Dublin Report: Giving peace a real chance is the only way forward

By John Kelly

There is one constant truism in Northern Ireland. When the worst is expected, it rarely happens. By the same token, when few expect anything to happen, it almost always will happen. We are back at the same old wire again. For most of us, it’s just the same old boring rhetoric.

Anybody who knows anything about the real situation on the ground knows that decommissioning is as old and just about as meaningless as last year’s hoary chestnuts.

Remember that there are more than 150,000 licensed guns in the Six Counties. Unionists hold the vast majority. In addition, the RUC retains its arsenal. The IRA may not have gone away, but the British Army and its guns are still there as well.

Just what that particular institution can get away with in relation to its powerful weaponry was illustrated by the release of Pvt. Ian Clegg last week. All charges were dropped against the man who opened fire on unarmed joyriders.

Nobody seemed to pay too much attention to the evidence of an honest RUC officer who admitted he had seen soldiers beat a comrade with a baseball bat to make it seem as though the car had struck him on the leg.

This is not to justify the IRA in its continuing failure to begin any effective decommissioning.

It is to highlight the fact that a lot of the sound and fury is just that, rhetoric gone mad. It seems that the unionists have to beat their breasts in fury every so often, perhaps to remind themselves that they are still here as a beleaguered minority on the island of Ireland.

They rarely seem to think it through.

If the worst comes to the worst and the assembly falls, the stark reality is that Northern Ireland will be placed under direct rule again.

Is this what truly enlightened unionists want?

Do they really prefer to see what they regard as their "country" to be ruled from Westminster, rather than Belfast?

Even worse is the fact that they do not seem to comprehend what direct rule will be under the terms of the Good Friday agreement. The British and Irish governments become directly responsible for government.

It is no longer just a case of the British government doing whatever may seem fit from its point of view. It demands consultation and even agreement with Dublin.

Surely it is very strange that unionists may opt for that scenario, rather than to share power with their neighbors, their fellow "Ulstermen."

The most salient fact about the guns of the IRA, apart from tiny breakaway factions, is that they are silent. RUC men and women can move around without flak jackets. British Army patrols can continue to operate in a hugely scaled down fashion with relative impunity.

Whether the unionists like it or not, the reality is that the war is over.

The IRA fear is that it may begin again. It will never again risk the derision it suffered during the pogroms of the late 1960s and early ’70s when nationalist houses were burned down and the wounding slogan "IRA — I Ran Away" was scrolled on many a gable wall.

Privately, many leading unionists will confess that decommissioning is pretty meaningless.

RUC officers know that the guns are still there, stockpiled in sealed arsenals along with hundreds of pounds of Semtex in isolated farms north and south of the border. They don’t really care too much so long as the guns remain silent and the Semtex remains in sealed plastic containers.

The hullabaloo, generated by David Trimble and unionists, anxious to placate their right wing along with the so-called securocrats within the London Establishment, is essentially meaningless.

The primary problem remains what it always has been: a lack of trust between two communities who share the same patch of land, as John Hume might put it.

Trust will not grow in inverse proportion to the number of guns or amount of Semtex surrendered to Gen. John de Chastelain.

Instead, it may flourish in the wake of the continuing success of the Assembly, if only that fledgling government is given a real chance. That is the only way that trust can grow. It is certainly the only way that useful personal relationships can be built between people who were reared in hostile communities. It is the only way that ancient enmities can be finally laid to rest. It has nothing to do with guns or explosives.

It has all to do with the building of a new community that is so obviously, and so urgently, needed. That is the expressed will of all of the Irish people.

Genuinely progressive unionists will concede that huge changes have already been implemented. Northern Ireland is nothing like it was a year, or even six months ago.

The unionists who refuse to recognize this, who obdurately avoid all contact with neighbors on the basis of an outmoded concept of religion do themselves no good. Even worse, they lay no peaceful foundations for generations yet to come.

The standoff concerning decommissioning is as artificial and as useless as the lemming like compulsion to march down the Drumcree Road.

There are some straws in the wind. The meeting between Gerry Adams and the Northern Ireland first minister, David Trimble, has to be hailed.

Even more important, far away from all of the thunder and fury was a little publicized encounter in the lovely little fishing village of Portavogie, Co. Down, on the Ards Peninsula.

The Rev. Ian Paisley was heckled in the staunchly loyalist village because protesters were angered at his association with a fact-finding deputation, consisting mainly of Sinn Fein members of the agriculture committee. The committee is investigating fishing problems, particularly European-imposed quotas, around the Northern coast.

Eggs were thrown at the Sinn Fein members. Paisley and his party became the victims of the same protest.

And what did he shout at the hecklers?

"We’re trying to keep your husbands in jobs. I’m not going to stop doing my job because of Sinn Fein."

Minor point though it may be, it certainly shows that cooperation is possible in the most unlikely places.

And that cooperation is in the interest of all of the people of the island, just as is the Good Friday agreement. There is a way forward. It is the only route to take.