Last Chance for Peace in Northern Ireland?

This article was downloaded by: [The UC Irvine Libraries]On: 25 October 2014, At: 07:39Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

American Foreign Policy Interests: The Journal of theNational Committee on American Foreign PolicyPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uafp20

Last Chance for Peace in Northern Ireland?Edwina McMahonPublished online: 18 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Edwina McMahon (2004) Last Chance for Peace in Northern Ireland?, American Foreign Policy Interests:The Journal of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, 26:1, 31-42

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10803920490425373

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uafp20

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10803920490425373

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Last Chance for Peace in Northern Ireland? 31

American Foreign Policy Interests

American Foreign Policy Interests, 26: 31–41, 2004Copyright © 2004 NCAFP1080-3920/04 $12.00 + .08DOI:10.1080/10803920490425373

A realistic answer to the question in the title is “most probably”—a conclusion based on

the broad perception that the outcome of the As-sembly election of 2003 provides no basis for re-storing the power-sharing institutions authorizedin the Belfast Agreement. But that perceptionshould not be distorted to support the contentionthat the Belfast Agreement—an internationalagreement between two sovereign states—can berenegotiated without the approval of Great Brit-ain and the Republic of Ireland and the consentof a majority of the people on the island of Ire-land as recorded in referendums conducted in theNorth and South. Because securing permanentpeace in Northern Ireland has always been theprimary goal of the all-party peace process inau-gurated more than a decade ago, the BelfastAgreement cannot be renegotiated to benefit theinterests of one side without jeopardizing the endgoal, and in the process restoring an inequitable,unionist-dominated society in the province. If thereview process, which is to begin early in 2004, isconceptualized against an impressionistic back-drop dominated by an abnormally acceleratingatomic clock, perhaps the British and Irish gov-ernments, encouraged by the United States—their chief ally and supporter in promoting peacein Northern Ireland—will be impelled to act ex-peditiously and objectively as they work with allthe leaders of the political parties in the North,including the leaders of the newly dominant sec-tarian political parties, to implement all the pro-visions of the Belfast Agreement without delay.Despite the fact that the “extremist” politicalparty in each sectarian community emerged asthe winner in the recent Assembly election, Brit-ish Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish PrimeMinister Bertie Ahern may discover that the lead-ers of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and

Sinn Fein (SF) know precisely how to inter-pret their parties’ election results, are acutelysensitive to the wishes of their constituents, andare more moderate than their critics and rivalscontend.

Held in an atmosphere rife with pessimism,the recent Assembly election produced resultsthat were predictable. They mirrored the outcomeof the Westminster and local elections that wereheld in the North in 2001. Although few thoughtit relevant to extrapolate the results from parlia-mentary and local elections in order to pinpointvotes likely to be cast in the Assembly election,the Westminster and local elections of 2001proved to be predictive of the Assembly electionof 2003, casting doubt on many of the partisanreasons that have been advanced to explain themore or less unwelcome results of the November26, 2003, election. Cast by 63.8 percent of the elec-torate on a day that was overcast in the earlymorning and rainy throughout the afternoon andevening, the ballots reflected the judgments andpreferences of a majority of the people, who votedfor candidates of political parties that have takenstrong (some would say extreme) and consistentpositions on the Belfast Agreement since it wasapproved in a referendum held in the North (andSouth) in 1998.

Although each political party that came todominance recently seems to represent the polarextreme of the Northern Ireland divide, each hadparticipated in the power-sharing governmentthat was dissolved by Britain in October 2002.Thus analyses of the Assembly election of 2003not only can identify the sources of apparent dis-affection from the polity established under theBelfast Agreement but also point to steps thatthe British and Irish governments can take tocomplete the implementation of the Belfast

Last Chance for Peace in Northern Ireland?Edwina McMahon

The results of the Assembly election of 2003 may well signal the last chance for power sharing in the province.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4

32 Edwina McMahon


Agreement, including the disarmament and dis-bandment of the Irish Republican Army (IRA),at the earliest possible moment and restore thepower-sharing institutions of the province. A care-ful consideration of the results also should con-vince the Bush administration and the StateDepartment’s new director of policy planning,Mitchell B. Reiss, who will also serve as theadministration’s special envoy to Northern Ire-land, not to be seduced into returning to the oldknee-jerk, reflexive American approach to North-ern Ireland of automatically seconding the pro-unionist line that constituted British policybefore the Belfast Agreement was formulated.The consequences of that regressive turn wouldprove to be a grave disservice to an ally who re-mains a stalwart member of the “Coalition of theWilling.”

