Some Recent Exchanges

I placed the following responses to readers on the ‘Steinbeck’ thread last night, but thought they deserved greater prominence. I have also added further responses to them.

 

1.

Michael Kenny writes :'Peter Hitchens seems to completely disregard the fact that a sizeable portion of the native people of Northern Ireland identify themselves as Irish and not British and want reunion with the south.' Twaddle. I have never 'disregarded' this in my life. It is blazingly obvious, and one would have to be a complete idiot not to be aware of it. The trouble is, and it has bedevilled the issue for more than a century, that it is equally obvious to all but idiots that a similarly large number do not agree. Thus one must either override one in favour of the other, which appears to be Mr Kenny's choice, or find a civilized compromise, which is mine. I am uninterested in which is technically the majority or the minority. I just think it a grave mistake to let either community dominate the other, as happened under Stormont (which I have many times said here I think should never have been set up), and as will, I fear, happen under Dublin. Hence my preference for non-sectarian direct rule from London, with no local government unit in the six counties greater than a city or county council, and no Parliament save at Westminster. Unlike Leinster House or Stormont, the Westminster Parliament can be (and was under direct rule) genuinely neutral between the two communities. Mr Kenny continues: 'What is more, the majority status of those who do regard themselves as British is increasingly slipping.' Once again, I am perfectly well aware of it, and have many times said so here. That is why this weblog has an archive and an index, so that people can look at what I have said, before telling me that I have, or have not, expressed certain opinions, or have or have not discussed certain issues. Mr Kenny asks : 'Does Peter seriously think that his proposed direct' London rule' is the answer to this?' No, as I have said here many times, I cannot 'seriously think' that, as it is now legally, militarily and diplomatically impossible. Britain's national defeat at the hands of the IRA, and under American pressure, ratified by two referenda (one of them in my view held under deeply unfair conditions) cannot and will not be undone. The 1998 surrender to the IRA ended all such hopes. I merely point out, when challenged (as people of Mr Kenny's general persuasion are always doing) to say what I would have done instead of surrendering to terrorist gangsters of both sorts, that this would have been a better option.

 

Mr Kenny has since posted a reply in which he seems to think that Northern Ireland (entirely unviable as a sovereign state) can somehow achieve an ‘autonomy’ with ‘connections and ties to both Dublin and London’.

 

Even assuming such a thing were possible, no such provision is contained in the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which permits either the status quo, ultimate British sovereignty, or a transfer to Irish sovereignty.

 

Nor could it be, in my opinion. Sovereignty is by its nature ultimate and absolute, and answers in all cases the question rightly posed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and central to any discussion of actual power,  ‘Who Whom?’.

 

Mr Kenny then asks ‘if Peter considers that direct rule from London is the antidote for resolving the differences between NI'S two principle native communities, then why not propose having the same sort of governance over the six counties emanating out of Dublin instead?’

 

Because this is a false equivalence. Despite its use of ‘British’ symbols (though it also uses Scottish ones) Ulster Unionism is far more exclusively Protestant, Scottish and indeed Calvinist than is Britain as a whole. British governments have not, for many decades been particularly sympathetic to this strand of religious or political opinion, and used the period of direct rule to dismantle many of the advantages Loyalists had taken for granted, though they also see no need to try to suppress or discourage it. (By the way, I must repeat here that I don't think direct rule has been a realistic possibility since the 1998 surrender. I am merely respondiong to squawks of 'what would you have done then?' from supportyers of the 1998 capitulation). 

 

Dublin, on the other hand entirely shares the strong Irish patriotism of the (perhaps) ‘minority’ in Northern Ireland. Roman Catholicism has suffered a major decline, but strong nationalist sentiment has not, and the cross-border strength of Sinn Fein illustrates this very well. Government from Dublin would not, could not, with the best will in the world (which cannot necessarily be expected from SF), be even-handed towards Unionists whose whole cause would be defeated and humiliated by the absorption of their home into a 32-county Republic.

 

In short, direct Dublin rule will place the whole force of the state behind one part of the population. Direct rule from London demonstrably did not, and would not.

 

He then says :’ And I wasn't surprised to see Peter (once again) spitting venom about the Provisional IRA... 'surrender' 'terrorist' etc etc. In that regard he is little different to dissident Irish Republicans who spout similar rhetoric about Sinn Fein.’

