Is peace safe with David Andrews?

Where politics once stagnated, events in Northern Ireland now chase each other helter-skelter. As Magill went to press, a new joint government document turned recent perceptions head over heels. Fionnuala O'Connor charts the doubts behind the instant reactions.

 
Attitudes to the “peace process” have always been very different: nationalists well-disposed but wary, unionists hostile or suspicious. As negotiations at last reach points of substance, the dread of paramilitary killings is constant, pressures on all sides intense. Some fear that the departure from negotiations of the tiny Ulster Democratic Party, one-time voice of what seems an increasingly anarchic UDA, may start unravelling the whole talks process.

The irony, in the view of participants and observers alike, is that progress has been stalled and the situation destabilised by the oddest combination: the actions of maverick paramilitaries and the erratic behaviour of the Dublin government. No one could be surprised at the destabilising effect of renewed violence. But there is surprise and growing anger that a Fianna Fáil–led administration should endanger structures created largely by the efforts of Irish governments, in particular by those of former Labour leader Dick Spring and Bertie Ahern's predecessor as party leader, Albert Reynolds.

It's been a rocky ride so far for the northern talks, underpinned as they are supposed to be by paramilitary cease-fires. At this point, to meet the May deadline signed up to by both Irish and British governments, serious negotiations should be well under way. Instead their very basis is at risk.

Republicans fear that the central premise on which they came to the table has been torn up, unionists are torn between hoping that that is so and fears that the governments are once more dithering. Their decision to oust the UDP may have come too late to re-establish authority. The document of Tuesday, January 27 might have redressed the balance and eased nationalist discontent. But there is a real and general concern that Dublin and London have been blown this way and that, showing dangerous weakness.

The first IRA cease-fire broke down when Sinn Féin's admission to talks was repeatedly postponed. Talks themselves got bogged down as unionists stalled on format and rules. Dublin's input has been vital at several points, fundamentally in drawing up the joint framework document of February 1995. John Bruton as taoiseach caused frequent anxious moments to those most involved in creating and maintaining movement towards negotiation, principally SDLP leader John Hume and the Sinn Féin leadership under Gerry Adams. In their eyes, Bruton's mistaken conviction that he could bring unionists on board and his distaste for Sinn Féin distracted him from what all concerned saw as the Irish government's chief role: to speak for the limited but defined nationalist consensus in dealings with the British government.
Irish officials were largely responsible for the framework document's scope and nuance. Theirs, not John Bruton's, was the passion for the underlying principles. In detailing how Northern Ireland could be reconstructed along lines of equality for two competing political identities and in describing the possible reach of North-South bodies, the framework gave republicans hope, and a fig-leaf—a chance to argue that they could achieve arrangements that at least allowed for gradual transition to a united Ireland. They decided it could be a basis for negotiation.

The charge now—made more openly by Sinn Féin and less so by some in the SDLP—is that Bertie Ahern allowed British prime minister Tony Blair to re-tool a draft “heads of agreement” document presented to the parties on January 12 in both their names, under pressure from Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and the threat of increased loyalist violence. The concern was that this sets out an agenda for negotiation that has been stripped of the framework's essence and was nakedly partitionist.

“What bothers me is the notion that there's no centre of gravity any more,” says an ageing observer. “Maybe this is the crunch that always had to come. Maybe it was inevitable when unionists were faced with the necessity to deal and republicans had to face the limits of what's on offer. But I think I see signs of the British losing the plot. Worse than that, the Irish seem to have forgotten it.” Another was more blunt: “The Brits are never going to stick with it unless Dublin stays on their backs. It's always been the way. Why should Blair be different? Bertie's lost the script. And if Martin Mansergh's still dialoguing with the Provos, nobody's listening to what he hears.”
The most serious implication some draw, almost under their breath because they dislike admitting they think so, is that the government has helped confirm loyalists in the belief that the talks and the entire “peace process” can be swept away if they continue to kill at the present rate.

The present spiral of violence was initially due to two groups outside the talks: the tiny, discredited Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), which has a history of murderous internal feuding and crime, and the more mysterious Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), originally largely composed of UVF dissidents, which exists to oppose and undermine the ceasefires of the larger UDA and UVF. Both of the maverick groups are excluded from talks because they refused to call cease-fires. Both bitterly oppose the talks format and the prospect of any compromise it might produce.
LVF leader Billy Wright's killing by the INLA inside the Maze prison was followed by a string of loyalist killings of Catholics, another INLA killing, and more Catholic deaths. To those who feel most vulnerable in the wider population, arguments about throwing parties out of talks are not the priority. Steel bars have gone back up inside front doors, gates on the bottom of stairs. In a small supermarket on the fringe of a loyalist district, the Catholic owner took a sledge-hammer and broke a crude hole in the back wall of the shop. He did it without thinking about how to block it at night, his only thought escape. UDA man Jim Guiney had been trapped days before by his INLA killers in his own small shop, hemmed in by his rolls of marked-down carpet.

