Irish Political Review, February 2004
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February 2004 England: The Northern Star Incorporating Workers' Weekly ISSN 0954-5891 Hitler's Inspiration Volume 18 Number 2 Peter Hart's lesser-known qualities Dublin/Monaghan Bombings (Labour Comment, back page) IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW Volume 19 No 2 ISSN 0790-7672 Contents: See Page Two What Is This EU Presidency . Perspectives The United States will break off relations with Sinn Fein and will press Britain to do For? likewise. Then, there being “no longer any barrier to a normalisation of Irish politics”, If spoofing by Cowen and snivelling the Social Democratic and Labour Party will do a deal with the Democratic Unionist by Ahern could achieve anything then the Party. “The IRA might then return to ‘what it knows best’—military resistance—but with Irish Presidency of the EU would be a strong American political and military backing—that resistance could be speedily roaring success. Improving relations overcome. So roll on that day”. The Day will be the day on which “the persons awaiting between the EU and US is apparently sentence in Columbia” will be sentenced. The writer is Conor Cruise O’Brien (Irish number one priority—at least it was a few Independent 3 Jan). O’Brien was a professional anti-Partitionist for most of his life, first weeks ago. This is a perfect priority for as a political civil servant in the Irish Foreign Affairs Department, and later as a hard- Messrs. Ahern and Cowen. It is totally line middle-class nationalist Minister, with special responsibility for Northern policy, outside their control and, if it happens, who played a leading part in subverting the Sunningdale system of devolution by they can claim the credit but, if relations encouraging the intransigence of Lord Fitt and Paddy Devlin in demanding the immediate get worse, it is not their fault. Ahern has establishment of a full Council of Ireland, even though the conditions for it, negotiated already prepared for the latter possibility at Sunningdale, had not been met. A few years later Fitt and Devlin—lapsed Republicans— by emphasising that Ireland is on the edge chucked in the leadership of the SDLP and resigned the party altogether—on the pretext of Europe and counts for nothing. This is that others had made it too nationalist for them—particularly John Hume, who had never true. In fact it’s only half true. Ireland is flirted with Republicanism as they had, but had put the Northern Ireland system to the held in contempt in Brussels because of its test as a middle-class Catholic with middle-class, rather than nationalist, ambitions, and craven attitude to Britain and the US. But who therefore discovered its fundamental inadequacies and experienced them in a way the Europeans are too polite to say so that the semi-Republican ideologues could never do. Both Fitt and Devlin then collapsed openly. What else could one feel towards into the very thing they had spent most of their lives declaiming against. And, when a Prime Minister who said in Brussels at O’Brien lost office in the late seventies, he too flipped over, and dedicated the remainder the beginning of the invasion of Iraq that of his life to compensating for the evil he had done in his prime. the legality was unclear and he would have to await its outcome before deciding Of course he didn’t put it like that. He re-invented his past and attributed his actual on the morality of it? past to everybody but himself. Roy Foster’s The debate on the EU in Ireland has revisionist conten- long since become a totally barren affair. tion that the Irish Europe is the source of all good on the pro- make up the past Europe side and a source of all evil and without regard for slow death for the country on the other historical fact is not side. There is an air of inevitability and entirely untrue. But predestination on both sides that paralyses the elements about any real thought. Martin Mansergh which it is true are regularly conveys the smug pro-Europe the revisionists them- view. A typical piece appeared in the Irish selves. But it’s no Times on 13th December 2003 as a warm use saying to O’Brien: up for the Irish Presidency. The EU was Revisionist, revise the best thing since sliced bread and he thyself! He is one of confidently declared: “It is clear that a continued on page 2 continued on page 5 The plain meaning of the GFA is that C O N T E N T S the IRA would depart from the scene in the course of two years, during which the Page devolved and cross-Border institutions Perspectives. Editorial 1 would function, the police and justice reforms would be implemented, and there What Is The EU For? Jack Lane 1 would be demilitarisation in Northern "Whatever You Say, Say Nothing": write it down instead. S. McGouran 