Irish Political Review, November 2005

IRISH ISSN 0790-7672 November 2005 Dev Neutral Against Who? Northern Dail Representation POLITICAL The IRA Connections The Sean Garland Case Volume 20 No 11 REVIEW No Irish Need Apply? (Back page: Labour Comment) Incorporating Volume 19 Number 11 The Northern Star Workers' Weekly ISSN 0954-5891 Contents: See Page Two Politics Shadow Of Of One Gunman Or Another . Exclusion Garret FitzGerald drove the Ulster Protestants crazy in 1985 when, in furtherance of Fine Gael is currently having an the sovereignty claim of the unamended Articles 2 & 3 of the Irish Constitution, he identity crisis. achieved a role for the Irish State in the governing of the Six Counties, which were part of the British State. Ulster Unionists were shocked out of their communal routines. We It may be simply the usual old septa- availed of their disrupted condition to implant amongst them the knowledge that they generian end-of-life crisis we’ve all seen were politically disconnected from the British state to which they professed loyalty. We our grandparents go through, embarras- urged them to demand incorporation into the democratic political life of that state as a sing us by claiming in their young days to means of overcoming the rigorous communal, or sectarian, division which was an have scoured Dublin with the Squad, blast- inevitable consequence of the ‘Northern Ireland State’. ing British officers and their wives as they lay abed all unbeknownst to blessed lady We had been advocating this remedy for more than ten years before that, but it was pity and hell slap it into them. only after Dr. FitzGerald traumatised the Ulster Protestants in 1985 that we got a hearing. Well, whatever the reason, those And when we did get a hearing, and a movement for the democratisation of the Six masters of prudence and rectitude, long Counties within the political life of the British state got under way, Dr. FitzGerald was the champions of deference and decorum, very angry. We were subjected to close scrutiny and harassment by his Special Branch dull grey upholders of lore and ordure as as well as by the Special Branch of the RUC. An apparatus supposedly intended for use ever we’ve known them, are busily re- against terrorists was used against us, who were the ultimate constitutionalists. inventing themselves as dashing despera- dos, romantic revolutionaries, the gallant The 26 Counties, in our experience, came closer to being a police state during the year men who roamed the glen and rode with following the signing of the 1985 Agreement than at any other time during the past forty Michael Collins. It’s all a bit disconcerting. years. And it was thanks to Charles Haughey’s refusal (as leader of the Opposition) to go along with it that Dr. FitzGerald’s authoritarian inclinations were curbed. Myself I put it down to the pernicious continued on page 2 influence of a bunch of dangerous radicals styling themselves the Collins 22 Society, whose Mission Statement is as follows: The Mission of the Collins 22 Society is: Lest we forget . To perpetuate the name of Michael Collins: To honour his ultimate sacrifice: On the first To aspire to his life principles: Remembrance Day To actively campaign for the erection Irish elected by the State of his statue in the representatives courtyard of Leinster house by 2022 (the centenary of his death): were arrested and To be non-denominational and non- imprisoned sectarian: To abide by the Constitution of Ireland: see page 3 To ally itself politically to Fine Gael (United Ireland) Party: To extend the influence of Michael Collins by promoting an interest in continued on page 7 the sovereign authority in the area. C O N T E N T S Page Partition remained the only issue in Politics Of Exclusion. Editorial 1 Northern elections because it was deliberately arranged that it should be so. Shadow Of One Gunman Or Another. Joe Keenan 1 The arrangements made for the Six Arrest Of Members Of First Dail On Armistice Day. Brian Murphy (report) 1,3 Counties in 1921 had nothing whatever to General O'Duffy And Friends. (Report of photograph) 9 do with the provision of good government. So-called elections there have never been Shorts from the Long Fellow (Free Enterprise In Iraq; Health Debate; Labour Will anything but referendums on whether the Wait; More On Due Process; O B E; The White Nigger . Again; A Real Editor) 10 region should be part of the British state or Bertie's Easter Parade. David Alvey 11 the Irish state. They were unconnected with the governing of the state, which is Who Was De Valera Neutral Against? Edward Spalton 12 what democracy is about. It might be said The Propaganda That Never Sleeps. Brendan Clifford (response) 14 that voting on which state the region should The IRA Connections. Conor Lynch 19 belong to was democratic in a secondary sense. But democracy in the proper sense Sean Garland And Questions For Mickey McDowell. Sean Swan 20 has to do with the governing of a state. In Ahern's Modest Proposal. Joe Keenan 21 the British state that is done through the Barry's Column. (Tom