Devolved and Divided

The degree to which Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic inhabit two parallel universes is starkly evident at the moment. Down South the vast majority of the adult population nervously awaits a December budget which threatens to contain the biggest cuts in public expenditure in the history of the state. What this will mean for the institutions and aspirations contained in the North-South provisions of the Good Friday Agreement is not clear but what is clear is that hopes of Irish unity based on southern economic success have evaporated — if they were ever realistic.

The most vibrant north-south linkage is not a Good Friday quango but rather is manifest in the traffic jams in border towns like Newry and Enniskillen caused by southern shoppers up to benefit from the weakness of sterling.

Up North, where the public sector continues to dominate the economy, the backwash from the international financial crisis has yet to be experienced full-on. But this temporary insulation will not last. Whichever party wins the UK general election before the summer, the first budget, an emergency one if the Ulster Unionists’ ally David Cameron wins, could have devastating effects on the local economy as a swathe is cut through the public sector.

How will our local devolved institutions and political class do when the whirlwind hits? This question, a not unreasonable one given the truly momentous implications for economy and society in the North of the first post-election budget, is absent from political discourse and media discussion in Belfast. This is in marked contrast to the Republic where only the report into the Catholic Church’s complicity in decades of child abuse has succeeded in temporarily pushing the economy and the budget from the centre of debate.

Of course given that the devolved government has no fiscal powers it will be difficult for it to be more than a dazed bystander if and when hurricane Osborne hits Belfast Lough. Issues which are of such fundamental importance have only entered political discussion in the refracted form of the DUP First Minister criticising the Ulster Unionists for their alliance with the Tories’ alleged cuts agenda. On this issue of political economy there is common ground with Sinn Fein’s proclaimed commitment to oppose any cuts in the public sector.

In fact the Northern Ireland executive’s room for manoeuvre post election will be severely constricted. But even given the objective constitutional constraints on the administration, the experience of devolution since 2007 does not give much grounds for optimism about its capacity to defend the North’s corner in the hard bargaining with the Treasury which will determine just how bad the next few years are going to be.

In his brilliant Northern Ireland: A Triumph of Politics, the essential primer for those seeking to grasp the dynamics of the peace process and the system of government it established, Frank Millar provides a revealing interview he conducted with Peter Robinson in 2002. Robinson excoriated the then First Minister and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, for accepting the core principle of the Good Friday Agreement: ‘Instead of confronting terrorism you actually elevated terrorists, gentrified their leaders, accommodated their wrongdoing and rewarded their evil.’

In reflecting on the mistakes of Trimble, Robinson provided a sentence which illuminates some of the current problems the DUP and Sinn Fein have in providing the core of an effective government: ‘The central feature of any government is that there must be trust between the parties, I don’t trust Sinn Fein.’

The experience of other coalition governments, for example in the Republic, would suggest that the importance of trust can be exaggerated in comparison with the basic imperative of not doing or saying anything in public which threatens the government’s survival. From the perspective of even that more basic requirement the record of the DUP/Sinn Fein partnership does not inspire confidence.

Thus it was not at all helpful to Robinson’s effort to establish community (aka protestant) confidence for the devolution of policing and justice powers when Michelle Gildernew, Sinn Fein’s Minister of Agriculture, publicly criticised the PSNI’s raid on a prominent South Armagh republican for alleged possession of assets derived from criminality. But the problem goes deeper than ministerial loose cannons like Gildernew and the Sinn Fein Minister of Education, Catriona Ruane, who in her solipsistic crusade to single-handedly make the problems over the transfer from post-primary education much more acute, has become an embarrassment to her party.

Sinn Fein will respond to such criticisms by asserting that the problems do not stem from them but rather from Robinson’s failure to stand up to the ‘abominable No-men’ in his party and the continuous attacks of his former colleague, now leader of Traditional Unionist Voice, Jim Allister. It is certainly the case that Allister’s strong showing in the European elections together with a revival of confidence and performance on the part of the Ulster Unionists was a severe jolt to DUP strategists.

There is real fear that agreeing to the devolution of policing and justice before the general election could put nails in the coffins of a number of the party’s Westminster MPs. Republicans’ frustration also reflects the fact that they have largely been mute about developments on the security front in response to the growing threat from dissidents.

In response MI5 from its substantial new base in Holywood’s Palace Barracks has, according to David Sharrock, Ireland correspondent of the Times, doubled its commitment in the last nine months with hundreds more officers. Members of the British Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been sent to border counties to combat dissident attacks. There was a time, not long ago, when such developments would have produced predictable Sinn Fein anathemas against ‘securocrat’ threats to the peace process. Now it has been left to the largely rudderless SDLP to make the running on this issue.

Martin McGuinness’s denunciation of the murderers of two British soldiers and a policeman earlier this year as ‘traitors’ to Irish republicanism might not cut much ice in DUP heartlands but Sinn Fein expected something more positive from Robinson.

It is unlikely that Robinson is not well aware of the degree to which McGuinness and Adams have shifted from the sacred principles of republicanism. But in response to the fears and doubts among their own supporters the DUP tends only to acknowledge this in a back-handed manner by proclaiming how they have dragged republicans kicking and screaming onto the ground of democratic politics.

The mutual acerbity of tone and reflex on top of the very limited achievements of devolution on Robinson and McGuinness’s watch make a sour brew to sell to either party’s electorate. If the present crisis is surmounted it will be more because of a widespread sentiment of faut de mieux in both communities than a positive endorsement of the post-2007 dispensation.

The dissidents wish to exacerbate the contradictions and tensions at Stormont by killing more policemen. They are a growing threat and mainstream republicans’ dismissal of them as without community support can look strained. They will not be able to develop a campaign similar to that of the Provos in their hey-day. However, they are well aware of that fact and will be content to maintain sufficient activity to destabilise the devolved institutions. An executive paralysed by the opposed imperatives of shoring up distinct communal constituencies is what they must be hoping for.

In his speech to the DUP annual conference a couple of weeks ago Peter Robinson warned his listeners against a view, common to both communities: ‘If it’s good for them, it can’t be good for us.’ The problem for Mr Robinson is that until 2007 the irresistible rise of the DUP and the downfall of Mr Trimble lay in the DUP’s propagation of just such a view.

Managing the shock that the jettisoning of this view has generated amongst DUP voters has been at the core of the party’s problems ever since. Jim Allister is trying to do to Robinson what he did to Trimble. History is unlikely to repeat itself for, whatever happens, the DUP will not lose its status as the largest unionist party and mainstream republicans have moved far from their indulgence of episodes like the ‘Columbia Three’. But the next few months are still capable of bequeathing the new UK prime minister a major unwanted problem.