Luck of the Irish?

National Review, July 28, 1997 by Geoffrey Smith

LONDON

`Where there is intransigence on both sides that becomes impossible." Mo Mowlam, the British Northern Ireland Secretary, was speaking ruefully of her failure to strike a compromise between the Catholic and Protestant communities that would have avoided the disorders that engulfed the province after the Drumcree march on Sunday. In a sense this encapsulates the tragedy of Northern Ireland. It is because this is not a place with a gift for compromise that activities which are acceptable elsewhere provoke mayhem and bloodshed there.

Elsewhere the right to march is considered a basic civil right. It is one of the benchmarks by which Chinese rule in Hong Kong will be judged. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and other American cities is a joyful occasion. The march of the Protestant Orange Order in Drumcree presented no threat to anyone and was itself peaceable. But it offended Catholic sensibilities, provided an opportunity for terrorists to orchestrate violence, and has created a new wave of bitterness around the province.

This has come just when the new British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had gone farther than any of his predecessors to reassure Nationalist opinion and to involve Sinn Fein in the negotiating process. Indeed, the question to ask of Blair is not whether he has done enough to try to bring Sinn Fein into the process, but whether he is giving the party one last chance too many.

He launched a dramatic new initiative two weeks ago giving Sinn Fein the opportunity to take part in all-party negotiations six weeks after it declares another ceasefire, and he is not giving up hope even after this week's violence. He wants the talks to begin in September and to be concluded by next May. Sinn Fein would not have to give up its arms before talks began: the sticking point with Major. Instead, Blair has accepted the proposal in the Mitchell Report last year (from the international body chaired by former Sen. George Mitchell) that the decommissioning of weapons by both Catholic and Protestant paramilitary groups could be carried out step by step as the talks proceed. These proposals are all designed to meet Sinn Fein concerns.

The initiative is all the more remarkable as it came only the week after a particularly horrific murder in cold blood by the IRA of two Northern Ireland policemen with young children in the town of Lurgan. This atrocity, which shocked opinion in both communities in both parts of Ireland, was bewildering as well as brutal. The British and Irish governments were already doing everything they could to prepare the ground for all-party negotiations, which was precisely what Sinn Fein was demanding.

Blair had allowed British officials to re-open the direct contacts with Sinn Fein that had been abandoned after the end of the previous IRA ceasefire in February 1996. He had made a speech apologizing for the British government's role in the Irish potato famine a century and a half ago--a symbolic gesture to Nationalist opinion of some significance. Yet while Sinn Fein continued to demand a place at the negotiating table, the IRA responded to these conciliatory moves by keeping up their program of bombing even before Lurgan.

So they have been talking peace, but acting war. There can be three possible interpretations of this. The first is that they have no intention of negotiating seriously but believe that talking about talks will appeal to Americans, confuse the British, unsettle the Unionists, and remove the risk of a security crackdown. In that case the sooner their bluff is exposed the better.

The second possible explanation is that some of them would like a political settlement but others retain their faith in the gun. Some observers on the spot believe that there are signs of a serious struggle raging within the IRA. Even if the leaders are in agreement, they may perhaps be having difficulty controlling their wilder elements. If this second explanation is true, it would make negotiations with Sinn Fein futile and possibly dangerous unless the leadership can impose control. Some sections of the IRA would have a motive for committing even more terrorist acts. If success in the talks ever seemed likely, they would redouble their efforts. Negotiating progress would trigger violence, not remove its cause.

The third possible explanation is that Sinn Fein is seeking a political settlement but believes that continued bombing will strengthen its negotiating hand. It may calculate that, whatever the British may say, more and more violence would weaken their resolve and incline them to accept a weak compromise--no doubt with lavish supplies of diplomatic camouflage. If that is what Sinn Fein believes, it would reveal the party as not only unscrupulous but stupid.

There can be no political settlement in Ulster without the agreement of both the Catholic and Protestant communities. Some people, especially in the United States, speak of Northern Ireland as if it were a colonial problem, simply a struggle between the British and the Catholic community in the province--with the IRA as the latest in a long line of colonial freedom fighters. Get the British out, unite the whole of Ireland, and then the people there will live in peace.