Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 1 Feb 1984

Vol. 102 No. 13

Disarmament and Development: Motion.

Mr. Robb

I move:

That Seanad Éireann, appalled at the continuous proliferation of nuclear weapons, concerned at the impact in particular of arms expenditure on the poor of the world, determined to do everything possible to contribute to the resolution of the war in Ireland and recognising the growing acknowledgement of non-violent action as a form of resistance, calls on the Government to pursue a policy of positive neutrality committed to anti-nuclearism, nonaggression and support for the oppressed of the world.

In moving this motion I would first of all like to say to the Senators who are here and to those who are not here that it is a mark of statesmanship never to be mean. After the misunderstanding of yesterday it is a tribute to my fellow Senators that they are prepared to have this motion debated today. I regret very much, as does Senator Ryan, the misunderstanding that occurred and in particular that the Minister was inconvenienced.

This is a very complex and inter-related motion. There is too much in it to be debated in the time available. Nevertheless, it brings up some of the difficulties of independent Senators. In the motion we are dealing with neutrality, an anti-nuclear stance in the world, ecological problems and the questions I have alluded to of the war in Ireland and peace-making throughout the world. Before I go any further, lest there be any doubt about where I stand in relation to wording, in particular in relation to the amendment, I have here a book written by a fellow Ulsterman, Professor J. C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, which I am sure some Senators and even some people in the Public Gallery, under the chairmanship of an excellent tutor, have read. It states and I quote:

An English civil servant of the sixteenth century, writing gloomily about the state of Ireland, found support for his pessimism in a proverb: ‘It is a proverb of old date, that the pride of France, the treason of England, and the war of Ireland, shall never have end. Which proverb, touching the war of Ireland, is like alway to continue, without God set it in men's breasts to find some new remedy that never was found before.'

I have no hesitation in saying that there is a war in Ireland. I believe that as far as this century is concerned what is almost a hundred years' war started with the rising of the Ulster Volunteers. You may not be aware that 25,000 rifles and a million rounds of ammunition were brought through the town of Larne in the year 1914. There was a response immediately by a further bringing of arms into Howth in Dublin and the tragedy is that so many of those volunteers, on the grounds that Home Rule would be delivered to Ireland at the end of the 1914-18 war, went to France and died together, men in arms fighting at that stage for a common cause. Since then we had the 1918 general election. It was quite clear from that that one side thought that majority rule should be OK — that was the Irish Republicans — and another side thought, "No, we want majority rule for ourselves". They were the Northern Loyalists. Somewhere along the line majority rule became confused with self-determination. We had a treaty which, to quote a Presbyterian minister from the town in which I live, represented a form of Home Rule which the devil himself could not have invented, a treaty which down here was seen on the one hand as a denial of the right to majority rule and on the other hand as a compromise. It dissatisfied us all. There was a civil war here from which I would maintain you have not yet recovered.

You should all know the rest of the history, but in case you do not I have here what have been in my attic for 15 years, 13 bottles. I returned to my home on 15 August 1969 with those bottles and in each of them was a bullet. The bullets were taken subsequently for analysis. Since then if you look at the situation in the North of Ireland what do you find? We find a casualty rate which has reached proportions which if exterpolated into Britain would mean somewhere in the region of 75,000 people killed and three-quarters of a million people as casualties. Therefore, I do not use the term "war" inadvisedly. Perhaps if I have time I will be able to return to the point I made at the start from J. C. Beckett's book that some fundamental change of heart will be needed in Ireland if we are even to come to terms with what is involved in order to resolve it so that you people in the Public Gallery will never again know or experience Irishmen fighting Irishmen in the name of some mythology or some cause, that we will be united in common cause.

We have now got a new dimension to violence, the global dimension. When we are referring to violence we must think of its global dimension, of its local dimension and of the violence that we all have inside ourselves in relation to our unresolved conflict. The greatest irony of this century was that on 26 June 1945 the United Nations Charter was signed. On 24 October 1945 that Charter became enacted. Between those two dates, on 6 August, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT, and 65,000 people were killed. Since that date we have in the world accumulated between the USSR and the USA no less than 13,500 megatons or 13,500 million tons of TNT. When we look at the build-up we ask ourselves what this deterrence is all about. Within four years of the Hiroshima bomb the Russians had developed their bomb. Then the Americans exploded the 15 megaton device at Bikini Atoll. Then the Russians exploded a 60 megaton bomb. Up to that time these bombs had to be delivered in long-range aircraft by human beings. The Sputnik in 1957 heralded a new age of rocketry by which we could destroy populations by remote control. The intercontinental ballistic missile was the next development. It was estimated by Robert McNamara, who is responsible for strategy in the United States, that 400 of these would be enough to annihiliate one-third of the Russian population and two-thirds of her industry.

Not long after, the thing escalated even further. We have had the philosophy of mutually assured destruction since then. We had the development of anti-ballistic missiles. We had a response to that by way of producing more missiles to get through the anti-ballistic screen, the development of decoys to deal with the anti-ballistic missiles and, finally, the most macabre development of all, the use of the anti-ballistic missile to deliver a nuclear missile. The neutron bomb speaks of the philosophy, destroy life but preserve what man made as his memorial when there is no life left to appreciate it.

It has not stopped even at that. As recently as last year President Reagan, at a cost of $650 billion, brought forward a new programme of MX missiles which are specially mobile devices which can move the MIRV systems from one place to another and so, perhaps, produce some means of secondary response after initial attack. No one can convince me that deterrence is a philosophy that makes sense. It is like, as I said at a nuclear rally in Belfast, two men up to their knees in petrol fighting over who will strike the first match.

