In a climate where many are in denial about compromise, the onus of leadership is on unionists, writes FRANK MILLARLondon Editor
ELEVEN YEARS after that famous Good Friday, there seems little mood for celebration in Northern Ireland. The calendar there remains packed as ever with important dates for commemoration of past victories and defeats, yet this anniversary of the Belfast Agreement – a truly marvellous moment offering liberation from decades of terrorism and communal conflict – may go largely unmarked.
In one sense, of course, this would be understandable, and might even seem a good thing. After the ultimate DUP-Sinn Féin deal, the long goodbyes of Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, days with Ian Paisley in Dublin and at the Boyne, “the like of which we never thought to see”, last year’s 10th celebrations were attended by a real sense that the political classes (and the media) had somewhat overdosed on “historic” breakthroughs.
“Time for the hard work to begin” was the prevailing sentiment a year ago as Peter Robinson prepared finally to succeed the Big Man. This was informed by the realisation that the political process had really been coasting in the heady aftermath of Paisley’s decision to abandon the oppositionist politics of a lifetime to jointly head a new powersharing administration with Martin McGuinness.
Following the Real IRA murders of two British soldiers and a PSNI constable, there is also some contentment that Robinson and McGuinness together are beginning to show the kind of leadership the governments in London and Dublin yearn to see. Yet it is salutary to recall that the Executive over which they preside failed to function for five of the past 12 months – a symptom of what many outsiders see as a disturbing tendency still on the part of the two major parties to continue “the war” by other means.
Even while they “share” power, too many on both sides appear in a state of denial about the nature of the enterprise, and the compromise, to which they have signed up. Robinson, naturally, won’t be raising a toast to the original deal negotiated by David Trimble and Séamus Mallon. DUP mythology requires us to see the St Andrews Agreement as the alternative to the Good Friday accord, rather than its natural offspring.
In the end Sinn Féin effectively killed off Trimble’s Ulster Unionist leadership, Gerry Adams concluding that the deal with Paisley was the one that would stick. Sinn Féin’s mythology, on the other hand, requires at least the party’s own supporters to believe that nothing about this settlement is intended to stick and that Northern Ireland remains in “transition” toward a united Ireland. This in turn fuels the arrogance of those in the DUP who behave as if the unionist majority has been restored at Stormont, their mission seemingly to deny Sinn Féin at every turn.
From the so-called “moderate” sidelines, likewise, comes only a succession of discordant, unhelpful and confusing noises. The SDLP might be up for a celebration of the Belfast Agreement, yet that party too seems in denial about the nature of the settlement, locked as it is in a presumably doomed struggle to out-green Sinn Féin. Sourness and disillusion at finding itself supplanted informs the persistent SDLP charge that Sinn Féin is routinely out-negotiated by the DUP. Some displaced and unhappy Ulster Unionists, likewise, seem ready to carve a defeat from their previously claimed victory – questioning the sincerity of Sinn Féin’s commitment to the democratic path while contemplating, with their new Conservative allies, a “voluntary coalition” model to replace compulsory power-sharing.
Nobody ever explains which of the main parties gets to be excluded under an alternative “voluntary” arrangement, but none of the parties can have forgotten where the politics of exclusion took Northern Ireland. Bertie Ahern has acknowledged that, in time, politics may evolve and permit, maybe even demand, the “normal” operation of government and opposition.
With the current partnership arrangements still in their infancy, however, that time surely remains a long way off.
It is unclear whether unionists collectively are guilty of laziness or some dishonesty. What can be said of some is that there is a significant discrepancy between their demeanour and the position they have separately and collectively articulated, namely that – while rewriting the rules for its governance within the union – the Belfast and St Andrews agreements have secured Northern Ireland’s constitutional position.
The unionists should start behaving as if they believe it, and act accordingly in terms of their approach to the republican and nationalist communities. For what must also be said is that the onus for maintaining a settled and stable Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom rests with them. Nobody else is going to do their job for them.
Frank Millar is the author of Northern Ireland: A Triumph of Politics(published by the Irish Academic Press) and David Trimble: The Price of Peace(by the Liffey Press).