Pic: Eric Jones. https://www.geograph.ie/photo/3445069
Clive Soley, deputy Labour Party spokesperson on Northern Ireland, was interviewed by Jonathan Hammond and John O’Mahony for Socialist Organiser (#123, 10 March 1983, #124, 17 March 1983, and #126, 7 April 1983).
JH: Can you outline the Labour Party policy for us, as it stands now?
CS: The first thing Labour would do on gaining power would be to give a clear commitment to a united Ireland by consent.
Why consent? First of all, we prefer to govern by consent, obviously. But, secondly, and this is very important, the population of Ireland is five million. Of those five million, 1.5 million live in Northern Ireland. Of that 1.5 million, one million, to a greater or lesser extent, support the Unionist cause. And to try to force one million to join the other four million without their consent would be a recipe for disaster.
I don’t think a united Irish government would be well equipped, particularly in the early days, to cope with the problems. But what consent must not mean is a veto on political progress. We would legislate in a way that would lead people to the conclusion that united Ireland was in their best
The sort of things I would like to see us consider, and I think we would consider, would be measures like joint citizenship, joint voting rights, the ability to vote and stand in each other’s elections, very close harmonisation, so that the Unionist won't feel trapped in a united Ireland — so that he knows that if he chooses to he can travel on a British passport or an Irish passport, he can vote in British elections, he can vote in Irish elections, and, I would hope, could stand in elections on both sides too.
I think we would be looking very quickly for a major effort to harmonise various matters on the economy, social factors, and political institutions north and south of the Border. I believe the Border has distorted the economies of both North and South alike. One of the things I would want to consider very urgently would be an all-Ireland Economic Development Council. I’d also like to look at some form of all-Ireland council, or a sort of British-Irish council — with elected representatives from the North and the South, and possibly from Britain.
We’d want to consider an all-Ireland police force, recruited — and I emphasise this — from both sides of the Border, trained in a common training school, with a common sense of identity.
I would say to people who are worried about an all-Ireland police force that unless you do consider things like that, then frankly you are not serious about a united Ireland. At the end of the day, there has to be a police force that can cross that border, and it’s an important step forward. There’s a whole range of factors of that sort which we’d want to consider.
JH: You seem to be leading towards the idea of a federation between Britain and Ireland, and a united Ireland within that federation.
CS: No. I don't think there is any chance of a federation between Britain and Ireland. If people wanted it, I wouldn’t rule it out, but frankly I don’t think it is realistic. What I do think would be more likely, although I would stress that I am not looking for this particularly, is a federal Ireland. That makes sense — whether on the existing borders or not, is another matter. A federal Ireland would, I think, provide a recognition that the Unionists are a significant part of the population, and do have anxieties about certain social legislation, abortion rights, etc. You can deal with that in a federal system quite well. But frankly I don’t think there is any chance of a federation between Britain and Ireland. I do think that with the Border out of the way, there could be a much closer, more healthy, relationship.
JO’M: Dick Spring, the Irish Labour Party leader, recently talked about seeking a solution within the broader framework of the EEC [as the EU was then called].
CS: I wouldn’t rule it out. We’ve got to be very open and flexible in our approach. But having said that, again I wouldn't be optimistic.
My view is that the reason why we’ve always had a problem in Northern Ireland is because we have always dealt with it as though it is a problem of the people of Northern Ireland or Ireland. But in fact it’s a British problem as well.
If we believe that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, OK, let’s integrate it into the UK. But no government ever has. No government has ever treated it as part of the UK. We have always treated it differently, and therefore I think we have to make up our minds.
An EEC intervention — well, it might help, but at the end of the day we’re still going to have to make that decision ourselves. If you have a family quarrel, it’s no good inviting the neighbours in to sort it out.
JH: You talk about the need to get the consent of the Unionist population. But that’s a two-way thing — because you also need to get the consent of the Republican population in Northern Ireland and in the Republic.
What is your view of the growth of Troops Out sentiment, not only in Northern Ireland, but in the Labour Party? What is Labour’s current view of Provisional Sinn Fein? Does Labour think they have a contribution to make to bringing about Irish unity? What about Frank Allaun’s recent statement that the Labour Party should start recruiting in Northern Ireland? On the face of it, it would seem to be a sensible idea — in the light of the ideas you’ve just put forward? Do you support it?
