Paul Bew

Paul Bew

This article is part of SpinWatch's Northern Ireland Portal.

Paul Anthony Elliott Bew, Baron Bew is professor of Irish politics at the Queen's University of Belfast, a position he has held since 1991.

A native of Belfast, Bew attended Campbell College, Belfast before studying for his Masters and PhD at Cambridge University. He was active in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights movement, and participated in the 1969 Belfast-Derry march which was attacked by loyalist protestors at Burntollet. He is a recognised authority on Irish History and politics.

He is a member of the Cadogan Group, a loosely-organised unionist think-thank. Like David Trimble, he is a signatory of the Cambridge neoconservative think tank the Henry Jackson Society Project for Democratic Geopolitics.

In February 2007, it was announced by the House of Lords Appointments Commission that he would be made a life peer and sit as a crossbencher. His title was gazetted as Baron Bew, of Donegore in the County of Antrim on 26 March 2007.

Early life

Bew was born in 1950 to a northern Protestant father and a southern Catholic mother. He was educated at Campbell College where joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party Young Socialists.

Civil rights movement

Bew joined the People's Democracy (PD) and was present in January 1969 when a PD civil rights march was attacked at Burntollet.

He later came to believe that the march had been a mistake, telling the Irish Times:

It's arguable that without Burntollet a reform package would have been accepted by both sides. In 1968-69 there was a fragile peace and we lost it, partly because of an unwise marching policy.

BICO and the Workers Party

In the early 1970s, Bew and fellow historian Henry Patterson were influenced by the British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO) analysis, which argued that the British state could play a progressive role in the conflict. Both were at one time members of the BICO-allied Workers' Association for a Democratic Settlement in Ireland.

The Workers' Party's Eamonn Smullen subsequently invited Patterson to write a section of The Irish Industrial Revolution, and he and Bew eventually both joined the party.

Patterson and Bew were among the speakers at the Worker's Party's 1984 Marx Centenary Conference.

In a 1991 debate with Tomás Mac Giolla in the Workers' Party publication Making Sense, Bew argued that the Easter Rising had been an aberration that allowed the ideas of 'marginal radicals' to hold sway for 40 years:

Of course, the intimate Redmondite involvement in Westminster - which would have survived home rule - is impossible to recreate, but a more relaxed, less charged version of Irish political destiny already exists with Brussels to some degree playing the role Redmond envisaged for London.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement and after

Bew told the Associated Press in 1985 that Protestants had been shocked at the concessions they believed Mrs Thatcher had made in the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

In the wake of the 1987 Enniskillen bombing, Bew commented:

The heavy irony of this terrible incident is that it has magically resolved the problems facing the Anglo-Irish Agreement in the short term.

Bew argued that Protestants had to accept the Agreement, and that Enniskillen would not necessarily undermine Sinn Féin in the long term:

we've been here before. We've had IRA outrages followed by Sinn Fein expressing contrition. Right now Sinn Fein is in retreat, but I'd be surprised if that is still the case six months or a year from now.

In a September 1988 piece for The Times Bew argued for a border poll as a means of separating the process of internal reform in Northern Ireland from 'creeping unification':

The people who say the Provos can be defeated only politically are correct; the problem is that having weathered the challenge of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Provos have emerged with renewed self-confidence. As Adams said recently: 'The British always adopt stiff upper lips in these circumstances. There is a long history of them putting up an intransigent front while making arrangements to go.'

A 'border' poll would send an unmistakable signal that this is not the case. The poll in 1973 produced 591,000 votes in favour of the UK link. This is more than the combined Unionist vote of 380,000 in the 1987 general election and implies at least a degree of cross-community acceptance of the Union.

In January 1990, after Charles Haughey said that the Irish government might be prepared to modify the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Bew told the New York Times:

People in both main unionist parties are arguing in effect that they have to make a reasonably generous offer to share power with the Catholics.

However, he also questioned whether a breakthrough was imminent:

"Unionists want to water down Dublin's role," Dr. Bew said. "I don't think Hume is interested in that. Someone still has to cave in further."

Cadogan Group

Northern Limits

Bew was one of a number of members of the Cadogan Group who contributed to a 1992 pamphlet entitled Northern Limits: Boundaries of the Attainable in Northern Ireland Politics.

The Irish Times reported that the pamphlet:

calls for the deletion of Articles 2 and 3 from the Irish Constitution "as soon ,as possible", challenges key nationalist beliefs on the potential for reform in the North, and claims that both joint authority and Irish unity are not financially viable.

The Cadogan group recommends that a North/South Co-operation Council be set up, bringing together relevant ministers from Belfast and Dublin, and possibly serviced by a joint secretariat working out of both cities. The council would offer Dublin no more involvement in Northern affairs than Belfast would have in the South and its role,would be consultative, not executive.

At a Belfast hearing of the Opsahl Commission in January 1993, Commissioner Eamonn Gallagher challenged the Cadogan Goup over its contention that the New Ireland Forum had exaggerated the extent of discrimination in the North. The Irish Times reported:

Asked why there was no mention of the Special Powers Act, - the legislation, said Mr Gallagher, used by the authorities to discriminate against Catholics in the North - in the Cadogan group's lengthy submission, one of the members said it had also been applied against the loyalist community in the past.

Challenged to give an example of this, members said they could not produce examples "out of a hat", but said they could do so at a future date. Professor Paul Bew, of the group, perhaps stung by the efficacy of the challenge, said that in the 1940s it had been stated that the absence of family planning in the South "was far more productive of human misery that the Special Powers Act ever was".

In a letter to the Irish Times, Bew responded:

The full subtlety of the exchange at the Opsahl Commission has escaped your reporter, Gerry Moriarty (January 20th). I was not "stung by the efficacy" of the commissioner, Eamonn Gallagher's challenge; I simply felt that it was based on a historical error which, as a matter of fact, it was. As both Patrick Buckland and Michael Farrell make clear in their books, the Special Powers Act was used against Loyalists.

Incidentally, my own profoundly critical view of the Special Powers Act and other features of Unionist rule (1921-72) may be found in Paul Bew and Henry Patterson, The British State and the Ulster Crisis, 1985, pp 4-5.

David Trimble and the peace process

More recently, he was an unofficial adviser to the former Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble. Though he has this to say about such labels:

He rejects his frequent designation as an "adviser" to Trimble. "This is misleading because it does an injustice to the people who are employed as his advisers and also implies regular contact, whereas I sometimes go months without contact." However, he accepts "informal adviser" as a reasonable description of a relationship that has grown from the late 1970s, when Trimble was a member of the interviewing panel that gave him his first job at Queen's. "There were two historians on the panel, but David was the only person who had read something I had recently written about Irish history, and asked a number of penetrating questions."

According to Henry McDonald, this interview took place in 1979, and the book that Trimble had read was The State in Northern Ireland.

Bew was present at the British-Irish Association conference at Keele University in 1986, where Trimble met another key member of his inner circle, the journalist Ruth Dudley Edwards.

The Peace process

In March 1994, Bew suggested that the IRA's mortar attack on Heathrow Airport showed that the Downing Street Declaration of the previous December had failed:

"It's amazing they still think there's life in the old dog yet," Prof. Paul Bew of Queen's University in Belfast, said in a telephone interview.

"This is a part of series of events that show that 90 per cent of the (IRA) rank and file, the activists, believe there's nothing for them in the declaration."

In a September 1994 article for The Times, Bew argued that the British Government's negotiating position placed a higher priority on the principle of majority consent in Northern Ireland than had been commonly recognised:

Some unnecessarily exotic formulations have been proposed in this context but, in substance, this proposal is not without merit. The sharpest legal mind in the Ulster Unionist parliamentary party, David Trimble, has pointed out in the latest Parliamentary Brief that the legislation governing Northern Ireland's place within the UK is the Act of Union of 1800 and the 1973 Constitutional Act. A Northern Ireland Office statement of last Saturday seemed to echo this in a rather uncanny way. Many moderate Unionists are understandably "upset by the notion of any tinkering with the 1920 Act, but there is, perhaps, a greater good at stake which permits a constitutional restructuring based on the concept of consent".

He made a similar argument in a leader in the following Sunday's Observer, which also called for the Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland.

In January 1995, warned that the peace process was in difficulties because the Framework Document being negotiated between the British and Irish governments was too pro-nationalist:

Why has the Northern Irish peace process got into trouble? In particular, why does the problem lie with the Ulster Unionists, Mr Major's recent allies in key House of Commons votes? The difficulties surrounding last night's vote on the new European fishing deal reveal that the Prime Minister can no longer be confident about Mr Molyneaux's support. The clue to all this is the framework document for the future of Northern Ireland, at present being negotiated.

The latest indications suggest that this document will be considerably more green than the Ulster Unionists have expected, apparently vindicating Ian Paisley's more pessimistic predictions. In particular, there is a strong hint that the British Government is willing, rhetorically, at least, to countenance arrangements which would greatly increase Dublin's influence in the North.

Bew also criticised the Framework Document in The Times the day after the paper published a version of its contents:

Throughout yesterday, official sources insisted that The Times's version of the document was selective and left out key elements of reassurance for the Unionists. In particular, it was suggested that any new North-South institutions would be accountable to a North-South assembly and that general criteria of workability remained in place. Yet middle-class Unionists very much the key to Molyneaux's continued authority remained unhappy. The new document seems to challenge the British identity of many Ulster Unionists.

Bew was less critical of the official version of the document in another Times piece that followed its publication later that month:

After the leak to The Times, it became clear that abstract concepts like harmonisation needed to be clarified. In a very significant late presentational change, paragraph 33 offers a vitally important translation of that frightening term. Harmonisation in education, for example, reduces to "mutual recognition of teacher qualifications, co-operative venture in higher education, in teacher training, in education for mutual understanding and in education for specialised needs." That is all perfectly sensible but hardly very exciting.

In May 1995, Bew criticised the British and Irish governments for softening their stance on IRA decommissioning ahead of a meeting between Gerry Adams and the Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew.

In the wake of disturbances at Drumcree in July 1995, Bew called for the British government to cultivate modernising unionists, and for the Ulster Unionist Party to address the role of the Orange Order within its organisation.

Following James Molyneaux's resignation in August 1995, Bew suggested that Trimble, who appeared to have ruled himself out as a successor, was a likely next leader but one, and that John Taylor was the candidate with the most appeal to modernisers in the meantime.

The following month, he criticised the Irish government for rowing back on the demand that republicans hand over arms before being admitted to talks:

Dublin opinion has become increasingly convinced that the IRA would not hand over its arms. Rather more surprisingly, respected commentators such as Dr Garret FitzGerald claimed that the British had slurred over the issue early in 1994. Equivocation became the order of the day. Worse still, nobody appeared to care about the impact of Dublin's spectacular self-deception on the Unionist community of the North.

Following Emma Nicholson's defection from the Conservative Party in January 1996, Bew deprecated suggestions that the Ulster Unionists had gained leverage at Westminster:

The Ulster Unionists will not get any more power than they have today. There is no immediate crisis for the Government. There is no forthcoming legislation that will cause the Ulster Unionists to withdraw their support.

Later that month he criticised Senator George Mitchell's report on arms decommissioning:

The overwhelming majority in Northern Ireland 83 per cent according to the latest poll have been asked to accept what they have hitherto rejected: talks before any decommissioning gets under way.

Following the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996, Bew warned unionists against returning to a purely defensive approach:

The need is for the pro-active unionism - with which David Trimble and Mr Taylor have been identified in the past few months - to drop some of its irritability and talk more openly of constitutional nationalism in Belfast and Dublin. The worst possible outcome would be for London and Dublin and, even more importantly Belfast and Dublin, to drift further apart.

In the Times a few days later he suggested that the way might be clear for an accommodation between moderate parties:

The emphasis has been on the inclusion of extremists. But if the ceasefire has ended, and if it cannot be meaningfully restored, the political strategies based on it have gone too.

He made a similar call in the Independent the following week:

If it proves impossible to bring Sinn Fein back in to dialogue, David Trimble may well be prepared to offer compromises that would serve to bind together the constitutionalist parties. But the fringe loyalists also have their part to play. People should not forget that loyalist paramilitary killing, which was about 10 per cent of the total on the eve of the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985, then rose to the point where it exceeded that of the republicans in the period immediately preceding the ceasefire. This dramatic rise was fuelled by fears of a sell-out. If the two governments now act in a way which reinforces stability, then perhaps we can be spared the worst of some of the horrors which otherwise await.

During the Drumcree Crisis in July 1998, Bew was one of a small group including among others, Professor Liam Kennedy, Sean O'Callaghan and Ruth Dudley Edwards which attempted to draft a speech for the Prime Minister. Dudley Edwards subsequently wrote:

There would have been no need to mention this draft either, had not two newspapers run front-page stories about us having written a pro-Orange speech. It was in fact an attempt to get a British politician to show he had some understanding of and respect for ordinary Northern Irish people. And though subsequent events made the speech irrelevant, echoes of it have subsequently appeared in prime ministerial utterances and in a letter from his chief-of-staff to the Orange Order.

Dean Godson describes Bew as an occasional 'back-channel' between Trimble and the British government, describing one incident in May 1999 when Bew met Jonathan Powell, and was surprised to find him unaware of the threat to the UUP's seat in the then-upcoming European elections. According to Dean Godson:

Shortly thereafter, Bew met Powell at a private residence in Pimlico. Bew sought to explain to Powell the Prime Minister's growing credibility problem within the majority community, stemming from his perception of broken referendum pledges.

Following Seamus Mallon's resignation on 15 July 1999, Godson reports that Stephen King rang round Bew, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Eoghan Harris to persuade Trimble not to resign. Bew suggested that Trimble should form a new executive whilst depositing a post-dated resignation letter with the Northern Ireland Assembly, a suggestion Trimble declined.

Bew was Trimble's and Ken Maginnis's first choice to serve as a pro-unionist voice on the Patten Commission into policing, but declined partly for personal reasons. Bew came to regard the man who chosen in his stead, barrister Chris Smith, as having been 'captured' by the Commission. He also expressed concern to Ken Maginnis about another commission member, Canadian academic Clifford Shearing, who had written sympathetically about alternative justice in South African townships.

