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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 19, 1982
PAGE 22
Ulster has known since the seventeenth century. A crisis of that
order does not calm passions, 1t inflames them. In Northern
Ireland, they are already inflamed.
A condition of incipient
civil war between Catholics and Protestants exists: the materials
for full-scale war are piled high in Belfast and elsewhere.
British withdrawal would ignite them••••If Britain withdraws,
each community will look to its own defense.•.•
Mr. O'Brien is not without personal experience in matters similar to this.
At various times, during actual or incipient civil war situations, he has
been in the Congo, in Nigeria, on the Bangladesh-Indian border and in
Lebanon. He adds:
I know the smell and the r1s1ng dementia of it. And every time I
travel in Northern Ireland I get a whiff of that smell, now grow
ing stronger.
I have no doubt that British withdrawal would
bring on the real thing in full force. You may think that the
kind of horrors that happened in those African and Asian coun
tries could not happen in Ireland. If so, you must be forgetting
what has already happened in Ireland, inside both communities:
the bloodthirsty armed fanatics are already there. If they are
let loose on both sides, without any outside restraint, we shall
have our Lebanon.
�
O'Brien then goes on to predict that under "UDI" conditions, Protestant
paramilitary forces and militia units would quickly secure the new state
and go hunting for IRA gunmen in Catholic areas. Also, he predicts many,
perhaps 250,000 of Northern Ireland's approximately half-million Catholics,
would flee south as refugees into Eire: perhaps a new border would be drawn
up separating a smaller, homogeneous Protestant Northern Ireland from the
Republic.
O'Brien insists that the foregoing scenario isn't only his own "private
nightmare," but is one shared by others, including one former prime minis
ter of the Irish Republic, himself an ardent exponent of unity.
When British Depart, It Will Be Fast, As In Palestine
Mr. O'Brien then has a few closing words for the Irish-American politic
ians. They are mistakenly pressuring Britain, he said, to come up with some
sort of a miracle "formula" to unite Ireland, after which it could withdraw
in an orderly fashion. What they refuse to see, admonishes O'Brien,
is that no agreed political solution is available, since the
parties are in radical {and increasing) disagreement. The Brit
ish can't deliver a united Ireland or "an agreed Ireland" and
then get out. It would be nice, I agree, but they can't. What
they can do is just plain get out•••. And make no mistake; if they
do decide to .9_!2, they will .9_!2 quickly: "2recipitately,"1f you
prefer. They are not about to say they are going, and then hang
around to take••. the blame for the consequences•••. The gap bet
ween the moment they decide to go and their actual departure will
be very narrow. As in the case of Palestine [ which precipitated
the 1948 Israeli-Arab
war
,-wh1ch broke out the day after the
British withdrew].