You say Ireland will never suffer these things, we do not have the bomb. Look at what happens when one explodes a one-megaton device at 6,000 feet above the earth's surface. Within three seconds winds travelling at 200 miles an hour are to be detected within a three-mile radius. Not long afterwards, winds still travelling at 40 to 50 miles an hour can be detected some 20 miles away. If you look at the fire of the explosion, you will be blinded, and you will get second degree burns, that is burns that require skin grafting on unexposed surfaces of the skin, nine to ten miles away from the explosion.

Then you have the effects of radiation, not only immediate effects but the effects of fission products and dust that is sucked up by this enormous fire-ball into the stratosphere and the troposphere. It does not matter whether the bombs are dropped in Moscow or New York, the effect will be the same for either if our madness allows us to go down that road. As far as the effects on you and me are concerned, you will have acute radiation, if you survive to begin with. You will recover from that and in three to four weeks later it will return. What does radiation mean? Anyone who absorbs more than 5,000 rads — the physicists among you will know what that means — will die. Within a mile of a megaton explosion you will get 10,000 rads. Supposing one is far enough away to get fewer than 5,000 what will it mean? Ulceration of the body linings, bleeding from the cervices, sterility, baldness, leukaemia, cataract, cancers, particularly of the bone, malformed children, genetic mutations. When we are talking about genetic mutations we must remember that if a recessive gene is affected it may not produce its weird manifestation in that generation. It may be a number of generations before two recessive genes come together to manifest the abnormality which has been created by the mutation at the time of radiation.

E. P. Thompson when lecturing in Dublin last year made the point that the peace-making movements in Europe were beginning to have an effect. So great was their effect that the Americans were now thinking of systems which would be launched from the sea. He made a further point. The programme would involve the production of 6,000 Cruise missiles based at sea. Ireland could no longer be spared from being part of the nuclear network. It is now thought that the Keflavik - Slyne Head - Mount Gabriel - Dublin - London radio network is in some way connected to the possible detection of the Tupolev 46 bombers, backfire bombers which could fire on Britain from 200 miles to the west. Whether we like it or not then, we also are in the nuclear war zone. That is why neutrality becomes important. It is why passive resistance has also become important in a politically violent world.

Let us look at our neutrality. From the origins of this State, neutrality became a completely understandable assertion of its independence. Let us look at the way in which the late Eamon de Valera distanced himself from the articles of the Treaty, the way in which Ireland developed its selfconscious neutrality during the last war. Along with that, Ireland established a place for itself in the League of Nations. Ireland also entered the United Nations in the fifties and has established its own independent role there. Ireland is an independent member of the European Economic Community. Therefore, the old reason for neutrality no longer exists.

There is a danger of making of neutrality, like so many other things in Ireland, a sanctimonious virtue. We have heard Senator Michael Higgins talking in this Seanad about the possibility of creating an abortion-free zone. I have mentioned that in medical terms, when you cannot be bothered, you want to pretend that there is no problem, you put on the chart NAD — nothing abnormal discovered. Nuclear-free zone, abortion-free zone, divorce free zone, nothing abnormal discovered. We can export our problems if we wish but do not let us think that we can export this one.

Therefore what we are to do with our neutrality becomes more important than ever. Are we to use it for a positive purpose throughout the world to bring the world to its senses? I maintain that we can do that, provided we see neutrality as part of a political philosophy which starts with ourselves and which sees in passive resistance the greatest defence that the people of Ireland, if they can ever become united, can offer to any offensive invasion from outside.

Let us unite with the non-aligned and other neutral nations of the world, the Switzerlands and the Swedens. Let us form a network of positive neutrality, let us use the tremendous influence throughout the world of the Church networks to introduce the idea of positive neutrality everywhere, to challenge centralism wherever it is found. In that context Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet writer, has said when he was writing to the Soviet leaders about the need to decentralise the Soviet Union, that the centralisation of all forms of life of the mind was a monstrosity that amounted to spiritual murder. We must take back responsibility for our own lives, for our own country, and in unifying this country create a message that can go out from Ireland to the rest of the world.

Lest you feel that the Unionist population will not listen, it is from Britain that we recently heard from Colonel Johnathon Salford, Deputy Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Britain, and from none other than Lieutenant-General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley who was Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces for Northern Europe, that a neutral Ireland was of far greater benefit to the defence of western Europe, let alone the defence of England, than an involved Ireland, particularly an Ireland at peace. Our neutrality is tied up with the need to create unity and our unity will mean nothing unless we are neutral. Furthermore, if we are not neutral, if we are aligned and become a pawn in the power-block game, this will become a very important element in the destabilisation of the country before a settlement and will remain an element for subversion and destabilisation in the aftermath of such. I would implore the Minister to take the advice of at least one Senator that Ireland should espouse a philosophy of positive neutrality.

Let us try to tie this up with two further elements. We have mentioned the effects of the nuclear bomb. We have mentioned the build-up, the need to stop it, the place for positive neutrality. Let us also remember that nuclearism is related to that other great issue at present, the ecological challenge. Never has there been greater pollution on earth or such worry about it as in recent times. Since last October various articles in the English newspaper The Times about the pollution from Windscale have revealed that 0.005 of a microgram — which is too small for my mind to register but it may be all right for yours because you can understand these things and I do not — is enough to produce a lethal dose from plutonium, yet radioactive waste is being poured out of Windscale, to quote The Times at 2,000,000 gallons a day. What is the half-life of plutonium? It is 24,000 years. We read about mud with 100 times the amount of radioactivity is should have. We read about seaweed with 1,000 times the radioactivity is should have. We read about slicks arriving on the shore between St. Bede's and Eskdale and we ask ourselves what about County Down?

