CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Elusive trust
BILL KIRKMAN
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In Northern Ireland, the legacy of mistrust is understandable.
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AFP
New hope? ... a mural in Belfast.
JUST over a year ago (October 20, 2002) my "Cambridge Letter" discussed the mood in Belfast at the time when the Northern Ireland Executive had been suspended. The suspension was the reaction of the British government to yet another breakdown in trust between Unionist and Republican politicians.
Until a few days ago, the signs that trust had been restored, at least to the point where the opposing politicians could work with each other, seemed good. Painstaking efforts by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his opposite number from the Republic of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, had brought us to the verge of a peace deal, and an announcement that elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly would take place in November.
A dramatic statement by Gerry Adams, leader of the republican Sinn Fein party, renounced "any use or threat of force for any political purpose". The Canadian General de Chastelain, charged with overseeing the de-commissioning of arms by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), announced that the IRA had "put beyond use" a vast cache of weapons, explosives and ammunition.
And then, David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, dropped his bombshell, declaring that insufficient information had been provided about the weapons. The deal was off.
For observers of the tortured political scene in Northern Ireland, the situation was all too familiar: discussion, diplomacy, patient efforts to achieve reconciliation end, yet again, in disarray. The British and Irish Prime Ministers devote an inordinate amount of time to this small province, a boil on the British body politic, with international ramifications. Once more their efforts are frustrated.
The question now is whether anything can be saved from the wreck.
As I write, the understanding is that the elections will be held. It is hard to see how they will achieve a return to the — limited — measure of collaboration in government that existed before last year's breakdown.
Sinn Fein members, understandably, will feel that the major step of renouncing violence and making a commitment to a peaceful political path has evoked only a negative response. There is no doubt that Gerry Adams's statement was historic. Significantly, it did not reflect a totally new position; Sinn Fein since the 1998 Good Friday agreement has in effect moved away from its violent past. Disillusionment now with the Unionists' reaction is inevitable.
David Trimble's insistence that there should be more transparency about the de-commissioning reflects deeply ingrained hostility to the nationalists within his party's ranks.
It is a recognition also of the fact that Unionists are divided; Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, far more extreme, and always hostile to the Good Friday Agreement, stands as a constant threat not only to Trimble's leadership, but to the very existence of his party as the major Unionist political force.
It is a depressing mess. It raises the question whether the majority of Unionists will ever agree to collaborate with the nationalists — whether, in fact, they really want a settlement.
The alternative to a settlement is continuation of the state of endemic communal hostility which has been a deeply damaging feature of Northern Ireland's life for generations. That prospect, for the province, and for its individual citizens, would be depressing in the extreme.
Any situation where there have been years of bitter mistrust cannot be solved without a readiness to take a major step in faith. That was the position, for example, in South Africa as it emerged from the apartheid era. South Africa was fortunate in having in Nelson Mandela and de Klerk, leaders who had the vision, and the courage, to seize the opportunity. Of course South Africa still has enormous problems but it has been able to move forward, and not hark back continually to its evil past.
In Northern Ireland, the legacy of mistrust is understandable. For years the Roman Catholics who make up the Nationalist side were treated as second-class citizens and in effect deprived of political rights; then for years Protestant Unionists were victims of IRA violence (which bred counter-violence also).
The opportunity to move forward now exists, after years of effort by the British and Irish governments. One corollary of these efforts is that the local politicians have been shielded from real responsibility: the British and Irish governments have been there to pick up the pieces. The crucial question now, following the latest debacle, is whether these local leaders — and particularly at this stage those on the Unionist side — have the vision to recognise the opportunity, and seize it.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, U.K. E-mail him at: wpk1000@hotmail.com
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