The Taoiseach said he had taken great political risks to make this more readily attainable. Ireland’s constitution had been changed so that it was now a secular instead of a Catholic state. Divorce, contraception, abortion, secular education and dual citizenship in provinces that became in any way integrated into an Irish confederation or federation were all now accepted.
Could not the British Prime Minister for her part now take some political risks also? He recognised that she could not formally break her promise that there would be no change in Northern Ireland’s status until a majority in the north agreed. But could she not take the line that those who stirred up hatred against the Catholics in the north were breaking the law under British race-discrimination legislation? And could not British political parties start indicating their support for moderate candidates in Ulster parliamentary elections?
If there could be one breakthrough whereby any constituency in the north elected a reasonable person ready to consider confederation, instead of always electing either Protestant bigots or rabid Republicans, people who longed for peace could start to hope.
The British Prime Minister agreed with the Taoiseach’s views on general lines, but said direct intervention by herself would only be counterproductive. If she indicated support for a moderate candidate in any election, both sects of the Northern Irish would swing all the more violently to their usual support of the most extreme candidate available.
Someday special circumstances might arise in some election, and she would seize the chance to try to get other politicians in other British parties to act responsibly with her on the moderates’ side. She had already turned her back on any coalition with the extreme Ulster Unionists in the British parliament, although Callaghan when in office, and Foot in opposition, had behaved badly about this. She would look for an opportunity to do more.
The opportunity arose because of the Christmas shopping bombs in 1983, and because of the emergence of that most unexpected of all Irish folk heroes, the 24-year-old Patrick McBride.
In early December of 1983, a bomb exploded amid shopping crowds in London’s Oxford Street, killing eighty-three people, including a store Santa Claus and seventeen handicapped children who were queuing to get free presents from him. The so-called Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), claiming ‘responsibility’ for these hideous crimes, declared that this was a justified attack upon a double military objective. The stores group had as a non-executive part-time member of its board a former General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland and the INLA had; understood (wrongly, as had to be admitted later) that the Santa Claus was a retired regimental sergeant major from the Irish Guards. Two days later bombs exploded in a shopping centre in Dublin, killing thirty-two. A Protestant para-military group called the ‘Battlers of the Boyne’ said that loyalist Ulster was striking back in the heartland of popery. Several more bombs went off in both Protestant and Catholic pubs in Northern Ireland, and, with appalling results, five in separate sectarian schools.
The British Special Branch took a keen interest in certain unusual features of the Oxford Street and Dublin bombs, although the Belfast ones were of the usual home-grown sort made in local factories, against which London and Dublin had by now rather sophisticated detection devices. The usual leakiness of Irish terrorist sources in London enabled the Special Branch to catch those who planted the Oxford Street bomb fairly early, and some interesting developments followed. Police in Eire and the Province carried out dawn raids on the headquarters of several extreme Catholic and Unionist groups. Communiques that evening explained why.
The materials for the Oxford Street bomb had been picked up by those who had planted it from a rendezvous in London, where they had been cached by a group of German students now known to be members of the reconstituted Baader-Meinhof gang. The materials for the Dublin bombs were similar, but had apparently been brought in from Italy by a party from the still very active Red Brigades. Raids on the extremist Catholic and Protestant political groups had produced clear evidence that people in each of those headquarters knew what was happening, and had in fact drawn a good deal of personal money as well as weapons and explosives from sources known to enjoy Soviet support. ‘Although most people in each group thought they were fighting each other,’ ran the joint communique from the British and Irish heads of government, ‘these outrages have been financed and organized by agencies very close to the Soviet Union, clearly with interests other than those of Ireland in mind.’
Nobody could with certainty define which Catholic and Protestant extremists had been paid traitors to the West, and which had been merely megalomaniac nationalists, but fairly strong fingers of suspicion were pointed at two people who happened to be in the news at this time. A parliamentary by-election was pending in the marginal (for Northern Ireland) constituency of mid-Ulster, and a lady Catholic extremist and a gaunt, outrageous Protestant demagogue were already the main candidates in the field. Up to now it had been assumed that these two malign people would share 90 per cent of mid-Ulster’s votes. The central parties (the Moderate Catholic, Non-Sectarian Alliance and so on) by now usually put up a joint candidate, but he or she rarely polled more than 10 per cent. After the killing of those seventeen handicapped children, the centrist parties hoped they might get more than 10 per cent of the vote in mid-Ulster, provided the right candidate for them could somehow be found.
He emerged in the most dramatic way at 4 pm the next Saturday afternoon, with bloodstained headband and three broken ribs, pounding down through the middle of the Twickenham Rugby Union football ground, with every Irish televiewer north or south cheering him along at every step.
Diminishing shamateurism and increasing sponsorship had brought it about that this winter saw the first Rugby Union World Cup, with teams from all four home countries of the British Isles and all the old dominions, plus France, Argentina, the United States, Romania and the Netherlands. From the top half of the draw the runaway entrants to the final were the powerful All Blacks of New Zealand; from the bottom half a green surprise packet from Ireland, made up, as always, of players from any part of the island, north and south.
With injury time already started in the final half, New Zealand led 28–23, and their ferocious forwards pressed once more on the Irish line. Ireland’s gentle giant redhead Pat McBride, lock forward and captain and fiftyfold hero already that day, fell yet again upon the ball. He emerged from the scrummage with forehead bleeding, kicking for touch. A brief bandaging. ‘Feet Ireland’ from the line out. A loose maul. A heel and a Garry Owen forward punt. The New Zealand full-back fielded it just inside his 22-metre line, sidestepped the onrushing Irish forwards to his left, and went to kick to the right as Pat McBride, and he alone, had anticipated. The New Zealander’s boot, the ball, and the front of Pat McBride’s ample torso occupied the same space at the same instant, with a sickeningly audible cracking of McBride’s ribs. But the ball was clutched to that green jersey regardless. McBride was past the full-back now, loping with dragging right foot the last 20 metres to the line like a wounded hare. Before two million television sets from Cork to Belfast all Ireland rose to its feet as he dived (no, actually flew)[4] the last eight metres to land between the posts. The conversion was a formality and Ireland had won the World Cup 29–28.
At the many TV interviews afterwards McBride developed a fine strain of Irish blarney, which was just what his country needed at this moment of shopping-centre tragedy and showplace triumph. As the winning team had been half from his north and half from the south, and ‘one-third Catholic, one-third Protestant, one-third heathen, all in old Ireland’s green’, McBride said that he himself felt Northern Irish nationalism for one day a year only, which was when he rallied his club side in Ballymena for the annual match against Sean O’Driscoll’s Cork. After that match, when it was in Belfast, he preferred to drink in Sean’s brother’s pub in Andersonstown rather than bomb it. As for those who blew up schools in the name of the Christian religion, in any of its forms, ‘or those who for one instant give any votes or sympathy or shelter or offer weasel words of partial excuse for any of these child murderers, whether from UDA or IRA or anyone else, my whole team would like to have each one of them for two, or better three, minutes under an All Black scrum’ (here the team burst into applause behind him) ‘and for that scrum I would nominate…’ (here he named the toughest eggs from the tournament, including three from Australia, a Welshman and an Afrikaner who had been sent off during it). ‘Ireland means this,’ declared McBride, holding aloft the World Cup, ‘it does not mean the bombers.’
4
A small group in the County Donegal who averred that they had actually seen McBride in flight, and sought an opinion from the parish priest as to whether this miraculous occurrence did not merit consideration for canonization, were quite properly sent up Croagh Patrick, on their knees, for their pains.