Beatrix Campbell
London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2008, p/b, £14.99
‘The rule of law is the cornerstone of democracy,’ a High Court judge said in February in relation to the case of alleged torture of a British resident held in Guantamo Bay. This book is solely about Northern Ireland’s recent history and it shows how that picture we have been given of it over the years has purposely been made more complex than the reality deserves and the above statement should be held in mind whenever reading this book.
It is quite fair to say that everything I read or see about developments in Northern Ireland has been given a new perspective. It is one that shows conclusively that the British government colluded with the murder of lawyers sympathetic to the republican cause in that province. Their names may be familiar: Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson.
The question revealed for us all is, how far has the cornerstone of our democracy crumbled?
In a work of impeccable scholarship, a heavy but rewarding read, Beatrix Campbell has described not only the socio-political geography of the total entity, but also the movement of the unseen tectonic plates beneath the surface and the effects they have created. From the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960s, she brings the picture up to early 2007. For example, she shows why there has been recent stalemate over the RUC. This armed police force was pivotal in much of the action and most of the floating intelligence in the past. Could the same people provide an equitable police force for all the people of Northern Ireland?
To mix metaphors somewhat, the description she gives is like that of a vast iceberg, with much of the visible one tenth previously shrouded in the fog of war, a manufactured fog which distorted and confused the light falling on the small area of surface ice rising above. Over the years this has been characterised by various inconclusive official reports, reports on reports, investigations into reports, and of course, occasional reports into those investigations. The truth has typically remained concealed.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along the South African lines, has been rejected for the Northern Ireland case. Reading, not only between the lines, one can see why. The action of the agencies concerned, from politicians, intelligence, via the armed forces and local police, through religious/politico social groupings, to front line street fighters, would be revealed for what is, or was, in those times. And the paths of collusion would lead unfailingly to Westminster. Put more bluntly, the English protestant establishment regarded the Catholic republicans as the enemy. An undeclared enemy in an undeclared war. But one that was fought and in which many were killed for political reasons.
While, no doubt, many versions of this history will subsequently appear, so far as I can judge, the author recounts a complete story within the picture she gives. Of course, much of the essential story may remain perpetually hidden, and readers of Lobster may know more of some aspects than is revealed in this book’s 279 pages. What I found most compelling was the growing complicity of various British governments and their semiautonomous agencies in creating and maintaining the murderous mayhem that has been the Northern Ireland story for most of my life.
I used to think Northern Ireland typified the last wet fart of British imperialism. Genetically-based grandees ruled from Stormont, with supporting institutions organised in their hierarchical ranks around them. But the bases of these institutions were engaged in tribal conflicts, ‘the troubles’, with republican opponents who subscribed to different belief systems. I was wrong. This book does confirm the nature of the opposing forces, but it shows Northern Ireland more as the hard constipation, the last remaining refuge of the autocratic attitudes of the British (English) Empire. It has been firmly lodged, and is only now finding a possible way out. And this arose from a paradoxical source.
The British government’s strategy backfired in a most interesting way. By sending murderous front-liners to prison for long periods, the authorities provided two things which had previously been missing from their lives. One was the capacity to become educated in the larger questions of the world. The other was sufficient time to think. This led to the politicising of many individuals who had only known lives of violence. To a large degree, it is the meeting of these minds, coming as they did from totally opposing cultures, which created the fertile, positive, ground for the agreement we now see unfolding.
Everyone concerned with the politics of the British establishment should own, read, and keep this book.