I wish to deal briefly with the principal question before the House in this debate—the relationship between Irish men and women south of the Border and our fellow Irish men and women in Northern Ireland and our mutual relationship with Britain.
One might feel that one should flounder in a welter of despair because we as a people have not been able to bring about national unity. This has been the historic failure of Irish people. The assistance we have received from Britain, British politicians and successive British administrations down through the decades, has not succeeded in breaking that deadlock. So many criticisms have been expressed over the past 12 months of the Labour Party attitude and so frequently have we been pilloried for a variety of attitudes, for example, the cheap sneer of Deputy Colley who accuses us of being anti-national, whatever that might mean, that it is necessary to restate the fundamental political objectives of this, the oldest political party in this country, a political party which has made an historic contribution to the emergence of parliamentary democracy in this country and a party which prides itself on having had a relationship with political parties in Northern Ireland over the decades.
National unity, the unity of all the people of this country in one parliament one day with one common set of laws, with a common sense of national identity and purpose—this is the basic objective of the Labour Party. Our aim, therefore, is not merely to have territorial unity or, indeed, a unity of our people north and south, much as we see that as the first objective. We also want to have a particular kind of society. It has been said that we want a socialist kind of society. This, I think, would be partly true It has been said that we want a republican kind of society. This would be equally partly true. However, 200 men and women have died in the North. They killed each other, were killed by British troops or were what the Provisionals call "accidents of war". When we look at that list we feel that an all-Ireland socialist republic, which is our objective, is something that is very much in the distant future. We must state it because it is a fundamental objective of the Labour Party. I have always held this view ever since my father told me anything about politics. My father was a founder member of Fianna Fáil. For many years he was a member of that party. He resigned when he became a national executive member of the union of which I am a member, the Transport Union, and when he found that party drifting away from what he regarded as the ordinary people.
My father always impressed on me that the distinguishing feature between the Labour Party and Fianna Fáil, in particular, was that the Government party obsessively regarded itself as the party which would bring about territorial unity while we in the Labour Party go very much further than that; we aim at uniting the Irish people, first of all, with a set of complementary aims and objectives, North and South, not merely by removing the ditches along the Border or by filling in the craters on the roads and then taking away the customs posts and then saying that we have achieved national unity. This is and always has been the concept of national unity of Fianna Fáil. It is a very limited circumscribed concept.
The Labour Party has always been distinguished from other forces of political evolution in the country and in many respects from other parties in the House in that we regard ourselves as a democratic party, not only socialist but socialist democratic, totally committed, I would stress, to democratic means. It is rather important to stress this in Dáil Éireann. As a political party we reject and repudiate and will oppose by every means in our power any attempt at usurping by violence the democratic parliamentary processes of this State which are based on the authority of the Irish people. As a political party we certainly will not have any hand, act or part in any proposals which would be classified as slightly constitutional, in the historic Fianna Fáil sense, or in the quasiviolent approach of, for example, many sections of the IRA. In simple terms, we, as a political party, do not propose to have at our backs a small private army or a large one for that matter. We stand by the authority of the Irish people. Whether we increase or decrease our electoral support by virtue of standing by that fundamental principle of society, we will accept the decision of the Irish people.
We have one other distinguishing feature as a political party, in sharing the objectives of all Irish people that this island should be one nation and, as is being repeatedly pointed out by the Leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Corish, should be one State, to use a phrase—the correct phrase— used. But we say that political adherence to that objective of national unity does not, and never will, give any Irishman, North or South, in Cork, Kerry, the midlands, on the Border or over the Border, licence to assassinate in cold blood a fellow Irishman who does not accept or support the national objective of national unity.
This is repetitive but there are so many apologists for violence in our State, there is such superficiality in a great deal of thinking in Ireland in relation to violence, that it is necessary to state this. Of course, those who are furthest removed from the violence are the most superficial. There is a great deal of pub analysis, a great deal of dinner party analysis, a great deal of superficial political analysis by people engaged and involved in politics of the question of violence.
In the name of a common loyalty and having a sense of Christian respect for fellow Irishmen, we condemn the use of violence one to another in convincing one another of the need for national unity. It is in that setting that we condemn and repudiate and detest those who organised and perpetrated the political murder of Senator John Barnhill. We say that in the Republic. Some people would ask, on the one hand, you condemn the murder of Senator Barnhill but what about the young boy who was shot, do you condemn that shooting also? That would be to fall into the trap of comparing life with life. That is not the issue. The life of every single Irishman is sacred. I am shocked, appalled and dismayed at the number of Irish men and women who profess to be Christians who glibly say, "It is war. It is violence. Men lose their lives. You cannot be terribly discriminating". I do not want to engage in a slot machine type of reciprocal condemnation. I would be prepared to condemn the killing of any person whether that person is an innocent child in a pram outside a furniture store, or a youth playing on a football pitch, or a Senator at the end of his days. I am appalled at the callousness; I am shocked by it I have met it in the streets of Dublin People say, "He was an old man". As a Christian, what reply can one make to that?
