No Trouble

One trouble about Ireland is that we never get to describing properly what is happening in and to it. We talk about The Troubles when what we  really mean is revolution. We talk about inter- religion hatred when what we mean is antagonism used as an instrument of government. Put it all together and what you get is that  in the northeast corner of Ireland  bad government using racism as an instrument of control led to a revolution.

With that  as a starting point we may reasonably hope to get somewhere , but it is doubtful if Dr Haass will even be directed towards it. He will be told, and will accept that the Irish problem is one of Protestant versus Catholic hatred. It is nothing of the kind. The problem is thoroughly bad government and has been  for centuries. Indeed the Protestant and Catholic populations were so successful in integrating and burying hatchets and living together that artificial antagonisms and pogroms had to be arranged on average every 12 years for a couple of centuries, as one of our perceptive friends, Andrew Boyd has pointed out.

Commentators on most conflicts  tell us  who benefits militarily , financially, socially, culturally from a particular situation . Not so about Ireland, where commentators  lazily or with intent declare that inter-community hatred is the cause of  the problems.  Ireland, particularly the northeast, has suffered  always from that false description . The world was told about the great Protestant-Catholic  blocs wrapt in struggle as if the Jewish people , the Muslims, the Humanists and about 60 different religious groups did not even exist. The result has been an interpretation of Ireland which has very efficiently prevented rational thought about it internationally.

It is time for that nonsense to cease but there is not the slightest possibility that Dr Haass will cause it to cease. From what he has said in public it seems he is locked into the old tired, inefficient model  of sectarian conflict in which what we have to do is get Mrs Mac Awilly to agree with her next street neighbour Mrs O Filigan and all will be well. No word of bad government leading to revolution, as any American commentator would be glad to notice if it were in a  Latin American country. No word of how the Humanists and the Jewish people and so many others have been left out of the thinking as blocs were petrified or if necessary created to suit the only model of  description allowed by government and press.

Control of flags and emblems can be dealt with locally in any society by clear laws and honest policing. Without those all the talking in the world is in vain. The past will be dealt with in time as it has been in other European countries , given  people’s need to survive with dignity and with an adequate sense of the realities of their life but the best way to ensure that happens is to guarantee good government and if good government is not possible in a Irish six county context which was  specially designed to create undemocratic  government then that context has to be changed. The shape of an ungovernable area may have to  be changed to suit modern  reality, rather than imperial needs of the past.

All that needs thinking – and doing – something rational about, but  is a matter not for  a visiting monitor but for a local and international  process of rational analysis and politics.   It is high time we had it.