The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 16

THE GUARDIAN Thursday December 23 1993 16 COMMENT AND ANALYSIS How Major plans to take the Union out of the Union Jack Goodall, the chief British official behind the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, applies the eye of a practised draftsman to fudges and ambiguities which all seem loaded towards the Irish side. Northern Ireland's constitutional guarantee, Goodall points out, is affirmed less solidly by Dublin than by London. And the British make a much clearer promise to legislate for unity, if Ulster votes for it, than Dublin does to rewrite the constitution in order to allay Protestant fears, tn short, the longer it is inspected, the more one-sided this document appears, which prompts some cautionary reflections. First, it represents a strategy not everyone involved agreed with. As between a declaration-plus-ceasefire and a full political settlement which would then be presented, take it or leave it, to the terrorists, much influential opinion in both Dublin and London favoured the second course.

These observers worried about a process that involved what has now happened, namely semi-public negotiation with the IRA. They thought it would lead decessor hated to alienate. Not even his slender parliamentary majority seems to deter him, when weighed in the balance against the transforming effect on his reputation of any Irish He has put his name to words which inch their way to diluting, as never before, the assumptions on which the Union is built. He is prepared to re-cast the link between Britain and Northern Ireland in language which even a decade ago would have been unthinkable. Something else, however, has also changed.

The political context has allowed this to happen. The Union, never in recent times a terribly strong commitment among the mass of the mainland British, is a slowly waning feature of Britishncss. It no longer seems to be seen as an integral part of the British national identity. The costs of the struggle, and all the unreasoning stubbornness of the parties committed to it. have finally persuaded the British political class at large to welcome a deal that redefines the meaning of "Union" within narrower limits.

Though the veto rightly remains, that re-definition can't be undone, even if the deal fails and violence resumes: a fact in my view a welcome fact which ought to concentrate minds on every side. state, seems quite possibly designed to come about before Northern Ireland is given a formal opportunity to stop it. Third, the settlement that might follow this declaration-plus-ceasefire will necessarily have to counterbalance the bias it contains. If the Ulster Unionists are prepared to accept such a loaded document because it might achieve an interim, though perhaps only partial, end to violence, it can only be on the basis that Mr Major's personal pledges to them are stronger than the words of the document suggest. Mr Molyn-eaux must have been kept apprised not only of the evolving terms of the declaration but of its obscurer hinterland.

Unless Dublin, after securing these British concessions in order to put the IRA to the question, is prepared to strengthen its reassurances to unionists, there will be no durable outcome. Fourth, however, all sides should remember that they are dealing with a British prime minister who has a limited respect for history. How much history Mr Major knows is a matter of intermittent speculation. What is quite apparent is his unwillingness to submit to its primordial lessons over Ireland. Nor does he have the unionist friends whom his pre to trouble and perhaps failure, and they may yet prove to be right.

Ministers decided instead to bank on intelligence assessments, not always reliable, that the IRA are tiring of the struggle. They have therefore set out a stall that gives Dublin, if not every terrorist splinter-group, much of what they want by way of words. Second, the IRA, in its own ponderously long drawn-out deliberations, should not in any way undervalue this. For the terrorists, this is an agonising moment of truth. But almost the only thing the document doesn't give them is the promise of Irish unity.

It makes that utterly contingent on a cast-iron veto which Northern Ireland will continue to have. But as regards the language, London has gone as far as it can decently afford to. To say, as Gerry Adams does, that London must now "join the persuaders" in the cause of unity is almost redundant. The Declaration's words, amplified by Major's parliamentary answers, make clear to all in Northern Ireland that the Union has changed its character. It is now an option to be considered by individuals rather than a solemn constitutional verity.

A creeping confederation, though not a single might legitimately be engaged by London in talks without limit on every aspect of Ulster's future. The 1993 declaration contains this phrase not once but twice, and it has occasioned little remark. London is pledged to "institutional recognition" of the links that are "part of the totality of Other textual concessions seem to buttress the sense of this, by long-calculated intent. The affirmation that Britain has "no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern a blatantly distancing disclaimer, appeared earlier in the speeches of both Peter Brooke and Patrick Mayhew, and has been hero formalised at Dublin's instigation. In the current issue of the Tablet, Sir David WHO ARE the British? They do not include the Irish.