My father was a Member of the Seanad for four years. Are we now to have Mr. Cathal Goulding or Mr. Mac Stiofáin putting him on their reprisal list? My father is only 76 years of age. I would imagine that he is expendable in their concept of political extermination. My father fought for the freedom of this country and is very proud of the fact. If he were to disagree with their concept of the political future of the country, I would rather imagine his age would not be any barrier.
There is a callous mentality displayed in the casual acceptance of violence. I suppose one does become hardened, just as the American soldier 30,000 feet up who presses a button and destroys two or three square miles on which human being live in Vietnam becomes inevitably hardened. Violence becomes the norm.
Many people have asked why we are talking about the murder of British troops. They have been murdered. They ask: "Why are you always talking about the murder of Unionists? Why do you condemn that and you do not condemn or kick up a holy hell about Catholics shot by British troops?" I do not think that kind of selectivity of death condemnation gets us anywhere. The fact is that those people are all dead, tragically, and they cannot make any contribution towards the unity of this country by their deaths. This is total human waste of potential, of families, of children, of human lives, in the pursuit of a national objective which by their deaths recedes further and further on the horizon.
In the Labour Party we predicted this would happen. It is cold and bitter consolation to the Irish Labour Party that we did so, that we predicted a drift towards sectarian civil war. We get no thanks for it. We have been accused, in predicting this, of adopting a weak attitude. We have been accused of being anti-national. We have had the sneers of Deputy Colley from his eminence of power hoping to hop into the seat of the Taoiseach. He tried to couple the names of Deputy Cruise-O'Brien and Deputy FitzGerald in Dublin South East. He was of course, playing politics.
We have rejected the policy of the gun and the bomb, the policy of assassination. We have denounced that approach to political action. Our attitude towards the British Army is well known. One would want to be a peculiar Irishman not to deplore and not to condemn their appalling tactics as well as the tactics of some Unionists, some like John Taylor who, I hate to say, is one of the most hated men in the Republic and, I am sorry to say, probably one of the most popular men in Northern Ireland.
This is the great divide, the great problem facing the country. Because we have tried to influence the political area within our sphere of influence, and that is the Republic—we do not own the British Army or issue orders to the Orange groups or to the RUC and we do not run the British Government—we have been condemned. We, the Irish Labour Party, have had our influence felt within the British Labour Party. There have been most unfair, stupid accusations which prejudiced people usually make. Accusations like these are the favourite trap which most people with prejudiced opinions fall into.
The Taoiseach, Deputies Hillery and Colley are still rather ambivalent in practice, yet still rather selective in many of their actions and condemnations of violence. There have been many manifestations of this. There has been the selective condemnations of the IRA. There has been very careful selectivity in the condemnation of British policy. One gets the impression that the Fianna Fáil attitude is one of hoping to God that things will blow over and that they will get on with the game of power—it is a question of power—and that on that basis the best thing to do is to have a foot in all camps.
I am particularly proud to say that the general attitude of the Labour Party has been one of consistency, of seeking a voluntary reunion of our people. We make no apology to anybody for that—for making appeals to sectarian elements for an end to violence. We hope this will have effect in a great many instances. As a political party we have tried to bring pressures on labour trade union opinion in Britain with which we have direct contact and where we can have direct influence. Of course, we do not have the slightest influence on the Tories in Britain any more than does the Taoiseach. He did not exert influence in his successive meetings with Mr. Ted Health. He was notably unsuccessful at the Chequers conference. We have tried to bring home to the British Labour Party and to the trade union movement there that only the British Government can remedy the situation in Northern Ireland and that there is a grave responsibility on the British Government to start the process of finding a way in which the two communities there can live together in peace.
We know that many people will place obstacles in the way of action by the British Government—there are many people, north and south, who will try deliberately to sabotage efforts to end the problems of Northern Ireland. The Provisionals do not want a political solution. They want a civil war in Northern Ireland and the quicker and the bloodier the better. They believe that out of that civil war will come peace on their terms and on their terms alone. If that goes askew they do not at all object to transferring the civil war to the Republic. They would not be unsympathetic to that approach.
Therefore, there is no doubt whatever that while the responsibility lies on the British Government to break the deadlock in Northern Ireland the Provisionals will try to scuttle it. The Officials equally will try to scuttle it. They would try to scuttle any general approach by the British Government. The Fianna Fáil Party will always try to be careful about being in on the act if they can get political kudos out of it. In the process, if they are not careful, they, too, could scuttle the general concept. We are not in a happy situation. The extreme Orange bigots in Northern Ireland and many members of Mr. Faulkner's Cabinet, notably Mr. John Taylor, would valiantly attempt to destroy any effort by the British Government to bring about a political solution.
The British Government, particularly a Tory Government—knowing the total insensitivity, incompetence and the chequered record of previous British Governments on matters of this kind and their total failure to grasp the real issues involved—are in great danger of continuing to underestimate the problem grossly. The Provisionals do not want a settlement. The more internment we have in Northern Ireland the happier they are and the more prospects of internment there are in the Republic the happier are the Provisionals. The British Government may propose half-measures which will not result in any solution or they may propose solutions which of themselves will be unproductive. The most counter-productive solution to date has been the cratering of the Border roads. This was a provocative and stupid measure. It was designed largely for confrontation purposes and that has rightly been rejected by every responsible public representative, North and South.
The principal efforts of the Members of this House must be directed towards directing the British Government into a realisation of the problems of Northern Ireland and how radical they will have to be to find a solution. We have not been very successful to date. I do not believe that the Taoiseach has succeeded in conveying to the British Government the basic essentials of the problem. The Taoiseach has returned each time with the word "unity" driven into his mind, and any little straw in the wind or any Press statement which contains the words "national unity", which might bring comfort to the Fianna Fáil grassroots, is seized upon as a glorious development. The Fianna Fáil Party practically clasped Dr. Ian Paisley to their bosom. Deputy Colley nearly discovered the republicanism of Ian Paisley while Dr. Paisley went to the nearest newspaper office with a press statement "conning" the synthetic Republicans down here with his version of a new Constitution. Paisley is a very adroit politician in terms of timing. He had a good master in that regard in Brian Faulkner who totally upstaged the Taoiseach at Chequers when he almost put him into total oblivion.
We should not underestimate the capacity of Mr. Faulkner to upstage the Taoiseach. The function of all parties in Dáil Éireann is to convince the British Government to take the correct radical initiatives in relation to Stormont and in relation to the security situation in the North. We have failed to do this so far. We have indulged in long-range rhetoric, such as Deputy Dr. Hillery discovering the semantic meaning of the word "lunacy" and putting his own interpretations on British policy and then clapping himself on the back wondering how brave he was to say a few naughty things to the British Cabinet. This is the kind of impact which we make on British opinion. It is neither productive nor conducive to a solution.
The first essential of any solution in the North must be that it reassures both communities in Northern Ireland about their basic rights and gives them a real sense of sharing in the making of decisions in Northern Ireland. This essential has not been accepted yet by the British Government. It has not been accepted by the Unionist regime. It has not been advanced in any detail or in any meaningful manner by the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach asks the British to give him something about the 1949 Act or to tell him that they will have another look at the 1921 Act. He asks them to mention the word "unity" in the Press release and to let him go home and have a general election. He tells them that he will come back for another chat after such an election. This is his rather inept approach to the situation in Northern Ireland.
We have to come back to the implications involved in reassuring both communities in Northern Ireland about their fundamental democratic rights. The first reassurance must be that the reforms of 1968-69 will be carried out to the letter of the law and in full in Northern Ireland. There must be full, written guarantees in Northern Ireland that the reforms will not be eroded or dropped or modified in future. This is the essential basis of a negotiated settlement in Northern Ireland. A guaranteed role in government for the minority in Northern Ireland is also involved, and not just the setting-up of extra Parliamentary committees there. The allocation of a few more seats in the Senate or merely increasing the number of seats at Stormont will not suffice. In the future in administration and executive authority in Northern Ireland the minority constitutionally must have a guaranteed role in government, representing themselves and having their own share of power.
These are repetitive propositions in this House. Everybody has become obsessed with watching the tragedy unfolding in Northern Ireland. We have become obsessed with the daily bombings, shootings and political assassinations and the daily round-up by the British troops and their terrorist tactics. It does not matter whether the troops were unemployed people in Lancashire or not. They are now employed in the British Army as soldiers. A great deal of what they are doing is not acceptable to the Irish people in the North or in the South.
The minority in Northern Ireland must be given essential, basic guarantees. Slowly but surely this is happening. It is about time that Mr. Maudling, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath and all the political leaders, North and South, began considering a peaceful solution. The Labour Party spokesman has been advocating this kind of peaceful solution.
