Here I begin to give an account of the development of the Green party which evolved from a quasi-anarchist crank fringe group to a serious political party, with 2 TDs, 2 MEPs and many local councillors at the end of the century. At the 2002 general election, the Green TDs increased to 6; much of this success must be attributed to their having got their organisational and constitutional act together, during the 1990s decade, to which the present writer contributed.

I continued to take an interest in the ongoing Northern crisis, and in what remained of the Left after the 1989 crisis, in the hopes that it might prove possible to rescue the Marxist baby from the Stalinist bathwater. An aspect of this was the Paul O'Higgins correspondence, also the Desmond Greaves School, which had been initiated in 1989 by Anthony Coughlan and others, in an attempt to keep alive the legacy of C Desmond Greaves, especially as regards the analysis of the Irish national question in Marxist terms. I took a somewhat critical view of the way it evolved, managing as it did to avoid taking seriously the need for a 'Left-Green convergence', and also to avoid serious critical analysis of the ongoing Provisional violent campaign. I treat this in a separate Greaves module.

Roger Garland's Think-Tank and the Internet

A quick response to your letter of Feb 22 re the Ralph Monod fax.

1. Information-sharing between the various green groups should not be confined to the parliamentary groups. It is most important for the groups who do not yet have representation to be able to draw on the experience of those who do.

2. The process of achieving an all-European Green consensus on key issues involves 2 stages: (a) each national group working out its own assessment of the key issues and their prioritisation (b) all groups interactively by negotiation agreeing what are the key priority issues for action at EC or CSCE level; this will be a sub-set of the issues as seen by each group.

For example a key issue in the UK is electoral reform and the abolition of the antiquated English system which blocks new parties emerging. A key issue in Ireland is the upgrading of local democracy and the establishment of an effective regional dimension, with the emergence of Limerick, Sligo etc as integrated government centres, with all functions except defence and foreign affairs. Neither of these however are key issues at the EC level, unless it becomes possible for the European parliament to legislate to over-ride national legislation in favour of a standard approach to local government and electoral democratic practice. The elevation of these issues to EC level is itself a key issue: do we value democracy imposed by the EC above sovereignty at the level of the national State?

3. A key issue at the EC level is the arms industry; this tends to be considered by the defence integrationists as the trojan horse for achieving a common defence policy. The Gulf War is going to provide all sorts of arguments; the one we should be leaning on is how to prevent the arms industry from becoming regarded as a prime export-earner. The European Community should not be arming dictators, and then profiting when they have to be contained. They make profits from arming both sides. This will mop up all peace dividend from the end of the cold war, unless it is put down, and the resources diverted to civil utility.

4. Expectations from the Network: we need a system to enable (a) the rapid and consistent development of pan-European Green policies (b) co-ordinated actions where necessary to put pressure on supra-national bodies (EC, CSCE and UN) and (c) the widespread reporting of such actions so as to develop pan-European and global Green consciousness of the ecological (ie conservationist, sustainable) approach to socio-economic and political issues.

5. I envisage a system in which every national Green centre has at least one computer-literate PC-owner who is registered with GreenNet. This person, whom I label the 'GN Window', should ideally be on the national executive and deputed to implement the networking function, reporting to a networking committee at national level. Alternatively, someone on a networking committee at national level should be deputed to liaise with the computer-literate PC owner who acts as the technical support service for the GN window.

6. These 'GN windows', one per State, or one per nation where there are several nations within the State (eg the UK), should set up a private electronic conference, in which would be available for general circulation all policy documents judged to be of EC, CSCE or UN significance. There should be a second private electronic conference devoted to proposals for, and planning of, co-ordinated international actions aimed at focused EC, CSCE or UN events (eg the coming Luxembourg EC Summit). There should be a third conference, aimed at the media (ie a public conference) in which actions would be reported and agreed policy documents made available to the public.

7. All these 3 levels of conference should be maintained actively by the GN window people, who would get to know each other, and become the real consciousness of the network, capable of quick response and rapid analysis, while keeping in touch with their own national centres and national/local networks.

8. There is nothing like this functioning anywhere yet, though embryonic ideas have been kicked around, primarily among the US, Canadian and Australian Greens, with the writer becoming recognised as the sole European participant. I can provide an abstract of these discussions, if this would be of use as a conference briefing.

9. We have a situation in which the available technology for communications and information exchange is far ahead of the ability of people to use it effectively. Effective communications in this mode however is the norm among the European and US scientific research and development communities, and it works. It is possible for networked research people to put together a proposal involving multinational interdisciplinary consortia, going through several drafts in a day or two, with inputs from many people.

10. The Greens internationally would appear to have the edge in computer literacy; they are on the whole a competent intellectual bunch. This should constitute their way of getting to be the globally leading political force.

Yours sincerely / Roy Johnston

Paul O'Higgins re-discovered

Paul O'Higgins / Christ's College / Cambridge CB2 3BU

11/10/91

Dear Paul / Good to hear from you. Trying to formulate a reply to your questions has helped my ongoing re-thinking process. I would have liked to interact with you when you were here; you may remember I made one or two efforts, but the logistics were against us. There is literally nobody of my own generation around with whom it is possible to discuss analytically areas of shared experience relevant to the current 'paradigm-shift'. So I have been doing my rethinking quietly and in isolation.

I tried to get to review the Skeff book, but without success. So I confess I haven't yet read it. I will now go out and buy it, and form my own opinion. People have told me that Andree was kind to me, perhaps because I went to see him in hospital after his heart attack. This if you remember was post Khrushchev, and it was beginning to emerge that the reality of the 30s and 40s was more as described by Koestler et al than what we in the 40s wanted to believe. I conceded to him that in that respect he had been right.

If you remember, in the 40s, while we worked as a disciplined student group, and were quite creative in student politics at the practical level, with the SRC and all the services we started (these were not equalled until well into the 60s, after the Korean War backlash wiped our work out), we were somewhat in advance of the current politics in our attempts to affiliate to the IUS and to swim against the stream of the cold-war environment. On the whole we placed too much importance on the international affiliations, and neglected the Irish environment. I think I was the only one (also possibly Malcolm Craig; what happened to him?) who put any effort into making the linkages with the developing working-class left, and with the ex-Curragh people. In this, we were also far in advance of the situation; we missed out on the chance to pick up the mantle from George Gilmore (who was around; I remember hearing his name) and by our neglect allowed another generation of militaristic republicanism to emerge. The cultural gap between the TCD environment and the then current triumphalist Catholic nationalism was palpable; we were like Doris Lessing's young white left Rhodesians.

Skeffington to his credit tried to steer us in the direction of objective study of the conditions of the Dublin working-class, and we only very marginally took this up.

Why did Skeffington dislike us? Because we represented what seemed to him at the time to be an ideology of deception, and we were a perversion of the ideals of socialism. Our own subsequent attitude in the 60s to the Maoists would be similar to his attitude to us. I think he forgave me because I later admitted to him that we had been wrong. Some 60s Maoists have turned out quite sensible.

My own evolution since has been a process of search for a democratic framework within which to develop policies with Marxist insights. Mainstream Marxist orthodoxy I was never at ease with, though I kept in touch. There seems to have been a trend among intellectuals to distance themselves, and do their own thing; Bernal did the peace movement, and the Marxist 'science in history' bit; Desmond did Connolly and the Irish question; EP Thompson went for labour history; those who stuck with the hard core on the whole got discredited. I tried to make my mark with the republicans, and I suppose had some influence; Desmond was dismissive of it as 'petty-bourgeois', but most of the world is exactly this and if Marxist thinking can't be adapted as a progressive tool in a democratic anti-imperial struggle, where the 'proletariat' isn't fully formed, then it's no good, not complete.

Indeed, my current re-think is along the lines that the new 'apostolic succession' is no longer Marx Engels Lenin but Marx Engels Luxembourg Connolly. Connolly supported Luxembourg against Lenin in '06 (was it) on the Polish national question.

The perversion of the Marxist stream came about because of its embodiment in a centralist Imperial State. Connolly used to be reprehended for not having developed a theory of the Party and the State, and for being at heart an anarcho-syndicalist. Perhaps this aspect needs to be picked up, and some steps taken towards how to get rid of the State. This is now feasible, because war is no longer a cost-effective way of doing business; technology has seen to that.

The core-question posed by Marx was how to control democratically the capital investment process, which determined the direction of growth of society. It is now demonstrated that a central State is certainly not the way to do this. Even if the central State is democratic. The way would seem to be industrial democracy at the level of the firm, with the Board of Directors representing the people concerned, in some proportion depending on the extent to which their livelihood is at stake. Rules could be drawn up for defining the constituencies; this, and their enforcement, should be the sole role for the State.

I have been reading some New Left Review stuff, and people like Nove seem to be groping in the right direction, but no-one seems to be on to the key issue: the decision process at the level of the firm, in the context of rapidly changing technology, moving goalposts etc. The only person I have encountered who came near to this was Stafford Beer; he is (was?) a cybernetician, without Marxist background; there is a group in Manchester who have inherited his mantle. Beer advised Allende in Chile, and wrote up the experience. It is a pity that embryo was not allowed to develop; it was wrecked not only by the CIA but by what might be described as a doctrinaire approach by the Left to the petty-bourgeoisie, which allowed the latter to be manipulated by the CIA. The Beer work was directed at the role of the state in economic planning, using cybernetic principles, and enabling the key investment decisions to be made locally. I don't think he broke through with it; Allende however supported him to the end.

Paul, I am working in total isolation, and have no-one to discuss these things with. Could we perhaps correspond, and define for ourselves some objectives, a research programme, leading perhaps to a New Left Review article, on some suitable topic?

All the best / RJ

This contact did not at this time yet bear fruit. I tried again:

Paul O'Higgins / Christ's College / Cambridge CR2 3BU

1/12/91

Dear Paul / I had hoped that you might have come back to me on some of the points I raised in my letter of Oct 11, in answer to yours of Oct 4 re Skeff.

Are you, perhaps, computerate enough to carry out your correspondence through the university computer networks? Or has the new technology not yet penetrated into the legal area? If it has, and you find it easier to e-mail someone than to post a letter, feel free to do so with me, as it is on the whole my preferred means of communication.

Let me add to what I said about the apostolic succession re Luxembourg / Connolly: I am not sure I have got it right regarding Luxembourg, as her position on the national question in Poland would not be similar to Connolly's.This needs to be researched. There is scope here for an article in the New Left review, which seems to be the only forum for serious Marxist analysis in sight, this side of the Atlantic. (There would appear to be much going on in the US, and perhaps it is to there that we should turn for intellectual stimulus).

The core of what I was trying to say is that Connolly with his concept of applying in economic life the principles of republican democracy was spot on. And this is not done via the top-down actions of a centralist State.

Let me come now to OSS. I went out and bought the book, and read it. I must say I found it excellent, accurate and moving. It is tragic that we in our time were not able to develop a politics fit to assimilate him. He represented the best aspects of the liberal secularist Home Rule tradition, of which my father was a part. Many of the people mentioned as early influences were on JJ's network, and I had picked up their lore via him. This tradition has been totally buried by current historiography, and needs resurrection. One of the elements in it was Canon Sheehan, and the All for Ireland League, the objective of which was to ensure that Home Rule was not Catholic hegemonist. Who is aware of this now? All they know is that Canon Sheehan wrote popular novels.

OSS picked up the French republican tradition of the 'mouvement laique' and this was totally in tune with the secularist tradition he picked up from his father and the Home Rule liberals.

Brendan Clifford has researched Sheehan; he has also come up with some insights into the French influences in Belfast in the 1790s. Brendan is a North Cork Protestant, from the heartland of the AFIL influence. In the 60s he was dismissed by the orthodox Left as a Trotskyist, to be dreaded. I have corresponded with him since.

On most of the key issues relevant to the struggle for democracy in the Irish context, Skeffington was excellent. He gave no quarter. The Establishment hated him.

His dislike of our efforts was totally comprehensible, as we appeared to him, not without good reason, to give priority to the defence of the indefensible, and to neglect the issues closer to home which he, rightly, felt were important.

We owe it to the younger generation to make available to them our experience, 'warts and all'. We need to make available to them the experience of the use and abuse of the 'philosophy of action' so that they can avoid the errors and abuses we fell into. (Perhaps the worst one was to imagine that Moscow was as infallible as Rome: was this perhaps a feature more of those of us who were dropout Catholics?)

We need to find an arena for action where the experience is relevant and listened to. I confess to having found such an arena with the Greens in Ireland. They are competent and realistic, unlike the UK greens, who remain crank fringe (except perhaps in Wales, where they have good relations with the Plaid, and are helping to develop an empathy between the Welsh national issue and the immigrant English, who when radical tend to be green; this if you think about it, is close to the Connolly model).

Last week I was at a meeting of a policy think-tank with our TD Roger Garland, and there was a chap there who recognised me, and I was introduced, but I can't remember his name. He said he knew me from the TCD Fabian days. I asked had he read the OSS book. He had, and what is more he had written to Andree apologising for his role in OSS's expulsion. He must have been part of our 'voting machine'. I will cultivate him and find out more.

There are very few people I relate to, in the context of analysing and criticising the experience of the Left. There are about 3 in Ireland, and one in Italy; none are of our cohort. The only one of the latter I encounter is Paddy Bond, and I must say I find him somewhat in a rut with the CA; indeed the CA is in a rut. The Greaves mantle would appear to be with Coughlan, who I don't think is fit for it; anyway it is flawed. On CDG I have several critical theses, and I must say they prevent me from empathising with Coughlan, who seems to have taken on the job in hagiographic mode.

In my final paragraph I suggested we try to develop a correspondence which might lead to an article in the NLR contributing to the analysis of the paradigm-shift. I was dead serious. It is feasible, I think, and I feel that we of our generation are under an obligation to do it. What do you say? Please come back to me on it.

Yours sincerely / RJ

Paul had established a vacation home in SW Wicklow, on the slopes of Brusselstown Ring, looking across at Keadeen mountain and the Glen of Imaal. We subsequently interacted there occasionally, during his Cambridge vacations. Later he was helpful in developing a democratic constitution for the Greens. The following notes were background to the foregoing POH re-discovery.

Socialism and Democracy: some Notes towards a Re-think

Roy Johnston October 1991

It is evident that the central political problem of the Left is how to bring about democratic control over the capital re-investment process, and how to mobilise people to this end, without generating a bureaucratic monster.

The following is a summary of some preliminary ideas on this topic which are currently the subject of an ongoing research program. I would welcome some preliminary feedback on these ideas, as an aid to the analysis of the problem, and the choice of direction of the research.

[A] Capital

2. How capital is invested for economic growth depends (a) on the interests of who owns the capital and (b) their level of knowhow. (The latter factor is increasingly important, as the technology of production becomes more and more sophisticated.) Because more people are concerned with the effects of capital investment than those who actually own it, the investment of capital becomes a social issue, and this is what socialism is all about.

3. There are two contrasting approaches: (a) the 'capitalist' approach, which says 'leave the investment decision to the owners of capital acting according to their perception of the market, and all will be well'. This is the classical 'Adam Smith invisible hand' concept. There is also (b) what up to now has passed for the 'socialist' approach, which says that social control over investment must be imposed by the central State.

3a. There is a need to re-examine the trends of socialist thinking which hitherto have been marginalised: the anarcho-syndicalists, Guild socialists, co-operativists etc, in the light of the collapse of central-Statism.

Connolly has been criticised for his failure to address the problem of the State, which was held to have been done successfully by Lenin. Perhaps in the year 2100 it will be apparent that the mainstream of Marxist thinking flowed via Connolly, and the principal application of Marx/Connolly thinking will be seen to have been in the context of the development economics of emerging democratic nation-States, in post-imperial situations. The attempt to apply Marx's thinking, top-down, in a centralist imperial system, will be seen to have been a disastrous aberration.

Marx's own practical political period, when he edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, was in the context of attempted emergence of a democratic Germany at the economic fringe of the first Industrial Revolution, then spreading from Britain and beginning to enter the continent via Belgium. Germany was emerging from the aftermath of the Napoleonic imperial period, and had not established a national-democratic State. Marx's primary political objective of the 1840s was to do just this.

4. Where the central State has been democratic, as in most western European countries, some limited democratic control over capital in certain key sectors has been achieved, in the national interest. The form of this control is similar to the private sector: a firm is set up, which has to operate according to commercial criteria, the principal shareholder being the State. Where such a State firm has an incentive to innovate, it is often successful. There are several examples of this model in Ireland.

5. Where the central State has been dominated by bureaucracy and in effect 'owned' by a 'party machine', the effect has been disastrous, leading to the crisis which we are currently observing in the USSR. We have had, in effect, one big monopoly capitalist, without competition, and no incentive to innovate in order to re-invest capital more effectively.

5a. The current privatisation crisis in Ireland suggests that there may be an analogous process at work, the full implications of which have yet to emerge. It would appear that although there is in the Irish State sector a substantial creative knowhow component, which has up to now been the secret of its success, this in recent times has been offset by the destructive type of 'knowhow' which empowers a political, or politically connected, 'nomenclatura' to enrich itself personally, at the expense of the peoples' property, without adding real value to the social product.

6. The key to successful re-investment of capital is the link with the innovation process, and it is necessary in the current crisis to find means of combining this with the introduction of democratic control by some means other than the central State.

7. Given that the basic economic unit is the firm, then the problem is to ensure that those who control the re-investment of the surplus it generates are (a) socially responsible and (b) aware of the potential for innovation available in the current state of technology.

[B] The Firm

2. A socially responsible Board of Directors should therefore look after the interests of owners, workers, suppliers and consumers, to the extent that the firm survives, making the necessary innovations to adapt to changing technology and market conditions.

3. A mechanism for ensuring that the Board of Directors became and remained responsive to these social interests would be to open the capital fund to access by them, and to provide means of ensuring that their share was in proportion to the extent of their interest. Thus the Board would still represent the owners, but the owners would be composed primarily of the worker, supplier and consumer interests. Thus a supplier, to ensure the future of the outlet, might be prepared to accept some % less, the balance going into the capital fund in the suppliers name. A consumer, similarly, might be prepared to pay a % more, into the capital fund, to ensure ongoing supply. And a worker might be prepared to accept a small % of wages in the form of shares (equivalent to a pension fund deduction).

4. In a vibrant, free-competition situation, these options need not be taken up, as the market would see to it that there were always alternative sources and outlets. A perfect market enables the 'perfect democracy' of consumer/producer choice to exist. Such a situation however is theoretical; the market is always imperfect; there are local and sectoral monopolies etc; workers can't always easily move. In the real world of imperfect competition it would seem that some such mechanism for democratising the ownership might represent a possible approach to ensuring the long-term viability of a particular firm in a given situation. The so-called 'perfect democracy' of market choice under capitalism usually tends towards a monopoly of the 'most popular' choice, so that the 'democracy' of the market, while it works transiently, is in the long run negated. This was one of Marx's key points.

5. Under capitalism, it is already the case that a significant proportion of the available capital is concentrated in workers' pension funds. We are simply generalising this concept into a possible model for a 'privatisation' process which is also a 'socialisation' process, operating at the level of the firm, without heavy-handed interference from the central State.

6. Under the 'democratised ownership of capital' system the innovation process would be likely to to work without tending towards monopoly for the successful innovator. If, for example, a consumer discovered a better product elsewhere, there would be 2 options: (a) buy it, and abandon the interests of the original supplier, or (b) put pressure on the Board of Directors to produce the better product, licencing in the knowhow if necessary. The 'capitalist free market' would tend to take course (a) and allow the local firm to decline and ultimately collapse. The socially responsible course is (b). Those who are pressing for a 'market economy' in the as an alternative to central-State management should be aware of this option.

[C] The State, Democracy and the Nation

2. An important role for the State might be to legislate for the transition of an innovative small firm, founded privately by an individual (this is usually the best way to innovate), into a fully-structured firm with Board of Directors responsible to an appropriate social mix of shareholders. The stage in the evolution of the firm at which this takes place should be the stage at which under capitalism the firm 'goes public'.

3. Tax law could be used to ensure that large shareholdings did not accumulate under the control of individuals who might then exercise undemocratic power (this is the central problem of western capitalism; it is especially acute when such power is exercised without competence, environmental sensitivity or social responsibility).

4. Apart from the democracy of the firm via the spread of share-holdings, there is also the fundamental democracy of the district and the region, and of course the nation. It is a good principle that the person elected should be known personally to the elector and this means that the basic unit should be small. This is high of the agenda of the 'Green' component of European democratic radicalism, and needs to be taken on board by the 'Left' component.

5. In the region and the nation there is the question of ethnicity; there should be no discrimination against any ethnic group, and some form of proportional representation. Democracy must be inclusive and sensitive to minority interests; it is not good practice to structure things so that one group is always 'voted down'.

6. Typical multi-ethnic situations have urban groups of extern origin embedded in an aboriginal rural hinterland. The key to democratising this system is in the development of a common perception of economic interest. (This of course was the Connolly approach to the problem of multi-ethnicity in the North.) The foregoing model for democratising the firm may help to develop this common perception. To tear an urban centre apart from its hinterland is a recipe for disaster (eg Derry and Donegal), and we are seeing many such disasters in contemporary European history (eg the Serbs in Croatia), which mirror the problem in Northern Ireland with which we are familiar.

I am putting forward the above 'theses' in the hopes that they may generate some analytical and creative discussion among those of the democratic political community who are concerned with the problem of social vs private ownership.

Any critical comments which I take on board I will acknowledge and attribute to their source, in the event that these initial ideas ever develop to the extent that they become publishable in a more elaborate form.

I have included the Maastricht material, as discussed with Anthony Coughlan both pre-Referendum (immediately below) and post-Referendum (subsequently), in the Greaves sequence elsewhere, but because it relates to the overall political environment I also include it here.

The Maastricht Campaign

24 Crawford Ave / Dublin 9

14/02/92

Dear Tony

I have been pre-occupied with finishing off an R&D project, but am now emerging again, and hope to get to the various events which are happening next week: the ATGWU event on Monday, the ICEM event on Wednesday and the Green event on Thursday. I think there is an increasing public awareness of the Maastrcht implications, not before time. I enclose for your information a statement produced by a group of Quakers in Cork, which I have sent on the the new Minister David Andrews, with a covering letter from the Dublin MM Peace Committee.

I didn't follow up on the CDG papers, as they don't seem on the whole to exude much priority, though interesting enough in their way.

I have received your material by various channels. Allow me to comment on it, from the marketing point of view.

1. The ordering of the material: you should put in the front of the shop window that to which people attach most importance. You seem to be falling into the economist tradition of the Irish left, by putting the monetary union issue first.

The perception of most people is that the financial discipline imposed by monetary union is a good thing and to be encouraged, in that it will make more difficult for irresponsible governments to indulge in uncontrolled spending sprees, as has happened in the past. The argument of the Left that government spending, if investment-oriented, is a 'good thing' has fallen victim of the track-records of the centralist States of the East, supported by the Greencore experience on the home ground. State/Party mafias sugaring themselves etc.

There is a new ball-game, which the Left will have to learn: the key politico-economic concept is to leave investment decisions with the firm, but democratise the composition of the Board of Directors, without direct intervention by the central State. This is a tall order, and until it has been demonstrated in pilot mode, the left does not have a leg to stand on in matters economic. Economism as a leftist weapon is a dead duck.

2. The nation-province argument is more complex than you appear to perceive. There is no such thing as a nation-state, pure, and without ethnic minorities. If there were such it would be either boring or an abomination. The old imperial States of Europe (Britain, France, Spain) are breaking up, with Scotland, Brittany, Catalonia emerging. The people concerned with these movements welcome the idea of a European Confederation, as a larger version of the Swiss model, as it weakens the power of their old imperial centralist oppressors. If we are to participate meaningfully in this politics, we should be seeking to weaken the old imperial centralist States, strengthen the emerging proto-nations, and oppose the development of too much power at the confederal centre. Talk of the Austro-Hungarian 'prison-house of nations' is facile.

3. The key issue, which should be in the front of the shop window, is neutrality. In the confederation, all armed force should be territorial, except a small central core on standby for UN type activities, with UN recognition as a regional peacekeeping force. This is the primary ground we should be fighting on, as it is in accord with our existing position as an emerging post-colonial nation, with a positive UN peacekeeping record. The WEU and NATO are anachronistic and should be dismantled, as has been the Warsaw Pact.

If Ireland were to give a lead in this politics, and were to combine it with a positive policy of active aid to the 3rd world, and indeed to East Europe, with transfer of relevant technological knowhow and associated educational and training services (such as we are doing already on a small scale), we could assume a leading role in the world as catalyst of the resolution of the north-south conflict, AND into the bargain generate work for our own people in supplying the necessary goods and services.

So you need to reverse the order: put neutrality up front, and develop its potential as a generator of economic activity at the interface between the first and third worlds.

So much for the document. Now for the sponsorship. An outside observer would ask: who are these people, and what is their standing, with regard to the goods in the shop window? Did they have a meeting, at which the issues and their priorities were discussed? Would my re-prioritising have clicked with them? Perhaps. Insofar are there are 'trad left' people, no doubt most if not all will be aware of the paradigm-shift, and the crisis of 'central-Statism'.

There are some good people there, but there could perhaps be more.

Any time you produce a list, Kelleher always rings up and complains "why aren't he and I on it, is it because Coughlan has a blind spot with regard to science and technology". I always agree with him, and we have a moan.

The reason I'm not on it is because I was not asked, although I have had, and still have, an influential role in all the strands of opinion represented on your list.

If the key issue is neutrality, and the key linkage into economics the role of Ireland in the transfer of appropriate technology from the first to the 3rd worlds, then Kelleher, a respected engineer, now in retirement but still active, and with Caribbean and African experience, should be on the list.

In my own case, since I did the Irish Times column, and subsequent consultancy for Eolas, the NEA, the YEA, Shannon Development, on the question of the use of college-based knowhow in enterprise development etc, I am known and respected in every 3rd-level College in the country. I am currently engaged in an enterprise development which is actively recruiting high-tech graduates from the gangway of the emigrant-boat.

Yet it never occurs to you to ask either me or Kelleher to join a sponsorship list like that; you seem to prefer what some call the scribbling and chattering classes (Fennells, Kiberds and such). Is this a continuing expression of the general blindness of the Left to the question of technical competence, on which rock the old Left has now visibly been seen to founder?

I am not in a position to do much active work, but there are people around who would be more inclined to support things if my name was on the sponsorship, and these people would tend not to be on the left; this presumably is what you want.

I would need however to be consulted as to how the shop window was to be laid out, and to be listened to.

Yours sincerely / Roy Johnston

More on Green Networking in 1992

Dear Roger / To take up what I was ringing you about last week, and didn't break through due to other pressures (both on you and on me!):

1. As you know I have been trying to develop the electronic networking system, with a view to helping to develop common Green policies throughout Europe where these are of EC relevance (eg the CAP and organic farming, the Maastricht business, neutrality and the accession of Austria and Sweden, third world trade etc.). 1 have not been succeeding, because the key Green parties of Europe and the Green co-ordination process is not yet over the computeracy barrier.

2. One of the ways in which I could demonstrate the utility of networking is by ensuring that people had access quickly to policy statements from us on issues of international significance, or where the international community is interested in Ireland for one reason or another.

3. Of the European Greens the only parties showing any sign of computeracy are the Germans, the British, the Swedes and the Finns. I see no sign of the French. The USA, Canada and Australia are well developed into networking; indeed the network is dominated by the latter 3, and European input is negligible.

4. There was last week a meeting in London of the Green MEPs with the UK Green Party. This was supported by Willy de Backer, who is charged with developing electronic networking by the EPGG. I have been in correspondence with Willy, and with the GreenNet people, on this question. Willy and the GN people had a meeting, with my briefing. I have not yet had feedback as to the outcome; perhaps Patricia has. It may be at the level that the EPGG is doing its own thing 'top down' and wants to use its networking ability for political advantage, in which case we have to try and develop a 'bottom up' alternative with people we meet via the co-ordination events.

5. In this context, it would be useful if I were to keep the network well briefed with material emanating from your office. For example, copies of your statements issued about the abortion issue, and also about the business of the Burren, which has achieved some international notoriety.

6. I have been on to Steve, and the Fownes St office is not in a position to supply me with material in DOS/ASCII format, suitable for unloading. I can't read Amstrad WP stuff which is not DOS. So if I am to do this, it will have to be through your office, where I gather that you have good WP facilities. 7. Also, on Northern Ireland: the network is dominated by a chap in New Jersey acting for the Provisionals, with the result that the overall Irish input on this issue is totally unbalanced. Can you perhaps let me have any stuff you can lay your hands on relating eg to the question of the SF Ard Fheis in the Mansion House, as this issue has been raised in an anti-Green manner on the network. Or indeed anything on the Peace Train, or other actions relevant to the ongoing situation.

8. I have all of our basic Green policy documents uploaded into a reference knowledge-base, with an indexed structure, as a sort of demonstration model of what should be accessible from all Green Parties in Europe (I got them in mag-media via Alasdair McKinstrey). This however is not yet properly developed; I had hoped that the EPGG people might be able to encourage this, so that we can see, for example, what is the French Green policy on nuclear energy, with a view to being critical of it. It would also be useful to see what is the German policy on agriculture, and how it relates to the CAP crisis.

9. If you were to let me have on a diskette (3.5" or 5.25"; must however be DOS, and 'saved as' 'Text Only with Line Breaks', preferably with a 66-char line) copies of statements issued by you, or by the Party from your office, along the lines suggested above, I would upload them, and download a selection of European Green material which might be of use to you on various issues as they arise. I would then return you the diskette; it could shuttle between us.

10. I gather there are tentative plans for the Leinster House network to have access to international e-mail networking: do you know what these are, and what are the objectives?

So much for the immediate e-mail networking problem. This I feel is where I can most effectively service the Party. However there are other questions, like economics, the social wage, the crisis in the West, the meat crisis (Goodman, Halal etc) where I feel I have something to contribute. Like for example how much of the meat and general agricultural crisis is due to the seasonality problem? Unique in Europe we have a 15 to 1 seasonality ratio for milk.

You can't have high added value products without continuity of supply. Meat similarly; they all calve in April and slaughter in October, like in medieval times. I did a report for Bord Bainne in 1972 on this theme, and developed a computer model of the industry and its supply base which enabled the 'added value' aspect to be quantified. It was shelved because all they could think of then was the milk price rise on EC accession; they didn't think it through.

(Indeed, my father Joe Johnston in 1932 did a paper in the Stat Soc on precisely the same issue, exposing how we had lost the UK market to the Danes because we only condescended to supply butter in the summer. The key was then, and still is, to grow crops for winter feed.)

This is a key strategic issue, and it is linked up with organic farming and the premium prices obtainable in the German market. It could be the salvation of the West, and Irish agriculture in general.

We ought to be mobilising the organic growers and providing them with a political voice. I have mentioned this to Vincent McDowell, who is supposed to be developing an approach to fielding candidates nationally in the next election.

We should be focusing on the agriculture and unemployment crisis with the next election in mind, and have the key candidates identified. The positive angle on the first is 'go organic' and the second is 'social wage, legalise the black economy; abolish income tax and put all tax on energy and productive fixed assets'. This could be done by re-defining existing cash flows, with no-one being worse off. In the aftermath of the change however, a firm would have the right to hire someone from the unemployed by paying a marginal economic wage on top of the social wage, and to pay overtime to met a deadline without taxing it. Business would be transformed overnight.

This needs to be developed into a package which could be sold politically to the masses of unemployed and to the Trade Unions and to small business; it should be perfectly feasible, but needs careful marketing, so as not to appear 'crank'.

I can see a role for myself along the above lines, if you can think of a way whereby I can be associated with Party groups looking at these issues, even on a corresponding basis, attending only occasional meetings..

What do you say? / Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

At this time I had not resolved the problem of how to get close to the somewhat anarchic Green centres of decision. The response was disappointing. I was somewhat in advance of the posse. So I turned to the Northern Ireland question, and responded to Andy Pollak's initiative:

The 'Northern Initiative 92'

I give as an appendix some notes on that background; I prefer to begin with the analysis of the situation and to outline a possible model for future development.

In the analysis I consciously adopt a European perspective, being painfully aware of how the failure of the Irish to develop successfully along democratic pluralist lines has weakened to supply of good models for the peaceful transition from colonial to post-colonial politics in a large number of situations in Europe, the most acute one currently being Yugoslavia.

So I begin by mapping out, in the abstract, two extreme 'malign scenarios' and one intermediate 'benign scenario' (if I may borrow Conor Cruise O'Brien's cliche).

Alternative European scenarios:

Malign A:

There is a strong central authority in Brussels; atrophy of the old States has taken place (these are mostly multi-national, the 'nation-State' being actually a rarity); there is complete mobility of people, goods and capital throughout the EC.

The leads to an 'ethnic melting-pot' situation, with some similarity to the USA, and a tendency towards decultured monoglot masses, concentrated in the main existing industrial areas, primarily Germany. It would differ from the USA in that the lingua franca of the business and scientific / technological upper crust would be English, while that of the masses would tend to be German.

Europe as a whole would develop on a macro-scale along the lines exhibited within those existing States having strongly centralist structures (the most extreme being Britain and Ireland, the latter being a micro time-capsule of old 1920s imperial Britain): a dominating central core, with high property prices, attracting labour from a declining fringe; the labour when there being confined to ghettos, and facing a high threshold before being able to influence core politics (examples: West Belfast Catholics, London Irish, Berlin Turks, Paris Bretons...).

The ultimate malignity of this scenario is the way it lends itself to the manipulation of the urban labour market, using exploitation of the ethnic tensions of the ghettos, by a cohesive unified upper-crust. In the USA this model, classically described by Upton Sinclair, remains with us to this day, and is at the root of the recent Los Angeles riots.

This malign scenario is the one perceived by those who opposed the accession of Ireland to the EC in 1972 (the present writer included), and by their successors who are currently opposing the Maastricht treaty constitutional amendment. It has considerable force, and is inevitable unless the pure economic forces are somehow moderated and controlled by socially responsible forces under democratic control, as it is suggested might just be possible in the following 'benign' scenario.

Benign:

The central authority is minimal, and all power is devolved to cohesive regional governments (or perhaps cantons, in that we are to some extent leaning on the Swiss model, though not uncritically, as in the Swiss cases there is a democratic deficit in some areas such as, for example, votes for women), which are not necessarily coterminous with the present States.

A canton should not be smaller than a population sufficient to support a credible third-level education centre, capable of supplying a competent leadership for politics and business rooted in local resources, including innovative enterprise based on scientific knowhow; say about 200,000 population. This, for example, is of the order of the size of the independent state of Iceland.

Cantons should on the whole be as small as possible, but where big cohesive units exist, as a result of past imperial structures (eg London) then it would make sense to accept their integrity, and think of the canton of (say) Anglia as London and its immediate hinterland, up to boundaries defined by the hinterlands of whichever cities emerge as the political cores of neighbouring cantons (Bristol, Birmingham etc; it is not relevant here to go into political details in the English context).

(The analogy between the projected Anglia and existing Austria is worth exploring: post-imperial London, relieved of the pathological pressure on house prices due to its current centralist state role, would become a pleasant place to live, an attractive international focus for science and the arts.)

All power of government would exist at the canton level, except defence and foreign affairs; there would also need to be a system of justice such that any perceived injustice to any individual or group within a canton could be referred to the central High Court for resolution, with binding authority (ie a Bill of Rights).

The central authority would be the executive of a European Parliament with two chambers, one directly elected, and the other with representatives of the cantons (we are here thinking of something like the US Senate).

Cantons would have the right to, and in some situations should be actively encouraged to, federate between themselves, for cultural purposes (eg if the cantons in England want to pay to maintain the monarchy as an ongoing soap-opera, they are welcome to do so), or for specialist economic purposes (eg the maintenance of safety in sea travel, or the management of a major river catchment).

No canton would have the right to legislate in such a way as to curtail ethnic, religious or linguistic minority rights (eg 'a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people', 'recognise the special status of the Roman Catholic Church' etc).

Procedures would need to exist to detect and positively prevent administrative practices which discriminate against minority rights outside legislation (eg administratively dispersing Breton-speaking teachers throughout France lest Breton culture should be supported by a viable education system etc).

Models for the peaceful democratic secession of smaller from larger units exist in European history: eg Norway from Sweden in 1904; this was the model to which the Irish Home Rule movement, in the lead-up to 1914, was to some extent looking.

Models for the maintenance of cultural rights by minority groups also exist: the Swedes in Finland and the Germans in Denmark have a healthy relationship with their mother-cultures while being symbiotic with their hosts, though perhaps with the political battles over the Maastricht treaty the German situation in Denmark may become more tense.

There was the makings of a benign process in pre-1914 Ireland, with the positive participation of leading Protestant intellectuals in the national cultural and language movements, and in the economic development movement via the co-operatives, and in innovative manufacturing development.

