THE STAKES IN IRELAND
WILLIAMS, W.H.A.
THE STAKES IN IRELAND W.H.A. WILLIAMS Dublin "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace" was the yuletide message which greeted me in the last days of 1971. In place of the Christ Child and the...
...exclaimed an enlightened nationalist friend of mine...
...It was a "Christmas" card from the Irish Republican Army...
...The leaders of the IRA are fighters today...
...Today they are in danger of going over to the extremists...
...And he is right...
...Violence and frustrated nationalism are institutionalized in song, story, and patriotic gestures...
...For decades they have viewed the unification of their country in the same way they view the Second Coming: it is an event in which one believes and approves but which will not happen in one's lifetime...
...Both factions have their headquarters in Dublin...
...No state can long tolerate an illegal army operating in its territory, training, raising funds and supplies, issuing propaganda, and claiming that it, and not the regularly elected government, represents the Irish people...
...Even in quieter times the challenge of the EEC would be formidable...
...The executed leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 have become secular saints...
...If unification came today it would mean bringing into the Republic a generation of Ulster children reared on petrol bombs and tear gas, gangs of untamed gunmen, and hatreds and bitter memories which would be long in passing...
...While the Republic is not, as Ian Paisley claims, a sectarian society, in its isolation it has allowed itself to develop into a cozy Catholic community where Irishness and Catholicism are almost interchangeable concepts...
...If the Republic seriously wants the brethren of the North, its citizens will have to plan for a truly plural society...
...The arrest on arms charges of three ardent nationalists by the Irish police had touched off fierce street fighting in the town, complete with barricades and stone-throwing mobs...
...Contraception is technically illegal, and the publicizing of all unrhythmic means of birth control is prohibited...
...Others are fearful that the plunge into Europe will destroy the remnants of a distinctively Irish culture...
...For all the rhetoric about Ireland being really one country, no one has been more ignorant about Northern Ireland than a Dail deputy—except, perhaps, a British prime minister...
...No sooner had the Treaty been signed than the victorious Irish Republican Army (IRA) split, one part supporting the legitimate Free State government and the other, led by Eamon de Valera, rejecting the Treaty and partition...
...Obviously you cannot both sanctify violence and condemn it, and so generations of Irish children have grown up indoctrinated in a view of Irish history which celebrates a tradition of revolutionary violence, the ultimate goal of which remains to be achieved...
...Moreover, Lynch knows that neither wing of the IRA has any more love for his government than for the regime of the Ulster Unionists...
...This crisis of choice will come because Prime Minister Lynch's government can no longer afford to turn a blind or even a bland eye towards IRA presence and activity in the Republic...
...The "troubles" of Northern Ireland could move south across the border into the Republic in 1972...
...A historian as well, Mr...
...Trade unions dispute the rosy economic future which the government has promised in the EEC...
...He writes a monthly column on Irish affairs for The Baltimore Sun and has contributed to Saturday Review and The Christian Science Monitor...
...Can you imagine what it will be like...
...Men who risk their lives in revolutions and give themselves military titles are seldom the type who will go back to being plumbers and ditch diggers after the revolution is over...
...Because of its poverty and conservatism, the Republic is years behind the United Kingdom in providing welfare services...
...The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which ended the war between the Irish rebels and the British Army, partitioned Ireland between the twenty-six county Free State and the six county Northern Ireland, a province of Great Britain...
...Both wings of the IRA have their apparatus in their respective Sinn Fein parties which split along IRA lines in early 1970...
...Endless "rebel" songs have been regularly churned out celebrating the bloodlettings of the 1920s and the IRA militancy of the later years...
...men who were assassins half a century ago have become national heroes because they killed for Ireland...
...A day or so later the Dublin newspapers were full of news about riots in Ballyshannon, a town in the panhandle of Donegal, the northernmost county of the Irish Republic...
...It has allowed the British Army to drift from its 1969 role as a neutral force between the Protestants and Catholics to become, for all intents and purposes, the military arm of the Unionist government...
...Under the tradition of Irish nationalism, the IRA is the inheritor of the nation's patriotic heritage and can in all justice use Irish rebel Patrick Pearse's dictum, "Ireland unfree will never be at peace...
...When de Valera came to power in 1932 and began his almost unbroken twenty-seven years as Prime Minister, reunification became a national goal...
...It is true that the beleaguered intellectual community in Dublin can start a ruckus over such issues as contraception and censorship...
...Not only was the Republic born amid the violence of revolution, but that revolution has remained unfulfilled in that it failed to create an independent united Ireland...
...Almost everyone is Roman Catholic, many are from a rural background, and practically all are out of the same ethnic and cultural bag—even the few Jews seem amazingly Irish...
...It is hard for Northern Protestants to believe Lynch's pleas for a peaceful settlement while IRA gunmen use the Republic as a sanctuary and supply base and IRA leaders hold open press conferences in Dublin hotels...
