It is interesting to note the frequency with which, yet again, discussion of Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien's views on the North are peppered with references to his "giant intellect" and "first-class mind". I do not question that he possesses these qualities, but wonder what they have to do with his opinions about Ireland, for these have always seemed to me to be governed by emotion. So far have his latest pronouncements deviated from the central core of what was assumed to be his thinking that the only explanation lies in an attempted rationalisation of a profound change of feeling. I have much more respect for Dr Cruise O'Brien than might be expected on the basis of comparisons between our respective viewpoints. In the past 30 years he has turned his name into a byword for something that really does not emanate from him at all but is rather an element of the culture of, and from which, he writes. Dr Cruise O'Brien is not, and never has been, an observer on the sidelines of history. He has become the voice of something deep within the Irish psyche.
As a writer, he has always been engaged with the issues he wrote about. His 1972 book States of Ireland remains one of the most compellingly elegant chronicles of the early stages of the present conflict. But I would distinguish between this level of his engagement and his direct involvement in political life, which has not, in general, been a positive thing. Towards the end of States of Ireland, there is a passage which contains a clue to Dr Cruise O'Brien's sensibility, by which I mean the whole gamut of feelings, ideas, images and impressions evoked by mention of the word "Cruiser". The book, he wrote, as though in anticipation of posterity's scepticism, was written "from the Catholic, specifically Southern Catholic" side of the fence:
"I have tried to understand some of the feelings shared by most Ulster Protestants and to communicate some notion of these feelings to Catholics in the Republic; as a result of which I have been accused of being hypersensitive about the Protestants, and caring little about the Catholics. In fact, the reverse accusation would contain more truth. It is to the Catholic community that I belong. This is my `little platoon', to love which, according to Edmund Burke (whose family were in that same platoon), `is the first, the germ, as it were, of publick affections'. I am motivated by affection for that platoon, identification with it, and fear that it may destroy itself, including me, through infatuation with its own mythology." Note how this passage is dominated by the concepts of "feeling" and "affection". With this book, Dr Cruise O'Brien was embarking on a new role in the public articulation of something deep in the emotional life of his own people. We can choose to describe this pejoratively, as I have often done, as the neurosis arising from the selfhatred generated by the colonial experience; or we can choose to describe it as the voice of our collective conscience, awakening to the new responsibilities of a post-victimhood Ireland. But however we choose to describe these feelings, none of us can afford to ignore or deny their existence, or Cruise O'Brien's importance in articulating them.
For this and other reasons, it is somewhat misguided to attack Dr Cruise O'Brien for his opinions. It is for his participation in Irish political life, and in particular for his role in generating repressive and censorial legislation, that he deserves to be harshly judged. It was essential that someone arose to say the things he said. But it was equally essential that others would emerge to say, perhaps, the opposite of what he said.
The tragedy is that this did not happen. And it did not happen, in large part, because of Dr Cruise O'Brien's involvement in public life. It was one thing to condemn republican violence and to extend that critique to question the fundamentals of Irish nationalism; it was quite another to acquire and utilise political power to prevent alternative viewpoints being articulated.
The climate of confused repression which persisted in Dr Cruise O'Brien's "platoon" for two decades after his ascent to public office was not simply a matter of abstract unfreedom. It was a significant contributing factor to the escalation of the conflict, as has been comprehensively displayed by the degree of progress achieved since his regime was dismantled. The removal of the option of democratic expression, together with the demonisation of nationalism and the uncritical succouring of unionism in Southern culture and society, created a climate in which continuing republican violence was probably inevitable.
The trouble with Dr Cruise O'Brien is that he was unable to see anything other than the dark side of his own people. In an address entitled The Northern Connection in Irish-British Relations, delivered at Queen's University, Belfast, in June 1978, he said that the reason many people could not see that Irish nationalism and unionism were incapable of reconciliation was because this idea was "so desolatingly devoid of all comfort". We all, he said, "find it hard to accept bad news even when it is true". Perhaps his fatal flaw is that he is incapable of hearing anything but bad news or seeing anything but darkness. And having observed this darkness, he went on to deliver pronouncements about the likely consequences. From predicting the deaths of hundred of thousands of Irishmen and Irishwomen in a horrendous civil war, Dr Cruise O'Brien has now reduced his prognostications to embrace only two calamities: the inclusion of Sinn Fein in the government of Northern Ireland and the reform of the RUC. It is, by any standards, a modest apocalypse. (It might be useful to reflect that, if these two proposals had been put on the table at the beginning, there would have been no war, no Provisionals and no peace process.)
Dr Cruise O'Brien's solution to these appalling vistas is that unionists throw their lot in with a united Ireland. And much as I might wish for such an eventuality, I know his position is intrinsically illogical, since it invites what from a unionist perspective is a doomsday scenario while rejecting a much less extreme solution which is now readily negotiable.
But we may be taking the Cruiser a little too literally. At a superficial level, one might note how his fundamental argument depended for vindication on the continuation of the IRA campaign and so decide that he simply hates being wrong or is finding it hard to accept good news even when it is true.
But what is going on at a deeper level, I believe, is that he is seeking to enable the wider culture to adjust its thinking in line with the collective feelings of relief arising from the cessation of IRA violence. Our worst fears have not, after all, been realised and so we need to emerge with dignity from the vortex of self-condemnation which the previous set of circumstances had drawn us into. In this, Dr Cruise O'Brien is functioning not as a journalist, commentator or intellectual but as an artist writing his own sort of history.