The ecology movement is a movement of your time. It is the new green party. It is the pro-life party of tomorrow. If we are going to be truly pro-life we must develop a reverence for all life, animal, vegetable, human and maritime. In that lies the kernel of the question if mankind with its 6,000 million people is going to survive. Are we to have a philosophy that respects and affirms life and rejects the death slope on which we are placed at present?

When I read the House that quotation from Professor J. C. Beckett's book I was thinking about our concept of self-determination. Loyalists in the North of Ireland talk about the self-determination of the people of Northern Ireland. Irish Republicans have talked about the right to self-determination of the people of Ireland. The United Nations affirm their covenants on human rights in both, that self-determination is a human right. How can a fundamental human right be such a recipe then for conflict rather than for the resolution of the conflict if the two sides in a warring situation are using it to sustain and to justify their conflict? The reason, I would maintain, is that the right to self-determination is not an unqualified right. The right to self-determination must always be related to the achievement of consensus. The founding fathers of democracy and the Latin scholars among Senators may have read of Herodotus who in describing Cleisthenes' concept of democracy said democracy was about taking the people into partnership. Where there is a feeling of partnership — in other words where there is consensus — then and then only do the majority have their rights, but where there is not a feeling of partnership, as today in Northern Ireland and in Ireland as a whole, where there is not this feeling of consensus, then majority vote may become majority rule which is not democratic if it is not based on trust and partnership. Therefore, fellow Senators and young people, we must ask ourselves——

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator may not refer to the people in the gallery.

Mr. Robb

I beg your pardon, I offer my apologies. We must ask ourselves if we can find in models elsewhere something that might be applicable to us in Ireland. Look at Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Yugoslavia, the south Tyrol where you have autonomous regions inside autonomous provinces in part of a settled whole.

I am grateful to the Minister, who was not here when I moved the motion, for coming after I so inconvenienced him yesterday. As I said, the mark of a true statesman is that he has no meanness. It would have been easy for Senators and easier still for the Minister to have decided, as there was this misunderstanding, that we should not have this debate. Therefore, I must thank him for coming.

Finally, there is another dimension to our world problems. Wherever there have been splits in consciousness, be it between reformation and counter-reformation, Islam and Christendom, Hindu and Islam, Judaism and Islam, where these have been developed in violence and have been almost sealed in their blood, no political solution on it own will produce an enduring solution. It cannot deal with the psychological and spiritual by-products of the violence, the guilt and the falsehood which are immediately part of any violent action. We need something further and I suggest that what we need is our holy men throughout the world to be courageous, imaginative and, for the sake of mankind and to redeem mankind for good feeling rather than bad, to step forward and stop talking about forgiving and to start asking for forgiveness. As a Protestant Irishman standing in the Seanad at this terrible time for Ireland, but, equally, at a most anxious time for the whole world, I have no hesitation in saying that one thing my tradition has to ask Catholic Ireland for is forgiveness for attitudes which it showed towards Catholic Ireland in its history which sought to diminish, and at times to despise, our fellow countrymen. I have said this before and I have said it on television. I cannot implore people enough to ask themselves how will they expurgate the guilt that keeps the falsehood running which keeps the violence going from one generation to another.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for his indulgence and conclude by imploring all to realise that I did not use, nor did Senator Ryan in supporting the motion, those words "the war in Ireland" inadvisedly. I have tried to indicate why I feel there is a war in Ireland. There are two wars. There is a war in the North and there is the unresolved element between London and Dublin. We cannot solve one without solving the other, they are interwined. Unless we face up to that and stop using the Northern one to divert us from the other one we will go nowhere. As an Ulsterman in Ireland, and as a man proud to be an Irishman wherever I travel in the world, I hope and pray that I will see in my lifetime the end of that war referred to in Beckett's book so many centuries ago but we will not see it unless we apply ourselves to a peace-making, positive neutrality philosophy which takes into account the local issues, the national issues and the global issues.

Mr. B. Ryan

Like Senator Robb, I wish to record my great regret at the series of misunderstandings which led to my absence yesterday. I apologise to Members for the misunderstandings and I am grateful to the Minister, as Senator Robb said so well, for being statesmanlike, to the Leader of the House and the Cathaoirleach, for facilitating us.

It is very difficult to follow Senator Robb on this or, indeed, on many other issues but what I would like to reiterate is the great need for a moral position on nuclear weapons, the great need to cease using political questions and considerations by Churchmen in particular and by Christians and religious people in general, to avoid confronting the moral horror of nuclear weapons. This lead should not have to come from lay people like myself or, indeed, the Minister or anybody else. The fundamental highlighting of the moral issue of nuclear weapons is a matter for those who are given the responsibility of teaching and explaining religious faith.

It does not appear to me, as I have said so often before, that we have anything like the same detailed explicit expounding of Christian teaching in the area of nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare and the so-called idiotic, crazy, insane logic of nuclear deterrents as we have had on certain other issues in the recent past here. Christian people are entitled to have their consciences challenged and questioned on this issue as on any other issue because fundamentally, and before all else, the question of nuclear weapons and nuclear war is a moral question. The moral question is, can they ever under any circumstances be right? I have no problem in answering that question because once the political considerations — and these are enormous — and the fears of the oppressor or the potential attacker — and these are also enormous — are separated from the moral question there can be only one answer and that is, no, no, no, nuclear weapons can never be used. There could never be circumstances under which the use of those weapons against any society or any country could be justified. There is no greater good which could justify it. There is no lesser of two evils choice which could ever justify it. Therefore, if we are to be consistent as Christians, the logic of that is that if we believe what we claim to believe then those whom we would claim to be our enemies must understand that we would never use those weapons in which case we might as well forget entirely about them.