...I have heard the most gentle and charming people in Dublin admit to being glad when they hear that a British soldier has been shot in Belfast or Derry...
...Ultra-nationalists and for the most part right-wing Catholics, the Provos are as weak in ideology as they are strong in terrorism...
...Not that the Republic has the same problems as Northern Ireland...
...The IRA now, as throughout most of its fragmented history, is divided...
...No doubt Prime Minister Jack Lynch (Fianna Fail) is correct in asserting that the majority of the citizens of the Republic do not actively support the IRA's campaign of terror in the North...
...Censorship, although not nearly so insane as it was a decade ago, is still much in evidence...
...Tomorrow, if they are not careful, they may have to negotiate with the IRA...
...Confronting a civil war in the North, the growing threat of violence in its own society, and the unsettled nature of the island's future, the Republic of Ireland is entering the most difficult period of its existence...
...All of this will change when and if the border is abolished...
...This was a natural development under the circumstances, but how does one explain to children that, while violence in the past may have been necessary, it is neither necessary nor admirable in the present or the future...
...Most of these people would never dream of taking a human life themselves...
...The Republic is one of the few really homogeneous societies left in Western Europe...
...At any rate, the government has already signed the Treaty of Rome, and the people will be asked to ratify Market membership in a constitutional referendum scheduled for the end of April or early May...
...Prime Minister Edward Heath's government has accepted the Wilson program in principle, and Lynch is most eager to have the talks start as soon as possible...
...In 1923, de Valera's anti-Treaty forces agreed to peace...
...The problem of the Republic lies in the fact that its citizens have never quite freed themselves from their national heritage of violence...
...The Official wing adheres to Marxian socialism and dreams of founding a thirty-two county workers' republic...
...Thus, quite apart from the bank robberies, house breakings, attacks on Irish Army arsenals, and other violence springing from IRA activity in the Republic, the IRA represents a potential threat to the Establishment in the South...
...In 1969 the moderate Catholics were potential citizens of a new Ulster...
...There the Roman Catholics compose ninety-five per cent of the population and the differences between the three major political parties, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, and Labour, are more apparent than real...
...But the party which he then founded, Fianna Fail, made the reunification of Ireland one of its major goals...
...Williams has taught at the National University of Ireland...
...It is clear that one of the things which he can do to create the best possible atmosphere for these discussions is to tighten up security on Eire's side of the border and curtail Republican (IRA) activity in the South...
...Clearing the legal and institutional obstacles for eventual union with the Northern Protestants will be a major task for Prime Minister Lynch and a painful one for the nation...
...Irish troops had to be called in to restore order...
...The dominant group is the Provisional wing...
...Although 1972 will probably not see the immediate solution to any of these problems, the year will still mark a significant turning point in Irish history...
...But the Officials are a minority force in the movement...
...But this year could see the first steps taken down that rocky road...
...This year will be a time of testing for the citizens of the Republic...
...Instead of isolating the IRA from the Catholic community, everything Heath's government has done has only succeeded in driving the two groups closer together...
...In fact, de Valera's 1937 constitution applies in theory to the whole island...
...Amid such unseemly ructions, there won't be a quiet place for a decent man to have his pint and forget about the world —which is, to a great extent, what life in the Republic is all about...
...Indeed, the Fianna Fail government took a fairly hard line against die-hard elements of the IRA which sought to keep up the fight against Britain...
...And for decades Fianna Fail has won elections by waving the bloody shirt of opposition to partition, claiming to eschew violence on the one hand, but keeping the issue alive on the other...
...Even without the possibility of a united Ireland, Lynch would want to act against the IRA...
...In the North the violence springs from a clash between two diametrically opposed political and religious groups...
...Williams is a free lance journalist now based in Dublin...
...Thus the gunmen could emerge as a political force in the North...
...The message was clear...
...It is hard to say which in the end is more irresponsible and morally culpable: a terrorist movement which seeks to translate patriotic sentiment into bombs and bullets, or a government which seeks to exploit patriotism to gain and retain power...
...Not only would an All-Ireland Parliament mean Ian Paisley giving free rein to his archaic anti-Catholicism in Dublin, but also Bernadette Devlin brandishing her Bogside Catholic brand of revolutionary socialism before the horrified lace-curtain conservatives of the South...
...This is not to suggest that the Republic is full of potential bombers and gunmen...
...Then, on Christmas Eve, William Cardinal Conway, Primate of All Ireland, warned the people of the Irish Republic that, while they had so far been spared the horrors which had gripped Ulster, they were nevertheless living on the thin crust of a seething volcano of unrest and violence which could erupt in their midst at any moment...
...The most important of his proposals are the holding of all-party talks (including Dublin but excluding the IRA) and the inclusion of the possibility of a united Ireland on the agenda...
...In the South the sources of danger are more subtle...
...But if they survive and claim any sort of victory, they will emerge as politicians on some perhaps not too distant tomorrow...
