Can bipartisanship survive?

John Biggs-Davison

The official Opposition has the duty to oppose the Executive but to oppose responsibly. It is the alternative government. Against those who work and conspire to overturn the constitution of the United Kingdom there is only one British side to be on. That then is the basis of what, in the current Americanism, is called bi-partisanship. The bi-partisan policy on Northern Ireland, such as it is—for coherent policy is sometimes hard to discern—rests on two needs: first, for national unity in support of security forces at grips with revolutionary terrorists, and, secondly, for constitutional changes to command widespread consent.

Her Majesty's Opposition backs Her Majjesty's Government in all genuine efforts and in all measures, however harsh and unpalatable, designed to restore the Queen's peace and writ in her Ulster counties. But an Opposition that ceases to offer necessary and constructive criticism is extinct. Last summer, for example, over the anarchy in South Armagh, which to the IRA and their admirers was 'liberated' republican territory and to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland 'bandit country', the official Opposition expressed indignant dissatisfaction. Later, Mr Harold Wilson declared Mr Merlyn Rees's 'bandit country' a 'special emergency area'. That was but a rhetorical flourish: but the introduction of a small troop of the Special Air Service Regiment got psychological and physical results.

Why had that not been done before? Because of sustained and successful traduction by an enemy who for generations has been a master of black propaganda. The devil has been allowed to have most of the good tunes in an island of bards and ballads. Irishmen and Irishwomen excel in journalism and popular exposition of a cause, and whereas some rulers become victims of their own propaganda, British rulers in Ireland become victims of their adversary's.

So the Ulster Special Constabulary was abolished, churlishly and without adequate replacement, and largely on the grounds that the B-men were a Protestant, rather than a people's, force. It was part of the implanted myth that there were never any Roman Catholics in their ranks. There were some earlier on and Sir James Craig, as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, thanked them in an Order of the Day. Whether it be during 'fifty years of Unionist oppression' from Stormont or under the impeccable 'British standards' of Whitehall, the effect of republican intimidation and slander has been to whittle down the gallant Catholic element in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (where they formerly had a quota reserved in proportion to population) and the Ulster Defence Regi

ment. The republican propaganda can thus disingenuously allege that the RUC and UDR are 'sectarian'. What the USC was maligned for was its hateful effectiveness particularly along the Border. It knew too much about too many. Indeed IRA chroniclers describe the B Specials as the rock upon which successive waves of republican physical force were broken. In like manner the Parachute Regiment was virtually smeared out of Ulster, despite its fine reputation for social work for the youth and the community, just because it was a formidable corps d'elite. Similarly, the SAS was kept out of activity in Ireland until this year.

The present troubles have lasted longer than either of the world wars. That is no reason for giving up or giving in. It is a characteristic weakness of democracy to demand early solutions to secular problems. But ever more innocents perish, trade and tourism languish, unemployment has risen into double figures and British prestige abroad suffers from a 'level of violence' which has never been 'acceptable'. Ministers in Whitehall and the Castle-colonial bureaucracy at Stormont work themselves close to exhaustion. But the impression upon the battered, fearful and frustrated Ulster public is of drift and inertia. So the Opposition has the right and duty, without being deterred by reproachful appeals to the bi-partisan approach, to expose what it has seen as a flabby Political direction of the best trained and most chivalrous counter-insurgency troops in the world.

The Government has failed to convince either friend or foe that it can honestly reply in the affirmative to the question put by the Bow Group in a pamphlet on Ulster much admired by the Monday Club: 'Do you sincerely want to win?' Conservatives for their part have made many practical suggestions to help the Government in its anti-terrorist task. It was assuredly Mr Airey Neave's persistence that led to the closing down of the incident centres which undercut elected representatives of the Roman Catholics and became one of the sick jokes of the one-sided 'cease-fire'. But more often than not Opposition ideas have been ignored or rejected.

