Northern Ireland
I suppose the time has come to deal with this. I did not go to it in my book, which is mainly about life issues in England, but this blog which roams freely in many tricky areas cannot duck its responsibility to go where many fear to tread.
In my young days there was A Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, the IRA was dormant, and Ireland was not an issue to which anybody gave a thought. I remember looking out of the window of my office in the West End when the first IRA car bomb went off, in the early seventies, with a tremedous concussion as smoke billowed up over the roofs undulating south east towards Big Ben. We all know the story.
Over the years since I have tried to form a view. I began pro unionist and anti republicans, who I dismissed as terrorists. Later I became neutral. I remain so, but only just. My sympathies are with the republicans. Not the terrorists. The politicans. The more I learned about the various factions of unionism the less I liked what I saw. This is how I see it now.
Ireland is one small country. Look at the map. It is a naturally catholic country with a history going back to the earliest days of Christianity. The protestants of the north are largely decended from the immigration of the Civil War era and Cromwell’s ruthless military supression. They have a very narrow and literal view of the teachings of the Bible, a sanctemoneous aura, a fundamentalist demeanour and a lust for provocation, any or all of which disaggreable attributes make them entirely out of kilter with the tolerance and inclusiveness, which is at the heart of the culture of the rest of the United Kingdom. In the whole of the U.K they are a tiny minority. In the whole of Ireland they are a small minority.
They live in a time warp of bitterness and triumphalism. Their marching tradition is as preposterous as it is incomprehensible. We do not celebrate Trafalgar or Waterloo by marching through Paris nor El Alamein by parades through Berlin. We know the difference between history and now. We know the value of reconcilliation and the benefits to human kind when enemies become friends. Unionists admit to none of that. They have their Orange Order. They celebrate their tawdry victory at the battle of the Boyne as if it were yesterday and march through areas of Belfast where catholics huddle, victims of the most offensive sectarianism, to show who is boss.
Of course the catholics are not without blemish. There has been the various incarnations of the IRA and sensless murder of innocents . But it is their country. The catholic church in Ireland is a very tarnished brand. This tarnish is beginning to spread to Gerry Adams at the same time as salacious and financial revelations hammer at the very foundations of the DUP. The outcome of the weakening grip of Sein Fein and the DUP is a stuttering revival of republican terrorism and a new, even more fundamentalist wing of unionism.
Just now the whole peace process is finely balanced. The government in London tries to remain impartial and ease the transfer of Police Authority to the devolved government. Talks are said to be taking place but the unionists are opposed to this move.
Were I Prime Minister, an event not in prospect, I would follow a more robust approach. I would summon the Unionist leaders to Downing Street for a meeting. It would be quite short. I would lay before them the terms for the continuance of the Union of Ulster with the United Kingdom. The terms would be simple. Agree the transfer of Policing, close down the Orange Order, the Apprentice Boys and all their ancillaries and fall into line with the way we go about life in this country right now, or I will put an emergency bill through Parliament to hold a referendum to dissolve the Union. They would then find themselves cut adrift, because the majority of the people are heartily sick of them and the referendum would be carried en masse. They would become a minority in someone else’s country, whose majority they have insulted and provoked over centuries and who would now call them to order.
Time to think it over. Certainly. Half an hour. I will have someone bring them some tea. The cake will come only after they have signed. If they walk out of the meeting, they walk out of the United Kingdom.
The time to deal with this is now. Once and for all.