Solving the Ulster crisis
Christopher Walker
Belfast For pure entertainment value, the high spot of Northern Ireland's snide and predictably bigoted election campaign occurred in the Plush surroundings of Belfast's muchbombed Europa Hotel. It involved two very sheepish-looking British government officials, one recently arrived from the higher echelons of the Foreign Office, who were rudely barred from trying to enter the conference called to launch the manifesto of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the main political voice of Ulster's Roman Catholic minority. Having effortlessly spotted the two sober-suited gentlemen among the throng of scruffy journalists, the excitable Gerry Fitt was quick to brand them as 'spies', a term which is applied here with increasing regularity to anyone unlucky enough to have an English accent. The two unmasked civil servants were then obliged to beat a hasty retreat to the mock-Gothic towers of Stormont Castle clutching copies of the virulently anti-British election document.
Amusing as it may have been for the many onlookers, the incident was also sadly sYmptomatic of the serious distrust which has built up between the Catholic politicians and the British Administration since the appointment of Roy Mason in September 1976. Combined with the recent disturbing deterioration in the overall security situation, the continuing political deadlock will pose severe difficulties for Her Majesty's fifth Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he flies in to take up his unenviable new duties next week.
Such is the extent of the disaffection, among even those minority politicians formerly regarded as moderate (always an unfortunate term in the Ulster context), that serious doubts now exist about the viability of the declared long-term aim of both major British parties: the achievement of a return to devolved government, based on an agreed degree of participation between representatives of the two opposing religious communities. Without a willingness by the British to leave the 'middle ground' and actively work to encourage reconciliation, there is depressingly little evidence in Ulster to indicate that such a reconciliation will ever take place. Ever since the violent spring of 1974, when the government refused to take on the Protestant extremists opposed to the newly-formed executive of Brian Faulkner, there has been a growing body of observers Who regard the possibility of re-establishing What is officially described as 'powersharing', as little more than a convenient fantasy. There are now strong indications that this sense of doubt has penetrated to the remote upper ranges of the Northern Ireland Office — though as yet there is no indication of what effect this realisation will have on government policy. At the very least, it would be a marked improvement on the last Labour administration if the new cabinet were to give simply the impression that solving the Ulster crisis was high on its list of priorities.
The immediate cause of the new hard line being adopted by the various Roman Catholic groupings, particularly the SDLP, was Mr Callaghan's hasty decision to allow Northern Ireland a permanent increase of five parliamentary seats in direct exchange for temporary support from Enoch Powell's small band of official Unionist MPs. This sense of grievance has been further increased by a belief that both Labour and Conservative parties are prepared to look sympathetically on Unionist demands for a return of British-style local government to replace the present remote system of executive boards. Viewed from the civilised surroundings of Westminster it is a request which must look eminently sensible and uncontroversial, if not even a touch prosaic, but to most Ulster Catholics it is seen as threatening the return of control over such sensitive matters as housing and education to the province's established Protestant majority.
As a result of these fears among Catholics and the renewed feelings of outrage among Protestants caused by the latest vicious upsurge of Republican terrorism, the unfortunate politician selected to take over the dangerous Ulster post will quickly find himself in the vulnerable position occupied by so many British ministers over the past ten years. From the Protestant side of the sectarian divide will come calls for drastic new security measures, and from the Catholic camp there will be immediate and shrill demands for Britain to launch an unspecified new initiative which would itself be more than likely resisted by the majority of Ulster Unionists.
Unlike the rest of Britain, where the intractability of the Ulster problem and the sordid similarity of the terrorist killings appear to have encouraged widespread dis interest, in Northern Ireland the longevity of the crisis has had the opposite effect. The fact that, nearly ten years after the arrival of the first British troops, the provisional IRA is still able to kill off twelve people in a two-week period, has increased the sense of anger of ordinary people, particularly Ulster Protestants living in the vulnerable bor der districts. Similarly, the bloody proof that Cite might of the British military establishment has been unable to control a hand ful of Irish terrorists has increased the morale of the IRA to a level not seen for many years.
To add to the pressures which will face the new incumbent at Stormont next week is the increasing international dimension which is being added to the Ulster crisis, and further complicating its solution. The past few weeks have already seen self-interested interventions by a number of leading Irish-American politicians, some of whom, despite denials, are regarded by diplomatic observers in Belfast and Dublin as reflecting an unease inside the Carter administration about the apparent total lack of political progress in Ulster since the collapse of the ill-fated constitutional convention.
Also waiting impatiently in the wings to add his voice to the demands for a fresh British initiative (which in this context means new pressure on the one million Northern Ireland Protestants) is the enigmatic Irish Prime Minister, Jack Lynch. For the last few months Mr Lynch has been keeping remarkably quiet on the subject of the north, but in private he has left visiting correspondents and politicians with the firm impression that he will be speaking up loud. clear and often once the new British government has been elected. He is also known to be planning to use Ireland's forthcoming six-month presidency of the EEC Council of Ministers as a vehicle for exerting pressure on Britain over the vexed Northern Ireland question.
In the face of such a surfeit of problems, it is unlikely that the new Northern Ireland Secretary will be looking for any fresh areas of controversy. But there are many disinterested observers in Belfast who believe that talk of any form of long-term or lasting 'solution' is unrealistic until the British gov: ernment is prepared to tackle Ulster's unsavoury education system. This ensures that over 95 per cent of Protestants and Roman Catholics are subjected to rigid segregation from the first day that they enter a local primary school. Prejudices are, consequently, ingrained at an early age; indeed they are often encouraged by hopelessly biased teachers, and it is disconcertingly common in every town and city to come across teenagers who have never in their lives met anyone of the opposite religion. The result is to encourage a degree of built-iri,intolerance which effectively rules out any chance of a workable compromise along the lines which successive British administrations have been trying to encourage since the present vicious stage of the crisis began.
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