Bew spoke along with Eoghan Harris and Malachi O'Doherty at the UUP assembly group away day in Glasgow on 25 September 1999.

At a meeting in the Commons on 17 November 1999, Lord Cranborne put to Trimble the post-dated cheque idea, which according to Godson, had earlier been put forward by Bew. This time the suggestion was taken up by Trimble, who decided to deposit a resignation letter with the UUP president Sir Josias Cunningham. Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson told Bew at a dinner on 6 March 2000 that he wished he had never come up with the idea.

At an American Enterprise Institute conference in London on 13 January 2001, Trimble told Bew that he could not push the Good Friday Agreement in a 'Unionist way' lest it give republicans an excuse not to decommission.

Bew was one of a number of Trimble supporters who argued that the North Belfast UUP MP Cecil Walker should stand down after a disastrous TV debate ahead of the 2001 Westminster election. He also proposed that a Border Poll should be held on the same day as the election to strengthen the union and increase unionist turnout.

Bew told Godson that his had been the only voice arguing for suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly at a Hillsborough dinner hosted by the Permanent Secretary of the Northern Ireland Office, Joe Pilling in October 2001.

In 2003, Trimble aide David Campbell asked Bew to deliver a paper on Eamonn De Valera's 1923 order to dump arms as a model for disarmament. Bew criticised this precedent because the IRA had continued to regard the Irish Free State as an illegal entity.

According to Dean Godson, Bew took the view that Bush administration neoconservatives could have over-ruled US envoy Richard Haass over his support for Northern Ireland Assembly elections in 2003, but that the disdain of British diplomats for the neocons prevented them from exploiting this.

Boston College Oral History Archive

Bew, along with two other historians who remained anonymous, took part in assessing information from IRA and UVF paramilitary veterans for the Boston College Oral History Archive. Archive testimony from Brendan Hughes and David Ervine was published as Voices from the Grave in 2010.

Writings

The British State and the Ulster Crisis

Bew and Patterson's The British State and the Ulster Crisis was published in 1985, as closer north-south links were under consideration in the run-up to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. George Brock commented on the book in The Times:

A new study of British policy in Northern Ireland over the past 20 years* reminds us of the strains which similar SDLP demands placed on the fledgeling Council of Ireland. The Council, left with undefined powers by the Sunningdale agreement, became the focus of clumsy attempts to merge northern and southern administration in relatively uncontroversial areas. The authors quote internal government documents which give brutal descriptions of how these attempts foundered on practical realities.

Between War and Peace

In October 1997, Bew along with Henry Patterson and Paul Teague published Between War and Peace: the Political Future of Northern Ireland. According to Henry McDonald, "The book foreshadowed much of what would later become part of the Good Friday Agreement. Trimble was so impressed with the authors' arguments that he gave copies of the book both to the Prime Minister during a visit to Downing Street and to Sir John Holmes, the only senior Foreign Office diplomat whom Blair kept on from Major's administration.

Publications

Books

• Land and the National Question in Ireland 1858-82, Gill & Macmillan, 1979.
• The State in Northern Ireland, 1921-72: Political Forces and Social Classes, Manchester University Press, 1979.
• C.S. Parnell, Gill & Macmillan, 1980.
• Sean Lemass and the Making of Modern Ireland, 1945-1966, Gill & Macmillan, 1982.
• With Henry Patterson, The British State & the Ulster Crisis, Verso Books, 1985.
• Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland 1890-1910: Parnellites and Radical Agrarians, Clarendon Press, 1987.
• With Henry Patterson and Ellen Hazelkorn, The Dynamics of Irish Politics, Lawrence & Wishart, 1989.
• With Gordon Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles, 1968-93, Gill & Macmillan 1993.
• With Peter Gibbon, and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921-96: Political Forces and Social Classes, Serif, 1996.
• With Henry Gillespie, The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 1993-96: A Chronology , Serif, 1996.
• John Redmond, Dundalgan Press, 1996.
• With Henry Patterson and Paul Teague, Between War and Peace: The Political Future of Northern Ireland, Lawrence and Wishart, 1997.
• Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism 1912-1916., Clarendon Press, 1998.
• With Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921 - 2001: Political Power and Social Classes, Serif, 2002.
• Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, Oxford, 2007.
• The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement, Liffey Press, 2007.

Affiliations

• Workers' Association for a Democratic Settlement in Ireland, former member
• Workers Party, former member
• Cadogan Group
• Henry Jackson Society, Advisory Council: Policy Council members
• Anglo-Israel Association, chairman
• Kurdistan Region in Iraq All-Party Parliamentary Group - Vice-chair