The North: Post Referendum - Its Only Just Begun

With Assembly elections, decommissioning and Drumcree still to come, the Northern Agreement has crucial tests to face. By Fionnuala O Connor

After the nail-biting Good Friday Agreement and then the Referendum, many of those already electioneering for the Assembly are determined to avoid another panic this time. As decommissioning becomes the focus of irritable exchanges, recitation of difficulties overcome is one way of steadying nerves. The agreement looked unreachable but it happened. The yes-margin in the referendum looked slim but was healthy. By this rule, fears that the election might destroy David Trimble's power-base or might grid-lock any new body are not just premature but unnecessary.

The latest counsel of calm may be more like hope than an observation: “Isn't that the spirit of the Agreement I hear? Mo Mowlam did it on TV the other day, insisted that everything has to happen together and that preconditions only prevent progress?”

To this way of thinking, republicans may indeed be preparing the way for some kind of declaration that ‘the war is over,' as demanded by David Trimble—in place of any token move towards decommissioning. “They'll look exposed if they don't get ready for something fairly substantial,” says the hopeful one, as impartial an observer as exists. “They want movement on about nine different fronts but none on decommissioning? That's just not on.”

To which voices inside republican communities reply that Gerry Adams has travelled far but the widest circle of his support will not follow him that distance. “It's not his own people he has to worry about, they'll swallow whatever the movement works out. It's ordinary Belfast Catholics who're saying ‘not a single bullet.' They say “I'm all for peace but they shouldn't hand over the gear.” It's partly David Trimble demanding it—the surrender bit. More of it is Bombay Street, what happened in ‘69 when the IRA had only that handful of pathetic old guns. And who was there to defend them? They saw the RUC in the mob that burnt their houses.”

Interpreting republican statements on the subject has once more become a matter of close textual analysis. The government's offerings add to the speculation. “I think you get echoes from the Taoiseach,” an official said recently. “I think Bertie's an honest man and because he's not a polished performer, some of what he knows comes out in what he says. When he hopes for a more concrete statement from Republicans about future intentions, I don't think he would be hoping out loud without some reason that his hopes might be fulfilled.”

Whether any formulation Gerry Adams might find on replacing war with politics would be acceptable to David Trimble as a substitute for actual decommissioning cannot be known, according to close observers of both men. Decommissioning is an elastic concept, they point out. The official international body headed by Canadian ex-Général de Chastelain has solemnly explored ‘modalities' with the loyalist fringe Progressive Unionists. That is, The international body reconvenes next month.

By then the marching season will be simmering: the ‘Tour of the North' threatening to ignite the sectarian interfaces threaded through North Belfast and Drumcree on the horizon. Gerry Adams' snappish response to the renewed calls for decommissioning was to link it directly with contentious marches: “Talk to me about that when the RUC hack their way down Garvaghy Road.”

Only half in jest, one observer has an idea for defusing the issue until the election is over and the assembly safely established: “People in Garvaghy Road would be outraged at the idea, but it isn't just unionists who think Sinn Féin has an influence there. The parades commission is about to announce they're re-routing the Orangemen, right? How about decommissioning Garvaghy Road? Adams phones Breandán Mac Cionnaith and says ‘we need your road, Breandán'. The Residents Coalition graciously invites the local lodges to march through, with no offensive songs or banners. The Orange say ‘don't you patronise us, we don't want to walk down your blasted road with your permission, thanks for nothing'. And First Minister Trimble's off the hook?”

The last fax from David Trimble's Glengall Street headquarters before Referendum Day had a characteristic flavour. Did it call on unionists from all ends of the spectrum to vote yes? No. The subject was more mundane. Because Monday May 25, it said, was the Spring Bank Holiday, the HQ would be closed. ‘Spring' had the capital ‘S' inked in over an original small ‘s'. That completed an impression of an office scarcely functioning, stubbornly underwhelmed by the most significant campaign in its history. David Trimble fought for the referendum at the head of a party divided from top to bottom, outclassed and outfought by the enemy, a point worth noting before any consideration of his own state of mind.

Campaign press conferences in the chaotic and amateurish surroundings of Glengall Street regularly displayed the UU leader flanked by a loyal, low-level few: Reg Empey, Dermot Nesbitt, fellow negotiators, neither man a force in the party. On the Wednesday morning of the last week—the week that made the difference—the morning after Trimble and John Hume appeared on stage with Bono and the day Tony Blair arrived for his third and conclusive boosting session, a journalist on the way into Glengall Street bumped into Dermott Nesbitt hurrying off to buy the Irish Independent for the latest poll. ‘We don't get the papers delivered', he explained.