(It would be interesting to analyse the extent that northern Protestant manufacturers participated in the trade exhibitions organised in Dublin by Arthur Griffith's Sin Feign; I recollect reading in the memoirs of the late Mrs Czar about the Ferguson aircraft being centre-stage in the Dublin mansion House; this was shortly after Beloit flew the English Channel; was this typical?).

Malign B:

I can perhaps label this the Enid Belton model; all the toys in Toland and all the goblins in goblin land. It is no accident that this particular author of children's' books flourished in the British imperial heartland. It is the model on which the decline of the British Empire would seem to have been managed; it could almost be said to be calculated to maximise the mayhem in the aftermath, leaving the declining imperial power still the main source of influence. (I am not suggesting an intentional conspiracy; just a cultural bias, resulting from generations of ruling elite reared on the classics and the history of the Roman Empire.)

After being piloted in Ireland, it would seem to have been perfected in India and Palestine, and is emerging as the 'standard model' for the self-dismemberment of imperial systems which have ceased to be viable, having the advantage that while the fringe tribes weaken themselves by wars to establish local hegemonies, the imperial core group can pull back to its heartland remaining relatively strong.

How else is one to interpret the thinking of Mountbatten, in engineering the pull-out from India, splitting the Indian Army on the basis of religion, and giving weapons to both? Literally, over Candi's dead body.

It is the model currently being operated, in its crudest form, in Yugoslavia, primarily it would seem by the Serbs.

It would not take much effort to convert the benign model outlined above into Malign B: all the central imperial power has to do is propagate the idea that the 'kith and kin' of the central imperial power would be discriminated against by the emerging fringe cantons. Where such people are in local concentrations, this destructive politics can be focused.

In Ireland, the central act in the malign scenario, from which all evil has since flowed, was the arming by the British Tory conspiracy of the Ulster Volunteers, with guns imported from Germany, in 1914.

This was analysed by my father Joe Johnston in his 1914 pamphlet Civil war in Ulster, from the Liberal Home Rule angle. It was also analysed by Connolly from the standpoint of the European Marxist social-democratic tradition, which he had consciously espoused and was in process of adapting to the emerging Irish national question.

(In passing, may I remark that I think that it will eventually be seen that the core of Marx's thinking, where he makes the case for democratic social control over the capital re-investment process, in order to avoid the processes of concentration, centralisation and consequent alienation, will be found in Connolly, and will persist, once Marxists cast aside the flawed Leninist model which concentrated on exercising social control top-down via a centralist State, the latter being integral with or controlled by a centralist Party with exclusive rights. The result of this flawed model was the production of the ultimate monopoly capitalist system, without any incentive to innovate, or any means of exposing inefficiencies. If Marx's thought is ever to be rehabilitated, it will be via a line of succession which passes through Connolly.)

In Bosnia (I am here depending on the reports of Maggie O'Kane, who appears to me to be totally credible), it would seem that there were mass demonstrations in the streets, in favour of peaceful transition to independence, involving Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims; these were broken up by Serbian snipers, members of Arkan's gang, sent in from outside. We have the extreme malign B scenario, masterminded so as to gain as much land as possible for an 'ethnically pure' Greater Serbia.

In Croatia, where the rot first set in, it would appear that independence was declared without setting up a system to ensure that Serbs in Croatia did not feel threatened, giving Serbia the pretext for intervening, and establishing the current pathological pattern.

Nor was there any attempt made, in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, to see what the natural boundaries of the units should be, in rational economic as well as cultural and ethnic terms. The speed with which the seceding states were recognised, without effective provision for internal structuring embodying justice for minority groups, almost suggests a 'Malign B' scenario. Was this conscious? Is the EC to blame? Or was it just insensitive and unaware?

The importance of finding alternatives to the Malign B scenario, in the light of Irish experience, cannot be overestimated. The Northern Initiative is therefore of key current European significance. Can a model be found which encourages a benign scenario to develop, in a multi-ethnic post-colonial situation?

The Northern Ireland Problem

This benign process, which was totally non-violent, and was beginning to achieve political results, was again disrupted, and set into Malign B mode, by the armed attack of the B-specials on the Falls Road in August 1969. (The smashing of the peaceful demonstrations of multi-ethnic Bosnians in Sarajevo by the Serbian racialist gangs is the current analogue).

The emergence of the Provisional IRA was a response to this, just as the emergence of Muslim armed groups in Sarajevo was a response to the perceived need of the Muslim people to defend themselves and prevent their houses from being burned. One would almost think Arkan and co had studied the experience of how the Malign B scenario was initiated in Northern Ireland, and profited by it.

We are now in the second generation after the second malign B scenario has been imposed in Northern Ireland.

The core of the problem is that the perceptions of the ghettoised peoples are so overlaid with the detritus of imperial decline, in Malign B mode, that it has become impossible for them to envision the alternative benign scenario.

In the core of the perceptions in the ghettos are two remote enemies, on the one hand Dublin (with Rome lurking in the background) and on the other hand London and the dead hand of imperial Britain on Ireland, expressed in the very tangible form of (for example) the Paras in Coalisland.

No progress will be possible until both these perceived threats are removed.

Can this be done, with EC support, in a benign scenario of a new type? If so, the Malign A scenario for the EC can be avoided, and democracy will thrive in Europe, in a manner such as to enable its influence to be felt positively in economics as well as politics.

Some Basic Theoretical Concepts

Labour and capital, the classical protagonists in Marxist theory, themselves become transformed, in proportion as knowhow to do with the production, sourcing and marketing processes become of primary importance, rather than the ownership of capital.

Large chunks of individually-owned capital need to be re-invested with knowhow if they are to be reproductive. Individual owners may think they can handle it, but can they? We have the Maxwell and Goodman debacles as object-lessons. They can up to a certain size, above which they lose contact with reality, lacking the ability to process simultaneously the necessary amount of information. There is a fundamental cybernetic problem.

Large chunks of capital, managed with knowhow, in the Irish business culture tend to 'stick within the business they know': when they saturate the home market they tend to go to the largest anglophone market to hand, Britain or the USA, and to do what they know how to do. The first wave (Guinness, Jacob etc) went to Britain, the most recent wave (Smurfit, CRH etc) has gone primarily to the USA. Either way, they have reinforced the tradition of Ireland being a net exporter of capital, and fortified a business culture which is positively opposed to being entrepreneurial on the home ground.

The use of State funds to entice productive units of foreign firms to locate in Ireland is counter-productive, in that it is paid for by high taxation, which further depresses the environment for local entrepreneurship, and fortifies the tradition whereby the few successful local firms expand by investing abroad rather than by diversifying, and adding value with knowhow, on the home ground.

The increasing dependence of all productive processes on knowhow is however to the advantage of Ireland, which has a well-developed and competent 3rd-level education system. The skilled human resources produced by this system are currently being bought at a high price, appreciated and used productively by firms all over Europe and the USA which operate at the cutting edge of advanced technology.

If we can achieve a situation where capital and knowhow can be combined in the adding of value in Ireland, to locally-produced (eg food) or imported (eg metal) resources, then it will be possible to give employment to an expanding workforce at an increasing level of skill.

Steps Towards a Benign Scenario in Ireland

Starting with the Northwest, pre-Partition it was possible to get from Westport to Sligo and on to Omagh and Derry by rail; the system also interfaced with the light rail system in Donegal at Strabane and Derry. There was the makings of a viable economic hinterland in the Northwest, which extended down to the West. The possibilities presented by this were killed by Partition; Derry was cut off from its natural hinterland; both Derry and its hinterland became declining peripheral areas of remote centralist capitals in Dublin, and in London via Belfast.

In the East, there was a rail complex linking Dundalk and Newry with the port of Greenore; Dundalk was linked directly by rail to Dungannon and Derry. We are talking of the 1921 situation, when rail transport, and connection to ports, was the key to economic development. The infrastructure was in place; given independence and a benign government close at hand, development of a vibrant economy was totally feasible. Partition killed all this, leaving Dundalk and Newry peripheralised.

Can these hinterlands be re-constituted, in the EC post 1992 situation, when there are supposed to be no physical borders any more?

Are there analogues in Europe, like on the French-Belgian border in the Ardennes, where the French side is highly peripheral as seen from Paris, but probably would benefit by association with the regeneration of the old Walloon industrial towns?

The town of Maastricht itself is said to be a model, with its hinterland in Belgium, Holland and Germany.

Let us think not of a central town and its hinterland, but a network of towns and their hinterlands, with some degree of specialisation between them. We should get away from the centralist model, even within the canton.

(In order to get a feel for what the natural flows would have been, it might be appropriate to refer to the records of the ill-fated Boundary Commission, in which my father, Ned Stephens and others catalogued where the farmers brought their produce, along the now-cratered roads of Tyrone, Fermanagh etc. On the other hand, this might not now be relevant; I just mention it as a possible historical by-way worth a look.)

A canton should be such as to support at least one viable 3rd-level education system, at least at the level of a Regional College of Technology.

The cantons would need to have devolved government, by agreement between London and Dublin, with the loss of 'sovereignty' from the centre being balanced equitably.

We are not talking about 'Dublin taking over Enniskillen' or 'London taking over Monaghan', but new political entities, formed as an EC project, with the blessing of London and Dublin, as steps in the direction of resolving the old and costly dispute.

Possible networks of towns at the cores of the regenerating cantons might be:

1. Derry, Strabane, Omagh, Donegal, Letterkenny.

2. Enniskillen, Ballyshannon, Sligo, Boyle, Carrick-on-Shannon.

3. Dundalk, Newry, Armagh, Dungannon, Monaghan, Cavan.

The first would in effect be the regeneration of the old Derry hinterland based on the Donegal light railway. It is already underpinned by EC-funded programmes in advanced communications (the STAR programme) which involves the RTC in Letterkenny and the Derry Technical College. It should be possible to develop a pilot political dimension, via the existing local government bodies, in the joint supervision of a network of College-related enterprise centres, and local business-funded College-based projects, in such a way as to give the initiative a positive image from the start, while the details of the cantonal political structure was worked out.

The second would be dominated by the touristic potential of the Shannon-Erne waterways link-up, fortified by the existing Yeats industry, and underpinned by the environment-oriented knowhow based in the Sligo Regional College.

There is also an industrial tradition in the region, which is supported by the quality control knowhow based in the Sligo College, which could be fortified by the linkage to Enniskillen, in which complementary technical college resources could be developed as part of the project, giving the canton a complete core of relevant developmental knowhow.

Leitrim is more likely to turn around and develop a viable economy as the hinterland of the nearby Sligo-Enniskillen axis, than as a remote fringe of a centralist State based in Dublin.

The land-based bitterness of inter-tribal strife in Fermanagh can only be assuaged in proportion as local-based industry develops and generates jobs, to which well-educated young people have equal access.

The third canton requires further study; the Regional College in Dundalk would need to be complemented by another, possibly in Armagh, or Dungannon; the region is quite diverse; there is the potential for a link-up between Lough Egish / Killshandra co-ops and the Armagh apple-growers, to go for the high added-value European food market.

As in the first two regions, the pilot-step would be to get a Development Council into existence, to monitor the linkages between the 3rd-level Colleges and the innovative enterprise process, and to grant-aid this process, so that it was seen to be productive of local jobs, while the devolved cantonal political structures were negotiated between the two governments concerned and the European Commission.

This leaves a core-canton around Belfast, or perhaps two inner cantons, the second being based on the Coleraine-Ballymena axis. Both would be viable. Or you could put Coleraine in with Derry and Ballymena in with Belfast.

The preferences of towns at the fringe of two developing cantonal areas would need to be respected, by an appropriate democratic process. Cookstown would probably prefer to be with Dungannon than with Derry.

Thus we would have instead of a 6-county entity, we would have a 5-canton entity involving 12 counties, of which 6 from the Republic.

The steps would be initially a Development Council, with composition drawn from existing local political bodies, and access to development funding from Brussels, and the ability to deal direct without reference to London or Dublin, charged with encouraging knowhow-based enterprise within the canton, and making links between existing enterprise and the sources of knowhow in the canton.

The Development Council should go on to become involved in the process of defining the future role of cantonal government, and should be helped to do so by being given the opportunity to study and evaluate systems of government at the regional or cantonal level as they work in other European countries.

Law and Order

What the British would get out of it would be the end of an ongoing nightmare, for which they would presumably be prepared to pay, by supporting the development funding via the EC.

