At last Hain will be found out

Ruth Dudley Edwards

13 December 2006

As a result of the British and Irish governments’ policy of appeasing the extremes, in the 2005 election the political centre was almost destroyed: Hain’s instructions from Blair and Jonathan Powell were to shake everything up, woo the unwooable and do whatever it took to get Paisley’s DUP and Sinn Fein to do a deal. His strategy was to operate through political bribery and threats and from the beginning his motto was ‘Bugger the means; I’m interested in the ends’.

A major tactic has been to push for drastic, ill-thought-out and contentious revenue-raising in areas like local government, education, water rates and property taxation, while offering the bribe that a devolved government could reverse or amend the decisions. A photo-opportunity with Gordon Brown (which helped boost Hain’s campaign to be deputy leader) backfired in Northern Ireland when it emerged that the projected £50 billion Hain described as ‘an extraordinary boost for a future power-sharing administration’ contained no new money.

Sean Kelly, the Shankill bomber, was returned to jail on a vague pretext to please the DUP and released a month later on no pretext as a sweetener to achieve IRA disarm-ament. Other typical bribes were to gratify the DUP by putting two Orangemen on the parades commission without corresponding representation from residents’ groups (a legal challenge now with the Lords) while promising Sinn Fein that the site of the Maze prison — 16 miles from Belfast — would be turned into a sports stadium cum terrorist shrine. He assured the DUP that there would be no amnesty or ‘other procedure’ to allow IRA fugitives to return home, while letting Irish America know that the government was ‘committed to addressing’ the issue.

Far more serious and indicative of this colonial governor’s lack of concern for the well-being of the natives was when he announced the replacement of 26 district councils by seven super councils, rather than the 15 wanted by public and academic opinion and all parties other than Sinn Fein: three will be orange and three green, thus encouraging a sectarian carve-up in an increasingly segregated society.