A nice place to visit…

National Review, March 16, 1992 by Andrew Gimson

He added it was a pity the British Army had arrived (at the request of the Irish Republic and Northern nationalists) in August 1969, or the Protestants could have finished the Roman Catholics off. This is chilling talk, and the liberal men who framed the Agreement did not hear enough of it, or if they heard did not listen. They tried to devise a middle way where none can exist; to reconcile territorial claims which are mutually exclusive; to imposed a liberal solution on two intensely conservative peoples.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the Agreement is that Margaret Thatcher signed it. Who better than she to convince members of the IRA that their violence is futile (and Protestant terrorists that their violence is unnecessary) because Northern Ireland is going to remain part of the United Kingdom? Who better than she to stand up to the ignorant international protests which would have resulted?

The Irish Prime Minister who signed the Agreement, Garret FitzGerald, has recently published his memoirs, in which he recalles persuading her that "doing nothing" about Northern Ireland would be worse than "attempting an initiative, however risky." This assertion appealed to her activist temperament. She decided to do something--and did the wrong thing. No matter than a year before, in Brighton, the IRA had nearly murdered her. She imagined such mortal enemies could be dealth with by making friendly noises to the constitutional nationalists.

One of her closest political friends, the Conservative MP Ian Gow, was among the few members of the British political classes to realize the Agreement would lead to more killing, not less. When it was concluded, he resigned from the government in protest. Mr. FitzGerald recalls that this was "a serious personal blow" to Mrs. Thatcher, but Mr. Gow was dismissed in most quarters as "a romantic unionist," a man out of touch with reality. The IRA disagreed. Some time later, it murdered him.

ANYONE who talks of "solving" the conflict in Northern Ireland is out of touch with reality. The British government continues trying to "solve" it by persuading the two sides to share power in a sort of bogus local democracy, a policy which has failed for two hundred years and will continue to fail. As for the British Labour Party, it favors a united Ireland by consent--as if the majority in the North ever would consent. Meanwhile the province's Unionist MPs hope that their 13 votes in the House of Commons will, if the forthcoming general election is inconclusive, give them greater bargaining power than at present.

Although the conflict cannot be solved, there are better and worse policies for dealing with it. In practice, the British government will not withdraw from the North, because it will not tolerate the development of another Lebanon or Yugoslavia on its doorstep. It should therefore make a virtue of doing the honorable thing and staying, in accordance with the clear wishes of the majority in the province, while taking all possible measures to safeguard the minority's rights under the law.