CS: When we say consent, what we are talking about is a majority — whether Catholic or Protestant, just a majority — of those people coming out in favour of a united Ireland. Obviously I would prefer it to be more than 750,001, but that’s a majority. So it’s not as difficult a task as it looks on the face of it.
You are dependent, obviously, on an Irish government wanting this outcome. At the end of the day it’s got to be negotiated with them. But we are looking for a majority of the people in the North, measured by a poll or by institutions like a new Assembly, or whatever.
On the Labour Party organising in Northern Ireland — I feel it would be a mistake. I don’t think it would work, and I think there is a hidden and very real danger in it that you’ll end up with a Catholic trade union movement and a Protestant trade union movement. That would be disastrous.
My view is that nationalism, sadly, is a stronger force than class, and until we resolve the question of national identity we won’t resolve the question of class politics. Therefore I think it is a non-starter. But if they are successful, OK, I'll relate to that party.
Provisional Sinn Fein? I clearly wish it will do the ballot box and drop the armalite. They can’t do both at the same time sensibly or honestly. They might be moving in that direction, though not immediately. It’s anybody’s guess.
People who have not broken the law are people whom, at the end of the day, you can’t refuse to talk to, and that’s not a problem as I see it. I still say: drop the armalite.
JH: Do you see withdrawal of troops as an objective of Labour Party policy?
CS: The aim should be troops back to barracks as soon as possible. That is actually happening, but slowly. We want to continue it as quickly as possible.
I’m not a Troops Out man, nor am I for setting dates for British withdrawal. I see a policy of British withdrawal from Ireland as opposed to a policy for a united Ireland. It does not follow that if we withdraw our troops then you will have a united Ireland.
We all know that some unionists are prepared to fight for an independent Northern Ireland. I don’t think it would work, but I do know that plenty of them are prepared to fight for it.
Therefore my view is that policies that are designed simply to get Britain out don’t provide a solution. They simply get Britain out, which might be nice for us but doesn’t solve the problem.
JH: As you know, the first post-war Labour government set a precise time-table for withdrawal from India. You don’t see that as a realistic option for the next Labour government and Northern Ireland?
CS: No, I don’t think so. These areas are always very difficult. We look back on the India operation as a success. It was a success for Britain, in that it got us out. But it wasn’t a success for the millions who died — and millions did die. And it created the split Pakistan state which led to yet more wars.
We have got to do this in a manner which does leave a united Ireland and not just an Ireland divided in a different way. We must do it with the minimum loss of life. There is going to be some loss of life whatever we do, no ifs and buts about it. It’s a violent situation, and the violence is going to stay for a while whatever we do.
JO’M: How would you define Britain’s motive for staying in? There used to be military Considerations up to the 1940s and later, and economic considerations a
long time ago. How would you define the motives now?
CS: I don’t think I would ever have defined it as simply one thing or the other. I agree that the military considerations were major. I don’t think they are any more. I think it is a mixture of economic, social, cultural and political, and in part military, things. I don’t go into Irish history in depth: there’s so much of it you can pursue it forever.
My job as a politician is to recognise that we have got a problem now and try to resolve it. You only need to look at the fact that the vast bulk of the Protestant community come from Scotland to realise that you have a very distinct cultural group there. You then have a distinct cultural group in the Anglo-Irish, and also the original Gaelic Irish. So it's very complex, and I’d hate to say it was purely economic or purely military. That would be to ignore an awful lot of complexities. I think the only similarities to Ireland are places like Cyprus and Israel/ Palestine.
JH: But would the package of economic social and political reforms you speak of really affect Catholic /Protestant polarisation for the better. Wouldn't it just scratch the surface?
Cs: Initially they might not have all that much effect. Some of them would. But as we went on, we would have more and more effect.
Let me give you an example. If we were successful in harmonising pensions on both sides of the Border — which is not impossible — then I would be quite prepared to administer pension payments from Dublin. So if you are a hard unionist, and you get your giro in the post from Dublin, then you could tear it
What I’m after is the vast majority of people prepared to enter into a united Ireland.
JO'M: Back in 1974 we had the very effective Loyalist strike. The Labour government more or less capitulated to it. Given the fact that Paisley and other hard-line Protestants might do the same again if you introduced such a package, what guarantees do we have a new Labour government would not do the same as its predecessor?
