Mr Trump, remember the Falls Road, 1969!

Each state in the United States has its own army, called the National Guard, under the control of the state governor. In the present emergency, following the tragic death of George Floyd, some state governors have felt that their local police forces were about to be overwhelmed and have used the National Guard to reinforce them.

President Trump, never a conciliatory figure, cowering in his bunker in the White House, has chosen this moment to grandstand by threatening to send in the US Army where HE thinks the state powers are failing. This is a massive challenge to the constitutional powers of the states, and the example it brings to my mind, is a TV news report from 1969 which showed Home Secretary Jim Callaghan at his avuncular Sunny Jim best.

A little history:

Until the 1940s, local councillors throughout the UK we elected by ratepayers, which meant heads of households (overwhelmingly male) and the occupiers of business premises (also mostly male). Adults living with family, such as wives and grown-up sons and daughters, had no vote. Amongst its many reforms, the Attlee government introduced universal adult suffrage for local elections. Although the Stormont Unionist government copied nearly all the Attlee reforms into Northern Ireland legislation, this was one they omitted. It tended, not in law, but in practice, to discriminate against Catholics. Fast forward to the 1960s, it was widely seen as a real problem for the Catholic citizens and demonstrations and marches were organised by the People’s Democracy to reform it. Working class Protestants, always very sensitive to any reduction in their own status, formed counter-demonstrations and the result was punch-ups followed by communal riots. Protestant mobs invaded Catholic areas. The police were overwhelmed, as well as being totally unused to dealing with large scale violence from ‘both sides’.

Westminster had no minister specifically for Northern Ireland at the time; matters there were for Stormont to deal with, and the Home Secretary handled the hopefully few liaison issues. For nearly 50 years, this system had worked well in that it relieved Westminster of the often, for mainlanders, incomprehensible details of Ulster politics.  But now the wheels were coming off; it was time for Westminster to grasp the nettle. James Callaghan, before being an MP, was an official of a white collar trade union and had great faith in bonhomie and reasonable negotiation. He had an Irish background, but that link had been broken in his father’s time. He toured round Ulster, talking to what seemed to be the key players. Fatally, though there wasn’t probably much choice, he brought in the British army to protect the Catholic families in the Falls Road area from rampaging Protestant mobs. Nice picture opportunity with Sunny Jim in the street surrounded by Catholic women and children and some follow-ups of Catholic housewives bringing British soldiers cups of tea.

2020

Unfortunately, the story didn’t end there. In any demonstration in danger of morphing into a riot, there will be a number of groups with different agendas. The peaceful demonstrators hope that getting a lot of people there, they will influence those in power, and perhaps through the normal political processes, get elected themselves. There will be people just along for the event. Towards the more sinister end are the people who could be looters, given the opportunity. At the extreme will be so called paramilitaries; those who would countenance terrorism; perhaps they are not actually on the demo but waiting in the wings to see how they can take advantage. On the other side there will be the civic leaders and police who desperately want calm things down, but maybe some who already see it terms of a battle, that can be won by force.

As unrest develops many of the peaceful will leave, as this was not what they came for. Some of them will try their best to calm things down by talking down both sides. We can pray for their success but sometimes their fate is to be hit a police club or shield or threatened by the paramilitary godfathers that they are trying to frustrate. The demonstration then becomes for the looters and the violent with the results we know. People get hurt; attitudes harden; bystanders’ property gets destroyed and the story line peddled by the paramilitary godfathers gets more widely believed.

That’s what happened in the Falls Road. The soldiers were there in public; to the republicans who found the bullet as acceptable as the ballot box and for whom they were an ancient enemy, they were a sitting duck. Teenagers were encouraged to throw stones and snipers got ready to pick the soldiers off. The measures they took to protect themselves alienated them from the people they’d come to protect. Mis-steps and malicious actions kept a terrorist war alive for nearly 30 years and more than 3000 people died.

This is what Donald Trump should be wary of. Soldiers are good at logistics and doing what they are told. When an organised force is called for because there are not enough civil powers to do the necessary, we need them. But soldiers from elsewhere are not experts in local political subtleties and may both make their own errors and be outflanked by the godfathers.

So President Trump, let the mayors and the governors manage their own problems. If they need the US Army let them ask for it. And when the Army comes let them listen to the state and city authorities and community leaders.