But it has until now been one of the fictions of the politics of Ireland that the British do, for political if not cultural purposes, include all among the Northern Irish who wish to be so designated. Great Britain is distinct from Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom; the Union is, by definition, a union of separate entities. But the right to be British and wrap up in the Union Jack is the emotional charge behind the unionists' claim. If 1993 is remembered for nothing else, it deserves to be marked as the moment when that claim was repudiated by the people on whom it is made: the British themselves. The archaeology of a single phrase in the Joint Declaration makes the point.

In December 1980, when Mrs Thatcher took half her cabinet to Dublin to meet Charles Haughey, who was then the Taoiseach, the Irish-drafted communique spoke of special consideration being given to "the totality of relationships between these When Mrs Thatcher saw this in the draft, she winced, but permitted it to remain. When Haughey, after she'd left for London, jubilantly described her acceptance of it as an historic breakthrough, she was furious, and would barely speak to Haughey again. The phrase was redolent of the notion, obnoxious to every unionist who ever whispered in Mrs Thatcher's ear, that Dublin Hugo Young The wholesale pardoning of killers may churn stomachs, but an amnesty makes political sense. It helped South Africa secure a settlement and could do the same for Ulster Stitching up the President dl Cfl David Beresford HE OLD Republican rubric that the trouble with the Irish is the English is particularly persuasive from the distant perspective of Cape Town this week, watching South Africa wrapping up its political settlement while seeing John Major falter at the first hurdle in what one would hope is a similar process towards peace in Ulster. The ract that the first hurdle happens to be the amnesty issue adds to one's sense of irritation with Downing Street; the prisoners arc not only one of the simpler obstacles to a settlement, but in the Irish context represent a potential trump card against the IRA.

To describe amnesty as a "simple" issue is not to detract from its ugliness. In the four years it has taken South Africa to move from the idea to the reality of a settlement the wholesale pardoning of killers and torturers has been one of the most stomach-churning aspects of the process. But it was "simple" in the sense that nobody even the victims suffered much doubt as to its necessity to a wider national interest. If anything, the amnesty issue is easier to deal with in Northern Ireland, because there the question as to who should benefit is fairly clear-cut. In South Africa, where the prisoners in the UK jurisdiction, is inescapable.

It is perhaps as well to avoid using the term "political prisoner" in the Irish context; that euphemism devised by the architects of the criminalisation policy "special category prisoner" will suffice. But whatever their label, the persistent denial of their existence is mendacious. The case for their discovery was never put better than by the late Cardinal Fiaich, in his anguished 1978 statement with which he attempted to arrest the crisis developing in the H-Blocks. "The authorities refuse to admit that these prisoners are in a different category from the ordinary, yet everything about their trials and family background indicates they are different how can one ex plain the jump in the prison population from 500 to 3,000 unless a new type of prisoner has emerged?" The Irish primate added: "The problem of these prisoners is one of the great obstacles to peace in our community." In retrospect he might also have said that the resolution of the "problem" also otters considerable potential for peace. The crisis, which the unholy row precipitated by the Cardinal's intervention failed to defuse, led to the hunger strike of 1981.

And that event is instructive to the current amnesty debate and hopes for an Irish settlement. Instructive because crisis, as always, offers understanding of the parties caught up in it One of the central lessons of the hunger strike was that the IRA is a captive of its prisoners. The frantic, unsuccessful efforts by its army council to dissuade its so-called "fourth battalion" from using the hunger strike weapon demonstrated how the prisoners are a tail capable of wagging the dog. When I wrote a book on the Irish hunger strike 00 Men Dead, Grafton) I was given access to the voluminous, secret correspondence between the prisoners and their external leadership during those traumatic months. The documents, which offer an extraordinarily intimate insight into the IRA psyche, bring home the human dimension to the organisation which through the tog ol media and government stereo typing needs to he penetrated for the understanding of the more spectacular accusations, but they establish that the troopers are enthusiastic embroiderers whose uncorroborated word is not worth much.

