Northern Ireland: The Troubled Peace ProcessSpecial Relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland problem by Paul Arthur; AFarewell to Arms? From 'Long War' to Long Peace in Northern Ireland by Michael Cox;Adrian Guelke; Fiona Stephen; Aspects of the Belfast Agreement by Rick WilfordReview by: Eunan O'HalpinIrish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 12 (2001), pp. 243-247Published by: Royal Irish AcademyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30002070 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 02:24

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Royal Irish Academy is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Studies inInternational Affairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:24:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Northern Ireland: the Troubled Peace Process A review article on

Paul Arthur, Special relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland problem (Belfast, 2001)

Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen (eds), A farewell to arms? From 'long war' to long peace in Northern Ireland (Manchester, 2000)

Rick Wilford (ed.), Aspects of the Belfast Agreement (Oxford, 2001)

Eunan O'Halpin

Department of Modern History, Trinity College Dublin

Before 1969 scarcely a word was written by British, Irish or any other political scientists about Northern Ireland, its problematic political system and communal divides, and its bilateral relations with its parent British state and with its antipathetic southern neighbour. Since then, there has been a cascade of academic studies in a range of disciplines, in addition to popular histories, personal testaments and partisan polemics. Coming to grips with the academic literature on Northern Ireland could take a lifetime, even without attempting to fathom the nuances of political change and continuity. The emergence of the peace process in the 1990s, the consequent paramilitary ceasefires and the widespread institutional, legal and security changes that resulted have seen a revivification of scholarly exploration of Northern Ireland's past, present and future.

The three books under review represent the most authoritative recent scholarship on the Northern Ireland conflict. As well as addressing the new politics of peace within Northern Ireland, they incorporate challenging new sets of arguments arising from the end of the Cold War, the internationalisation of the search for a peaceful future, and the selective appropriation of the new international vernacular of human rights. Decades after some of the authors under review began to attract attention internationally as experts on the baffling peculiarities of the Northern Ireland conflict, we now see a resolution process that emphasises the generic nature of intercommunal conflict, which is routinely analysed in a comparative context and which relies heavily on external honest brokers, emissaries and witnesses-George Mitchell, John de Chastelain, Matti Ahtissari, Cyril Ramaphosa-to keep the show on the road.

A farewell to arms? and the more prosaically titled Aspects of the Belfast

Author's e-mail: ohalpine@tcd.ie

Irish Studies in international Affairs, Vol. 12 (2001), 243-247.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:24:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

244 Irish Studies in International Affairs

Agreement provide a constellation of academic opinion on aspects of recent political developments-a total of 34 separate contributions. The collections differ in emphasis: A farewell to arms? focuses mainly on the making and development of the peace process, including the crucial international dimension, while the rather shorter Aspects of the Belfast Agreement has more to say on the making, workings and prospects of the new institutions. Paul Arthur's commanding Special relationships, 'not a chronology but a thematic study', charts the progressive redefinition of Dublin-London and of Belfast-London relations before and since 1969. Professor Arthur's long view encourages a degree of optimism because it both demonstrates the remarkable extent to which Dublin and London have come together in discussion, analysis and planning and reminds the reader of how far the North's communities have gone towards formal recognition of each other's rights of identity and aspirations. These are developments that may well outlast the Good Friday Agreement, if only because that set of arrangements is currently under such pressure from within Northern Ireland.

Inevitably, the months since the last of these books appeared has thrown up more uncertainties that qualify the careful optimism of many of the authors. Despite an apparent dearth of alternative sets of ideas around which to mobilise, the Westminster and local elections showed that anti-Agreement Unionism is a growing, not a spent, force. It may be short on the language of compromise, pluralism and state-building, but its basic message of betrayal is a powerful one and its electorate at present sees no value in conventional statesmanship. Anti-Agreement Unionists are pessimists, and they have much to be pessimistic about. The nuances of Irish constitutional reform cut little ice with people who feel themselves abandoned within their own state, while changes in matters such as policing and security increasingly appear to be a zero-sum game from which only the enemies of the Union can profit.

On the nationalist side, despite or because of its leadership's masterly equivocations, Sinn F6in made significant gains in the May 2001 Westminster and local elections, and in the Republic of Ireland despite being an entity that until recently mainstream Irish Republicanism affected not even to recognise, the party appears well placed to make significant electoral inroads. In the recent EU referendum Sinn F6in's 'No to NATO, No to Nice' and other posters far outnumbered the few isolated and apologetic endorsements of the Yes campaign erected by the mainstream Irish parties. In the longer run the party's reversion to the isolationist and sub-Marxist rhetoric of the 1980s may cause it some difficulties: can Mr Adams continue to sport the shamrock, to take his photo opportunities in the Bush White House, and even to urge the Irish-American business community to invest in Northern Ireland when his party is against multinational capitalism and mistrustful of all supra-state economic or security institutions and regimes. But in the short term its stance is likely to strengthen its electoral prospects in both parts of the island.

