| Republican News · Thursday 27 March 2002
IN THE LATE 1980s, I acknowledged to myself the uncomfortable fact that I really didn't understand the question of Northern Ireland; that, despite having had opinions on the subject for a long time, I couldn't explain how the problem arose. It became clear to me that my own ignorance was part of a general ignorance among English people on the subject. For the left, Ireland has been a blind spot, and in the trade union movement it is often avoided because it is felt to be divisive. Many on the left know more about Eastern Europe, South Africa or Central America than about Ireland. Since the Good Friday agreement of 1998, the only valid moral argument against British withdrawal is the unwillingness of the Republic of Ireland (expressed in a referendum) to unite with Northern Ireland without the consent of a majority of the people there. I aim to show that withdrawal is in the interests of the people of Britain, that British rule over Northern Ireland is wrong, and that the decision by Britain to partition Ireland in the first place was wrong and was imposed by violence. I hardly need add that partition is a policy that has failed. We, the people of Britain, have our own right to national self-determination, which can be exercised by dissolving the union with Northern Ireland. I shall argue that we should campaign for our government to make this its policy, to be achieved by persuasion and inducement, combined with pressure on the unionists whenever necessary to make them implement the Good Friday Agreement.
Unfinished business In short, I want to show that the problem in Northern Ireland results from unfinished decolonisation and that the solution is to complete that decolonisation. We English like to think of ourselves as very fair-minded, with a strong commitment to justice, freedom of speech, fair play, religious tolerance, trial by jury and parliamentary democracy; as a humane, and certainly not a blood-thirsty, people. Yet the history of our relationship with Ireland flatly contradicts this self-image. This is why the question of Northern Ireland is such a difficult one for us. We don't know its history, partly because it has been deliberately hidden from us by successive governments and their supporters in the media, but partly because we don't want to know -- it's all too uncomfortable. As Professor Terry Eagleton said, "The Irish can't forget their history because the English refuse to remember it". We also believe the problem is incomprehensible. If you accept that, then of course there is no point in reading this or anything else on the subject. A big mistake, in my view, is to see the republican military campaign as the problem. No bombs, no problem. But the military campaign is the smoke, not the fire. Smoke warns us of a fire, but it can also obstruct our vision. The fire is the basic injustice of the partition of Ireland by Britain, and the forcible inclusion of a part of Ireland in the British state. Too many writings on the Northern Ireland problem are about the smoke. This one is about the fire. On the question of Northern Ireland, Britain is entirely in the wrong, and nothing the IRA (or the Real IRA) has done alters that, though it has for too long been used to obscure it. In my experience, the nature of the IRA's campaign made it almost impossible for British people to have a discussion on the subject of partition. But although the IRA's actions are not a good reason for demanding British withdrawal, neither are they a good reason for opposing it. British politicians are at their most smug, and least challenged, when condemning IRA violence and calling for republicans to follow the democratic path. Yet Northern Ireland as a political entity was founded by violence and the rejection of democracy. In 1912-1914 the Ulster Unionists formed an illegal paramilitary force to defy the will of the Westminster parliament, and the Conservative Party urged them to do it, supported them and funded them -- with impunity and with success. In 1918 the Irish people as a whole voted overwhelmingly for independence, yet Britain's reply was to send in the notorious Black and Tans, official British terrorists who broke every rule in the book including the one about killing innocent civilians. In 1921 Irish 'agreement' to the partition of Ireland (after the event) was obtained by British prime minister Lloyd George's threat of "immediate and terrible war". Since then (or until 1998 at least), Northern Ireland has never been ruled democratically and the killing of innocent people by the unionist and British authorities has continued. When, in 1968, people marched to demand 'one man one vote', they were attacked by the police; when, in 1972, they protested at imprisonment without trial, they were fired upon by paratroopers on Bloody Sunday. In 1974 the Sunningdale Agreement and its power-sharing executive were brought down because the Wilson government caved in to unionist violence, connived at by the British army. So the IRA can justly say, "we learnt it all from you".
Taking responsibility This doesn't make the IRA's actions right, or wise, but it makes them understandable. We should turn our attention to the crimes committed by our own government -- that is where our responsibility lies. The problem is the injustice of partition, not the various responses to this injustice by its victims. The Missing Piece in the Peace Process is a plea to the people of Britain to take responsibility for what our government is doing and has done. British governments created this Frankenstein monster called Northern Ireland. The sectarian hatred is British-made. The tendency to political violence is British-made. The problem is British-made, and we must make Britain solve it. It is a curious fact that, whilst many Irish people feel guilty about the IRA's actions, with a consequent need to disown them, any equivalent feelings on the British side are largely absent. Whilst there are many who decline to support British withdrawal because of their disdain for the IRA, there are few who decline to support the Union because of their disdain for the actions of the loyalist paramilitaries or British forces, even though these have included torture, indiscriminate killings, and collaboration between those two forces, the legal with the illegal. This is because we accept the view that everything is the fault of the Irish, that Britain is a referee or peacekeeping force between irrational warring tribes. This is partly due to misinformation from politicians and the media, but it is also part of a long-standing prejudice about Ireland in the British mind, which affects even those on the left who are otherwise anti-colonialist. There is very little campaigning in Britain for withdrawal. The IRA campaign (now happily ended) is partly the reason for this, but also partly the excuse. Surely every killing should spur us on to greater efforts to solve the problem, not sicken us into inaction and hand-wringing.
Decolonisation demand A strong campaign in Britain, demanding decolonisation, is the missing piece in the peace process. The possibility of building such a campaign is better now than it has been for a long time, and we must seize the time. There is already a majority for withdrawal, including many who privately acknowledge the injustice of partition and of Britain's treatment of the nationalist people. There is also an underlying awareness that Britain has treated the Irish people very badly down the centuries. I am urging British people to campaign for decolonisation, not just as an act of solidarity but because it is in our interests. The inclusion of this colonial remnant within the British state poisons our parliamentary democracy, poisons our system of justice, undermines our freedom of speech and threatens the civil rights of every British citizen. It impedes the forward march of democracy in Britain as well as Ireland. Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement has lurched from one crisis to the next. The agreement created a new political battleground favourable to the campaign for a united Ireland, but its weakness (necessary to make it possible at all) is that it incorporates the unionist veto. This weakness is made worse by the vacillating attitude of the government, which frequently panders to unionist intransigence. Yet the agreement was only possible because the government told the unionists they could not have what they wanted, and progress on implementing it will only be possible on that basis. Even if the Agreement fails, it is a turning point. If it brings a lasting peace, that will not only be infinitely better in obvious ways, but also because it will create more favourable conditions for truth to emerge, for the injustice of partition itself to be made the issue, and for British people to discuss these matters with Irish people and with each other. If successful, it will create the conditions for the withering away of the sectarianism that is the basis of both unionism and of Northern Ireland itself. It is not a permanent solution, but a transition stage. Does the Good Friday Agreement make this pamphlet irrelevant and a campaign for decolonisation unnecessary? That would be a dangerously complacent view. As long as Northern Ireland remains in the UK, it will pose a threat to the peace and stability of this state, to our democracy and our civil rights. It will be a hotbed of reaction and a means by which a crisis can be manufactured at any time. The danger of an alliance between unionism and right-wing forces in the British establishment is ever-present. The unionist population remains armed with legally-held weapons. Many complex problems lie ahead, to which I hope this pamphlet will help to bring clarity. The 800-year old 'Irish problem' is the old Vesuvius of British politics, erupting sporadically over the centuries. Our generation can solve it once and for all, and start to build a new, peaceful relationship with the people of our neighbouring island, to our mutual benefit.
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