Repartition plan an 'act of lunacy'
William Scholes, Irish News
January 4, 2003
British government proposals to repartition Ireland and move 500,000 people
across a new border in 1972 were yesterday branded a “crazy plan” by Sinn
Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness.
Mr McGuinness, who, as an IRA leader in Derry was part of a Provisional IRA
delegation which went to London for talks with the government in July 1972,
was commenting on details of the border plan revealed in Westminster cabinet
papers disclosed under the ‘30-year rule’.
“It was an act of lunacy to even contemplate going down that route. What is
really scary about the revelations is the total inability of the British
government to plan for a resolution of the conflict we were enduring at that
particular time,” he said.
Lord Fitt, who was MP for West Belfast in 1972, had earlier described the
repartition proposal as “pub talk” while Lord Kilclooney, who as John
Taylor, was a minister in the Stormont government at the time, acknowledged
that the plan was “seriously considered” but was “total nonsense”.
“People might be surprised to know there is considerable agreement between
myself and Lord Kilclooney on this. This was a crazy plan,” Mr McGuinness
said.
It was not just nationalists and republicans who should be alarmed by the
border plan, he said.
“I think the big message for many unionists when they look at papers such as
these is that the British government will do whatever is expedient for it in
political circumstances.”
He added that the repartition details confirmed “for all of us who have for
many years been of the view that successive British governments effectively
left the north of Ireland to the unionists as a unionist parliament for
unionist people”.
“You can clearly see right through the introduction of internment and
through the killings of Bloody Sunday, that the British government at that
time were not in any way psychologically prepared to face up to the
inequalities, the discriminations and the domination the Catholic community
endured,” Mr McGuinness said.
It was clear that the IRA was not seen by the government as its only enemy,
he added.
“It’s very clear that they regarded republicanism, nationalism and
Catholicism as the enemy in the north of Ireland,” he said.
On the revelations that a senior west Belfast republican was given £300 by a
British army officer, Mr McGuinness said “we should not be fixated by the
past”.
According to the cabinet papers, Lenadoon IRA representative Seamus Loughran
was given the money to persuade the IRA to withdraw from a standoff with the
UDA over vacated housing in Horn Drive. However, Mr McGuinness said he knew
nothing about the payment and “would be very sceptical about any claims that
the IRA would receive £300 from an agent of the British government”.
“Many community groups were articulating the plight of the Catholic
community at the time and it’s possible that that money, if it existed, was
being handed over to a community group.”
Meanwhile, Ulster Unionist assembly member Sam Foster said the Conservative
government’s repartition plan was “insulting and very offensive”.
Mr Foster, whose Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency would have been one
of those affected had the plan gone through, said it was “a right and not a
privilege” for people in Northern Ireland to be considered British.
“It is time the government realised that we in Northern Ireland are part of
the family of Britons on these British Isles as much as any English,
Scottish or Welsh person can be,” he said.