The November 26, 2003,Assembly Election

In a contest featuring 256 candidates vyingto fill 108 seats in 18 constituencies consistingof 6 seats each in the provincewide Assembly thatdetermines the composition of the power-shar-ing executive, 30 DUP candidates were elected(a gain of 10 seats); so were 24 SF candidates (anincrease of 6); 27 Ulster Unionist party (UUP)candidates (a loss of 1 seat); 18 Social Democraticand Labor party (SDLP) candidates (a loss of 6seats); 6 candidates from the Alliance party (AP,a gain of 6 seats); 1 candidate from the Progres-sive Unionist party (PUP; a loss of l seat); 1 can-didate from the UK Unionist party (UKUP; nochange); and 1 independent—a doctor who cam-paigned on a manifesto designed to promote thehealth-care needs of his constituents.

In the intricate transfer system of propor-tional representation that determines electionsin Northern Ireland, first-preference votes indi-cate the breadth of popular support for each po-litical party and for its leader, who almost alwaystops the poll in his constituency. In the Assembly

election of 2003, the DUP secured 25.71 per-cent of first-preference votes, an increase of 7.49percent; SF—23.52 percent, an increase of 5.89percent; the UUP—22.67 percent, a gain of 1.43percent; and the SDLP—16.98 percent, a loss of4.98 percent.1

Even a cursory look at the final results re-veals that the relatively sizable increase in first-preference votes for the DUP is not analogous tothe substantial increase achieved by SF. The DUPincrease is attributable to its success in securingthe votes of those who voted for individual candi-dates of independent unionist parties in the 1998Assembly election, not from convincing the sup-porters of its main rival unionist party, the UUP,to switch their allegiance and vote for it. It canbe said, then, that the election result does notindicate an increase in unionist support for adopt-ing a more extreme approach to the peace pro-cess or a hardening of opposition to the BelfastAgreement.

Unlike the dominant unionist outcome, thetop nationalist result shows that SF’s gain camefrom the SDLP’s loss. Accordingly, it can be saidthat because both nationalist parties support theBelfast Agreement, the results have nothing todo with nationalist interest in preventing the re-negotiation of the terms of the agreement. Otherfactors appear to have been responsible for theSDLP’s unsatisfactory performance in the Assem-bly election of 2003.

Examining the votes garnered by the leadersof the major parties in Northern Ireland shedslight on the extent to which those leaders haveachieved broad support within their constituen-cies. Moreover, comparing individual leaders’votes with the votes obtained by rival or comple-mentary leaders in their own political parties andin competing parties can illuminate some of thelosses suffered by the no longer dominant par-ties—the UUP and the SDLP—and suggest oneof the sources of the unsatisfactory performan-ces of the now third- and fourth-place politicalparties.

For example, the first-preference votes thatDavid Trimble, the leader of the UUP, obtained

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4



in the recent Assembly election seem consistentwith the votes he obtained in the 1998 Assemblyelection: In the recent election in the constitu-ency of Upper Bann, he received 21.1 percent, aloss of 3.4 percent of the votes he obtained in 1998.But the DUP scored heavily in the Trimble en-clave. It racked up a 13 percent gain in first-preference votes. Although Trimble’s percentageof first-preference votes was an outcome compa-rable to that achieved by his arch rivals—IanPaisley, the leader of the DUP, who obtained 1.5percent fewer votes than he obtained in the con-stituency of Antrim North in 1998; and GerryAdams, the president of Sinn Fein, whose first-preference votes in West Belfast reflected a de-crease of 2.8 percent from 1998 to 2003—hiscompetitors’ results can be explained by factorsthat were not present in the Trimble contest. Forexample, the 77-year-old DUP leader campaignedonly rarely. He turned over a major part of cam-paigning in the constituency to his namesake son,who also ran in Antrim North and obtained an8.9 percent increase in first-preference votes overthe votes he received in the 1998 Assembly elec-tion. The inability to play an active role in the2003 Assembly election also seems to have af-fected Gerry Adams’s vote: Withdrawal from thepublic to mourn a family death in private as wellas a trip to the United States kept the Sinn Feinpresident off the campaign trail for an extendedperiod of time.2 In contrast, David Trimble, whoacts as if he were the person-ification of the UUP,played a well-publicized, continuous, and conten-tious role in the Assembly election campaign of2003. In fact, the results of his polarizing perfor-mance are implicit in the votes recorded in thatelection for his other set of rivals—his colleaguesin the UUP.

