Next Week's
Referendums to Approve the Northern Ireland Peace
Agreement.
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON--The centre cannot hold--that
has been the received wisdom since in 1921 the protestant
bulwark of Northern Ireland was detached from the rest of
this catholic- dominated, Irish island and incorporated into
the United Kingdom. Now the historic peace agreement between
the mainstream protestant unionists and Sinn Fein, the
political front of the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, will
be put to the test in next week s referendum. It is not a
simple choice between the ballot or the bullet, for Sinn
Fein has long had a dual Armalite and ballot box strategy.
Even now the decommissioning of the IRA's formidable arsenal
has been allowed a two year grace period, enough for the IRA
to see if it gets anything out of this deal. But the accord
has put the ballot box on a higher pedestal than the bullet
and reverses a long-standing, almost sacred, position of
Sinn Fein/IRA never to enter into membership of a
"partitionist" assembly in the north.
Sinn Fein/IRA, it was always thought,
would never give up their goal of a united Ireland, would
never participate in northern political institutions that by
their existence give further life to the union.
It is, quite simply, an historic shift
that can only be explained in cultural, not political,
terms. Being Irish these days is more and more a cultural
state of being Americans in particular understand this well
than being actually in residence as part of country Y or
country X.
Such a transformation on the emerald
isle itself could only come about because of the rapid
changes in the catholic south. (In the north a frozen
landscape, economically and culturally, not to say
politically, has been the principal stay until now.) The
south is not only the fastest growing country in Europe,
with growth rates that used to be considered the norm for
east Asian "tigers", but it has changed its cultural spots
in a generation in a way that bears comparison with the
catharsis of its catholic sister Spain, following the death
of its dictator Franco. Gone is the automatic deference to
the will of the church hierarchy. Gone are the uptight
sexual mores of the old order. Gone is the fixation with the
past and its lack of vision for the future. Gone is the
quest for fulfilling to the letter the terms of the
constitution and re-uniting with the north (what the south
will vote to abrogate in its own referendum on the same
day).
Instead, southern Ireland, Eire, is
part of the new Europe, perennially in the lead group that
is pushing for a more federal Europe (thus its enthusiastic
membership of the single currency club, and one of the first
two or three to satisfy the tough monetary conditions of the
Maastricht Treaty). In the new concept of a Europe of
regions, rather than Charles de Gaulle s vision of a "Europe
of patries", this old border between north and south is
beginning to recede in importance.
Yet to describe it so makes the peace
agreement sound inevitable; there is almost a ring of
marxist determinism to it. It was not. There were too many
hard men involved on both sides, too many passions had been
aroused and too much blood shed for peace ever to be a
foregone conclusion. This conflict was never likely to
simply burn itself out and consume the fringes in its own
fire. The centre, until now, was not strong or wide enough
for that for that to happen. Just as the Unionist vote in
Westminster stymied Tony Blair's Conservative predecessor,
John Major's near successful series of negociations because
he could not rule without their votes, so today the
remaining fringes, both catholic and protestant wield a
leverage out of all proportion to their numbers. There is
already a breakaway IRA, bombing and killing as per usual.
On the protestant side the Orange Order and other opponents
of the accord are going to stand for election for the new
assembly with the sole aim of destroying it. Only if the
centre can hold together for long enough to show real
success will the fringes start to wither.
The key is Northern Ireland, itself.
It needs both cultural and economic change. In fact it has
such unrealized potential that once there is peace and it
gets going it should have no trouble in emulating the south
s economic success. Because of thirty years of conflict it
hasn't had the money to tear apart its historical heritage.
Its villages and small towns are still quaint and its
marvellous coastline unsullied. Its criminal violence
murder, theft and arson is so low that even factoring in the
political violence the north ends up being one of the safest
parts of the world to live in and bring up a family. As for
paedophilia, rape etc., the words are barely in the lexicon.
(There has to be something to thank the fervour of religion
for.) The unanswered question is will positive cultural
change follow economic, as in the south? We have to wait a
while for the answer.
Meanwhile, many omens are good. The
business community want this peace. The churches want it.
Most activists in northern Ireland's prolific
non-governmental organisations want it. In short, the centre
has momentum. Maybe this time it can hold, if for no other
reason that every voter in these referendums knows how
complex, delicately balanced and vulnerable this accord
is.
May 13, 1998,
LONDON
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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