POLITICS
Peace is tantalisingly close, but 25 years too late
BRUCE ANDERSON
For the past generation, the news from Ulster has been mired in gloom. It seemed as if hope arose— if ever — only to be dashed. Out of Ulster, there was always something bad.
But in the past few hours, there may have been a dramatic transformation. Only a few days after every newspaper was reporting that the peace process was hanging by a thread, there might have been a break- through. The peace process is now trem- bling on the verge of success. This does not mean that the killing will stop. On the con- trary: peace on present terms is almost cer- tain to provoke renewed violence by the irreconcilables. But let no one underrate the magnitude of what has been achieved. We may not have an assured peace, but we do have the constitutional basis for peace, and for an historic reconciliation between the two nations in Ulster and the two coun- tries in the British Isles.
Much credit is due to many persons, and to two bodies which do not receive much praise in this column. Even if their contribu- tions were partly unwitting, the EU and New Labour have both played a crucial part.
For 50 years after its creation, the Republic of Ireland was not an impressive recruit to the concert of nations. In their search for an identity, the Southern Irish could only come up with pseudo-Gaelicism on the one hand — Gaelic culture in Ire- land has the same vitality as morris dancing in England — and bigoted Catholicism on the other. Catholic Ireland always reminded us that it was the only nation in Europe which had had the Counter-Reformation without even a spark of reformation. In 1922, the Irish had inherited a great cultural legacy, that of the Anglo-Irish, 'no petty people' in Yeats's phrase, many of whom had renounced their ethnic privileges and opened their generous hearts to the new nation: all to no avail. Catholic Ireland dis- played its gratitude to them by burning their houses and banning their books.
Catholic Ireland could not be at ease with its Anglo-Irish heritage because it could not be at ease with Britain. Any small nation which feels psychically overshadowed by a larger one has a problem — compare mod- em Scotland — and the Irish were no exception. For 50 years, they resented Eng- land, a resentment which was inflamed by economic dependence, and which found a focal point in the claim on Ulster. This was not without its ambivalences; most South- erners would acknowledge the problem of those million Protestants in the North and recognise the well-nigh impossibility of incorporating them in a united Ireland. But that was their mouths speaking, not their hearts; at an emotional level, most South- erners believed that, one day, the problem of the Ulster Prods would somehow magi- cally be resolved; after all, it was the Brits who had put them there in the first place, so it was surely the Brits' responsibility to remove them, or to break their will.
Thus Southern Ireland for five sullen decades after independence, but then came Europe. The Irish are devoted to Europe for two reasons: status and money. The sta- tus comes from being more popular in Brussels than the British are. One way or another, the British are nearly always the worst-behaved boy in the class, so for once the Irish can feel superior to the old enemy. They can also feel rich: Europe has poured vast sums of money into Ireland. This does not just benefit the countryside, where it has enabled peasants to grow a Mercedes out of the same potato patch on which their ancestors starved. Dublin is now a modern, self-confident, cosmopolitan city, with an assertive middle class, most of whom regard Gaelicism as a joke and many of whom are increasingly Italian in their atti- tude to Catholicism. They are also increas- ingly uninterested in the North. They no longer think in terms of six lost counties;. they are far more concerned with lost tourist revenue, investment opportunities and GDP as a result of the Ulster crisis. `Why should we worry about Ulster,' they will say, 'when we are all going to be part of a united Europe in 20 years' time?'
So the EU, by creating a new Ireland, has made it possible for the Irish government to move beyond palaeo-nationalism, to accept the principle of consent in Ulster, and to allow the creation of devolved institutions in which, whatever the franchise, there will inevitably be a Unionist majority. It is also fortunate that the more nationalist of the two main Irish parties, Fianna Fail, should be in power at the moment. As with Begin and Camp David, it is always the ultras who find it easiest to renounce irredentism.
But Mr Blair has also helped. Over the past few years, the Irish have never been sure where the British stand on Ulster. They always tend to mistrust the evidence of their eyes and ears, and insist on believ- ing that every document and statement from London must have a hidden meaning, inserted by those wily Brits to ensnare innocent Southerners. Paddy Mayhew, the most straightforward and plain-dealing of men, was endlessly amused by the way his Southern interlocutors would insist on scru- tinising every word for sub-plots.
In response to the many equivocations with which London lubricated the peace process, some Southerners wondered whether the Brits just wanted out (a few Southerners were delighted at the prospect: rather more were horrified). By the end of Mr Major's government, Dublin had come to believe in his Unionist intentions, but wondered whether it might be different under Tony Blair. But not so: in Ireland also, Mr Blair has no sentimental links with old Labour. This has helped to convince Dublin that it will have to deal with a British consensus in Ulster: a Unionist consensus.
Hence the new heads of agreement, but will they work among the public? There is a lot of rage and hate in Ulster, on all sides: how could it be otherwise after nearly 30 years of death and destruction? A peace based on compromise and concession is bound to rest uncomfortably on a popular psychology easily swayed to anger and revenge.
There are also individuals to whom peace means a lost vocation. In west and north Belfast, there are a lot of youths with two GCSEs and an automatic rifle. They will not find it easy to make a living or forge an identity out of the former rather than the latter. That is why more violence is almost inevitable.
But we may be in the last phase of blood- shed. This invites a tragic retrospect, for we have been here before. Twenty-five years ago at Sunningdale, the Unionists and the SDLP reached an agreement involving power-sharing in Ulster and a Council of Ireland. London and Dublin looked on benevolently; success seemed tantalisingly close. But at that stage, it was a compro- mise too far; everything fell apart.
Twenty-five years and around 3,000 deaths later, we are back where we started; this settlement is Sunningdale for slow learners. So even if there is peace and rejoicing, a lot of people in Ulster will be thinking of their dead, and wondering why they had to die.
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