Spectator's Journal
Reid, Stuart
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL by Stuart Rei, The Bloody Hand of History W hen Tony Blair flew into Northern Ireland on the wings of a dove on Tuesday in Holy Week he came straight to the point. "This is...
...The English Protestants, and the Scottish Presbyterians who colonized Ulster, treated Irish Catholics abominably...
...Most people in the UK, however, are quite relaxed about the apparent disintegration of the union...
...Bingo...
...David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the De Klerk of Northern Irish Protestantism, must sense this...
...There are not many votes these days in that old bitch...
...In 1985 she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave the Irish Republic a direct input into the affairs of Ulster...
...Increasingly, however, the same may be said of the Irish...
...Poor Ireland, you may say...
...46 Jun e 1998 • The American Spectator fruits of the cease-fires — in return for a willingness to be subsumed in some form of united Ireland at some unspecified future date —and even then, only if the majority in the North agrees...
...They are being made an offer they can't refuse: peace and prosperity—the continuing Two cheers (at least) for the Good Friday peace accord...
...There were no cameras present, but terrorism now had its combat boot in the door of power...
...but it does strengthen the position of the unionists, by providing them with a guarantee of continued power in Ulster...
...Historically, the nationalists have a case and a cause...
...He had been chairing the peace talks for four years and now, at last, had the chance to get home to his lovely wife...
...It would be unkind, however, to crow over the discomfort of Protestant bigots, if for no other reason than that bigots are people too, and often morally serious people...
...1. Please write your new address on a separate sheet...
...The deal does not guarantee peace, but it does mean—and by any rational test this is triumph enough —that the peace "process" will continue...
...When it comes united Ireland will not, of course, be the Ireland of idle conservative dreams—an Ireland in which only Gaelic is spoken, an Ireland of giants and elves and superstition, of wayside shrines and censorship, of donkeys, poteen, and the shriving stool, an Ireland in which condoms and television are banned, and where adolescent boys stutter and blush if they get within fifty feet of an Afro-Asian female mud wrestler...
...They know that before long they will be outnumbered by the Catholics, who, being more frightened of God than of AIDS, tend not to practice safe sex...
...Nor would it be right to suggest that all Northern Protestants who oppose the deal are bigots...
...Outside the ranks of the psychopaths, Irish nationalists are prepared to wait for a united Ireland...
...Adams, whose comrades have spent the past thirty years maiming and murdering indiscriminately, is widely loathed on the mainland, but there is no love of Northern Irish Protestants, either...
...But if there is hope yet for the pessimists, there is even more for the optimists...
...Then, in 1989, her administration put out signals to the IRA that it was prepared to talk...
...They are not a religious people—the Church of England has seen to that—and they can't see what all the fuss is about...
...Perhaps the English are indifferent to matters of principle...
...The peace process implicitly recognizes that the Protestant-British statelet in the North is an anomaly, and that eventually it must be disbanded...
...This is not the time for soundbites," he said...
...In the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 he insisted that Britain had "no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland...
...Aihen ator...
...The sterner Thatcherites and the wilder Ulster Protestants object that this is not peace with honor—which they believe can only come about if Sinn Fein-IRA is defeated—but merely the absence of war...
...But the key point here is that the majority will agree...
...04 Click Here get the latest Spectator information updated daily...
...Some may end up in a reconstituted Ulster police force...
...They have accepted the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales, and seem resigned to the eventual transfer of power to Dublin...
...Such people are hopeless romantics and deserve our sympathy...
...Ian Paisley, in many ways an engaging fellow, is probably held in as much contempt (though not in as much hatred) as Adams...
...Even Margaret Thatcher, the most resolutely anti-nationalist of Prime Ministers, tried her hand at appeasement...
...History is running against British Ireland, and some form of Irish Ireland—possibly an Ireland of the regions within a united Europe—now seems inevitable...
...An accommodation is therefore a Darwinian necessity...
...Officially, he says that the Good Friday deal strengthens the union...
...He wept when he heard the news, and said: "It rekindles my faith in human nature that good can overcome evil...
...Crimes were committed that cannot be erased from the folk memory...
...And they are right...
...Yet they need not despair entirely: the peace deal does not mean the end of conflict...
...Last December he invited Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, to No...
...Subscriber Service P.O...
...M any Protestants are beginning to accept that inevitability...
...Item: A Mori poll published at the end of April showed that 74 percent of Britons supported Blair on Ulster, and that if there were an immediate election Labour would win a 250-seat majority-71 more than its present lead...