Unlike the other leaders of the leading politi-cal parties in Northern Ireland—Ian Paisley ofthe DUP, Gerry Adams of SF, and Mark Durkanof the SDLP—David Trimble has vocal and vo-ciferous opponents in his own party. JeffreyDonaldson, Trimble’s major antiagreement op-ponent in the UUP until his recent resignationfrom the party after surpassing all other UUP

candidates in the election held the month be-fore, achieved 34.2 percent of first-preferencevotes in the Lagan Valley constituency. (He didnot contest the Assembly election of 1998.) Hisstance against the Belfast Agreement may wellexplain his election to the Assembly, but it doesnot by itself account for the magnitude of thevote he received. Donaldson’s erstwhile anti-agreement cohort in the UUP, David Burnside,received 18.89 percent of first-preference votesin the Antrim South constituency, a result thataccords with UUP votes obtained by other poll-topping winners such as Sir Reg Empey, whosupports the Belfast Agreement and tried topersuade Donaldson to remain in the UUP.Empey received 20.9 percent of first-preferencevotes in the constituency of Belfast East. Some-thing else, it seems, accounted for Donaldson’sextraordinary electoral performance, and thatappears to be his willingness to take a publicand active party role in opposing the combativeDavid Trimble.

The Disintegration of the UUPJeffrey Donaldson—joined by Arlene Foster

and Norah Beare, two colleagues elected to theAssembly in the November 26, 2003, election—resigned from the UUP on December 19, 2003.The official reason for his resignation was to ac-cept a position offered by Ian Paisley, Sr., to jointhe “negotiating” team that the DUP claims itwill field during the review process of the BelfastAgreement to be conducted in early 2004 by theBritish and Irish prime ministers. Not cited byDonaldson as among the causes for his resigna-tion were Trimble’s awkward attempt to disci-pline him for rejecting the UUP whip atWestminister, his belated attempts to challengeDonaldson’s arguments against the Belfast Agree-ment, and his failed attempt after the election tooust Donaldson from the party. Whether he meantto or not, Donaldson went beyond his officialexplanation to focus on Trimble’s apparent defi-ciencies as a political leader. He stated,“I’m not

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4

34 Edwina McMahon


going to waste any more energy on a futile argu-ment within the UUP when, clearly, DavidTrimble and his supporters aren’t listening to meor to the majority of unionists.”3

Leadership veering out of control seemed tobe the disorder of the UUP day as David McNarry,a senior UUP adviser to Trimble, denounced thepeacemaking activities undertaken in mid-December by Empey, a former minister in thedissolved Executive, and Jim Rodgers, honorarysecretary of the UUP, with 50 UUP members andDonaldson to repair the fissure in the party. Ac-cording to McNarry, who was widely perceived tobe speaking for Trimble,

These two men are attempting to un-dermine the settled will of the UlsterUnionist Council and party executive.I can only conclude that these two of-ficers are manipulating the Donaldsonaffair for their own gain. In saying thatthe party could disintegrate, they arehighlighting what they see as the un-suitability of the current leadership.4

Both Empey and Rodgers, unlike Donaldson,support the Belfast Agreement. Unlike Donald-son, Trimble has refused to resign as the leaderof the UUP in the wake of the party’s showing inthe November 26, 2003, Assembly election.

If, as many unionists suspect, Donaldson andthe two UUP members of the Assembly who leftthe party with him join the DUP in 2004, theywould give that party a majority of 33 membersin the Assembly. If party luminaries do not heedthe warning issued recently by Lord Kilclooney(John Taylor), a UUP member elected to the As-sembly on November 26, 2003, to represent theconstituency of Strangford, the UUP could de-scend even lower in party ranking and becomethe fourth largest political grouping in NorthernIreland, behind the third-ranked SDLP. Accord-ing to Lord Kilclooney,

The UUP, like other political parties,must facilitate differences of politicalopinion. . . . The expulsion of members

or personal petty attacks distract fromthe more important need to developpolicies for the longer term. In this re-spect, we need to unite the UUP in sup-port of agreed policies for the future. Iunderstand that two party officers—Sir Reg Empey and councilor JimRodgers—are working to try to createa new sense of purpose and unity withinthe UUP. They have my full support. Tofail is unthinkable.5

Kilclooney concluded his statement by tell-ing members of the UUP that he had complainedto Trimble about McGarry’s personal attacks onthe integrity of Empey and Rodgers. Implicit inKilclooney’s warning is the realization that if thethree disaffected UUP Assembly members jointhe DUP, it would produce a surfeit of offices inthe Executive for Paisley’s party. Under thed’Hondt system of apportioning positions, theinclusion of Donaldson, Foster, and Beare in theranks of the DUP in the Assembly would givethe party four ministerial positions in the power-sharing Executive, leaving two each to SF, theUUP, and the SDLP.6

A Review or a Renegotiationof the Belfast Agreement?

