The Politics of Sectarian
Arithmatic
At his Party Conference in 2002 David Trimble,
Northern Ireland's First Minister, caused general surprise by calling for the British
government to hold a referendum in Northern Ireland on the question of whether
the Province should leave the United Kingdom and become part of the Republic of
Ireland. His call was surprising because Trimble has dedicated his political
career to keeping Northern Ireland within the UK. Trimble, of course expects
any such proposal to be defeated if it were to be placed before the electorate
in Northern Ireland. He went on, to general astonishment amongst Irish
nationalists, to attack the Republic as 'pathetic, sectarian, mono-ethnic,
mono-cultural state' that he contrasted with Britain, the 'vibrant
multi-ethnic, multinational liberal democracy…the most reliable ally of the
United States in the fight against global terrorism.'
So why call for a referendum at all?
The answer is that the success of the peace process
in reducing violence masks the distressing fact that absolutely no progress has
been made towards settling the conflict. In a sense, the Peace Process has
ushered in an era of politics as war by other means. How can this contention be
justified?
Well, modern understanding of war, especially long
running, intractable wars, tends to assume that it is irrational, the result of
blind hatred or poor communication. In fact, people aren't that stupid. Wars
always involve a genuine conflict of interests and they happen when at least
some of the people involved decide that the best way to settle the conflict to
their advantage is to use violence.
The fundamental conflict in Northern Ireland is about
whether the Province should be part of the United Kingdom, as it is now, or
part of the Irish Republic, as Nationalist politicians and voters wish it to
be. The whole sorry mess that we call the Northern Ireland Conflict rests upon
this single conflict of interests.
Why does the question of who governs Northern
Ireland matter so much? Well, the answer to that question boils down to this.
Unionists want to remain within the United Kingdom because they are British.
The United Kingdom is their country. Nationalists want to leave the United
Kingdom because they are not British and it is not their country.
How does the Good Friday Agreement affect this?
Well, like so many things in the Peace Process, that depends on how you
interpret the Good Friday Agreement. The aim of the negotiations that created
the Agreement was to devise a set of governmental institutions that would
reflect the differing allegiances of Northern Ireland's population. Under the
Agreement, the Province remains part of the United Kingdom, reflecting the
wishes of the majority of its population. There are, however, significant
concessions towards the nationalist minority. The Agreement created a
power-sharing Assembly that guarantees that nationalists will be represented in
the government of Northern Ireland. Even more significantly in the light of the
fundamental conflict of interest, the Agreement involves what are called
'North-South Implementation Bodies', an all-Ireland tier of government, quite
independent from London.
There are provisos. Pro-Agreement Unionist
politicians argue that these bodies are merely administrative, that it is just
common sense to have an institutional relationship with the Irish Government.
We do, after all, share a small Island and a whole host of common interests and
problems.
But for unionist voters in particular, there is no
hiding from the fact that supporting the Agreement involves a significant
compromise of the fundamental conflict. It involves an entirely new approach to
the whole concept of sovereignty. Pro-Agreement Unionists find themselves with
a policy, if not yet a well thought out supporting ideology, which says that
the institutions that govern Northern Ireland ought to reflect the identity and
allegiance of the minority as well as the majority. This principle is genuinely
revolutionary, and somewhere in the distance, not quite visible yet but
definitely there if you follow the logic, it is a principle on which the
elusive settlement of the Northern Ireland conflict could be based.
The trouble for pro-Agreement unionists is that
their compromise has not been reciprocated at all. Sinn Fein make no secret of
the fact that their aim is the same as ever, to take Northern Ireland out of
the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister of the Republic has spoken of a United
Ireland in his lifetime. Even the moderate nationalist party in Northern
Ireland, the SDLP, is committed to independence from Britain.
They interpret the Agreement as a step towards the fulfilment
of precisely the same agenda they have been following, in various forms, for
the last couple of centuries. Under this interpretation, the Agreement involves
no compromises on fundamental principles, it is just a new vehicle by which the
conflict can be pursued. The Peace Process has been one of conflict
transformation, turning a violent conflict into a poloitical one. It has not
been a process of conflict resolution aimed at producing a final settlement
based on compromise.
Their argument is that unionists can be persuaded to
leave the UK. The argument that is whispered in the background is that the
Catholic population of Northern Ireland, overwhelmingly Nationalist, is
growing. If the unionists can't be persuaded, they can be outnumbered. This is
the politics of sectarian arithmetic.
It is difficult enough for people who have been
fighting for something for generations to compromise. It doesn't help if the
people you are compromising with are continuing to pursue an agenda that is in
conflict with your interests.
Nationalist reaction to Trimble's attack on the
Republic was to point to how far they have come in recent years, leaving behind
old-fashioned reactionary politics and adopting a more open, tolerant vision of
their nation. It was nationalist politicians who designed the Peace Process,
after all.
Trimble's attack on the Republic was signalling his
willingness to take on the nationalist arguments about the comparative benefits
of membership of the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland. He is willing
to argue that for every good reason to join the Republic, there is, in his
opinion, a better one for staying in the United Kingdom. He clearly believes
that many Catholics in Northern Ireland, would vote against leaving the United
Kingdom.
This may well be wishful thinking on his part, and
his attack on the Republic was indelicately put at best. But his call for a
Referendum in particular has had one immediate effect.
For all their protestations, it is clear that what
nationalists have not done is accept unionism as an equal. They are willing to
accommodate unionists, but only as another Irish minority. The founding
ideology of their ideal state is that on the Island of Ireland, the 'Irish'
identity and allegiance of the majority is worth more than the 'British'
identity and allegiance of the minority. It is a discriminatory ideology. It is
wrong for all the same reasons as the old Northern Ireland was; it is wrong to
say that I have more rights by virtue of my identity than you have by virtue of
your identity because there are more of us than there are of you. Unionist's
who voted for the Agreement were taking the first steps towards leaving that
mindset behind. Nationalists who voted for the Agreement hoping to tear it up
at the first opportunity and march out of the UK into the Irish Republic were
not. Alex Atwood of the SDLP made it clear that even his party would campaign
for a United Ireland in any referendum.
Trimble hopes that a proposal to leave the UK would
be defeated in a Referendum. His aim is to lift the imminent threat to
unionist's right to a form of government that reflects their identity and
allegiance. If the prospect of a United Ireland is pushed off the medium-term
agenda, he will find it far easier to take on his anti-Agreement unionist
opponents.
His longer term aim is to force nationalists to face
up to the fact that for all the distance they've travelled, they have a very
long way to go. He wants to remove the comfort blanket of demographic change,
hoping that this will introduce a new dynamic into nationalist politics,
towards a settlement based on compromise. He wants nationalists to see unionism
as an equal to be dealt with fairly rather than, as they often do, a problem to
be overcome.
And, perhaps, Trimble is simply of just how
dangerous the politics of sectarian arithmetic will be. One must, after all,
only look as far as the Balkans to see the consequences. When we try to
understand what happened to Yugoslavia, we tend to fall back on trite comments
about ancient ethnic hatreds.
In fact, what happened to Yugoslavia was the
politics of, in this case, ethnic arithmetic. he various ethnic groups of
Yugoslavia decided that their bits of the country should be ruled in their
interests because they were the majority. Ethnic Cleansing was what happened
when people on the wrong end of these decisions decided to change the
arithmetic. It wasn't an outburst of primeval hatred. It was applied logic. As
any historian knows, it is when he is at his most rational that man is capable
of his most evil deeds.
Perhaps Trimble understands how fatuous 'it could
never happen here' sounds when you consider how many died at the hands of
former neighbours during that sorry episodes. Perhaps he is simply desperate to
shift the debate onto other ground, even if he does offend sensibilities along
the way.
Trimble took a big risk with this speech. Things may
not work out the way he hopes. The referendum may not even happen and if it
does, it may not go the way he hopes. But if he can kill the politics of
sectarian arithmetic, he will have made by far his greatest contribution to
lasting peace yet.