Intervening in Ulster

There is something about Ireland that makes politicians, particularly Americans, take leave of their senses. Usually the results of these flights of fancy are harmless or merely vulgar. Occasionally they are mischievous and, potentially, dangerous.

Such is the case with the California Legislature’s ill-considered passage of a bill that would compel the state’s public employee and teachers’ pension funds to ensure that the companies in which they invest conform to the so-called MacBride Principles when doing business in Northern Ireland. All that stands between this irresponsible and pointless gesture and the statute books is the veto we believe Gov. George Deukmejian should exercise.

The measure at issue, AB 2443, was introduced by Democratic Assemblyman John Burton of San Francisco. If signed, it would force the two retirement funds to report yearly on what the companies in which they invest had done “toward the achievement” of the nine points in the MacBride program.

That program takes its name from one of its authors, the late Irish statesman and jurist, Sean MacBride, a Nobel Laureate, co-founder of Amnesty International and one-time chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army. Some of its principles are inarguably anti-discriminatory, others--including those that seem to demand quotas--are illegal under British law, while at least one--a requirement that employers be responsible for their workers’ security as they travel to and from their jobs--is patently silly.

For those reasons, none of the 25 U.S. firms operating in North Ireland has agreed to sign the MacBride Principles, which are opposed not only by the governments of Great Britain and the United States, but also by the Social Democratic and Labor Party to which the majority of Ulster’s Catholics belong. Unlike the promoters of the Burton bill, they understand that the American companies, which provide 11% of all Ulster’s manufacturing jobs, are regarded as the province’s leaders in ensuring equal opportunity.

They also know that the burden of living up to the unworkable MacBride guidelines could deter the job-creating foreign investment desperately needed in Northern Ireland, where unemployment is more than 15%, and Catholic men are more than twice as likely as Protestants to be jobless. Perhaps most important, they know that the British government already has enacted a strict new equal-opportunity law. The new statute was drafted in consultation with the SDLP and the Irish government, and its implementation is to be monitored by both Dublin and London under the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

In Ulster itself, the only organized support for the MacBride Principles comes from Sinn Fein, the political voice of the murderously anti-democratic IRA. That is sort of company in which California will find itself unless Gov. Deukmejian vetoes Burton’s AB 2443.