Fortnight Publications Ltd.

McNamara: The Rhinoceros SolutionAuthor(s): Paul DixonSource: Fortnight, No. 304 (Mar., 1992), pp. 20-22Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25553334 .

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McNamara: the rhinoceros

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^ and adept the watchword -

"Rememberl974^J looks back at Harold

^Bi&^aBMl^^^MHHiHHHHHHHHHIIi^^^^HH Wilson's walk-on, walk-off Surmounting the 'obstacles'?extracts from that 1985 document role in the 'troubles'.

rPragmatic at best, opportunist T1 1 HE SAD STORY ofthe Labour party

and Northern Ireland is dominated by ,_I Harold Wilson, who became prime

minister in 1964 and resigned in 1976. It was Labour's third prime minister who sent the

troops in in 1969, and who failed to defend the

power-sharing executive in 1974.

If there was little socialist inspiration in

Harold Wilson's Irish policy, the behaviour of

British governments in the 1960s and 1970s was very far from imperialistic. Behind the

reforming rhetoric of the politician in Parlia

ment lay the institutions of the state, with

Whitehall mandarins struggling to manage the

'troubles' using an array of policies. The logic of bipartisanship?on this question above all

others?influenced Labour and Conservative

front benches at Westminster, just as London

and Dublin began to co-operate over the area

one possessed and the other claimed.

There was not much in Harold Wilson's

antecedents to prepare him for the Northern

Ireland nightmare during his first, but princi

pally his second, period as premier. He had

visited Belfast in 1940, as an assistant to Sir

William Beveridge in the wartime civil serv

ice, reporting favourably on the Unionist gov ernment's desire for closer economic relations

with Britain. Nor was there anything in his

early life (he was born some weeks before the

1916 rising) to link him with Ireland. Mr Wilson was the youngest member of

Clement Attlee's postwar cabinet, which, in

response to the south leaving the Common

wealth, introduced the 1949 Ireland Act guar

anteeing the union with the north while a

majority there so consented. In his brief period on the Bevanite left ofthe party in the early 50s, he did not become a pronounced anti-partition ist?as he did a Zionist. When elevated to the

Labour leadership in 1963, he responded sym

pathetically to reformist pressures concerning the north, but saw progress being made by the

Northern Ireland Labour party. His 1964-66 government was more con

cerned with the republic, with which a free

trade agreement was negotiated. It was only after the 1966 general election success?which

saw Gerry Fitt returned to Westminster for

West Belfast?that Mr Wilson encouraged the

then Northern Ireland prime minister, Terence

O'Neill, along a vague road to reform. As

home secretaries, Roy Jenkins and then James

Callaghan handled London's relations with the

devolved administration. Mr Wilson did not

want to get too deeply involved?indeed he

would have loved to have got rid of Northern

Ireland representation at Westminster.

He had to force reforms on Mr O'Neill in

November 1968, to appease the civil rights movement, and, after the commitment of troops

in August 1969, he imposed further changes on

Mr O'Neill's successor, James Chichester

Clark. But if the Foreign Office had already considered withdrawal?only to reject it?it

was the failure of the Wilson government to

impose direct rule in 1969 that led to the

growth ofthe IRA. The prime minister had had to bounce his cabinet into committing the army to replace the Royal Ulster Constabulary and

the 'B' Specials, and British troops were to

prop up the Unionist regime right through to

internment and 'Bloody Sunday'. Labour meanwhile lost the 1970 election,

and it was Edward Heath who abolished Stor

mont two years later, his Northern Ireland

secretary, William Whitelaw, doing much to

bring about the Sunningdale agreement of late

1973, which led to the formation ofthe short

lived power-sharing executive.

To spring back in opposition, and also to

see off backbenchers angry about internment, the Labour leader visited Ireland?for the first

time in 31 years?in November 1971, later

putting forward his own 15-point programme for a united Ireland in a parliamentary debate.

