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'Northern Ireland - The Politics of War and Peace'
by Paul Dixon
An international poll to find out the best method of preaching a sermon was published in a newspaper some years ago. Ian Paisley came in second place behind a Baptist minister from the Deep South who explained how he got his message across:
"First, I tells 'em what am gonna tell 'em," he said. "Then, I tell 'em. Then, I tells 'em what a toll 'em."
Reading Paul Dixon's book reminded me of that preacher, except that at the end he tells us all over again what he has been telling us throughout the book. He himself concedes that at least one chapter may prove difficult given the concepts he is handling. His approach is based on analysing the conflict in terms of the inter-relationships between power (the ability to shape action through armed struggle, state repression, propaganda wars), ideology (rhetoric, propaganda, myths, morale-raisers, etc: for some reason he omits 'theory') and 'reality' (which he places in inverted commas, given its controversial, subjective nature).
Dixon is Lecturer in Government at the University of Ulster and this book, claiming to represent a fresh and original contribution to the political debate on the North, would appear to aspire to syllabus-status in the burgeoning field of Irish political/historical studies. (At £47.50 you would need a student loan or grant to buy it.)
Unfortunately, there are many typos and omissions (is this because the book was printed in China?) and at times the writing is fuzzy. For example, in the introduction, when referring to the detested Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA), against which 100,000 Ulster Unionist and DUP supporters protested in Belfast city centre, he makes the following untrue statement: 'Unionists are more likely to see the agreement as a historic accommodation from which the Union benefits and emerges stronger, ending Northern Ireland's slide from the Union.' He himself later contradicts this very statement when he writes: 'The British were out-negotiated by the Irish Government over the Anglo-Irish Agreement… and this was a cause of concern for unionism…'
Where he analyses the situation from a 'structuralist' point of view (which treats politicians as being almost victims of fate, their actions circumscribed by historical, social or economic forces, and less through personal determination) he tends to be very kind to Ulster Unionists and successive British governments. Indeed, one of his conclusions is that there has been 'a general failure to understand Ulster Unionism.'
The book reprises most of the major political crises and turning points throughout the past thirty years, the most significant of which was the 1981 H-Block hunger strike and its influence on the direction and politics of the Republican Movement. He reminds us that the Dublin government lobbied the British against withdrawing from Ireland (in the 1970s), that the New Ireland Forum, from which Sinn Fein was excluded, and the AIA were both aimed at shoring up the SDLP against the electoral rise of Sinn Fein - a policy which perished on the rocks of the last Westminster election results. It begs the question (which he doesn't explore) of how sooner we might have been to negotiations, a settlement and a saving in lives, if both London and Dublin had engaged in real dialogue with republicans, instead of demonising and excluding them.
There are some interesting quotes. Most observers are aware of the famous speech from Sir James Craig, paraphrased as, 'We are a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people.' Dixon quotes it in full and it does put it somewhat into a different context: 'In the South they boasted of a Catholic State. They still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State.'
And an interesting quote from David Trimble in 1986 about extra-parliamentary activity: 'I would personally draw the line at terrorism and serious violence. But if we are talking about a campaign that involves demonstrations and so on, then a certain element of violence may be inescapable.'
The book glosses the role of successive British governments, underestimates the culture of political imperialism which explains its continuing role in Ireland (and its doggedness against the IRA) and ignores the military interest and the 'securocrat' factor. Instead, he accepts at face value Britain having no overriding interest in remaining in the North. That if it has acted partially it has done so favouring nationalists! That John Major did not obstruct the peace process by artificially raising the issue of decommissioning (which wrecked the first IRA ceasefire; caused a split in 1997 which saw the emergence of the Real IRA; and continues to create major internal republican difficulties as the leadership does a balancing act and struggles to save the Good Friday Agreement and the institutions).
'Does the Good Friday Agreement entrench the Union or is it a further step towards Irish unity?' he asks. Ulster Unionists subscribing to the former view causes republicans no difficulties. But republicans subscribing to the latter arouses unionist accusations of republican deceit, violence from loyalists and reassurances from the British Prime Minister along the lines of his first speech in Belfast, 'none of us in this hall today, even the youngest, is likely to see Northern Ireland as anything but a part of the United Kingdom.'
In partitioning Ireland the British instituted and perpetuated structural sectarianism in the North. They used violence, repression and censorship against nationalists rather than giving and guaranteeing them rights they should never have been denied. Isn't it telling how justice and equality and full rights even now are seen by some as subversive? Or should that not tell the historian some fundamental truths about the politics of war and peace?
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison