Northern Ireland: This is the kind of title that might catch the attention of readers wishing to know more about the underlying reasons why the Northern Irish peace process and the Belfast Agreement are in the mess they are following the Northern Bank robbery.
The reasons for the mess might seem obvious to some: the inherent fragility of a form of government which requires erstwhile bitter enemies to share power together; the institutionalisation of sectarianism at the top of Northern society which only serves to legitimise it at every level in that society (with the consequent carving up of many poorer areas into paramilitary-run ghettoes); the continuing deep fear and insecurity of one of the main protagonists, the unionists; and, above all, the total lack of trust between the two sides, starkly highlighted by the continued deceitfulness and criminality of the other main protagonist, the republican movement.
However, nearly seven years after the Belfast Agreement many people - this writer included - would greatly welcome a clearly argued, scholarly analysis of what has gone wrong. Unfortunately, this book (written before the Northern Bank robbery) does not provide it. G.K. Peatling's main problems are those of the academic: his opaque writing style and determination to quote every known authority on the subject - one-fifth of the book is given over to references and bibliography - mean his own conclusions are often obscured by a dense thicket of argument and counter-argument from others.
Readers should ignore the DUP-sourced cartoon on the cover. Although he believes that nationalist misunderstanding of unionism is one of the main reasons for the frailty of the Belfast Agreement, Peatling tries hard to be even-handed.
He makes some good points. He notes that the tiny majority within the unionist community in the post-Belfast Agreement referendum was largely achieved through a speech and letter from Tony Blair promising action on decommissioning beyond the terms of the agreement, and this "sharp practice" undermined it fatally in unionist eyes almost from the beginning. He says unionist leaders should have been able to discern for themselves, as Jeffrey Donaldson did, that the vague language of the agreement did not place the IRA under an obligation to give up their weapons within any specific time frame.
He points out, acutely, that British attitudes to Northern Ireland were formed by a media that was unbalanced because of its obsession with republicanism: virulently negative in the 1970s and 1980s because of the IRA's bombing campaigns, yet uncritically positive in the 1990s when that media was falling in behind the establishment consensus that the peace process had to work.
He stresses that to "under-represent a majority", as he argues convincingly the two governments did vis-à-vis the unionists in their determination to bring the republicans on board, "is certainly a fragile strategy in the long term".
However his arguments, to the extent that his arguments are able to be discerned from those of others, sometimes display a poor knowledge of the subjects he is analysing, notably republicanism and the media. Thus he still believes, against all the evidence, that at some time in the future it might be possible to enter negotiations, not with the Provisionals, but with "another representation of republicanism". He also urges, very late in the day, that the two governments should pay more attention to the role of the SDLP.
Similarly, he is much too late in exhorting the media in Britain, Ireland and internationally to pay more attention to "life in Northern Ireland outside violence". While those of us who live and work in the North might applaud such sentiments, a demand for such a switch of attention in order to provide a more knowledgeable and judicious constituency for new ways forward in the peace process is entirely unrealistic, given that Northern Ireland is simply not an international news story any more.
Overall, this book is a lost opportunity. Those who read recent articles in The Irish Times by David Adams and Dan O'Brien about criminality and the anti-democratic mindset of paramilitary organisations in the North will understand more about the reasons for the current stalemate in the peace process than anyone who has waded through this volume. If this shows anything, it is perhaps that the much-derided profession of journalism still has a greater role than the academy in clarifying, explaining, criticising, proposing amendments to and thus broadly supporting that vital process.
The Failure of the Northern Ireland Peace Process By G.K. Peatling Irish Academic Press, 292pp. €45