Mr Wilson was back in Dublin in March 1972 (before direct rule), to meet secretly with

the IRA at the end of a short ceasefire. The

encounter, subsequently leaked, allowed Mr

Whitelaw to meet the IRA in London that July. Mr Wilson later saw a second delegation,

again in secret, at his country home in Buck

inghamshire. Such engagements did not how

ever legitimise the republican leadership ?which was in a maximalist political mode?

the object of the British state being to get the IRA to stop, to allow for political advance.

Labour inherited responsibility for the Faulkner-Fitt power-sharing administration in

March 1974, but Mr Wilson allowed it to be

destroyed by the Ulster Workers Council strike that May. There was no parental feeling for a

Tory fondling, and Mr Wilson chickened out

of rescuing the executive. There was no army

revolt?just a lack of political will.

A study of withdrawal had been initiated in Whitehall (again, to eliminate it as an option),

20 MARCH FORTNIGHT

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S1 ~

IINCE THE MID-1980S, the Labour

party has become increasingly am

,_Ibiguous about what it means by its

policy of Irish unity by consent. 'Consent' has

been redefined, or not defined at all, to imply that a Labour government would unite Ireland

without the explicit consent of the majority of

people living in Northern Ireland. This shift reflects an acceptance that neither the pursuit of

'working-class unity' nor harmonisation of the

economies and institutions of Northern Ireland

and the republic (Fortnight 303) are likely to

produce majority consent for a united Ireland.

After the 1983 election, a joint National Executive Committee?Parliamentary Labour

Party policy committee proposed to remove the

unionist veto on the constitutional future of

Northern Ireland. At first it was suggested that

'consent' should mean the consent of the whole

island of Ireland, with a veto only being wielded

by the governments ofthe UK and the republic. In April 1986 the NEC-PLP joint policy com

mittee underlined its departure from official

Labour policy, agreeing a paper committing the party to Irish unity but only with "a signifi cant degree" of consent?by implication less

than majority consent.

If the joint policy committee's position had

been endorsed by the full NEC it would have

represented a major shift in Labour policy, and

would have raised fears among unionists that a

Labour government would attempt to push them into a united Ireland. But in February 1987 the paper proposing the change was leaked

to the Times and the party leadership moved

swiftly to prevent the change of wording?

although Labour's spokesperson, Peter Archer, was reported to have been in favour of it.

What is notable about this incident is that

Kevin McNamara, along with Clare Short, backed the redefinition of 'consent' on the joint

policy committee. Seven months later, follow

ing Labour's defeat at the 1987 general elec

tion, Mr McNamara was appointed Labour's

shadow spokesperson on Northern Ireland?

with a brief to defend a policy which he had so

fundamentally tried to change (although he had not been Neil Kinnock's first choice for the

position). Mr McNamara is among the very few La

bour MPs who have maintained a consistent

interest in Northern Ireland. In the 1960s he was involved with the Campaign for Democ

racy in Ulster, a pro-civil rights lobby. In the

1970s he adopted a civil libertarian stance on

security policy and was a leading opponent of

internment.

On the question of the border, Mr Mc

Namara has always been close to the nationalist

Social Democratic and Labour party and has

never been happy with the constitutional guar antee given to the majority in Northern Ireland.

In March 1972 he told Parliament: "My argu ment is that the best people to decide what is to

happen to Ireland are the Irish people them

selves. But the Ulster members represent only the six counties, not 32."

After the defeat of the Labour Government

in 1979, Mr McNamara took part in the inquest into Labour's Irish policy. In August that year

he was listed as a sponsor for a rally calling for

British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. In

May 1980, anticipating 'harmonisation', he

advocated closer ties between north and south, and a more aggressive approach to Irish unity.

While respecting the views of the million or so

in the north who "allegedly" did not want to

become part of a "complete Ireland", he said:

"The Labour party should not be fooled by spurious appeals to democracy of the six coun

ties; it is the wishes of the majority within the island of Ireland that should be counted."

Mr McNamara's nationalist zeal was such

that, as the former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald

records, the former prime minister James Cal

laghan "seemed to regard (him) as an Irish

politician who had nothing to do with the Labour party". In 1981 Brian Lenihan, the

republic's then minister for foreign affairs, asked Labour's spokesperson on Northern

at worst?

but Mr Wilson?privately?considered an Al

gerian solution, before favouring the goal of an

independent Northern Ireland. The UWC strike

induced mental, rather than political, with

drawal, and Mr Wilson, and his Northern Ire

land secretary, Merlyn Rees, turned eventually to the idea of a Constitutional Convention,

which failed to reach agreement in 1975-76.

Dublin had been worried about a British pull out and the Fine Gael minister for foreign

affairs, Garret FitzGerald, asked Henry

Kissinger to pre-empt another Congo. At the time of the 1975 ceasefire, he IRA

believed it had secured a British commitment

to withdraw, but civil servants were really

pursuing the strategy of 'Ulsterisation' and

criminalisation. Mr Rees worked to end intern

ment, but also the 'special category' status

paramilitary prisoners enjoyed (which was to

lead to the 1980-81 hunger strikes and the

electoral emergence of Sinn Fein). The 1974 Guildford and Birmingham pub

bombings by the IRA had led to the Prevention of Terrorism Act, introduced by Mr Jenkins

largely to reassure an unsettled population in

Britain. The IRA leadership subsequently tried

to get through to Mr Wilson directly, to pro mote the idea?inspired by Sean MacBride?

of a commission on the Irish problem. Mr Wilson took no further interest in Ire

land after 1976. But his conduct of Irish policy is a case study of his approach to politics. First, there is the marked absence of any theoretical

view of the world, and the eclectic use of

various ideas and notions. Second, there is the

combination of enthusiastic embrace of a prob

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And Mr Wilson let it?loyalists celebrate the UWC strike victory lem and extreme caution in action. Third, above

all, there is the civil servant's concern to main

tain the continuity of administration in Britain.

And, fourthly, there is the duplicity with politi cal colleagues and actors, which makes 'devi

ous' the word used most to describe him.

When Harold Wilson responded sympa

thetically to Catholic grievances in Northern

Ireland in the 1960s, it was out of a desire to

protect Britain's reputation abroad. When he

failed to stand up to Protestant leaders in 1974, it was out of a tactical concern to preserve a

Labour government?and to prevent British

politics being contaminated with what he con

sidered 17th-century atavism.

Mr Wilson's tenure at No 10 reveals little

British economic, political or military interest

in the neighbouring island (the entry of both states into the European Community in 1973

being of greater significance for Anglo-Irish

relations). British experience of decolonisation

was of little help to the Labour government? which is not surprising given the uniqueness of

the Irish question (though the experience of Mr Wilson, and Mr Callaghan, in government would do much to promote the idea of British

withdrawal on the Labour left in the 1980s). While both major British parties have shared

a policy range over the years, it is difficult to

avoid the observation that the Conservatives, for good or ill, feel more comfortable with the

police and army, while they are also more

politically innovative?Mr Heath in 1973, and

Margaret Thatcher in 1985. Labour's singular contribution has been grudging financial as

sistance to the region?as exemplified in the

philosophy ofthe last Labour Northern Ireland

secretary, the proconsular Roy Mason.

FORTNIGHT MARCH 21

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Ireland to tell Mr McNamara to "cool it".

During the 80s Mr McNamara consistently refused to accept the right of the majority in

Northern Ireland to remain part of the United

Kingdom. Shortly before the Anglo-Irish Agree

ment, he submitted two papers to the joint

policy committee on Northern Ireland. The

first, Obstacles on the Path to Unity, redefined

Labour's understanding of unity by consent, to

mean unity by "peaceful means". According to

this logic, if Mr McNamara was to become

Northern Ireland secretary, loyalist paramili taries would have a positive incentive to persist

with their campaign of sectarian violence, in

order to prevent the peaceful conditions being secured which Mr McNamara deems neces

sary for Ireland to be united.

In the same paper, Mr McNamara rejected, as counter-productive, the notion that Labour

should commit itself to set a date for British withdrawal. This would allow the Conserva

tives to portray Labour's policy as an admis

sion of defeat at the hands of terrorists, or

otherwise to make a "dishonest equation be

tween the Labour Party and the Provos". He

concluded that "a strategy which looks like

fellow-travelling or smacks of Pontius Pilate

will be politically damaging". But the coded message of this paper is that

a Labour government could unite Ireland by

stealth. This is most clear in the analogy drawn

between Northern Ireland and Algeria. Mr

McNamara wrote that "of particular interest is

the way in which the OAS [the terrorist organi sation of the French settler community] was

contained and eventually destroyed. Once de

Gaulle had made his mind up in favour of

Algerian self-determination, the OAS was un

able to resist the political will and, ironically, an extremely ruthless anti-terrorist campaign.

The Secretary of State would do well to bear

[this] in mind and adopt the watchword?

'Remember 1974 [an allusion to the Ulster

Workers Council strike]: No Surrender?'" The

implication is clearly that if a Labour govern

ment had the political will to withdraw it could face down any loyalist resistance, whether mili

tary or a UWC-type strike.

The second paper Mr McNamara submitted

to the joint policy committee, Policy for La

bour?No 2, dealt with security policy. It ar

gued that "formalised arrangements for Irish

participation in security policy-making must

be established ... More effective would be lo

cally recruited forces subject to the control of a

Police Authority with effective representation from the Republic." In an accompanying press

notice, however, he argued that he had not

attempted to tackle the security problem, "be

cause I consider the security problem is the

symptom of the disease and not its cause".

As shadow spokesperson, Mr McNamara

has brought Labour's Irish policy still closer to that of the SDLP, which is now hallowed as

Labour's sister party in the Socialist Interna

tional. The party's commitment to consent has

been watered down in line with the ambiguous

position of the SDLP. Mr McNamara refuses

any longer to define what Labour means by

consent (or "formal consent", which is the

wording ofthe Anglo-Irish Agreement) or how consent for Irish unity might be tested.

When asked in an interview, in July 1990,

how unionists would know when 'formal con

sent' had been given to Irish unity Mr

McNamara replied:

I don't think it is a 5,0 per cent plus one. It's a

whole amalgam of things, it's a feeling, it is a

political representation, it is an acceptance, you could tie it down and say it is a border poll... or

representations made from local authorities or

city councils... it could be one of a whole host of

things and we're not tying ourselves down to it in

any particular way and saying that this is going to

be the particular benchmark which we are going to use. Because consent can be shown in a whole

host of different ways.

He has also likened the test of explicit consent

for Irish unity to the famous definition of a rhinoceros: "I do not know how to define it, but

if I see one I'll recognise it. The explicit agree ment to transfer sovereignty occupies a similar

status."

Not only does Mr McNamara refuse to

define what it means by consent, but he also

refuses to indicate how long Labour's strategy of harmonisation would take to produce a united

Ireland. Mr Kinnock has spoken in terms of

"many, many decades" before his party's goal of Irish unity is realised. Mr Mc Namara, on the

other hand, will not give any indication what

soever of how long he envisages it will take for

Labour to unite Ireland, although he has said he

hopes to be the last secretary of state for North

ern Ireland. In spite of his nationalist record, Mr

McNamara seems to be saying to the unionists,

'trust me', come into my parlour. Labour's ambiguity about what it means by

consent to unity is likely to aggravate unionist

anxieties about their position in the UK, creat

ing the environment in which loyalist violence

thrives. The political party linked to the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Democratic

party, has argued:

The result of pursuing harmonisation (let alone

Irish unity) without the free will of those living within this part of the UK will be disastrous.

