AN IRISH VOICE AGAINST TERRORISM
0'Brien, Conor Cruise
The following passages are taken from a speech delivered by CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN in public debate with Thomas Mac Giolla, president of Sinn Fein (Official), in Dublin a few years ago. The Sinn...
...Do they include the Ulster Protestants, or don't they...
...The I.R.A...
...They decide who is to die and when, and they possess the prestige which the power to decide that confers...
...What difference does it make...
...Lynch they wanted...
...Have not the Provisionals as good a right to call themselves the I.R.A...
...Being noble is what it is all about...
...I speak here for a Party which accepts normal democratic process...
...Democracy, on the other hand, is not noble, and not compatible with the ideals of a military elite...
...Now this division, between those who accept democracy and those who don't accept it, is fundamental...
...To belong to a military elite is noble—in the strictest, earliest meaning of the word—and the authority of a military elite is the real present-day meaning of this movement...
...To some people, and certainly to a significant minority in this country, that idea—of the authority of the dead and those who volunteer to die—will seem more noble than democracy...
...elements are using random terror methods against the Protestant population...
...Mac Giolla, on the other hand, speaks for a movement which recognizes no validity in that transaction...
...Majority...
...And literally all sorts of people join in the choice of those civilians...
...There is, indeed, a way of deciding between such forces...
...I would even From States of Ireland, by Conor Cruise O'Brien...
...The dead can only validate: real power is wielded by the living military elite...
...The man who likes greyhound racing and reads the Daily Mirror has the same vote as a dedicated patriot who reads the United Irishman...
...But who are "our people...
...Mac Giolla speaks decides that these votes don't count...
...It is not the democratic way, for you are living—all of you—outside the democratic rules...
...That acceptance includes recognition of the legitimate authority of an elected government which one does not like, and which one seeks to replace by democratic process...
...operations in the Twenty-six Counties approve its operations in the North...
...Is not their right to take life just as good or as bad as yours...
...If people disagree about that, their verbal agreement on other political matters is utterly deceptive...
...It cannot recognize that right, because it is itself the political extension of a private army...
...But if you set out to bring the society you want into existence through denying the validity of democratic process in the society you actually have...
...agree...
...They are defending our people...
...In fact I.R.A...
...In fact the process whereby, after each new horror, each private army issues its solemn claim to the deed, or its repudiation, or even condemnation— this process has become nauseatingly familiar, as a kind of bureaucratic aftermath of murder...
...Sinn Fein may occasionally condescend to address itself to that electorate, but it recognizes nothing conclusive in its verdict...
...EDS...
...is now waging sectarian civil war in Northern Ireland...
...The closer your movement approaches to success, if it does approach success, the more it will be a movement dominated by the most efficient and ruthless gunmen...
...These are Provisional tactics, you will tell me...
...Reprinted with the kind permission of Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc...
...Jack Lynch were not Taoiseach, but we recognize that he is Taoiseach because the people of this State—living, breathing Irish people, making marks on pieces of paper—decided in 1969 that in terms of Dail Deputies elected it was Mr...
...It is more noble...
...Minority...
...It does not recognize, for example, the right of the living people, through its elected parliament and government, to control the armed forces of the State, and to suppress private armies...
...O'Brien, a well-known writer, is active in the Irish Labour party...
...if you set out to win it through a private army, withdrawn from democratic control...
...For us, socialism is not only something to be 230 IRVING HOWE striven for through democratic process...
...The military elite for which Mr...
...It is the arbitrament of force, the ecology of the gun...
...The Sinn Fein is a political group supporting one wing of the Irish Republican Army...
...CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN q THE RETURN OF TERROR 231...
...it is also itself an extension of democratic process, the placing of the essential resources and skills of a country— and eventually of the world—under public control, responsible to the people as a whole...
...How can you talk to us of majorities and minorities, those democratic concepts for which the whole history of your movement shows such a sovereign contempt...
...Once you reject democratic process, and set the example of the private army, there is nothing to prevent any determined group, which can get its hands on guns and bombs, from setting up as the true heirs of the national tradition...
...No doubt, but it doesn't matter much to Protestants who are killed or injured, or to their friends, which particular Catholic private army did which particular job...
...You tell us that you were in the majority, they in a minority at a certain meeting...
...We wish Mr...
...Maybe so...
...If they do, it would be hard to convince Ulster Protestants that they are being defended by the I.R.A...
...Many people who dislike I.R.A...
...Whether they call themselves Provisionals or Officials does not matter very much...
...For us, who accept democracy, all the votes count, and the dead don't vote...
...By "the people" we mean something precise, measurable, even hum-drum...
...You may be as benevolent as you like in your ultimate intentions, the society to which you aspire may be just, socialist and democratic and altogether more admirable than the society in which we actually live...
...People who value peace above national unification have votes...
...Not us, you tell us—the Provisionals...
...if you set out to win it by exploiting the latent forces of romantic nationalism and hatred of foreigners, and if you hope to control these forces by authoritarian methods in your republic within a Republic—if you set out in this way, then I say to you that the forces you hope to use and control will use and control you...
...But they would not mean the same things we mean...
...Under democracy, civilians, not soldiers, have supreme power...
...Copyright ° 1972 by Conor Cruise O'Brien...
...His arguments against terrorism are close to those advanced in Irving Howe's article...
...as you have...
...Sinn Fein might agree with much of that, verbally...
...What does matter is that these will not be people who were drawn to your movement by socialist idealism...
...Here and now, we mean all the men and women on the electoral register of this State...
...For that movement true, legitimate authority is derived only from the generations of the dead who died for Ireland, and is properly wielded in the present by the organization of men and women prepared to repeat the blood sacrifice...
...We deny that right to both of you, not just to them...
Vol. 22 • July 1975 • No. 3
