Facing Reality in Ulster

...None of this need trouble the Orangemen too much, to be sure, for they will always maintain a comfortable majority??and that majority will unquestionably never vote to join a united Ireland...

...To this the Provos respond, quite accurately, that the IRA was defeated because its commanders chose to follow a conventional rather than a guerrilla strategy against better trained Northern troops equipped with arms the British had left behind...

...It has been suggested that certain overwhelmingly Catholic areas close to the border could be ceded to the Republic: Newry, Strabane, and the Creggan and Bogside section of Londonderry...

...Did the Provos decide to play "good boy," at least temporarily, since much of their indiscriminate violence has alienated Catholic opinion in both North and South...

...According to the polls, most Englishmen would prefer to see the Army withdrawn, arguing, "Let the Irish fight it out among themselves...

...Those who seek long-term reunification in Ireland forget that the Emerald Isle never was united except, ironically, under the British...

...The Unionists, of course, hold Ulster to be a Protestant state, legally established in 1922, and solemnly confirmed by Great Britain in 1948...

...As for withdrawing the British Army, while most Englishmen would applaud the move, Conor Cruise O'Brien and others have pointed out that the result would be massacre...

...To members of the Provisional IRA, or Provos, the struggle in the North is a direct continuation of the armed confrontation with the British Empire that in 1921 ended English rule over Ireland's southern 26 counties, but not the northern six known collectively as Ulster...

...The leaders of the Official IRA, I think it fair to say, agree that military force cannot by itself do the trick...

...But the Provos still face the dilemma of executing what Mao Tse-tung has called the decisive "Third Stage" of guerrilla strategy: of shifting finally to conventional warfare with a united people behind them and a demoralized enemy in front of them...

...he came to power, 10 years later, only by reverting to parliamentary tactics...

...The experience taught them the Marxist tenet of the "primacy of politics...

...With their backs to the wall, the Protestants could be expected to give a good account of themselves, and the cease-fire line would become the new border between the two states, as in Palestine or India...

...Undeniably there has been persistent discrimination against Catholics, and Westminster governments have done nothing...

...The Unionist reply is that the Irish Republic in the South has allowed itself to become a Catholic state in an almost theocratic sense, and no Protestant would willingly submit to living under its rule...

...And since "Bloody Sunday," January 30, when 13 men were killed by British troops during a civil rights demonstration in Londonderry, the possibility of working out a satisfactory political compromise appears more remote than ever...

...3. After the terrorists are beaten, the British troops should be withdrawn in stages and replaced by a local, politically balanced military and police force...

...For their part, the regular Communists, who are of the Soviet persuasion, have come out clearly against any violent solution to the Ulster problem...

...Then there were the Republicans (who refused to take their seats in Parliament) and the Nationalists (who were so willing...

...While this is certainly true in matters concerning divorce, birth control, book censorship, and the ever-present if hidden hand of the Hierarchy, Protestants do enjoy complete freedom of worship, have full civil rights, and own a considerable share of the country's industry...

...THREE STEPS TO PEACE Facing Reality in Ulster byjohn London If the average American has difficulty grasping the intricacies of the turmoil in Northern Ireland, I can assure him that most Englishmen, and probably most Irishmen, are equally baffled...

...Secondly, the esprit of the British Army is not going to crack (it is a volunteer, fully professional force??as opposed to the draftee U.S...

...It should not prevent North and South from making accommodations with one another at the administrative and government level, as they have tacitly done in the past and as they will be required to do next year if Britain and Eire enter the Common Market together...

...Army in Vietnam...

...an end to electoral gerrymandering and housing discrimination...

...In International Law??even if not in administrative practice??Northern Ireland is simply part of the United Kingdom...

...Eamon De Valera, of course, took this stance when he subsequently launched a civil war against the North with his section of the IRA??a battle the Provos see themselves as carrying on today...

...Despite the present violence, this can be done...

...Indeed, each of the various "solutions" proposed during the past three and a half years has seemed more dubious than the one before...

...A forced union of North and South might be fatal...

...The border, I fear, will have to remain...

...In the first place, their terrorism has had the predictable effect of solidifying the opposition of Ulster's 1 million Protestants, and I have my doubts about the true strength of their grip on the Catholics who make up the remaining one-third of the North's population...

...Furthermore, repartition might just encourage the extremists to think that, having achieved a partial victory, they stand a good chance of swallowing the whole lot...

...What is more, I think internment??the understandably unpopular detention of suspected subversives without trial??must be retained in Northern Ireland and may have to be instituted in the South if responsible, democratic government is to continue...

...Recognizing that a repetition of this mistake would enable the British Army to destroy their movement in a matter of days, they have decided that guerrilla warfare??especially the currently fashionable urban variety??is the answer...

...The Right-Wing groups led by the Reverend Ian Paisley and William Craig are pressuring Prime Minister Brian Faulkner to be more extreme, and under present conditions they might make large inroads into the Protestant vote...

...at best, they can reduce its level by hunting down the ringleaders...

...Nonetheless, they are not about to give up easily what they have gained over the past few years...

...De Valera lost the civil war...

...2. Elections must be held??they are due next November??in a manner that insures the emergence of a stronger and more coherent opposition...

...No Northern Catholic would come forward today to help convict an IRA man: One potential witness has already been killed and another wounded in attacks by the IRA to prevent people from giving evidence in court...

...the Protestant-Catholic division is directly comparable to the Hindu-Muslim schism...

...But with a Conservative-Unionist party in power at Westminster, and a man as stubborn as Edward Heath (who needs the nine Unionist votes for his Common Market policies) in charge, it is unlikely that the British government will crack either...