The terminology used to refer to the discus-sions that the four major political parties willenter into with the British and Irish governmentsin January 2004 suggests the focal point of dis-agreement that is likely to be reinforced duringthe process. The two governments have charac-terized the prospective talks as a review, nota renegotiation, of the Belfast Agreement; theantiagreement DUP has termed the review a re-negotiation of the agreement. So has ex-UUPmember Donaldson, who is slated to head theDUP’s “negotiating” team, as he headed theUUP’s team of negotiators before he withdrewfrom the talks and announced his opposition tothe Belfast Agreement the day before it was

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4



signed in 1998. Like his party’s new negotiator,Paisley considers the review to be a renegotia-tion of the Belfast Agreement. Although his partywill be a party to the review, Paisley has pro-claimed his party’s opposition to sharing powerwith SF. He declared that he “would not be will-ing to accept the title of first minister in anadministration which included SF members orto negotiate with SF while the IRA retained itsweapons.”7

As DUP supporters and other prospectivevoters discovered during the 2003 Assemblycampaign, Paisley is not the only face and voiceof the DUP’s brand of unionism. Peter Robin-son, the DUP’s deputy leader, presents what usu-ally comes across as a more pragmatic versionof DUP unionism. Underscoring commentsmade by Paul Murphy, the secretary of state forNorthern Ireland, as well as British Prime Min-ister Tony Blair’s description of the review asslated to be “short, sharp, and focused” and theprime minister’s identification of its focal pointas “the way the institutions work and how wecan overcome the current impasse,”8 Robinsonremarked:

In fairness to the government . . . theyhave stripped back the Belfast Agree-ment to what they describe as its fun-damental principles [such as the prin-ciples of power sharing and the consentof the people] and what we will want toexplore with the secretary of state is justexactly what he sees those fundamen-tal principles as being. We are not run-ning away from helping the governmentto find solutions. They will find we haveideas and that we are positive.9

Reiterating the deputy leader’s promise of apositive approach, the DUP’s designated negotia-tor declared:

[I]t was not impossible that Dr. Paisleyand Mr. Gerry Adams as leaders of thetwo largest parties could strike a dealacceptable to both unionists and nation-

alists. In politics anything can happen,but republicans will have to recognizethe reality that David Trimble is not ca-pable of delivering agreement. Theymust also recognize that if they are todo a deal with antiagreement unionists,they must make the moves that arerequired.10

The DUP luminaries were not alone in sug-gesting that the two leading sectarian parties areperfectly capable of negotiating a deal and enter-ing into a power-sharing government with eachother. As the apparent first attempt to reinforcethat impression, Mitchell McLaughlin, the chair-man of SF, declared that SF “would be willing toengage with the DUP to hear what they [have] tosay about the peace process.”11 Similarly, just ashe is insisting that the Assembly be reinstated atthe earliest possible moment, Gerry Adams iscontinuing to predict that the DUP will discusssharing power with SF by the time the talks haveended. Delivering an assessment that is as frankas it is realistic, Adams remarked of the DUP andits leader, “It’s only a matter of when they dealwith us, not if. Paisley is a leader in decliningyears. It doesn’t matter whether he does or not;the party he leads will be in discussions.”12 Afterthe election, a spokesperson for SF elaborated onAdam’s remarks by reminding her audience thatthe DUP had filled the two ministries that its votein the 1998 election entitled the party to manageand oversee and had worked with SF in the Ex-ecutive government of Northern Ireland:

The DUP works with Sinn Fein in thecouncils across the north and workedwith Sinn Fein in the assembly. Nearly500,000 voted for proagreement par-ties on Wednesday [7 of 10 voters],and the antiagreement parties will notbe allowed a veto in the Assembly.We are confident that the DUP will talkto us.13

Despite such positive comments, predictionsconcerning the restoration of the Assembly and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4

36 Edwina McMahon


the Executive at the end of the review processwill undoubtedly prove to be without merit. Forexample, credible stories about each party’s strat-egy for ensuring its best interests suggest thatrestoring the power-sharing institutions based onthe plans proposed will prove impossible.

