'Big Society' address echoes FitzGerald's liberal crusade

YOU DON’T expect to hear Bobby Sands mentioned in a DUP leader’s speech. And if he is to get a name-check the expectation is that the concentration will be on derision.

Peter Robinson referred to Sands’s best-known phrase about the revenge of republicans being the laughter of their children. “Such narrow vision,” said Robinson, while adding that there was too much talk of revenge, too much talk of victory or defeat.

He was more thoughtful than derisive.

And he used Sands’s quote as the launching pad for the main element of his speech: seeking to broaden the party, to bring in wider support including from Catholics and to hammer home the need to “build one, united, shared and peaceful society”.

“The DUP’s ambition,” he said, “will be the laughter of all our children, playing and living together, with a future that doesn’t see them having to leave our shores, but wanting to live here, in Northern Ireland, within the United Kingdom.”

It almost has an Éamon de Valera-type ring to it, doesn’t it? But it is probably best not to conjure up images of comely DUP maidens and strapping DUP lads doing Riverdance at Castlereagh crossroads.

No, the focus has to be on what was a forward-looking speech for a DUP leader, one in which he sought to reach out beyond the DUP’s natural constituency. In this game sometimes the natural response is to be cynical but nonetheless Robinson did make quite a powerful pitch for tackling the last great problem in Northern Ireland: sectarianism. And one that would be difficult from which to retreat.

Ultimately, it’s all about delivery. That’s the real test, and considering how sectarianism is so endemic in Northern Ireland it is a hugely challenging test.

There wasn’t much meat on the bones, so to speak, but Robinson definitely set out a broad vision for the party that includes seeking to bring Catholics into the DUP, and more generally to persuade more of them to hold with the North’s union with Britain.

In a sense it was a mirror image of how Sinn Féin says it wants to persuade unionists of the benefits of a united Ireland. But this speech of Robinson’s seemed bolder because if there is not practical follow-up to his pledges then his talk of energetically working to create “one community” will become a running political joke – a pledge that will haunt him and the DUP.

Assembly member Stewart Dickson of the Alliance Party, which has majored on the issue of a shared society as opposed to a carved-up or shared-out society, made the point that “talk is easy” and if the First Minister really believed what he said he must begin to effect real change at the interfaces.

This was Robinson’s Big Society statement for Northern Ireland, rather like Garret FitzGerald’s proposed liberalising “crusade” of the 1980s.

There is no doubt the DUP is an evolving party. It is the party with the power that has attracted a broader range of people to it, politicians and supporters who are generally moderate and reasonable and unlikely to alienate Catholics or others in the middle ground.

There is obviously a self-serving element to Robinson’s commitment, in that if he can attract some Catholic support, or poach voters away from Alliance and the Ulster Unionist Party, then, of course, the DUP will grow even bigger and even more powerful. There is also the question of demographics and how the Protestant/Catholic breakdown will end up when the census figures are released.

There is moderate risk to what Robinson is proposing. He will be conscious that some in the founding evangelical wing of the party will be uncomfortable about the talk of convincing Catholics to support or join the party. After all, there is a real fundamentalist belief that if you are not “born again” then you are damned and Catholics don’t tend to subscribe to the “born again” protocol.

Robinson rammed home his “one community” message so passionately and at such length in his speech that maybe he is serious. And if he is then there is a chance that something will be done, because Robinson is a can-do strategic politician.

Otherwise it was a predictable, traditional flag-waving DUP conference where delegates celebrated political success, had a few digs at Dublin, Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionist Party, Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister and generally enjoyed themselves in their normal sober but ebullient manner.

If life was any better for them they’d be worried.