Politics:This is an important book which deserves to be read by anyone with a serious interest in Northern Ireland affairs or indeed the wider politics of Britain and Ireland.
The veteran American diplomat Dean Acheson called a book of his memoirs Present at the Creation, because he had been on hand for so many historic occasions. Likewise, Kenneth Bloomfield was part of the inner circle for many critical events in the North, such as the prime ministerial meetings of Sean Lemass and Terence O'Neill, the inception and demise of the Sunningdale power-sharing administration, and a great deal else. He also suffered a Provisional IRA bomb attack on his home in 1988.
Bloomfield's book is a thoughtful, provocative and stimulating meditation and analysis of the last 50 years in Northern Ireland, dating from his first day at work as a civil servant in the early 1950s. Promoted to the very highest level, he worked closely with O'Neill and his equally ill-fated successors, James Chichester-Clark and Brian Faulkner, as well as the short-lived cross-community cabinet that emerged from Sunningdale.
Hopefully, one of his southern counterparts will produce a similar work, as a companion volume to Bloomfield's book. These are more than reminiscences, and the author's mind remains very nimble and active as he casts a critical eye over everything from the early civil rights marches up to the moves towards establishing a joint DUP-Sinn Féin government at Stormont.
Reading it is like listening to the excellent RTÉ historical series, What If . . ., and you find yourself asking: What if the civil rights movement had cut Terence O'Neill a bit more slack and given him a chance to implement the reforms he claimed to favour? What if the idealistic protesters of the day, students and others, had realised just how much they were playing with fire? What if William Whitelaw had been left in situ as Northern Ireland Secretary, to ensure that the Sunningdale negotiations came up with a result more palatable to the unionist population?
The book amounts to a forensic examination of these and other related matters. It resembles a report on a series of terrible disasters: the train-wreck of internment, followed by the plane crash of Bloody Sunday, the earthquake of the H-Block hunger-strikes, and so on. The tragic narrative proceeds against a background of the cries and anguish of the thousands of victims and their grief-stricken families and friends.
If there was any value in apportioning blame, one could probably place some of it on the author's own head. He was, after all, at the apex of government as a top civil servant when critical and wrong-headed decisions were made. Indeed, he accepts some of the responsibility for Terence O'Neill responding with excessive rhetoric and insufficient action to the grievances of the nationalist minority. Bloomfield's great hero is Brian Faulkner, whose capacity and drive he rightly acknowledges. But could he perhaps have stayed Faulkner's hand before he took the fateful decision to proceed with internment on August 9th, 1971, converting a tragedy into a catastrophe overnight?
If there is one lesson to be taken from Bloomfield's book, it must be this: history has consequences. The grievances of the Northern nationalists could and should have been addressed by Britain's post-war Labour government, generally acknowledged as one of the most enlightened and progressive administrations of all time. But Attlee and his colleagues left the unionists undisturbed because of their contribution to the war effort, in a raging world conflict where the South remained officially neutral.
With the benefit of hindsight, and employing what medical people call "the retrospectoscope", one can clearly see where so much went wrong. But, even at the time, the fateful consequences of certain actions should have been obvious to anyone who was not blinded by prejudice and/or stupidity. What result could the Bloody Sunday shootings have had, other than a prolonged conflagration? What would letting prisoners die rather than allow them wear their own clothes achieve, except an influx of support for violent revolution?
Writing just before the establishment of the Ian Paisley-Martin McGuinness power-sharing arrangement, Sir Kenneth is wary and sceptical about its chances of success, fearing it could be undermined by the contradictory agendas of the two parties.
Others would argue that the war is over and these admittedly difficult matters can be resolved in a spirit of goodwill and co-operation. But this book is a valuable reminder that nothing can ever be taken for granted and that, in Northern Ireland as elsewhere, the price of peace is eternal vigilance.
Deaglán de Bréadún is an Irish Times political correspondent, former northern editor and author of The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, published by Collins Press, Cork
A Tragedy of Errors: The Government and Misgovernment of Northern Ireland By Kenneth Bloomfield Liverpool University Press, 275pp. €39.90
