I move:
That the Dáil do now adjourn.
The time allotted to each speaker is limited and therefore I propose, without in any way commenting on the reasons for the recall of the Dáil —that is the recall a week earlier than it would otherwise have met— to go into the subject matter. Deputies will recall that before the Adjournment for the Summer Recess on 6th August, this House was extremely concerned because of the impending Apprentice Boys' parade in Derry and the consequences that threatened to flow from it if it was permitted to take place. I asked on that occasion whether it was agreeable or acceptable to the northern majority that the tenure of office of their Government should seem to depend on whether or not that kind of parade in Derry should again be permitted and accomplished this year. I went on to say that surely it was realised in London that responsibility went hand in hand with claimed authority; that if responsibility were shirked and if the Stormont Government were seen to depend for their continuance in office on the appeasement of a bigoted and intolerant group of men they would not long survive, and indeed they would earn the contempt of all fair-minded people, including fair-minded British people.
The appeasement of intolerant and bigoted men was achieved all right and in full measure—three days ahead of the planned Derry spectacle. The violence of a sectarian parade was replaced by an act of greater violence against the minority in the application of onesided internment without trial. It is hardly necessary to recount in detail the history of the horrible aftermath— an aftermath which unfortunately is still with us. The news media carried graphic details of the violence and its consequences sparked off by internment swoops; details of death and destruction at a rate which far exceeded anything experienced since the current unrest on a large scale began in 1969; details of intimidation; of allegations of torture and brutality; of suffering and evacuation of many people from their homes, several thousands of whom sought refuge here.
At this stage I should like to thank all those who assisted the refugees in their plight. The unprecedented flow of women and children across the Border placed a very heavy strain on our immediate resources. I am sure that the whole House will join with me in an expression of thanks to the various bodies, religious communities, individuals, and in particular the Army personnel, who did so much to accommodate and help these innocent victims. The fact that several hundred are still with us serves as a reminder that deprivation and fear are still serious problems and that little progress has been made towards solving them.
I stated on 9th August, the date of its introduction, that internment without trial in the North directed against one section of the community was deplorable evidence of the political poverty of the policies that had been pursued in that area for some time. I called for a conference of all the interested parties in order to obtain a new form of Administration for Northern Ireland so as to avoid further deaths and injury. In this connection the Minister for Foreign Affairs went to London to find out where the British Government stood in this situation. On 12th August I said that the Stormont Government should be replaced by an Administration in which power and decision-making would be equally shared between Unionists and non-Unionists. In doing so I pointed out that there existed in the North a Government whose main concern appeared to be to meet the wishes and demands of the most extreme elements within the Unionist community. The implementation of the Downing Street declaration of August, 1969, I said, had been delayed and distorted by that Government. That comment which I made led to the production of a White Paper by the northern authorities setting out the action taken by them on the reform programme. This in turn led to the issuing of a commentary on the White Paper by minority representatives on public bodies in Northern Ireland who felt constrained to rebut in detail the sweeping assertions that the commitments to reform had been fully honoured or were in the process of being honoured. Copies of these two documents are in the Dáil Library for the convenience of Deputies. On 19th August, in a message to the British Prime Minister and Mr. Faulkner, who were then conferring at Chequers, I underlined the fact that internment and the military operations then in progress were a failure and that solutions would have to be found by political means.
I pointed out that if the existing policy of attempting military solutions were continued I intended to support the policy of passive resistance being pursued by the non-unionist population. And I repeated my earlier offer to participate in a meeting of all the interested parties in the event of agreement to a policy of finding solutions by political means. The contents of Mr. Heath's rejoinder are well known and need no repetition here. Suffice it to say that Mr. Heath invited me to Chequers for discussions on the Northern Ireland situation on 6th and 7th September and again on 27th and 28th September, with Mr. Faulkner participating on the second occasion. These discussions were as the communiqué afterwards indicated, wide-ranging and covered all aspects of the situation in Northern Ireland. I emphasised, of course, that the only ultimate solution lay in a united Ireland; that without prejudice to the realisation of that aim, political rather than military initiatives were urgently required to bring peace and justice to the North; I also stated that I saw in quadripartite talks the best hope of formulating such initiatives; that new structures were required in the North because the attempt to govern the area with a Parliament based on the West-minister model had been such a total failure; I added that obviously one-sided internment was a tragic mistake and would have to end quickly if progress were to be achieved; that the 100,000 licensed guns in the North, almost twice as many as in the South per head of population, and more than four times as many on a territorial basis, should be impounded; that the majority in the North were made insensitive to the political aspirations of the minority by the nature of the guarantee contained in the Ireland Act of 1949. Further back, on the 11th July, I suggested in the speech at the Garden of Remembrance that that guarantee should be re-formulated. During these meetings Mr. Heath recognised that it was legitimate for the non-unionist population in the North to work for the reunification of Ireland by political means. I put it to him that violence is a by-product of the division of the country; that an immediate central issue was the restoration of influence to the elected leadership of the minority so that they could participate in discussions about future political arrangements and structural changes in Northern Ireland. These elected representatives, I said, were entitled to an effective voice in government and decision-making.
In the joint communiqué issued after the second meeting at Chequers on 28th September, we stated that it was our common purpose to see the ending of violence and internment and all other emergency measures, and that these should be ended without delay. The ending of internment without trial now would remove a barrier to political discussions with the true representatives of the minority and these would help to clear the way for the developments I have mentioned. Otherwise, the reference in the communiqué to the hope that—and I quote—"the process of political reconciliation may go forward to a successful outcome" will continue to have a hollow ring.
Stormont's attempt at reform in the North has been a dismal failure, as the commentary on the White Paper to which I have referred earlier attests. If Stormont cannot reform itself, then Stormont itself must be reformed. The elected representatives of the minority have had discussions with me on a number of occasions and I know their views in this respect. I believe, too, that the Opposition parties have had discussions with them and know these views equally well. The British Home Secretary, Mr. Maudling, said at Westminster, in the debate on 22nd September, that the object of his talks with various groups from Northern Ireland is—and I quote—"to find agreed ways whereby there can be assured to the minority and majority communities alike an active, permanent and guaranteed part in the life and public affairs of Northern Ireland". He said that four times in the speech but he also said that—and I quote again—"one cannot create a cohesive Government if people do not denounce violence or if people are not prepared to accept the will of the majority on the fundamental point about the Border which succeeding Governments have always accepted in this country". The elected leaders of the minority with whom I have had discussions have, as we all know, repeatedly denounced violence, and thus they have met Mr. Maudling's first condition. On his second condition, I would hesitate to advise anyone to be guided by what succeeding British Governments have accepted in Northern Ireland in the past—they have accepted far too much as Cameron, Hunt and other impartial observers have shown.
On the question of the Border nothing will induce up to 40 per cent of the Northern Ireland population to endorse it nor are they required to do so under the terms of the Downing Street Declaration or Mr. Heath's remarks to me in relation to the legitimate aspiration of unity being a legitimate political aim. They are entitled to maintain that attitude in order to obtain and practise their rights to the full. Mr. Maudling knows this very well even if Mr. Faulkner differs from his views and from the views expressed to me by Mr. Heath.
The British Government must some day recognise the true nature of Northern Ireland. They sometimes say that that area is as much a part of the United Kingdom as Yorkshire, but the palpable nonsense of this thesis is demonstrated when they also say that Northern Ireland is a democracy in its own right; and that it is entitled to have a Parliament and a Government which represent permanently only part of the population of that area; and that this Government should have extensive powers to coerce and discriminate against a substantial minority of the population of the area—all of which it has done and continues to do. Yorkshire has no such structure or authority—and I dare to say that if it had it would use them much more wisely. Time is long overdue for British Governments to rid their minds of such ideas. Even within the terms of the internal affairs of the United Kingdom, Britain has unqualified responsibility, by virtue of section 75 of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, for the good governance of Northern Ireland.
