HAS Britain undertaken in Ulster a police operation conducted by the Army, or a military exercise, an operation of war? The question is vital both in terms of present efficiency and of the ultimate peace settlement. It now appears to be treated as a police job, but young soldiers face skilful sniping, and lethal booby traps set by experts with a long tradition of guerrilla fighting, protected by a civilian population in Catholic areas mostly dedicated to what they passionately believe is their country's cause.
The result is a pitiful loss of young lives and a continuing anarchy which mocks British rule. A military operation is exactly the opposite method, which I suggested a year ago; the complete closure of a shortened and tenable frontier, based on the original boundary commission findings which remitted the bulk of the Catholic population to the south. It is idle to argue that closing the frontier by two lines of wire intersected by blockhouses is impossible, because the British Army did it in South Africa at the turn of the century over a larger area; since those days they have the additional means of aircraft, helicopters and armoured vehicles to patrol the lines, and the possibility of many new scientific devices between them. The flaccid objection that the I.R.A. will then circumvent the closure by sea can be overcome by the same fast motor boats used in the Channel during the last war, or by mining appropriate waters with due notice, which could also be given to airplanes liable to fire if they crossed the frontier without permission. The present infiltration of guerrillas and weapons from the south could thus be completely stopped, and that essential means of protracted warfare—periodic withdrawal of front line troops for rest— could also be denied to them. The military operation could then be made entirely effective, and a genuinely impartial police force could maintain order in Belfast between the Protestant majority and the remaining Catholic minority, members of which should be offered transfer to the south on generous terms if they wished.
This is not in itself a settlement but a decisive step toward it. Directly we face the fact of a war situation we eliminate the confusion which now inhibits possibility of peace. You can only end a war with a lasting peace by dealing at some point with the men who are doing the fighting. To be baffled in an ineffective police operation and then to declare that you will never meet the I.R.A. and will continue indefinitely to answer "ferocity with ferocity", is to get the worst of all worlds: no peace, scant prospect of enduring military success, some discredit of the British name if words are implemented which are inappropriate to soldier or statesman.
We have lived through all this before, but our politicians never learn. Michael Collins was nominated "chief of the murder gang" and the "hunted fugitive" was to be shot on sight. A few weeks after such utterances he was seated in Downing Street exchanging jokes, and amenities with Lloyd George, Churchill and F. E. Smith. He was the man who had led the fighting, and he stood true to his word when he made the peace at the cost of his own life. A promise implicit in the settlement was never honoured: the inclusion in the south of most of the Catholic population of Ulster after the report of the boundary commission. Is such a peace now impossible because passions are more inflamed?
Feeling ran high before, when fourteen of our officers were shot in their beds during the night by young men who had spent the previous evening praying in a chapel. It was atrocious, but peace had to come in the end. The very inconvenience of a closed frontier could promote peace because it will inevitably induce joint counsel between north and south gradually to make possible normal life again, and this in turn can lead to joint council as both enter Europe with all its possibilities of a better life. The agreed union of Ireland with European safeguards for all minority regions is in the end inevitable and can thus be expedited.
Oswald Mosley -12th September 1972
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