The walls of Belfast

At a recent meeting in London, to discuss the Hungarian uprising of 1956, I found myself sitting next to the jovial MP for Daventry, Tim Boswell, chairman of the all party Anglo-Hungarian parliamentary group. We spoke briefly before the meeting and again afterwards. The 1956 uprising has always held a particular interest for me since the day my father brought me, as a small boy, to see the military camp in Co. Clare where Hungarian refugees were housed. I mentioned this, in conversation, after the meeting and there was some surprise to hear the Irish state had shown such generosity towards the Hungarians. It is regarded as axiomatic that Britain should adopt a paternalistic interest in foreign conflicts, while taking a more partisan line in problems closer to home. My English companions struggled to comprehend what foreign policy interest Ireland could have in distant central European conflicts. They were less than delighted when I explained it was natural for Ireland, itself recovering from centuries of oppression, to welcome the rebels who fought Soviet tanks with their bare hands. Boswell took it well and launched into a familiar recital of English weariness at the intractability of “Irish politics”. I posed a question which often confuses English interlocutors, “you mean English politics in Ireland, don’t you?”
I have often heard it said in England that Irish politics are rigid and inflexible but when I ask whether the speaker is referring to Fianna Fail or Fine Gael they are often genuinely confused. Most have never heard of these organisations and few have any idea what they stand for. When English commentators, even well informed people like the MP for Daventry, talk about Irish politics they are referring to the age-old divisions within Northern Ireland. When I point out that they are complaining about the politics of the part of Ireland that Britain still controls they show signs of irritation at being confronted with an inconvenient truth. The fact is that politics in the republic look much the same as any other European democracy, a volatile mixture of self-interest, principle and skulduggery. It is striking to consider that nearly a century after the division of Ireland the southern republic has moved on, converted its poisoned inheritance into something positive and made a success of itself while the north, still tied into the United Kingdom, is an economic and political failure, mired in ancient feuds and divisions. Seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin wall and the final liberation of Hungary, the authorities in Belfast consider it necessary to maintain high “peace walls” to keep the warring communities from tearing each other apart.
Is it fair to characterise the failure of Northern Ireland as due to some inflexibility in “Irish” politics? I think not. Northern Irish politics perhaps but Irish, no. There are deep-seated structural problems within Northern Ireland and the constitutional link with Britain is at the heart of all of them. It is the British controlled part of Ireland which has failed and the rigidity, which so many British commentators complain of, is a symptom of that failure. It is a failure of British politics, made in Britain by Britons. Britain must dig deep into its reserves of patience, time and treasure to solve it or at least manage it in a civilised fashion, and stop complaining about “Irish” politics.