Instead of putting all of our energies into building a fair and progressive NI and UK, those who have

no wish to be forced into a 'harmonised Ireland'

will be forced to form an Independent State. The

majority ofthe population will be forced into the

hands of right-wing extremist groups who do not

seek to build a fair and equal society but who will

offer themselves as a way of stopping the 'sell

out'. NI will continue on the sectarian carousel

and the Labour Party will provide the

momentum!

Should Mr McNamara become the next North

ern Ireland secretary, he would be willing to

suspend the pursuit of harmonisation while

inter-party talks were in progress. Yet the cre

dentials of any Labour secretary of state?let

alone Mr McNamara?as a 'Brooke-type' hon

est broker between the political parties will

have been badly damaged by the party's close

identification with the SDLP. It would also be difficult for a Labour government to fulfil its role as sponsor and guarantor of the unionists

as envisaged by the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Faced by a British-Irish-SDLP consensus,

with the prospect of both chairs of the Anglo Irish Intergovernmental Conference being in

favour of Irish unity, the unionists are likely to

feel that their backs are against the wall. Their

siege mentality will be reinforced and the pros

pects for power-sharing correspondingly re

duced. In such a climate of increased tension,

the ability of Labour to implement a compre

hensive reform strategy, even if it has the

political will, may well be undermined.

From the Labour leadership's point of view, Mr McNamara's period as shadow Northern

Ireland spokesperson has been a success. Al

though the 'greening' trend of Labour's policy does seem at odds with movement in the repub lic away from traditional irredentist national

ism, it has helped to cut the ground from under

the feet ofthe withdrawal movement in Britain,

whose links with Sinn Fein had often embar

rassed Labour. The 'Time to Go!' campaign around the 20th anniversary ofthe deployment of British troops in 1989 failed to stimulate

support for withdrawal at Labour's confer

ence?the vote on a withdrawal motion that

year was lost by an even greater margin than in

1981?and it subsequently disappeared with

out trace. Comparing 1981 and 1991 party conferences, the vote for withdrawal has de

clined both in absolute terms and as a percent

age of the total.

Mr McNamara, however, might now have

outlived his usefulness, and if Labour does

form the next government he may not find

himself installed in Stormont Castle. Labour

will have enough problems on its plate without

an activist secretary of state stirring things up across the water. Mr McNamara is not an

elected member of the shadow cabinet and his

replacement with a woman might be defended

by Mr Kinnock on the grounds of increasing female representation in the cabinet.

Northern Ireland is a very low priority for

the Labour party?principally because there

are so few votes to be won on the issue. Barely

anyone noticed, let alone complained, when it

was left out of the party's policy review. Thus

Labour's Irish policy is less entrenched than

most of its policies, and therefore particularly

susceptible to political expediency. This is borne

out by Labour's negotiations with the Ulster

Unionists about the possibility of a pact before

the 1987 general election (a point I develop in a forthcoming article in the Irish Times).

This also explains why some unionists are

not more agitated about the prospects of a

Labour government. The record seems to show

that Labour in government has rarely lived up to the nationalist promise of Labour in opposi tion. This, perhaps, was why Austin Currie,

then of the SDLP, called for another term of

Conservative government during the 1987 gen eral election campaign.

So, in spite of the 'greening' of Labour's

policy during the 1980s it is still very difficult to anticipate what a Labour government would

do in Northern Ireland. But this ambiguity in

itself contributes to the continuing conflict. It

increases constitutional uncertainty about the

region's future, sending the message out to

loyalist and republican paramilitaries that there

is still everything to play for. Credence is lent

to the IRA's belief that its campaign will ulti

mately be successful. And the loyalists are led

to believe that, but for their capacity to terrorise

the Catholic community and bring the region to

a standstill, a Labour government would unite

Ireland.

It is very probable that a Labour govern

ment would not, in fact, do very much in

Northern Ireland?preoccupied, as it would

be, with more immediate and higher-priority

problems on the 'mainland'. Its policy record,

however, is unlikely to help produce an envi

ronment conducive to progress towards the

resolution of the conflict.

22 MARCH FORTNIGHT

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