8 JUNE 1974, Page 12

Northern Ireland

Varieties of 'freedom'

Rawle Knox

Londonderry If you could throw a 'Berlin Wall' around Belfast, people in Northern Ireland are fond of saying, the rest of the province could live quite happily together. Unfortunately, as we discovered recently, it would Hite to live on imported Donegal potatoes eaten by candlelight.

Physically, Belfast dominates and controls the Six Countries to a monstrous degree, and the Protestant workers of Belfast have now shown they can close down the Province, unless its economic framework is radically altered, any time they wish. Even so the Ulster Workers' Council might not have won its victory had not almost every Ulster Protestant, perhaps sometimes subconsciously, willed it to do so. You could sense the feeling among them. It was the Ulster nationalism Merlyn Rees was so surprised to discover, the nationalism of a sect rather than a people, and still without a Fiihrer. Towards the end of the great strike last week, senior civil servants in Belfast were warning Brian Faulkner that his only course was to negotiate with the UWC, because the army would be unable to keep the Province going. Protestant members of the middle of the road Alliance Party, even many of Faulkner's own supporters, were saying the same thing.

These people were not dishonest, they saw no cause to fight. The spokesman for the electricity authority who must have camped out in the BBC's Northern Ireland's studios, said that if the Government 'in its wisdom' decided to use troops in the power stations, the soldiers would find themselves absolutely alone. Confessing bleakly that he could not envisage a society without electricity, he forecast an imminent total blackout by my count no fewer than six times. As against this my friendly neighbourhood nun, while handing me back my laundry, assured me that the workers would never move out of Ballylumford power station because they intended to keep control to the last. And she proved right. The Protestants kept doomsday around the corner long enough for everyone to believe it was really coming. Brian Faulkner was almost alone at the end, and T. E. Utley was probably correct in saying that he fell because of his desperate concern to stick to the Westminster rules. He was asked to do more than an Ulster Protestant could, perhaps because Westminster still doesn't understand the Ulster Protestants. To be fair, Westminster is not alone.

On the day the strike ended, the Irish Times published a long and reasoned letter from an Ulster Protestant living in England, who said that he could only feel free when living "in the British dimension." He had lived in Dublin for four years and, "since I was neither Gaelic in outlook nor Catholic by upbringing, I could not claim first-class status, n'or would it have been given to me had I tried." That interested me because I, as an Englishman, lived and worked in Dublin for four years, and nobody ever tried to make me feel a second-class citizen, though I should doubtless have had difficulty if I had tried to run for Taoiseach. I trunk in Ireland the Ulster Protestant does have acutely sensitive antennae. For I have found that quite liberal-minded Protestants here hold the same view as that letter-writer.

In the light of the last few weeks it may seem an almost old-fashioned view. The British connection now casually mentioned by Ian Paisley and Harry West seems to be one of convenience that could be shed without Mitch sorrow. For Paisley the Constitution Act is dead. He regards as laughable the idea of giving the SDLP, which can claim to represent the bulk of the minority of the Catholic community, a share in . government. Nevertheless, power-sharing did work, and many Protestants would still think if that were to be the price of staying with Britain, it would be worth paying.

The 'Loyalist' hand is indeed a strong one and it is strengthened by a continuous feeling of righteous indignation. Politically by Westminster, and physically, by the IRA bombers, the Unionists have been pushed around more than somewhat. In Belfast the Protestants have dealt out more murder than they have suffered, but throughout the Province their material losses have been enormous. And they are convinced they are misunderstood by everyone.

One thing the strike may have done, not now but perhaps for the future, is to make Southern Irishmen change their spectacles. Dublin's first reaction was apparently to expect British troops to move in to make Ulster safe for a United Ireland. Harold Wilson has taken an Irish caning for his pusillanimity. Nevertheless, Dublin may begin to realise that there is a point beyond which Ulster Protestants will not be pushed, and it doesn't matter whether London or Dublin is doing the pushing. It is true that a lot of those secretly exalted by the strike are now having serious second thoughts, because they are sensible and serious men and anarchy is not in their book. The strike was in fact over a bogus issue, but its importance was that in an emotional crisis, the Protestants didn't care what the issue was so long as they were all together displaying their refusal to join anything like a United Ireland; -No legislation is going to change that kind of feeling. Only a very real change of approach by Dublin can do it.

The latest ploy — and it has now been taken up by Jack Lynch and the Fianna Fail party — is for Britain to make a 'declaration of intent' that she will sever her Irish link within a given period. This move, its supporters opine, would bring the Northern Protestants to their senses, and inject some realism into their politics. The trouble about such a declaration, when proposed by Lynch or by any other protagonist of a United Ireland, is that it assumes an Irish unity that has never existed; and that always makes the Ulster Prod get tougher than ever.

On the other hand, Westminster, having looked on wonderingly while the UWC mounted a rebellion in the name of Irish Protestantism, has a ready-made excuse to disown Northern Ireland, an excuse that has nothing to do with Irish unity. Paisley has shown that he doesn't want freedom to be British; only freedom to do what he likes in Britain. There is, however, Westminster's guarantee, underwritten by Dublin, that the Northern Irish may remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as the majority express the desire to do so. Given the opportunity, the majority will still, I believe, vote to stay with Britain, unless the British Government lays down new, unacceptable conditions of loyalty, because they feel free "within the British dimension."

The Northern Catholics, however, certainly don't feel free under the Union Jack the Ulster Protestants wave. Paisley may have given his assurances that the rights of the minority will

The

Spectator June 8, 197 be assured, but anybody who watched the tc UDA bully-boys closing down Catholic Pub: a and shops during the recent strike 505' wonder what those rights are. The political morass into which Northern Ireland has once again fallen, has given enormous fillip to the IRA. Their contention that constitutional reforms worked 011,tIi between Dublin and London were artificiaL t now seems justified. What other way ca„ri, t there be to a United Ireland, but by the gtli'd'• t They see the Protestants isolated, att increasing pressure in England to bring tui'd troops home, a move which the IRA w°111 naturally claim as a victory. Do not set 0111c" store by those secret meetings between to) UDA and IRA. They were something like A Capone conferring with a rival to see that neither got in the other's way while they shot it out with the cops.

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Four months is not a long time in whicha find a solution, especially as it will take,, month or so for the euphoria of the milita to wear off. It is good news that Merlyn Re: will now consider talking to leaders of On UWC. These are comparatively unknoW„s men, and though they have let the PaisleY0 and the Craigs do their talking for them 5, far, the British Government may find th° have something to say on their own. It will not be a very friendly somethih, however, if British socialists and tractii` unionists continue to abuse them. The wor of the Belfast worker is strange and enclose. (' and best left uncommented upon by the Lerls doner, or indeed the Dubliner, who knove nothing of it. Nevertheless, it is high tih1,0 someone knocked on the door and tried find out what is inside.

Rawle Knox, the distinguished foreigrid correspondent, now lives in Londonderry writes regularly from There for The Spectator,