In that regard, having listened to Senator Robb's detailed and frightening account of the consequences of nuclear warfare, I can only regret — I am sure it was not deliberate — the apparent attempt by our Civil Defence agencies to more or less suggest to us the night after "The Day After" was shown on television that we really were not threatened by nuclear war, that we would probably escape with the less unpleasant consequences. They are fundamentally, totally and categorically wrong. If there is a nuclear war we will be victims the same as the rest of the northern hemisphere will be victims. We cannot escape. The statistical possibilities are so extreme, the likelihood of such devastation to the whole mechanisms of communication is such as to guarantee that the guidance systems of nuclear weapons will be completely cockeyed. The fact that Windscale obviously will be a major target, and it is only 70 miles from Dublin, will guarantee it. There is no logic to our Civil Defence philosophy and if the same amount of money was to be spent in educating our people about the fears of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear weapons to the world we could eventually develop a highly articulate and sensitive public opinion which would guarantee a very high level of concern about foreign affairs issues.

It would be wrong to deal exclusively with nuclear weapons on this issue. The motion is, regrettably, long and complex because the issue is long and complex and there are inter-related issues. The issue of world development and the issue of world oppression and the issue of world poverty are directly related to the question of armaments. It has been estimated that 40 billion dollars would probably provide basic shelter, basic food, basic nutrition and basic medical supplies for all of the oppressed of the world. It sounds like a huge sum of money until we realise that it is about one-twentieth of what we spend annually on armaments. There is not in any way a question of us not being able to afford to deal with the problems of injustice, oppression and poverty in the world. We have the resources at our present levels of development to deal with oppression and injustice. The problem is whether we will use those resources in the way they are intended to be used.

The Brandt Commission estimated that on average one tax dollar in six in the world is used for armaments expenditure. It is worth recording some of the figures produced in the document of the Catholic Commission on Justice and Peace on disarmament and development. They stated that the cost of one jet fighter would build 40,000 village health centres, that a half year's military expenditure would provide the basic needs of the entire world for ten years and that half a day's military expenditure would fund the entire World's Health Organisation's malaria eradication scheme. Most, or a large number, of our chemists, physicists, engineers, and nuclear engineers in particular, are devoting their energies to military research. Arms expenditure is also highly inflationary and it is not, contrary to many suggestions, a particularly efficient creator of employment. The United States Department of Commerce has estimated that if the equivalent expenditure that is being spent on armaments in the United States was to be spent on education it would create two and a half times as many jobs. There is no logic to the suggestion that the armaments industry is somehow a creator of jobs. There are other more human, more necessary and more important issues to be dealt with.

I was going to quote from the Brandt Commission because it makes one important point which should not be left out. On one occasion when I quoted this Report, when Senator Dooge was Minister for Foreign Affairs, he reminded me quite rightly that the Third World countries could in no way be excluded from the criticisms of arms expenditure. It is one of the great tragedies of the world that the expenditure on armaments among Third World countries has increased faster than the expenditure on armaments elsewhere. That is a question we are entitled to put to those countries and ask, why, again and again. The Brandt Commission suggest that one of the reasons is a fairly sophisticated selling job being done by the wealthy countries of both East and West.

Regrettably, one has to refer in passing to some suggestions that we are now beginning to try to cream off some of the funds that are available for defence expenditure around the world. Our attempt is to co-ordinate our standards with those of the United States Department of Defence — I do not care whether it is the US or the Soviet Defence Department — and there is the suggestion that we will, without much thought, endeavour to create employment and wealth here through the armaments industry and that raises serious moral questions. It would have to be, as it has been traditionally here, a Quaker who would resign his job in Waterford when he discovered that his employers were involved in the armaments industry. It seems that the only section of the whole Christian church which has retained the original Christian conviction to peace and non-violence are the Quakers, or the Society of Friends. It is impossible to separate, or to make a moral distinction between international drug trafficking and international arms trafficking. One is as destructive, one is as amoral and as inhuman as the other. We have no more right to be involved in arms industries and arms expenditure that we have to be involved in international drug trafficking.

Senator Robb mentioned the controversial reference to the "the war in Ireland". His reasons almost explain it. I have an additional reason for using those words: that is to call into question the whole use and suggestion of the legitimacy of war, that somehow war is a more legitimate operation than some of the things that are done on occasions in other places. War, of itself, is obscene. There cannot be any gradations of war that are more or less acceptable. All wars are obscene whether they have legitimacy or not, whether they have the support of all populations or not. All wars are wrong and where violence is used, however mindlessly or however ruthlessly to achieve political ends, that is war. There is no such thing as a noble or heroic war. The fact that hundreds of young conscripts had to be executed in the First World War in the trenches to persuade all the other conscripts to fight for their noble causes ought to underline that fact. There are very few willing heroes in war but there are many frightened conscripts in every war, frightened out of their wits.

Moving on to the question of neutrality, I should like to say that this country has quite rightly denounced the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It has quite rightly denounced the oppression of the people of Poland. I wish we would, with equal conviction, denounce the terrorism that is being perpetrated against the population of Nicaragua by the United States Government. That is the only word to describe it, terrorism in an attempt to destabilise a legitimate, good, caring and socially progressive Government in the economic interests of the United States. That is what positive neutrality means. It means being willing to stand up for the truth in the world, to be able to stand up for values that we hold to be important irrespective of the great interests that are questioned by our commitment to those questions.

It is regrettable that we have to be so brief on an issue like this because so many questions arise. A question that is worth raising here is why the heroes that we commemorate so vigorously are the ones who used violence on our behalf? Why is Michael Davitt less a hero than Patrick Pearse? Is it because he had the good fortune not to die for this country? It was Michael Davitt who contributed so much to the liberation of the people of this country, so much in a method which did not resort to or use violence.