CS: I don’t have any, because all governments when they come under pressure have to move. It is unrealistic to pretend otherwise.
However, having said that, I think this policy requires a great deal of political determination and political skill. The thing is to do it in such a way that you don't allow either of the main antagonist groups to bring down our proposals. You are going always for what is workable, thus pushing people in a certain direction. It will be maybe two steps forward, maybe one step back now and then. But it's got to be very clear progress in a way forward.
I hope we could deal with a crisis like 1974, but my first aim would be to avoid it.
JH: But Britain’s whole strategy was broken in 1974 by the Orange general strike.
CS: That's largely true, yes. But we need to remember that we were still in a very early stage of grappling with the problem. We’ve done a lot more thinking about it. I would hope we’ve learned from that. I recognise that it would be extremely difficult. But with determination and skill I think we can do it.
JH: There has been a lot of — justified — criticism of one of your fellow spokespersons on Ireland, Don Concannon, for the crassness and insensitivity of his visit to Bobby Sands on his death-bed. Concannon obviously represents a strong point of view in the Labour Party.
CS: I wasn’t involved in any discussions with Don about the visit, so therefore I don’t know if the popular image is quite right. I think he would have a very different view of it. It ought to be recognised, in fairness, that he was asked to carry out that visit by the then leader of the Party. Whether it was right or wrong, sensitive or insensitive, I can’t say.
Don is now committed to the policy that is being described, and that to my mind is good.
JO’M: Would you defend Roy Mason’s policy after the bringing down of the power-sharing executive by the Orange general strike — withdrawal of political status, a hard line "security policy" for the Catholic areas?
CS: I don’t think I’d defend the records of a number of previous Secretaries of State! It’s very easy to sit back and criticise when in fact what happened, I think, is that successive Labour governments and successive Labour Parties - it wasn't just the government, it was the Party as a whole — never really thought about Northern Ireland until it blew up in their face, and then the first thing we did was to try to hold everything together.
We tried to clamp down on violence. I remember the outrage at the time of the 1974 pub bombing. Now everybody is against the Prevention of Terrorism Act. My own view on that has always been the same. But at the time that Act was passed, there was an awful lot of support for it in the labour movement.
I thought we would never crush the violence until we had dealt with the political problems. But some people have forgotten what they were saying at the time.
JO’M: Can I put to you a view of what Mason did? You have a situation where the government balances between the Protestants and the Catholics. The Labour government capitulated to the Orange general strike in May 1974. I think it simply let its strategy (power-sharing and a Council of Ireland) be wiped out.
Then it swung in the opposite direction and, after he succeeded Merlyn Rees, Mason adopted a policy that was essentially one of beating down the Catholics. There is a lot of evidence of very widespread searches of thousands of Catholic homes. It amounted to terrorisation. It was basically a policy of holding the ring, doing nothing, sweating it out — immediately after buckling under the pressure of the Orange strike. That’s what happened.
CS: I understand that view. Can I say how I see it? I wasn’t involved in the politics of Ireland until I came into this House in 1979. I always felt there should be a united Ireland. Then when the civil rights movement came along in the late 1960s I got very excited. I thought there was a good chance of real political and economic progress by peaceful means.
I think the destruction of that civil rights movement was a crucial step. A lot of people have got a lot to answer for. The main people are the Stormont government, and then the paramilitaries on both sides of the divide over there.
Because, leaving aside the obvious things the Loyalists and the Stormont government did, the other thing that happened is that the IRA, as it then was, recognised that the initial popularity of the British troops could not be allowed to continue. So they started their policy of shooting at British forces. British forces totally unequipped to deal with that situation, backed by both Labour and Tory ministers, then began to crack down where they thought the threat really came from, which was the Catholic population. And then you get everything you have described — searches, people being arrested wrongly, etc., so that the Catholic population began to feel the full weight of the British presence, and.that is what alienated them.
I don’t blame them for being alienated in exactly the same way as the Prevention of Terrorism Act alienated them, because they all get lifted under it. We all know that. That’s how it came about.
It’s very difficult to reverse that process quickly. At the end of the day it is going to need to be reversed. But in the meantime we must just stick with the main objective of a united Ireland, because all of these things are symptoms of the problem. The problem is the Border.
JO’M: But why do you think the civil rights movement of the late ’60s turned into the armed offensive led by the IRA?
