Ulster finds her Husak
The sight, even on our television screens whose daily food is violence and blood- shed, of English soldiers occupying with fixed bayonets the streets of a British city, is enough to chill the spine. The burning buildings and barricades of Bel- fast were a grim enough warning against any complacency. And if only eight men have so far been killed in the Ulster fight- ing—roughly the number who are killed every eight hours on Britain's roads— that is still eight too many. Yet grave as it is, and tragic too, the situation in Northern Ireland is very far from being out of control. Nor is there any reason why it should be allowed to get out of control, so long as sensible and, above, all, patient policies are followed in London.
So far, happily, this has been the case. The immediate task is to maintain law and order and to restore civil peace. If this cannot be achieved (as it clearly cannot at the present time) without the presence of British troops, then it is the clear obligation of the Government of the United Kingdom, of which Northern Ireland is an integral part, to provide those troops in whatever numbers are necessary. More important still, we must be prepared to see the troops stay there for as long as is necessary, which may well be longer than many people think. Nor can there be any weakening in this resolve if, as the British GOC has warned, some of his men meet hostile gunfire instead of friendly cups of tea, or if a soldier is killed by a sniper's bullet.
A British presence on this scale, how- ever, inevitably raises the question of whether Parliament should be recalled in order to restore to Westminster, by legis- lation under the terms of section 75 of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, all the Powers over Northern Ireland affairs Which that Act handed over to Stormont.
storically, it is true, Stormont is an nomaly: the purpose of the 1920 Act as to provide two Home Rule parlia- ents for Ireland, one at Dublin and one for the six counties) at Stormont, with rovision for their future reunification, S a neat means of meeting the demand or Home Rule in the South without in any way subjecting the North to Dublin. But in the event the South rejected Home Rule and insisted on independence, while the North found itself landed with the Home Rule for which it had never asked.
But to abolish Stormont to-day, nearly half a century later, would be a very serious step indeed, to be taken only as a last resort. There is, first, the matter of principle: for all its failings (many of which should give pause to those advocat- ing Stormont-type arrangements for Scot- land and Wales) the Ulster Unionist government is the freely, democratically and constitutionally elected government of the province. To give in to the minority who want to see it abolished, seemingly because a very small minority of that minority have had recourse to violence, would be utterly wrong. And there is, secondly, the practical danger—the dan- ger that the abolition of Stormont would lead to a far greater outbreak of violence on the part of the extremists among the Protestant majority than any yet seen, partly because they might fear that West- minster was taking power away from Belfast only to hand it over, like a hot potato, to Dublin, and partly, of course, because they would see it as the abrupt end of the privileges associated with the Protestant ascendancy, for which Stor- mont, among Catholics and Protestants alike, unhappily stands.
Certainly there is no need to abolish Stormont and revert to direct Westminster rule so long as Major Chichester-Clark is prepared to play Husak to Whitehall's Kremlin. And at present he clearly is. The key role being played by British troops, under exclusively British command, is one pointer to the true state of affairs. An even plainer indication is provided by the agreement on Tuesday night to place the entire Ulster police force, whose blatant lack of impartiality was the Catholics' greatest remaining grievance and provo- cation to violence, under British control.
Meanwhile, despite the present turmoil, the Stormont government is going ahead with Capt O'Neill's original plan for the introduction of 'one man, one vote' at the next local government elections, in 1971, which are to be fought out on the basis of new and virtually ungerrymandered boundaries. Thus the principal legitimate grievances of the Catholics in Ulster arc already well on the way to being remedied, particularly since it is the local authorities who largely determine the allocation of housing. The civil rights leaders' further cry of 'one man, one job' is not something that legislation can satisfy: all that is clear is that it cannot be achieved wihout a prolonged period of civil peace. There remains the objection to the Special Powers Act; but in present conditions, with a small minority of violent extremists at large on both sides. it is hard to demonstrate that these powers are not needed, and the British Got is now in a position to see that they are no longer used in a grossly partisan way. In short, so long as Major Chichester-Clark is willing and able to continue his Husak role there is no need whatsoever for any direct or overt British political intervention—least of all the attempted imposition of a so-called 'broad- based' government on the province.
None of this, admittedly. provides a long-term political solution to Ulster's difficulties. Here, once again, patience must be the keynote. A policy of com- munal reconciliation was tried under Captain O'Neill : it made some slight progress but ultimately failed, and the time is not yet ripe for a further attempt. Again, the original civil rights movement's attempt to capture moderate Protestant working class support and so transform Ulster politics from the politics of caste to those of class was a hopeful step, in that class at least allows of the possibility of change; but this too has suffered a severe setback in the recent communal strife. All that can be done now, politic- ally, is to reaffirm that the border is a permanency (until, of course, the Repub- lic wishes to return to Westminster); and that whether or not Stormont exists the Six Counties, as the overwhelming majority of their inhabitants desire, will remain an integral part of the United Kingdom. And then to hope that, within this secure context, the forces of reason will, gradually, once again begin to pre- vail over those of unreason.
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