The section states that, and I quote : "The supreme authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters and things" in Northern Ireland. To suggest, as has been too often the case, that Britain's hands are tied to a particular kind of administration for the area, and to all the consequences that flow from that, is a mere pretext for evading real responsibility for them. This becomes all the more obvious in circumstances where a substantial part of the British armed forces is used to implement certain repressive measures, where a substantial portion of the wealth of Britain is used, without proper accountability to anyone, to maintain a regime which has shown constant bias in its uses of that wealth, and where British prestige suffers internationally by British support of methods and manners of government which would be anathema in Yorkshire or anywhere else.
Time and again, publicity and privately, I have said that Northern Ireland is no ordinary society. Its territory results from an Act of the British Parliament which had no sanction from the people of Ireland. As Mr. Roy Hattersly, MP, a Minister in the previous British Government, has recently written of the origin of the State, and I quote: "It was a direct and calculated gerrymander, so blatant that at the time of its perpetration even the men who drew the crooked line had to promise a revision." It is no ordinary democracy. It is, instead, a carefully chosen enclave whose demography ensures that even if democratic principles were strictly observed and applied—and no one, I assert, can argue that they have been—one party holds power permanently.
Again, quoting Hattersly, the history of the Border "makes all the talk about a sovereign nation, democratically committed to its present shape and size, sound more like cant than conviction". There is, therefore, nothing genuinely democratic in the origin or in the present Government of the north. Indeed, its practices are nearer to totalitarianism than to anything else. As Mr. Richard Crossman, also a Minister in the last British Government, said on 23rd September last: "This is not a natural State of any kind at all. It is an artificial, political product created to destroy political rights and to maintain one group of people in permanent power. By its very essence it denies every principle of democracy and always has from the time the House of Commons created it." He was referring, of course, to the West-minister House of Commons.
I am sure that British public opinion, if it fully recognised the nature of the North, would not tolerate it for a moment; not only would the British public not tolerate it, but they would question the propriety of having their Army maintain a system of Government which is exclusively concerned with perpetuating the totality of its own control; they would question their duty to maintain financially a system which deliberately excludes the talents and abilities of almost 40 per cent of the population from the management of the State; they would question the abuse of their own British democratic principles; they would be the first to say that the whole purpose of the Northern Ireland Parliament and Government must be re-examined fundamentally; and I believe, too, they would support the refusal of the Northern minority to have anything further to do with it.
I believe they would go further : far from being an integral part of the United Kingdom in any realistic sense whatever, they know that the North is part of Ireland. It contains a population of whom about 60 per cent claim to wish to adhere to Britain— even if many of them do not adhere to British principles of behaviour. The other 40 per cent pretend no such allegiance and feel no need of it. They are entitled to be themselves, that is to say, to be Irish and not also British. They are, in fact, the majority in more than half the area of Northern Ireland. These are statements of fact and not of fancy.
In recent weeks British Government spokesmen have said that this minority are entitled to, and I quote this oftrepeated phrase. "an active, permanent, and guaranteed part in the life and public affairs of Northern Ireland". Both Mr. Heath and Mr. Maudling have said this. Mr. Faulkner, on the other hand, has said that the Government of Northern Ireland has no place for this minority. Will Mr. Heath or Mr. Maudling now publicly state whether their views will prevail or whether Mr. Faulkner's conditions will be applied? I think it is vital that they should answer this question as bluntly as I have put it. Or, will we see again the spectacle of the British Government expressing unexceptionable principles while their Unionist clients refuse to practise them?
Will a British Government again falter in the application of the rules of good government, sensible politics, and reasonable behaviour in Northern Ireland—to all of which Britain is committed—simply because of the impertinent demand of a very small minority in these islands to dictate policy to the British Government in their own sectional interest? Or will the British Government finally decide that the minority in Northern Ireland have the right to work peacefully for change—for political as well as social change? To do so may be "disloyal" -and I put the "disloyal" in inverted commas—to Unionism; but what is the essence of politics in the North except whether or not the people of the North want a continuation of the State as it exists or an alteration of it?
Not only is "disloyalty"-again in inverted commas—to Unionism legitimate, but it must be given a constitutional framework under which it is protected and can be effective. To do otherwise is to state that Britain herself intends to maintain a Unionist hegemony which is destructive of British prestige, of harmony in Northern Ireland and of a better arrangement of things between Ireland and Britain. For myself I do not believe that the experience of the past 50 years, and, in particular, of the past few years, will continue to be the pattern for the future. There will be no beginning to permanent peace in Ireland, or permanent harmony in these islands, until the British Government accept their proper responsibilities and assert in the interim their claimed authority over Northern Ireland.
In this respect the nature of the guarantee given to Unionism in the Ireland Act, 1949, to which I have already referred, is contrary to the best interests of Britain and Ireland. It is also contrary, I assert, to the best interests of the Unionist population of Northern Ireland. It serves only to put them all in the hands of the most extreme among them who have charged themselves with the duty of seeing to it that nothing shall ever change and that no element of their domination, not merely of Northern Ireland but of British policy in regard to Northern Ireland, shall ever be diminished. We should not fall into the error of identifying the whole northern majority with the extremists amongst them. There are many hundreds of thousands of them who resent and repudiate the vulgar and deadly abuse made of their religion by people whose interests are wholly selfish. The Protestant community are as much entitled as anyone else to obtain the kind of policies from the British Government that will enable them to shake off the remnants of the 17th and later centuries and develop a healthy society which is Christian and not sectarian. The future of Ireland is their future, too, and we should never forget this.
I would like Mr. Maudling to understand that deeply. He has said that, even with the fulfilment of the reform programme, there remained another difficulty—the feeling of the minority that they could never hope to participate in the government of the area. He added that where party alignment was based on religion and where there was no prospect of a change of government the minority could genuinely feel that they did not have the full opportunity, to which they were entitled, to share and serve in the government of the area. Lord Stoneham who was a Home Office Minister with responsibilities for Northern Ireland in the last Government had this to say in the British House of Lords as recently as 22nd September:
Most members of Your Lordship's House know some of the members of the Opposition in Northern Ireland. Those I know are reasonable people, people completely opposed to violence. They are decent, responsible, leading people. They are more anxious than we are to give a lead to their people to end the violence and to bring about peaceful conditions.
While we are sitting here men of great integrity and courageous conduct, the kind of men Lord Stoneham spoke of, are engaged on a hunger strike outside No. 10 Downing Street to draw attention to the evils of current policy in the North. They are, as the House knows, John Hume, MP, Austin Currie, MP, and Paddy O'Hanlon, MP. They may be ignored; people may brush past them. It may be that, in spite of what they have said and done to show a better way forward, their present protest will be refused as many other of their ideas have been in the past refused only to be accepted later. That may be. But if it should be, the failure is not theirs; the intransigence is not theirs; the fault is not theirs. But the victory over intolerance and discrimination must certainly come.
In these circumstances it is necessary that the British Government should suggest enactment without delay of a form of administration for Northern Ireland in which the minority, led by men of the calibre of those I have mentioned, will participate by right. The alternative is a continuation of what we are seeing today—military repression and coercion of the minority, a reaction of violence and destruction by elements among the minority, and a cynical and unworthy attempt to blame this part of the country for what is wrong in the north.