Jim Guiney's killing shook the tiny UDP. He was close to two party delegates at Stormont—UDP leader Gary McMichael and David Adams—and by all accounts a strong supporter of negotiations. McMichael and Adams are liked in the talks. “It was uncomfortable to watch, but I felt for them too,” said a delegate from another small party who saw the news come in.” Another noted the UDP's confusion: “They kept saying ‘he's not a shooter, he's not a shooter.'”

“It's clear the UDA don't listen to Gary or Davy,” says another participant. “I don't know about John White.” In talks where many others have violent records, White's convictions for two particularly gruesome killings all of 22 years ago should not lend him the image he seems to relish as hard man to the diplomacy of McMichael and the soft-spoken David Adams. Even White's credentials seem to have failed to reach the other hard men. The probability of a UDA split now hangs over the UDP, and the possibility of their being allowed to come back into talks.

The paper eventually presented as the two governments' “heads of agreement” was meant to kickstart real negotiation when talks reconvened after Christmas on January 12. As that date approached, loyalists suggested their cease-fires were precarious, and their imprisoned leaders were visited in quick succession by Trimble and Secretary of State Mo Mowlam. Then, journalists sympathetic to the Ulster Unionists ran predictions that the document would show Blair meeting a unionist prescription for a settlement firmly bounded by the union.

A frantic weekend of phone calls between Blair, in Tokyo, and the Taoiseach produced a result less strident than the leaks but left many nationalists rattled. A northern assembly got prominence while unionists' chief bugbears, the kernel of the framework, were omitted: the proposition of equality for nationalists and unionists inside Northern Ireland and the potential for North-South structures to develop.

Bertie Ahern had to take responsibility for the unseemly fluster of his own dealings with Blair, said one non-nationalist observer. But sooner or later a Dublin-directed disaster was inevitable. “I can say this, the Shinners and the SDLP won't. There's no consistency. Ray Burke looked strong, did alright, but he was distracted and he hardly got his feet under the table. David Andrews doesn't do the work. Nobody on his own side tells him when he goofs. Dublin's all over the place, puffing Trimble up on the one hand, leaving Sinn Féin out of the room one minute, sucking up to them and annoying the SDLP the next. Now this.”

A man known for the moderation of his language says, “Bertie's channel to David Trimble, alongside Trimble's access to Blair, that's damaged the possibility of building up the talks themselves. Trimble loves this notion of the three prime ministers in conclave. Why would he lower himself to negotiate at Stormont when a prime minister and a taoiseach are his to command?”
British and Irish ministers together emphasised that these were merely propositions for “heads of agreement,” an agenda rather than a blueprint. It took several days for Sinn Féin disquiet to emerge in detailed form, echoed in an IRA statement with an ominous ring. This stated baldly that “yet another British prime minister had succumbed to the Orange card,” that the document was not a basis for a lasting peace settlement and that “meaningful inclusive negotiations” were crucial, with the implication that these had been blocked off.

SDLP negotiating strategy demands at least a public show of approval for anything Dublin has jointly signed. Sinn Féin is more openly disappointed. After the obstruction they saw in John Major, the SDLP and Sinn Féin alike accept that Tony Blair's Labour government decided to go with the peace process as defined for them by Dublin: that is, to test the proposition that this could end violence and deliver a stable settlement. Blair policy has caused tremors: his “no united Ireland in the lifetime of the youngest person in this room” remark, Mo Mowlam's visit to the UDA. Northern nationalists never imagined that the weakest link in the process might turn out to be an Irish government led by Fianna Fáil.

“It could be that they underestimated Adams's objections before they finally signed up to these heads of agreement. It could be that this was purely intended to kickstart negotiations. That's the best interpretation possible.
That's what the SDLP profess to believe, though I don't think they do,” says the veteran observer. He wonders again why Bertie Ahern was not better advised, if not by officials then by someone like John Hume.

But the SDLP leader's profile in the talks process generally is curious. Like the Taoiseach's special adviser on the north, Martin Mansergh, Hume was out of the country on the crucial weekend. He has been more absent than present for much of the process to date, say participants. Dublin might well have difficulty deciding where SDLP authority now lies, other parties suggest.

“Hume can't stand this stuff now,” said a former fan who hopes against hope, “I think he might be pacing himself for the final stretch.” Another is glad the famously impatient SDLP leader has paid sparing visits to the talks.
“He'd be climbing the walls if he was here more. You can see him deciding to switch off for the good of his health. The head goes down on the arms. I don't know if he actually sleeps.”

It is of course possible that nationalist, particularly republican, discontent with Dublin and London is exaggerated as part of a general “positioning” by all parties—gearing up as negotiation on specifics becomes unavoidable.
“Everybody's posturing,” said one tired politician. “Everybody's positioning at this stage.”

Republicans in and close to leadership insist that their cease-fire is not about to end in the near future. “We're in this for the long haul,” said a republican official on the night after the heads of agreement emerged.
“Negotiations are the only game in town; we're not walking away from it, whatever worries we may have.” But then the same person continued: “we have no difficulty reading it as a basis for negotiation. It doesn't preclude us from bringing our own issues.” The IRA response, eight days later, was a good deal harsher.

