More than eight years has passed since Albert Reynolds and John Major unveiled the Downing Street Declaration and formally inaugurated the peace process,writes Stephen King. Northern Ireland has changed almost beyond recognition since.
Then the Unionist leader James Molyneaux battled manfully against grassroots scepticism to give the declaration a fair wind. Republicans demanded clarification - code for renegotiation. The new year was greeted a fortnight later with IRA firebombs, yet there was a sense that their offensive military caompaign wasedging towards a close.
The declaration represented a subtle modification of the British guarantee to unionists. Self-determination was conceded to the people of the island - but on the basis that it be exercised separately. An agreed Ireland could not, by definition, be a united Ireland without majority consent in the North. Nor was London to become a persuader for Irish unity. The three-stranded process was given priority at joint authority's expense.
The Irish Government's major commitment was to change the Constitution, as part of an overall settlement, to reflect the principle of consent. That commitment has been met. But the then Taoiseach gave another commitment. He agreed to examine, "any elements in the democratic life and organisation of the Irish State . . . that can be represented as not being fully consistent with a modern democratic and pluralist society, and undertakes to examine any possible ways of removing such obstacles".
In view of the referendum being counted today, is it not remarkable that Albert Reynolds's solemn assurance was not recalled once in the debate of the last few weeks? Is it any wonder that unionists react sceptically to such assurances? Having kept out of the abortion debate, are unionists not now entitled to ask just what it was all about? Whatever this referendum campaign has been about - and the last thing it was about was reducing the number of abortions - it has been fought entirely within a Catholic idiom. Compare the nature of the debate with that in previous referendums. Two weeks ago in this column Mary Holland entreated the Protestant churches to stop cowering and state their view. They responded and the overwhelming balance of Protestant opinion was against the amendment. Protestants tend to view ethical problems in situ, with more regard to the particular circumstances. It is a complex issue which should not be reduced to crude billboards of bouncing babies. But unlike 1983, pluralism has not had a look-in as an issue. On an island where religious difference has been the defining social cleavage for centuries and has superficially characterised the conflict in Northern Ireland, is it not shocking? How Protestants felt about major social issues was seen as an important consideration 20 years ago. Now it seems not to matter. Nor would it matter terribly if the rhetoric of Irish unity had been forsaken. But some in the South seem to want it both ways.
TAKE Michael McDowell, who has painted himself again in the liberal, post-nationalist colours of the Des O'Malley party but sought backing for a sectarian constitutional amendment. Simultaneously he has jumped on the United Ireland bandwagon just when we thought its wheels were falling off.
The question is: do politicians in the South want a 26-county State that embodies the values of the overwhelming majority, or do they want a pluralist state which Northern Protestants could have no objection as Protestants - if not unionists - to joining? The Taoiseach looked extremely shifty explaining the new, economically successful Ireland's "backwardness" to a British audience on BBC TV's Newsnight last week.
Michael McDowell is quite right, though, to draw attention to the harmful effects on civil North-South dialogue and coexistence of a substantial Sinn Féin contingent in the next Dáil. At last the southern electorate seems to be waking up to Sinn Féin's hypocrisy. One day their leaders hang out with international bankers; the next with the "oppressed" Palestinians. One day with Fidel Castro; next week with the Bush administration. They demand human rights protection second to none but their armed wing denies drug dealers the basic right to life. They called for a No vote yesterday in the South, yet they bitterly resist the one and only way of liberalising abortion law in the North - extending the 1967 Act. Why? Sinn Féin's claim to be radical is synthetic. Their position in the abortion referendum has been opportunistic, just as it was on Nice. The ultimate irony was that it was a former member of their nemesis the Workers' Party, Liz McManus - not Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin or Gerry Adams - who was the most visible face of the No campaign. Whichever way today's count goes though, history will record this abortion referendum as yet another example of stroke politics. We were promised "a modern democratic and pluralist state" but few seem interested in even understanding unionist concerns, let alone addressing them. Nearly a decade after the Downing Street Declaration many in Northern Ireland still wrestle with their consciences and ask if they did the right thing by compromising their principles for the sake of peace. It is time for some similar soul-searching south of the Border. As it stands, the cruel reality is that the independent Irish State's most defining characteristic is that it gets the old ruling power to carry out its citizens' abortions.
Dr Steven King is a political adviser to David Trimble, Northern Ireland First Minister
king.uu@btinternet.com