CS: I think the civil rights movement was a threat to the paramilitary groups on both sides. Certainly it was a massive threat to the Stormont government and the Loyalists generally. There is no doubt in my mind that a. whole lot of people who had a very fixed view of how they saw things developing, thinking they represented their particular group, set out to destroy the movement.
JO’M: The IRA scarcely existed in 1969.
CS: Well, it existed all right, and it existed enough to do the damage by turning on the British troops.
JO’M: The Provisionals emerged at the end of 1969 as part of a reaction against the fact that over the previous seven years there had been an evolution to-.
wards peaceful methods by the old IRA. They were involved in the civil rights agitation. They had no guns, or scarcely any, during the pogroms of 1969. The
IRA didn’t in fact...
CS: I’m quite prepared to accept that you know more about the IRA than I do. nI wasn’t deeply involved. But I put it to you that there was an effort to alienate the minority. community from the British presence there when the troops were first brought in. Is that not correct?
JO’M: I doubt it — not at first. I could, for example, tell you in detail about how the British army was allowed into Catholic Free Derry, and the protective barricades (erected in August 1969) voluntarily taken down, in October 1969. It was actually organised by the Republicans. Later the IRA split and things changed. But can I put the point in a different way? It seems to me that there was an absolutely necessary political logic in the development from civil rights to the IRA offensive, in that the basic civil right that the Catholics lacked was the right of self-determination.
CS: Right.
JO'M: The whole logic of the struggle for limited objectives led to a Protestant backlash, which in turn pushed the Catholics, in fear and terror, towards self-defence, and then boosted those who wanted to go on an armed offensive, after the IRA split.
That takes us back to what you said about waiting for a majority in the Northern state. The point is that it has been artificially carved out — very artificially. 35% of the population are opposed to the state’s existence. Over the past 15 years, in fact from before the violent phase, when it was a question of Britain putting pressure to reform on the old Orange state, the central problem has been that the state was deliberately designed to give a permanent Protestant majority. It was not reformable. You say you want a new beginning. Yet you are committed to remaining within the narrow limitations of a state which has a built-in Protestant sectarian majority.
CS: These are very important points, and I recognise the logic of what you have just said. I'd go along with quite a bit of it. I’d have reservations about some of it. What I would stress to you is that the key to this is having the political skill and determination to go through with the political, social, economic and institutional changes regardless of opposition from the Unionist groups.
I don’t mean rough-riding over them. I am saying that we would not accept that they had a veto — for example, on setting up an all-Ireland Economic Development Council, or an all-Ireland police force, and a whole host of other things of that nature.
If you do that, you are saying something you’ve never said before to the unionists: it’s not just that we want to get things better in Northern Ireland. We are saying to you that we don’t want you in the UK any more, we want you in a united Ireland. That is a very different message going out to the Unionists than has gone out before.
I don’t think you can assume that all unionists are hard-liners who will fight in the last ditch. Obviously there are lots of those. They keep making their presence felt. But there are also a lot of them saying things that would not have said even five years ago, let alone ten. "Well, we can’t go on as we are, can we?", for example. That's very significant.
JO’M: What do you think of the fact that the Unionists seem to be divided into only three political trends: those who want Northern Ireland independence, those who want something like the old system of Protestant rule, and those who want integration with Britain?
CS; I wouldn’t define them in that way. I’m looking for those who vote Unionist because there is nothing else for them to vote but who realise that things. can’t stay as they are, that there have got to be changes, and you have got to make concessions.
They are not going to be your party activists, by any stretch of the imagination. The vast bulk of those will be opposed to what I am saying — very opposed, regardless. The Northern Ireland Labour Party is just as opposed to me as the Democratic Unionists (Paisley) and the Official Unionists.
Margaret Thatcher’s unemployment has probably done more to make the sort of policies that I am talking about make sense to some of the people than almost anything else. Harland and. Woolf five years ago would have eaten grass rather than take orders from the South. Now they will consider taking orders from the South. You know what the workforce is at Harland and Wolff and what they represents.
I'm after the bulk of people who are not deeply involved in the political proess and who desperately want economic and political stability, and are prepared to move.
JH: In Britain recently there bas been a mobilisation of racist anti-lrish feeling. You can see it in the right wing of the Tory party saying that votes should be taken away from Irish citizens. And the outcry against Ken Livingstone inviting over representatives of Provisional Sinn Fein highlighted some of the anti-Irish feeling that exists. How will the next Labour government deal with anti-Irish feeling over here?
CS: The party in the House of Commons is very strongly opposed to any nonsense like taking the vote from Irish people, and is generally aware of the dangers of that sort of racist feeling.
But the danger to the sort of policy I’m outlining doesn’t come from the Parliamentary Labour Party, as some people think. It actually comes from the bulk of the labour movement. The further north you go in Britain, there are within the trade union movement very deep Protestant feelings.
I understand this. It is one of the problems I face, and I think the party doesn’t always face up to it generally — that the unionists are to some extent supported by attitudes within the labour movement here. That, frankly, is a bigger danger to my policy than just anti-Irish feeling generally. That will always be around while there are bombings and so on.
The fact is that we have imposed the problem on the Irish, and we ought to face up to our responsibility. I get quite a good response to that from MPs. It’s not necessarily so good in some sections of the labour movement.
JO’M: One view of what's happened since, say, the Labour government was returned in 1964, would be that pressure by that government on the Orange state for reforms simply exacerbated the situation and made it more explosive. You had the Orange backlash, the destruction of the old political system because of the incapacity of people like O'Neill, Chichester Clark, etc. to lead the masses of Protestants. Britain acted timidly all the way through. It simply stirred up the antagonism, and then, when it came to the crunch in 1974, backed away from the Protestant general strike. Desirable as some of the things in your policy might be, they are all skirting the problem, all avoid tackling it head-on — particularly, I would say, your commitment to a majority within the artificial Six Counties. It could be argued that you are merely going to exacerbate the situation instead of tackling it head on — by, for example, a decision to get out, a declaration of intent to get out, an energetic attempt to reach an agreement with the Republic about restructuring, and British payment of all sorts of indemnities or whatever you want to call them.
CS: It’s surprising you should say that. The picture you describe is not different from what I’ve been saying except that you are saying in some way you do it without consent.
JO’M: No.
CS: My question back to you is, what happens in a new Irish state if the unionists fight?
JO'M: I think you could not coerce the Unionists. Quite certainly you would have to have a federal Ireland and give them rights over their own affairs. The thing is that a British Labour government could create the political conditions for change by a declaration of intent to withdraw; by really energetic determination to change the whole structure and framework to make some form of a united Ireland realistic politics for the Protestants — give them options where they would have an incentive to accept change.
CS: I haven't ruled out any of that.
JO’M: But if you start by accepting the majority’s rights within the artificial entity, then you are in fact saying to them: “We'll always let you veto us”.
CS: No, I’m not saying that at all. All I’m saying, very clearly, is that what we'll do is first have talks with the Dublin government — whatever government it happens to be — to set up new economic and social institutions, and we do not allow them to veto that.
I’ve already indicated that, obviously, governments can get pressurised and deflected if the pressure is strong enough. That’s where the political skill comes in.
There would be a major effort not to allow any group or any individual to veto those things that were agreed by London and Dublin. In effect what I’m saying is: Yes, we are giving a strong commitment to get out. We are not setting a
date. I think, as I’ve said, a commitment to getting out is not a policy for a united Ireland — it might be that the real policy is to have a commitment to a united Ireland, and that’s what I’m saying. You yourself say we can’t do it by coercion. Therefore we have got to do it by consent. But you don’t allow them to veto the political progress.
JO’M: How would a new Labour government treat the Catholics?
CS: Better!
JO’M: For example, it was a Tory government which granted political status as part of an attempt to find a new solution after Bloody Sunday (when 13 unarmed men were shot dead in Derry, on January 30 1972). A Labour government .
took it away. You still seem to be committed to a policy that would involve a continual harassment of a big section of the Catholic population.
CS: I would hope things like the Prevention of Terrorism Act can go, and that
we would have a major review of the Emergency Provisions Act. I would want
to have a whole look at human rights issues there, like the delay in getting death certificates and coroners’ reports on children killed by plastic bullets, and all sorts of other things like that.
That won’t come about quickly. The Catholics, for very understandable reasons, don’t trust the security forces, and it’s very difficult to change that quickly. I mean, I'd like to change it tomorrow morning.
We'll make the forces be seen and felt to be totally impartial. I haven’t got a magic wand that would do that. I have got a number of things in my mind, including an all-Ireland police force, that would help do that. But not overnight, I fear.
JH: What do you feel about restoring political status to Republican prisoners?
CS: I would not give political status. I’ve always been very opposed to political status, not least because as an ex probation officer I very strongly take the view that if you decide to lock people up for whatever reason then you should treat them equally, except on the grounds of security (i.e. a burglar doesn’t get the same sort of security as a mass murderer).
I think it is wrong in principle. The only justification for it would be under the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, in which case you have got to have two states that have, declared war on each other, both sides wearing recognisable uniforms.
One of the most dangerous things about political status for nationalists is that you also give it to Loyalists. If you do that, and you then have a united Ireland, you hand over a large number of Loyalist prisoners of war to the new state, which is the surest way I know of saying to the Loyalist people — you have a legitimate fight, you are entitled to prisoner of war status too, you have got it, and make sure you keep it.
I know that the unionists will be prepared to fight and kill and die themselves for their cause, as are the nationalists at present.
JO’M: But you accept that the Catholics have been oppressed terribly for 60 years at least. On what definition are the IRA straightforward criminals?
CS: They’re not. Of course they’re political, I'm not disputing that for a moment. But if we lock them up, that doesn’t mean they should be treated differently.
You are saying that an ordinary criminal should be treated worse. As a penal reformer I reject that strongly. There is no reason why a so-called common criminal — personally I find the phrase very offensive — should be treated worse than you who committed your act for political reasons.
Secondly, what’s political? If you are a young Black in this country, you feel the police don’t defend you, and you take out a brick in your pocket to defend yourself — is that political or not? I would argue it is political.
JO’M: So would I.
CS: Someone who goes shoplifting and says, ‘I don’t like the present structure of society in capitalism’, is political.
JO’M: You're mixing up two questions, though. I'd be in favour of penal reform, and of recognising the political dimension in the case of the young Black or the unemployed person shoplifting. But there is a qualitative difference between the political element in these things and the political army of an admittedly oppressed community, with grievances which — you admit — pose a united
Ireland as the only solution, even if you disagree with their methods.
CS: That’s not a reason for treating them differently. And certainly no reason for treating them better — which is the request.
JO'M: They are soldiers.
CS: If they are soldiers, then prisoner-of-war status comes from a very specific agreement. It is the Geneva agreement, which covers two states at war, and wearing a uniform when you are in combat. It’s a dangerous policy because at the end of the day you'll wind up with a Loyalist prisoner-of-war camp in a united Ireland. If you want that, OK. But it’s dangerous.
JO’M: The Geneva convention in its details is a product of established governments. We are talking about an oppressed people and their guerrilla army, which does not wear a uniform because it is outnumbered and so on. But they are soldiers.
CS: By that definition, anyone who is fighting the British state as such, including the Tartan Army in Scotland and the Welsh arsonists and the Angry Brigade, are soldiers. We give them political status, do we? What sort of status would you give them, and why treat them better?
JO'M: I think you are using the whole business about penal reform to obscure the qualitative difference. For example, the Catholics in 1969 did not have guns. The IRA offensive grew out of the civil rights movement in reaction to the Protestant backlash and the pogroms. Your picture about how the armed conflict developed is somewhat askew, because one of the earliest events was the British curfew in the Falls just after the Heath government was elected, in July 1970 — before the IRA offensive got under way. The whole chronology of how it developed shows that the IRA began as the defensive militia of the Catholic community.
CS: I think that people who pursue this line are, not intentionally, betraying socialist values. There is no reason to argue that people who are less articulate — the vast majority in your prisons are working-class people — don’t in fact have political motives for what they do. Some of them act as organised groups like the Provisionals do. Obviously there is a qualitative difference. But that does not justify unequal treatment. If you want specific prisoner of war status, then two things follow: one, you must accept prisoner of war rules and regulations, under the Geneva Convention; two, to my mind more importantly, you must give PoW status to Loyalists too. You must take on board that you will hand over to a united Ireland political prisoners of war, and you are virtually saying to the rest of the unionist population that this legitimises their fight against the new Irish state.
JO’M: Isn't that the distant, or mid-distant, future?
CS: I don’t think so. I’m working as fast as possible on this programme. Al though I’m not setting dates, I’m not writing it off as some distant future aim.
