Britain's dark hope in Northern Ireland

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): For the past two months the signs of hope for Northern Ireland have been coming thick and fast. But it is probably a false dawn.

First Tony Blair won the British election, and more or less promised the Irish Republican Army (IRA) that its political front, Sinn Fein, could rejoin talks on the British-ruled province's future as soon as it declared a new ceasefire.

Then Nelson Mandela flew senior Northern Irish politicians from both the Protestant and Catholic communities to South Africa for a meeting that was effectively a training session on how South Africans achieved a non-violent deal on their country's future.

The Unionist (Protestant) delegation would not meet, eat or sleep under the same roof as Sinn Fein, so it was in practice two separate conferences, but Mandela put a brave face on it. "What is significant," he said, "is that they are here. That alone is a sign that they are serious in searching for peace."

Now the Republic of Ireland has also elected a new government, and Prime Minister-elect Bertie Ahern believes that "the possibilities of moving forward are tremendous." As the traditional voice of pan-Irish Catholic nationalism, Ahern's Fianna Fail party has some sympathy for the IRA, and Ahern plans to meet Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams this week.

But all this hopeful talk is based on the fallacy that governments in London and Dublin (and even in the United States, where President Clinton is issuing his usual optimistic forecasts), can somehow affect the course of events in Northern Ireland. They cannot. Northern Ireland is a place apart, with its own logic.

The most significant recent event in Northern Ireland was a murder. Unlike most of the 3,500 killings in Northern Ireland since the 'troubles' began 30 years ago, this was no attack by Catholics on Protestants or vice versa. It was a sign that the province may actually be nearing the brink of what the locals call 'Armageddon'.

The victim was an off-duty policeman, a Protestant like 93 percent of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who met a colleague for a drink in a pub frequented by fellow Protestants in the town of Ballymoney. An argument erupted about the police role in stopping Protestants from 'marching' in the nearby Catholic village of Dunloy the previous week -- and outside the pub Constable Gregory Taylor was kicked to death by a crowd of his own people.

They finished him off by stamping on his head.

Protestants didn't used to kill members of the RUC, which they saw as 'their' police force, but many of them are now so frightened of the future that all the rules have changed. Northern Ireland went to the edge of civil war at the peak of the 'marching season' last July. This July, it may cross that line.

The apparent immutability of the Northern Irish 'problem' for over a quarter-century was based on the fact that two-thirds of the province's population was Protestant and would always vote to maintain the union with Britain. That fact is ceasing to be true, and the result is Protestant panic.

When London suspended local self-rule and sent in the troops in 1969 to curb the Protestant majority's oppression of and attacks on the Catholic minority, Protestants accepted this curbing of their power because they still felt fundamentally secure.

Then the IRA exploited the presence of British troops to whip up Catholic nationalism and resume its armed struggle for a united Ireland, and the province settled into the grim routine of a hundred or so terrorist-linked deaths a year. But 'Armageddon' -- all-out civil war -- still seemed a long way off.

Now, at last, the higher Catholic birth-rate is starting to tell. Catholics are no longer a third of the population, but 43 percent. Outside greater Belfast, they are an overall majority -- and in the western half of the province, 75 percent of the children are Catholics. This is already having electoral consequences.

In 1983, only two of Northern Ireland's 17 MPs in London were aligned with Sinn Fein. Today, five of 18 are. The Unionists have even lost control of Belfast city council. Hard-line Protestants see their voting power draining away, and so they become more rigid, more defensive, more desperate. That's why the 'marching season' has become such a flashpoint.

Protestants have traditionally held marches during the summer months, mostly under the banners of the Loyal Orange Order, to celebrate the Protestant victory in the siege of Londonderry in 1689. As streets and whole villages have shifted from Protestant to Catholic, the routes often take the marches through Catholic areas that are offended and frightened by them. But Protestants who secretly fear they are losing everything have a 'not one inch' mentality.

In last July's high-profile confrontation at Drumcree, the RUC and the British army first forbade the Protestants to march through certain Catholic streets, and then suddenly gave in. The reason was this: the Protestant paramilitaries mounted heavy machine-guns on armored bulldozers, and told the police they would be sent in if the march did not proceed. The authorities replied that they would shoot, and dozens of Loyalists, police, and British soldiers would be killed. The Loyalists said: so be it.

So the authorities caved in, because the alternative would have been a massacre that could have triggered civil war right across the province. Next month, when the Protestants plan to march through Drumcree again, that decision will have to be taken again -- and it will be just as hard this time, because all of Britain's old leverage over the Protestants is gone or much diminished.

A British pull-out, ethnic cleansing in mixed areas, and re- partition of Northern Ireland on lines that create a defensible Protestant majority are no longer prospects that deter everybody in the Protestant paramilitaries. For many, they are an imaginable, even palatable alternative to the slow erosion that the future otherwise holds in store for Ulster Protestants.

Maybe, like South Africans, the Northern Irish will turn back at the edge of the abyss. But don't bet on it until after Drumcree.