Barry; Father Reid) 23 operation of the two-party system, with one party as the Government and the other Japan And Pearl Harbour. Robert Burrage (letter) 24 as a Government-in-waiting, and other parties marginalised. The party-system Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: of the state excluded Northern Ireland No Irish Need Apply? from its operations. Voting in the Six Trade Unions Against Partnership Counties was therefore disconnected from Dublin Trade Union Demonstration the actual democracy of the state. It is a Dr. FitzGerald has now written a but came to identify primarily—one virtual certainty that large numbers of reflective article on the Northern problem might say almost exclusively—with our Catholics in the North would have (Irish Times, 15 Oct) in which he attributes new State.” participated in the democracy of the state if it had been open to them to do so, and the feeling of the Northern majority that it It would be too harsh to say that paradox would as a result have found themselves was a threatened minority to the higher is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But there acting politically with Protestants. nationalist birthrate combined with are few authentic paradoxes in the world. “Southern irredentism”. The combined Most paradoxes do not arise from inherent But electoral activity in the North had pressures of Catholic fertility within, and difficulties in thought but from evasion of nothing to do with governing the state. the Dublin claims from without, led to thought. We have just now the paradox Elections were only convoluted “carefully disguised political and that established commentators who praised referendums on the question of whether economic discrimination against the Peter Hart’s truly dreadful book on the the region should belong to the British Northern minority”. Meanwhile the 26 IRA in Cork five years ago are denouncing state or the Irish. They were referendums Counties developed itself as a state in his very much better book on Michael conducted as elections. And, in order to accordance with its predominant culture. Collins. But that paradox is no more than remain within the British state in semi- It did not hold itself in abeyance lest, by an expression of mindlessness. Hart, for detached form, Unionists had to secure shaping itself as a state and allowing itself all the adulation of asinine critics in high ‘party’ majorities within the devolved to develop, it should deepen its differences places, was made to understand, by system. Devolved governments were with the Ulster Unionists. Thus— authentic criticism in publications elected, but government policy played “From these events a deeply paradox- associated with this magazine, that his ical situation emerged. First, on the little or no part in the voting. And the initial vision would not play. So he Protestant Unionist side, their artificial conducting of referendums in the form of regrouped and produced a much better electoral majority within the six-county the election of devolved governments book, and is condemned for it by a critical area never translated itself into a ensured that both Protestants and Catholics acumen which is of a kind with that which psychological sense of being actually a remained cohesive communal blocs. majority.” praised his first book. We are here in the And realm of fashion, not of thought. Catholics would have taken part in the “the Protestant unionist community democracy of the state if it had been open could never lose a sense of being a Dr. FitzGerald’s head is not as empty to them to do so. If simple referendums threatened minority on the island of as the heads of these ‘critics’. But he had been held on whether to retain a Ireland. In that key respect, and at the constructs his paradox by averting his subordinate attachment to the British state deepest level—that of fear—unionists mind from a fundamental fact of the or transfer to the Irish state, it is probable in Northern Ireland continued to think in situation which is politically unacceptable that at various times quite a few of them all-Ireland terms. In sharp contrast, the to him—that the preconditions of demo- would have voted for the former. But, in nationalist people of the rest of the the convoluted referendums in which a island… rapidly became deeply involved cratic political life were deliberately and in the construction of their new State… calculatingly withheld from the Six vote to remain attached to Britain could Within a very short period, we in this Counties when they were constituted into only take the form of a vote for the Ulster part of Ireland, for practical purposes, ‘the Northern Ireland State’ by the British Unionist Party (the communal party of the ceased to think of the island as our home, Government, which never ceased to be Protestants with the Orange Order at its 2 core) only a minuscule number of Catho- lics could be expected to vote for the · Biteback · Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback British connection.

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