Maurice Hayes: North stand-off rooted in lack of mutual respect
Monday February 01 2010
INCH by inch, row by row, that is how the talks do go (or 'go now', depending on how you think 'row' should be pronounced).
The parties have laboured long into the night for most of the week, and will reconvene today. The coded messages from both sides on the adjournment were cautiously optimistic.
The gap between DUP and Sinn Fein, we were told, had almost closed, with the implication that settlement was near.
Sammy Wilson was right when he claimed that a settlement made in the North would be preferable to one imposed from without. He will recall, though, that the sheet with which William Bloat managed to hang himself "in a mean abode on the Shankill Road" was also of Ulster manufacture.
There is, sadly, precedent for near-agreements dissolving over the weekend when parties go back to those who keep the fires of tribal animosity stoked, only to return on Monday to renew the ancestral conflict.
However, the message on the streets is that people want the thing settled, that they value devolved government, and do not want what has been gained put at risk by needless bickering. Above all, they do not want to see the fragile peace threatened by a return to violence.
The issues that have divided the parties are essentially symptoms of the deeper malaise that has crippled the Executive -- a chronic lack of mutual respect. Members of an enforced coalition do not have to like each other, but they should at least develop a sense of common purpose and a respect for the views and cultural values of their partners. This has not existed between DUP and Sinn Fein, who lose no opportunity to score points off each other.
It would be to everybody's advantage if, as well as dealing with the presenting problems of policing and parades, they were to deal with the other issues that have impeded the work of the Executive and emerge from the process in a new spirit of co-operative working.
No one could contemplate with equanimity the continuance of a system that required the periodical intervention of prime ministers and taoisigh, or where the parties engaged in trench warfare as jobs disappeared and the economy went down the drain.
DUP and Sinn Fein, as the largest parties have most to gain from a successful resolution of outstanding problems, and most to lose from failure.
DUP can scarcely relish an early Assembly election with a wounded leader under pressure from extraneous events, and leaking support to Traditional Unionist Voice, if not to voter apathy and disillusion.
Sinn Fein, having convinced republicans that politics could be made to work, can scarcely prove their point by packing it in now.
The elements of a settlement are there -- a firm date early in May for the transfer of policing, a means to select a justice minister and to accommodate a new justice department, and a means of supplementing the Parades Commission to deal with contentious parades locally and to mediate between what one group see as their right to march and another as their right to privacy and a quiet life.
The rest of the world can only marvel at the lack of any sense of proportion that would allow the desire of a small group to walk down a particular road, and the passion of a few others to stop them, to bring the structures of government to ruin.
It may be argued that there is no essential connection between marching and the transfer of policing, but marches do require policing, contentious parades place a huge burden on the police and the policing budget, and dealing with them could place an intolerable burden on the Executive and the new minister.
It makes sense, therefore, to remove marching as a cause for dissension and to find a civilised method of dealing with the conflict of rights involved.
Failure would have quite devastating consequences.
The alternative would be a divisive election resulting in a polarised Assembly that could not produce an agreed Executive, or direct rule, with Dublin involvement, which neither government wants.
It would presage a bleak period of cuts in public spending, loss of inward investment, a souring of the public mood and a boost for dissident republicans.
In this case, everybody would lose. But the biggest losers of all will be the brave young men and women (especially those from a Catholic and nationalist background) who joined the PSNI and are now left out on a limb, and at increasing risk. The politicians can either settle quickly, or be anathematised in the words of Cromwell to the Long Parliament: "Ye have sat here too long for any good you have done."
- Maurice Hayes
Irish Independent
