Rationalising ``a measured military response''
The Narrow Ground
The Ulster Crisis
by ATQ Stewart
Published by Blackstaff Press
Price £8.99
ATQ Stewart likes his history. He likes the telling of
a history, relishing in the details, building up a
unique picture. Stewart is also a unionist and as an
historian his writings offer a view that many
republicans will find, at best, at considerable
variance with their own. At worst they will find
Stewart's views insulting and patronising.
This makes it all the more important to read the latest
re-releases of two of his most well known books. The
Narrow Ground: Aspects of Ulster 1609-1969 was
originally published in 1977. The Ulster Crisis:
Resistance to Home Rule 1912-1914 was originally
published ten years earlier.
To understand exactly where Stewart is coming from you
need to read his books in reverse order. Start with,
for example, the last chapter of the Narrow Ground
titled ``Catholics 1920-1969''.
Stewart tells us that ``In 1920 the nature of the Ulster
Protestant's problem was dramatically changed.... Now
they were called upon to act as a majority, having to
govern and tolerate a dangerously large and troublesome
minority.''
The poor unionists made, according to ATQ, ``the best of
the situation and contrary to popular Catholic belief,
they did genuinely try to create a non-sectarian state
in which all citizens would enjoy equal rights.''
If you were wondering just why the promised
non-sectarian state never actually came into being
Stewart has the very plausible explanation that ``the
IRA launched in the north a campaign of murder and
outrage with the object of making it impossible for the
new government to function''.
Stewart does admit that ``the response to the IRA
shootings by infuriated sections of the Protestant
population was sometimes on a larger scale''. But he
goes on to crib that ``Catholics alleged throughout the
world that these attacks amounted to `pogroms', and
found a ready audience, especially in the United
States''.
The consequence of the IRA campaign and the sectarian
rioting was to create the B Specials and the passing of
emergency legislation. Still cribbing, Stewart writes
that ``the erection of these emergency features into the
permanent structure of government has been a major
grievance of the minority''. It was justified in his
mind because of the ``ruthless determination of
republicans''.
Later in the chapter he tells us that ``The minority had
no incentive to reform the state''. ``Catholic hatred'' of
the Six-County state's institutions was ``total'' and
``unalleviated by any effort at compromise or
understanding of the Protestant viewpoint''.
Stewart proclaims that ``there was no question which
could not be aired in parliament'' and that ``not only
did Stormont not enact discriminatory laws against
Catholics; it was expressly forbidden to do so by the
1920 Government of Ireland Act''.
Stewart does concede that ``minor injustices could, and
did, flourish''. This only happened though because
``Protestants were allowed, and indeed obliged, to claim
the monopoly of loyalty to the Government''.
Stewart's apology for the years of unionist misrule,
systematic discrimination and brutality are based on a
simple premise that the Protestant Unionists are not to
blame. The central theme of the Narrow Ground is to
perpetuate the myth that it is Catholics who are to
blame, because of their resistance to British
occcupation, to their support for republicanism and
because they could not accept partition.
Worst of all, Stewart lays the blame for hundreds of
years of conflict in Ireland at the door of the
Catholic population. Their sole damning crime that
created the centuries of misery was the fact that they
were Catholics.
Early on in the book Stewart tells us that ``had the
British Isles as a whole remained Catholic, or had the
Reformed religion been adopted in Ireland, a mild
movement for independence would probably have developed
in Ireland during the nineteenth century. It would
undoubtedly have been successful without much bloodshed
in the twentieth''.
He then tells us that the opponents of Catholic
emancipation were motivated not by religious bigotry
but by fears of a Catholic-dominated parliament. There
is only one way to describe Stewart's analysis. It is
the rationalisation of the politics of the so called
``measured military response''.
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