Paisley raises the bar on policing

Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has moved to raise the bar on accepting participation with Sinn F&ea...cute;in in a new Northern Executive by confirming that Republican participation in the policing boards will not meet DUP demands for “total support for policing”.

At the reconvening of the Northern Assembly this week, Paisley made clear that he is in no rush to share power with Republicans, and dismissed out of hand suggestions that he was anxious to win a place in history as the first Unionist leader to make such a deal.

“What I want,” he thundered, “is to uphold democratic principles, and at my age I have no particular interest in office for the sake of office.”

A vote on forming a new Executive will not take place until Monday, but everyone understands that a motion by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams to elect Ian Paisley as First Minister will fail because of the DUP's refusal to entertain power-sharing at this stage.

The two governments have given the parties until 24 November to form an Executive, and no one expects that to happen before then. But Paisley's insistence on extra demands concerning policing raise real doubts about how interested he is in a deal at any stage.

The Republican movement is coming under intense pressure from the governments and the political establishment to sign up for policing, but this is not an easy issue for Sinn Féin. The leadership of the party emphasises its demand that the politicisation of policing be brought to a complete end, and as part of this wants all British security influence over the police removed – MI5, Special Branch, the lot.

There is considerable anger in Republican circles that these concerns are not entertained in media circles and that Republican opposition to the current policing disposition is dismissed as obdurate anti-statism.

In fact, one MLA told me that the real problems go much deeper, as the PSNI are as hated by young nationalists as the RUC which preceded it. “What has changed?” he asked me. “They've changed the uniform and the name, but the same people are in charge, the same anti-Catholic mind-set runs through the force, and it remains a political instrument to keep the nationalists down.”

This source told me it would be a very hard sell for the Republican leadership to get its young voters to understand and support any acceptance of the PSNI. “The only person to have come close to recognising this,” I was told, “was [Minister for Foreign Affairs] Dermot Ahern, who has been excoriated for saying he understood Sinn Féin's position on policing.”

What is clear – and Dermot Ahern has admitted this – is that no deal on policing will be done unless it is part of a complete package.
While Paisley's attempts to create new obstacles to a deal are the most important development of the past week, the reconvening of the Assembly was dominated by a curious row within Unionism when David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party signed the roll as a member of Reg Empey's Ulster Unionist Party group. Ervine's PUP, of course, is linked to the UVF, which is not on ceasefire, still holds its weapons and is stigmatised as still being involved in paramilitary violence.

Under the d'Hondt system, by which ministerial appointments would be shared out between the parties when an Executive comes to be formed, without Ervine the UUP would be entitled to two ministers and the DUP to four (assuming that Paul Berry returns to the DUP fold in time for an Executive vote). With Ervine on the list, the UUP will get three ministers as will the DUP (with Sinn Féin and the SDLP getting two each).

Adams seemed unfazed by the issue, even though he might sneak an extra minister, given the vagaries of the system and the uncertainty about Paul Berry. But the DUP are furious, and Paisley went as far as to say that he wouldn't share power with even the UUP if Ervine (and behind him the UVF) remained linked to Empey's party.

Ervine, of course, has noted that Paisley had no problem with his party sharing platforms with the late Billy Wright or with his own role in trying to create the Third Force. He dismissed Paisley's angst about links with violence as hypocrisy.

But equally it underlines how hypocritical the Official Unionists are in this regard as well.

While this argument is essentially a sideshow, it is an extra complication that the governments could do without.

The real work now is getting talks underway on the issues that divide the main parties, DUP and Sinn Féin. No one at this stage knows how the governments will go about this, but both the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British secretary of state Peter Hain are adamant that the November deadline is exactly that and will not be extended.

Indications are that the governments will wait until the Assembly has used up its initial six weeks of grace and will then begin the negotiations in earnest. Sinn Féin is happy to let others make the first moves, but Paisley is faced with a real dilemma because he risks losing everything if the governments carry out their threat to proceed with closer North-South integration without further reference to the Northern parties in the absence of a functioning Executive.

Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity