By John Pilger
The American liberal journal Nation described the renewed IRA bombing campaign as "an indefensible military response to the corruption and recklessness of a politician who was willing to torpedo peace to keep his job".
Similarly, the Washington Post described John Major as the "saboteur" of the peace negotiations. These are not pro-Republican voices, and they reflect a body of opinion in the US and Europe that understands why the bombers have returned. Theirs is a view routinely suppressed in this country behind ritual denunciations of violence and a media/parliamentary consensus that protects the status quo.
None of this is surprising, given the level of political corruption in the Tory hierarchy and, more importantly, the collusion of the Labour Party. "Bipartisanship' on Ireland has always been an article of faith, and for many years was almost as effective a gag as the 1922 speaker's ruling that contentious Northern Ireland matters could not be raised at all in the House of Commons.
But during the 1980s there was a significant change in Labour's policy that made it perceptibly different from that of the Tories. This was the Labour leadership's acceptance of the principle of a united Ireland by consent of all its people, with the British government acting as "persuader" of the Unionists.
Labour committed itself to this at the party conference in 1981, following the fall of the minority Callaghan government largely on the question of Unionist support. The party's 1983 election manifesto made clear that the Unionists must never again have "a veto on political development". Five years later, Labour's newly appointed spokesman on Northern Ireland, Kevin McNamara, reaffirmed the change in policy.
What then happened to McNamara tells us a great deal about new Labour. Elected in 1966, McNamara was considered a loyal right-winger. However, he was close to the SDLP [Social Democratic and Labour Party] and he strongly opposed the Unionist veto. In 1993, he published a paper that suggested Northern Ireland become an independent country under joint British-Irish sovereignty for 2O years.
McNamara was clearly a threat to the status quo — which was the message of a whispering campaign among Labour's hierarchy and right-wing commentators. "He embarrasses Labour", wrote Edward Pearce in the Guardian. "[He] is not just far too Green, he is more ambitious for the Republic of Ireland than the government of that republic ..."
When Blair became leader in October 1994, one of his first moves was to replace McNamara and bring Labour's Irish policy strictly into line with the government's. McNamara responded by sending an extraordinary memorandum to Blair with this warning: "It is vital at this extremely sensitive time that we are not seen to alter a policy stance which has been constant since 1981. Our position affects the context in which all the parties in Ireland operate and any shift at this time could be deeply destabilising. Secondly, our policy position is one which will encourage Unionists to negotiate the best possible deal for themselves in the next two to three years. If we shifted policy, Unionists might be encouraged to hold out against any pressure from the Conservatives to compromise — in the belief that we will prove a soft touch."
The distinction between the government's policy and Labour's, said McNamara, "is that we have been the persuaders for Irish unity ... and all-Irish cooperation". Blair's response was to give what amounted to unquestioning support to the Unionist veto — regardless of the fact that, unlike the Tories, Labour had no strategic reason to do so.
Last September, Blair gave a long interview to the Irish Times in Dublin in which he pledged full support for the British government on "decommissioning" IRA arms, a transparently stonewalling issue that was not part of the Downing Street Declaration or of the Framework Document.
In an illuminating admission for an opposition leader, Blair said that it was not Labour's role to be "on the back of the government sort of pushing them forward, prodding them and all the rest of it". On the contrary, he said, "I believe the most sensible role for us is to be the facilitators, not persuaders in this, not trying to pressure or push people towards a particular objective".
In the Irish Times interview and elsewhere, Blair displays a telling ignorance of Irish history. Indeed, his remarks about not wanting to impose "a settlement through coercion, or from outside", are quite amazing when set against the historical fact of an inherently undemocratic state imposed by coercion from outside in 1922, and the Unionist veto legitimised in the Ireland Act of1949.
Following the Irish Times piece, McNamara resigned as the party's civil service spokesman in protest against Blair "slavishly' following government policy. The danger, said McNamara, was that the Unionists might now hold out for a Labour government knowing that they would be "a softer touch".
He may well be right. When Major dismissed the Mitchell Report and went for the ploy of elections in the North, his allies were those on the Labour front bench. Had Labour argued for all-party talks, a minimal sign of progress, there might still be a cease-fire. The Irish Post described this opposition silence as "a disgraceful performance".
Jack Straw's announcement that Labour will no longer oppose the Prevention of Terrorism Act — which has failed to stop terrorism, but has criminalised much of the law-abiding Irish community in Britain — is entirely consistent with his, and the leadership's, endeavours to out-Tory the Tories, once again leaving little doubt that Labour is now a second Conservative Party in all but name.
New Labour has promoted itself on its "modernity", its break from the party's past. On Ireland, it has merely added to a record that has often been colonial and oppressive: from support for Home Rule in 1913, and the Ireland Act of 1949, to the sending of troops by Labour home secretary Callaghan in 1969, to the Prevention of Terrorism Act introduced by the "libertarian" Labour home secretary, Roy Jenkins, to the draconian rule of Northern Ireland secretary Roy Mason, who extended the role of the SAS and spoke of squeezing people "like a tube of toothpaste", to the torture practised under the Callaghan government and covered up until the Bennett Report in 1979.
The change of policy that Kevin McNamara and many others supported was modest, but it was a true reform, a genuine break from the past. Blair's return to the old ways is irresponsible and likely to contribute to further bloodshed.
[This article was first published in the March 1 New Statesman & Society.]