Brock reports one trooper's alleged memories of Clinton's anger at Michael Dukakis alter Clinton embarrassed himself with an overlong speech nominating Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention. The trooper claims that Clinton called Dukakis "that little Greek motherf Could be. But Brock concludes the anecdote this way: he (Clinton! refused to endorse him Dukakis until a few weeks before the Patterson (the trooperl recounted." Refused to endorse? Clinton had just nominated Dukakis! Furthermore, a Nexis search reveals a string of later public expressions of support by Clinton for Dukakis, beginning just two days after the speech. Do you believe that Clinton Willy" ever told a trooper who asked for an autographed photo for his family, "I don't have time for that Do you believe that the Clintons "wouldn't go out to dinner with friends the way you or I Whatever moral failings the Clintons may have, a refusal to go out to dinner with friends is not one of them. Some of the troopers' stories undoubtedly are true.

But the testimony of such unreliable sources doesn't make the stories any more likely to be true. Clinton more or less conceded some previous philandering in his famous 1992 interview on the TV show. Sixty Minutes. By talking vaguely about problems in his marriage while denying a "12-year" affair with Gennifer Flowers as opposed to an affair of other duration he cagily managed to stay just this side of lying. I'm not one who holds that the private lives of politicians are nobody else's business.

It would bother me greatly if Clinton was still messing around after the (il) Minutes interview. That would reveal a brutal willingness to deceive the public. Clinton tried to bribe a trooper to keep quiet, that's obviously very bad too. But I don't believe it, at least on the evidence offered. In a comically sleazy note, Brock declares that bis hoopers "cannot speak authoritatively" about possible Clinton philandering since he come to Washington.

Of course, that is a subject on which they cannot speak at all. What is going on here? In some conservative quarters. resentment of the tact that there is a Democrat in the White House again has become simply pathological. That's part of it. But how did the rest of us get sucked in? Copyright reserved.

Michael Kinsley is a senior editor on the Now Republic, Washington. popularity in this country. Originally of course from Vienna, Taubcr made his home in London after the war. Incidentally, he is buried in Brompton Cemetery next to the Chelsea Football Club ground, so he still has the rear of the crowd in his ears!" FOR any stocking except, perhaps, Princess Di's, just time to grab a real bargain. At Stockport Bargain Books, Prince Charles's A Vision Of Britain, a steal at 1.25.

HR.jacksvn VJAnrs ro POT A BKAVT FACE ON I 5W Why are we keen to believe allegations about Bill Clinton that are so open to doubt? Michael Kinsley DAVID BROCK'S dishonesty announces itself in his very first paragraph. Brock's would-be expose in the American Spectator, "Uving with the Clintons," is Topic A in Washington. It alleges a variety of adulteries by Bill Clinton while governor of Arkansas, continuing into 1993. The piece begins: "In a remarkable but little noticed article buried inside the Sunday Washington Post four months before the 1992 presidential election, top Clinton campaign aide Betsey Wright said she had been spending the better part of her time since the Democratic National Convention trying to quell potential 'bimbo eruptions'." Little noticed? The implication is that Brock has picked up some overlooked evidence. In fact, Ncxis.

the electronic media database, reports 324 subsequent references to "bimbo eruptions And the Post article did not say that Wright had spent "the better part of her time" since the convention on this matter. Brock just made that up. So that's the first paragraph. In the second paragraph, Brock writes: "The extensive effort to short-circuit such stories, Wright said, included the campaign's hiring of a private investigator to obtain information damaging to the credibility of the women involved, which was then used, presumably, to persuade them to stay quiet." The implication is that the stories were true and Wright was admitting trying to hush them up. Brock later refers to "the strong-arm tactics acknowledged by But Wright acknowledged no strong-arm tactics.

The clear point of Wright's remarks was that she was investigating the bimbo stories in order to prove them false. This may have been a fool's errand, or Wright may have been lving, but that doesn't give Brock the right to utterly misrepresent her. These minor matters don't prove the untruth of Brock's major accusations. But they prove his bad faith. Brocks stories come irom four Arkansas state troopers (two of whom refused to he quoted).

