jmm@bonnie.UUCP (Joe Mcghee) (12/11/84)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The next article appeared in the November 25, 1984 issue of the New York Times. IRA Seen Gaining London Shuns Proposals On Ireland, Sets Off a Storm - By Jo Thomas - Belfast, Northern Ireland - The Republic of Ireland, born in violence and delivered by the same Irish Republican Army it now opposes, has always laid territorial claim to Northern Ireland and has fixed this claim in its Constitution. It was thus seen as a significant concession last spring when nationalist parties of the North and South said in the report of the New Ireland Forum that, to bring peace to the province where more than 2400 people have died in political violence since 1969, they might settle for something less than a united Ireland. But last week, in language that Irish Prime Minister reportedly called "gratutitously offensive", British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher flatly ruled out all their proposals: "I have made it clear that a unified Ireland is was one solution that is out. A second solution was a confederation of two states. That is out. A third solution was joint authority. That is out - that is a derogation of sovereignty." Mrs. Thatcher's Northern Ireland Secretary, Douglas Hurd, later reiterated that Britain was not prepared to the Dublin Government an executive role in Northern Ireland. Editorial writers in Dublin were indignant. Said The Irish Times: "So this is the new British initiative: first, Mrs. Thatcher's 'out...out...out' foray, then Mr. Hurd's laying down on Irish soil, for the Government of the Republic, the limits of interest it is to be permitted to take in the affairs of Northern Ireland". The newspaper added, "It seems that the North is now back to about the year 1926." Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Hurd added to the furor by challanging the Irish Government's belief that a growing sense of alienation among Northern Ireland's 500,000 Catholics has increased the danger there. "Well," Mrs. Thatcher said in a televised press conference seen all over Ireland, "this word 'alienation' has come in somehow in the last year, and I'm bound to say that, as far as my information is concerned, one could not find alienation." Some British officials sought to write this off as Mrs. Thatcher's distaste for psychoanalysis in politics, but Mr. Hurd underscored her observation. Reports of alienation in the minority community had been exaggerated, he suggested, and alienation was a self-fulfilling analysis. "Where is Mr. Hurd?" asked John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party and generally regarded as as a spokesman for moderates in the province. "If he wants to find out about alienation, let him come to visit me in my home," Mr. Hume said in a BBC radio broadcast. "Do you know what he will need to do that? He will need an army of tanks to bring him in there." Mr. Hume lives near the Bogside area of Londonderry, now renamed Derry by the City Council, which is controlled by his party. The police enter the Bogside only under army protection. Feelings run so high that onlookers recently knocked out the teeth and blackened the eye of an ambulance attendant sent to assist a British soldier severely injured by a booby trap bomb. Mr. Hume, whose party is competing with Sinn Fein - the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army - for the allegiance of northern nationalists, had staked much on the hope that the Forum's report would prompt a fresh approach. Now he and his party are trying to decide what grounds remain for them to stand on. "Smashed Eggs" "It could be seen as a great victory for the Provisionals, Dr. Joe Hendron, a Social Democratic Party leader, said. "We are disappointed by the arrogance of the Prime Minister and her apparent dismissal of the New Ireland Forum. The Forum report was the very deeply considered opinion of the nationalists on this island, north and south." "Anyone who goes to the negotiating table goes with options" said Joe Austin, Sinn Fein's Belfast chairman, noting that his party which contends that the British will only respond to force, had been excluded from the Forum. "They put all their eggs in one basket and the eggs are all smashed," he said. "I think Hume thought Thatcher would give something for nothing. She's backed her side. We would have liked to have seen a situation where she would have begun a process of re-examination," he continued. "She didn't, and it set everyone back." His conclusion: "There is no constitutional way forward." The Irish Prime Minister, Garret FitzGerald, was heatedly denounced by Charles Haughey, the opposition leader. "No agreement on political structures within Northern Ireland is even remotely likely," Mr. Haughey insisted. "The people of Northern Ireland are being callously condemned to more bloodshed, more violence, more misery indefinitely." He added, "You have led this country to the greatest humiliation in recent history. You have done grievous damage to our national political interest and our pride. History will record that it would have been better if your visit to Chequers (Mrs. Thatcher's official country residence had never taken place." British officials played down the rift, taking hope from the comments of Dick Spring, the Irish Deputy Prime Minister. "We must keep dialogue open," Mr. Spring said, "because obviously there is only one group that stands to gain from its absence - the IRA." clyde!bonnie!jmm J. M. McGhee