Ulster

After the military

Ronan Fanning

Few operations in the history of British arms have been at once so massive, so successful and yet so limited in military significance as the operation carried out in Northern Ireland last weekend. The principal aim was swiftly achieved — the security forces were able to move freely throughout the whole community — but the enemy had not been engaged, let alone defeated or disarmed. Seldom, indeed, has an invading force gone to such lengths to avoid battle with an enemy. The explanation of this apparently strange anomaly is simple: Mr Whitelaw's concern was not, and is not, military; it is political. Mr Whitelaw's activities in the week preceding the breaching of the 'no-go' areas amply testified to this and merit close examination. From the moment when he first announced the Government's intention to send another 4,000 troops to Northern Ireland, Mr Whitelaw took great pains not merely to eschew the element of surprise normally thought essential for any military operation, but to signal his determination to move against the barricades. He did this frequently and clearly. On Friday, July 28, for example, he took what was for him the unusual step of giving a special interview to Irish Television. His aim was clearly to spell out for the benefit Of public opinion in the Republic his determination to have the barricades down. By reminding his audience of the horrors of the Bloody Friday bombings and by enlisting their support for his revulsion at the carelessness with which the Provisionals treat human life and by reassuring them that what he proposed was in no way aimed at them, he effectively reduced the risk of an emotional backlash to the invasion of the Bogside and Creggan comparable to that which followed in the wake of Bloody Sunday and led to the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin.

But the full extent of Mr Whitelaw's determination to isolate the Provisionals from all moderate Irish opinion was even more remarkably demonstrated when, also O n last Friday, a member of •his office Phoned two priests in the Bogside and warned them of the impending invasion, Members of the SDLP, convinced of Mr Whitelaw's intentions (although it is not clear Whether they too had been specifically warned in advance), subsequently spent much of Friday night persuading the Provisionals' commander in Derry, Martin McGuinness, not to engage in battle with the invading British troops.

The dilemma which Mr Whitelaw's tactics posed for Irish moderates was nowhere more agonising than in the case of John Hume, In an interview broadcast on Irish radio at lunchtime on Sunday little more than twelve hours before the invasion began, Mr Hume expressed the hope and, significantly, nothing stronger than the hope, that the troops would not invade. But in a remarkably statesmanlike and courageous passage for an Irish Catholic politician with a power-base in Derry, he also said that if an invasion did take place and if it led to widespread suffering among the people of the Bogside or Creg gan, while he would blame the British Government and the British Army, he "would also blame the Provisional IRA because when people embark on military means of solving problems then they must accept the consequences of their policies."

This passage was promptly seized on by the media and was highlighted in news bulletins in the crucial hours before the invasion; it may well have been the decisive factor in preventing the growth of a climate of opinion in Derry which might have given rise to a futile and bloody civilian resistance to the invading units.

Mr Whitelaw's demeanour in the hour of victory, moreover, was wholly consistent with his policy prior to the invasion. At his press conference in Stormont Castle on Monday morning he was more cautious than jubilant, even though it was already absolutely clear that his forces had achieved their initial objective. He refused to be drawn about the possibility of a fur ther phase in which the IRA might be sought out, let alone defeated or destroyed.

This, it became evident later in the day, was rather the language of Mr Faulkner and Mr Craig. Mr Whitelaw's insistence on this point clearly influenced army attitudes.

The initial statement being issued by army press officers some five or six hours after the operation had begun and when its suc cess was already assured made no mention, for example, of arrests. Indeed inquiries on this point elicited somewhat confused and embarrassed uncertainty. The army's anxiety to maintain a low profile, a term which seems incongruous in view of the size of the operation, was underlined by the fact that at the end of their first day in Free Derry, with the Creggan and Bogside thick with British troops, only seven men had been arrested and one of these was later released.

What then is Mr Whitelaw's present policy towards the Provisional IRA? The key is a phrase which he used repeatedly during his press conference and which bears all the appearances of a carefully-thoughtout formula which we can look forward to hearing again and again in the weeks ahead: the aim is "to remove the capacity of the Provisional IRA to wreck the life of the community," a capacity which again became all too horribly evident even as Mr Whitelaw spoke and as the first reports of the Cindy explosions became available. The Provisionals, it is now clear, must bear the responsibility for these explosions notwithstanding their disclaimer to the contrary. However, if Mr Whitelaw disappointed extreme unionist opinion in his refusal to encourage any root and branch war of attri tion against the IRA, neither was he as unequivocal in his refusal ever again to talk to the Provisionals as he had been in the House of Commons the previous week. Questioned about the discrepancy between his answer in the Commons and a much less emphatic answer on the same subject subsequently given by the Prime Minister, Mr Whitelaw made it clear that what he had said "committed himself and no one else." It committed, he said, neither future governments, nor even the present Government; and although Mr Whitelaw ducked the question as to whether he would remain a member of a Cabinet which did talk to the Provisionals, he did not deny that there were circumstances under which he might do so.

