Northern Talks: A long day's journey into peace

Assessments of republican intentions following the Ard-Fheis clashed. One confident BBC Radio Ulster voice proclaimed on air that Sinn Féin looked ready to campaign in the referendum for a ‘yes' vote in the north, a ‘no' in the south. Could well be right, a senior SF'er confirmed solemnly. And pigs might fly, a second SF'er told another broadcaster.

On the surface, Sinn Féin maintains the casualness they brandished at the end of the talks, although there was nothing cool about the final night. Friction between themselves and the SDLP is still obvious. “There's huge bitterness,” says a talks insider, “the SDLP claiming SF stole their arguments on the Assembly, SF accusing them of ‘bottling out'.” But with the wider nationalist community disposed to wish the agreement well, recrimination may soon be muffled.

The loss of Articles 2 and 3 will rumble on. Northern nationalists are acid about opposition from the south, especially the deep south.

Northern republican irritation is voiced with little apparent awareness of their own partitionism. “Nobody went out and fought and died for Articles 2 and 3,” said a northerner with a prison record. “When you listen to Rúairí O Brádaigh getting all
het up, wouldn't you wonder at the neck of him?,”  said another. “And guys from Cork and Kerry—that's a hell of a long way from the action.”

After all the edginess in advance about the impossibility of selling any agreement David Trimble was likely to sign, SF have taken up a position some way behind the UUP leader, but with apparent confidence that they can deliver in due course.

“They have a hard enough selling job”, one close observer insists. “I hear people saying it's time Adams and McGuinness came out and gave a clear lead. They should lead them by the nose.”

A young Derry nationalist said laughingly that her family changed their minds from day to day. “Nobody wanted to be the first to comment. Then when they got themselves straight, someone said ‘did you read the bit about policing?' They all went off and came back the next day and you should have heard them: ‘I don't know what to think now, it's not the way I thought it was.'”

Like the Ulster Unionist leader, it seems Gerry Adams can travel some distance on the drabness of his opponents and their lack of alternative strategy. “Look at them,” said a cruel youth, “no charisma, no arguments, they can't say clearly what the objective of armed struggle should be now - so what's their alternative?”

The weariness that many discern as agreement's deepest support, is voiced as a major put-down of the 32 county sovereignty people.” Are they suggesting Sinn Fein's been on the wrong track since ‘82? Do they want to go back to pre-Bobby Sands? People won't buy that.” 

In this view, the clincher is the military argument, or lack of it. “If they're suggesting that they're the new Provos and the Shinners are the Sticks, who's going to believe that? Militarily no new group is ever going to replicate the intensity of the struggle the IRA fought.
And if the IRA couldn't do it, and everyone agrees they couldn't win, like the Brits couldn't, this lot certainly can't do it.”

But there are major differences in the situations facing unionists and nationalists. One may seem more significant than it proves in the end, if unionist public opinion does indeed turn out to be more attuned to compromise than the bulk of David Trimble's parliamentary party and young workers. Plainly, nationalist opinion in general, while sceptical about the chances of a complicated and embattled timetable delivering workable institutions, is, as one veteran put it, also “sighing with relief.”

The section which some thought must harbour deep and burning suspicion—republicanism—looks far less fraught than unionist MPs. “That's down to preparation”, said the talks insider, “if Trimble had done a fraction of the work Adams and co. put in, he wouldn't have had this nervy start. “Some other talks participants noticed a month back that one-time regular attenders, Pat Doherty and Lucilita Breathnach, had gone missing: touring the provinces, it emerged, talking to the grassroots. “And boy has Doherty got his finger on the pulse of the party.”

What happens next no one knows. The betting would probably be for referendum successes, followed by elections that few will guess at. The recurrent question of the SDLP's ability to fight off a Sinn Fein challenge gets opposite answers from an urban SF party worker and a rural SDLP supporter. “I think we're sunk”, says the SDLP man, “though after all the work our lot put in, it hurts me to say so. But where's the young blood?”

Not the way the Sinn Féiner reads it. “We're short of big names to take on the likes of Mc Grady and Mallon, aren't we? We get a bit high on our own opinions sometimes.”

David Trimble faces into the next two months, dependent to a large extent on the dimming of Ian Paisley's star and the lack of starriness in his own party.