...Consequently, while Irish politicians have thundered for years against partition, outside the chapel gates and inside Dail Eireann (the Dublin parliament), little has been done to create a society in which the Protestant majority of the North could feel comfortable and confident...
...Nevertheless, over the years a severe moral ambivalence has become a part of the fabric of Irish patriotism...
...At the moment the only thing which keeps the IRA from exercising complete political control over the Northern Catholics is the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the largest of the Catholic opposition parties in Ulster...
...Such a development would not be welcomed by the government of the Republic...
...It is the Provisionals who are most likely to emerge as a political force...
...Every man and woman in the South will finally have to choose between the stable institutions and conventions of a democratic society and their romantic allegiance to what William Butler Yeats christened the "terrible beauty" of Irish nationalism...
...Because they hesitated in bringing in Home Rule, they ended up in 1921 having to negotiate an independent Ireland with the leaders of the revolutionary forces...
...Fortunately for the good people of the South, unification will not take place in 1972...
...The introduction of the Northern Irish into the Republic would be comparable to bringing a half-civilized, quarreling group of second cousins into a staid and well mannered family...
...While religious hatred has long died out in the South, it is a daily routine in Ulster...
...These were random but disturbing signs of the times at the close of the worst year in the last half century of Irish history...
...The implications of a united Ireland are beginning to dawn on the people of the Republic...
...While the two IRAs are theoretically illegal in the Republic, the Sinn Fein parties are not...
...Over the years two quite different societies, both of them Irish, have grown up on the same island, and the gradual recognition of this difference has come as a painful shock to the Southern Irish...
...In place of the Christ Child and the Madonna, the card bore a crude green and orange representation of an armed man trampling on the Union Jack, while bearing aloft the Irish tricolor...
...Finally, 1972 is the year when Ireland joins the Common Market...
...It is little wonder that in every decade since the Irish state was founded there have been willing recruits in all parts of Ireland for the remnants of the IRA, despite the fact it is an illegal organization, even in the Republic...
...Since history seems doomed to repeat itself in Ireland, it is worth noting that in 1914 the British had only the Irish Home Rule Party to deal with...
...The only hope Britain had of bringing stability to Ulster was to appeal to moderate Catholic opinion to support Ulster in return for political power and economic benefits...
...Because of the lack of support from Britain and the actions of the British Army, however, the SDLP has been driven into taking increasingly uncompromising positions, since both it and the IRA are competing for the same constituency...
...Viewed from the still hypothetical future of a united Ireland, this political threat takes on a special importance...
...The harsh interrogation methods, the ever increasing harassment of the Catholic population through midnight raids and overuse of tear gas, the physical and verbal abuse which accompanies the interminable searches of Catholic ghettos, and the recent opening of a new internment camp have all served to increase the alienation of Catholic opinion...
...There are several reasons for this...
...First of all, late last year Harold Wilson put forward in Westminster a multi-point program aimed at finding a solution to the Irish question...
...But it is also one that has a great sense of community, which makes it a comfortable and pleasant place to live...
...Today the British could deal with the SDLP...
...A bitter and savage civil war ensued...
...It is not so much the effectiveness of Sinn Fein nor the military power of the IRA which promises the gunmen a political future, but rather the blunders of the British...
...Thus the Republic is a provincial, introspective, and rather dull society...
...Outside the Irish Pale section, however, these debates have little relevance for the plain people of Ireland...
...They are all bigots up there in the North, Catholics as well as Protestants...
...What is provided in the areas of pensions, the dole, medical care, and higher education is generally inadequate by British standards...
...In a united Ireland, Fianna Fail would find it easier to work with the Protestant Unionists than it would with the ambitious rebels of Sinn Fein-IRA...
...The present Irish constitution recognizes the "special position" of the Roman Catholic Church and makes divorce all but impossible...
...Unfortunately, Britain has repeated its historical mistake in regard to Ireland: putting a military solution ahead of political reform...
...Yet it is the very nature of that schizophrenic Irish bliss in being both a respectable law-abiding citizen and a pub rebel which keeps the deadly moral ambivalence towards nationalistic violence alive in the Republic...
...While some hope that Britain and Ireland's membership in the Community will ease the way to a settlement over the North, others warn that entrance into the EEC will gradually rob Ireland of what sovereignty it has had as a state...
...Although the changes in the laws and constitution they will some day be asked to make will be more symbolic than real, more than a few people in the South will be forced to wonder if a united Ireland is really what they want...
...The European Economic Community (EEC) membership is itself a contentious issue in the Republic...
...Somehow Ireland will have to bury its past so that it will not be entombed by the future...
...De Valera himself and the majority of the members of his party gradually gave up the idea of a violent takeover of Ulster...
...But it is also likely that the majority in the South has not yet been able to bring itself to repudiate completely the IRA, or to welcome with enthusiasm the prospect of jailing IRA men in the Republic...
Vol. 36 • March 1972 • No. 3
