A View North: summer of discontent gives way to fall of uncertainty

By Jack Holland

Northern Ireland’s “long hot summer” degenerated this year into a long wet summer, one of the worst on record. The rain, however, did not stop play, at least when it came to playing certain old, well-tried tactics which the vast majority of the population wish would stop. That is, the summer proved once more how deeply rooted aspects of the Northern Ireland problem are, which eight years of the peace process have not been able to eradicate.

As I write, the eighth anniversary of the Provisional IRA’s cease-fire is coming up, the move which kick-started the most dynamic phase of the search for a settlement to decades of a sectarian and civil conflict that was once though insoluble. Yet the summer has left behind a legacy of continued violence and political fragility which is, as autumn closes in, once more threatening the stability of a process that the majority of Irish people wants to succeed. Riots still erupt on a regular basis in East and North Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries still target Catholics. The physical force tradition of Irish republicanism continues its version of the “armed struggle,” with the Real IRA claiming its first victim since 1998. Ulster Unionists are still riven by uncertainty as to their relationship with the Good Friday agreement in general and the power-sharing government in Belfast in particular, with an upcoming meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council set to decide on whether the party’s leader, David Trimble, should remain in office with representatives of Sinn Fein.

It is as depressing as a wet Sunday in Belfast. The question is, why does it persist, year after year?

To begin with, the peace process is proof that just because the “war” is over, that is no guarantee that the conflict has ended. This cannot be reiterated too often. The riots in and around the Short Strand and Ardoyne areas remind us that the dragon of sectarianism has not been vanquished. Indeed, if anything, the peace process has served to incite it. Loyalist paramilitaries play on working-class Protestants’ feelings of insecurity as they perceive the rapid gains being made by their nationalist neighbors thanks to the new dispensation. The old equation, which counts a step forward for Catholics inevitably as a step backward, for Protestants has not changed. It has been there since the mid-1960s, when Northern Ireland’s prime minister, Terence O’Neill, invited Irish Taoiseach Sean Lemass to Stormont, and began visiting Catholic schools, proving to loyalist fundamentalists that the end was nigh. If, 40 years later, the end seems nigher, it is as much because of loyalist actions as republican machinations. If current loyalist attempts to bring down the Good Friday agreement were to succeed, they would only prove to the British government that nothing can be done with them, and that in the long run it is better to cut a deal with nationalists and republicans. The doommongers always help create the circumstances which bring doom about. In this sense, the Northern Ireland problem may be viewed as one long, self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course, riots or no riots, the Good Friday agreement has not been doomed by this summer’s disturbances. If anything, they will only convince the Irish and British governments of the need to reinforce that agreement. The alternative is demonstrated almost nightly on the streets of those conflicted districts. Or it was seen, even more horrifically, at the beginning of August when the Real IRA murdered David Caldwell, a Protestant construction worker. He was their first victim since the 29 people they massacred in Omagh four years earlier. If anything spells out the bankruptcy of physical-force republicanism in modern Ireland it is surely this futile, but brutal, act. What a way to wage war against British imperialism — 29 dead shoppers and one dead construction worker. This is what the forces of the “Real” IRA are offering the people of Ireland as an alternative to political cooperation and negotiation.

Unfortunately, history continues to show that people have a remarkable ability to fool themselves. The illusion that the British can be forced out of Northern Ireland through pathetic acts of terrorism is steeply deeply rooted in the minds of some, who continue to ignore the lessons of recent Irish history. However, that is not to say that the RIRA and other anti-peace process republicans do not pose a threat. They do so by feeding the suspicions of anti-agreement Unionists, who pretend not to distinguish between the Provisional IRA and the dissident groups and who see every act of violence from the nationalist side as being manipulated by the Provisionals. It is on the Unionists’ horizon that the storm clouds are gathering, as predictable as bad weather in Belfast.

Trimble, having survived the summer, is facing the prospect of a meeting of his party’s governing body, the Ulster Unionist Council, in the coming weeks. He might well face another challenge to his leadership or, at the very least, a demand that he begin to withdraw from the institutions of government and shut them down. He also faces a demand from anti-agreement forces to allow two Westminster MPs, Jeffrey Donaldson and David Burnside, both strongly opposed to the GFA, to run in the upcoming assembly elections, scheduled for next May. They argue that they would be able to counter the threat from the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party. This is disingenuous, of course, since if the party approves, and they win, Trimble will have simply placed two opponents within his own party in the ranks of UUP assembly members, where he is hanging on to a wafer-thin majority.

It seems like a no-win situation for the UUP leader, who many fear will be forced to cut a deal with the anti-agreement faction in order to survive as leader — at the expense of the peace process. These fears are heightened by the fact that the party will be confronting a serious challenge from the DUP in May.

Trimble, however, will probably win more time by promising some sort of concerted action against Sinn Fein and the IRA, such as he took before, which, he claims, helped force the IRA to decommission. At least this works, he will argue, which is more than can be said about the tactics of Donaldson and Burnside, whatever they are.

The bets are that the UUP leader will secure his leadership until Christmas. Shortly after that, the election campaign will well and truly begin. And by then, all bets will be off.