The consequences of MacStiofain
Ronan Fanning
Any one of the developments occurring in Dublin would, in normal times, have provided ample material for the would-be analyist of the Irish political scene to reflect upon at some length. It is almost as if a gourmet, having been restricted to a regime of tea and toast for some months, was suddenly asked for his opinion of a twelve-course dinner, with each course more rich and exotic than the last, and the whole of which he had to eat within an hour. In such a circumstance he might count himself fortunate if he were able merely to convey an impression of the style of the cuisine and that of the atmosphere within the restaurant. In this particular case, he might well begin by observing that the atmosphere got oppressively hotter as the meal continued and that he was not sure who was responsible for the cooking.
For, while there is general agreement that the heat in the kitchen has caused Mr Lynch's government to abandon, albeit temporarily, their normal style of consensus politics in favour of the politics of crisis and confrontation, it is much more difficult to decide whether the scale and prolongation of the crisis is more of the Government's or of the IRA's making. Nor should all the colour and drama of Dublin last week distract us from the fact that Mr Lynch's first moves must be seen in the context of his meeting with Mr Heath; as much, that is, in an English as in an Irish dimension. Mr Lynch has expressed himself as being pleased with that meeting, much more pleased, evidently, than with any of his previous encounters with the British Premier. It is hardly coincidence that the friendly atmosphere which prevailed coincided with the arrest and trial of Mr MacStiofain, Nor was Mr Heath likely to have been worried by Mr Lynch's treatment of the Irish Television Authority; indeed his own taste for dealing firmly With the media is well known, and it may even be that he was secretly admiring of Mr Lynch's smack of strong government. It may be, too, that Mr Heath had a newfound sympathy for his fellow-practitioner In confrontation politics. To the British Prime Minister, then, as to the British Public, Mr Lynch's recent actions deserve nothing but admiration: he is seen, simply, as doing what has been asked of him for so long — getting tough with the IRA. But while Mr, Lynch is doubtless gratified by his improved personal relations With Mr Heath, with all that it implies for the harmony of Anglo-Irish relations and for his hopes of the forthcoming White Paper on Northern Ireland, he must have very mixed feelings about his new-found Popularity in Britain. At the best of times, any British praise is sufficient to make any Irish politician distinctly uneasy; and these clearly are very far from the best of times. There can be no doubt that Mr Lynch would sacrifice much of his enthusiastic British press support for a more favourable Irish press support. And while he has been long accustomed to and unmoved by wildly emotional and irrational IRA accusations that he takes his policies from Whitehall, he will be determined to prevent such accusations gaining wider currency among the general public. This is the key to the inconsistencies which British observers may well again discern in his behaviour in the immediate future. It is for this reason too that he may have welcomed the gravity of last weekend's crisis, in that it provided him with a justification for moving against the IRA in an intrinsically Irish context.
Two points are relevant here. First, the bomb which exploded outside a crowded Dublin cinema last Saturday night; second, the hospital gunfight of Sunday afternoon. The first pushed MacStiofain's trial and hunger strike out of the headlines of the Sunday newspapers (an especially important consideration at a time when the country's radio and television network had been blacked out) and thus reduced the emotional impact of his undeniably courageous, if melodramatic, performance in court. Not for nothing is he reported as being extremely angry at that particular explosion. Indeed, so clear is it that the explosion benefited no one but the Government that it has even given rise to the ludicrous speculation that the bomb was planted by agents provacateur acting on the Government's behalf — the more plausible explanation is that it was probably the work of an extremist splinter group on the fringe of the republican movement and not amenable to Provisional IRA discipline. The hospital gunfight, however, was clearly the work of the Provisionals and had a very similar effect on public opinion, again depriving Mr MacStiofain of the next morning's headlines. In the rumour-ridden atmosphere of a country incongruously dependent upon British radio and, for the lucky few, television, for what knowledge they had of what was happening in their own capital city, the average Irishman may well have seen these events, together with the threatened mob violence of the demonstration outside the hospital, as vindicating the Government's action. It has long been Mr Lynch's contention that his Government would move against the IRA only when the interal security of their own state was threatened. With the hospital shooting (the first occasion during the present crisis when the Provisionals have staged an armed confrontation with security forces of the Republic) that condition was fulfilled; that it was fulfilled only after Mr MacStiofain's conviction seems in retrospect almost irrelevant.
Mr Lync'h's present position, then, is that the crisis has to do with a clear and direct challenge to the institutions of the State; that what is at issue, to paraphrase his reply to a question in the Dail last Tuesday, as to whether he was prepared to release Mr MacStiofain on humanitarian grounds, is nothing less than whether Parliament, Government, the courts and the law are all to surrender to an illegal organisation. For as long as he is able successfully to represent the case in these stark terms, he will probably win widespread support. But for many people, people who are by no means sympathetic to the IRA, the issues are much more blurred. My Lynch's greatest problem may well be that he is faced, not with one crisis, but with a multiplicity of crises; the IRA may thereby win support from areas where they have been denied it in the past. The principal opposition party for example, Fine Gael, have long demanded a harder fine towards the IRA; nevertheless they felt obliged to oppose the second reading of the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Bill as originally drafted as being an intolerable usurpation of democratic rights — they objected, in particular, to the Bill's provision that where a police officer not below the rank of Chief Superintendent " states that he believes that the accused was at a material time a member of an unlawful organisation, the statement shall be evidence that he was then such a member." Whether, as seems likely, Mr Lynch's Government has already allowed for the possibility of accepting reasoned amendments on this and other points in a gradual return to their traditional consensus politics, or whether they will rather risk forcing a general election, is still unclear at the time of writing. Such a decision must be viewed in the context of the Government's anxiety to damp down public uneasiness about what has been termed the Star Chamber aspects of the Bill. There is a similar uneasiness, again in quarters where there is ordinarily little or no sympathy for the IRA, about the Government's sacking of the television authority and the imprisonment of Mr O'Kelly. That Mr O'Kelly: a respected journalist with no sort of radical reputation, should be sentenced to three months, when Mr MacStiofain was only sentenced to six, seems to most people utterly incongruous.
Mr Lynch's task would appear to be to reach a compromise with his more moderate opponents on the issue of democratic rights as embodied in the case of Mr O'Kelly and the precise terms of the new IRA legislation, while refusing utterly to compromise with the Provisionals. But It is still too early to tell whether the drama of the past week has caused major changes in public opinion. Above all, we do not know for how long, or whether Mr MacStiofain will live; or just how the public will react if he dies. But when an Irish priest can appeal to a Dublin mob in the name of Christ and Sean MacStiofain," and when the remnants of that mob can recite the rosary in Dublin's main street in the course of an all-night vigil for an IRA leader who has been visited by both the present and previous Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, there are signs that such mundane political analysis may be of small consequence in the face of such spectres.
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