Mr. E. Ryan

Who says he is less a hero?

Mr. B. Ryan

All I can say is that the commemorations and the history books underline in great depth those who died on our behalf. I suggest that those who failed to use violence on our behalf are implicitly pushed down in the pantheon of Irish heroes. Apparently, it is because of their recourse to non-violence. I am not saying it is deliberate but I am saying that it is part of psychology and we would need to look at it.

All of what I said would be assented to by anybody anywhere talking about disarmament. I regret in a special way that when the United Nations' recent conference on disarmament proposed a scheme of education of the general public on the issue of arms limitations and disarmament that we, as a Government and a country, failed and refused to make any voluntary contribution to that scheme, allegedly because of the state of our public finances. That, of course, is an important issue. However, poverty-stricken, under-nourished India contributed. Arid, under-developed Mongolia contributed. Norway contributed. The much feared Soviet Union contributed 1.8 million rubles. Bangladesh, Burma, Nigeria, Uganda and Vietnam all contributed to educate public opinion. We have decided to increase our defence expenditure by £30 million this year, 13 per cent over last year, 5 per cent above the rate of inflation, and we claim we could not contribute anything to the disarmament of the world. It is not that we are poor in money but that we are poor in ideas. I begin to wonder who is poorer, ourselves or Bangladesh. At least they have a sense of the real issue that faces the world, the frightening threat of armaments. When will we get our priorities right?

Professor Dooge

I move amendment No. 1.

To delete all words after "resolution of" and substitute the following:

"conflicts, and recognising the need to direct resources to the tasks of development, emphasises the need to pursue a policy of positive neutrality and opposition to nuclear armaments and calls on the Government to support development policies in solidarity with the oppressed of the world."

Many of the sentiments of this motion are, I think, shared by all Members of Seanad Éireann. Unfortunately, to my mind, some of the language of the motion gives rise to difficulty largely because of its looseness. What this amendment does is that it seeks to sharpen that wording, to produce an amended motion which should receive universal support in this House. If I had been drafting a motion ab initio I would have drafted it somewhat differently but those of us who have put down this amendment have sought to avoid a wholesale replacement of the words of the motion and so the amendment is in the form in which it is.

Senator Robb indicated that we have in this motion a complex of a number of issues. This is creating a difficulty for all of us. It created a difficulty for Senator Robb who had 30 minutes to find his way around that complexity. The rest of us have only 15 minutes to do so. Consequently, we cannot deal with all aspects of it and it is difficult to deal more than superficially with some of them. There are a number of points that I would like to touch on. I have heard Senator Robb, and Senator Ryan, on the question of the use of the term "war in Ireland" in a resolution of Seanad Éireann. I cannot agree with them on this particular point. Senator Ryan makes the argument that all wars are wrong and because what is being done in Northern Ireland, and less often in this State, is wrong, we are free to call it war. I am afraid that we will fall into a propaganda trap if we in this House use terms such as "war in Ireland". It will be interpreted by ill-intentioned people as if we are prepared to give belligerent rights to terrorists in Ireland and that I am not prepared to do this.

Because of the complexity, I would prefer to talk about the global dimension of this problem. On this, I agree with a great deal of what has been said. Senator Robb said that deterrence does not make sense. This has been the position of successive Irish Governments. On our behalf successive Taoisigh and Ministers for Foreign Affairs have said this in the appropriate forum, that deterrence does not make sense, that deterrence is making less and less sense as armaments are built up and as we have creeping into this discussion the idea that it might be possible to talk of limited nuclear war.

The amended motion, equally with the original motion, condemns the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Let us be clear that we should deplore all aspects of proliferation. The original narrower meaning of non-proliferation meant that no more countries were to be nuclear. This is now referred to as horizonal proliferation. We can well be proud of the work of the late Frank Aiken in bringing about, along with other like-minded people, the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But what we have heard of this evening is what is sometimes referred to as vertical proliferation, an increase in the number of nuclear weapons, even in the countries that have nuclear weapons, an increase in the sophistication of these weapons, of the launching systems and of the guiding systems.

The goal of the United Nations set down in 1961 is general and complete disarmament. This was set down over 20 years ago. We can look back at those 20 years and if we look at the future we can say it would take at least 20 years to achieve general and complete disarmament. Indeed, here I do come back to a parallel with the problem of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Our question here is, what is to be the first step? Let us worry about first steps rather than last steps. The arms race continued during those 20 years. Indeed, there has been a sort of a positive feedback whereby the increase in armaments on both sides has now become not merely a consequence of international tension but a cause and a creator of international tension. It is this whole situation which is feeding on itself to produce the intolerable position we have today. We must continue at all times to urge practical steps — first of all, a slowing down, then a freezing, then a reduction and finally, a complete abandonment of nuclear weapons.

This position has been stated well on our behalf and I pay tribute to successive Governments for the manner in which they have put disarmament to the forefront of their concerns at the United Nations and at other security meetings. In the Seanad we have an opportunity to support that policy of four elements: a substantial reduction of nuclear weapons, a negotiated moratorium on strategic nuclear weapons, a comprehensive test ban treaty and, fourthly, measures to avert the militarisation of outer space. The latter is something we supported and was proposed originally by the Soviet Union. We have shown our real neutrality here in that we have taken up something which could reasonably have been said to have been originally a propoaganda ploy, a weapon being used by the Soviet Union against the United States. However, in this particular issue of the militarisation of outer space, our Government were able to see that this was part of general disarmament and to support it. When we talk of the horrors of nuclear war neither should we neglect the other aspects of disarmament. This could well give rise to a further debate. Our record is good on matters such as the use of chemical weapons. We have played a leading part here.