The almost touching relaxation of those once clenched Trimble features—reminiscent, some think, of Gerry Adams when he first met approval from the wider world—may well be reversed. Paisley rallies might begin to pick up numbers. Opposition inside the UUP might organise. MP's Willie Ross and Willie Thompson, most outspoken of the rebels, are likely to plough ahead with their protest but seem initially at a loss about how to maximise it. With other disaffected UUs they might agree to share platforms with Ian Paisley.
And North Down MP Robert M Cartney might recover his old energy.

McCartney's potential influence is more feared by a number of Trimbleites than that of the 72 year old Reverend Ian. The Paisley hold on his hardcore vote is not in doubt, though the vote itself looks past its best. But “sellout” remains strong voodoo, and the crude Paisley appeal to wider unionism in European elections was still evident in 1994 when he polled 29.2% of the vote.

There is no threat in the tiny McCartney-invented UK Unionist party. As a self-made wealthy man and successful Queen's Counsel, ‘Big Bob' can still ‘tug the heart-strings' of UUP workers and voters from his days as a starry new recruit to the party, according to veterans. But legend has it that publication of the 1995 Framework document brought an unsolicited McCartney hatchet job to the Belfast Newsletter for publication within three hours.

This time comment came more slowly and with less ferocity. Opinions vary: has McCartney decided the agreement voices an unspoken unionist desire for compromise? Or does he recognise that affluent and snobbish North Down disliked seeing their parliamentary representative on a platform with Ian Paisley last winter, in front of a crowd—which at one point let rip with the bloodthirsty sectarian anthem “We are the Billy Boys.”

There is still a worry about how UUP dissidents might respond to a McCartney tongue-lashing even if delivered in private down the telephone line, and whether this might weld together a disparate bunch. Some also question the role of David Trimble's predecessor, Jim, now Lord, Molyneaux, known to have discreetly disapproved of the entire peace process.

In the agreement's first week, speculation centred on the ambitious young Jeffrey Donaldson, Molyneaux' successor as Lagan Valley MP. His walk-out as negotiations ended, provided a positive spin on the anti-agreement argument—at least until the Unionist Council voted on April 18th—by demanding reassurances from Tony Blair on decommissioning.

“I see Jim's fine hand there,” said one insider. “That's Trimble's weakest point. And then when I think about it, it could be Bob in the background.” Others thought Donaldson's ambition stood on its own. “If Trimble falls at the council”, said one observer fiercely, “who's the leader then? Come on, who gets it?”

In advance of the Council meeting, the insider estimate of David Trimble's requirements was steep. “Willie Ross etc might well reflect a solid base, and that would grow. He needs 75% of the vote to kill them off.”

The UUP leader's vote came in at 72%. Temptation to declare him safe was dispelled for some by the recollection that the UU Council of the day had initially backed Brian Faulkner, the toppled Unionist leader of 1974. With McCartney and Paisley on the prowl, success in the forthcoming referendums will still not reassure David Trimble. The subsequent election campaign will be his real test, with the possibility of anti-agreement UUs shredding his vote. A veteran of the 1974 struggle takes the cynical view: “If David can get momentum into the constituencies now, and get people who support him selected, then we might see people who just want jobs in any assembly—and there's your tide.”

But UU constituencies are small kingdoms. If Messrs. Ross and company form a settled alliance and exert themselves, they could choose anti-agreement candidates for the Assembly election. Put that together with a reasonable Paisley and McCartney showing, and David Trimble could find himself entering the new legislature not as triumphant First Secretary but as shadow head of a shadow body with something much less than a workable 40% of the vote.

The ‘grey man' syndrome might save him. Clifford Forsythe (South Antrim), Roy Beggs (East Antrim) and the Reverend Martin Smyth (South Belfast) have made known their discontent but none strike sparks. They share dislike of Messrs Paisley and McCartney.
Willie Ross is more forceful but still uninspiring, and has internal constituency rivals. Willie Thompson is a soft-voiced loner: “no, a crank”, says the insider.

They all of them lack an alternative to David Trimble's hard-fought, unloved agreement. “I voted for it,” said a youngish member of the Ulster Unionist Council, “because we have no choice. But how's David going to sell it on the doorsteps?”

It could be, of course, that the UUP leader has a secret weapon, an instinct that the mass of unionism wants a settlement more than their political representatives.