Time goes by

By Tommy McKearney

Ten years after the world welcomed the ending of a twenty-five year long period of sustained hostilities in Northern Ireland, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) issued a report finding that underground armies are still operational in the region. Moreover, agreement between the different political parties is clearly non-existent and prospects for meaningful local politics are bleak. What, we might well ask, has changed in the decade since the convoys of black taxis paraded joyously along the Falls Road?

There are, of course, serious questions being asked about the composition of the IMC. The body was appointed unilaterally by the Irish and British governments and its membership drawn from the heart of the Establishment. Both republicans and loyalists have pointed to the fact that a Deputy Director of the CIA and a former senior officer with Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad are unlikely to take a broad view of conflict in Ireland or are they likely to have the ability to view IRA activity as anything other than subversive. Moreover, it would appear that the IMC based its report on evidence collected from the security services and did not consult with any of the organisations singled out for criticism in its report.

Another major inadequacy with the IMC report was the fact that it failed to analyse properly the absence of a consensus on policing. For far too long there has been a view shared by Dublin and London that insisting upon support for the police in Northern Ireland is similar to demanding that parents behave responsibly. In other words, it appears to be ‘taken as read’ that police and policing are above reproach. Nowhere in the IMC report is there any acknowledgement that if there isn’t overwhelming support for the police then objectively speaking, the police become part of the problem. However questionable the composition and practice of the IMC, it has to be accepted nevertheless that its headline assessment (that the IRA, UVF etc., continue to exist and function) is a tautology. We didn’t need a commission to tell us what every punter on the street knows. Nor indeed did these organisations ever pretend that they had ceased to exist.

In spite of all this, the ceasefires have by and large held firm and most people have grown used to a different situation where there is no longer the daily fear of shootings, bombings and ubiquitous security. By a strange paradox, the findings of the IMC – in so far as they are accurate - underline the extent of the ceasefires. Ten years ago the British and Irish governments would not have considered it worthwhile appointing a commission to comment on such a relatively small number of incidents nor would it have raised any eyebrows to learn that the IRA was being held responsible for a number of punishment beatings. Things have changed lately.

The absence of widespread physical conflict has not however been replaced by any significant meeting of minds between the communities in this area. The Northern Ireland Assembly is in abeyance and appears destined to remain so for some time. It is now being acknowledged, if only grudgingly, that the end of the armed campaigns have not automatically led to conventional political progress.

A quite unpleasant deduction to be drawn from this observation is the fact that the absence of conventional politics in Northern Ireland was not as a result of armed organisations or campaigns of physical force. Had the overwhelming majority of people in the region been anxious to engage in the normal practice of politics, the armed campaigns would have disrupted life but not politics. The fact that ‘normal politics’ are not flourishing, after a ten year period that was largely free from armed conflict must surely indicate that the gunmen were a symptom of the ailment rather than the cause of it.

Many will argue, however, that the IMC report and the absence of total decommissioning of arms is precisely the reason for the political breakdown. Such people will say that it is a fear of a return to the ‘old days’ that prevents the normal functioning of the Northern Assembly. This is one of those arguments that is difficult, if not impossible, to prove or disprove since it would be virtually impossible to guarantee that underground organisations have entirely decommissioned their invisible arsenals or that secret armies have indeed disbanded. With such a focus on armed organisations that are patently in peacetime mode, it is clear that a large number of people are unwilling to swallow their reservations and make the compromises necessary to have power sharing.

On the other hand it appears that in practice a majority within the non-unionist community is quite happy to forego power sharing. By granting Sinn Fein the majority position within nationalism the electorate ensured de facto a breakdown in the Assembly. No one can dispute that people are perfectly entitled to vote for whomsoever they like and that the onus for shared government must rest on all elected representatives. Nevertheless, when a majority of nationalists voted for the republicans it practically guaranteed a DUP boycott. Of course the converse can be said of unionism; giving the DUP a majority was giving them a mandate to reject any deal with republicans.

In contrast to the absence of political movement since the ceasefire there has been a very dramatic change in certain sectors of the Northern Irish economy. House prices in the area are increasing at an incredible rate. Pent-up demand coupled with speculative investment means that real estate prices are now matching similar areas in Southern Ireland and Britain. The difficulty though is that these booming sectors are not spread evenly across the economy. There is an ever growing disparity between rich and poor and peacetime conditions make this gap all the more obvious to the under-privileged.

The decline in heavy industry and textile manufacturing has impacted most severely in Protestant working-class communities and it is frequently said that such areas have not noticed any improvement in their socio-economic conditions over the past ten years. It should also be pointed out that there is also unemployment and deprivation in nationalist working-class districts as well. Visitors to Belfast are no longer confronted quite so starkly with the evidence of security or a city divided between nationalists and unionists. The old divisions undoubtedly remain – and some are as vicious as ever – but what is now even more obvious to the outside observer is the gap between prosperous Belfast and marginalised, unemployed Belfast.

To a certain extent the ten years since the ceasefires have made Northern Ireland resemble Britain more than ever before and in the worst possible way. With the emergence of a prosperous and brash new middle-class sharing the area with an increasing marginalised community, Northern Ireland has taken on many of the features of contemporary, post-industrial Britain.

The great majority of people in the area have welcomed the ceasefires and there is no desire whatsoever for a return to the days of armed conflict. However, there is no commensurate endorsement of a local political process and, crucially, Northern Ireland remains deprived of a consensus. All the while socio-economic deprivation festers away almost unnoticed by all apart from those who are experiencing it.

The ceasefires have been a Godsend in terms of saving life and limb but have not proven to be the panacea for all our problems as some predicted in 1994.

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