JO’M: You are using the ‘unionist PoWs’ argument and the political element in ordinary so-called criminal activity to obscure the actual problem, that the Provisional IRA is an army of an oppressed people.
CS: I've been working for good treatment in prisons for donkey’s years — but I want it for everyone, not just one group.
JO’M: So you're in favour of a blanket reform in prisons?
CS: Yes. One of my positions from early on in the hunger and dirty protests was that if we had made such reforms, we would have had no problem — the five demands would have been met.
JO’M: So your policy in Northern Ireland will be to bring in a complete prison reform to include all sorts of rights for political and other prisoners?
CS: In fact Northern Ireland prisons are better than the ones here, which are appalling. If we could do more to liberalise prisons, I’d be very happy.
JO’M: You will in effect grant political status to all "ordinary criminals" in Northern Ireland?
CS: No. You are twisting my words. I’m saying I want good conditions for prisoners, and I’m not prepared to distinguish as to why a person committed an offence or not.
JO’M: You are evading the actual point.
CS: I don’t think so, but we'll have to leave it there.
JH: Thank you very much.
Comment after the interview by Hammond and O'Mahony
Clive Soley, deputy Labour spokesperson on Northern Ireland, has been an outspoken advocate of the view that a united Ireland is the only real solution to the war in Ireland. This is now official Labour policy.
Soley’s chief, Labour’s Secretary-of-State-for Northern-Ireland-in-waiting, is Don Concannon: Concannon who, like the man in the Christian myth who offered the ailing and parched Jews a drink of vinegar, visited dying hunger striker Bobby Sands to tell him that the British Labour Party was supporting Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to make concessions to the IRA prisoners; Concannon who helped organise a wild mob of chauvinists, racists and reactionaries in Mansfield to counter a peaceful Troops Out demonstration in his constituency during the hunger strike; Concannon, who was Roy Mason’s deputy in Northern Ireland during the last Labour government, when the policy was one of heavy repression of the Catholic community.
Concannon would not carry much conviction as advocate of the united Ireland policy of Labour conference. So there is a division of labour — with Soley acting as spokesperson for the Labour Party on Northern Ireland, while Concannon preserves himself to do business as before if Labour wins the next election.
After all, talk about a united Ireland is not all that new. Back in 1971 Labour leader Harold Wilson put forward a 15-year plan for movement to a united Ireland. Even Tory prime minister Edward Heath was reliably reported (by the Irish Times) to have told 26 Counties prime minister Jack Lynch in late 1970 that if a sufficient number of Northern Ireland people wanted a united Ireland, Britain would do everything it could to help the process along.
And of course it was the British state in the mid ’60s which triggered the (mainly) Catholic civil rights movement and, indirectly, the Orange backlash which followed, destabilising the Six County state, destroying the 50 year old Protestant government in Belfast, and leading to British direct rule. All ‘initiatives’, professed good intentions, attempts to reform the Six County state or, in collaboration with 26 County governments, to restructure the Trish state system (by the Council of Ireland of the mid-’70s) have foundered on rocky Protestant unmoveability. Commitment — even if only "for now" — to maintain the partition of Ireland and to seek solutions within the artificial Six County entity has left only one option open to British governments, Labour or
Tory, once the attempts at reform had been smashed or neutralised by the opposition of the Protestant community and its built-in majority — to beat down the Catholics and try to defeat their drive to break the Six County framework. Commitment to the Six Counties, and options within it, and all that inexorably flowed from that commitment, turned the Labour government in the mid-1970s into a government of jailers of the Catholics. It gave the army — which was reluctant, if it did not refuse outright, to act against the Protestant general strike — its head in conducting mass terror against the Catholics. House-wrecking was one of the mildest techniques. Under Rees and Mason, in the three years after the Orange general-strike brought down the power-sharing executive in May 1974, about 70,000 Catholic homes were raided by the Army. There are 400,000 households in the whole of the Six Counties. The Labour government also did dirty deals in the House of Commons with the Orange Unionist bigots there. Michael Foot was the wheeler-dealer and go-between.
All in all, the last Labour government had a worse record on its treatment of the Catholics than Heath’s Tory government, even counting Bloody Sunday .