Projected Party Plansto Refine or Redefinethe Belfast AgreementDuring the Review Process

The UUP Approach

Ever the egoist who evidently cannot conceiveof playing a subordinate role to anyone (but es-pecially to someone such as the irrepressible Pais-ley), Trimble appears to have convinced himselfthat the DUP became the largest party in theAssembly election of 2003 because former sup-porters of independent unionist candidates ac-cepted its flawed manifesto of false solutions. Itfollows, then, that once the voters realize theyhave been deceived, they will reject the DUP andreinstate the UUP as the dominant power in theNorth. Accordingly, the leader of the UUP hasproposed that another Assembly election be heldas soon as possible. Although Trimble has notmade the corresponding proposal that the newAssembly be constituted and convened immedi-ately—a measure that would mandate the selec-tion of the power-sharing Executive in six weeksor else the Assembly would be dissolved and yetanother set of elections would be called—that maybe the linchpin of his plan to restore his party’sstatus as the first political party of Northern Ire-land. Perhaps the leader of the UUP believes thatthe divisions evident in the UUP can be healedby contesting a heroic election against the DUP;but if that is his strategy, it testifies to a flawedvision of leadership on his part and suggests thatDonaldson’s assessment of Trimble’s politicalacumen is correct.

The DUP Approach

Maintaining the party position that its lead-ers will not share power with SF while the IRAretains its arms, the DUP’s more pragmatic lead-ers hold out the possibility of offering solutionsto the current impasse. Among those solutions issaid to be the application of the d’Hondt provi-sion to the process that selects the first ministerand the deputy minister in the Executive govern-ment of Northern Ireland. In essence, the d’Hondtsystem can be adapted to select a voluntary coa-lition of individuals who are willing to governcooperatively across both communities. Such aproposal reflects one made recently by BrendanO’Leary and John McGarry, two Irish academ-ics.14 In essence, the system could become opera-tional if a person refused to serve in a capacitysuitable for one of his or her political ranking.Then that position would be offered to and couldbe accepted by another person of similar rank whowas not necessarily in the same political partybut who was on the same side of the sectariandivide. The indications are that both the Britishprime minister and the Irish prime minister areeager to discuss the proposal, which may openthe process to what could turn out to be an end-less round of tinkering with the nuts and bolts ofthe Belfast Agreement. It also may turn suppos-edly desirable quantitative changes into one ormore undesirable qualitative changes. Neverthe-less, until all the principals demonstrate that theyare capable of putting sectarian, partisan, and per-sonal differences aside and governing in concert,the implementation of the proposal may lead tothe immediate restoration of an effective andlong-standing power-sharing government inNorthern Ireland and promote a climate of coop-eration and goodwill in which peace and prosper-ity can flourish.

The SDLP and SF Approach

Except for not endorsing SF’s position thatthe decommissioning and disbandment of theIRA can take place only in the context of the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4



implementation of all the provisions of the Bel-fast Agreement, there is no appreciable differ-ence in the approach taken by either party tothe review process. Both nationalist politicalparties maintain that the Belfast Agreement can-not be renegotiated and that the Assembly andthe Executive must be restored immediately. Infact, Sean Mallon, the former deputy ministerin the suspended power-sharing executive, whorecently retired from public life, remindedeveryone:

[T]he agreement does not depend on theStormont institutions. It will continueto operate through the British–Irish In-tergovernmental Council which deals,as the agreement states, “with the to-tality of relationships. . . .” It was setup specifically to cope with unionist at-tempts to wreck the agreement.

. . . when you subtract all the issues thatcan’t be renegotiated such as release ofprisoners, the end of the RUC, a newcriminal justice system, all-Ireland bod-ies, constitutional changes in the Re-public, all the DUP and the Donald-sonites are talking about is tinkeringwith the institutions at Stormont sothat they suit their own objectives, andthere’s no way they’re going to succeedin that. The agreement goes on with-out the institutions, a set of circum-stances that should suit Sinn Fein, thedominant majority party of nationalismdown to the ground.15

Reading the 2003 AssemblyElection

It has been evident since the first power-shar-ing government was constituted in Northern Ire-land that the then-leading unionist party was thedestabilizing element in the new political dispen-

sation established under the Belfast Agreement.After several years marked by issuing ultimatumsto the IRA every three months and staging quar-terly party conferences in which First MinisterTrimble’s demand for the complete and immedi-ate decommissioning of the IRA was trumpetedand ratified, the party leader was so emboldenedby his success in manipulating Prime MinisterBlair into suspending the power-sharing institu-tions that he displayed the hubris that caused himto lose control of the old order symbolized by LordMolyneaux, his immediate predecessor, who re-cently met with Donaldson and others to discussremoving Trimble from his leadership position.16

Trimble’s loss of authority was not confined tothe withdrawal of support for him by Molyneauxand his cohorts. Nor was it limited to expressionsof no confidence voiced by Donaldson and otherelected members of the Assembly who opposethe Belfast Agreement. Instead, the rebellionspread to moderate and centrist members of theparty such as Empey who support the BelfastAgreement.

Despite the DUP’s political ascendancy overthe UUP in the 2003 Assembly election, it shouldnot be assumed that the result was anything otherthan the expression of a strategy adopted by vot-ers who had decided not to vote for the singularcandidates of independent unionist parties. In theNovember 2003 Assembly election, independentunionist voters gave their votes to the candidatesof one unionist political party they apparentlywanted to strengthen in order to oppose anotherparty whose leadership had become tiresome,predictable, ill-tempered, and hypocritical. Thusthe DUP’s gain appears to be a one-time phenom-enon. Because the UUP’s vote has always beenbased on transfers, voters’ growing perceptionsof its leader as intemperate, confrontational, andimpervious to rebuke are bound to affect its vote-getting ability unless Trimble resigns soonerrather than later. Perhaps the realization thattime is running out for him has driven him toattempt to stem the tide against his fracturedparty by calling for new Assembly elections at theearliest possible moment.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4

38 Edwina McMahon


The decline of the SDLP cannot be attrib-uted—as its leader, Mark Durkan, suggested—tothe general decrease in voter turnout in the 2003Assembly election. Instead, a combination of fac-tors seems to explain the party’s unsatisfactoryelectoral outcome. The leading lights of theparty—including John Hume, Sean Mallon, andBrid Rodgers—decided not to contest the recentAssembly election.17 To some, the party’s greaterinterest in vying for seats in Westminister, theEuropean Parliament in Brussels, and the Dailin Dublin suggests that Northern Ireland is nolonger a major political venue for the nationalistparty that was spawned in the six counties. Sucha perception tends to nurture the collective infe-riority complex endemic in Northern Ireland.Especially alive in the political arena, it stemsfrom the North’s status as a statelet, or province,and from its all too recent position as a colony ofGreat Britain. Moreover, talk of the SDLP’s de-sire to merge with Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Failparty reinforced the impression that the partywas transforming itself into an all-Ireland politi-cal party based in Dublin, not Belfast. The hiringof Fianna Fail political consultants to advise theSDLP’s Assembly candidates in the election of2003 did nothing to dispel the notion that theparty was becoming an alien presence on soil itno longer considers compatible with its brand ofindigenous life.

Sinn Fein’s rise to nationalist dominance inthe Assembly election of 2003 mirrors its as-cendancy as the premier nationalist party in theWestminister and local elections of 2001. Inessence, the results it achieved in the Assemblyelection reflect its acute sensitivity to its sur-roundings and its realization that by champion-ing and striving to achieve nationalist goalsthat all nationalists support, it is helping itssupporters to fulfill their nationalist and person-al aspirations. Although committed, like theSDLP, to becoming an all-Ireland political partyand to contesting elections to the EuropeanParliament, SF’s leadership is so structured thatits supporters concede without resentment thatthe president, Gerry Adams, is authorized to

speak about the broad interests and issues ofconcern to the nationalist party, which originat-ed in the South, while chief negotiator MartinMcGuinness is accorded overall responsibilityfor doing what he does best—negotiating, askill highly valued by the nationalist voters ofthe province. The ability to negotiate is the pri-mary source of SF’s growing support in thenationalist community of Northern Ireland.18

While the IRA retains a quantity of arms afterdisposing of what have been estimated to beconsiderable caches of weapons on three occa-sions since SF signed the Belfast Agreement in1998, SF is not expected to gain the support ofmore than a wayward unionist voter or two.The party’s future growth in the North and itssubsequent success in convincing the Britishand Irish governments to implement all the pro-visions of the Belfast Agreement should enableits leaders to persuade the IRA to undertake todisarm and disband immediately. IRA decom-missioning in and of itself will allow SF to wagea successful campaign across a disappearing sec-tarian divide and enable it eventually to speakauthoritatively about the needs of its diverseconstituency.

