The Collapse of the Nationalist Consensus

The Stormont talks are unlikely to succeed. The only real doubt is whether violence will return. By Fionnuala O Connor

There are few now who believe a deal will emerge from the Stormont talks. The hope, perhaps forlorn, is that their failure will not result in a return to wholesale violence. If violence does return, blame will attach not just to the perpetrators.

Quietly, many observers will recall the failures of the two governments in the management of the peace process. And some will estimate that crucial damage was done and that the internal republican argument for permanently replacing violence with politics was lost when “the nationalist consensus” collapsed. They will point to an amalgam of misjudgement by Bertie Ahern's government and a lack of coherence in the SDLP, which left the British government without an essential corrective.

The inflexibility we have seen recently, of course, may precede somersaults.

Republicans are impossible to read with certainty from outside their regimented ranks. Gerry Adams took a full page in Ireland on Sunday to write what some took to be a prolonged resignation from the present process. But he also reiterated that a united Ireland was not available in the near future, a remark others thought set a tone of realism that hinted at further compromise. Similarly, one nationalist daydream has always had unionists holding out until the last moment against the inevitability of compromise, then “flipping over, like Afrikaaners accepting Mandela.” A harsher vision reckons that “they'll see the place in hell first.”

Yet referendum preparations and electioneering have begun, and one talks veteran maintains that “the gap could still close in the last 48 hours.” It is a minority view. More suspect, though only in private, that there will be no agreement and, therefore, no referendum.

“Even if John Hume wanted to, which he doesn't, he couldn't do a deal with Trimble on Trimble's terms,” is how one knowledgeable unionist puts it. “A Mickey Mouse assembly with David as first secretary, and a council of the British Isles—which would be neighbourly in its own good time to the “foreign country” next door? Why on earth would any nationalist buy that? The status quo is better for them than that. But if the British force Trimble to move now, they'll destroy him. They've left it too late. He's made no effort to prepare the party. He's surrounded by enemies—and Paisley and McCartney are waiting for him like wolves.”

This man believes that the Blair government has begun to put pressure on the Ulster Unionist leader by producing its own proposals for change, to be established in addition to structures agreed by the parties. Unionists do seem winded by successive British proposals for independent commissions on policing, justice, and the release of prisoners, following a joint government paper outlining how Dublin and London would together monitor the workings of any cross-border structures.

Less than a month from the talks deadline, David Trimble is still ridiculing the notion of significant cross-border bodies. Some cling to the belief that popular unionist support for a settlement will bring him to compromise. “In three weeks he has to turn himself inside-out, plus his party,” the unionist observer retorts. “It can't be done.”

The recent proposals suggest belated recognition by the two governments that no deal is possible if Trimble's position remains unchanged. But only two months ago, Blair and Ahern negotiated directly with the Ulster Unionist leader outside the talks. By doctoring a text to his requirements, some think they entrenched his position, making it more difficult, if not impossible, for him to move without appearing spineless—even if he wanted to.

It is not thought “helpful” for participants in the talks to voice any of this publicly. The ramp for peace from the White House through Downing Street to the taoiseach's office fits the long strategy of boxing the protagonists into compromise. The most openly sceptical have always been the Ulster Unionists, who foretold disaster from day one on the premise that republicans were not sincere about ending violence.

An opposite belief underpinned the original nationalist consensus, which helped launch the process of ceasefires and negotiation and brought Tony Blair on board.

Conviction that the leadership of Gerry Adams is committed to ending republican violence still exists. But some never believed it and others have begun to doubt. The irony is that even among the doubters, there are those who think the rest of nationalism shares responsibility for republican backsliding.

The notion of a consensus was central to Gerry Adams's argument within republicanism for a “peace strategy.” Given an unequivocal ceasefire, it effectively meant a commitment by Dublin and SDLP leader John Hume to work with Sinn Féin in dealings with London. As refined by Irish officials, they would push together towards equality inside Northern Ireland for nationalists and unionists, and cross-border arrangements, which would allow north and south to grow together.

A far cry from British withdrawal and Ireland free and united, an SDLP representative scoffed years ago, measuring how far short of their demands the Provos would be forced to settle with contempt that foreshadowed relations between the two groups inside the talks. They would want a fig-leaf, he said, “something to cover their bum.” As crafted by Dublin officials in the 1995 framework document agreed with London, the proposed settlement would have offered something more respectable.

The Adams leadership decided the framework could be a basis for negotiation, that it could be represented as providing a gradual transition to unification. Few Sinn Féiners imagined SDLP enthusiasm for a working consensus reached beyond Hume into the party organisation, more accustomed to competing with Sinn Féin for votes. But as a trade-off for silent IRA guns, the idea enthused rank-and-file nationalists.