Brock raises, ritualisti-cally, the possibility that the troopers might be motivated by dislike of Clinton or hopes to get rich. Then he proceeds as if this disclaimer relieves him of any duty not to lie credulous. Are the troopers believable? Once again, small matters leap out to the honest leader. These little things don't disprove the possibilities follow" but jolly encouraging for the chaps at Walworth Road. "The Labour Party will relaunch itself this year as a Democratic Party.

Then they will be a potent force for votes. Watch September." I will. I will. ANGELS we have heard on high, hoarsely snuffling o'er the plain The sharp-eared might have noticed that live choral Evensong, yesterday on Radio 3, did not come as billed from Chester Cathedral. Flu ravaged that choir, so the microphones had to whizz off to Liverpool instead.

A PROBLEM the Halle Orchestra is very familiar with. Less choked musicians, than hacking audiences. At Huddersfield Town Hall on January 7, they're setting out bowls of cough lozenges, help yourselves, at all the auditorium doors. DISTURBING item, from the January issue of CD Review: "Old Chelsea was a big favourite with London theatre audiences, greatly increasing Richard Tauber's systematic corruption of the common law has seen the mass criminalisation of the population, the task of sorting out the "ordinary" criminals from the victims as well as the politically motivated has been truly Au gean. One story has it that the beneficiaries of the amnesty in eluded two men jailed for the perverse affections they had visited on sheep.

And at least one armed bank robber per suaded the authorities that his interest in cash tills was ideologically motivated. Even more troubling was the release of the highest profile political prisoner, the racist mass killer Bar-end Strydom, in the face of psy chiatric advice that he was mad and dangerous. But even there the country suffered the sight of this demented man on televi sion giggling inanely as he retraced his murderous path and enthusiastically acknowledging that he could repeat the atrocity with a toleration which showed a broad understanding of the need to cast the amnesty net wide. It is all a long way from the days when the likes of PW Botha and John Vorster used to blandly tell the world that there were no "political prisoners" in South Africa, only The lie to that was always apparent in the judicial system; the special laws diluting due process which landed them in their predicament. The corollary, that the Diplock system in Northern Ireland similarly points to the existence of such map all 1 final ktihlt' JOHN PILGER.

Ournalist and broadcaster East Timor SUBSCRIPTION oiaiulig iruni uiu rai ui uiu niiiuwiHSJ annually, until cancelled, the NI Account number Sort codo number I I'd discovered fk it sooner Get a grasp of the events and the ideologies thai shape an ever more complex world. Read llic NI maya.ine. month we tackle one subject in depth: Food or the Arms Trade, Africa or the A a Amazon. 1 he ideas, tacts ami aiguniems are all neatly compressed into an instant monthly briefing with clear charts, lively articles, vivid photos and graphics all lor just 22.70 a year. But you don't have to take our word lor il.

Fill in the box Uelow and we will semi you three months' issues absolutely Pick up the gauntlet 1'RFIi, plus a lull-colour world yours to keep whether or not you cal process is concerned, the IRA prisoners are hostages. Knowing Adams slightly, from my years as Belfast correspondent, and McKarlane. through his letters, I have little doubt that the relationship between the two men among many others provides a temptation for the Sinn Fein leader to compromise in order to rescue a close friend from what he liked to characterise as "this devil's Over the decades, Britain has used the stick of internment, "interrogation in roadside executions and the most sophisticated terrorist effort ever mounted to beat the IRA. It is now time to bring the carrot to hear. The name of the carrot is amnesty.

Pardon? one didn't play very well in and take full responsibility for "the break-up of the nuclear family and the destruction of They collected quite a band of camp followers, and, as they progressed along the street, police. OutRage assures me that the shop where they finally stopped for coffee had, like most London department stores, a high percentage of gay employees. These assembled from all over the place, formed a cordon sanitaire around the revolting Out rage is, and as the police tried to get senior management on the phone to repeat their offer of out-chucking, rang their own section managers to explain the situation. The police retired discomfited, the OutRagcrs finished their mince pies. GOODY, here's Old Moore's Almanack.