Whatever the true level of republican unease about Dublin's dealings with London and their joint management of negotiations, the pace of loyalist violence gives republicans an immediate problems. There is a growing, primitive call for the IRA to strike back—even though 30 years of death tolls show that retaliation is no more deterrent than it is moral. In much the same way as unionists believe the INLA to be a proxy for the IRA, “licensed” by it in David Trimble's phrase and essentially part of a pan-nationalist front to break the union, many nationalists, not just republicans, suspect that the LVF is a catch-all title used when it suits the larger groups—and secretly admired by unionists who think the IRA's cease-fire is just the most recent nationalist trick, dreamed up by an alliance of the Catholic church, Gerry Adams and, wiliest of all, John Hume.

The strongest republican argument against the IRA ending their cease-fire in the face of the recent string of killings is that this would give loyalists and unionists what they want, by preventing negotiations. Some of those who support the argument are themselves unsure about the outcome, as they are about the shape of any likely settlement.

“I'm sure the loyalists would love to know what it would take,” says an ex–IRA prisoner. “I'm sure they're wondering, ‘If we went into a youth club or a community centre or a bookies or a pub, would that draw the IRA in?'—and I don't know what the threshold is.” He was speaking before a loyalist gang placed themselves on the roadside in the heart of republican west Belfast, flagged down a taxi driver, and shot him dead.

By one of those thought processes that southerners rarely understand, the INLA is not blamed in republican districts for triggering this terror by killing Billy Wright. “No,” the ex-prisoner says, “because the Catholic mood was up before that. They'd say, ‘what about Seán Brown in Bellaghy, what had that got to do with Billy Wright? That was the LVF, whoever the hell they really are, trying to wreck the thing.'”

The much-reported police estimate that Billy Wright was responsible for up to 30 Catholic deaths over 15 years certainly colours opinions about his killing. Loyalist violence before the recent spate, continuing through the IRA's cease-fire and scarcely commented upon, is more to the point. Republicans killed five people in 1997—two policemen and a soldier killed by the IRA before their cease-fire, a policeman and Billy Wright by the INLA.
Loyalists of various kinds killed 15 people—the UDA two, the UVF two, the LVF four, with disputed circumstances in several other deaths. Some killings were apparently the results of internal loyalist feuds.

The LVF victims were Catholic civilians, two of them teenagers, a girl shot in bed beside her Protestant boyfriend, a boy whose burned body was hidden among animal carcases. Yet some imagine that the LVF began to kill only when Billy Wright was shot, and that the two larger loyalist groups held blamelessly in 1997 to their cease-fires.

Sinn Féin supporters, and others in the wider nationalist community, resent that impression. The sense that loyalist violence against Catholics is invisible and unnoticed translates into more pressure on the IRA, already digesting political problems. Whatever the polished Sinn Féin spin, this comes down to macho pride: other paramilitaries are putting it up to them. Their community says “do something.”

“If republicans are extremely clever, they won't do anything,” says the ex-prisoner. “The big danger for them is if Catholics continue to be killed and the INLA kills some major loyalist paramilitary figure. There would be a sort of residual respect for the INLA then which would hurt the IRA. I don't think it's likely: the INLA are far more likely to end up killing ordinary Protestants. Why did they target Jim Guiney? Because he was a quarter of a mile out of Twinbrook. But…there's still the myth, August '69, IRA means I Ran Away, and that's what this whole last two generations has been predicated on.”
Perhaps, with hindsight, this was exactly when we should have expected the crunch to come, even down to the INLA—which no informed quarter believes was anything but characteristic reflex violence on their part.
Both governments began to insist before the Christmas talks break that the first month of the new year must see the start of real negotiation. Ministers pointed towards mid-February or March. “That's when we'll need to have the gist of it agreed,” one said privately, “or we'll never make the May deadline.” A period of six weeks' intensive negotiation, in other words, a crash-course towards compromise. Persistent rumour has it that the UDA in the Maze gave Mo Mowlam a deadline to achieve an outline of an acceptable settlement—six weeks again. And republicans do not deny the security-force claim that the IRA is to review the cease-fire in March. According to IRA rules, it is said, no review is needed to end a cease-fire, only to prolong it. Deadlines multiplying, muscles flexing.

But no matter how often violence blocks the path, if Northern Ireland is ever to find stability the present peace process, or something very like it, still seems the most likely route to the necessary compromises. Which is the framework worked out two years ago by the two governments. Sinn Féin never openly welcomed that document. It is a measure of how they have come to terms internally with compromise that they now profess such concern at the possibility that Dublin has backed away from it.

This is how a republican definition of that compromise goes in private: “The framework document turns out to be the minimum republicans could sell. The minimum. And only because it implies a dynamic towards an open-ended settlement, in the assurance of demographic change, sectarianism shrinking here so we can end up in a decent place—which, you know, isn't that hard to stick. With further possibilities.”

An upbeat note. The downside is the grim possibility that, even if a stable compromise is ever reached by “the central ground of the Ulster Unionists, SDLP, Alliance and Sinn Féin”—a surprising recent description by John Major—violence by groups outside any new consensus, like the LVF and INLA, may still not come to an end.