(when 13 unarmed Catholics were shot down in Derry on January 30 1972). By removing political status, it set in motion the H-Block protest movement which culminated in the tragedy of ten dead hunger-strikers, presided over by Mrs Thatcher.
There is no reason why we should trust the Labour Party establishment one inch where Ireland is concerned.
Nevertheless Soley said some important things when we interviewed him. He talked of a “clear commitment to a united Ireland" (by consent). "Consent", he said, "must not mean a veto on political progress. We would legislate in a way that would lead people to the conclusion that a united Ireland was in their best interests".
Labour’s policy would mean: ".. saying. something you've never said before to the Unionists: it’s not just that we want to get things better in Northern Ireland. We are saying to you that we don’t want you in the UK any more, we want you in a united Ireland. That is a very different message going out to the Unionists than has gone out before".
“What we’ll do is first have talks with the Dublin government... to set up new economic and social institutions, and we do not allow the Protestants to veto that".
"In effect what I’m saying is: Yes, we are giving a strong commitment to get out. We are not setting a date".
To the question, on what definition are the IRA straightforward criminals, he said: "They’re not. Of course they’re political. I’m not disputing that for a moment". (“But if we lock them up", he added, “that doesn’t mean they should be treated differently...").
On talks with Sinn Fein, he said: "People who have not broken the law are people who, at the end of the day, you can’t refuse to talk to".
"What I’m after is the vast majority of the people prepared to enter into a united Ireland’’. “I don’t blame [the N.I. Catholics] for being alienated... it’s very difficult to reverse that... quickly... but in the meantime we must stick with the main objective of a united Ireland because all of these things are symptoms of the problem. The problem is the Border".
While counterposing a united Ireland to immediate self-determination ("Troops Out"), Soley concedes almost the whole moral and political case for it. But, he says, a certain economic and political framework must be created first. He pledges Labour to create it.
Though he refuses to accept it, he concedes the entire case for political status — "of course they’re political". He needs to find other grounds for refusing to face the logical conclusion: spurious and far-fetched grounds, we suggest.
These points would be a great step forward if they’ came to be accepted in the broad labour movement: those who accepted them would not be likely to take refuge, as Soley does, in evasions.
One might question the realism of this or that aspect of Soley’s belief that the framework to usher the Protestants towards a united Ireland can be legislated piecemeal. No socialist can have any confidence in a policy to be supervised by the wretched Concannon. But if we assume both the practicality and the sincerity of the approach, and a will to carry out the policy Soley advocates, it is still a certainty that it would fail.
Soley says in effect that a Labour government would have to scrap its plans if Orange opposition became powerful enough. But opposition will be extremely powerful. Ian Paisley’s claim that he has now become "the leader of the Protestant people" is a long way from being just bombast.
Soley stakes everything on "political skill" to avoid a confrontation. That is to rely on "political skill" to square the circle.
And if the skill fails to work miracles? The policy will have to be scrapped.
Given also Labour’s commitment to wait on a majority within the Six Counties, which has a built-in majority hostile to any moves towards a united Ireland, what we have from Soley is not so much a serious commitment to a united Ireland, as a commitment in advance to surrender to those who are fanatically opposed to it.
Soley commits himself in advance to bow before the Protestants if he cannot outmanoeuvre them. Like Martin Luther he says: "Here I stand". But he is careful to add: "I can’t be sure I won’t have to move".
With a policy like that, the one thing you can be sure of is that you probably will move. And the pressure will not come only from the Protestant community. It will come from sections of the British state apparatus — the sort of people whose reluctance to stand up to the Orange strike in 1974 was a factor in Harold Wilson’s decision to surrender to it.
A policy based on commitment to, and relying mainly on, full-scale coercion of the Protestants into a united Ireland would be neither sensible nor practical: and it would not lead to a united Ireland. Commitment to stand up to the Orange bigots is not the same thing, and it is essential.
Soley is a big step forward for an official Labour spokesperson on Northern Ireland. Some of the things he says are important even should they prove no more than passing comments — they can help change the climate in the labour movement.
It’s plain, however, that we cannot rely on the official Labour Party. That’s why it’s important that we break away from the paralysis on Ireland that has gripped the Left in the last decade. We must build a powerful mass labour movement campaign in support of the Catholics of Northern Ireland, and for a united Ireland with as much autonomy for the Northern Ireland Protestant community within it as is compatible with the democratic rights of the Irish people.
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