The Necessity of EstablishingViable Power-Sharing Institutions

Few observers believe that the Assembly willbe convened in Northern Ireland before theEuropean elections are held in June 2004. Someexpect the delay to last until the general elec-tion is held in 2005. Why, some wonder, rush toset up power-sharing institutions when theparamilitary cease-fires continue to be observed,relative peace prevails in the province, and theBelfast Agreement is alive and functioning?The answer is evident: From the standpoint ofdemocracy, direct rule—even of a consultative,benevolent kind—is rule by a distant elite thatis presumed to be all-knowing. Direct rule, un-like democratic rule, does nothing to foster lead-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4



ership skills in communities that acquiesce intheir political subordination. For example, lead-ership skills are underdeveloped or lacking insome segments of the unionist political commu-nity. In contrast, they are abundant and exercisedskillfully in the nationalist community, which hasnever given its consent to British rule or to sur-rogate, unionist rule imposed in the six countiesof the North.

A review of the Belfast Agreement will revealthat pique and intransigence, not flaws in theinternational treaty, are responsible for the cur-rent impasse and the failure to complete theimplementation process, including the decommis-sioning and disbandment of the IRA. Conse-quently, tinkering with the agreement will donothing to compensate for the political ineptitudedisplayed by those who have been charged withcarrying out the agreement. It may, in fact, un-dermine the agreement. Accordingly, the Britishand Irish prime ministers should state unequivo-cally to the next first minister in the next power-sharing government of the North that even if heis obtuse enough to try to emulate the actions ofDavid Trimble and issue public ultimatums to theIRA first at Stormont and then in the glare of aseries of unionist party conferences called to de-nounce the republican paramilitary organizationand its political ally, Sinn Fein, he will not suc-ceed in persuading the British prime minister tosuspend the Executive and the Assembly andimpose direct rule on the province. The unionistleader, aided by the British and Irish governmentsand their American ally, should be encouraged topursue quiet diplomacy in order to secure theparty’s and the province’s overarching objectiveof achieving the complete decommissioning of allparamilitary forces. Similarly, both governmentsand their American ally should encourage Mar-tin McGuinness to work with the IRA to create adocument that could be presented to the head ofthe Independent Commission on Decommission-ing and used by him at the completion of the veri-fication process to present concrete and transpar-ent information about individual acts of decom-missioning to the governments of Northern Ire-

land, Britain, and the Republic of Ireland. Finally,a plan providing for the calibration of individualacts of decommissioning with the implementationof every remaining unimplemented provision ofthe Belfast Agreement should be formulated. Itshould be vetted and signed as a codicil to theBelfast Agreement. Because of the overridingimportance of decommissioning to the completeand permanent implementation of the BelfastAgreement, this addendum should be the onlyexception to the no-tinkering injunction thatshould prevail at the review that is scheduled tobegin in 2004.

It is hard to see how the coalition of the will-ing can succeed in assisting the people of Iraq toestablish democratic institutions if its membersfail to help the people of Northern Ireland, whoshare Anglo–American culture and values, to sus-tain a democratic, power-sharing government inthe province. Supplementing the statement madeby the White House that it “had some concernsover the outcome of the election” was the state-ment made by Condoleezza Rice, PresidentBush’s national security adviser. After saying thatshe “hoped that progress could continue to bemade,” Rice stated, “any leadership should rec-ognize that the Good Friday Agreement gives anopportunity for Northern Ireland to continue todevelop. I do believe that having tasted peace, thepeople of Northern Ireland desperately wantpeace.”19 Such expressions of concern and sup-port for the people of North expressed by theWhite House and the president’s national secu-rity adviser may allay the fears expressed recent-ly by some in the Irish–American communitythat the new assistant to the recently appointeddirector of policy planning at the State De-partment—an individual who recently assumedresponsibility for managing the day-to-day im-plementation of American policy toward North-ern Ireland—would behave the way he did whenhe displeased a number of Irish–Americans whodealt with him during his tenure at the Ameri-can consulate in Northern Ireland.20 Moreover, itshould be relatively safe to predict that duringthe president’s reelection campaign in 2004, the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4

40 Edwina McMahon


Bush administration will do nothing to alienatethe large number of Irish–Americans who areexpected to vote in the election. Although theydo not vote as a bloc and the implementation ofthe Belfast Agreement is just one of severalcountervailing issues that will influence theirvotes, they are sure to react strongly against anyAmerican-supported attempt to rewrite the agree-ment and undermine the fledgling democracy inNorthern Ireland.

