Northern peace process a stalemate between enemies who loathe each other
Opinion: Progress requires an unambiguous understanding that the future is shared
Union flags being waved in front of Belfast’s City Hall last December during protests over the decision by Belfast City Council to limit the number of days the flag is flown from the building. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters
Fifteen years after the Belfast Agreement and more than six years into devolution, the storm clouds are gathering. Austerity has robbed Northern Ireland
of the “happy shiny people” rhetoric of 1998. But the malaise is
deeper. In spite of huge efforts, there is a gaping hole where there
should be answers to the question, “where next?”
The peace process has seen things that seemed
unthinkable become commonplace. It was as if the long night had ended.
So why, if things are so good, do things feel so bad? And what should be
done? The answers take us into the heart of the carefully worked
“non-agreements” at the heart of the peace process: no agreement about
the future, and none about the past. Indeed, the prize of agreeing to
share power depended on not agreeing about them.
Revisiting national aspirations to accommodate
others would have stopped negotiations in their tracks. The mantra that
“you do not have to change and neither do I” was presented first as
wisdom, second as morality and third as obvious. It was clever politics,
but nonsense.
Without change, the peace process is a
stalemate between enemies who loathe each other. Without a shared basis
for mutual accommodation, there are just contradictory visions of the
future wrestling for supremacy. And there is a significant risk that
more incidents such as the flag riots will explode.
Endless recrimination
The only way to keep negotiations going was to admit nothing and demand nothing.Official silence seemed good politics. But endless recrimination in practice still suggests that the agreement traded a just war for an unjust peace.
Endless recrimination
The only way to keep negotiations going was to admit nothing and demand nothing.Official silence seemed good politics. But endless recrimination in practice still suggests that the agreement traded a just war for an unjust peace.
The priority was to get the show on the road.
Then the impossible could be managed into the possible. A combination of
political agreement, international support and unexpected symbols of
partnership allowed new things to happen. Economic life returned.
Miracles happened at interfaces. Yet perhaps the clearest signals came
from private investors. The peace dividend, when it came, went mostly to
quieter places. The cleavage in socioeconomic experience between
conflict zones and the less contentious suburbs continued or even
deepened.
Over time, community initiatives to create
breathing space at the interface were no longer novel but tired.
Connections between local leaders now looked like gate-keeping. New
initiatives in policing were undermined by confrontations over parades.
The need to assert that “we won” prevented any serious initiatives to
create a shared future. We opted for community control and separation
over integrated schools or shared housing, kept celebrating the past as
if we were still enemies.
Progress now requires an unambiguous
understanding across the political leadership that the future is shared –
the North will have to reflect its hybrid British and Irish character
in everything it does.
The legacy of violence in the past has to be
faced, requiring political agreement on prosecutions and amnesty,
agreement on expectations for victims and the reintegration of
paramilitaries and their organisations into democratic community life.
Perhaps more creatively, we might agree to celebrate the end of
violence, so that cultures which developed in hostility acknowledge that
they have now changed, committed to a more important relationship of
equality and acceptance. A shared future requires:
l
Sustained effort to develop free and equal access to public
and residential space. This is an issue of the rule of law as well as
housing and public services.
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Planning education to make meeting and friendship for
children from all backgrounds a real possibility in schools and youth
services.
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Formal agreement on symbols and cultural celebrations
relating to nationality and religion to prevent them being understood as
discriminatory or violent.
The alternative of a deteriorating climate of
inter-community relations, sporadic serious violence, ongoing terror and
abnormal policing, mutual recrimination and the potential for worse is
real and obvious. It would be a tragic conclusion to a noble attempt at a
new beginning.
Duncan Morrow is director of community engagement at the school of criminology, politics and social policy at the University of Ulster
Duncan Morrow is director of community engagement at the school of criminology, politics and social policy at the University of Ulster
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