What the IRA would get out of it would be the British Army out.

What the Catholics would get out of it would the ending of a situation where they were under any obligation to the IRA, and where they were effectively excluded from politics.

What the UDA and the Protestants would get out of it would be the ending of the threat of Rome rule via Dublin. (Would they feel a threat of Rome Rule from their neighbours via a local Catholic majority? The Bill of Rights aspect of cantonal law would have to take care of this, and this would have to be underpinned by European law.)

Implications for the EC and the Member States.

This system, if it works in Ireland, should be perfectly generalisable to all EC member States considering democratic reconstruction.

In the case of Britain, we have already touched on the Anglia concept; it is easy to envision a cantonal system where entities called England, Scotland, Wales might emerge as cantons or cantonal confederations.

In this case, the two cantons suggested for the north-east might decide to opt to confederate with the Scottish cantons, and if this were to happen, I doubt if there is anyone in Ireland who would object. The 3 other cantons might or might not want to confederate with Dublin, and such other cantons which emerge in the present Republic: Cork, Limerick or whatever. This is another day's work.

The EC problem is how to make the transition, constitutionally, to a situation where there is enough devolved power at the level of the cantons to avoid the malign scanario of Type A, and where the old centralist imperial States, while possibly retaining ritual or cultural roles, do not block the process.

The other problem is how to prevent malign influences (eg arms manufacturers? Islamic fundamentalists?) from actively provoking incidents such as to transform the proposed benign transition into the malign type B model, with the 'cantons' all armed and trying to be 'ethnically pure', a process which we are seeing happening in former Yugoslavia and in former USSR.

The key therefore is the cantonal constitution, with Bill of Rights, and if this can be piloted with European support in the context of Northern Ireland, then the future of Europe is safe.

Appendix

Of the 7, 3 served the imperial system via the Indian Civil Service (which visibly damaged their health and well-being; two died young and the third retired early and took to drink), two had professional careers in England, and two made their careers in Dublin, my father in TCD and my aunt Ann as a civil servant.

My father, as well as being a Home Ruler, and exposing the Carson conspiracy in 1913 in his book, went on to become an economist; he reported for the Irish Dept of Agriculture on French agricultural production during World War I, and then served the Boundary Commission.

Once the Partition die had been cast he attempted to minimise the damage, by supporting the co-operative movement in the 20s; he wrote extensively in the 20s and 30s on agricultural economics, based on the experience of others and of his own experimental farm, filling the niche subsequently developed by the Agricultural Institute. He pointed out in 1932 the importance of the problem of seasonality of supply of milk and meat, which has remained with us to this day, rendering Irish agricultural production totally dependent on the bulk commodity market, and in recent times on intervention. He counts as one of the very few critical economists mentioned in Joe Lee's recent book analysing Irish failure to develop since 1921, in comparison to other comparable European states.

When the EC was first mooted, he initially welcomed it, but then when he saw the threat of the 'malign type A scenario' in 1972, shortly before he died, he supported the call for a No vote in the referendum.

The present writer was reared in the southern Protestant environment, with some exposure to his father's experimental farms, and to practical economic activity, via a secondary school which had a strong scientific, technical and practical bias.

He did science in TCD in the late 40s, in the company of the wave of war veterans who were then there, in which environment he picked up a positive though critical feeling for Marxist politics; this probably rendered him 'unemployable' in the normal sense. Despite this he managed to survive, with a series of short-term projects in basic and applied science, so that he has remained working in Ireland most of the time since, though never with any long-term security, and in recent times on a self-employed basis.

He can claim to have participated in the politicisation process of the republican movement in the 1960s, and in the development of the non-violent 'civil rights' approach to the Northern Ireland problem, but dropped out when in response to the emergence of the Provisionals the 'officials' re-emerged as a physical force group.

He has not since been politically active except peripherally on issues as they arose. He has served with Sean MacBride on the Council of the Irish UN Association, and has done some UN consultancy work in the information-technology field. He is currently a member of the Irish Green Party.

The 1992 Maastricht Referendum

20/6/92

Dear Tony

In response to your of June 17, I enclose £20 towards the reduction of the debt. ....

I did send you some political notes on Feb 14, none of which I saw any evidence that you took on board. If you feel you want to consult the letter, and have mislaid it, let me know, and I will regenerate it for you. I find I can stand over most, if not all, of it in retrospect.

Let me give you one or two post-mortem insights. The principal one is the impression that many informed political people who would have voted 'no' on questions of neutrality and sovereignty in the end voted 'yes' because that did not want to be in the same camp as the Hanafin gang and the ayatollahs. They voted for what they perceived as the European Enlightenment against quasi-Muslim fundamentalism. This was reinforced by the appearance of fundamentalist youth rallies in the streets.

There were several good initiatives on the neutrality question, the best being from the Cork Quakers, which I had a hand in helping to promote and publicise. Jony Wigham ran a fringe event at the Yearly Meeting, at which a good few Nunan books were sold, and there was serious discussion. I spoke to the Dublin Monthly Meeting on the eve of poll, and there was serious consideration given to it, and significant support for the 'no' position, but there were several there who had been supporters in '72 had reversed their position for the reason I indicated.

The Greens were campaigning actively, and they had the full political support of the European Green Co-ordination, which met in Dublin last weekend. This was somewhat to their surprise, as they had been inclined to write off the major European Green parties as being 'pro-European', and to vote to hobble the powers of the Co-ordination in its attempt to assume the role of a mandated body; this they are now on the road to becoming.

In the new ball-game which is emerging, the battle is going to be for local and regional democratic structures, which will enable the fringe to hold its own against the macro-economic forces leading to the reinforcement of the core. As I said before, the roles of central states and central superstate agencies are going to have to be curtailed, and we will have to find means of developing constructively the democratic forces at local and regional level, and weakening the centralist forces. The central state (of your so-called 'nation-state' model) is NOT a suitable vehicle for this democratic reconstruction, as it is mostly parasitic, especially in its Irish form (where it is a construct inherited from the period of imperial rule).

This parasitism it at its worst in the 3rd-world countries which have adopted the State structures of the imperial system; this is Crotty's 'undevelopment' scenario, of which the Irish are the pioneers.

The centralism of the traditional 'working-class movement', and the associated bureaucratisation, should be another indicator to you of the need for a new paradigm: the Trade Unions which were solidly 'no' in '72 came out solidly for 'yes', and what if any discussion was there within them.

The ultimate logic of the centralist 'nation-state', run by a centralist 'working-class party' is the use of the Russian colonists in the Baltic States to prevent the re-emergence of the latter, and, worse, the current 'ethnic cleansing' by Serbian gangs of Muslim villagers from Bosnian villages.

The democratic alternative scenario which I can see developing in the European reconstruction process is going to have to be 'bottom up', inclusive, and with democratic control exercise over economic decisions at the level of the community and the enterprise; we need to re-invent the co-operative movement.

The Irish Partition question is going to have to be challenged in this mode by the peoples living in the marginalised border areas, reclaiming the economic spaces weakened by Partition, and regenerating the natural hinterlands of the towns and urban networks. A theoretical basis for this can be found via Connolly in Marx, whose core-concept was the need for democratic control over the capital re-investment process. Connolly had the Ralahine model in mind for how this might work. Connolly never promoted State centralism; this was a construct which emerged in the USSR under Stalin. The whole political structure of the European Left has been poisoned by this pathology, and is on the whole beyond redemption, apart perhaps from some individuals.

I think I have said enough / Yours sincerely RJ

In August 1992 there was a further somewhat acrimonious exchange of letters with Anthony Coughlan, arising out of his treatment of the post-Jugoslav crisis. I treat this partially elsewhere in the context of the Greaves political legacy.

President Mary Robinson

President Mary Robinson / Arus an Uachtarain / Dublin 8

11/7/92

Dear President

I am writing to congratulate you on your Oireachtas speech last Wednesday, which certainly gave plenty of raw material for reflection to us all, not only the Oirachtas members, for whom reflection seems to be a rare luxury.

May I take up a few key concepts which seem to relate to the theme which we have discussed, in correspondence, and in our meeting.

The order in which I list the concepts is the order in which they appear in your speech.

1. Davitt and the Irish 'race': I would have used this as a handle to question the relationship of race and nationality. The Irish 'race' is a highly questionable concept; if the nation has any hope it is as an inclusive hybrid, in which the term race is meaningless.

2. The outward-bound adventure of Irish scholars from the 6th to the 12th centuries: this was technology transfer at the state of the art, the technology being literacy, and the keeping of written records.

The modern analogue, perhaps, is the flow of Irish graduates, mostly in the sciences, into the R&D laboratories of the European and US high-tech companies; we can no longer however claim Silicon Valley status, as we could then; we are simply being brain-drained, because we have failed to get our national act together.

Perhaps the earlier effort was also a brain-drain, because we were unable to get our national act together despite the stimulus of the Vikings. We export our brains because we are unable to develop a vibrant national economy and culture on our home ground. Joe Lee has begun to analyse this in recent times.

3. Connolly's question: who are the Irish? He asked it in the context where he knew the answer, which for him was inclusive of the Northern Protestants. Perhaps you asked it in the same spirit? If so, good on you.

4. The Common Law and the written Constitution: at the time of writing it remains to be seen what the Supreme Court will make of the question of Cabinet secrecy in the Goodman context. The importance of this issue can hardly be underestimated. If we end up closer to the USA, the way is open for a Freedom of Information Act. This point which you raised is perhaps the central one of the speech.

I won't however dwell on it, as it is peripheral to my main theme, which is Irish identity, the Protestants, and the question of science and technology as part of the culture.

5. You mentioned John Hewitt, in the context of putting the Protestant identity into the national mainstream. You also further on mentioned Albert Camus, critically. You could have made a contrasting link here: Camus was an Algerian 'pied-noir', and he totally dissociated himself from the emerging Algerian national identity. This I suggest was at the root of his negative philosophy. Contrast John Hewitt, or indeed Bernard Shaw, who never forgot, and indeed celebrated, their Irishness.

Thus, if there is a model for the development of a multi-ethnic national identity, sharing an inclusive economic and cultural space, we have the makings of it here in Ireland, and have a positive message of hope to convey to the unfortunate Bosnian people, and other existing and future victims of the collapse of the Eastern empires.

6. In the context of the N-S Corridor would not the 'Northern initiative', with which Andy Pollak is associated, merit a mention? Also, the concept of cross-border development regions, uniting hinterlands made doubly peripheral by Partition? There is scope here for creative work by voluntary organisations; I know there is one working between Dundalk and Newry, based in the Dundalk Regional College.

I have attended a Regional Studies conference in Enniskillen, which brought together local government development people from the natural hinterland of the Sligo-Enniskillen axis, including Leitrim. I don't know if anything came out of it, but there is a flurry of activity came out of the closure of the Arigna mines. It is most important that the N-S economic corridor be not just the Dublin-Belfast axis. Any voluntary effort in this direction needs to be cherished.

7. Maria Edgeworth is an interesting link with the scientific culture, in that her father was a corresponding member of the Birmingham Lunar Society, which included Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), Joseph Priestly, and other applied-scientific luminaries of the First Industrial Revolution. Few of the literary analysts of Maria Edgeworth seem to be aware of this.

The Academy and the RDS, to both of which Edgeworth contributed, were the mainsprings of colonial applied science, and the scientific stream in Irish culture would not have existed without them.

This brings me to, and relates to, my last point, which is the prime stimulus for writing this letter:

8. '...Our writers, our artists, our composers and our craftsmen and women who have been at the heart of the Irish identity...': this made me reach for the keyboard.

If you feel that the list should not include '..our scientists and our engineers..', and the omission was deliberate, because they are not in fact at the heart of Irish identity, and indeed have no place in it, then we are in big trouble, as they are a key intellectual resource, and no nation can survive without them.

If the omission was oversight, then there is hope, and we can work on peoples' perceptions. If the omission was because, while you personally think they should be in the list, you felt that the audience might not accept it, there is still hope; I think however you underestimate the Oireachtas, and suggest that next time the opportunity arises you give it a try.

I hope you can accept the foregoing as a friendly critical note on what was, in its overall impact, a tour de force, and which has set a precedent.

I see some have compared it to a 'Queen's Speech', which I suggest does you an injustice, as the latter is a list of proposed legislation prepared by a civil servant.

What you have done is given them food for thought, at a high intellectual level, which can only be beneficial, in making them think about the totality of the national question, and not just where their next vote is coming from. It, literally, raised the whole tone of the place.

