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Reading
Roy Hattersley’s article in the Guardian (14
Apr) it struck me that one reason many British politicians
grew prematurely old and grey where they hadn’t
pulled their hair out over Ireland, is that their
ignorance of the place left them baffled. It is as
well for Roy Hattersley that he was once shadow Home
Secretary for the British Labour Party rather than
the Northern Ireland shadow. A certain detachment
from the place allows for mere irritation - as confessed
to by Mr Hattersley - as distinct from the neuroses
that appears to have afflicted others.
Criticising
Irish republicans for having killed Michael Collins
is a dubious proposition given that it remains unclear
who actually did kill Collins. Perhaps the latter’s
bombardment of the Four Courts with British artillery
was a more compelling reason for anti-Treaty republicans
to militarily oppose him than the mere fact of taking
oaths to a British king. But the passage of time does
befuddle the mind and one sometimes posits as facts
that which the evidence does not conclusively support.
That
defence can hardly apply to Roy Hattersley’s
other claim that Ruairi Quinn is leader of the Irish
Labour Party which he admits to supporting - is he
unaware of a particular Pat Rabbitte? And the SDP,
which he claims to back in the North, broke with his
own party in Britain - it is not an established party
in the North.
Roy
Hattersley’s notion of historical inevitability
taking us towards some predetermined outcome has not
been so fashionable in a world where relativist and
postmodernist influences have made their impact felt.
Where Marx once reigned supreme as the post-Hegelian
theorist of teleological thinking his influence has
since been diluted and replaced by, amongst other
things, Foucauldian and Derridean challenges to the
Enlightenment march of irreversible forward momentum
- Foucault dismissively having said of Marxism that
it ‘exists in nineteenth-century thought as a
fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe
anywhere else.’
David
Trimble speaking at a Belfast book launch towards
the end of last year purposefully drew a distinction
between the two Karls - Marx and Popper. Siding with
the positivism of the latter he seemed in no way bothered
by the notion of supposed historical inevitability
taking the population of the North towards a united
Ireland. Shortly after his speech the results of last
year’s census left him even less bothered.
Jim
Molyneaux, as pointed out by Mr Hattersley, may have
been right to suspect that all John Major's Ireland
initiatives were "edged with green". But
the green was securely boxed in by the consent principle
to Northern Ireland. When the nemesis that long stalked
republicanism - the internal solution - gripped the
Provisional leadership by the throat in the form of
the Good Friday Agreement - the game was up. Republicanism
had ignominiously failed. Anything it engaged in after
that was green constitutional nationalism coated with
a republican froth.
To
talk, as Roy Hattersley does, of the enemies of republicanism
surrendering sounds like political Esperanto. Even
Danny Morrison has claimed that once republicans decommissioned
they would have reached their own point of surrender.
It is something they have since done twice. Roy Hattersley
and Joe Cahill alone seem to believe that the IRA
has won the war. Now Cahill is set to support a police
force one of whose officers he almost went to the
gallows for killing. Hardly what the war was about.
As
for the cross border bodies so praised by Roy Hattersley
as the harbingers of Irish unity, who seriously believes
that these were anything other than what Professor
Henry Patterson called the ‘necessary nonsenses’
grafted on to an internal solution merely to facilitate
the republican leadership to bluff its way with its
own grassroots?
On
one level Roy Hattersley is merely putting a smile
on the face of the corpse and tarting up republican
failure as victory. He is trying to add some ballast
to a republicanism inexorably keeling over. But sweeten
the pill as he may, behind such discourse there remains
a number of bitter realities which do not easily wash
down with a pint of rhetoric.
The
British state strategy of including republicans but
excluding republicanism is proving successful. For
all their efforts republicans are as far away from
achieving their goals as Roy Hattersley’s team,
Sheffield Wednesday, is from winning the Premier League.
What has emerged from the Good Friday Agreement is
a British declaration of intent to stay, no united
Ireland, the primacy of the British and unionist infused
consent principle, and a renamed RUC. If republicans
won the war why did we ever fight it to begin with
given that all these were for the most part available
without any such war?
Roy
Hattersley admonishes - but in reality praises - republicans,
with the backhanded compliment that ‘failing
to realise you have won is ridiculous.’ Not nearly
as ridiculous as being told the wooden spoon is the
coveted silverware.
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