History made as centrists meet in middle ground
Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey introducing SDLP MLA and Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie to the media after her address.
The appearance of a SDLP Minister at a UUP Conference, the first time that a nationalist politician has done so in nearly 90 years, may well be the first sign of the centre fighting back in Northern politics.
Having borne the burden of the day and the heat, to borrow a Biblical analogy that might not impress the literalists of the DUP, it must have been extremely galling, to both former major parties, that the electorate chose to reward those parties who had scoffed outside, and who had entered the vineyard of democratic politics only late into the eleventh hour.
Even in the heady, if brief, days of the post-Sunningdale power-sharing executive, the possibility was never entertained that a SDLP minister would address the UUP, or vice versa.
Indeed, when the unionists in the executive did want to bring SDLP back-benchers into line on their demands for an executive role for the Council of Ireland, they did so by proxy, through Stan Orme, a NIO junior minister.
It is still not conceivable that Martin McGuinness would be given a hearing at a DUP conference -- although Sinn Fein would probably be more prepared to listen to Dr Paisley in his latest reincarnation, as benign father of the people.
That Margaret Ritchie was well received should not come as a surprise. Unionists are courteous people and their conferences generally decorous affairs (except when they are cannibalising their own leaders).
That she should have addressed the conference wearing her ministerial hat, and under her party label, is indeed worthy of note -- a milestone -- but, in what direction is less certain.
It may well be a sign of weakness, rather than strength, that parties which could not, when at the height of their powers, contemplate a common platform, are now prepared to do so.
That she should have had a standing ovation is perhaps less noteworthy in present circumstances, than the very fact of her presence on the platform.
Ms Ritchie is currently the darling of the UUP (and, indeed, of many on both sides of the main political divide) for her decisive stance on violence and her refusal to pay grants, allocated by Peter Hain for community activities aimed at conflict transformation, in areas dominated by the criminal activity of the UDA.
In the crude shorthand of the headlines, this becomes money for guns, and Ms Ritchie has roundly told loyalists that guns must go. In this, she has drawn support across all the parties (including those who would question her methodology).
The result has been to hugely raise Ms Ritchie's political profile, which may indeed have been part motivation for the robustness of her stance.
Political motivation, even among the highest-minded politicians, is seldom entirely pure. Ms Ritchie was delivering the message that unionists most wanted to hear.
That she did so in words borrowed for the occasion from Edward Carson added piquancy.
Unionists, more than others, can see what loyalist paramilitaries and associated crime are doing to their communities.
They are also suspicious of what might happen if they go political.
What is more interesting in Ms Ritchie's appearance at the conference, and her speech, and the reception accorded to both, is what it tells us about relationships within the executive, and how these are likely to affect the prospects for success.
The grand theory of consociational democracy on which the executive is grounded, is intended to provide security for all groups in a divided society, by ensuring a voice for all in decision making, and that no majority can dominate a minority on the other side of the major lines of cleavage.
It is less good at dealing with a situation where the two largest parties on either side of the main divide combine to obliterate all the minor parties on their respective sides.
There is a danger that Northern Ireland could be heading for a two-party state, and the fear that those parties would represent the extremes on both sides.
It is arguable, however, that the voters supported the DUP and Sinn Fein because they offered the best hope of ending the conflict and securing a local administration.
Rather than the electorate becoming more polarised at the extremes, the parties desirous of getting into power moved towards the centre. Both SDLP and UUP, in their present pain, are in danger of blaming the voters, rather than themselves, for getting it all wrong.
There was, and probably still is, a section of opinion in both the UUP and SDLP which argued against joining the executive and for combining to form a reasoned opposition within the executive, and providing the challenge which the present system sadly lacks.
In that way, they might, together, by building support in the middle ground, provide, over an election or two, the basis of a cross-community consensus which would meet the criterion of broad support, and offer an alternative to DUP/Sinn Fein.
The situation could be further complicated if Fianna Fail were to organise in the North (wrapping the mantle of their version of republican orthodoxy round SDLP) and if this encouraged the UUP to renew links with the Conservative (and unionist?) Party.
In the meantime, however, the task of ministers is to make the power-sharing executive work.
If they cannot do so without slagging each other off, the future is bleak for all.
Within these constraints, however, the willingness of both the SDLP and UUP to fight back from their present position of relative weakness, can only be good for politics in the North.
- Maurice Hayes
