Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [237]
My own instincts are profoundly Unionist. There is therefore something of a paradox in that my relations with the Unionist politicians were so uncomfortable most of the time. Airey Neave and I felt the greatest sympathy with the Unionists while we were in Opposition. I knew that these people shared many of my own attitudes, derived from my staunchly Methodist background. Their warmth was as genuine as it was usually undemonstrative. Their patriotism was real and fervent, even if too narrow. They had often been taken too much for granted. From my visits to Northern Ireland, often after terrible tragedies, I came to have the greatest admiration in particular for the way in which the little rural Protestant communities would come together, looking after one another, after some terrible loss. But, then, any Conservative should in his bones be a Unionist too. Our Party has always, throughout its history, been committed to the defence of the Union: indeed on the eve of the First World War the Conservatives were not far short of provoking civil disorder to support it. That is why I could never understand why leading Unionists…apparently sincerely…suggested that in my dealings with the South and above all in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which I shall discuss shortly, I was contemplating selling them out to the Republic.
But what British politician will ever fully understand Northern Ireland? I suspect that even the most passionate English supporters of Ulster do so less than they imagine. Certainly, time and again I found that apparently innocuous words and phrases had a special significance in the overheated political world of Ulster…indeed the mere use of that term to describe the province is an example, allegedly denoting a ‘Protestant’ bias. In the history of Ireland…both North and South…which I tried to read up when I could, especially in my early years of office, reality and myth from the seventeenth century to the 1920s take on an almost Balkan immediacy. Distrust mounting to hatred and revenge is never far beneath the political surface. And those who step onto it must do so gingerly.
I started from the need for greater security, which was imperative. If this meant making limited political concessions to the South, much as I disliked this kind of bargaining I had to contemplate it. But the results in terms of security must come through. In Northern Ireland itself my first choice would have been a system of majority rule…devolved government on the same lines as Westminster, and subject to its supremacy…with strong guarantees for the human rights of the minority, and indeed everyone else. That is broadly the approach which Airey and I had in mind when the 1979 manifesto was drafted. But it was not long before it became clear to me that this model was not going to work, at least for the present. The nationalist minority were not prepared to believe that majority rule would secure their rights…whether it took the form of an assembly in Belfast, or more powerful local government. They insisted on some kind of ‘power sharing’…that in some way both sides should participate in the executive function…as well as demanding a role for the Republic in Northern Ireland, both of which proposals were anathema to the Unionists.
I had always had a good deal of respect for the old Stormont system.* When I was Education Secretary I was impressed by the efficiency of the Northern Ireland education service. The province has kept its grammar schools and so has consistently achieved some of the best academic results in the United Kingdom. But majority rule meant permanent power for the Protestants, and there was no getting away from the fact that, with some justice, the long years of Unionist rule were associated with discrimination against the Catholics. I believe the defects were exaggerated, but Catholic resentment gave rise to the civil rights movement at the end of the 1960s, which the IRA was able to exploit.