In the motion and in the amendment proposed there is a reference to the resolution of conflicts. When we look back over the past 20 years, since the first UN declaration on disarmament, we have seen in the world over 50 major wars. We look around the world at the moment and we can see up to 50 armed conflicts, both major and minor, most of them minor. It does appear as if there has been a complete failure by the U.N. Let us look at that failure. I would suggest that the failure has not been in the principles the United Nations have put forward or, indeed, in the institutional framework, but in a lack of political will arising from a lack of trust. Here we see on the global scale the same problems that we can see on a smaller scale in the northern part of this island.

There is a heavy onus on anybody proposing alternatives to the stand that our Government have taken to prove that these alternatives will do anything more to shift the position of the super powers, because that is the only way forward. Declaratory resolutions will get us nowhere. Of course, declaratory resolutions and non-violent demonstrations can help in the movement towards changing the minds of the super powers if they truly reflect public opinion and they are balanced in their approach, but they are no substitute for constructive action within the United Nations and in other fora.

I would like to refer to other terms that are in the motion. There is reference in the motion as well as in the amendment to positive neutrality. In December 1981 this House debated neutrality. It may well be that we could debate it again some time during this year, but unfortunately any deep debate on neutrality cannot really take place within the confines of this complex motion. Neutrality is a legal concept and its meaning has now grown in common use well beyond its original and true meaning. When we go on to positive neutrality, we find it being used in very different senses. Some people use the term' "positive neutrality" in a rather technical sense to describe cases such as Austria in which neutrality arises in the context of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. Other people use the term "positive neutrality" to mean an active policy as against a passive policy of neutrality. I gather that what Senator Ryan is putting forward is this sense of an active and balanced policy of neutrality and in that sense it certainly has my support.

Our policy of neutrality is an active one. We have played a positive and constructive role that would not be open to us if we were not neutral and using our position of neutrality actively. We certainly are not indifferent. At times within the United Nations context we have used sanctions against countries condemned in UN resolutions even though this would give rise to displeasure on the part of powers which are in other matters our friends.

Finally, I want to talk, in the few minutes that are left to me, about the problem of the use of global resources. I agree entirely with Senator Brendan Ryan that one of the most horrible features of the armaments race is that it does involve the diversion of resources. Not only is the arms race dangerous in itself but it is wasteful and an unjust diversion of the world's resources. I have been concerned in my scientific and engineering work in recent months with the problems of drought in Africa. I see clearly the situation whereby some 22 out of the 34 countries in Africa have experienced a long, continued drought situation and I look at the misery which arises from that situation and contrast that with the amount of the world resources devoted to armaments. Millions of people throughout the world are being denied an elementary human right while this mad expenditure goes on.

On the question of development aid, this indeed could be the subject of a separate debate. I hope that the House will have an opportunity to debate this question rather fully either on the basis of a Private Members' motion or a Government motion. There are many things we could discuss here. To me, development aid is aid to the development of individuals, of human beings. It is not the sale of machinery or the imposition of institutions. This is the sense along which our policy has largely moved. It is a way in which it could be continued and perhaps intensified. The position of Ireland in international discussions has been clear. I want to congratulate our Government on calling for global negotiations, for real constructive dialogue rather than the exchange of statements. Such a continuation is urgently required. I will finish by reminding Senators of the title of the Brandt Report which Senator Brendan Ryan referred to. The title of the Brandt report was North/South — A Programme for Survival. The survival to which the Brandt Report referred was not just a survival of the developing countries; it was a survival of the whole world. What we have been talking about here is the survival of the whole world, which is one world, and for that we need disarmament and we need real development.

Mr. M. Higgins

In the first instance, I want to express my appreciation of the sponsors of the motion which made it possible for us, by proposing an amendment, to tease out some of the important issues that are involved and that are contained in the motion. My response, and I agree with Senator Dooge in this, is that it is necessary to anticipate interpretation of some of the words in the original motion. That anticipation has not been acknowledged and the clarification suggested in the amendment, I hope, will be accepted in the spirit in which it is offered. I want immediately to recognise the integrated nature of the contributions that have been made, particularly by Senator Robb. It seems to me that Senator Robb is pursuing a principle of integration. It is rarely that we can speak about there being a mentality of violence and a mentality of peace.

In the brief few minutes available to me I do not intend to move away from what I think are some important points of principle that need to be established. One of the problems that face us is that in having a comprehensive approach within international affairs that can recognise that tied together with the threat of war and destruction is an economic structure that regularly condemns people to death. Tied together with both this political and economic horrific stage of development to which humanity has descended is a structure of mind. It is most important to bear that in mind.

It is not too fanciful to suggest that if you live in a world that accepts that as normal, as an inescapable fact that cannot be answered or avoided, you live with the possibility of global destruction. Inevitably — it is not an abstract point — it reduces the commitment to other life sustaining activities that are far short of such a global catastrophe.

I want to go much further with some specific points in relation to what Senator Robb has suggested. If you are to move away from the mentality of war and the economic and social thinking that sustains it, you have to come to terms with building and indentifying the bases, both nationally and internationally, for an alternative structure of peace. It would be fanciful to suggest that the existing relationship between the developed and the undeveloped world in any way could be regarded as an appropriate economic base for evolving a new peace. Even in the best intentioned aspects of economic thinking of the developed world, where it seeks to establish development cooperation and development policy, without much examination one can see that sometimes it does not give the appropriate levels of aid. Even where it gives aid, it excludes people from trade. Even when it discusses technology transfer it often stops far short of the generosity which is required to allow people to develop in their own way at their own pace to provide for their individual needs.

One of the speakers referred to the 6,000 million people who will comprise the world population before the end of the current century. It is important to bear in mind that this increase in population will take place in parts of the world where people have little prospect of living past the third decade. For example, in 1978, 30 million children under the age of five years died from malnutrition. Figures are only too well known, and now it has become counter-productive to stress that 40,000 children die every day. Of these 40,000, 7,000 could be assisted immediately should resources be made available for such innovative techniques as oral rehydration therapy and so on, and the new forms of vaccination that are now possible.

What we have seen at a global level is that when technology became available for saving the lives of children, the super powers' contribution overall to aid was in fact falling, first reaching a plateau about 1979 and falling in all the last two to three years.

I want to emphasise the commitment of the Labour Party to this question, and to take up some specific points. Our commitment has been to an integrated approach that sees the economic issues of development inextricably linked with the wasteful expenditure on armaments. I do not want to put a tooth in it: how can we listen to presidents and heads of states, the most powerful in the world, use terms like human rights, development and democracy when they preside over war machines that far from reducing threats to all of us are expanding daily? I refer to the super powers equally, but in my personal view I think the United States at present represent a more serious threat to peace.

In relation to neutrality, I think there is an advantage in this resolution that we should bear in mind. It is sometimes suggested that we have had a position on neutrality that was perfectly acceptable and that now somehow or another it is being chipped away and we will have, rather like a tattered coat, a lesser version of it. I claim that, looking at the history of the Labour Party's views on neutrality, I have already suggested that the Labour Party's concern about neutrality was expressed by James Connolly in 1914 as President of the Irish Neutrality League. Many other statements were made by the Labour Party. For example, at the international Socialist Conference in Berne in 1919 Tom Johnson asserted the position of the Labour Party. In 1928 he emphasised these points. My predecessor, Michael Keyes, in 1941 told the annual conference of the party in his chairman's address:

As a neutral country we have no war aims to declare, but neutrality itself is an important aim. It has been the aim of the Labour Party from its inception. We proclaimed it in Parliament, in party conferences and in election manifestos. We proclaimed it when others who applaud it today were discussing the conditions under which the country might participate in a European war.

I emphasise this to make the point yet again that in relation to the position of the Labour Party our acceptance of the concept of neutrality is not hedged around with conditions and in our party conference document in 1975 we went on to specify what we mean by positive neutrality. Senator Dooge was correct to ask what people mean by concepts such as positive neutrality and active neutrality. It has been the position of the Labour Party since 1978 that we believe in prosecuting neutrality as a concept internationally, initially through increased contacts with a neutral group of nations and then by a more positive approach and later adhesion to the non-aligned nations of the world.

We believe also it is important that if you say you are going to be neutral you must understand that to achieve this "mind of peace" which Senator Robb is indicating you must build it as part of the normal experience of people, that is, that there should be an educational programme that can explain and allow to be debated what the different versions of neutrality are. It is important also, should it be necessary — and it is a contentious suggestion but it is the position of my own party — that the principle of neutrality must be regarded as something that should be protected constitutionally.

I welcome this motion before us. In a curious way I see the logic behind the approach that the proposals intended. It is that at the end of the day the regularity with which people can kill, the regularity with which people can remain silent and support killing, in itself is an example of a diseased mentality in which fear has corroded people and has immobilised them into giving support for the loss of lives. It is a courageous thing to reach into the darker part of ourselves and try to identify that fear that either allows us to give overt or tacit support to the taking of lives. That fear at individual, social and collective levels within nations is something that is simply amplified at international level. When I look at the proceedings of international conferences I have detected in recent years the weariness with which some of the offerings are put forward, as if language itself had become bankrupt of meaning, where tyrants speak of human rights, where people speak about human rights in Central America, as President Reagan has done, while deploying ships to blockade a country that wants to pursue its independent path to development.

In the amendment there is an important word and I hope its movers will take it up in the spirit in which it is offered. It suggests that we support development policies that are in solidarity with the oppressed of the world. This recognises the sovereign right of the undeveloped countries both to see, establish and pursue their development path separate from any forms of dependency or leanings on people who may be donors to them in relation to trade, aid and assistance. It is the building in of that principle we have been so often asked for.

I am glad the Minister is here because we have tangible things we can do. The negotiations for the third Lomé are shortly to be resumed and we must always remind ourselves that sitting across the table will be the representatives of ten nations, the average to lowest income of which is hardly ever below 6,000 dollars, and that sitting across the table will be 70 nations the average income of whom will perhaps not reach 300 dollars a year. The ratio is 20:1.

I favour the development of a debate about the quality of mind that sustains oppression and violence in all of its institutionalised forms, and let me say, even controversially, it was at the heart of colonisation in its thrust, when you produced in the colonised the fearful corollary of what was your own tyrranical impulse. It is necessary now that this be broken, and this is where Ireland is so important. Before we write ourselves off and say we are only a small country, and of course we are terribly dependent on industrialisation strategy and on the location decisions of other large industrial countries ——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator has one minute to conclude.

Mr. M. Higgins

—— there is no limit to the moral achievement which a country like Ireland can gain. I am not lifting the word "moral" out of the world political. I think that in a curious way we have been shocked by the possibilities of global warfare. I want to remind this House of what is fundamental. If you look at the history of human rights you will find that it took the death camps in the Second World War to make people establish declarations in which they said we will never sink to that level again. It was at least a part of the atmosphere for human rights declarations and evolutions. We have been seeing regular famine, regular hunger, child malnutrition, the right to bomb countries. Nicaragua was referred to by Senator Ryan. It enjoyed only a brief three years of democracy in a century of dictatorship. They have been told: "Our strategic interest requires us, no matter what you do, to make you bend the knee because you are our backyard."