The peace process is largely about two things: on the one hand, convincing Unionists, still the majority in Northern Ireland, that their constitutional identity is secure, that they will not be coerced into a new Ireland and that Northern Ireland can be made peaceful and prosperous through the operation of carefully crafted consociational devices; and, on the other hand, persuading Sinn F~in and the IRA that the gains available through the reformulation of the Northern state and through electoral politics in both parts of the island outweigh any disadvantages arising from abandoning the armed struggle. A growing problem for other Irish nationalist parties

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:24:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

O'HALpIN- Northern Ireland: the Troubled Peace Process 245

in both jurisdictions is how to limit the electoral benefit to Sinn F6in that results from the transition from being a party of war to a party of peace. The imperative of supporting the peace process means that the nationalist parties and the British and Irish governments soft-pedal relentlessly on the more disreputable aspects of Republican pursuit of electoral popularity. This is particularly evident in both jurisdictions in terms of commentary on paramilitary violence and crime within the nationalist community. The IRA's murder of alleged drug dealers on both sides of the border has produced little overt censure and no negative fall-out; indeed it has probably enhanced Sinn F6in's street credibility among those segments of the Southern electorate-the young and the deprived urban underclass--that it now courts so assiduously. Less fatal forms of violence such as punishment beatings also go almost unremarked-the RUC and its plastic bullets must go, but plastic kneecaps will continue to be necessary for as long as Republican paramilitaries choose to maim alleged miscreants within their communities-while the various parties to the peace process look the other way. Loyalist paramilitary activity attracts rather more public criticism, particularly when it crosses the communal divide, but, despite the emergence of articulate spokesmen in Billy Hutchinson and David Ervine, as a movement loyalism suffers from an acute credibility problem precisely because unlike Republicanism it has been unable to make any electoral headway against the established Unionist parties. It is, consequently, regarded as both dangerous to and intrinsically unimportant in the peace process.

In acquiring its present standing Sinn F6in has, of course, made major concessions of principle, from which it has reaped an electoral premium just as Eamon de Valera did when he abandoned the make-believe world of Republican legitimists in 1926 and created the Fianna Fiil party. In a searching essay in Aspects of the Belfast Agreement the former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre advances a challenging argument about why this departure was possible. He undertakes a careful analysis of the very modemrn roots of the Provisional movement and dissects what he sees as its essentially contingent attachment to the fundamentals of Republican tradition. By this argument, the Provisionals are in the peace process because they were a creation of two forces: the nationalist demand for equal treatment within the British state; and the particular needs of communal defence in Belfast in 1969-70 when that state failed to control Unionist violence. McIntyre rightly criticises inadequate stock histories of the IRA that take as given a seamless evolution into Provisional Republicanism. He is, however, in danger of falling into a variety of the fallacy in which the authors whom he attacks are trapped, with his evocation of an imagined purity and cohesion in earlier All-Ireland Republicanism, and also in his implicit equation of the Irish physical force tradition solely with Republicanism. The Irish Volunteers began in 1913 as a force pledged to fight if necessary not for a republic but merely for Home Rule. That was scarcely even Sunningdale for slow learners.

In its most innovative section, A farewell to arms? lays particular emphasis on the international and comparative contexts of the peace process, with eight chapters dealing with a range of subjects, from Elizabeth Meehan on Europe's modest though growing role, to Fred Halliday's tally sheet for late twentieth-century peace processes. There are, however, grounds for wondering how long all this international interest will last. Crucially, US President Bush, his St Patrick's Day party notwithstanding, seems far less engaged by the Northern Ireland issue than was Bill Clinton, who placed great public store by his role in the peace process. Why should a Republican White House facing very serious foreign policy differences with major powers, and contemplating yet more trouble in the Middle East, waste energy on

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:24:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

246 Irish Studies in International Affairs

supporting the reformulation of a disputed and complicated deal in Northemrn Ireland, where US interests are not threatened?

The 'dog that does not bark' in any of these studies is that of extemrnal defence. Yet for decades Republican ideologues customarily explained the continued 'British presence' precisely in terms of Cold War geostrategy. Britain held onto Northemrn Ireland, it was argued, not through sentiment or out of deference to the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants but simply because it needed to retain key sea and air defence assets. In this, NATO (and especially the US) supported Britain. Peter Brooke's 1990 declaration that Britain had no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland addressed that argument by publicly indicating that, whatever the historical validity of such calculations, the British government no longer saw Northern Ireland as integral to the defence of the UK. This presumably reflected both the virtual disappearance of a serious Atlantic threat with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the developments made in weapons and communications systems. But Brooke's statement was ambiguous about the defence of the people of Northemrn Ireland, and that ambiguity persists. What does the Good Friday Agreement do for the defence rights of Unionists? Just as nationalists and Republicans worship at the totem pole of Irish military neutrality, so many Unionists look to the UK not only for communal but also for external defence. Some people feel safer with explicit rights to shelter under the NATO umbrella rather than, as independent Ireland has long done, quietly to avail of the cover while pretending not to. Given their histories and traditions, furthermore, the majority of people in Northemrn Ireland may wish to contribute to the defence of the wider polity of which they remain part. Yet, if Sinn F6in's grounds for opposing the Nice Treaty are any guide, 'demilitarisation' means not simply the dismantling of watchtowers and the removal of army patrols from the streets of Northern Ireland but the eradication of state militarism. Is the new, agreed Northern Ireland that the peace process aims to create a defence-free as well as a weapons-free zone?

Despite the breadth of perspective afforded by the various studies in these three books, there are areas on which work of comparable quality remains to be done.

Political parties as well as state machines analyse, reappraise and reformulate policy in a strategic as well as a more narrow, electoral context. It would be important to know to what extent, if any, the wider professionalisation process within the main parties in Ireland so noticeable since the mid-1970s-the appointment of research officers, the development of consultative groups on key policy areas and the like- has had on the evolution of policy on Northern Ireland. We should note that Dublin's man at the heart of the peace process, Dr Martin Mansergh, who contributes an important chapter to A farewell to arms?, has for two decades been primarily a servant of Fianna FAil rather than of the Irish state: when the party is in government he works in the Department of the Taoiseach; when it is out of office he reverts to his analogous post at Fianna FAil headquarters. It was scarcely an accident that at the height of the Troubles Ireland's largest party decided to recruit an experienced diplomat to handle the nuances of the Northern Ireland issue. His appointment meant that, even when not in government, Fianna FAil, a party constantly derided by its opponents and by the media for short-termism and electoral opportunism, could maintain and develop contacts with key players and could take a long-term view of the gravest single issue facing Ireland. This development in party organisation unarguably contributed to the consistency of the party's public pronouncements on Northern issues, both in and out of government. It also does much to explain the noticeable lack of internal party friction on Northern Ireland since the early 1980s.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:24:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

O'HALPIN-Northern Ireland: the Troubled Peace Process 247

The North was an issue that came close to tearing Fianna FAil apart in 1969-70 and that provided the backdrop for the ousting of Jack Lynch in the autumn of 1979. By 1983, as Paul Arthur notes, Fianna FAil's was 'the most disciplined delegation' at the New Ireland Forum, and it would be oversimplistic to attribute this entirely to fear of the then party leader. The other parties, although less well resourced than Fianna FAil, also began to invest in policy development when out of office in the 1970s. So too, albeit in a rather different context, did both the SDLP and Sinn F6in leadership begin to promote long-term reflection and policy development in the 1980s. The same was also true within Unionism, though perhaps in a less consistent way. As Arthur points out, the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement prompted both an innovative loyalist response--Common Sense-and a ground-breaking mainstream Unionist initiative undertaken by Frank Millar, Peter Robinson and Harold McCusker, outlined in An end to drift. This document appeared to fail in its attempt to redefine a long-term agenda for Unionism--it was effectively disavowed by the two Unionist party leaderships, causing Frank Millar to resign the general-secretaryship of the UUP and Peter Robinson to quit as DUP deputy leader. Policy advisers are now an acknowledged part of the UUP's fabric of policy-making, albeit associated most closely with the leadership of the hard-pressed modemrniser David Trimble and perhaps unlikely to wield much influence should he be ousted by an anti-Agreement politician.

The same arguments apply in respect of British parties. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a troublesome anti-partitionist minority on the left of the British Labour Party, sympathetic to Republicanism, hostile to unreconstructed Unionism and prone in principle to a 'troops out' solution. Such views might well have been in the majority in the wider party. Yet the paradox remains that since 1997 it has been Bennite-free New Labour that has proved more imaginative and flexible-Unionists might say more appeasement-minded-towards Irish Republicanism than the old faction-ridden party ever-threatening to be in government. To what extent does this represent a shift in Labour policy resulting from a recognition of and a desire to build on the achievements of the Major government, and to what extent--if any--is it the product of years of policy development within the party before 1997? Similarly for the Conservative party: did the apparatchiks of Smith Square play any part in Northern Ireland policy modernisation in the 1980s and 1990s, or was this simply a consequence of the inexorable weight of the Whitehall machine suffocating the better instincts even of Margaret Thatcher (in her case, of course, only temporarily)?

To point to lacunae in academic discussion of the peace process is not to criticise the various authors and editors involved in these three very valuable works. We might note, however, that of the total of 35 authors represented in the books, thirteen are based outside the island and just one, John Coakley, researches in a university in the Republic of Ireland (the other two Dublin authors are a leading journalist, Paul Gillespie, and a key official, Martin Mansergh). While there have been some valuable contributions in recent years from south of the border-the political sociology of Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, and the diplomatic history of Michael Kennedy come to mind1- Southern scholarship on the Northern Ireland issue unhappily stands out for its rarity as well as for its high quality. This begs the awkward question of what the rest of us down here are up to.

I'Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The dynamics of conflict in Northern Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), and Joseph Ruane and Joseph Todd (, After the Good Friday Agreement (Dublin, 1999); Michael Kennedy, Divisions and consensus: the politics of cross-border relations in Ireland, 1925-1969 (Dublin, 2000).

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:24:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions