[A-List] UK state: Northern Ireland

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

David McKittrick: One reason to expect fresh agreement: Ulster's politicians
all love the assembly
Opinion in the Stormont canteen is that the three most effective ministers
are a former IRA commander and two Paisleyites
The Independent
06 March 2003

Tony Blair said "Good morning" to the media when he emerged from
Hillsborough Castle yesterday following his marathon talks involving the
Irish government and the local parties. He used that greeting because it was
after midnight as he made his way, hunched against the chilly March drizzle,
to report on the outcome of 30 hours of negotiation. It was a pretty
miserable scene.

He and Bertie Ahern had arrived on Monday with a 28-page document covering
most of the most difficult issues: how to get the suspended assembly up and
running again, how to get the IRA to cease its activities, what to do about
policing and so on. The two prime ministers spoke of significant progress
being made, but there was no sense of celebration. All the issues had been
aired with the parties but, after 30 hours, the bottom line was that nobody
had signed up for anything. The assembly elections scheduled for 1 May had
been postponed for four weeks to allow everybody to digest the document,
said Blair.

Things had seemed to be going reasonably well in the talks until teatime on
Tuesday, when Sinn Fein reacted angrily to the proposal that sanctions could
be used against the party as punishment for IRA misdeeds. Then the Ulster
Unionist leader David Trimble walked out of Hillsborough, his aides saying
he had business to attend to in London. This left Tony Blair, who himself
had plenty of business to attend to in London, stuck in Hillsborough without
one of the most important participants in the negotiation.

At that point some feared the worst: there were rumours that it was all
falling apart and could end in fiasco. One person who met Blair and Ahern in
the late evening summed up their prime ministerial dispositions as
"knackered and pissed off". But the two kept the show on the road, at least
enough to be able to claim that progress had been made, and that more would
follow in the coming months. It might well be wondered how any breakthrough
can be expected against such an unpromising background.

The fact is though that powerful influences are propelling most of those
involved towards a deal. Almost uniquely in the politics of Northern
Ireland, the usual unhelpful centrifugal forces may be outweighed by new
centripetal factors. This was best illustrated a month ago at another very
different political scene, this time in the sumptuously gilded surroundings
of the Stormont Assembly's Long Gallery.

On that occasion, assembly members, coffees and canapés in hand, gathered
for the unveiling of a unique group portrait by the Belfast artist Noel
Murphy of all the 108 assembly members, the brainchild of journalist Eamonn
Mallie. There is little friendship and less trust among the various
political parties, but opponents and rivals surged forward in fascination to
see how the artist had captured on a single canvas not only themselves but
figures such as David Trimble, Gerry Adams, John Hume and Ian Paisley. Here
were most of the political classes in one room, and if there was not exactly
harmony among them, there was a very marked sense of common purpose. With
only a handful of exceptions these people like and value the assembly, and
they want it back in operation again.

Some assembly members are colourless, some have few political talents and
are frankly a waste of space, some see it as simply a forum for venting
prejudice, some are pompous, some are venal; for some it is just a
high-status, well-paid job. But others are hard-working, dedicated, good at
their jobs and have a marked sense of duty. One of the major political
faultlines is whether parties and individuals are for or against the 1998
Good Friday Agreement, yet membership of the assembly transcends even that
fissure.

Nationalists and republicans are enthusiastically pro-agreement; Mr
Paisley's Democratic Unionists are dead set against it; David Trimble's
party contains both sections of opinion. The assembly was created by the
agreement, but even anti-agreement people prize it, generally seeing it as
being in both their political and personal interests. It is viewed as
something close enough to a level playing field for the business of
politics.

Sinn Fein used to be totally anti-assembly, but this proved to be a tactical
position quickly abandoned once it was established. Opinion in the Stormont
canteen has it that the three most effective ministers have been Martin
McGuinness, Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds - a former IRA commander and two
Paisleyites. Republican enthusiasm for the assembly has grown so much that,
in one of the many political inversions of recent years, both Sinn Fein
representatives and their grass roots are much keener to restore devolution
than many Protestants and Unionists.

Much of the Unionist grass roots either dislikes devolution or is largely
indifferent towards it. This is obviously a drawback for devolutionists,
though it is balanced by the fact that the Unionist political class is so
heavily in favour of the assembly.

This pro-assembly consensus among the leading figures of all the major
parties represents the strongest reason for calculating that, for all its
problems, the current wearying round of negotiations will eventually
succeed. In other words, there will probably be a breakthrough because
nearly everybody wants one, because it is the only way to bring the assembly
back.

Blair and Ahern did not achieve a final breakthrough this week, and nor did
they guarantee success, but they laid the groundwork. A large measure of
agreement was achieved on issues such as policing that have for years seemed
insoluble. The sanctions issue was not cracked, but there is a fair chance
that Sinn Fein and the IRA will see it as one unwelcome part of an otherwise
acceptable deal. It may help that the governments are prepared to extract it
from the main package and present it as a free-standing intergovernmental
move.

The package is to be published in a month, and if all goes well, the IRA
will respond with an "act of completion" that will involve arms
decommissioning. The IRA must also, in the Government's words, "cease
activity in all its forms". After that there will be assembly elections at
the end of May. The result of those elections could be pivotal, since the
four main parties are all close together in terms of support. The DUP is
pushing hard to dislodge the Ulster Unionists as the largest Unionist
grouping in the assembly, while Sinn Fein is ambitious to become the main
nationalist party. Since no one has ever been able to predict Northern
Ireland elections, the results will be a real roll of the dice.

One striking point in all of this is that such negotiations used to be
regarded as matters of war and peace. This time it is different; they are
now viewed as likely to end either in breakthrough or impasse.

It is a measure of how much the peace process has delivered that it is more
and more in the political sphere, and less and less a matter of life and
death. Blair and Ahern may thus conclude that those hours of being knackered
and pissed off will ultimately be worthwhile.