 

Don’t be silly. The 1998 agreement is clearly an instrument of surrender, as one side gives everything and the other side takes everything, and also because one side has stopped deploying force, and the other side (see below) continues with impunity to deploy – and use - force. The Provisional IRA was and is a terrorist organisation. To describe it as such is not ‘venom’. It is a statement of fact. The ‘venom’ emerges from the IRA’s explosives and bullets and its gangs of bully-boys who beat and maim.

 

If these ‘dissident’ Republicans are truly so at odds with their leadership then why has there been no instance of any of them being physically attacked or otherwise disciplined for their ‘dissent’? Why, even disputes about cigarette smuggling have led to lethal violence among ‘Republicans’, and IRA supporters have been accused of involvement in the apparently non-political murder of Robert McCartney.

The Republican movement, either in the days of Michael Collins or in the days of the conflict between different parts of the IRA, or INLA, has never been backward in using violence against ‘dissidents’ (an outrageous misuse of an honourable word, once applied to peaceful dissenters against Soviet power).  

 

These people are merely a deniable operation of the Provisional IRA, who have not actually disarmed, of whose alleged disarmament there has never been a shred of independently verifiable objective evidence, and whose ‘permanent cessation of hostilities’ deserves as much credence as Adolf Hitler’s statements about having 'no further territorial ambitions.’

 

The fiction of ‘dissidents’ is convenient both to the victors, who are thereby enable to nudge matters along whenever the vanquished drag their feet, and to the vanquished, who can pretend that these outrages are unconnected with the people to whom they have surrendered, in return for a false pledge of non-violence which they are too feeble and beaten to enforce.

 

Thus the whimpering repetition of the words ‘This must not be allowed to derail the peace process’, every time there is a terrorist attack . Why must it not be allowed to do so?  Generally, when people break the terms of a treaty with violence, the conflict resumes. It is because the surrender is irreversible, and our gvernment, which naturally does nto wish to appear as weak and carven as it actually is,  must pretend to the public that it is not a surrender.

 

He asks ‘Have the British government declared a permanent demilitarisation of the six counties?’

I don’t believe so, but actions speak louder than words. The British Army presence in Northern Ireland (you’d struggle to find any evidence they were there at all)  is almost entirely gone, and will of course cease, completely and demonstrably, once sovereignty is handed over in, perhaps, 2022.

 

He talks of meeting people halfway. Yes, I’m happy to meet *people* halfway, but I won’t meet gangsters, kidnappers and murderers halfway, for in doing so you become what you behold. It was because I believed in meeting people halfway that I favoured permanent direct rule.

 

2. Dealing with Mr Martin is like playing one of those fairground games you cannot win. Now he says he has 'an assumption that all journalism is to some extent biased'. No he doesn't. He should recall that he began this exchange by declaring that a Private Eye report on my argument with the BBC (which I have since demonstrated to be far from unbiased) was 'factual'. As for his wearisome cliche about how I supposedly 'see things in black and white', what does he mean? I defend Vladimir Putin, yet say he is a sinister tyrant.I defend UKIP against BBC attacks, yet criticize it as a 'Dad's Army' and attack its leader for his position on drugs. I am opposed to the Labour Party and all its works, but defend its leader against puerile attacks. I love the USA and like Americans, but am a stringent critic of American foreign policy. Come to that I am an incessant critic of the BBC, yet I defend the licence fee. I could go on. What is 'black and white' about any of this?

 

3. Terence Courtnadge said:

' if the State hadn't destroyed the State school system between 1965 and 1975'. And who was (Conservative) Secretary of State for Education from 1970 to 1974?

 

I answered : ‘Does Mr Courtnadge (who has been contributing here at least since 2011) really think I am a Thatcherite? Can anyone help him?’

 

And Mr Courtnadge then replied:’ You have made abundantly clear on more than one occasion that you are most certainly not what you seem to assume what I was suggesting. I wasn't ; I was dropping a hint that there was still abundant time and opportunity in those (almost) four years, to reverse the disastrous decline in education standards (including the scrapping of Grammar schools) started, as you say, in 1965. That opportunity was squandered. I was emphasising the irony that the Education Minister from 1970 to 1974 was of course the future Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.’

 

To which I reply, in that case, what on earth is the point of saying this? All my articles on the grammar school issue (not to mention the chapter on the subject in ‘The Cameron Delusion’) are fiercely critical of the ‘Conservative’ Party for its failure to defend or reinstate academic selection. There is no ‘irony’ in this at all, unless you still suffer from the strange belief that the ‘Conservative’ party is in any way conservative.