Vol. 14 No. 4 · 27 February 1992
pages 13-14 | 3840 words
Talking about Northern Ireland
Tom Wilson
- All in a Life by Garret FitzGerald
Macmillan, 674 pp, £25.00, October 1991, ISBN 0 333 47034 6
It has often been said that the Irish tragedy can be ended only by political means. In this political autobiography, Dr Garret FitzGerald gives a fascinating account of his own attempts to contribute to this end. It was a role for which he seemed better-equipped than any other party leader in the Republic. His political lineage as a nationalist was impeccable: both his parents had been engaged in the struggle for national independence. When British rule came to an end and civil war broke out within the Irish Free State, his father took the side of the new government, in which he subsequently became Foreign Minister. Through his mother, an Ulster Presbyterian by origin, he also acquired contacts in the North quite unusual among Dublin politicians. To the experience of growing up in a distinguished political and literary family, he could add his own experience as an administrator and an academic.
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Letters
Vol. 14 No. 6 · 26 March 1992
From P.R. Bonnett
I spent nine years in Ulster, working for HMG, and Tom Wilson says everything I’ve thought and felt about the political situation there (LRB, 27 February). Although I’m a paid-up subscriber to the LRB, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Tory. Knowing the LRB’s leftist leanings, I hadn’t expected to see the Unionist case in Northern Ireland so well and fairly put. But I oughtn’t to have been surprised because I like to think that when the chips are down the LRB puts truth and realism first.
P.R. Bonnett
Norfolk
Vol. 14 No. 7 · 9 April 1992
From Tom Wilson
May I be allowed to correct an error of fact in Dr Garret FitzGerald’s interesting reply (LRB, 12 March) to my review of his memoirs? He says that he made no mention of the intensification of IRA violence at the time of the power-sharing experiment ‘because it did not happen’. He has now apparently forgotten the upsurge of terrorism which began in March 1974. The annual average statistics on which he relies do not bring out the importance of this bombing campaign, which came at a critical time for power-sharing. It is important to set the record straight, because these events help to explain the public disillusionment with the new constitution, as well as illustrating the way in which the IRA responds to ‘peace initiatives’.
Belfast, Bangor, Lisburn and Armagh were bombed. In Belfast, one of the main streets was devastated by a 500 lb bomb, and subsequently a series of bombs and hoaxes closed all the main roads into the city. Brian Faulkner recorded these events in his Memoirs of a Statesman, and recorded also the public indignation at ‘government weakness’.
May I add that Dr FitzGerald’s references to me as a ‘Unionist’ may convey the impression that I am presenting the views of a Unionist Party? I have no authority to do so. For my own part, I am a ‘unionist’ only in the sense that, if I lived in Northern Ireland, I would not wish to exchange membership of the UK for membership of the Republic of Ireland. This was also the attitude of the old Northern Ireland Labour Party and is that of the liberal non-sectarian Alliance Party. It is a view that seems to be shared by a large majority in the province.
Tom Wilson
Bristol
