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The
recent elections in Northern Ireland have produced
what many have long dreaded. The emergence of a DUP/Sinn
Fein axis is considered viewing for over 18s only,
and never before dark; the supposed 'nightmare scenario.’
For those gripped by such a doomsday vista, the Good
Friday Agreement was a finely balanced piece of architecture
purpose-built to swivel on the centre ground; its
construction designed largely with the needs and tastes
of Mark Durkan’s SDLP and David Trimble’s
UUP in mind. But with Ian Paisley's DUP and Gerry
Adams' Sinn Fein now the principal deeds holders,
courtesy of a British Government decision to call
an election, the centre ground anchor has supposedly
shattered. And a tense hushed breath awaits the anticipated
tailspin.
Bleak
as things may seem from the Camp Gloomy perspective,
the real disarticulation lies not between the centre
ground considered necessary to sustain the agreement
and the new dominant but combustible combination of
forces said to have the potential to destroy it. It
is between those who worship the agreement and their
own faith in it. Arguably, the robust nature of the
agreement is such that rather than becoming a stage
where the ‘extremes’ can strut their garish
wares to the point of destroying their own theatre,
the long-running play will in fact be performed by
a new set of actors. Without doubt they will procrastinate,
they may not be as pretty, they may have worked in
the less salubrious side of the industry previously,
but they have learned their lines. And when they have
routinely settled into their performance, few in the
audience - 70% of whom still give a standing ovation
- will care to remember that it was ever any different.
Whatever
mutually exclusive tangents the 'twin peaks of extremism'
veer off on, the journey will be temporary in duration.
The centripetal pull will ultimately magnetise them
back to base camp where waiting to greet them with
a handshake - the free hand used to hold its nose
- shall be the Good Friday Agreement. It might be
called the Holy Thursday Arrangement or the Shrove
Tuesday Accord, but that is mere packaging for the
optics. Why else did the British Government allow
the election to take place when it could calculate
with certainty the ‘dreaded’ result? Forget
the moral imperative of it - realpolitk rather than
ethics dictates. The way in which the publication
of the Cory report into collusion is being postponed
because the British are trying to censor it tells
us that imperatives other than moral ones determine
London’s intervention here.
The
British more than most are hardly ignorant of the
following laws of political gravity: the Sinn Fein
leadership's craving for institutional power is stronger
than its need to keep the IRA. The DUP's 'visceral
hatred' of the IRA is firmer than its love for devolved
government. Only one terminus leads from that.
Those
fearful for the future trajectory of the agreement
can, if they are so inclined, draw solace from the
briefest glance at its past. Its twin founds - cross
border bodies combined with a power sharing executive
- have since 1972, more than any other, been the preferred
policy objectives of the British state. Not because
it was the ethically decent thing to do but due to
it being the most plausible alternative to Provisional
republicanism - Britain's most serious problem in
Ireland. Rupture the link between those substantial
sections of the Northern nationalist population which
supported the IRA by means other than repressive,
and an outcome light years short of a united Ireland
would bring stability.
Up
until the 1990s the British were much too absolutist
in their strategy of marginalisation, seeking to exclude
both republicans and republicanism from any stabilising
framework. It produced containment rather than victory.
And then they hit on the notion of defeating the Provisionals
through inclusion. They brought the republicans in
and left their republicanism out. Hence, what made
the Good Friday Agreement a runner from the outset
was the willingness of the Provisionals to shed the
core tenets of their belief system. John Kelly, a
Sinn Fein MLA in the previous assembly, in recent
days noted how the party was completing its journey
from republicanism to constitutional nationalism -
a journey it swore never to make, and one for which
the British were prepared to cough up the price of
a no return fare. That Gerry Adams should have been
pushed from promising a united Ireland through Hume-Adams
to seeking accommodation within Northern Ireland as
part of some strange Paisley-Adams hybrid, should
in itself explain just how neutralised republicanism
has become.
While
David Trimble, the first durable strategic unionist
leader to emerge, appreciated that the longevity of
the union with Britain coupled with partition had
been secured, unionism in general has been very slow
to acknowledge this. But the signs of change come
as frequently as television commercials. There is
absolutely no reason for seasoned observers to pay
the scantest attention to the bluster of those already
posturing in the respective camps. Although Gerry
Adams has said that there will be no renegotiation
of the GFA and Ian Paisley has threatened with expulsion
any in 'his' party who talk to Sinn Fein, the agreement
is going to reconstitute both of them in its own image;
a task the government will find much easier with Sinn
Fein who already support the Agreement.
Former
Secretary of State Mo Mowlam appreciates instinctively
what the parameters and contours are: 'Ian Paisley
and his followers and Gerry Adams and the rest of
Sinn Fein will have to face up to having to talk and
negotiate with each other' - negotiate being the key
word. And while the present incumbent, Paul Murphy,
insists that the fundamental principles of the Agreement
such as power-sharing and consent will not be changed,
this is a vacuous truism. The DUP is not demanding
that this type of change occurs. What it will demand
and shall eventually receive is the dissolution of
the IRA.
Peter
Robinson, deputy leader of the DUP, having accused
senior members of the Sinn Fein leadership as serving
on the IRA’s army council, can hardly negotiate
with them directly. But it is being speculated in
the press that the party will put its views to Sinn
Fein through a government intermediary. There are
two elections in the offing – the European next
year and the British general the following spring.
While at present the Tories are unlikely to become
the government, the DUP may take a leaf out of Sinn
Fein’s book and procrastinate long enough to
get past the elections and then see what a much weaker
Labour majority, feeling Michael Howard breathe down
its neck, might do. And as long as they define renegotiation
as meaning the end of the IRA on the grounds that
the latter’s existence undermines the working
of any agreement, the force of their logic will, given
their status as the most popular unionist party, be
hard to withstand.
Whether
a prolonged hiatus or one remembered for its brevity,
two things are virtually certain: republicans not
going back to war; the DUP is not returning to permanent
'splendid oppositionalism.' While rule from London
suits unionists much more than republicans, wandering
as nomads in the political desert of direct rule will
amuse neither of them for long. They have drunk at
the oasis of devolution and will come back for more,
paying the asking fee as they step inside. And, ultimately,
because they missed their chance with Trimble, Sinn
Fein will pay more and receive less.
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