Congratulations, and may you live to do it again, regularly.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

Green Economic policies

26/8/92

Dear Trevor

I am somewhat immobilised currently, having had a spell in hospital with an embolism, but I have been turning my mind to what we should be doing to prepare for the next election. There are 2 groups of people who are dispersed nation-wide, who should be our natural constituency: (a) the organic growers (b) the unemployed.

(a) Organic Growers

I am a member of IOFGA (being an organic part-time gardener, and full-time consumer) and I read their newsletter. This is a source of contacts all over the country, and I wonder are we cultivating them. Whose responsibility is this? Is this one of Tom Simpson's areas? We should however be politic, and not poach people who are activists in IOFGA as such, which is quite a fragile organisation, and needs good people. We need to identify people who would be credible local politicals, and who would be in a position to combine politics with IOFGA support. I wonder would the IOFGA head office people (eg Fergus Brogan and Paula McCann, both of whom I know) be co-operative in this process? I have been making preliminary enquiries. What are we doing on this front, and would it be appropriate for me to co-ordinate with it?

(b) The Unemployed

I produced a submission at the time the Culliton Report people were asking for them, based on my experience of trying to start a small hi-tech business on the fringe of TCD. I kicked this around a few people, and Con Power in the CII appeared to take it seriously, in that he sent me a lengthy reply.

Arising from a TV appearance, I sent it to Niall Green of GPA (as an Irish-based capital source; also I knew him and had done work for his when he was running the Youth Employment Agency). He responded positively; at that time he was in touch with Michael Allen who leads the National Unemployed Organisation, and he passed it on to him. So Mike theoretically has the full document. However he has not responded, and has probably left it at the bottom of the pile; perhaps he does not take Niall seriously.

I wonder should we not be cultivating Mike Allen and the UA? If they could take on board the key demands, which are 'Social wage', and 'Legalise the Black Economy', we might get to have a mass movement on our hands. What do you think?

I append an extract from the document; the stuff preceding it is all background historical stuff; this is the essence. What do you think?

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

Came the election, Roger Garland lost his seat, and Trevor Sargent gained his, in North County Dublin. I wrote to Trevor on December 1 1992 as follows:

Dear Trevor / May I congratulate you on your success, and hope that you will be able to carry on the good work initiated in LH by Roger, who I think deserved more credit than he got from the media.

You may remember I wrote to you on August 26 with some ideas for the election campaign, based on the assumption that the Organic Growers and the unemployed were among our potential supporters. I enclosed some notes I had submitted in the context of the Culliton Report, on the question of taxation reform and social welfare; I attempted to quantify and validate the concept of the social wage. I hope you found them useful.

What I would like to do now, if possible, is to establish some system whereby I can interact with the national Green co-ordination, and service it supportively. I am however not into participating in much in the way of regular committee meetings etc; I would prefer if a liaison could be set up, with me doing my homework, and servicing the process. I am 63 and not as mobile or energetic as I was. I am however 'heavy into' electronic communications, and I feel this should be relevant if we are to develop a European and global Green network.

I have produced the enclosed (I have alas lost track of this!) as the outline of an analysis of the role of the Greens in the Irish election, for foreign consumption. This I can upload to electronic conferences which are seen by most Green Parties in the world. I can download material from these conferences which may be relevant from time to time in the development of Irish green positions on foreign policy issues. The material can be exchanged on diskettes, provided we can set up means for interfacing Patricia McKenna's Macintosh and the DOS system in Leinster House with e-mail ASCII standards. Patricia and I are currently going into this; it certainly can be done with the Leinster House computer which was accessible to Roger; I have piloted it, but it was not done as a routine. The interface with Patricia's Mac I will be exploring in the next few days. If this works out, I should be able to interface with the national and European co-ordination via Patricia, and supply a global networking service.

The enclosed script I will discuss with Patricia and with Colm and the Foreign Affairs Committee if a meeting takes place. It can act simply as a stimulus for an 'official' script to be generated; if you or anyone comes up with a better one, in DOS-ASCII, I will substitute it. But I do feel we need a 'fast-response' system to keep our friends abroad aware of our key events. So we should try and finalise it within the week if possible.

I look forward to hearing from you, and setting up a good procedure.

Again, I was ahead of the posse; Green networking did not begin to develop until the Web exploded subsequently. The concept however was good, and I did my best to implement it at the time.

The Greens and the Irish Elections

The elections which took place on November 25 were precipitated by tensions in the Fianna Fail / Progressive Democrat government arising out of the Beef Tribunal.

(It should be said that this represented a 'centre-right coalition', entered into reluctantly by the main national party of the centre, Fianna Fail, which traditionally has governed from an overall majority situation. Recent trends, however, have indicated that this position is going to be increasingly hard to obtain, and coalitions in future in Ireland will probably be the rule rather than the exception.)

(The Beef Tribunal was set up to enquire into the collapse of the Goodman meat business, which dominated the export market for Irish beef, in the aftermath of the Iraqi crisis. It emerged that export credit cover was obtained in a manner which suggested corrupt practice. The full story has yet to be told.)

The composition of the outgoing and incoming Dails are shown in the table below:

                                  old Dail       new Dail
Independents                        4                5
Greens                              1                1
Workers Party                       1                0
Democratic Left                     6                4
Labour Party                       16               33
Fianna Fail                        77               68
Progressive Democrats               6               10
Fine Gael                          55               45

Initial post-election meetings have been held between FG and PD, and between Labour and DL. FF so far has held aloof, but voices within it, some influential, are looking to Labour and a left-centre coalition. The emerging closeness between Labour and DL are a barrier to cohesion with FG/PD. It is too soon to predict the outcome. A left-right coalition with the centre excluded would be highly unstable, and with the economy in crisis (20% unemployed and a threatened devaluation) instability is the last thing needed.

In this context, where stand the Greens? They put candidates up in 18 of the 41 constituencies (the 166 seats represent 3, 4 and 5-seat constituencies, under the PR transferable vote system). Greens picked up a creditable vote, which was helped by transfers mostly from the parties of the Left. When they were eliminated from the count their votes went mostly towards the Left. Yet the general swing towards the Left did not benefit the overall Green position.

They have lost one TD, Roger Garland, in Dublin South, and gained one, Trevor Sargent (who incidentally is the Green national co-ordinator and serves on the Fingal County Council). The loss was probably the result of the Richard Greene incident, which had the appearance of a local split; Greene was expelled from the Green Party for taking an extreme anti-abortion stand, and acting without consulting the Party on policy issues. He stood in the election in opposition to Roger; both lost, and transfers from both went towards the right. Roger failed to pick up many of the transfers from the poll-topping Labour candidate Eithne Fitzgerald; most of these also went towards the right. It is a somewhat middle-class constituency.

In contrast, Trevor Sargent in Dublin North picked up the majority of the surplus transferred from the poll-topping Labour Sean Ryan, and went on to win a seat, also picking up significant transfers from FF. So on the whole we have here a healthier political outlook for the necessary 'green-left convergence' of future politics, in a constituency which is more typical of Ireland as a whole.

In the background of the election lurked the abortion referendum. The 'Yes/Yes/No' result has been widely misinterpreted abroad. The Yes votes were for freedom of travel and information: no-one can now put an injunction on a 14-year-old rape-victim, or prevent student unions from distributing booklets. The No vote was for a wording which attempted to allow abortion where the life of the mother was in danger, and it distinguished 'health' from 'life'. To have passed this would have made the constitution less 'liberal' than it is now, with the 1984 prohibition as moderated by the Supreme Court decision in the case of the 14-year-old rape victim which attracted international attention. The pro-choice lobby opposed it, as well as the fundamentalist lobby, for opposite reasons.

The way forward now is legislation within the current constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court, and this will be the focus of controversy between the Catholic fundamentalists and the feminists. We have not heard the last of this issue, but it has been cut down to size, by a positive progressive vote, which covered the party spectrum.

In conclusion: the Irish Greens can claim to have marginally improved their position, and to be well placed to influence the Irish political scene in the direction of decentralist democracy, with continuing representation in the Dail, and a strengthened political machine.

Roy Johnston, for the Foreign Affairs Committee, Irish Green party.
c/o Techne Associates P O Box 1881 Rathmines Dublin 6 Ireland
phone 353-1-975027

The Social Wage and the Labour Party

Ruairi Quinn TD Leinster House

23/01/93

Dear Ruairi

May I congratulate you on your own and on the Party's performance, and on your tactics in breaking the old FG line-up, going in with FF in a situation where you seem to have a genuine chance of pulling FF to the left, in the direction of encouragement of creative productive enterprise rather than land-speculation and gombeenism. I take the liberty of enclosing a copy of a recent New Scientist article, which I think you will find relevant to your Ministerial brief. The key message in the article, and in the editorial comment on p3, is the importance of accessible support systems at regional level for small innovative business.

Nearly 10 years ago I went round the Regional Colleges for Niall Greene, who was then with the YEA, and came up with proposals along these lines. The NS message is that in the US and Japan this approach is recognised as valid, has become standard, and is being properly funded. In Britain on the other hand, so insular are they that they still regard it as 'pilot' and are doing a shoestring job. The danger here is that our civil servants will only be aware of the British experience, and will tend to repeat the attitudes that the NS is criticising.

A related question I want to take up is the black economy and the poverty trap. This is relevant in the enterprise start-up environment. It should be obvious, on basic economic principles, that you subsidise inputs that are in surplus, so as to encourage their use, and levy inputs which are scarce, to encourage the maximum of thought in regard to how to use them best. For the former, read labour, for the latter, capital.

You could state the case very simply: let's legalise the black economy, lets all draw a basic social wage or retainer, equivalent to the dole, and then when we work, we work for a marginal economic wage, on top of the social wage. You pay the social wage out of a levy on all productive assets (land, buildings, equipment etc).

It would be a relatively simple accounting matter to re-define existing cash flows along these lines, no-one gaining or losing. But observe the effects at the margin: the cost of hiring extra labour would be perhaps halved (marginal instead of total cost), and existing dole-drawers who are trying to earn their beer money on the black economy could come out of the closet and legitimise themselves.

Some time ago, possibly about a year ago, I wrote up a draft paper on this, which I sent to Niall Greene; he replied in positive terms, saying he had passed it on to the unemployed movement people. I have heard nothing since. Perhaps the time is ripe for me to re-develop it. Are you interested?

yours sincerely / Roy Johnston

Ruairi replied acknowledging this but without referencing the content; Mike Allen the Unemployed Movement leader replied admitting he had heard from Niall Green about my initiative, but was unable to locate the paper. I had also sent the paper to Con Power in the Confederation of Irish Industry, and had a lengthy and reasoned reply from him; he obviously took it seriously. The paper in question was my Culliton Report submission, in which I had attempted to quantify the 'social wage' issue. This response is perhaps typical of the relative openness to innovative ideas as between the various bodies.

Green Party NI Policy (draft 2)

The following is an attempt to present some policy development ideas reflecting the thinking of the Green Party on the Northern Ireland question. It is a reconstruction of the first attempt made by Vincent McDowell dated 16/5/93 which was discussed at the Dublin SE meeting on June 29. It is basically a re-write which attempts to cover as concisely as possible, and without rhetoric, the same ground.

I have reconstructed the arguments into the form 'background -> statement of the problems -> basic principles for a solution -> immediate next step'. RJ 1/7/93

[A] Background

2. The assertion of a British identity for the peoples united under the 1800 and earlier Acts of Union was an attempt made in the 19th century to build a British nation-State in which the identities of the fringe-nations (Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Cornwall) would be submerged under English hegemony and persuaded to assume a new identity under the British label.

3. It was a strategic objective of the British Government, frightened by the incipient alliance between Ireland and France, to prevent the emergence of an Irish nation which would be inclusive of all Irish people, which might develop cohesively and become a military threat. The response to this perceived threat was to support and encourage actively all forces tending to divide the Irish on religious lines, ranging from the Orange Order to the Catholic Church (in the latter case via the financing of Maynooth in 1793). The present divisions in the North, and the general weakness of the Irish sense of cohesive national identity, are rooted in this historical background.

4. The various constitutional attempts to assert Home Rule in the 19th and early 20th century were broad-based and pluralistic; they always included a substantial Protestant component. The political model in mind pre-1914 was along the lines of the secession of Norway from Sweden in 1904, which took place peacefully, with the support of democratic forces in Sweden. The British liberal victory of 1906 promised evolution along these lines, but the process was thwarted by the conspiracy of out-of-office Tories to import guns from Germany in 1914 for arming the Orangemen, with the perception fostered of 'Home Rule being Rome Rule'.