Shortly afterwards, Nesbitt and soft-spoken party chairman Denis Rogan sat by while Trimble gave what regulars reckoned was by far his most relaxed and persuasive performance until then in the campaign. A copy of the Newsletter with a big front page spread photo of the Bono concert meeting lay beside his place. The happy faces at the concert, Trimble said, showed what the future could be with a Yes vote, contrasting sharply with the ‘sour' faces of Ian Paisley and Bob McCartney whom he described as ‘sneering' at the young audience for naiveté.

Paisley and McCartney offered “no alternative, no vision, no achievement,” he said.

A ‘No' vote would play into the hands of Sinn Féin/IRA, a ‘Yes' returned control over local affairs after 26 years “and on a better basis than before”. He gestured for Rogan to hold up the photo of himself and Hume: “That's the meaning of that photograph there.” A few minutes later the UU leader held up the Newsletter photograph himself for photographers, pointing to it again. “There is the message,” he said, “they say a picture is worth a thousand words. That's it.” But no words followed. He didn't name Hume, never mentioned partnership, didn't describe what the handshake meant.

There was terror in Glengall Street about reaction to the moment with Hume, officials admitted later. But the phones failed to light up: “we got away with it,” breathed one. Next day, Trimble shook hands with Hume, this time with Tony Blair in the Bono spot.

No Northern Ireland press conference is complete without Eamon Mallie, the tireless radio reporter and peace process historian. As the questions dried up, all of them comparatively easy for Trimble, with a strong sense in the room of even those usually least sympathetic to him willing him to maintain this positive mood, Mallie said thoughtfully: “You talk of the future as though it's a foreign country, David, where you're never going to live. When are you going to prepare your community for the inevitable moment when you have to accept Sinn Féin in cabinet?”

Some bent their heads to note the answer. But there was silence. Trimble was already leaving the table with Rogan and Nesbitt, the press conference terminated without a word to Mallie or the rest of us. The non-exhange spoke volumes about Trimble, his handling of Unionist opinion, and the issue of Sinn Féin taking ministerial posts. This is a politician whose conversion, if he has had one, is still not to be put into words. Whatever Trimble's eventual intention, decommissioning is still to be used over the next few weeks as though to bar SF from the executive.

As the Stormont talks neared their end the wider unionist world waited in vain for guidance from the UU leader. He reassured them throughout that he had made no significant concessions: he told his party executive the same thing. His negotiating team imagined until the very last moment in talks that they were agreed in holding out on a string of points - hence the 11th hour rebellion led by Jeffrey Donaldson. What alternative did he have but to play his cards close, say his few supporters, and observers straining to be fair. Did he not deliver? Didn't he bring the Unionist council with him, precisely to the degree of support he foretold? What was the prospect if he'd come clean earlier? And indeed, all the indications are that among those close to David Trimble in the last weeks of talks were several who thought little of passing on information, and documents, to his Unionist enemies outside.

Now the UU leader faces into elections which will almost certainly make two Sinn Fein representatives eligible to be ministers in the new Assembly. His approach to this sensitive moment? He began directly after the Yes victory was declared by making a list of demands on his future Executive colleague, Gerry Adams: for a declaration of an end to violence, decommissioning, disbandment of the IRA. Wooing No voters back and above all mending fences inside Ulster Unionism are the priorities. No difference there from Sinn Fein self-centredness and overweening compulsion to ‘reassure the base' that led Gerry Adams at the Ard-Fheis to describe the Balcombe Street gang -against a background of near-hysteria - as ‘our Mandelas.'

The gap where a positive UU campaign should have been was plugged not a moment too soon by the Tony Blair show, a blockbuster made up in equal parts of charisma, public relations slickness, Blair's own mastery of detail and set-pieces of considerable intensity. Others helped, starting with the group effort behind the Bono photo, which in terms of images began to redefine the last campaign week as determined rather than desperate. Over the fortnight before the vote the non-party Yes campaign kicked in, powered by NI's voluntary sector, many of whose young non-sectarian professionals see themselves as having a third identity between nationalism and unionism.

Slick posters and New Labour-type wheezes balanced the genuinely moving effect of victims' relatives calling for a Yes. A group of Protestant clerics were helped to present the message that you could be a Christian and vote ‘Yes', contrary to a lengthy statement from the General Presbytery of Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church, complete with Bible references, that the Agreement was a product of ‘devilish craft.'
The ‘Yes' clerics agonised for some time but decided to make no direct reference to Ian Paisley. A prompt counter-blast, signed by Paisley and his minister son Kyle among 156 others declared that ‘the Agreement flies in the face of Holy Scriptures.' The Word of God is expected to be invoked once more on at least one side during the forthcoming election.