In his contribution to this series of pamphlets, Paul began with a simple proposition: there is a solution to the problem of Northern Ireland; there is a way out of the endless cycle of killing and terror; it is for the British government to simply get out of Ireland.
The central problem, he argued, was partition of the North from the South. ‘Ireland is England’s oldest colony’, he wrote. He rattled through the Act of Union between Ireland and Britain (1800); the demand for independence and Home Rule (1910); the ferocious campaign against it in the name of religion and support for partition (1912); the acquiescence by the nationalists that half a loaf was better than none (1914); the lone voice of James Connolly, insisting that half a loaf poisoned by religion was worse than no loaf at all; the failure of the Easter Rising (1916); and the creation of a Protestant state for a Protestant people (1921).
‘The carnival of reaction was about to begin’. In the North, Catholics were driven out of their jobs and their homes. Council borders were gerrymandered to ensure no political representation for Catholics. Northern Ireland became a Protestant state with a Protestant police force, and an economy dependent on subsidies from Britain. It lasted for fifty years before the dam burst in 1968. Then successive British governments and prime ministers – Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher – tried ineffectually to bring about some minor political changes. No one even discussed cutting Northern Ireland loose.
‘My proposal is very simple: the British government should declare that it intends to withdraw its troops from Ireland forever; and that it will no longer sustain a separate state in the North of Ireland.’ The government should set a date and convene an international constitutional conference to plan the withdrawal and agree what contribution Britain should make to a new, united Ireland.
The reason the British government clung limpet-like to the Orange state could not be the fear of a bloodbath, although that was always raised. Such a fear had not deterred Britain leaving India, where there was a mighty bloodbath. More likely, Paul reasoned, the fear of defeat, of appearing to be beaten by the IRA, was too much to countenance. But that, Paul pointed out, was nothing more than political paralysis.
