The
elections are over and all the results are in. The
Ulster Unionist Party may console itself with the
fact that its performance is not as bad as the Workers'
Party. Small consolation it would be because no
party's results are ever as poor as the Workers
Party. UUP leader David Trimble, however, has decided
against following the example of Rainbow John Lowry
who has persevered in spite of every defeat in the
sure knowledge that the day will come when he will
be defeated again. Trimble, having led the Ulster
Unionists to their worst election drubbing since
the formation of the Northern state, is willing
to let Lowry hold on to his crown as the North's
most rejected politician and has bowed out.
This
was the DUP's election. The party made serious strides
towards its goal of monopolising unionist political
representation. It is comfortably the North's largest
party. Its nationalist nemesis, Sinn Fein, weathered
a fierce storm to put in a firm showing but was
far short from attaining the success pulled by the
DUP. It failed to emulate the DUP routing of its
main rival within its own community. The SDLP proved
surprisingly resilient, managing to emerge from
the election with as many parliamentary seats as
it had gone in with. Even if party leader Mark Durcan's
easy victory over Mitchel McLaughlin in Foyle fails
to stabilise the party sufficiently to prevent death
by a thousand cuts, the party's drawn out demise
must deeply perturb Sinn Fein, who because of the
SDLP's showing, has found itself seriously hobbled
as it seeks to sprint towards becoming the largest
party in the North.
The
DUP are cock-a-hoop. We are eleven years, of sorts,
into an IRA ceasefire and have heard the potential
of the peace process extolled time and time again
by Sinn Fein. Yet rather than the North showing
any sign of moving towards union with the South,
the 2005 elections have produced a unionism which
is more united than it has been for decades and
which is as robustly hostile to the project of Irish
nationalism as anything that preceded it. Although
Sinn Fein throughout the peace process trumpeted
the divisions within unionism, it now seems that
nationalism is more divided than unionism.
Yet
it is the gap between the communities rather than
within them that fuels the polarisation school of
thought, where the logic is that this election has
sounded the death knell for the Good Friday Agreement.
Gerry Moriarty frames the big question: 'can the
centre hold?' The middle ground has supposedly disappeared
and the extremes stand on opposite sides of a gaping
chasm where they see but don't hear each other.
The DUP will now look to London and Sinn Fein to
Dublin. This may be true but there are valid reasons
for thinking that it is not.
Northern
Ireland survived throughout the conflict because
- the shrill discourse notwithstanding, more resonant
of discord than accord - there was a large centre
ground that held the place stable. There were plenty
of crises but few possessed any substantive transformative
potential. Societal infrastructure survived intact.
Governmental coordination of the essential services
functioned much the same as it did in conflict free
zones. Political representatives continued to function
even if stripped of a local assembly. Only at very
rare junctures did society appear as if it might
implode under the weight of civil unrest. This suggests
that those energies that fuelled the middle ground
have not suddenly dissipated or been usurped by
more malign forms. More likely they have shifted
their allegiance without significantly reconstituting
themselves. In short, the centre ground that is
given institutional expression in the template of
the Good Friday Agreement is much stronger than
the extremes. It hardly requires close scrutiny
to observe that the extremes have for some time
found themselves being reshaped in the image of
the centre ground template. Sinn Fein's Pat Doherty
has rightly made the point that the old labels of
hard-liners and extremists no longer have the same
explanatory power.
Even
so, the governments, while having the magical fly
killer of the centre ground, remain bedevilled by
the problem of catching the flies. The post election
situational logic suggests that the political terrain
is more favourable to the DUP. A greater percentage
of the Unionist population share the DUP's assessment
of Sinn Fein, than the percentage of nationalists
who hold Sinn Fein's view of the DUP. If London
and Dublin have taken due note of this, and decide
to push against the line of least resistance, then
Sinn Fein is going to feel the knot tighten. And
the party can hardly hope to sell last year's goods
for the same price in a market of rising expectations.
What
unionism would have settled for when the UUP was
hegemonic no longer has the same exchange value.
Were the IRA, leading on from Gerry Adams' pre-election
'appeal' to it, to make some major move on the weapons
question it would only be offering the fee charged
by a doorman long since pushed off the door. Matters
have moved beyond the point of decommissioning having
any real potential to break the deadlock. It is
a hand that has been overplayed and the DUP are
unlikely to gamble their chips against the same
hand in the way that the UUP did and end up politically
broke as a result.
Support
or oppose the Good Friday Agreement, an inescapable
political fact since the Northern Bank robbery and
subsequent events is that devolved government and
the continued existence of a militarised IRA are
mutually incompatible. Summed up by Kevin Cullen's
observation that 'there is no chance the DUP will
share power with Sinn Fein, unless the IRA goes
out of business.' The equation is simple: if the
North is to have power sharing, there can be no
IRA. If the IRA is to continue to exist, there can
be no devolved government.
One
option for the two governments within the template
of the Good Friday Agreement is for them to undertake
to legalise the IRA in both jurisdictions. If the
point referred to Martin McGuinness is reached,
'where the IRA is not involved in anything, and
I mean anything' then the only illegal activity
the IRA would be engaged in is to exist. What purpose
then for London and Dublin to keep it illegal? But
legalising would be the sequel rather than the prequel
to the IRA divesting itself of any military dimension.
To achieve that status the IRA would not have to
disband but in the words of McGuinness adhere to
the belief that 'that the best way forward is by
purely political and democratic means.' Rather than
disband it could transform into something as demonstrably
militarily innocuous as the GAA. It could remain
loathsome to the unionists but that is hardly a
felony. The Orange Order is loathsome to nationalists
yet remains legal.
Such
an initiative would unshackle unionism from its
misgivings about having to enter government with
those they call 'unreconstructed terrorists.' It
would not have to make the call, placing a working
trust not in republican promises but in government
assurances, in the knowledge that the governments
alone would look ridiculous if they were to legalise
what continues to behave illegally.
Given
that decommissioning as a deal maker is now a redundant
concept, there is little to be gained by persevering
with General John de Chastelain in his current role.
It might make more sense to have him transferred
to the IMC. While Sinn Fein has long opposed the
IMC, it has lambasted all and sundry who felt there
was insufficient transparency surrounding the decommissioning
question, arguing how dare any one question the
general's integrity. With de Chastelain in the IMC,
Sinn Fein would find itself hard pressed to fling
securocrat accusations the general's way, were he
to concur with his new IMC colleagues that the IRA
was not honouring its legal status. If it were measuring
up, an IRA legalised and stood over by a de Chastelain
empowered IMC would either place before Irish and
British society evidence of DUP intransigence, or
free the dominant unionist party up to enter a power
sharing executive with those whom twenty years ago,
sledgehammers in hand, it vowed to smash.