3 Ireland. Trimble’s great concern was to An Cor Tuathail: A Song In Praise Of Tobacco.4 ensure that these conditions were not met, (Compiled by Pat Muldowney) and the only apparent concern of the two Governments was to humour him and to England: Hitler's Inspiration. Brendan Clifford (review) 6 excuse him. (The DUP is now being Is Peter Hart A Medium? Jack Lane 9 humoured, which is reasonable since, unlike the UUP, it did not sign the GFA.) Price And Value. John Martin (Part 8 of a review of Das Kapital) 9 Northern Ireland News Digest. December 2003/January 2004 13 O’Brien’s wishful thinking ever since the World Trace Centre affair has been Letters to the Editor: De Valera's Little Problem. Helen Hilton that the White House would deal with The Anti-Smoking Crusade. E. Courtney 14 West Belfast, the Bogside and South The Clonbanin Column: Refugees; Inquests Into Monaghan Bombing; Armagh as it dealt with Afghanistan. (And Social Justice 15 a propos Afghanistan, the British Prime Minister, when making war propaganda, Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: regularly declared that the Taliban regime was responsible for a very great part of the Dublin/Monaghan Public Inquiry? supply of opium to the world market for it. It was obvious, even from the managed news of the BBC, that the Taliban regime had drastically reduced drug production those utterly self-righteous people who and unconditionally. This journal—in its in Afghanistan. And now we have an can hardly even be said to deceive them- Workers’ Weekly format—took a close official report confirming this. The Taliban selves because they have absolutely no interest in the affair as a Sunningdale curbed drug production to such an extent memory about themselves. They are a supporter. It was evident from radio that the world supply was reduced by a stream of self-righteous feeling. And, interviews that O’Brien was the intransi- third. And, since ‘liberation’, Afghanistan where O’Brien led, the greater part of the gent element in the Cabinet, and that was has again become one of the major nationalist middle class of the 1970 era later confirmed by Fitzgerald’s Cabinet producers.) followed. They are now stolid upholders memoirs. The outcome was that the whole of law regardless of circumstance—and Sunningdale structure was brought down O’Brien loves and loathes America. even regardless of law: “the persons in May 1974 by the Ulster Workers’ He loves it as a fanatical Zionist and awaiting sentence in Columbia” are actu- Council Strike. The SDLP and elements loathes it as a blind enemy of the Northern ally awaiting a verdict. And it is obvious in Dublin declared the Strike to be Fascist. Catholics. A few years ago he published that the verdict is taking so long because it In our view it was one of the few major a book demanding that Thomas Jefferson, is a matter of politics rather than law. events in Unionist history that might the chief source of American democratic reasonably be described as democratic. ideology, should be removed from the Recall 1973/74. The Unionist Party American Pantheon and denounced. He led by Brian Faulkner made a power- That was 30 years ago, though it seems dreams of America as an autocracy sharing and Council of Ireland deal in an like yesterday because so little has committed to the expansion of what he Agreement with the Dublin Government happened in the meantime. thinks of as civilisation. But it always lets and the SDLP on the understanding that him down. America remains Jeffersonian. O’Brien & Co. had committed themselves The next thing was 20 years later—the And, in broadening out beyond its WASP to constitutional recognition of the North Ceasefire brokered by Hume and Adams. [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant] origins, as a legitimate region of the UK. Then, six When the terms of the ceasefire were not it has come under Irish influence as well weeks after the power-sharing Govern- met on the British side, the war was as Jewish. The two bete noires of the Ku ment began functioning, O’Brien & Co resumed—in the City of London. This Klux Klan are now in the corridors of pleaded in Court that they had not was the stimulus to more genuine negoti- power. recognised the North. Faulkner had been ations, leading to the Good Friday Agree- deceived by tricky language. Unionist ment, and to partial implementation of the reaction to this revelation took the form of terms of the GFA. But the conditions on With a fundamentalist WASP Presi- a demand that the establishment of the the two-year decommissioning process dent in office at the fall of the Twin Council of Ireland should be deferred under the GFA have not been met any Towers, it seemed that the Day had arrived until the conditions on which it was agreed more than the conditions on the for O’Brien.