Peace talks need more women around the table

WHO cares about the children?" Not once over the weekend, when once again we were bombed into interminable analysis and speculation about the North of Ireland, did I hear that question asked. If you looked, listened and read, did you once hear a woman's opinion? What they felt or what their priorities were? I did not until I spoke to women early this week. They represented some of the political parties in the North.

God knows, last week was bad on a cosmic scale. Early on I wept for the Irish travellers who were wickedly picked for target practice by a few journalists. Midweek, I watched Return To The Dying Rooms again, and wept once more for the abandoned Chinese orphans.

Then came Friday.

The news flashed while I was on the phone to a friend in Tralee. The television was on, with the sound down. It was one of those long, meaningful, meandering women's talks both waiting for Coronation Street. Suddenly, there was John Finerty's face. I turned up the sound and my stomach plummeted into my boots.

For the rest of the night, until the early hours of the morning, I sat and trawled the stations, listening, watching, waiting. Coming up to 10 p.m., I burst into tears and wept. Without thinking, I went to the phone and rang Joyce McGimpsey in Belfast.

She was stoical and soothing. Don't be upset, she said. We have to stay calm. We have to find out more. We have to get the industries in. We have to get people working again. We have to talk to each other. We can not panic. Her reassurance, her composure quietened me.

I first met Joyce McGimpsey of the Ulster Unionist Party over, a year ago. (Her husband, Chris McGimpsey, is a UUP councillor.) I have met many other Northern women during the past year and a half most of whom I would not have known if the war was still going on. We talked. We listened. We went to conferences. Friendships were formed. We were fascinated with the minutiae of each other's lives. The Border had made us all invisible to each other. So much to catch up on. So much to do...

On Friday night, one woman on the panels pulled in by the various television stations was Joan Burton, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. As usual she was superb. Articulate and assured, she is one of the few politicians who wears her compassionate heart on her sleeve. Allied with acute intelligence, the combination is mighty. In the middle of the opinions and speculation, she spoke about a women's conference in Belfast before Christmas. I too was there, along with, many women from the South, principally Cork. The overwhelming mood of the Northern women was forcefully behind May Blood of the Shankhill Women's Forum when she said "We will not go back to the violence. No woman in Northern Ireland will be forced back."

Joan Burton got a token polite silence when she recalled this, and then they launched back into the hurdy gurdy of male speak. She was on RTE, on BBC 2's Newsnight and probably several other programmes. I searched the Saturday, Sunday and Monday papers for reactions from women, but saw zilch. Then came the anger.

BEFORE I go any further, get this. There is absolutely no way I blame the male politicians who have been involved over the past 17 months. Is there a woman born who has not seen the grooves deepening John Hume's face? Is there a woman born who does not worry for Dick Spring on his endless travels, his children growing up in his absence? No.

But now, having got it wrong they must fire the Guidebook For Ending Wars into the nearest cesspool. That make it up as you go along thing with its crazy vocabulary permanent cessation/complete cessation framework Washington 3 (who dares ask what Wash 1 and Wash 2 were) twin track decommissioning proximity talks, the Dayton blah, blah, blah was surely one of the daftest things ever invented.

What they have to do is cut out the "nonsense and get to the core. For that, they need women. Why? Because if or "when there are any more negotiations, this week women are demanding to be in on them. And it is only women who are talking about the children.

Patricia Lewlesly, SDLP councillor for the Upper Falls, says "Women see the whole picture. Men are shortsighted. Friday night was the first time I felt vulnerable again. I find now I am watching again to see who is parking outside the door, taking the reg number and locking away a mental description of them. I can hear the hyper note coming back into people's, voices. They are more alert, more cautious.

"Two years ago my son of 11 was distracted. He jumped if there was a knock on the door at an unusual time. My daughter, younger, was covered with psoriasis. In hindsight I think there are very few children who were not affected by the Troubles."

Joyce McGimpsey was down here at a Fianna Fail conference in January. In a workshop she was asked about the peace process. "I explained how the Troubles started when I was 161/2. I did not really understand what was happening. My husband gave a speech once where he explained that our eldest son was 161/2 and the Troubles were still continuing. He is now 22. My second son reached 161/2 and we still had the Troubles. He is now 20. My third son will be 16 in April and my youngest son is 10.

"We are now in the peace process. But what if it does not last? Does this mean my youngest son will reach 161/2 and the Troubles will be continuing As soon as I said that, I had to stop. My voice was quivering. I was shaking and the tears were running down my cheeks. I did not expect to become so emotional.

But the peace process is an emotional issue. I am not the only mother who thinks this way. We want the peace process to work. We demand that the political parties and the governments solve the problems and give us peace. Everyone is accountable. I will not accept failure and a return to the past. Neither will the hundreds of thousands of women in Northern Ireland.

Mary Clark Glass of the Alliance Party says when her husband was active in politics, it was their sons then 11 and 16 who worried. "They would say you haven't looked under your car or you left the car out again. Children should have a growing when they feel secure. If that security is continually threatened you must expect it to affect them, probably for life."

SENATOR Ann Gallagher of the Labour Party, whose solicitor's practice is in Castleblaney, says it is "as if there is a cloud hanging over us all since Friday". She says "Women have to make it publicly known to Sinn Fein they are not going to accept a return to the violence. There is an urgent need for women's input into the negotiations. Women are not confrontational. They see the broader picture.

They are open to risk taking, to breaking moulds. Women are always more inclined to say, let's try this to experiment. They have more common sense. They work better in a committee system. Generally they are not into scoring points."

Bronagh Hinds of the Northern Ireland European Women's Platform, says the best way women in the South can help is to stand with Northern women. "Women in the South should be calling clearly to a ceasefire. In the North, many women are still disempowered in the political parties. There are no women's voices and they are needed in mapping out the future.

"On Friday night my daughter came in. She is 17. I said to her, you can't go out like you have been doing. You have to be careful. You have to tell me where you are going and where you are. I can see the stressful effects all round me already in people's breathing. And the tone of their voices."

Una Gillespie from Sinn Fein says the party's priority is to try to ensure there are no more bombs and to get the ceasefire back.

As management consultant Caroline McCamley says "If women had reacted with force every time every promise to us was broken, imagine the battering of bodies there would be. You just do not carry on like that bombing, shooting and the rest. You go into negotiations. You get tired and despondent. You get fresh energy. You go at it again. You lobby. You change public opinion. It is not just women who have been disempowered. Look at business people, others in tourism or just people who want to take a break in the North for a change."

For myself, I simply do not know which planet those IRA guys think they are on. I could not give a tuppencehapenny for the fourth green field. If they were honest, neither could they.