Haughey's Strategy

Mary Holland examines the behaviour of the Fianna Fail leader in the Forum for a New Ireland.

What is Charles J. Haughey up to at the New Ireland Forum?

Some people who have attended the private sessions fear that he sees it less as an instrument for promoting Irish unity, than for spreading egg all over the face of Garret FitzGerald. Position papers prepared by the Forum's fulltime secretariat have been dismissed by the Fianna Fail leader as irrelevant. Meanwhile, members of his party have taken up a considerable amount of time at the Forum's private meetings raising questions about the Irish language and the position of the GAA in a United Ireland.

Haughey's own views were made quite clear in his opening speech to the Forum on May 30. Or were they? Inevitably, the media concentrated on his "Brits Out" message which so dismayed the Government. But having staked out his green credentials, the Fianna Fail leader went on to consider the importance of continuing British citizenship for Northerners who desired it, the possibility of a future defence pact with Britain, and of power-sharing arrangements in the island of Ireland as a whole.

It is too simple to say, as has been suggested elsewhere, that Haughey is out to wreck the Forum, or to run it

into the ground by a process of attrition. He agreed with John Hume's suggestion when it was first mooted and endorsed it at the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis in February. He went along with FitzGerald's invitation to take part for very good reasons: to honour his commitment to help the SDLP in the British general election, and to have a Fianna Fail input into any document which the British might accept as representing the Irish Nationalist position on the North.

While the general election is now history the need to maintain the SDLP's credibility as the constitutional representatives of the Northern Catholic minority remains as pressing as ever. So does the desirability of ensuring that Fianna Fail's position is written officially into any report that the Forum eventually produces.

There are major differences between Fianna Fail and the other parties taking part in the discussions at Dublin Castle and these will be evident when the Report is written. More immediately there are difficulties over the time scale in which the Forum should operate. The parliamentary representatives had been meeting on a regular basis until the end of July and will reconvene in early September. It is hoped that the first session after the break will be open to the public and that the Forum will be hearing evidence about the economy from an eminent Northerner.

The secretariat continues through August, collating written documents, arranging for people to give oral evidence and so on. What was described to me as "an encouraging number" of written submissions have been received from the North including about fifty from what we must call Northern Protestants, though the Forum itself would probably describe them as "representatives of the Northern majority tradition". Inevitably, most of these have come from the ranks of a familiar bank of wouldbe peacemakers, but they have been toughminded in emphasising the central problem which not even Mr Haughey dismisses as irrelevant i.e. that these people see themselves as British and want to stay that way. The issue of Church/State relations and a marked scepticism about the performance of the Republic's economy have also figured. For this reason Northern industrialists have been invited to give evidence when the Forum reconvenes, and there are even hopes that the odd Unionist politician may be coaxed down to The Castle.

All this raises the question as to when the Forum will be ready to start drawing up its report. Both FitzGerald and Hume are keenly aware that James Prior is impatient to try and get politics moving again in the North, now that the British election is out of the way and he seems set to remain in Belfast for at least another year. He wants to save his Assembly and is already thinking about ways to persuade the SDLP to think, once again, about participating in it. He knows that this will only be possible if he can work out some kind of deal acceptable to the Irish government. Since the British election Prior has been pushing his own government to repair Anglo-Irish relations and it was London who wanted a summit meeting between the two prime ministers to take place as early as possible.

From Prior's point of view it would be all to the good if the Forum's report was on the table before the Taoiseach meets Mrs Thatcher, probably in November. While this seems to be out of the question it does contribute to the sense of urgency which both the Government and the SDLP feel about the Forum's deliberations. They, too, would like to see the Irish position on future options for the North put on the public record before the British yield to the temptation to float another set of proposals for modifying the present Belfast assembly.

Haughey does not agree with this need for haste. He has no interest in helping to save Prior's assembly in any shape or form, since he has already made it quite clear that he is fundamentally opposed to having any internal political structures for the North. This is an issue which he has said, again and again, should be resolved by negotiations between the sovereign governments in Dublin and London. Nor, come to that, does he see any great attraction in rushing to draw up a report which will strengthen FitzGerald's hand in dealing with Mrs Thatcher. Hence the delaying tactics of Fianna Fail. It does now seem that if there is to be any hope of the Forum meeting the optimistic deadline of reporting by the end of this year set by the Taoiseach, it will be up to John Hume to convince Haughey that this is a desirable objective.

It is now fairly generally accepted that the Forum is unlikely to come up with any single united strategy as to the political route that should be pursued to reach the New Ireland. What its supporters are still optimistic about is that an agreed report will at least layout the obstacles to Irish unity and suggest a number of possible political options, ranging from a unitary state, as advocated by Fianna Fail to joint sovereignty over Northern Ireland .