I would like to say a few words on that subject. Border roads are being cratered at the present time. Lord Windlesham admitted in the House of Lords recently—he is a Minister in the present Government—that "there were relatively few crossings by terrorists"— crossings of the Border he meant. Violence in Belfast and elsewhere in the north is indigenous to the area and receives its main support from within the area. It is dishonest on the part of the Stormont Government to pretend otherwise. It is particularly inappropriate for the British Government to lend their authority and prestige to a form of confirmation of Unionist propaganda in this respect.
When I agreed to go to Chequers to discuss Northern Ireland with Mr. Heath on 6th and 7th September, and when I agreed later to revisit him on 27th and 28th September, in a meeting at which Mr. Faulkner was also present, it was part of my intention and purpose to demonstrate the need -the vital and immediate necessity— for political action rather than further and even more disastrous military operations than had occurred already. We now have the spectacle, comic if it were not so dangerous, of an attempt to create a physical division of Ireland. There is no military excuse for or value in this exercise. If it is intended to intimidate the northern minority it has already failed in its purpose, as they have shown. If it is intended to encourage even greater demands from extreme Unionists, that certainly has been accomplished. Nothing less than barbed wire, electric fences and other such products of sick imaginations will ever satisfy such people. I confess that my imagination has not risen to finding any intelligent reason for this kind of activity at all.
Yesterday near Castleblayney armed British forces were observed by a member of the Garda Síochána in a firing position about 300 yards inside the Twenty-six Counties. A British armoured vehicle was parked about 20 yards south of the Border and several more soldiers were observed at a nearby shed, also south of the Border. A protest has been made about this further infringement by the British Army. I may say that I told Mr. Heath that such incidents would repeat themselves and that they may do so with increasing gravity—if British policy continues to be directed at the wrong objectives and at the wrong people. It gives me no pleasure to see my warning borne out already. I hope that better counsel will prevail and that the British Government will draw back from this last crazy attempt to intimidate Irish people on either side of the Border. If behind this new "barrier" of holes in the road, there are, as alleged, brutality, torture and the taking of innocent lives, the truth will not be hidden by them. I have noted that the committee of inquiry into allegations of brutality headed by Sir Edmund Compton is now also stated to have begun inquiries some time ago into allegations of torture. I might note in passing that Mr. Faulkner last Sunday on BBC radio already forecast the result when he said that there had been no brutality of any kind against either a detainee or an internee. He did not, however, discuss what might have happened to anyone between the time of his arrest and the time a detention order was served on him.
There are serious defects in the terms of reference of the Compton Inquiry, two of which need to be mentioned. Firstly, the inquiry is being held in private and not in public. Secondly, there is no possibility of legal representatives of complainants being permitted to question witnesses other than their own clients and, indeed, this concession was given with some reluctance and only after some delay. It seems highly unlikely that an inquiry so restricted can achieve the truth. The Government have this matter under consideration. We have received many reports from reliable people including elected representatives and members of the legal profession in the North. We have, as yet, taken no decision on the matters referred to us. I assure the House, however, that the holes in the road between here and Girdwood Barracks and any other places where brutality and torture are alleged to have been practised on Irish people do not create, to use Mr. Faulkner's words, a "barrier of ignorance" between us and them.
All three parties in this House are agreed that the reunification of Ireland should come by peaceful means. All three parties subscribed unanimously to a motion in that sense which was tabled by the Leader of the Fine Gael Party on 9th March last. I have on many occasions condemned violence in Northern Ireland by whomsoever perpetrated and so have the Opposition Parties here. I also condemn what I call institutional violence—which includes the sort of violence that discriminates against a man and renders him permanently unemployed.
As the unrest continues and escalates, more and more influential people are taking a deeper look at the problem and making, for them, an interesting discovery. To give an example, Michael Stewart, the Foreign Secretary in the last British Government, the Government that was seized of the Northern Ireland problem when violence broke out seriously in 1969, now realises that the Border is an issue, in fact the issue. Mr. Stewart repeated at Westminster on 22nd September what he had already said last August, and I quote:
We must think in terms of a united Ireland, whether we like it or not.
