The uncivil wars: Ireland today.

WINSTON CHURCHILL'S 1922 comment about the Northern Irish, that "the integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world," is still valid today. That quarrel also has a remarkable fascination for Americans. The three Democratic presidential candidates have called for an American special envoy to help resolve the Northern Irish problem in the direction of Irish unification, and Irish-American activists are petitioning the Democratic Platform Committee to issue a similar statement. Charles Haughey, the leader of the opposition party in the Irish Republic, has recently called on President Reagan to challenge the legitimacy of Irish partition.

Before any public figure comments on Northern Ireland he, or at least his staff, ought first to make the acquaintance of what is beyond a doubt the most insightful and complete analysis of that tragic situation yet to appear. Padraig O'Malley has interviewed most of the major figures in the current phase of the controversy, including Ian Paisley, the Protestant extremist; James Prior, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; Garret FitzGerald, the Irish prime minister; John Hume, the leader of the moderate Northern Catholics; Danny Morrison of Sinn Fein; and Daithi O'Conaill of the IRA. He reports on the interviews in the course of his presentation of the various perspectives on the issue, in which he thoroughly and critically demonstrates the implications, prospects, and inconsistencies of each.

He spares no camp in his weighing of claims and grievances. For instance, he notes how the British army's attempt to break the IRA by internment--that is, imprisonment without trial--in the early 1970s only served to spawn "a new generation of IRA leaders who revitalized the movement in the late 1970s." Internment was then replaced by trial without jury for specified offenses, as well as detention without warrant or benefit of counsel for up to 72 hours, during which time confessions could be obtained. Predictably, police abuse of power and maltreatment of suspects ensued, prompting Amnesty International to demand a public inquiry. To their credit the British conducted such an inquiry and established reforms in the interrogation procedures. Since then accusations of physical maltreatment have practically ceased, but the continued ease of arrest, especially when the overwhelming majority of those arrested are released without charges, leads many to conclude that these arrests have become in Catholic areas a substitute for ordinary police techniques.

O'Malley also challenges the assertion that IRA members are "mindless hooligans," and he accepts the view of the Irish Catholic primate, Cardinal O'Fiaich, that the majority are ordinary working-class youth without criminal disposition, aside from that inspired by their political perspective. But it is on that perspective, which is the basis for its actions, rather than on the character of its members, that the IRA must ultimately be judged. That perspective, which is formed by "bad history," "the pervasiveness and singularity of the myth of [Irish] unity," "the misguided actions of the British government," and Loyalist "sectarianism," might "make the IRA's actions understandable, but they do not justify them."

In asking the basic moral question, "Are Northern Ireland's Catholics being politically repressed to an extent that justifies a campaign of violence to end it?" O'Malley clearly answers: "They are not." He insists that the majority of Northern Irish Catholics are inclined to see themselves as victims of the IRA and that they support a tougher policy toward it by both the British and Irish governments. Also, a plurality of them would settle for "a power-sharing devolved government within a UK framework."

There is an inadequate appreciation by outsiders of the position of Northern Irish Catholics, victims of both Protestant discrimination and IRA intimidation. While majorities in both Britain and the Irish Republic would probably favor a British announcement of intention to withdraw--the former to relieve themselves of a costly burden, the latter to satisfy an emotional political aspiration--they would not be the ones who would have to experience the very serious possibility of bloodbath that could follow, as both history and present-day surveys of attitudes suggest "the determination of Protestants to defend their privileges at all costs."

O'Malley concludes that there should not "be a search for a solution as such, but rather for a framework" in which alternative settlements might emerge. That framework is made up of several building blocks. One would be the removal of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution, whereby the irredentist claim for Northern Ireland is made, serving only to legitimize the IRA. Another building block would be British willingness to coerce the Protestants, who have used the British legislative guarantee that they will not be forced into a united Ireland as a means of vetoing any governmental structural concessions to the nationalist minority. In other words, the Protestant Loyalists of Northern Ireland, for whom special accommodations were made in the original partition of the island, must now be forced to accept similar special accommodations for the substantial minority within the six counties of Northern Ireland. O'Malley lists several other building blocks, but, significantly, none of them comes from America. Presidential speechwriters and Democratic Platform Committee members, please note.