A question of allegiance
Charles Moore
What constitutes a serious public ques- tion? For the BBC, at least, anything to do with sex, the social services or 'discrimination' qualifies. Driving through Belfast last month, I turned on my car radio in time for the beginning of 'You the Jury' on Radio Four. The programme is a sort of mock-trial in which arguments are advanc- ed and witnesses called for and against a proposition, and the audience decides who wins. That week's argument was about whether women were sexually harassed at work. I did not stay tuned to find out whether We the Jury think they are.
If one heard such a programme in Lon- don, one might be sufficiently dazed by the frequency of this sort of thing to think no more about it. But in Belfast, its full oddity strikes one. Shortly afterwards, I met an Ulsterwoman who had heard the entire pro- gramme and was laughing about it. For her it had had all the irrelevance and surreal charm that a debate about Jewish dietary laws might hold for a buddhist.
For in Ulster there has never been time to cultivate the arts of peace to such a pitch that sexual harassment at work springs naturally to mind as a topic for earnest debate. The great public subjects are politics and religion, and the relation bet- ween the two. Politics and religion, of course, are often treated on the BBC, but in rather an esoteric way. Politics means either the lobby (Foot to Quit Storm, Maggie Raps Jim etc), or pressure groups trying to prise more power and money out of the public authorities. Religion means either personal and ethical convictions (How Mysticism Saved My Marriage), or the work of much the same pressure groups that come under politics.
In Northern Ireland the two words preserve more of what I take to be their original, or at least basic meaning. Politics means the questions of what composes a state and how that state is governed. Religion means the worship and study of a God, and the scope and purpose of the in- stitutions established in His name.
Whereas England expects a man to trifle with a question like, 'Did Christ really rise from the dead?', but to look deadly solemn when it is revealed that a theatre has refused to provide a ramp for wheelchairs, in Ulster the first question would be considered too sacred to be bandied about in a studio, and the second would probably pass unnoticed among more urgent problems.
It is not that Ulstermen have a turn for philosophical and metaphysical specula- tion: I should think they are as immune to such things as any race on earth. It is rather that the central questions of public affairs in Northern Ireland are so real and so im-
possible to banish that public argument on `serious' topics really is serious. Religious belief and political allegiance express an identity which has deep historical roots, and both are made tense and urgent by the fact that two religions and two allegiances coexist and compete.
Since what Social Democrats like to call the political agenda is so clearly defined in Northern Ireland, and so steadily directed at the question, 'Of which nation is this place a part?', there is little room for diver- sion. Ulster offers none of the random pleasures of a society where all thought is free and most of it therefore virtually mean- ingless. It has few of the engaging charlatans, and none of the trendy 'intelligentsia', who make London life so amusing. Only on the field of evangelical religion can one find the sort of eloquent phoney who, in such a different guise, pops up over here at Lime Grove or on Channel Four.
Perhaps it is because of this unattractive simplicity that English people try to evade, despise or complicate the Ulster question. To most the whole matter seems petty and obscurantist: farcical if it were not so unpleasant. Those who manage to spare any time from debating sexual harassment at work to consider the matter, like to talk of overcoming 'blind prejudice' and out-of- date enmities. The more impatient dismiss the subject as impossible to understand and say that the bloody Irish should shoot it out among themselves. Mr Reginald Maudling spoke for most of England, as he returned 'On in five minutes, Mr Waldo.' Spectator 2 October 1982 from the province he ran so incompetentlY as Home Secretary: 'God, what a ghastly country. Get me a drink.' Occasionally, Ireland in some shape or form has aroused English interest. The latest bout of this was for a few years front 1968, when the civil rights movement realls' ed the advantage of enlisting English synt' pathy. The gloss of an education at Queell5 University, and a study of the rhetoric 0', protest in other parts of the world, gave them the vocabulary to appeal to liberal consciences. Soon the Insight teams were calling for English electoral rules, the disat* ming of the RUC, the disbanding of the Specials, and an end to 'discrimination , and the marchers were waving their tricolours, whistling their Republican tunes, and including among their stewards members of the IRA. Very gradually it became apparent that it was merely the same dull old quarrel about partition in lie!, clothes, and most English people, dismaYeu that such a simple theme should survive their interventions, retired bored. Since the early 1970s, English people di good will have confined themselves to humanitarian pleas (calls to release ter- rorists), and support for those charitable projects which advertise themselves as 'breaking down the barriers between the communities. Only the unhappy politicians, less easily able to extricate themselves than ordinary citizens, have persisted actively in the belief that Ulster can be 'solved' by the wily British methods of negotiation t ja brought you African decolonisation. 1"" Heath set Mr Whitelaw to work for 'recoil' ciliation', and only desisted when Posve.r., sharing had broken up the Unionist Olt; and discredited the 'men of moderation Even today, a Conservative and Unionist Government is about to have another g0 as marriage guidance counsellors to the wall- ing factions. It is easier for British politicians to try _ anything on in Ulster than it is for them tu, admit that the entire proud edifice os enlightened British constitutionalism has evaded the matter central to the preserva; tion of any state — the question allegiance. What is important from the point of view of Mr Prior is to show that Ulster is a 'special case', a freak of history' and not a classic political problem. Perhaps it is because Englishmen used t° be so good at dealing with political pro blems that they have now forgotten how tu c, ti recognise them. If you live in Surrey, () even in Yorkshire, you do not have worry about what nation you are a part °f. Your ancestors, in circumstances less coin' fortable than your own, settled the matteer in your favour. For three centuries to England, and two in Scotland, people baste_ not seriously doubted who their ruler; should be. It therefore requires an exacts_ of sympathetic historical imagination understand the plight of people wit!, though fellow-citizens, face as much uncel, tainty as England did in the 1640s. Hist°.r,, does not record that England reacted wit' Anglo-Saxon unflappability then.
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