Withering Away

LOYALIST paramilitaries have announced that they would not cease firing even if the IRA did. They will continue to kill until Articles Two and Three are dropped, and until nationalists North and South give up even the desire for a United Ireland. They have not said how thought-police will monitor people’s unwritten, unspoken desires.

People are drawing questionable conclusions about the announcement. Liz McManus, Democratic Left TD, used the UVF threat to conclude that an IRA ceasefire wouldn’t of itself bring “peace in a week”, as John Hume said it would. “What about the UVF?,” she asked on RTE. Alan Dukes of Fine Gael nodded in agreement with her.

Ergo, the Hume–Adams plan doesn’t matter, it should be shelved, and the only way to lasting peace is to bring all the Northern parties round a conference table – with the exception of Sinn Féin, which would still be stuck with the IRA, which would still be stuck with continuing the war because its offer of a ceasefire was rejected by the UVF, the UFF, Unionist parties, Major, Reynolds, McManus, Dukes et al.

In such an event, the UVF might stop killing. In short, UVF rules OK, as it has done since the Ulster Volunteer Force persuaded Britain at the point of a gun in 1912 to partition Ireland.

Of course, even if there was an all-party settlement, the UVF might go on shooting, because the IRA would still be shooting. No problem to Ms McManus and such. One would introduce internment, as one has done in every decade since the North was founded. That would quell things until the next generation came along and rose up, as the IRA has risen up out of every generation.

Brilliant.

Not.

OLD CLICHÉS

In the four weeks following the Hume–Adams announcement of a plan to end the war – FOREVER – the prospect was in the air and on everyone’s lips, there was hourly speculation on radio and TV here and in Britain, politicians were galvanised into adding and subtracting from the plan and we were that close – as close as this phrase – to peace.

All gone now.

And everyone can go back to war, mouthing the old clichés about how it’s all the fault of the IRA, and if only the IRA would stop, everything would be grand.

Not entirely grand. Albert Reynolds wonders why the Unionists won’t accept the plan which he and Major and Spring drew up, to replace the Hume–Adams plan. It was a most reasonable plan, he said on RTE the day after Greysteel.

He sounded puzzled. He could see no reason why any reasonable Unionist would reject his reasonable plan. He saw no problem with the UVF. They were, by their own description, “reactive”, he said, and they’d have no reason to react once the IRA ceased firing.

He gave no reason then why the IRA should cease firing in response to his rejection of the Hume–Adams plan, and has given no reason since. He was not asked then, and has not been asked since, what there is in his plan that would prompt the IRA to do so.

Anyway, the UVF has since announced that they don’t just react to the IRA. They react to Albert and Dick too. And unionist Ulster continues to say no.

Brilliant.

Not.

FINAL PLAY

The only constant in the whole shambles is the prospect of peace that has lodged in Northern nationalist heads. For a while there they saw, tasted, and rehearsed in their minds a future without war. They know now what it will feel like. They burst through tribal bonds, were liberated into mental freedom.

They were, in particular, freed from the mythical yearning for a United Ireland. The Hume–Adams initiative allows the Free State to say no to Ulster, and allows Ulster people of all persuasions to say no to the Free State.

The fact is that, because of the war, the North doesn’t like the South very much, and the feeling is mutual; Britain doesn’t like the Irish, North or South very much and that feeling too is mutual. The Hume–Adams plan would have, by taking the gun away from everyone’s head, and lifting artificially imposed deadlines, given time and space in which people could have looked at each other again, without hatred, mistrust or alienation.

Brilliant?

Yeah.

Of course, people North and south might still harbour desires that all the people of this island would one day vote for a unified political state. Loyalists, to go by their own stated terms, would therefore still have a reason to kill. The Hume–Adams plan does not address that problem.

The unspoken assumption in many Northern nationalist minds is that the UVF would wither away if Unionists withdrew tacit tolerance of them. Like the IRA, those paramilitary fish can only exist if they swim in friendly waters. What would happen during the withering period?

Private talk has it that Northern Catholics must learn to endure death. There would be no IRA protection; internment and a shoot-to-kill policy by the British security forces would be unacceptable, despite what those war-mongers say whose only solution to the North is barbed wire, bullets and attrition until eternity, while talks about talks continue with Unionists who say no.

Northern Catholics must endure the final play of the Orange card. That’s the answer to those who ask “What about the UVF?” Well they know it.