BRITAIN'S THIRD OPTION
Fisher, Desmond
held for downs on burglary and bugging, why should we listen to you on dttente? Wrong again, or, more accurately, another bunch of self-serving lies. The opposition to dttente in this country...
...Simple folk inflamed by such Nixonian rhetoric over decades were and are opposed to dttente or any rational consideration of the Russians Nixon taught them to think of as devils...
...FRANK GETLEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM IRELAND BRITAIN'S THIRD OPTION Politicians in the Irish Republic have taken refuge in a well-recognized device for covering up political stagnation with the appearance of progress--appoint a committee to examine the matter...
...Callaghan does not want to stir up the Northern Ireland pot while he is contemplafi.ng going to the country in a critical election later .this year or early in 1979...
...In a narrow gulch as narrow as my bed I listen what it says what it says it says it says it says of trains of trains across the night...
...So now all the main parties are committed to a rethinking of their Northern Ireland policies a~d while this is going on and in the absence of a British initiative in the pre-election period, a period of political inactivity is inevitable, leaving a dangerous vacuum which the Provisional IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries look like filling...
...Hesuggested that the British government had three options...
...Commonweal: 327...
...This would be a little unfair...
...Lynch had nice things to say about President Carter whose initiatives on Northern Ireland last year he welcomed...
...Finally, Mr...
...Fine Gael was the senior partner (with the Labor Party) in the ill-fated coalition government which was massacred at the June 1977 general election, in which Fianna Fail won 84 seats, giving them a 20-seat overall majority, the biggest ever in Irish political history...
...They tear, flap loosetent back to moon and drift until the echo on the rails clicks tinnily of trestles over a Kansas riverbedand a far Rocky in mountain spacechanging soundtracks...
...Jack Lynch, leader of FiannaFail, joined the race for a seat on the Hume bandwagon...
...Then he added bitterly: "If those who contribute believe thdr money goes to support widows or orphans, let me make it dear that it goes to make widows and orphans...
...The opposition to dttente in this country was not affected by Watergate...
...We believe that this should be the basis of British policy now, instead of the maintenance of the union," Mr...
...Hume's call on the Republic's political parties for new thinking in what they meant by unity was eagerly seized on...
...Thirdly, it could declare its objective of bringing together both Irish traditions in reconciliation and agreement, which would be to bring them together in unity...
...Even among Protestants, support for the idea was 47 percent...
...He also cited Mr...
...They should commit all their resources, all their powers of persuasion, towards that end in the same way as they have committed all their resources in the past to maintaining the union...
...Early in February, Mr...
...Hume spelled out a whole new dimension of thinking when he called on all concerned--the British government, the Northern Ireland Unionists and the political parties in the Republic--to consider a federal solution...
...Hume's assessment of the present position was put forward in an interview with the Irish Times...
...John Hume, deputy leader of the Northern Ireland SDLP and the most serious thinker on the whole Irish question...
...And, at present, Mr...
...Secondly, no progress can be made on Northern Ireland unless the British government wants it...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 BERNICE BUNN CHRISTMAN NIGHT TRAIN Across the country dark of miles and houses asleepthe swaying shadow breathes grit through rattly lungs and shakes the snow-coops on the grades...
...Failure by the Irish political parties in the past to spell out the meaning of unity---or their concept or vision of it--meant that loyalists had easily been able to interpret it as something the Protestant people of the North ought .to be afraid of, something which would trample on their rights and coerce them into a hostile state...
...Tip" O'Neill, Governor Hugh Carey, Senators Ted Kennedy and Pat Moynihan and "~the many other true friends of Ireland in American political and business life," thanking them for their support for the economic development of Ireland as a whole "and in encouraging Irish Americans to desist from contributing to doubtful organizations in the U.S.mlike NORAID and the Irish National Caucus --whose activities are anathema to our patty and our Government...
...He lies now as he has always lied and his lies now contradicting his lies past do not make truth but only more lies...
...In the first place, a new look at the problem can do no harm, Toooften, policies are representedby half-baked slogans and emotion has replaced rational argument...
...He began his career by crying, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, Jerry Voorhis believes in medical insurance, Helen Gahagan Douglas wears pink underwear, all the Russians understand is force and then more force, for God's sake don't talk to them as if theywere human, put your faith in arms, let us rouse the captive nations to revolt and so on and so on in the same manner up to but not including any least United States commitment to help the rebellion of the enslaved nations...
...rights, as creating one uniform state in which the Protestant is dominated by the Catholic Church...
...He told the Fianna Fail annual conference on February 18 that he proposes to set up a study group, representing North and South, .to examine the civil rights, legal and constitutional implications of Irish unity, i.neluding apossible federal arrangement, adding "and this is noth~: ing new: we have discussed it for many years...
...But, most importantly, the new studies by the Repunic's political parties are justified by a call from Mr...
...DESMOND FISHER (Desmond Fisher is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Ireland...
...As a second option, it could make a declaration of intent to withdraw, risking a violent loyalist backlash if it were implemented...
...Hume's call as an excuse for a radical re-think of Northern policy, which would distance his party from the philosophy of Dr...
...It would enable the North to rule itself within a federal Ireland, thus enabling the Northern people to protect themselves in areas where they felt they needed protection and would also allow full-scale cooperation and partnership between both Irish traditions...
...Hume's call to announce that the party's administrative council would be asked to re-examine its Northern policy...
...This showed that 62 percent of the population in the area favor a special relationship with the Republic...
...Hume supported his argument by pointing to the results of a recent public 26 May 1978:J26 opinion poll in Northern Ireland...
...Frank Cluskey, also used Mr...
...The-cynic will point out that the Northern Ireland problem has been in the forefront of politics i,n the Republic since the island was partitioned in 1922 and will suggest that little new can emerge from such study groups now...
...Unity had been portrayed as the conquest of the Northern Protestant, as wiping out his...
...Hume said...
...Lynch used his most abusive language ever to condemn the Provisionals for their "savagery" and "mindless bestiality" and the cotderence stood for a minute's silence in remembrance of the people killed and injured in the County Down restaurant bombing...
...Garret FitzGerald, leader of Fine Gael, the second biggest of the parties, immediately announced a major review of its Northern Ireland policy...
...Hume said this would be a form of power-sharing...
...O'Brien's own Labor Party leader, Mr...
...The basic opposition to dttente had been assiduously built up and hardened by--guess whom?--Richard Nixon, over the years...
...The three main parties in the RepuNic-~Fian,na F~til (back in government since June 1977), Fine Gael and Labor--have appointed study groups to examine all the implications of Irish unity...
...The objective would be to achieve a solution which would enable the Irish people to govern themselves without any involvement by Great Britain in Irish affairs...
...In tentatively suggesting a federal arrangement as one form of an agreed Ireland, Mr...
...Let us hope that more and more people will heed his words...
...It could hold to its presem position of maintaining the union between Britain and Northern Ireland as long as a majority in Northern Ireland wanted it, a policy which had not produced peace, stability, or justice...
...He was careful not to spell out his own ideas too elaborately: they have not yet been adopted by the SDLP and the idea has not been considered at any great depth before...
...FitzGerald was obviously using Mr...
...Conor Cruise O'Brien, a leading policy-maker on Northern Ireland in the coalition cabinet...
Vol. 105 • May 1978 • No. 11
