WILLIAM Waldegrave, one of the Prime Minister's extensive collection
of crash dummies, has been experimenting with logic this week: he has
told the truth about lies. Ministers are liars, says the Minister
cunningly designed to crumple on impact with reality, and that's the
truth. Take a Minister's word for it.
Oddly, the clever younger son of the 12th lord, in whom centuries of
breeding have instilled the ability to say the right thing at the wrong
time, was crucified for stating what most people already knew. All
governments lie and this one has been lying like Baron Munchausen in a
fibbing contest.
Lord Justice Scott has been hosting one event (''And our next
contestant is Willy Waldegrave. Willy's wearing a scanty little
statement he stitched together all by himself!'') while MPs dirty their
hands in the backwash from the Pergau dam. But the trail of ministerial
deceit is now so long it might almost be called, in a post-modern sort
of way, Britain's own misinformation superhighway, on which every
turning is the wrong one.
Thus, everything Waldegrave had to say about untruths was true, and
all who attacked him for it were liars. Indeed, you get the impression
they were more appalled by an outbreak of honesty about dishonesty than
by the dishonesty itself. Someone, perhaps even the public, might have
heard. But if you believe that will change anything you'll believe
William Waldegrave.
Take -- and the workers at Heathrow wish you would -- the Irish peace
process. Conventionally, any suggestion of peace for Ireland means that
someone, somewhere, gets killed. It is therefore a situation in which
truth and lies are interchangeable, in which promises mean the opposite
of what they seem to mean, and in which what participants say they are
doing bears no easily recognisable resemblance to what they are actually
doing. Diplomacy, they call it.
Thus, we now know that the Government lied about secret contacts with
the IRA. We know, in part, because Ian Paisley, regarded universally as
a pillar of rectitude (according to my notes), said so, but mostly
because the Government made a horrible botch of covering their tracks.
They talked to the Provisionals, denied it all, were found out, and
then stopped the contacts just as almost everyone else was beginning to
grasp that talks might not be a bad idea. Gerry Adams was then able to
go off smiling to the United States and flaunt these facts. The
Government (Minister for ''Openness'': W. Waldegrave) responded by
censoring his broadcast remarks lest the British public get the wrong
idea.
ALL this was passing strange. In order to separate the Provisionals
from their guns it seemed merely sensible to bring them into the
democratic process. That meant talking to them.
Instead, the Downing Street Declaration was turned into an ultimatum.
Republican requests for clarification were rejected. Such debate as
survived was conducted through the media. And the IRA's active service
units went back, as we saw at Heathrow, to the kind of dialogue they
understand best, as though to remind Britain of the alternative to
talking.
One piece is missing from the jigsaw, however, thanks in no small
measure to Her Majesty's Auxiliary Media. Just what did the Republican
movement, depicted everywhere as merely obstructive, mean by
clarification? What are the questions the Government refuses to answer?
Try these.
Does Britain intend to stay in Ireland forever or does it not? How can
Britain maintain that it is neutral in the Irish constitutional debate
when Amnesty International maintains there has been significant
collusion between Loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces?
If the northern Loyalist community has a veto over British policy,
what rights are offered to the communities of Fermanagh, Tyrone and
Derry, where the majority are Nationalist? If Unionists have a right to
''self-determination'', what are the rights of people in those counties?
Is British policy towards the north influenced in any way by the
precedent real ''self-determination'' might set for Scotland? Equally,
if the Six Counties are to be demilitarised, how is policing to be
carried out? How will Nationalists be protected from Loyalist killers if
the IRA lays down its arms and the UVF does not? By the mistrusted Royal
Ulster Constabulary?
Finally -- a question, in effect, for both sides -- if the IRA cannot
defeat the British Army and yet remains, as Heathrow showed, undefeated
itself, what is the alternative to politics and dialogue? Why are there
now no contacts with the Republicans? And if the Provisionals are
bluffing over clarification, why not call their bluff by answering their
questions?
Obviously all of this would involve the Government in what Douglas
Hurd might call a temporary entanglement with truth. It would be a new
experience, but a useful one. Lying to the Commons is one thing, but
lying to the British public, which foots much of the bill for Ireland's
troubles, is quite another.
It is obvious, of course, that the Republicans are looking for an
advantage in all this. So are the Unionists; so is the Irish Government;
so is the SDLP and the British Government. It may be, however, that
simple honesty now contains the best prospect of John Major winning that
advantage.
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