In their view, the damage was done on January 12, after a frantic weekend of phone calls between Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, in a document called “Propositions for Heads of Agreement.” “That did what unionists wanted it to do. And it came in the middle of a loyalist killing spree,” says a senior republican. “It ditched the framework, elevated the notion of an assembly and relegated cross-border bodies.”

A much more moderate nationalist came reluctantly to the same conclusion. “I think the heads of agreement sent a misleading signal of what the final package could be. This is meant to get the whole of northern nationalism on board for the first time, after all.
That means political equality. And what did we get instead? ‘Equity,' whatever that is, because it's a Trimble notion about what ‘ethnic minorities' should be entitled to.” Another less moderately remarks that “nationalists, who make up 43 per cent plus now of the population, in a bit of their own country, aren't going to be patronised as an ethnic minority.”

The counter-argument is that a necessary tilt in “Propositions” towards unionist concerns was corrected two weeks later in another document presented at the Lancaster House talks. Where ground was given, it has been retrieved: Ahern has nothing to apologise for, a Dublin observer insists. “Don't get bogged down on words. This stuff about equity is just northern paranoia. They've been saying ‘equality, equality' here ever since.”

North and south, some are not reassured, especially by the suggestion that the choice of words does not matter. “There are two sets of people who are careful about language,” says one sceptic, “the Brits and the Provos.” But it was clear that the Lancaster House paper pleased David Trimble much less, because it reiterated commitment to the framework document—baldly, and still without reinserting key words for nationalists like “executive powers” in relation to cross-border bodies.

“Keeping Trimble in the game was important, of course,” says an observer with long experience of the talks. “But not at the cost of telling his people minimal change would do the business. Not if it meant letting Trimble approve what nationalists get. Not if we let London drift back again into the old thing of saying, ‘Well, Northern Ireland is unionist, you've got to work through the unionists or no dice.' Partly that's because establishing fairness right round the block is just too troublesome for them.”

The Irish News, Belfast's Catholic morning paper, is a strenuous supporter of the idea of nationalist consensus. Its sharpest commentator, the former SDLP politician Brian Feeney, had no doubt what happened on January 12: “How will life in the North change for people on the ground? That's the really important issue…Paragraphs 19 and 20 of the framework committed the British to…equality of civil, political, social and cultural rights…just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities. Unforgivably the Irish agree to downgrade this…Equity ain't equality. It's what a judge decides is fairness…The British and the unionists have always held out against equality. Can you imagine arguing against equality? The British did and the Irish sold the pass.”

In the context, “the Irish” were clearly the Ahern government.

What of the SDLP's influence on Dublin? Once, John Hume's voice would have been unmistakable, Dublin acting without his support unthinkable. Now even talks insiders can not tell if Hume has been silent, or is diminished in Dublin's eyes by the cross-currents in his party to the point where the team led by David Andrews imagine they have a superior grasp of the situation.

“What can you think?” says a long-time admirer.“Remember the talks in '92, the daring things Hume suggested then that pushed out the horizons—an EC element, his six commissioners?”

The notion that the SDLP might settle for an altogether tamer type of assembly became current enough to bother their voters, like Sinn Féin's. Meetings in nationalist districts have heard hard questions for both, principally “How do you prevent unionists abusing power in an assembly?” They also worry that an amended constitution will “put them out of the nation.”

One talks participant says Hume is entitled to rest, having provided energy and inspiration for years. A second pleads exhaustion and depression all round, a view various parties share: “You get so involved in the detail of the process, sometimes you lose perspective. It's inevitable. So many are there in good faith, with a wish to compromise—but the negativity and, I have to say, the sheer nastiness of the unionists is very difficult to deal with. It debilitates you.”

Behind all the speculation, there's the static of steady low-level loyalist violence, ignored by both governments, and suspicion about the IRA.

“I'm almost afraid to write what I'm hearing,” says a reporter with enviable security and paramilitary sources. “I wanted this thing to work. Blair and Mo and Ahern have been so gung-ho. You dread being called a wrecker.” For him, as for others, doubt began in earnest with the two killings that led to Sinn Féin's suspension from talks. That doubt reaches into the heart of both government machines. Republicans may well be right about the ill will and potential for sabotage among “securocrats,” civil servants and intelligence.

But securocrats were not responsible for those killings, or a third shortly afterwards. “One of the really worrying things about the killing of the UDA man Bobby Dougan was that it had pretty high-level clearance,” says an official.

The general conclusion was that republicans expected immunity. Some even wonder if mainstream involvement in violence is part of “an agreed programme for disassociating the military and political wings”—in advance of the expected failure of this “phase of the peace process,” as Gerry Adams calls it.

For all the recognition of how far Adams has come, mistrust and dislike of republicans goes deep, in the Republic's political system as in the SDLP. It threatened the Hume-Adams plan from the start. Perhaps the wonder is that a pan-nationalist consensus ever got off the ground, not that it came apart.