...The hand of history duly became the phrase of the day, and of the week...
...By opposing Major over Europe last year, when there was no burning anti-European mood in the country, the Thatcherites appeared obsessive and helped make the Tories unelectable...
...But in spite of Ms...
...and that the politicians of Dublin and London will be able to have a quiet drink and cynical chat—indulge, that is, in creative cronyism—without worrying overmuch when some demented Presbyterian in Antrim starts bawling about the Whore of Babylon...
...Though all parties to the negotiations—including Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA—reaffirmed their commitment to disarming, not one baseball bat or Black and Decker drill has been handed in...
...The English are bored, indifferent, irritated...
...3. Return this form to us at the address listed below...
...But it is some years since the Catholics in Ulster suffered any social or political discrimination...
...In fact, as he must realize, it does no such thing...
...Blair has continued the policies of Thatcher and Major...
...The heavens did not fall...
...to Downing Street, and shook his hand...
...That, however, has been the goal of all British governments since the Troubles began in 1969...
...The American Spectator • June 19 9 8 47...
...Morris, IL 61054-8084 1-800-524-3469 ATTACH ADDRESS LABEL HERE IMPORTANT: Allow six weeks for address change...
...By doing the same with Hague now over Ireland, when most people support the Good Friday deal, they are making Labour unbeatable...
...2. Attach the mailing label from your most recent issue...
...If a handshake will get rid of the problem, shake away: after all, the hand of history was eventually offered to Menachem Begin, Yasir Arafat, Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela...even to George Washington...
...So were John Major and William Hague, his successor as Tory leader...
...All this means trouble for the Tories, however...
...Indeed, they show every sign of being prepared to acquiesce in their own betrayal...
...The Rev...
...So was Colin Parry, whose son was murdered by an IRA bomb in Lancashire in 1993...
...so were the Thatcherites, for whom Major's declaration was further evidence that he was not just a South London suburbanite with a dodgy accent but a weakling, prepared to surrender not only to Brussels but to Dublin as well...
...To Thatcherites, Irish unity and European integration are symbols of the war against the United Kingdom, whose interests they claim to represent...
...genuous grandstanding—something important, and good, happened in Belfast on Good Friday...
...Box 655, Mt...
...Screw the Irish, is the attitude in the pubs and sushi bars of London...
...www.spectator.org r MOVING...
...On Good Friday, following President Clinton's last-minute intervention, history obligingly handed Northern Ireland a peace deal: the Protestant unionists and the Catholic nationalists agreed to share power in an elected assembly and to work with the Republic of Ireland in establishing a cross-border authority...
...Naturally, however, not everyone joined the general mood of euphoria...
...I feel the hand of history on our shoulders...
...There are among them unyielding men of principle—victims, almost, of their own integrity—who believe that the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is charged with upholding the union, has betrayed them...
...The Queen was delighted...
...They have been betrayed...
...There is nothing like the prospect of peace to lower the spirits of those who have invested all their intellectual capital in the proposition that the tribal differences in Ulster are irreconcilable, that the British government has a sacred duty to maintain the union with Northern Ireland and that—failing a renunciation by the Catholics of their nationalist aspirations—the war must, and will, go on...
...No, it will be an Ireland of clean rest rooms, Burger Kings, and Jerry Springer...
...In the next two years, furthermore, hundreds of terrorists are due to be released from jail...
...John Major went further, replacing signals with secret contacts...
...Unionists, who were among her strongest supporters, were horrified...
...Just be sure to allow six weeks for your change to take effect...
...but you can't muck with manifest destiny, and you can't, or shouldn't, blame the people for wanting peace...
...So was the Pope...
...No doubt he thought of it as the handshake of history, though he was too smart to offer that up as a soundbite...
...It goes without saying that George Mitchell was delighted too...
...TAS Address Changes Made Easy...
...Ireland is becoming for William Hague what Europe was for John Major...
...That's all there is to it...
...Things could still fall apart...
...O'Connor's intervention—and for that matter Blair's disinSTUART REID is an associate editor at the London Sunday Telegraph...
...Once again, the unionists were horrified...
...As for Sinead O'Connor, that fearless champion of Catholic rights (and enemy of the Catholic Church) spoke from what we must assume was her heart when she said: "The whole of Ireland and the whole ofthe music world are united in calling Ulster a great country on the dawn of a new era of peace...
...that, except on the fringes, the paramilitary cease-fires will hold for the time being...
...and the IRA has said that it has no intention of surrendering its weapons...
Vol. 31 • June 1998 • No. 6