He concluded his speech by saying:
I say this strongly and out of deep conviction. I know very well all the objections which will be raised to it, but I say it in the deep belief that after all those objections have been made and the policy which I am advocating has been rejected, ten or 20 years later and goodness knows how many lives later this policy inevitably will have to be accepted. The sooner we realise that, the more fortunate will be the circumstances in which it can be brought about.
It has been alleged that we in the Twenty-six Counties, especially the Government, are tolerant of illegal organisations, that our controls are lax in regard to the storage and movement of explosives and that, consequently, there is a good deal of illegal cross-Border activity. I have denied these allegations on a number of occasions and so has the Minister for Justice. The repetition of the charge by unscrupulous people does not alter the facts. Anyone who has studed the situation cannot say that the unrest in Northern Ireland originates in any measure from here. Of the hundreds of people convicted or interned in Northern Ireland over the past three years only a few came from outside Northern Ireland and some of that few came from countries other than Ireland.
It is frequently alleged that most of the gelignite used in the North in these illegal activities comes from the South. The fact of the matter is, of course, that more than half of the North's legitimate imports of gelignite is manufactured here. Therefore, it is more than likely that much of that which is being used illegally is procured from these legitimate exports from this part of the country. Nevertheless, security has been tightened and vigilance will continue to be strict.
Mr. Heath and his colleagues in Government know perfectly well that the troubles in the North do not emanate from the Twenty-six Counties and I told him, in this connection, that I would be prepared to make with him a joint approach to the United Nations for a United Nations observer group along the Border. I have repeated that offer several times but it has not found favour with him. If, however, there are repeated and more serious incursions by the British Army across the Border it may become necessary to seize the United Nations of this issue as a threat to international peace.
Instead of creating international incidents along the Border we should be involved in building bridges between North and South, not in the creation of more puerile and more ineffective barriers between the people of this island.
Further military measures are promised almost daily. If these things are being done to appease Unionist extremists the end of the road in that direction is the further imposition on the British public of responsibility, in every sense, for the kind of Government which they would abhor for themselves and find remarkably unappealing in any other part of the world. It cannot be acceptable to them to know that the advisory committee on internees expects internees to appear before it deprived of the assistance of a lawyer. This gives the internee no real opportunity to do justice to his case. Even if he has a lawyer to assist him in the preparation of his case, he is expected to prepare his written submission without knowledge of the allegations made against him. Kafka, a mid-European writer, in his book The Trial describes this kind of procedure in a totalitarian state which he does not name. The accused, I think, was not made aware of the charges against him and, therefore, could not defend himself against an accusation and certainly, of course, could not clear himself of it. There is no justice where such a thing can happen. There is, indeed, no law where this can happen. This is the jungle of Unionist politics to which the British people are expected to give their permanent support. Indeed, Lord Stoneham, whom I quoted already, also had this to say on 22nd September and I quote :
The first move should be the immediate release of those now detained against whom it is not proper to bring charges. If there is something against them, if they have done something, then charge them. Otherwise let them go. That is British justice.
Deputies will be aware that the Minister for Foreign Affairs has restated forcefully at the United Nations our attitude in regard to the current situation in the North and has corrected an allegation that the problems there stem solely from a confrontation arising out of religious differences. He has had discussions also in New York with the United Nations Secretary-General and with several Foreign Ministers.
Nearer home, at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the Irish delegation have promoted a motion for the establishment of a representative group appointed by the Political Affairs and Legal Affairs Committee of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe to study the situation in Northern Ireland and recommend appropriate legal and administrative provisions that would guarantee the involvement of the northern minority in all decision-making and administrative processes. This motion has been referred to the Political Affairs Committee for a report to the Legal Affairs Committee for an opinion. I welcome this development as evidence of the serious concern of European countries with developments in Northern Ireland: it reinforces the demands we have been making that a formula must be found urgently for the full and genuine participation of the minority in the affairs of the North.
