POLITICS

Ulster: English inanity, not Irish insanity

MARTIN IVENS

Anglo-Saxon attitudes are the key to the question of Ulster. Irish Nationalist or Loyalist aspirations, extreme or otherwise, are commonsensical and straightforward; it is the irrational, atavistic British who are the problem. We all know what each Irish faction wants, but what Westminster has been up to for the last 20 years in Northern Ireland is a riddle wrapped up in an enigma inside a mystery.

Westminster was still wobbling while eight British soldiers were blown to smithe- reens in their coach on Saturday. Mr Archie Hamilton, the Armed Forces Minister, admitted that the bombing placed a question mark over Army security measures. Two days later a Royal Navy recruiting officer, afforded no protection, was blown up by an IRA car bomb as he drove home from work in Belfast.

The British affect to be serious but they are in fact a frivolous lot. How should Dublin, the Ulster Unionists and the Pro- visional IRA be expected to behave when the line from London is so fantastical?

British mainlanders have long been of the opinion that the Irish have a moral duty to go away. Because they have a moral duty to go away it is further assumed they will go away. Obstinately, however, the Irish refuse to budge. Only two classes of mainlander are free from this delusion — a sprinkling of die-hard Tories and a rather larger number of left-wing 'extremists'.

Guilt created by the penal laws against Catholics and our handling of the Famine, anger at Parnellite obstructionism, Fenian outrages, the Easter Rising and the Trou- bles, and dismay at the near civil war in 1914 are deeply embedded in the Anglo- Saxon collective unconscious. Any men- tion of Northern Ireland is therefore dreaded.

When, however, Northern Ireland forces its way into the news the politicians and the press react with outrage. 'The IRA should be blotted from the face of the earth,' says our Prime Minister. Quite, but how? At the beginning of the week, on the unattributable lobby system, Mr Bernard Ingham or his stand-in added for good measure that she was 'saddened and angered by yet another senseless killing'. 'Senseless killing'!? That idiotic phrase has poisoned the mainland's thinking about Ulster for the last 20 years. Of course it makes 'sense' for the IRA to kill British soldiers. It is what the IRA is for. Moreov-

er it is a strategy which proved its 'sense' when Ireland gained its independence.

For another fortnight we will hear more Government waffle about heightened security measures. Then the Government will begin humming its favourite old tune called 'Why can't men of goodwill on all sides get together?' It continues: 'Why can't Ulster Protestants admit that the Irish Republic should have a say in their affairs?' and finishes with a rousing chorus of: 'Why is the Revd Ian Paisley so awful?' But Irish Unionists who 'senselessly' re- fused to accept Westminster's dictat in 1914 and 1974 will go on being 'senseless'. And what have they gained by it? The answer is 'senseless' freedom from Dublin rule.

Soon, in Reginald Maudling's cynical phrase, we will be back to 'an acceptable level of violence' in Ulster and perhaps the launching of a new initiative to halt those 'senseless killings'. Then, there will be another prolonged search for the mythical centre of Ulster politics. Finally, there will follow complete silence in the press and on television and in Cabinet. When the ques- tion of Ulster is raised in Parliament, about 20 MPs will stay to hear the debate and half of those will have come from Ulster.

No minister will be sacked for incompe- tence in Ulster. When the disastrous Maze prison break-out occurred, for instance, the doctrine of ministerial responsibility was ignored. Ministers' failures will be blamed on the Irish and their ever so fleeting successes will be greeted with rapture. They may follow Willie, Merlyn and Douglas by ending up as Home Secret- ary. And just as no Thatcherite thinking has been brought to bear on Defence so none will be devoted to Ulster and Union.

As IRA atrocities mounted last week much publicity was given to Mr Edward Heath's warning that the reintroduction of internment would be a grave mistake. The timing of Mr Heath's public return to the Northern Ireland issue was impeccable because we are fast approaching the 15th anniversary of a remarkable event in Brit- ish politics. For it was in September 1973 that Mr Heath discovered a solution to the Irish problem.

On television in Dublin Mr Heath, then Prime Minister, was asked what would happen if no agreement could be reached in Northern Ireland between the parties on power sharing. He replied that the corn- plete integration of the province into the United Kingdom would have to follow. Readers, however, need not adjust their Spectator because Mr Heath shortly re- sumed normal service. A few days later he broke his own record for rapid U-turns when he wrote a letter to the then Leader of the Opposition, Mr Harold Wilson, utterly renouncing integration. The word subsequently disappeared from the politic- al vocabulary of British governments.

No marching bands of either Loyalist or Nationalist persuasion today commemo- rate this event but one suspects the Pro- visional IRA and the Unionist leaders who led the Loyalist strike understood its full significance.

Other key events in Britain's failure to tackle the insurgency also date from the period of Mr Heath's Government, although the children who have just com- pleted their new GCSE history examina- tion will not have been taught to memorise them. In June 1972, Mr Seamus Twomey, head of the Provisional IRA's Belfast brigade, was invited at the head of a delegation of other unelected Republican terrorists to London to discuss ways of prolonging its truce with the English army. Along with the contemporaneous imposi- tion of direct rule from London this proved conclusively to the IRA that 'senseless' violence paid dividends.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party is commit- ted to the eccentric notion of a united Ireland in the long term, but only when the insurgency is defeated. The Tories, although nominally Unionist, want to de- volve Northern Ireland's government under a system of power sharing. Scottish and Welsh devolution, however, must be resisted at all costs because it would undermine the Union. This, I suppose, ts what journalists mean when they say Mrs Thatcher is a practical woman who likes straightforward solutions. Meanwhile the Republic, it is said, cannot or will not deliver sufficient support to the Army or the Royal Ulster Consta- bulary in their battle with the IRA. However, no dramatic military initiatives can be taken against the IRA because It would undermine co-operation with Dub- lin. A terrible muddle is born .

Martin Ivens is foreign editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Noel Malcolm is on holiday.