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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 13, 1985
PAGE 9
one designed to arouse the maximum Protestant outrage••••
Inherent in this new agreement, therefore, are developnents
which Mrs. Thatcher and her colleagues must know will, sooner
or later, provoke Protestant resistance, in all probability
violent resistance.
A decade or so ago such a probability would have been enough to
deter any British government from embarking on such a policy,
since the idea of having to suppress a Protestant rebellion
would have been quite unthinkable, particularly to good Tories.
It is no longer unthinkable•••• As for the keepers of Britain's
liberal conscience, who in the past have always started to get
uneasy whenever tough measures--internment, say--are used
against the IRA, that high-principled lot would cause no
trouble at all so long as any proposed breaches of civil rights
applied on ly to the hated Paisleyite reactionaries (followers
of Protestant leader and minister Ian Paisley}.
Nor would there be a squeak of protest from the United States
if the British Army were to get rough with the Protestants.
Quite the opposite:
Mrs. Thatcher would be acclaimed from
coast to coast, much more universally than she was when she
sent in crack troops to deal with General Galtieri [of
Argentina in the Falklands war}••••
Britain might have no choice but to get out. Aga�n, a decade
ago such a denouement--scuttle, in plain English--would have
seemed inconceivable, too humiliating for words.
Today, at
home and abroad, it would be eulogised as an act of
statesmanship, as was de Gaulle's ex trication of France from
Algeria•••• .f2!. Ulster is no longer felt .QI most British people
to be � integral part or the United Kingdom, loss of which
would be a fatal deprivation.
In the March 19, 1982, •pastor General's Report,• we printed excerpts
from an article in the December, 1981, HARPER'S MAGAZINE by Conor Cruise
O'Brien.
Mr. O'Brien, a former Irish and
u.
N. diplomat and then (and
now) British journalist, warned of dire consequences in Northern Ireland
should the Ulster Protestants feel betrayed by the government in London.
An
ultimate British pullout would in fact lead, he said, to a Protestant
declaration of independence and a bloody civil war leading to the
dissolution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Mr. O'Brien continues to warn of such future developnents, as he reported
in a column he wrote in the Nov. 26 TIMES of London:
I think I understand how the government of the Republic [of
Ireland ] got into this ill-omened agreement:••• 'l.be motivation
of [Irish Prime Minister] Garret FitzGerald's government is
honourable.... He has shown courage and altruism of an
exceptionally high order, but I wish he had shown a bit more
sense.... The Dublin government has no experience of governing
Northern Ireland, and its illusions are relatively pardonable.
But what about the UK government, which does have suc h
experience, and which ought not to have such illusions?•••