Subtle negotiations in testing times


Crisis of Confidence: Anglo-Irish relations in the early Troubles


1966-1974 Anthony Craig


IRISH ACADEMIC PRESS, 214PP, £19.95 Tablet Bookshop price £18


his well-researched and timely study comes just after Lord Saville’s report. Its hero is William Whitelaw, who was Northern Ireland Secretary under Edward Heath. After Bloody Sunday on 30 January 1972, Heath prorogued the Stormont Parliament and substituted direct rule. Senior civil servants invigilated a famous meeting, in early July 1972, at the Cheyne Walk, London, home of junior minister Paul Channon between Whitelaw and Gerry Adams, recently released from internment. Adams demanded an immediate British withdrawal: the author comments, “by asking for everything in return for nothing, the negotiations were doomed to failure”. Car bombs in Belfast and Claudy later that month killed 18


T


people, including children, and the IRA lost much of the support it had won after Bloody Sunday. Whitelaw instantly launched Operation


Motorman, using 22,000 troops and tanks “to make the point that the state would no longer tolerate ‘Free Derry’ and the other no-go areas”. Whitelaw, a one-time tank commander, reckoned that the IRA would stand aside. He was right. Heath had


Glass half full


The Rational Optimist: how prosperity evolves Matt Ridley


FOURTH ESTATE, 438PP, £20 Tablet Bookshop price £18


att Ridley has a big reputation as a geneticist and has written five acclaimed books including a life of Francis Crick. He now embarks on a wider ocean, covering the future of the human race and which options it should choose in order to increase material prosperity. His erudition is enormous, and on almost every page there are fascinating details on topics including the exchange of ideas; the ups and downs of empires and civilisations over the whole of recorded time, and beyond; and the best solutions for starvation among the world’s poorest people.


M 01420 592974 He begins with the cross-fertilisation of


scientific discoveries, a process which, in his breezy, eye-catching way, he describes as “when ideas have sex”. Optimistically, he believes that “the world will escape from its present crisis because of the way markets in goods and services allow the exchange of ideas for the betterment of all.” All this comes pouring out with great fluency, attractive wit and a wide command of a vast range of material. The Chinese, for example, by the year 1100 had mastered silk, tea, porcelain, paper and printing, “not to mention the compass and gunpowder”. But under the Ming dynasty “ambitious elites captured an increasing share of society’s income by interfering more and more in people’s lives”, until they suffocated and killed the goose that had been laying all those eggs, with “government agencies pursuing the inflation of their budgets rather than the services of their customers”. Does this not ring with a powerful echo? But how is “rational optimism” going to prevent it from happening again, if it has not done so already? On the energy crisis he is clear: oil, coal and gas will last for years, perhaps decades, he says, and before they run out, scientists will discover alternatives. Yet wind turbines require more concrete and steel than nuclear power plants: just one wind


32 | THE TABLET | 18 September 2010 01420 592974


forewarned the Irish Premier, Jack Lynch, who was anti-IRA and approved of the action: “1972 witnessed the end of large demonstrations of tribal might by Catholics in Northern Ireland”. Whitelaw’s subtle working with the Dublin Government was best shown when British Intelligence discovered that IRA weapons from Libya were to be landed in Ireland. This information resulted in the widely publicised capture by the small Irish navy of the arms ship Claudia. Dublin kept quiet, and retained British confidence. Facing the prospect of lethal intimidation of jurors, Whitelaw introduced the Diplock (non-jury) courts. He persuaded the nationalists to move towards power-sharing with the Unionists, but in December 1973 Heath made him Employment Secretary to deal with the striking miners. In the summer of 1974, extreme Unionists shattered power-sharing, for the time being, but by this time Heath had lost the election and Harold Wilson had taken over. Dr Craig’s excellent account, founded on a huge bibliography, proves that the Sunningdale Conference of December 1973, with Heath presiding, was “the culmination of the resurgence of relations between Britain and Ireland begun in late 1972”. Florence O’Donoghue


farm in California kills 24 golden eagles a year. “If an oil company did that,” he writes, “it would be in court at once.” Ridley advances, like some busy


Too often he seems to regard material progress as the be-all and end-all and


ignores the limitations of rationalism


dragonfly, from one striking detail to the next, without creating any reliable picture of what the future will in fact consist of, nor of what banana skins will lie in our paths. From a jungle of statistics and historical facts, he extracts samples to support his case. But sometimes he seems to be saying, “This is what will happen because this is what I would like.” The basis of his optimism, seems a little flimsy, and on spiritual matters he is shaky. For example, Christianity did not “need the Roman Empire in which to flourish and become powerful”. Too often, he


seems to regard material progress as the be-all and end-all and ignores the limitations of rationalism. This makes for an ultimately shallow approach, in spite of the wealth of scientific and historical detail. But as far as it goes, and when sticking to material progress, the whole thing is elegantly written and cheerfully readable. For an antidote, which is philosophically and spiritually more profound, read Roger Scruton’s perceptive treatise on The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope (Atlantic Books, 240pp, £15.99.) John Jolliffe


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