NORTHERN IRELAND “SKINNY LIZZIE” EXEMPLIFIES PARADOXES OF ULSTER LIFE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32067, 15 August 1969, Page 20

NORTHERN IRELAND “SKINNY LIZZIE” EXEMPLIFIES PARADOXES OF ULSTER LIFE

T. E. UTLEY.

(By I

. writing to the “Daily Telegraph", London. from Belfast)

("Reprinted from the “Daily Telegraph" by arrangement)

To understand what has happened in Belfast in the last week you must know the story of Skinny Lizzie. The bearer of that affectionate nickname, which is owed to her robust physique, is a Protestant lady in her 70s who kept a huckster’s shop in Roman Catholic Hooker Street until it was razed to the ground, by fire in a minor riot a few months ago.

I For 363 days out of every | year Skinny Lizzie enjoyed | more cordial relations with her Roman Catholic neigh- | hours than any decent Pros testant in the Province of j Northern Ireland. She was | famous for her genial characii ter and her facilities for s extended credit. Yet she re- | mained a woman of convietibn. Each year on July 10 | she would put up the Union | Jack in preparation for the £ celebrations of the Twelfth, s' The higher echelons of the | Royal Ulster Constabulary f would visit her with earnest I petitions to remove the | offending symbol and even to | take • few days* holiday in | another part of the city until I the Twelfth was over and i normal civil life resumed. | Once rumour had it that her | pet dog had been strung up | on a lamp post; an invest!I gation personally conducted I by the Minister of Home ! Affairs at midnight was re- | quired to establish that the i animal had died a natural | death and that Protestant resi prisals would therefore be out 1 of place. I Ambivalent Attitudes | In two ways Skinny Lizzie ? explains the paradoxes about | Ulster life and politics which | have so effectively eluded » most British commentators. It I is trite and true to say that ii the vast majority of respecti able prosperous inhabitants I of Belfast of whatever deno- > initiation loathe violence and i despise agitators. What is not commonly understood is that those who, on ceremonial - occasions, resort to violence, those who can be counted on to respond pathologically to the sight of a Union Jack or a tricolour, are for most of the time capable of conduct- . ing normal and even arnicu able relations with their sec- “ tarian enemies. t That is why, as the people 1 of Shankill Road, Hooker !’ Street and Unity Place sur- ’ vey the consequences and count the cost of their midsummer madness, they are today strongly inclined f towards peace, so strongly > indeed that they are at the s moment hotly engaged in i- fixing up private amnesties t and armistices to last until t the next ritual feast » The trouble is the abundi- ance of ritual feasts which the > rich history of this Province s provides. You can compile t with precision a calendar of '<■ violence. What is worse, hiss- tory goes on being made and ■. the number of anniversaries i demanding commemoration : accordingly increases. So it is r that Civil Rights marchers s will seek to stage a demont stration on October 5 to mark > the first anniversary of the 1 Battle of Bumtoilet Bridge. i f Courting Defiance ’ To impose a ban on any I one of these demonstrations : which can cite a respectable 1 pedigree would be to court. an open defiance of authority. What is more, it would be extremely bad police tactics; a crowd regularly assembled in a particular and predicts able place is far easier to i control than a series of spora- . die outbursts of disorder I throughout the country. The s Prime Minister clings to the s hope that he may be able to s persuade responsible Protes- - tant and Roman Catholic s leaders to abandon some of ’ these occasions voluntarily. • If the sacred festivals could , thus be disposed of, the . minor demonstrations could i be safely banned by Govemr ment decree for a cooling-off • period of (say) six months. ’ In the meantime the main - concern of the police must i be the defence of life and • property against the con- • tinuing activities of small 1 bands of thugs who are • threatening families with ’ eviction from their houses, ! and factories employing pre- : ponderantly Roman Catholic • or Protestant labour with de- ■ struction. The hard core of 1 sheer criminality in the re- ! cent disturbances—witnessed, 1 for example, by the looting ■ of Protestant-owned shops by 1 Protestant rioters—must also • not be underrated. The Government’s hopes of voluntary restraint are small. It was left therefore initially with the task of maintaining order in Northern Ireland with a police force no larger in proportion to that of the population than are the police 'orces in Britain. It should be clearly understood that, in the light of all the most probable contingencies, this task will prove impossible unless two conditions are fulfilled: The police must be free to use all reasonable instruments of coercion at their disposal (which in practice means tear smoke for the dispersal of crowds); and they must be able to count, on conditions acceptable to the majority < of Ulstermen, on the ultimate support of the « British Army. Minister’s Dilemma ” Consider, then, the dilem- B; mas of Mr Robert Porter, 'the distinguished Q.C. who is Minister for Home Affairs and Tl constitutionally responsible for keeping the peace in h Ulster. His police force, though excellent in quality, gu is inadequate in numbers; he is precluded, by radical prejudice on both sides of the Irish Sea, and by the very nature of the case, from any Sl massive use of the voluntary Special Constabulary, historically a Protestant force (in the recent trouble the B

Specials were successfully employed but only for the most carefully defined duties). Can he, like any magistrate in a British village, count in the last resort on the support of the British Army to maintain the civil power against odds which would otherwise be overwhelming? The ostentatious movement of British soldiers to Belfast police headquarters in the course of the recent riots probably had a decisive effect in averting disaster. It has also raised a crucial problem. Lawyers cannot doubt that it is the common law duty of the soldiery (as indeed also of all civilians) to lend their aid In the maintenance of civil authority in any part of the United Kingdom. A massive and continuing deployment of British troops in the defence of law and order in Ulster (should that ever become necessary) would obviously require the consent of Whitehall, and Whitehall would properly wish to have a say in the manner in which those troops were used. All this is common ground between the Government of Ulster and the British Government. Now, however, it is suggested that the British Government may also take the much more extreme view that any grant of military aid should be accompanied by the

suspension of the Northern Irish Constitution and the assumption of direct control from Westminster. It would be hard to imagine a more disastrous course for British policy at this juncture to take. If Protestant extremists were to believe that Ulster was on the verge of being wholly absorbed id the British political system they would react with no less vigour than Carson did to the proposal that she should be absorbed in a wholly Irish political system. Equally those elements in the Civit Rights movement whose conscious first aim is total authority for Westminster in Northern Ireland would infer that the high road to success was a campaign of disorder vigorous enough to necessitate the use of troops. The story of Skinny Lizzie, which is the story of Ulster, has elements of hope as well as of misery. But if Mr Wilson wishes to preside over an Irish civil war, with all the commitments which that would involve, he has the means ready to hand. What neither he nor anybody else can count on is an endless supply of honourable men willing to accept responsibility for maintaining order in a Province of the United. Kingdom while persistently denied the means of doing so.