SPECTAT THF OR
The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603
THE BLOOD RED HAND
If it seemed, for a moment, that there was some faint hope of a peaceful solution to the chronic problems of Northern Ire- land, then those hopes were destroyed by the carnage in Belfast last Saturday when the Provisional IRA bombed a fishmon- ger's and killed ten people. Even Mr Gerry Adams, the terrorists' apologist as the lead- er of Sinn Fein, looked genuinely stunned by the event. We are used to the nauseating Sight of Mr Adams 'apologising' when an atrocity goes 'wrong' (begging a sickening question about what it means for one to go right); but for a change his horror had a grain of sincerity. This is unsurprising when one looks into the background. Thanks to his recent asso- ciation with Mr John Hume, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the odious Mr Adams has been able to flirt With respectability. While watching the spectacle of a terrorist sympathiser negoti- ating with a constitutional politician, the Government has held its nose and looked the other way. Had something acceptable emerged from their negotiations — always unlikely — then the Government might well have sought to make the most of an e. PPurtunity to stop the killing, particularly if the dirty work had been done by someone else. Now there is no chance of that; and Mr Adams dug his own grave earlier this week when, having for years claimed not to be. a mouthpiece of the IRA, he suddenly said that if the British Government gave certain concessions, he could deliver a peace deal on behalf of the Provisionals. r Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, nas attracted opprobrium for imposing an ex. elusion order on Mr Adams preventing him from travelling to Great Britain. How- ever, a man with such control over the IRA as Mr Adams claims to have clearly fulfils all the requirements for such an order. Mr At dams is, by his own admission, far more in he orbit of the murderers of the Provision- aki. IRA than those who make excuses for "lin On the left wing of the Labour Party would have us believe. t,
Mr Adams' behaviour confirms some of he impressions about the present divided nbature of the IRA high command. The
°Ilahing last Saturday looked to many observers like a protest by one wing of the
movement against the pacific overtures of the other. The belief among Unionist and Nationalist politicians is that the IRA is tired of the conflict, and many of them have realised that they cannot win it. Terrorists who take this view have supported Mr Adams in his dubious endeavours. Those who do not, stick their fingers up at him by the disgusting means of murdering inno- cent men, women and children. Mr Hume has suffered even more than Mr Adams, because Mr Adams did not have a reputation to forfeit. The grim, defeated visage that Mr Hume presented at Westminster this week was that of a gam- bler who has failed horribly. Despite words of personal encouragement to him from Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Sec- retary, Mr Hume knows that the betrayal of his misplaced trust in Mr Adams and his accomplices has effectively ruled out any chance he might have had of leading a peace initiative. The Unionists, who were waiting for just such a disaster to befall Mr Hume, can now press their suit more effec- tively with the Government. As the Gov- ernment is relying on Unionist votes to save it from what could be a series of humilia- tions in the months ahead — starting with the rail privatisation legislation before the Commons next week — the Unionists may find they are pushing at an open door.
The Unionist demands include a Grand Committee on Ulster, devolution of certain powers (now discharged by Order in Coun- cil) down to local government level in the Province, and an emphasis on security poli- cy that would show (as the Unionists see it) greater determination by the Government to maintain Ulster as an integral part of the United Kingdom for the indefinite future. Since these demands stop short of a repudi- ation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, they should be palatable to Mr Major. It is high- ly unlikely, though, that Mr Major would contemplate the kind of crackdown on security that some Unionists would like — such as the reintroduction of internment.
The political reaction in the aftermath of this week's atrocities against both Protes- tants and Catholics has once more exposed the limitations of the policy that has been followed, with various fine-tunings, since 1969. Rhetoric and expressions of sympathy remain a substitute for decisive action to try to resolve the problem. The politicians themselves are so exhausted by the years of bloodshed that they lack the energy even to vary the clichés — hence Mr Major's admirable but unsatisfactory promise to hunt the terrorists down and bring them to justice, and Mr Ashdown's plea that the bomb and the bullet should not win over the ballot-box. If the IRA has realised that it cannot win, because the Government has reconciled itself to the corpses of IRA vic- tims piling up from now until kingdom come, that is not necessarily an incentive for the Provisionals to run up the white flag. It is a policy in the face of that psycho- pathic determination to wreak terror that we need, and we still do not have one.
Previous page
