The Season of Hope Is Dark This Year for Ireland--North and South

Until the yuppies pushed it across town, there was a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District called Ireland’s 32, an Irish-American watering hole where middle-aged couples would two-step to an accordion and listen to songs about the “bloody Black and Tans” and “the thundering rum-ta-tum of a Sten gun.”

You could sit and drink Guinness and if you felt so inclined--as plenty of patrons did--donate a dollar or two to Noraid, the U.S. fund-raising arm of the Provisional IRA. Even the bar’s name was loaded with political meaning, the 32 standing for the 32 counties of the vanished united Ireland. (The Republic has just 26, the other six constituting Northern Ireland.)

About a 15-minute walk from St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, there is another bar. It’s called the An Bheal Bocht, which in Celtic means the “Poor Mouth,” reputedly one of the best places in the capital to hear traditional music. But you’ll wait in vain for the nostalgic and bloodthirsty songs favored by the immigrant Irish of Boston, New York and San Francisco. The struggling young musicians with their long hair and acoustical instruments have a different repertoire. And Ireland has a different agenda.

After nearly 70 years of waiting, praying and sometimes dying for the dream of a united Ireland, the real Irish--the people who can’t or won’t chuck it all and emigrate to America or Australia--have had enough.

In a country where a cook makes $65 a week and gasoline costs upwards of $3 a gallon, there are other priorities a lot closer to home than the troubles in Belfast.

That’s not to say that most Irish have forgiven the British for 800 years of colonial violence. They haven’t. But “It’s not our problem, thank God,” is a common tag line on conversations about the latest atrocity in the North.

With their country nearly broke and things in the North as tough as ever, the Irish elected last year the most nationalist prime minister Dublin has seen in decades. An accountant turned politician, Charles Haughey was arrested in 1970 for allegedly smuggling guns to the IRA. But Haughey promptly astonished everyone by embracing the Anglo-Irish agreement negotiated by his more conservative predecessor. Later he ordered the Irish army and police to search 50,000 homes in a nation of just 3 million after the interception of a boatload of Libyan weapons destined for the IRA.

The reason for Haughey’s political turnabout was well known. As head of a minority government, the prime minister faces the necessity of slashing the already lean budget, cutting essential services and adding more people to the dole. Jousting with the British over Northern Ireland is something he simply can’t afford.

Margaret Thatcher might have been expected to treat Haughey like an erstwhile ally. But she hasn’t. Thatcher has treated the Irish prime minister with a studied disdain bordering on contempt. She made a point of enraging an Irish citizenry that would rather ignore the Northern problem, thus missing a historic opportunity to bring peace to Ireland and Britain.

The opportunity to launch a peace initiative was ironically provided by the worst political blunder ever committed by the IRA. The Enniskillen bombing that killed 11 people last November was met by a general revulsion by the Irish in the Republic and Northern Catholics as well. When passions cooled there were peace feelers from leaders of one of Ulster’s leading Protestant political groups to Northern Catholics, and hints that Haughey might meet with Northern Protestants. It looked as if the tragedy might mark the beginning of the end to hooded terrorism.

But the Thatcher government chose to scuttle a potential turning point in the Irish conflict with a series of political miscalculations.

-- Thatcher pressed Haughey to implement an extradition agreement, and spurned an Irish request to end the British practice of trying suspects in Northern Ireland before one-judge tribunals known as Diplock Courts.

-- A review court dismissed the appeal of the Birmingham Six, who are serving a sentence for allegedly bombing a British pub.

-- A British shoot-to-kill policy by the Royal Ulster Constabulary was revealed in a best-selling book.

-- Three IRA unarmed suspects were gunned down by police in Gibraltar.

The Gibraltar shooting set off a horrifying resumption of sectarian violence. It was 1969 all over again. Any hope of an end to the Irish agony was buried as thousands of angry people lined the streets of Dundalk to watch the funeral procession of the martyred Provos.

A sense of inevitability set in again when a right-wing Protestant fanatic attacked the mourners with guns and grenades. A few days later, two British soldiers were dragged from their car and beaten to death by a mob seeking revenge. More recently, the death of British troops in the Netherlands signals the start of a new IRA offensive.

Spring in Belfast has turned bloody, and the awful irony is that it didn’t have to happen. If Thatcher had been willing to yield just a bit--if she had instructed her security forces to act with a modicum of sensitivity--the Gibraltar killings would not have happened and the ensuing violence would not have erupted. Had she been willing to meet Haughey half way and encourage the peace feelers put out by the Unionists, she might have been remembered as the British prime minister who at last embarked on the path to peace.

But the Iron Lady did not budge, and the marching season--when bigotry takes to the streets with banners and flags--will soon begin.