If a commission on truth and reconciliationis ever established in Northern Ireland (andthe U.S. government would do well to consideradvocating such an undertaking), perhaps the In-ternational Fund for Ireland (IFI), the U.S. gov-ernment organization established to assist theIrish peace process, could disseminate its find-ings in an effort designed to eradicate the kind ofpropaganda that has short-circuited confidence-building measures, led to the building of morethan 20 misnamed peace walls in Northern Ire-land, and prevented the forging of political andsocietal coalitions across the sectarian divide. Therecent announcement that Peggy Noonan, Presi-dent Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, has joined theboard of the IFI as an observer may offer the pos-sibility of enlisting her considerable gifts to dis-pel such meaningless statements as “There areguns in government” and “Martin McGuinnesswas the head of an IRA battalion when BloodySunday occurred.”21 Once Noonan can be con-vinced to convince unionists that the unarmedelected representatives of Sinn Fein neither bran-dish nor conceal weapons in the corridors of sus-pended power and therefore pose no mortal threatto other power holders or to the rest of the peopleof Northern Ireland and that Bloody Sunday wasnot an IRA atrocity but a murderous act commit-ted by British troops against unarmed national-ist civilians, perhaps she can be persuaded to turnher attention to other forms of the big lie thathave undermined the peace process in NorthernIreland.

All things considered, the Assembly electionof 2003 suggests that the clock is ticking rapidlyfor power sharing in Northern Ireland.

About the Author

Edwina McMahon is a senior fellow of theNational Committee on American Foreign Policy.

Notes

1. “Northern Ireland Assembly Results,” BBCNews, November 28, 2003; http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/shared/bsp/hivote2003/northern_ireland/html/vote.stm.

2. Suzanne Breen, “Fracas and Fashion MarkMemorable Campaign,” The News Letter; http://www.nuzhound.com/articles/arts2003/nov27_memorable_campaign_SBreen,php.

3. “I Quit,” IC Northernireland.co.uk, Decem-ber 19, 2003.

4. Noel McAdam, “Peacemakers ‘Working inOwn Interests,’” The Belfast Digital, December17, 2003; http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=474064.

5. Billy Kennedy, “Unite or Face Up to FreeFall,” IC Northernireland.co.uk, December 18,2003.

6. Gerry Moriarty, “Donaldson Quits UUP forPlace on DUP Talks Team,” The Irish Times,December 19, 2003; http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2003/1219/2067487605HMIDONALDSON.html.

7. “Paisley Due to Meet NI Secretary,” BBCNews, December 1, 2003; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern _ireland/3251856.stm.

8. “Review Will Be ‘Short and Sharp,’” BBCNews; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3324989.stm.

9. Ibid.10. Gerry Moriarty, op. cit.11. “Paisley Due to Meet NI Secretary,” op.

cit.12. Rosie Cowan and Angelique Chrisafis,

“Trimble Confident as Province Goes to thePolls,” Guardian Unlimited, November 27, 2003;http: / /pol i t ics .guardian.co .uk/northernirelandassembly/story/0,9061. 1093974,00.html.

13. Anne Madden, “The Rise of Sinn Fein,”

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4



Irish News, November 29, 2003; http:///www.nuzhound.com/articles/irish_news/arts2003/nov29_rise_of_Sinn_Fein.php.

14. “How to Get Around Paisley,” Irish Voice,December 16, 2003; http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irishinamerica/editperiscope/how.asp.

15. “Proconsul Murphy Tells the Natives toGet on or Get Lost,” Newshound (November 30,2003); http://www.nuzhound.com/articles/irish_news/ar.../nov28_proconsul_Murphy_BFeeney.ph.

16. Ciaran McKeown, “Rebel Plot to BringDown Trimble,” ICNorthernIreland.co.uk, De-

cember 16, 2003.17. “Big Names Who Are Out,” Newshound,

November 29, 2003.18. Anne Madden, “The Rise of Sinn Fein,”

op. cit.19. “Paisley’s Party Tops NI Poll,” BBC News,

November 28, 2003; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3245156.stm.

20. “New Bush Envoy Raises Concerns,” IrishVoice; http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irishamerica/columnists/intelligencer/11dec.asp

21. Ibid.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4

42 Edwina McMahon


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

The

UC

Irv

ine

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

7:39

25

Oct

ober

201

4

Documents

Last Chance for Peace in Northern Ireland?