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Northern Ireland’s ’68. Simon Prince
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isbn 9781788550383
Автор произведения Simon Prince
Издательство Ingram
Nationalists, however, could only follow the Social Democrats part way along this road. Social Democrats could win West German voters away from the Christian Democrats; Nationalists could not win Protestant voters away from the Unionists. Each election in Northern Ireland was effectively two parallel elections. Nationalists campaigned to increase their share of the Catholic vote while Unionists campaigned to increase their share of the Protestant vote. Nationalists needed to adapt to the post-war era not to defeat the Unionists, but to remain the political leaders of the Catholic community.
During the same year that West German socialists recognised the new political realities, similar voices were heard within Northern Ireland’s Catholic community. Michael McKeown wrote a Hibernia article in 1959 suggesting that ‘nationally-minded people’ should organise themselves into a more professional and pragmatic political party. They then ‘might hope to secure some reforms within the Northern system’. Among those intrigued by what McKeown called this ‘appallingly ingenuous’ appeal was James Scott, a lecturer at Queen’s University. As a convert, Scott understood Catholicism and Irish nationalism differently from people ‘nurtured in those cradles’. He felt that Northern Catholics needed to get involved in public life as a first step towards persuading Protestants that their future lay with a united Ireland. Scott’s house became the meeting place for a wide array of politically active individuals. This circle developed into National Unity, which can probably be best described as a part-time Irish nationalist think-tank.52 The Special Branch investigation into the new organisation highlighted National Unity’s commitment to achieving unity through consent, to co-operating with ‘all elected representatives of the National people’, to reassuring Protestants, and to non-violent methods. The RUC concluded that ‘there would not appear to be anything of a subversive nature attached to it’.53
From a Nationalist perspective, however, the group was subversive. Scott attempted to reassure McAteer that it merely wished to serve ‘as a link between all people who believe in a united Ireland’. But the Nationalist MP paid rather more attention to National Unity’s attacks on his party made at a meeting in Derry and its move into electoral politics.54 Fears that the group intended to assume the political leadership of the minority community were to reach their peak in April 1964. National Unity invited all Catholic politicians and other interested parties to a convention in Maghery to discuss forming an umbrella body to co-ordinate future political activity. The result was the National Political Front. A spokesman for the independent candidates in the Dungannon local elections described it as the ‘something new’ that was ‘needed’ to take the ‘place’ of the ‘dying’ Nationalist Party.55 McAteer was therefore not too disappointed when splits – a familiar problem for Irish nationalist organisations – led to the Front’s rapid demise.56 He told the press that Nationalist MPs had ‘found it impossible to abdicate our position as elected representatives in favour of people who have no claim to representation whatsoever’.57
McAteer was undermining attempts to unite all the ‘nationally- minded people’ and to build democratic structures, yet he had previously pushed for such changes. This apparent contradiction between the progressive and the reactionary can be resolved. McAteer had to fill the conflicting roles of statesman, de facto party leader, and local party boss. He generally pursued the policies that he felt were in the best interests of Northern Catholics. But McAteer occasionally had to make tactical deviations to protect the party against potential rivals and to defend his Derry fastness. However, he was also able to exploit the challenge posed by the National Unity critique to help justify change to the old guard.
The decision to embark upon a major shift in strategy was finally taken during mid-1962. The timing was influenced by a combination of international, national, and local developments: the Second Vatican Council, London and Dublin’s joint application for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), the formal end of the IRA’s failed campaign, and Nationalist successes in the Stormont election. Doherty later recalled that Nationalists felt that this would be an opportune moment to offer the Unionists the ‘hand of friend- ship’ in the hope of winning concessions – to adopt a policy of normalisation.58 Senator James Lennon explained the party’s position at a rally staged in Omagh by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Orange Order’s Catholic counterpart: ‘faced with the present terrible unemployment conditions in this area and the unknown consequences of the advent of the Common Market we owe it to our country as a whole to make every effort within the framework of our National aspirations to find … solutions’.59
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