5. The imposition of Partition withdrew the majority of the Protestants from the Irish democratic nation-building process, and gave the new Free State a Catholic-triumphalist flavour, which reinforced the 'Rome Rule' perception initially held by the Protestants. The emerging Irish multi-cultural nation was, in effect, strangled at birth, and we are faced with the task of setting up new opportunities for it to re-emerge, if it wants to.

6. Politics within Northern Ireland have persistently been dominated by the constitutional issue, and by the perception among Protestants that Catholics were 'disloyal' and had to be voted down, and deprived of all civil rights, including local government housing and jobs. The results of this policy have been persistent higher levels of unemployment among Catholics, to the extent of a factor of 2.5 in the % unemployment rates, with Catholic male unemployment running at 35% (cf Bob Rowthorne and Naomi Wayne, 'Northern Ireland: the Political Economy of Conflict', Blackwell 1988).

[B] Statement of the Problem

2. This situation persisted until in the 1960s the first generation of Catholics who had had the benefit of the 1945 Education Act of Westminster, and received university education, began to emerge as leadership. The objectives of the Civil Rights movement of the 60s were at the level of one person, one vote (which previously had not been the case in local government), and equal rights in jobs and houses. They did not raise the constitutional issue. Those of the left and left-republican traditions who associated with the Civil Rights movement accepted this, on the basis that if Civil Rights were achieved, it would be easier to work politically to persuade Protestant working people that a united Ireland would be in their objective socio-economic interest.

3. The response of the Orange hegemonists to the demand for Civil Rights was to launch what would now be called an 'ethnic cleansing' attack on the people of the Falls Road in Belfast in August 1969, spearheaded by the B-specials, and supported by armoured vehicles and heavy machine-guns. This was the first introduction of weapons into the situation, with up to then had been totally non-violent. The pattern of the 1914 initiative, armed intervention from the racialist right, was repeated. The British Army came in initially to contain the Orangemen; the B-Specials were disarmed and disbanded; reforms were enacted (including one person one vote); the Unionists were split. The road seemed to be pointing in the direction of the politicisation of the issues, with a Bill of Rights, enacted by Westminster over Stormont's dead body, and the objectives of the Civil Rights movement achieved.

4. Into this promising political situation intervened the disruptive factor of the Provisionals, who began to mount an armed campaign with the objective of ending British rule by force. The effect of this campaign, which has persisted to this day, has been to harden and unite the Protestants in their Unionist position, and render political progress along the lines necessary at local and community level impossible.

5. The Provisional campaign has given the British Army exactly what it wants: a live training-ground in which its recruits can be blooded. The 'level of violence' remains 'acceptable' (ie somewhere at about the road accident casualty rate). British rule can receive ongoing international sanction, on the basis that they are 'keeping the communities apart and preventing them civil war', and the Protestant people support them, regarding them as being their defenders from the IRA, whom they perceive as being potential 'ethnic cleansers' if they get their way.

6. So far under 'statement of the problem' we have analysed the recent background. Let us now focus in on the elements of the problem as they currently exist. We make no apology for having gone into history to the extent necessary for understanding the current situation. Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

7. We recognise that there is little prospect in the near future of obtaining a consensus on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland either as part of the UK or as part of the Republic. The existing status as part of the UK is a manifest costly failure which can only be held together by military force and repression.

8. Within the UK the use of the law against religious discrimination has been ineffective; it was declared illegal in the original Government of Ireland Act 1920, and has been declared illegal since in 1973, 1976 and 1989. It is clearly impossible to enforce such laws without direct community involvement in the enforcement machinery at local level.

9. The core of the problem is in the perceptions of the protagonists that it is a zero-sum game, ie that if someone wins someone else must lose. It is necessary to persuade the protagonists that we are dealing with a non-zero-sum game, and there are win-win solutions possible.

10. The 'players' in the game are (a) the British Government (b) the British military establishment (c) the Irish government (to which the Irish military establishment is loyal; this is not true in the British case) (d) the political leadership and their supporters on the Nationalist side in the North (e) ditto on the Unionist side in the North (f) and (g) the associated paramilitaries.

11. We can perhaps add another potential player, the CEC, and a further one, the UN, though these are not currently active. The motivation for increasing their participation would be in the event that political models emerge in the Irish context which become recognised as of significance in other situations in Europe and elsewhere, where there are ethnic or religious issues and territory is in dispute. This possibility adds an increased urgency to the achievement of a peaceful resolution of the Irish situation.

12. Let us consider the perceptions of the players, in the order listed:

(a) The British Government, and indeed the British people, would welcome a solution to a problem that is costing them money and lives, and undermining their own democratic rights on their home ground. If a win-win solution could be identified, the British Government would welcome it. The long-term strategic objective of keeping Ireland weak and divided has slipped down the agenda into relative insignificance; there is common interest between both major European offshore islands in keeping their distance from centralising forces centred in Brussels.

(b) The British military, on the other hand, have an interest in keeping it going, as it gives them a sense of importance, and provides the live training-ground that they relish. There is a long history of the British Government not being fully in command of its military, going back to the Curragh mutiny over Home Rule, and put in evidence in more recent times when they refused to move in the case of Rhodesian UDI, and in the case of the UDA stoppage which brought down the power-sharing Stormont government which was the fruit of the Sunningdale agreement; in both cases this was with Harold Wilson at the helm, whose office, it has since emerged, was bugged by Military Intelligence.

(c) The Irish government and the Irish people have an enormous interest in the resolution of the situation, as the amount it costs per head of population in Ireland is substantially more than it costs the British, in security terms. They also have an interest in creating opportunities for the economic regeneration of the depressed border areas, in the context of a programme of reconstruction of the pre-Partition natural hinterlands which were split by the Border.

(d) The Nationalist politicians, basically the SDLP and Sinn Fein, have an interest in gaining justice and equal rights for their followers, and in getting their national political objectives made legitimate rather than subversive, so that they can be promoted by political rather than military means.

(e) The Unionist politicians and their followers, as a result of the IRA campaign, feel threatened on all sides; the Anglo-Irish Agreement they regard as a betrayal; support for their paramilitaries is widespread and open; paradoxically there are increasing signs that Protestants are prepared to consider social, economic and cultural contacts on an all-Ireland basis, echoing the old pre-1914 Protestant business support for Home Rule. The perceptions of the Northern Protestants are the key to future political developments; they need to be enabled to cultivate a positive vision in the non-zero-sum game solution.

(f) and (g) It is increasingly apparent that the paramilitaries are operating within their own internal ideological systems, which are being bolstered by the developments in post-Yugoslavia. There also emerges evidence from time to time that there is active intervention by British military intelligence in guiding their actions, in the interest of keeping the 'live training-ground' going. Yet the majority of those who actively support their objectives do so on the basis that they are desirable and worthy. The objection to being ruled by alien forces from Rome via Dublin is not dissimilar to the objection to being ruled by London. Both objections would be met if government was visibly closer to the people.

[C] Outline Solution

(a) that all peoples of this island are to be cherished equally

(b) that everyone's opinion is of equal value and is to be treated with respect

(c) that violence has no place in the political process

(d) that the State must ensure that there is no discrimination in law or in practice.

2. In what follows we borrow heavily from the ideas developed in the context of the Opsahl Commission. In summary, the key concepts are the taking of a back seat by the British and Irish governments, with the setting up of an enabling devolved system, with stronger and more localised local and regional government, and with a consensual approach to decision-making, supported by a strong inter-community involvement in the defence of law and order: unarmed policing under community control.

3. The framework for an interim political settlement exists in the context of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, under which it is open to the Irish Government to put proposals on the table outlining a 'win-win' solution. (The positive opportunities presented under this Agreement have been set out in an article by Michael Lillis in the Irish Times 30/12/92.)

4. The basis of such a solution would be to set up an independent Commission to govern Northern Ireland, with the task of developing a new constitution in consultation with all parties directly concerned within Northern Ireland. The Chairman of this Commission should be appointed by the EC, at the combined request of the British and Irish Governments. In other words the British and Irish Governments should agree to set the process up, and then stand back from it, acting as the ultimate guarantors of citizens' rights, in accordance with a Bill of Rights to be enacted by Westminster and by the Dail.

5. The funding of the Commission should be on the basis that all existing funds identified with the Northern Ireland problem should be paid by the British and Irish Governments to the Commission, and to the Regional Government which succeeds it, at a rate declining over time as the issues are resolved and the Region recovers its economic life, and is in a position to generate its own taxation. Thus the cost to the British exchequer should be seen as eventually (but not suddenly) coming to an end.

6. The sovereignty conflict should be resolved by both British and Irish Governments agreeing to devolve sovereignty to the region, and to accept whatever proposals emerge from the bottom up, whether integrationist, confederal, autonomist or secessionist, provided they are generated by a peaceful consensual political process, without terror or intimidation by armed gangs.

7. We do not presume to dictate what sort of political structure would be likely to emerge, but European comparisons suggest that about 4 or 5 regions, ranging from about a quarter to a half a million population, each with a strong educational and cultural focus or network of foci, would be likely to be viable. These regions would need to be structured as confederations of the existing local government districts, with as much power as possible devolving down to district level.

8. The construction of regions out of districts would need to be overseen by the Commission, with emphasis on the development of compact hinterlands of urban foci and networks of foci, so as to maximise the possibility of economic development. There should not be allowed to develop a rationale for adding or subtracting districts on the basis of a religious head-count, as was done when Partition was originally set up for six counties of 9-county Ulster (bring in as many Catholics as could comfortably be 'voted down' etc). The new regional structure should be constructed on valid geographical criteria.

9. Those regions which border on the Republic need to have the right to negotiate independently (ie without the need to refer to a higher level of government) with regional or local authorities in the Republic on issues relating to cross-border regional development, for which EC funding is available.

10. The Belfast Region, which borders on Scotland, should have the right to negotiate independently with Scottish regional bodies in a similar manner.

11. The relationship of this new political structure with the rest of the people on these islands would be dependent on the extent to which the British and Irish Governments reform their own structures away from centralist systems based on Dublin and London, and towards decentralised systems, with, in the British case, independence for Scotland and Wales. The more the system is decentralised, the less will be the perceived threat arising from the imposition of alien rule from London or Dublin.

12. At the same time, there will need to be enough power at confederal level, exercise initially by the Commission, and ultimately by the devolved Northern Ireland Constitutional Authority, guaranteed by the British and Irish Governments, and by the CEC and the UN, to ensure that no minority community will be alienated from the political process by continually being voted down, and subjected to policing over which they have no control.

[D] Immediately Possible Next Steps

2. In the case of the British Army, the lead must come from the British Government, in the context of the agreed politics of the win-win solution outlined above. There are enough tense and unstable situations in the world developing in the aftermath of the collapse of various imperial systems, in Europe and elsewhere, to require substantial UN-led peace-keeping and peace-making forces for the foreseeable future. Many of these situations are in parts of the world where the British do not have a history of oppression to live down, and where their role on behalf of the UN could be constructive.

3. In the case of the Provisionals, the scenario as outlined above would be such that there would be enough withdrawal of British forces to give them the sense that they had achieved something, to the extent that they would agree to a cease-fire.

4. In the case of the UFV, and the Protestant population in general, it would be necessary to ensure that they participated in the new politics of reconciliation, and did not feel threatened. There is much to be learned from the history of the post Civil War Free State, with the development of a role for an unarmed police-force. There is also much to be learned from the transition to independence in Zimbabwe. Many paramilitaries who hitherto were dedicated to their ideologies would be likely to find positive roles in the development of police systems under local and regional control.

5. Given that there is peace, it will be necessary to ensure that it is peace with justice; the first step must therefore be the enactment of a Bill of Rights by Westminster. While this could usefully be enacted for the whole of the UK, it should make explicit reference to parts of the UK where there are national aspirations (eg Scotland and Wales as well as Northern Ireland) and should make these aspirations explicitly legitimate: no incubus of 'disloyalty' should be imposed on people who work politically for independence from English rule as embodied in the Crown in London. The enactment of a Bill of Rights of adequate scope will require a political campaign in Britain, and this could be initiated by the Greens of England, Wales and Scotland, with input from the Greens in Northern Ireland.

6. There are democratic forces across the political spectrum in Britain who would support a campaign for the establishment of a proper written constitutional basis for law in Britain, including the separation of Church and State, and independence for Scotland and Wales, and the provision for the non-threatening assertion of English national identity, which is currently submerged in the process of assertion of English hegemony in the UK via the label Britain.

7. It is necessary that the Protestants participate in the political process of reconstruction without feeling under threat from alien outside forces identified with Rome and expressed via Dublin. To counter this perception, it will be necessary for the Government of the Republic to enact a Bill of Rights along similar lines to that enacted by Westminster, with explicit separation of Church and State, and active support for the development of a decentralised regional structure, which would be relevant to the roles of Cork, Galway, Limerick etc as regional capitals.

7a. There should be explicit empowerment of regional authorities near the Border to negotiate cross-border development programmes with EC funding without reference to central government, mirroring the projected situation in Northern Ireland.

8. It would also be necessary to amend Articles 2 and 3 to take cognisance of the proposed autonomous status of Northern Ireland, while retaining the option of accepting as part of the Republic any region of Northern Ireland which so desired. Any such amendment of Articles 2 and 3 should of course be conditional on a corresponding abandonment of sovereignty by Britain, and the establishment of an agreed Commission underwritten by the two States. An appropriate amendment might be the insertion of an Article 3.2 pledging national unity only on the basis of peaceful reconciliation.

9. Green Party activists on the ground need to take initiatives to bring together community groups of all persuasions to discuss the proposals of the Opsahl Commission, to define in practical terms the path to increasing local and regional democracy in a pluralist community, and to put pressure on politicians of all persuasions to get around the table to discuss the terms of a peaceful solution with justice for all.

10. All-party talks should have the blessing of the Irish and British Governments but should be without their presence. In the event of any party not being present, honest attempts should be made to ascertain their views on the issues, the door being left open. The objective is consensus not victory.

11. Priority in any talks should be given to addressing the problem of the unemployment differential, to new job generation, and to means of measuring progress towards these objectives in such a way as to foster a positive vision of the 'win-win' possibilities inherent in community co-operation. In particular, the practice of 'political vetting' of community enterprise groups should be abandoned.

The Euro-election and the West

TECHNE ASSOCIATES / Techno-Economic, Socio-Technical, Socio-Linguistic and Environmental Consultancy

PO Box 1881 / Rathmines / Dublin 6

Richard Douthwaite
Cloona / Westport / Co Mayo / 23/9/93

Dear Richard

Further to our brief encounter at the Tyndall School, may I expose you to some thoughts which I have been having, and occasionally sharing, in recent years. The stimulus is the coming Euro-election, and the news that you are considering participating in the Green interest.

The two key issues seem to me to be regional government and the social wage.

By regional government I mean the definition of cohesive regions, with a good cultural focus, and a hinterland with development potential. What I have picked up about scale suggests that the hinterland of a 3rd-level college might be about right, and in this case you get in Ireland, apart from Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick, where there are Universities, the Regional College centres, which are Waterford, Tralee, Athlone, Sligo, Letterkenny, Dundalk and Carlow. Soon there will be Castlebar.

We already have a model regional development agency in Shannon Development; I would envisage the IDA being split into as many Shannon-Development type agencies as there are regions. The 'foreign affairs' of the IDAs would be carried out by a small confederal unit. The affairs of the Irish State would be carried out by central policy/strategy units servicing the needs of the regions for defence, foreign affairs and common standards of justice and rule of law. All other government would be regionalised, and the bulk of the civil service would be dispersed, in proportion to population.

Do you think it would be feasible to elaborate some or all of the economic implications of such a restructuring, in such a way as to have an impact on the election?

There is an implication also in the context of the North and the working of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The role of the latter has up to now been purely law and order, so-called. Could it not be extended to explore the potential for creative development of cross-border regions?

We should develop our regional thinking so as to help regenerate the old pre-partition hinterlands. Donegal is in the Derry hinterland. Dundalk relates to Newry. Sligo relates to Enniskillen. Monaghan relates to Armagh and Dungannon.

Consider now the North in the context of the need for reconstruction of the constitution of the UK. There is Scottish autonomy on the agenda, also Welsh. There is need for the analysis of the identity of England: are we talking of Wessex, Mercia, Cornwall etc? Is Scotland unitary? We need to become aware of what the Greens in the island of Britain are thinking.

In a cantonal Scotland, is there perhaps need for a Dal Riada concept, involving association of Belfast region with Glasgow?

Is there perhaps scope for a 5-region 12-county system, with Belfast and 4 cross-border natural hinterlands, having power devolved from the 2 governments by agreement, and overall support and funding from the EC?

Each of the 5 regions would have their own police-force, and their own governments, development agencies etc. They could opt into higher associations of their choice, for one specialist purpose or another, but basically they would be autonomous States. Could this perhaps be put on the overall Green agenda?

Might a solution along these lines, with rule over the North neither from London nor Dublin, and international support for the law and order machinery, be acceptable enough to bring about peaceful politics?

I feel issues like this need to be discussed by Greens on these islands, and I understand that there are meetings likely to take place, eg in Belfast and Edinburgh in the near future. I wonder could we get this concept on the agenda as an electoral manifesto, with the blessing of all Greens on these islands, and support from our friends in Europe.

What do you think?

Now consider the social wage. Crotty has been on about this, and so I believe have you. My understanding of it is as a device to subsidise labour and tax capital, rather than taking labour to subsidise capital, as is the case now. You subsidise to promote the uptake of the plentiful commodity, and tax to restrict the use of the scarce one.

It seems to me that it should be possible to declare the existing dole to be the social wage, and to give it to everyone, whether they work or not. People currently working would accept a cut of their net economic wage, so as to make the sum of their social and economic wages equal to their current net wage after tax.

Employers would be asked to re-define their existing payments to government, including PAYE deductions, in terms of a tax on their productive assets. There need be initially no change in net cash flows. However it would soon emerge that some productive assets were taxed at a higher rate than others; there would have to be adjustments.

On the whole those employing few people and owning expensive equipment would initially be under-taxed, and as their productive assets tax winched its way up to the average over the years, they would have an incentive to employ more people so as to use their assets more productively, add more value etc. On the whole it should become cheap to employ more people to use productive assets more intensively.

A key productive asset is of course land, and this at present is not taxed at all; it would need to come into the net.

There are other taxation ideas floating about, like carbon tax, which is also a good idea. Wasting assets need to be taxed to ensure their replacement.

Social equity would need to be taken care of by having no tax on basic living space, and this might be defined in terms of square feet under a roof per family and per unit; any more than the basic is productive and taxable; this would give a widow an incentive to rent space to students etc. It would also get people like me, who have work-space at home over and above living-space.

There might be a basic subsistence land-holding free of tax, say 10 acres or so. It should be possible for someone to draw the social wage and grow food for the market or for personal consumption, develop crafts or whatever, without getting into the tax net.

Do you think this could be elaborated cleanly enough to stand up to an election TV show, with the arguments being defended clearly?

I have written to Mary Bowers along these lines, and hope to be in on the policy development work myself, insofar as I can find the time.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

Maastricht and Northern Ireland

TECHNE ASSOCIATES / Techno-Economic, Socio-Technical, Socio-Linguistic and Environmental Consultancy

PO Box 1881 / Rathmines / Dublin 6 / 13/12/93

Ruairi Quinn TD / Leinster House / re: the North

Dear Ruairi

You may or may not have noted my recent (Dec 10) letter to the Irish times, which I append below. I feel I should annotate and extend it, in the hope that some of the arguments in it may be of use to the Tanaiste and the Taoiseach in the current negotiations. What I have added in is in square brackets.

"John Taylor is doing his Protestant constituents, and Ulster Protestants in general, a disservice by using the decline of population of Donegal in support of the Unionist 'British identity' position. He would do better to if he came around to trying to influence the current talks by urging that any new peace settlement should open up the possibility of the re-integration of the old pre-Partition hinterlands, and encouraging innovative regional enterprise to develop so as to generate jobs.

The decline of Donegal was due to its being cut off for 70 years from its natural focus, Derry. The decline of Derry was due to its being cut off from its natural hinterland, Donegal.

The reversal of this decline is the 'win-win solution' lurking, I suspect, in the Hume-Adams paper. Integrate Derry with Donegal for economic development purposes, take up the available EC structural funding creatively, and in the ensuing dynamic economic situation there would be no time for Protestant or Catholic hegemonism. It is no longer a zero-sum game; everybody wins.

[Some years ago I submitted a paper to Gerry Adams developing this aspect, which he acknowledged, and I had subsequent discussions with him in the aftermath of a public occasion. In the paper I stressed the need not only for democratic structures empowered to make structural arrangements with local authorities across the Border, but also for the development of an unarmed police-force, loyal to the regional authority or canton, and recruited from all communities. Catholics could join such a force with a clear conscience.]

If the new devolved Northern Ireland constitution, still within the UK, were to be given an enabling structure such that cross-border enterprise development was actively encouraged, taking advantage of the post-1992 situation in the Maastricht mode, I find it hard to believe that Protestants would emigrate rather than take up the opportunities presented, as he suggests.

[There needs to be less talk of 'accommodating the Unionist tradition' and more of 'enabling Protestants to identify with the new enabling structures'. A religious denomination does not need to own a State system in order to defend its identity. The Irish identity is not identical with Catholic. Protestants in the Republic identify with Irish nationality, no bother.]

I mention Maastricht because the hinterland of that prospering city extends into 3 States. It is for that reason that it was selected as the location for the signing of the European Union agreement. Many object to the European Union, for good reasons, but let us profit by it where it can help to get rid of the negative effects of political boundaries which carve up natural socio-economic hinterlands.

Not many Protestants in the Republic dance at the crossroads, or speak Irish (though I have known some who do, or, in the former case, have done, as it has ceased to be fashionable behaviour for some decades). Most if not all would however would have no problem with Irish identity, although many families, including my own, lost relatives in the 1939-45 war in defence of Britain and democracy.

British identity need not be exclusive. John Taylor is trying to make it so. We urge him to reconsider his Irish identity (which he has claimed in the past) and evaluate it as having growth potential, given an imaginative peace settlement which encourages regional development in Border areas by co-operative initiative."

To continue: it seems to me that it should be possible to come up with a revised NI constitution within the UK, composed of possibly 5 regions or cantons, one being Belfast and hinterland, and the 4 others being broadly the hinterlands of Derry, Enniskillen, Dungannon and Armagh. It would make good economic sense to set these up and empower them to make arrangements respectively with Donegal, Sligo/Leitrim, Cavan/Monaghan and Louth, such as to help re-constitute the pre-partition hinterland structures, and to pour massive development funding into the cross-border development agencies.

Such a Constitution would need to be underwritten by a Bill of Rights, such as to prevent any local minority group being discriminated against. The judicial system supportive of the Bill of Rights would need to be under EU supervision; it should not be left to the British.

It would make good political sense to pass a corresponding Bill of Rights in the Dail, so as to bring the objective rights of Protestants in the Republic on to the same footing as those of Catholics in the North. In this new constitutional context, the Belfast region, which should have its regional authority like the others, distinct from the overall NI super-regional structure (Stormont), would have the right to make arrangements, if it so wished, with one or more Scottish regional authorities for economic development purposes, while the (federal) NI government would be empowered to deal with Dublin, on larger-scale issues.

In order to make this regional or cantonal system work, the empowerment should be to the extent that regional or cantonal authorities did not have to refer decisions to London. In the Republic the corresponding step is that the border county authorities should be entitled to participate in the regional development system without having to refer everything to Dublin. We are in the presence of an opportunity for massive decentralisation measures, with the development of effective regional government throughout the Republic, roughly along the lines of the IDA or Health Authority regions, as urged repeatedly by Tom Barrington.

If remote rule from Dublin, perceived as an agent of Rome, is one of the factors that drives Protestants into Unionism, then the devolution of power to regional authorities in Ireland as a whole would be seen as weakening this threat.

I have seen leaks and hints on various occasions that concepts like the above are on the table. If so, good on you. If not, then I urge you to put them on the table. And I urge you to beware to the 'dirty tricks department' of the British Army Establishment, who have a vested interest in keeping the war going, as a live training-ground in which their lads can be blooded.

The 'business interests' said to be currently arming the UFF gangs are also people who have a vested interest in the continuation of the war. It is important to persuade the mainstream business interests that they have more to gain by peace and co-operation. Was this not the theme of the Balmoral conference recently, which included all-Ireland business heavies? Why is this aspect being kept so much under wraps?

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999