His horoscope for the Diary is a bit worrying "progress is slower at the start of the year. work command are inescapable, as when, on hearing of Bobhy Sands's death, he wrote in one of several letters to Gerry Adams: "It's been a heart-breaking day for us all. We lost someone we all loved very dearly and we can't cry in case someone is looking." His letters also illustrate how limited is the authority of the IKA leadership in the face of sentiment in the wider Republican community, as in late August 1981 when McFarlane wrote to Adams of growing opposition to the hunger strike among prisoners' families: "It wrecks me to think that the breaking power lies with those who haven't a clue what out-struggle is all about." Essentially, where the politi of peace. WHAT with all these security scares, shoppers in an Oxford Street department store weren't a bit surprised to see a squad of police, including Tactical Support Group members, charging in. They were more surprised when London's finest surged on to the first-floor coffee shop.

The Christmas consumers there included tinselled fairies, chaps in slashed leather, and a bondage Santa in merry red hat and chains. The police politely asked the floor managers if they would like the motley crew chucked out. The floor managers said no thank you, they were fine. OutRage, that diffident pressure group for gay rights, was on a little shopping spree. They pranced from shop to shop, proffering "Queer Recruitment They were astonished at how many people signed and returned them, promising to stop sleeping with the opposite sex; stop buying clothes "at naff places like and Benetton" (that organisation vital to any peace effort.

The principal author of these documents is a man whose name is often raised when the enormity of an Irish amnesty is raised. Bic McKarlane, the IRA commanding officer in The Maze during the hunger strike and leader of the "groat escape" of 1983, was kept oft' the fast because of the "propaganda" potential his conviction for five murders (a bomb attack on a bar) would offer to the authorities. Despite that record, as a mass killer, his letters written with no thought to publication show him to be a man of conscience as well as courage. His compassion for his comrades and tortured feelings at the tragedy unfolding under his King's Champion, Sir Robert Dyinock, at the coronation ritual for Richard III. Sir Robert offered to fight at the throwing of his gauntlet "whosoever refused to accept him as This did not seem a terribly promising negotiating tool with Republicans.

And gauntlets of peace? "Er. Mr Eaves, "well I suppose by straining; it to breaking point you could relate gauntlets to hands and thence to ottering the hand of peace, but I must say I've never heard of such a thing." BUT the Northern Ireland trip was certainly not wasted, oh no. John Major got the Christinas present which was just what he always wanted, or at least needed. During his visit to the Shorts aircraft factory in Belfast, he took control of a riveting machine. "A computerised riveting even, so all he needs now in his stocking from Norma is lots of spare batteries.

COMINO SOON World Bank Prostitution NO-RISK TRIAL BwrPwusE send me my 3 (roc issues and (roe map. I decide to cancel, CO I will write and tell you within 10 days ot receiving my third issue. II WISn IO COnlinUO, I nCOO OU NOIIIIIiy. month, you will chargo my account subscription price (now tv). DIRRCT DEBIT INSTRUCTION To my bank manager: I instruct you lo pay direct debits nl Iho roquost of NI.

Amounts arc variable- and may he debited on various dales. Bui NI may only change (horn nllcr I giving mo prior notice I will toll the bonk in writing if I wish lo cancol this instniction. If any dirocl debit io paid which breaks Iho torms of this instruction Iho bank will refund mo. NnfI10 BankBuildinr) Society account in thonamo of: F3 Maev Kennedy A FEW eyebrows shot up yesterday at the Prime Minister's striking challenge to Gerry Adams to pick up that gauntlet marked 'peace' It was, Mr Major reiterated firmly to the cloth-cared, "a gauntlet down on the table. It is marked peace' It is there for Sinn Fein to pick it up." Flinging down the gauntlet of peace? Kr.

tnat is an interest ing question," said Ian Eaves, Keeper of Armour at the Royal Armouries, still at the Tower of London (pending the removal vans am vi ng to pack them all off to Leeds). He has lots of lovely gauntlets in his care, but the whole question of gauntlet flinging is a bit dodgy. The earliest reference he could una was Edward Hall, writing in 15-18 about the PoKCOd Signed I To- Now internationalist, FREEPOST CN2203, Mitcham CR4 OAR onlh.rld.l..l..l 5GUGE.