Thus, not month after month but year,,by year we have pleaded for a larger whole-time element in the UDR. Part-time soldiers who work by day and patrol by night are feeling the strain. The General Officer Commanding at Lisburn is Director of Military Operations but not of all operations. No structure exists of police-military co-operation save that provided by local initiative and periodical committees. My call for a Templer-type Director of Operations responsible to the Secretary of State has been echoed by Lord

Spectator May 29 19/6 Shinwell in the Upper House and by Ws with counter-terrorist experience but it seems to have been decided in Stormoat Castle. The Committee headed by Lord Gardiner (no fascist he!) proposed the creation of a new offence of being concerned in terrorisM. The Gardiner Report was presented to Par' liament in January 1975, but neither 0°1 nor since has the proposal been acted uPolt The Opposition has been calling, so far in vain, for the institution of an offence of ter" rorism coupled with an offence of incite' ment. Yet Mr Merlyn Rees is the first to urge that the 'godfathers' of the Ulster mafias should be brought to book. He is right. not enough to apprehend teenage duPes r)d the rank and file of so-called brigades all, active service units. The managers of : m der, the millionaires of extortion, the al° pulators of co-operatives and other ente,i; prises in Andersonstown and elsewhere, ta tycoons of thuggery, whatever colours ttle2t brandish and besmirch—these must be!'"

out of circulation. or

It causes grave scandal that a TworneY, McGuinness can walk free in Northe 1,f'; rn land while in the South the Garda SioeW e can take in a Mallon or O'Connell. The 6111b, is past when the British could chide the Vake lin Government for softness towards Provisional IRA. The Irish understand beal ter than do British Ministers, who fev,ebe their incomprehension by describing 'II, terrorism as 'mindless', the ruthless and Ilhol compromising character of a movement t”ai recognises no government in Ireland as le'of other than that proclaimed from the stelli.she the Post Office in Dublin at Easter 1916. I only terms on offer are surrender.thal It is demoralising and it is humiliating ed British Ministers should have been leetaito, by Irish Ministers on the folly of giving. 501 tus and encouragement to the Pros/isle/0 IRA by continuing the parleys between ckeir cials of the Northern Ireland Office and t:ori 'political commissars' in Provisional Iv Fien. There has been no assurance that yen talks have been broken off. One cannot e f be certain whether the bloody fiction ° 'cease-fire' still persists. Oaf Bi-partisan backing for the restoratOt of law and order and the re-establishnlerlo. the 'primacy of the police' in law enfeos ment is thus qualified by doubts as to In'yer and to will. Bi-partisanship would hovie likel/ become utterly impossible in the un tllC event of the Government weakening t°

king

point of despairing of the Union or Ina de. the declaration of intent, peremptoribrd, manded by the Provos and requeste more dulcet tones, by Mr Ruairi Bruti'cot TD, Fianna Fail's spokesman on NI°rt,„flt1 Ireland, to withdraw the troops who P ell° between Mr Brugha's countrymen as v" or. ours and a conflagration which would r) leap the Border and not stop at the sea* nol' Neither the term 'bi-partisan' nor the rir j5 icy, or absence of policy, to which the ter fr

k k

applied, is particularly popular 00 the servative benches or in Conservative

ches in the country. Too many mistakes and misjudgments have been made with bipartisan approval or acquiescence. The then Conservative Opposition made no trouble for Ministers who disarmed, and for a time, demoralised the RUC and, although bipartisanship never prevented Mr Merlyn Rees and Mr Stanley Orme from voting against the Conservative Administration, as was their right, on legislation for the emergency, they gladly endorsed much that I resisted and many Conservatives now regret : the demolition of Stormont (the first of the Provos' demands) which was followed by the chipping away at the Crown in Ulster by the abolition of the Governorship and a residual Privy Council whose history is older than the Northern Ireland state or the Parliamentary Union itself.

No new Conservative links are yet contemplated with Ulster Unionism but the Conservative and Unionist Party needs to rebuild the political base which collapsed when the Mother of Parliaments strangled her daughter at Stormont and Unionism splintered in sour recrimination.

With Mr Wilson at one dispatch box and Mr Heath at the other, there was something of a bi-partisan coolness towards the Union and Ulster Unionists. The Union was tolerated rather than asserted. What did six counties signify in the scale of Europe? But what could not be gain said by either side was the determination of the overwhelming majority, including many Catholics, to hold to the British link. This was made manifest in elections, the Border Poll and, in more sinister fashion, the strike called by the Ulster Wor-k ers' Council. Repeated pronouncements were made by both front benches that it was British policy that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as that was the majority will, but the implication could easily be read into statements thus worded that the British might not be surprised, and might even be relieved, if the majority changed its mind.

Since then the Conservative and Unionist Party has put beyond doubt its belief in the Union and not merely its acceptance as a fact of history. The Leader of the Opposition

has reminded the nation that her party is the Unionist Party. For this, as well as for her' self, Mrs Thatcher when she visited Belfast was taken to Ulster hearts from Stormont t° the Shankill.