Correspondents' Correspondence

...Spiro Agnew is, well, superlative in expressing their prejudices...

...One night ask why a Labor government which has so few Northern Irish representatives in Westminster would not just cut the links altogether ard allow Union's government at Stormont to stand on its own...

...He was joking, of course, but just barely...

...Every time U.S...

...Nixon can credibly contend that when his welfare and food stamp programs are enacted, they will as much as quintuple the amount of aid currently received by many Southern poor and will establish the principle—crucial to the poor everywhere—of a guaranteed annual income or jobs...

...For it had been officially announced that Assistant Secretary of State Martin J. Hillenbrand was visiting Madrid to inform Spanish authorities of the just-concluded proceedings at the Brussels meeting of nato foreign ministers...

...The British Labor government, by d'rect military intervention and control over local police authorities, has acted quite vigorously to pressure the Northern Irish government into observing Catholic civil rights...

...Quintin Hogg, a shadow minister, recently declared that the Irish Republic had a certain role to play in the eventual resolution of the controversy...

...Kevin Phillips, who sits to the right, if that is ideologically possible, of Attorney General and former campaign manager John Mitchell, denounces such a strategy as "stupid," since Wallace might well run again...

...The rhetoric of civil rights leaders like Bernadette Devlin also de-emphasizes nationalist demands, going so far as to scorn the government of the Irish Republic for having betrayed the dream of a "Socialist Ireland...

...The U.S...

...They are less interested in their British association than in maintaining a privileged position in relation to the Catholic minority—whose adherence to papal marital teachings is rapidly resulting in its approaching numerical maiority in the six counties...

...The Franco dictatorship is contemptuous of the basic political and moral concepts the "Free World" is supposed to stand for...

...This still imprecisely determined federal arrangement would seem the most appropriate solution to the existing situation...

...In addition, a democratically reformed North, given the growing Catholic population, could eventually return a very strong Labor representation to Parliament...

...The last may also explain why the British Conservative party—historic defender and ally of the Irish Unionists—has been dropping hints of a move toward a federal solution...

...The White House has been solemnly divulging, as portents of a Right-ward revulsion, public opinion polls chiefly showing the obvious fact that most people don't know much about specific political issues and thus will react in accord with conventional prejudice if asked about them...

...The Irish government, for instance, knows that it could never assume the cost of social welfare programs in the Northern counties now bankrolled by Britain...

...the Catholic civil rights movement, and its Unionist Protestant opponents—often tend to use a public oratory that belies their private interests or objectives...

...Because many nationalist activists in the North and in the Republic (such as the IRA) are aware of this tendency to subordinate nationalism to economic considerations, they hope the British government will not impose civil rights on the Northern regime...

...But Spain is not a member of nato...

...It appears, however, that the relatively moderate Unionists will institute democratic reforms, restrain the terrorist auxiliary police forces and more equitably allot public benefits, housing and employment to Catholics...

...Similarly, both Vice President Agnew and Mitchell have expressed their belief that black leaders are treacherous and undependable types...

...He may well decide in time that a strategy directed to the least influential segments of the electorate is not as promising as the polls suggest.—George Hobart MADRID "U.S...

...There are conceivably nato plans concerned with the defense of Gibraltar that the British would not wish Spain to see...

...But the Unionists will maintain their dominant position (through gerrymandering, if necessary), as well as their region's continued partition from the Republic of Ireland—much as the white population of the American South has largely preserved a system of segregation in spite of professed adherence to court decrees and Federal legislation.—John p. McCarthy...

...This is a U.S.-Spanish huddle...

...Indeed, rather than make absolutist irredentist demands, it has been bending over backward to soften those fears of Catholic oppression of their "Protestant liberties" which made the Northern Protestants Unionists or antinationalists in the first place...

...Nonetheless, the Administration's case has considerable plausibility...

...It may be that Hillenbrand and his colleagues feed Madrid only information they know to be insignificant or misleading...

...One is bound to ask why...

...And in order to win Arab support at the UN, Franco's government fawns on Egypt, whose intelligence antenna in Madrid is also a Soviet listening post...

...The Congressional approach of the Administration—most particularly the continued resolve to scuttle the Voting Rights Act—bespeaks a Southern orientation...

...Nixon is remaining anemometric...

...The Dublin government has taken an unexpectedly statesmanlike and disciplined position, having also moved in this federalist direction: It apparently realizes the impossibility of either governing the recalcitrant Unionists or financing the six counties...

...Not nato's," said an official of the organization...

...Under a federal arrangement Stormont, while making democratic concessions to its Catholics, would become more autonomous from Westminster and, while preserving its distinction from Dublin, would intensify its collaboration with both Dublin and London in foreign policy, trade agreements, and economic planning...

...But why waste that much effort...

...Significantly, the most vocal Northern Catholics are not the farmers, who are doing quite well (especially in terms of subsidies) despite political discrimination and gerrymandering, but the vast number of Catholic unemployed in Londonderry and Belfast...

...The other side, the die-hard Unionists and followers of the Reverend Ian Paisley, are consistent to their forefathers' contradictory heritage of taking up arms against British authority for the sake of maintaining British affiliation...

...officials appear to be courting or in cahoots with a government like Franco's, America's credibility in the rest of the "Free World" takes another nosedive.—Ray Alan BELFAST The various parties to the controversy in Northern Ireland—the governments of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Great Britain...

...The Spanish Establishment has no affection for the United States, and is particularly hostile to Britain and the Scandinavian democracies...

...Similarly, the Catholics in the North, though outraged at being denied political and social equality, are reluctant to forgo these generous programs, even to realize their dream of national un'fication...

...or even be swallowed by the Irish Republic...

...The answer is probably a fear that Stormont might "pull a Rhodesia," with all its tragic implications for the Catholics, and an uncertainty about British popular feelings shortly before a national election...

...And the Administration's more liberal spokesmen assert that while Nixon is giving the South a degree of symbolic recognition it has long been denied in Washington, his policies concerning the black and poor are more generous than those of his predecessors...

...Nationalist Catholics feel it is better to be oppressed by Irish Protestants than by Westminster, no matter how liberal the British might be...

...The people, that is, are "boobs...

...embassy knows all this and so, presumably, does the State Department...

...In addition, he can point to his strong support for the Philadelphia Plan, developed by hud Undersecretary Arthur Fletcher, who is emerging as the most influential black man in the Administration...

...Harry Dent, Strom Thurmond's man in the White House, calls the charge of regional bias "ridiculous...

...For all their "Rule Brittania" oratory, they are now, as they were in 1914, really more anti-Catholic Irishmen than British loyalists...

...Nor are those disturbed by the Administration's shift to a new "impartiality" in the Middle East reassured by the report that a Cabinet wife recently left a Washington party exclaiming her relief at getting away from "all those fat Jews...

...WASHINGTON White House spokesmen are expressing sincere private indignation at the widely held belief—propagated with equally sincere indignation by leading Northern Republicans—that the Administration is following a political strategy oriented chiefly toward attracting the 1968 Wallace vote into the Republican party...

...Official Betrays nato Secrets to Free World's Foes," declaimed a British diplomat the other day, trying out his American head-linese...

...In analyzing the Administration's political strategies it may in fact be more helpful to consult H. L. Mencken than Kevin Phillips...

...On the surface, the indignation of the Northern Republicans seems better grounded than that of the White House spokesmen...

...And on whose authority...

...Mencken's theory was the American democracy was a "boobocracy" in which the ignorant (silent) majority chooses "Boobissimus" for its leader...