When speaking in the emergency debate on Northern Ireland in the British House of Commons on 22nd September, Mr. Harold Wilson was conscious of the international implications for Britain of the deteriorating situation in the North and the security measures being adopted there. In this connection, Mr. Wilson said:
The British Government and this House bear the international responsibility of defending in the councils of the world, including the United Nations and the European Commission on Human Rights, any action taken in Great Britain and Northern Ireland which derogates internationally-agreed conventions about human rights obligatory on the United Kingdom. The Special Powers Act and action taken under it involving imprisonment without trial are breaches of those obligations.
If the wrong policies are now being pursued in the North—and I am convinced, and I am sure most people here are convinced, that that is the position—it is certainly not because of any failure on our part to point this out to the British Government at the highest level and to suggest courses of positive, constructive action.
It is futile to think that it is within the power of a Unionist Government to find a basis for establishing peace, justice and progress in Northern Ireland. Fifty years of history have proved this. No matter how often the Unionist Party changes Prime Minister, the fundamental fact is that it has not the will or the capacity to govern fairly and honestly. The mass withdrawal of minority representatives from various public bodies and their collective commentary on the reform programme is proof of this. These people made a very genuine attempt over the years to improve the lot of the entire community in the North by trying to work within the existing system, notwithstanding its serious limitations and its in-built institutionalised discriminatory practices. Many of them have now withdrawn from further participation.
As I said earlier, in a situation where the British Government have allowed themselves to be dragged into a jungle of Unionist politics, there is neither law, justice nor reason. We can point this out with vehemence to the British Government and we have done so. If they choose not to listen, their posture becomes the same as that of the Unionist authorities. The responsibility for deliberate coercion of the minority in the North becomes even more clearly the direct responsibility of the British Government. The facade of operating through the Stormont Government becomes even more wretched and derisory. The non-Unionist community in Northern Ireland must be brought into participation in an administration in which they share authority with the rest of the community. What other solution is there? Here again I should like to quote from Lord Stoneham who said:
...as I see it, the choice before us, and it is our choice, is either moderation and firmness to ensure justice for all the people of Northern Ireland, or, if you must have it, force. And you will be compelled to use still more force to ensure the final bloody chapter of the Irish disaster. It has been going on for a hundred years. It is now coming to an end. I can only pray that we shall do the right thing while there is still time.
These are sobering words. In a sense, they are reflected in what Mr. Heath said last week, from a different point of view, at the Conservative Party Conference. He suggested that the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland would result in a civil war in which the South would become involved. I take it for granted that he said this in a spirit of goodwill and with a sense of responsibility. However, a sharper sense of Irish history must have indicated to him how dangerous these words are. We have had already too many decades of violence and threatened violence. It remains intolerable that a situation of violence should again exist, increasingly affecting us all, and that it is, in large measure, due to a continued refusal to grasp the Orange nettle which stings the dignity of the majority in Northern Ireland, attempts to humiliate the minority, threatens the peace generally and then expects to be supported by Britain in all this.
The overwhelming majority of Irish people North and South, Catholic and Protestant alike, have shown an enormous capacity for restraint in the face of all this provocation. There lies beneath this an obvious desire to live in peace and harmony among ourselves. This is a reality that will continue to inform the policies and actions of this Government—as it has indeed the decisions of this House. From this Britain can surely find better policies than are now being pursued.
It is said that the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. It is only right not to blame current administrations for the mistaken policies of the past but we must all learn from the mistakes of the past.
Deputies may have heard on today's radio news a reference to a speech that Senator Kennedy is making in the American Senate in which he says that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Time and again this Government have pointed the way to the solution of the remaining problem that lies between us and Britain. A solution will be found some time. The British Government can and are in a position to promote that solution. The nation that is strong, that acts with justice of its own volition towards its weaker neighbours will be applauded by world opinion.