I take the thinking behind Senator Robb's motion which is that when we have abolished backyards, when we realise that we jointly live in either peace or fear, then it is appropriate to begin at home and to look at the fear that has given us the horrific loss of life in Ireland, North and South, and to look at the fear that we can do so much to eliminate, however small we are, at international level. I hope the principles of this discussion will be brought to fruition by the Minister in the negotiations to come particularly in relation to aid and trade.

Mr. Hanafin

I first of all ask whether it is proposed to rise at 5 o'clock?

Professor Dooge

That is so.

Mr. Hanafin

If that is so we are not giving an opportunity to the Minister to reply. In deference to the Minister I was prepared to cut very short what I have to say if he wants to come in.

Professor Dooge

Since there is an amendment down which enables statements to be made by me and by the Chairman of the Labour Party the Minister thought it more appropriate that he should listen to a number of Senators and that he should make his contribution relatively late in the debate. He hopes to be with us when we resume the debate and to comment on the points we raised.

Mr. Hanafin

I was about to suggest that I would show support for the amendment on this side and that if the Minister wishes to reply now I would be given an opportunity at a later stage to speak. That is purely a matter for the Minister.

First of all, I would like to refer to that splendid address from Senator Robb. It was frightening, knowledgeable and sincere and it showed that he has an obvious hatred of violence. Unfortunately it is much too complex a problem to take on this amendment and deal with just one part of it and to deal with the North of Ireland in the few minutes that are available to us. I congratulate Senator Robb on all the things he said. Amazingly in 30 minutes he was able to cover so much ground and deal with so many things.

To deal with the many Irish problems, not just alone the North of Ireland, as we are talking about it at the moment, one has to go away back in history. I recall when President Kennedy was here. He said many significant things but there was one thing that he said in Galway that stuck in my mind. That was that what really amazed him since he came here was the fact that what happened 100 years ago was only yesterday as far as the Irish people were concerned. I remember noting that indeed he was so right. Senator Robb covered many things including that most tragic part of our history, the Civil War, and certainly one never wants to re-open Treaty debates in this or the other House. There were many tragedies of that Civil War but the greatest was that it has kept so many good men apart for far too long.

The issues in the North of Ireland are historical and national and local. It is so difficult to deal with them. Fortunately we have at present the New Ireland Forum. It is difficult to find a word to describe what I feel for the Forum. There will be results from the Forum, and in speaking of the Forum, I express the hope that it will bring about a change of attitudes, open discussion and meaningful dialogue. I have heard so far, and as far as I can see, the end result will be a very good one. It will be difficult for me in this House, when I am referring to the Forum, not to say that this House takes particular pride in the fact that one person has put much work into it and in my view is responsible for the good that has come out of it — I am, of course, speaking of the Clerk of the Seanad who is also a major figure in the administration of the Forum at present.

This is probably one of the easiest motions and amendments ever to come before this House, to speak to. One could cover it in a single sentence and say the thought of nuclear warfare is so terrible that it must not happen. There is not a person in the world who would not say it must not happen. Recently some young people representing Ireland were in Russia and as it happened my daughter was one of them. She told me that the biggest fear of young people and the one thing they wanted to talk about in Russia was the threat of nuclear war and the fear that they had in regard to it. I am quite certain the same fear exists in the young people of the US and of other countries.

What is it that makes one race better than the other? Each one distrusts the other, each one builds up more weaponry, each feels it has to equal the other in the arms race, or pass it out. What type of money is it costing? I am not concerned about the actual money figures. I am concerned about the amount of money that could be used otherwise. I have a figure which I think is taken from a speech made by the Minister. He used a figure of more than one million US dollars being spent worldwide every minute for military purposes. One thinks of Mother Teresa, for instance, and all she has to cope with and all she is trying to do and the love she preaches and the love in her work but she cannot cope with the terrible problems where she is, the starvation and the disease and unwanted children.

A person could paint a most horrible picture. If somebody only decided to spend in The Third World, the money devoted to armaments look at the beautiful picture one could paint of people receiving what they had never received before, what they do not understand exists in the world. They do not realise that there are things beyond the bare necessities. They do not understand these things because they never had them.

Yet the enormous amount of money being spent on destroying the world which could be used for such wonderful things throughout the world makes one sick. Why do people do it? People say that nobody will ever press the button, that nobody will ever start a nuclear war, that they are not that mad. People are mad and in my time I have known of two madmen, Hitler and Stalin, two powerful world leaders. People say madmen can never get into power. There were two of them in our time. They were not the only two. Madmen get into positions of power.

People say that this cannot happen. Of course it can happen. One can only pray that it will not happen. It is the most frightening thought. The picture painted by Senator Robb was so terribly frightening and the reason it was so frightening is that it is true. All through the ages there were wars, some in the name of religion. All through the ages up to the present we have had wars in the name of religion. In the Lebanon, right through the Middle East, you will find them. They include the Crusades. When Christ was on earth all He ever did was to preach kindness and good and non-violence, and yet everything is done in the name of religion.

Senator Robb said if the neutron bomb were used nothing would be left; that the purpose of neutron bombs is to destroy people and only leave what was made by man. He was not quite accurate: all that would be left would be what God made because that we cannot destroy. I can give the size of the bomb that was used on Hiroshima. One bomb today would destroy one million Hiroshimas. Today, there are sufficient nuclear weapons to bring about the end of life on this planet. When that war is over — please God it will never happen — I do not know where it will end, I do not know whether it will be defending the walls of Jerusalem or what, there will be no parades and there will be no medals and there will be no winners because there will be no people.

Debate adjourned.

The Seanad adjourned at 5 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 15 February 1984.