...Yet Newry showed that these groups and their leaders are very much alive and kicking...

...Yet this would leave Ulster with a Catholic population of roughly 20 per cent, most of it within Belfast...

...It matters far more to the Protestant worker that he belongs to what might accurately be called his tribal community than that he belongs to a militant working-class organization (the same is true of Catholics to a slightly lesser degree...

...That fact is highly embarrassing to the Provos, for it is visible evidence that they do not control the Catholic minority in the way they so often claim...

...Amore reasonable and realistic approach remains possible...

...They are "fish in the Catholic sea," they note, which after all comprises half a million people in the North...

...As men of the gun, democracy cannot be other than lethal to them...

...Bernadette Devlin's People's Democracy is basically an off-shoot of the student militancy of 1968, New Left in its general orientation, but differing from earlier movements in that it initially declared itself willing to work within the United Kingdom framework...

...Today they correctly perceive that the only way they can win a democratic majority in the North is by detaching a large segment of the Protestant working class from the basically conservative Unionist party...

...The tragedy of the minority is that it has never thrown up a politician with the talent of, say, the Reverend Paisley...

...And as the violent tactics of the Provos harden the Protestants in their sectarianism, the prospects of the Official IRA become increasingly hopeless...

...It might then be possible for internment to end as well...

...Internment aside, too, practically all the demands of the 1968 civil rights movement are now on the statute book: one man, one vote...

...Accordingly, Ulster has its outright Trotskyists, who despise the "pseudo-Marxism" of the Official IRA as well as that of the Communists, and at the same time denounce the political primitivism of the Provos...

...For the many factions in this struggle disagree not only on how it reached its present overheated stage, but on what must be done if it is to be resolved...

...In other words, the Orange Lodge takes precedence over the Trade Union or, in Marxist terms, the Ulster worker is simply not class conscious...

...If the Protestants have no right to Ulster, then Americans have no right to the U.S.: They immigrated at the same time, and for much the same reasons...

...My own view is that the tight security measures saved the day...

...One of the potential disasters of the current anti-British uproar in the South is that it will not only wreck the Irish tourist trade??more Englishmen than Americans vacation in Ireland??but that reawakened Irish chauvinism will lead to a defeat of the coming referendum on the Market, which would complete Eire's economic ruin...

...They do not differ from the Stormont regime on fundamentals, though, only on tactics...

...They tried a similar campaign from 1957-62, and it was a total failure precisely because they had little popular support and an even less coherent political program...

...An agreed separation, I submit, is the only sane answer...

...Internment was used successfully in the North and South from 1957-62, and there is simply no political or legal alternative to it at this stage...

...On the left, a twilight zone stretches from the Unionists across the Catholic community...

...Their position, in short, is untenable...

...To bring it about, I would urge the following tentative steps: 1. The rule of the gun must be stopped quickly, in both the North and the South...

...So would an irrevocable divorce...

...The Provos claim the revolution was never fought to a finish because of a combination of British duplicity and shameful betrayal by the newly, and democratically, elected leaders of Ulster...

...Thus the Provos' aim of dragging a million unwilling Protestants into a united Ireland is dependent upon their ability to enter the critical Third Stage, yet that is the one situation in which they will infallibly be beaten because they lack the vital prerequisites...

...We??and still more the Irish??must learn to accept the fact that there are two Irelands, one Catholic, one Protestant, and that both are entitled to exist...

...In the light of this, the Newry march was suspiciously quiet...

...Predictably, these diverse parties are continually maneuvering, bickering and shifting positions...

...Keeping the present borders and arranging a population exchange is another perennially popular notion, and one with many precedents, but a cruel and heartless solution however you look at it...

...The British forces admit that they can never eliminate random or individual terrorism...

...But even granting that the Unionist administration of Ulster has long been a scandal and that the Labor party in particular should have exerted greater pressure on it, the Unionists have one argument on their side that no democrat can dismiss: If a referendum were held in Northern Ireland today, two-thirds of its people would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom...

...The brand-new Alliance party is a high-minded attempt to form an interdenominational Protestant-Catholic center grouping, an effort doomed, I fear, to failure...

...When the pending adjustments are made, the Ulster Parliament and the local councils will certainly be more representative, and many that are now controlled by Protestants will go Catholic...

...Consequently, he is immune to the pseudo-Marxist propaganda of the Official IRA, urging him to fight alongside his Catholic brothers...

...The problem for the Official IRA is that Ireland resembles India more than England or America...

...Similarly, no jury in the South would dare convict an IRA member??a measure of the extent to which the law of the gun has come to dominate life on both sides of the border...

...Two Labor or Social Democratic parties did send representatives to Belfast and Westminster...

...O'Brien now contends that the mere threat of a pullout would suffice to bring Belfast and Dublin to their senses and to the negotiating table??a highly dubious and dangerous proposition...

...Rather, it is a fragmented mosaic, troubled by constant feuding and personal animosities...

...Not surprisingly for a body of citizens who have grown up knowing they could never hope to win a majority??and who therefore frequently preferred to emigrate to England or the South??the minority community is not at all the monolithic bloc that British newspapers make it out to be...

...Or was the three-day Army check for weapons so effective??practically every person and car coming into Newry was thoroughly searched??that the Provos' plans were thwarted...

...The Provos' strongest, if indirect, ally is British public opinion...

...The opposition should then be given certain privileges in the Northern Parliament and in the whole structure of the administration, so that Catholics can acquire some sense of participation in the Ulster government...

...The Provos' scenario, however, would seem to be based on a misreading of history...