Terrorism is back in Northern Ireland

09 September 2009

Paul Bew says that the young police recruits in the province now find themselves facing the sort of armed confrontations they assumed were a thing of the past

So is it business as usual in Ulster politics? Not quite. The DUP visibly fears the prospect of a Cameron predominance in British politics to the point of actually demonstrating against him on his visit to Ballymena. The party privately hopes that somehow New Labour will survive and leave the tramlines of local politics — the protracted fractious community psychotherapy process at Stormont — undisturbed. Increasingly, the DUP makes it clear that they do not want to see Sinn Fein have to face any possible inconvenience or challenge arising from a conservative victory and, therefore, from an alleged London partiality for any local faction in the province. But the status quo in Northern Ireland means a cocooned political class in Stormont — underwritten ad infinitum by the British taxpayer, the great unsung hero of the Troubles, and playing no role in shaping, or being shaped by, the wider UK debate on public policy.

This already feels like a somewhat nostalgic vision. But there are strong local interests involved in maintaining it. It is, however, now bound to be challenged, because Northern Ireland is, after all, part of the United Kingdom.

Any incoming Cameron government requires the stability of the Agreement and its devolved institutions, but it needs to be able to move on from it in certain respects. The prospects are reasonable. Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, Irish nationalism has been addicted to the idea that it could progress by doing deals with London which could then be imposed on local unionists. David Cameron has emotionally distanced himself from that part of the Thatcher legacy. Nationalists, as a result, will be compelled to return to the position famously endorsed by Eamon de Valera in the Irish Senate debate of 1939, that of seeking an accommodation with unionists rather than decisive British intervention against them.

The removal of the spectre of an imposed Anglo-Irish Joint Authority, which is effectively what Cameron has done, means that the local parties have no choice but to work within the existing devolved compromise. But it also means that there will be no excuse for a Little Ulsterist failure to engage in the wider public debates of the Westminster parliament.

Paul Bew is professor of politics at Queen’s University Belfast.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

More articles from: Paul Bew | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (4)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Mike

September 10th, 2009 9:19am Report this comment

Time for a new roadmap for a peace process, and a peace processor, and more Nobel Peace prizes and Congressional Meldals, Amen.

David B. Wildgoose

September 11th, 2009 1:45pm Report this comment

The Irish Republicans are anti-English rather than anti-British - for example their "mainland" terror campaign was in England rather amongst their "fellow Celts" in Scotland and Wales.

Meanwhile the Scottish Presbyterian "Unionists" in Northern Ireland with their "Ulster Scots" language want close links with Scotland, but take great delight in helping New Labour impose draconian 42-day internment legislation on the English.

The answer is obvious.

England leaves the Union, possibly to be replaced by the Republic of Ireland, and then everybody's happy. The "Unionists" are still in Union with Scotland. And the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Irish Republicans no longer have to campaign to rid themselves of England.

And once again we English will be able to look after our own interests in our own English Parliament.

What's not to like?

40 Degrees S

September 11th, 2009 2:18pm Report this comment

What if a series of plebiscites, with foreseen results and under UN or EU supervision, were held in obviously Nationalist areas asking voters to decide on UK or RoI citizenship, and counties or LGAs above a particular percentage for RoI joined the Irish Republic?

Thus, Fermanagh and southern Armagh, for example, would no longer be a “Northern Ireland” problem, and the creeping equal numbers of nationalists v unionists would be redressed - at least, for the time being, till the next plebiscite.

Yes, "Northern Ireland” might be reduced to the counties of Antrim and Down, and there may have to be a population exchange like the Greco-Turkish one after 1923 (but with hopefully less bloodshed^), but wouldn’t it be a more manageable province?

^ not that the leaders of each side in such situations seem to worry about it.

40 Degrees S

September 12th, 2009 1:36am Report this comment

Love your creative thinking about Northern Ireland and Britain, David B. Wildgoose
(11 September 2009 1:45pm): let what a century ago was called the “Celtic Fringe” become a garment of seamless unity among the Scots (Highland & Lowland, RC and Protestant) the Welsh, and the Irish (traditional and militant republicans, RC and Protestant).

As if.

Let’s not forget that an inter-clan feud in 1169 was the reason that the Anglo-Normans from Britain first entered Irish affairs; let’s not recall that more Scots died at Culloden for German George than for the wee Papist sot.

And another thing: more Irish have died fighting for Britain than have ever died fighting against it.

Looking at things from the opposite direction, p’raps Angleterre could reclaim a role in La belle France by reviving its former identity as an extension of the duchy of Normandie. Or became another Land in the German republic as Saxony-across-the-water (although an irredentist Denmark, remembering the Jutes-Jutland connexion, might want a say).

Entirely fanciful though all the above is, alternative histories do have their fascinations, don’t they!

Post comment