ANOTHER VOICE
The good intentions of Mr Gordon Wilson are worse than useless
CHARLES MOORE
It was characteristically disgusting of the Sunday Times to serialise the story of Annie Murphy, the former lover of the Bishop of Galway. But I am grateful for two short passages. When their relationship is in trouble, Dr Casey turns to her and says, `My life has gone topsy-turvy. I'm lost. Many European Community grants I was working on for the diocese have fallen through. Maybe I was wrapped up in you and got careless.' On another occasion, the bishop and his lover have an assignation in a Dublin gravel pit. His car gets stuck in the mud as the police drive past. 'Oh, God, dear God. Oh, my God,' says Dr Casey. `Get out,' I [Annie Murphy] said, 'put those notebooks under the back wheel to give us leverage.' I cannot,' he said. 'They are offi- cial papers from my last EEC meeting.' Instead of damaging these sacred objects, they use the bishop's coat that he bought from Harrods.
I didn't believe most of the woman's tale, but these incidents strike me as the authen- tic voice of modern Ireland. The great national task is to get money out of other people, the EEC being the largest source. This is an essentially reasonable response to the fact that Ireland is an unreal political and economic entity. De Valera's constitu- tion notoriously lays claim to the whole island, and speaks of 'the reintegration of the national territory'. But when was that territory ever integrated except as part of the United Kingdom? The Ireland which that constitution constructs is a figment of De Valera's imagination with its 32 coun- ties and its Catholic national socialism and its attempt to get everyone to speak Irish. In 1943, the republic's then minister of education spoke of the necessity of 'waging a most intense war against English, and against human nature itself, for the life of the language'. The struggle for a united Ire- land is a similarly intense war against human nature itself.
Modern politicians in the South under- stand this. Just as they have quietly dropped any serious efforts to make people speak Irish, so they have long since stopped trying to work for a united Ireland. They know that the Unionists won't have it, and they do not want it themselves. They could not maintain order in the North, nor defeat the IRA who, if Ireland were united, would set out to overthrow the bourgeois govern- ment in Dublin. What Irish politicians want is more or less what they have got — an apparently inexhaustible well of sentimen- tal sympathy and therefore of money from the United States, the EEC, and — which is odder — from Britain itself. We allow the Irish to vote in Britain, and our border with the republic, which is our only border used by terrorists every day, is also our only border without passport controls. The ter- rorists operate chiefly from the republic and the republic, almost unique in relations between EEC members, lays claim to part of our territory, and yet, through the Anglo-Irish Agreement, we give it a formal say in the governing of that part. A couple of weeks ago, Michael and Breda and Paul and Raisin and Brian and Sile and Clara Joyce were named as 'family of the year' by the marriage guidance organisation, Relate. No one seemed to mind that the Joyces had come from Ireland and were liv- ing on British social security. If they had been French, there would have been a fuss. We are soppy about the Irish.
In order to maintain the sentimental sympathy, Ireland has to maintain the sense of grievance, and that is why its politicians find it hard to state their true feelings about a united Ireland. American Democrats would stop paying money and attention if Mr Albert Reynolds declared that Britain could have the six counties and welcome. Even as enlightened a politician as Mr Dick Spring, who has called the con- stitutional claims to the North into ques- tion, has done so in the context of burbling about a new pattern of relationships between the two islands, which is only a politer way of making a constitutional claim. The only Irish politician who has told the truth is Conor Cruise O'Brien, and as a result his political career came to an abrupt close. If the republic instituted internment in the South and supported it in the North, it would crush the IRA opera- tionally, which it would genuinely like to do. But it would even more genuinely like to keep all that international sentiment and money and the freedom to make Britain a scapegoat. If I am right, the anger of the Irish peo- ple against the Warrington bombers is politically dangerous. However admirable as a human emotion, it will not stop vio- lence. 'Peace' in its modern usage means having talks, so talks with the IRA are taken as symptoms of peace. Yet they will almost certainly be the opposite. When Mr Gordon Wilson, the hero of Enniskillen, meets the IRA, they will tell him, because they are not fools, that they want an end to violence too. They will announce what looks like a great concession — a ceasefire, a policy of not attacking civilians (as if it is morally acceptable to kill the men and women we depute to protect our lives), a readiness to sit down with the British Gov- ernment without preconditions. Perhaps Mr Wilson will say that he detects real signs of hope and a chastened spirit. Then what an outpouring of sentimentality there will be and every fool the world over will call for a new beginning, which is a euphemism for the British Government making a deal with the terrorists. Then one of two things will happen. Either Britain will do a deal, in which case the killing will increase, as the Unionists realise that their rights are being thrown away, or it won't do a deal, in which case the IRA will resume the killing and the world will blame Britain.
The good intentions of Mr Wilson and others are worse than useless. The views of the republic are of little account because its leaders are united in their determination not to take responsibility. World opinion is only that — opinion. The sole entity that matters, because it is the sovereign authori- ty and the wielder of real power, is the British Government. It has to decide what it wants and that is what, for 20 years, it has refused to do, and that is why, for the same period, terrorists have used bombs and bul- lets to persuade it to make up its mind. honestly do not know what our Govern- ment wants, and I do not think it does. The implications of its language about Northern Ireland are that it agrees with the IRA that it is a colonial power which should not be there, but some residual decency seems to prevent it from pursuing the logic of that position and getting out. If only it could recover the simpler language of political legitimacy, which is that the constitutional authority's chief duty is to defeat its ene- mies and assert its right to rule, then the IRA would eventually give up hope, and therefore give up fighting.
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