And it is to talks of the most comprehensive kind with all interested parties that Mr Whitelaw must now turn. The real significance of the fall of the ' no-go ' areas is that a crucial political obstacle to such talks has now been removed, The inviolability of the Creggan and the Bogside in particular had become as large and as emotional an issue with the Protestants as with the Catholics. It was the only remaining logical reason whereby unionists could justify an attitude of total non-co-operation with the Whitelaw administration, as is evidence by the recent speeches of that most logical of politicians, Mr Enoch Powell. That this was the vital consideration which persuaded the Government to gamble upon such massive military action, even in Derry, was emphasised not by Mr Whitelaw but, even more significantly, by Mr Heath in his Panorama interview last Monday. What had been happening, said Mr Heath, was that one community had been saying, "We can't talk about a political solution because there is a ' no-go ' area there" and then they say, "Well, we must have ' no-go ' areas as well," and then the other community says, "Unless they get their barricades down, we can't talk."

The military events of last weekend then represent not so much a political success as a political opportunity. If that opportunity is not swiftly grasped it may soon vanish. Although the fall of the 'no-go' areas will deny to the Provisionals such havens for the manufacture of bombs and for the preparation of the delivery of bombs as they have recently enjoyed and may, it is to be hoped, lead to a reduction in the number of major explosions, it has little other military significance. The Provisionals are numerically stronger and better armed than ever before; for the moment they simply decided not to fight. The longer Saracens, Saladins, Centurions and all the other exotic creatures of modern military might rumble up and down the Bogside, the greater is the risk of renewed friction between the army and the Catholic community. Such friction and the consequent cycle of stoning, rioting and petrol bombing to which it gives rise would again provide the Provisionals with the opportunity to redeem themselves and to regain their traditional role as protectors of the Catholic community. Mr Whitelaw has spoken at some length of the dominance now enjoyed by the security forces in both Protestant and Catholic ' no-go ' areas. He seems Strangely insensitive to the fact that British military dominance does not have the same connotations for Ulster Protestants as it does for Ulster Catholics. Neither does the renewed presence of the RUC in all no-go areas — and this may well prove his most intractable problem in the immediate future.

The greater the display of military might, moreover, the greater is the ever present temptation to use it not in a political but in a military sense. One must doubt whether all the troops share Mr Whitelaw's enthusiasm for the avoidance of a confrontation with the IRA. Already the events of last weekend have embarrassed and angered two of the principal parties to whom Mr Whitelaw must presently talk — Mr Hume and the SDLP showed itself to be seriously divided about their reaction to the invasion, so much so that what Mr Hume said at midday on Sunday was at odds with what purported to be an official statement issued by the Party later that day. Mr Lynch was placed in an even more awkward situation just when he was in the throes of the critical by-election campaign in mid-Cork, and there was considerable anger in Dublin Government circles at Mr Whitelaw's statement that Mr Lynch had been informed in advance of the British Government's intentions. While he was informed in the sense of being told what was going to happen before the tanks actually began rolling towards the barricades (but after Mr Whitelaw's warning to civilians late on Sunday night that military action was pending), he was not informed in the sense of being consulted — the more appropriate diplomatic usage, in the view of the Dublin Government at least. This misunderstanding illustrates what must be one of Mr Whitelaw's greatest fears at the present time: that in trying to find desperate and dramatic military remedies to ensure the political isolation of his enemies, he may end by isolating himself from those who would be his friends.

That both Mr Lynch and the SDLP do see the situation created by the British military operation as desperate and dramatic is beyond doubt. The melodrama of Tuesday night's so-called 'helicopter talks' in Dublin between members of the Irish Government and of the SDLP (who were flown from Lifford in County Donegal in an Irish army helicopter and then driven to Government Buildings in Dublin by an Irish Army driver) is wholly alien to Mr Lynch's style in Government. Nor do the accusations, made by Mr Gerry Pitt, the nominal leader of the SDLP, and by Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien that the talks were no more than an Irish version of the Zinoviev letter — a publicity stunt to help the Government party win the Mid-Cork by-election — hold

any water. The conclusive argument here is Mr Paddy Devlin's participation in the talks: no other Northern Irish politician has campaigned, so regularly and so assidously against Mr Lynch's Government in the .domestic politics of the Republic, and he would be more sensitive than any of his colleagues to the possibility of such electoral manipulation. While it is, of course, undeniable that the drama of the week's events was a welcome electoral bonus for Mr Lynch, if there is an Zinoviev in the situation it is Mr Whitelaw and not any member of Fianna Fail.

Mr Whitelaw must have been immensely gratified by the cracks in the political logjam which appeared so soon after his incursions into the ' no-go' areas. The plethora of talks proposed this week (in particular between Mr Whitelaw and the SDLP), the jockeying for position around a conference table which is now more sharply delineated on the horizon than ever before, the decision of the Irish Minister for Justice to call in all the licensed guns other than shot guns and point two two rifles before August 5 — these are but some of the political fruits of what masquerades as and what, tragically, could still become an essentially military enterprise. The recalcitrance of the Ulster Unionists remains the single obstacle to what all other interested parties (some publically, some privately), agree is the ultimate goal of quadripartite talks involving representatives of the Irish and British Governments and of the Unionists and the SDLP. But the stakes are high — no less than a major share of political power in a new Ireland — and Mr Whitelaw has already shown himself a man of sufficient resource not to allow his Cabinet colleagues to baulk at driving the Ulster Unionists at the final fence over which the Dublin Government has already spurred the SDLP.