THERE'S nothing like a permanent and pensionable job.
Queen Elizabeth's occupation certainly fulfils the first of those qualifications, but there is no sign at time of writing that she is going out on pension. One wonders if there is a Monarchs and Sovereigns Trade Union (MSTU) somewhere, to advise her in this regard.
Seventy years is a long time in any position, especially when it involves meeting such a wide range of individuals or groups and being generally nice to them. In her time, she has interacted with no fewer than 14 British prime ministers, starting off with Winston Churchill who was said to be one of her favourites and including Labour's Harold Wilson, with whom she also had a very good rapport.
Wilson, who died in 1995 aged 79 years, was head of government initially from 1964 to 1970, when he lost an election but returned to Number 10 Downing Street for two years on March 4, 1974. Two months afterwards, the general strike organised by the Ulster Workers' Council brought down the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive established under the Sunningdale Agreement.
Three decades later it emerged that there had been a secret plan, mainly devised by Wilson and codenamed "Doomsday", to sever all constitutional links between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. The plan was shelved at the urging of Foreign Secretary James Callaghan and after an admission by the Irish government that it did not have the military capability to cope with the resulting violence between the two main northern communities.
A friend recently sent me a copy of a letter, now in the public domain, from an official in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office to a colleague in the Cabinet Office, dated April 26, 1974, which was almost three weeks before the UWC strike began. Two draft memos are attached, on the political, legal and other implications of withdrawal. One of them suggests there could be ensuing violence and poses the question as to whether this would be "a few years of transitory trouble (as followed French withdrawal from Algeria) or an infectious focus of violence in Ireland for the rest of the century". The second memo stresses that the implications of withdrawal would depend on whether it was unilateral or negotiated and, if it was the latter, would the negotiations be focused on an independent six-county state or a united Ireland?
The point is that, 48 years ago, the question of withdrawal from the north, resulting in either an "Ulster Dominion" or a 32-county republic, was given serious and careful consideration at the highest level of British administration. In the current situation, where Sinn Féin is the largest party in the Stormont Assembly and dominating the opinion polls in the south, unity is again becoming a major issue, with a border poll in the next five or ten years a serious possibility, although there is a lot of preparatory work to be done.
Winning over middle-ground, currently-undecided or at least non-dogmatic voters will be crucial and they will want to have the practicalities spelt out in considerable detail. What would happen in terms of health, education, social welfare . . . the list goes on. There would also need to be generous acknowledgement of a British dimension, e.g., by some form of association with the Commonwealth, which the south officially departed from in 1949 -- although it wasn't altogether a clean break and certain links in economic and defence terms were retained for many years. Timing is important and the groundwork would have to be carried out very comprehensively in advance. If the unity case was rejected there couldn't be another vote for seven years and the atmosphere, as that reality was sinking in, could be quite dispiriting and even generate a dissident republican revival.
In general terms, there isn't much evidence of major sentimental attachment by the British towards Northern Ireland or any overwhelming desire to retain the place as part of the UK. This is confirmed by the fact that, under the terms of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, London agreed to let the north merge with the south as an independent state, if that is the wish of a majority on each side of the border. Some people wrongly insert a comma after the word "selfish" in the following quote, but the words of then-Secretary of State Peter Brooke were still significant when he said, on November 9, 1990, that "the British Government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland".
Email: Ddebre1@aol.com; Twitter: @DdeBreadun
