The Agreement to end all agreement

The Agreement to end all agreement (Derry News, 6^th December 2004)

Ian Paisley’s taunt that the IRA must be “humiliated” by being forced to wear “sackcloth and ashes” will surely send alarm bells ringing among the general population. This is the man who’s on the verge of leading a government with Sinn Fein as his principal partner.

Gerry Adams replied that republicans are “decent people” and the politics of humiliation should be set aside for the politics of “liberation”.

These are noble, if provocative, words if you come from either a DUP or Sinn Fein background.

But most people don’t. Most people will see that these people are behaving at their worst, beating their collective chests, and attempting to outdo each other in order to reach the moral high ground first.

Gerry Adams once wanted to be seen as a liberator who stood up for what is right and was prepared to do, or order others to do, almost anything to achieve that liberation. So his taunt back at Paisley is just as fundamentalist as Paisley’s “humiliation” taunt.

Ian Paisley was just saying that he hadn’t changed despite the scent of high office, and Gerry Adams was simply replying that he hadn’t changed either.

So if neither has changed, you’ll wonder why they’re wasting their time trying to reach an agreement. You’ll wonder too how Sinn Fein’s goal of achieving a united Ireland in twelve years can be balanced against the DUP claim that they’re saving the Union for ever more.

What’s happening here is that these two parties fancy themselves in a fight with the other party of government. They don’t really want to be in government with each other because they both see themselves as too good for the other. Sinn Fein really see themselves as the equivalent of the UUP, and the DUP see themselves as the equivalent of the SDLP. However, most people see them for what they are and as a good match for each other. So the fight is on.

The DUP want to save Ulster from the lawless republicans, trying to restrain them, and Sinn Fein want the world to realise the extent of the hypocrisy of the DUP.

Neither party has any noble intentions going into an agreement. There is no idealism, no love lost between them, no declared interest in making the future better than the past. Why? The simple and honest reason is that both these parties made contributions to the past that were disastrous for everyone and yet they themselves actually think that they made essential contributions, that both made things better and also enhanced the interests of their own people.

So their government of the North will most likely be a waste of time and effort, and we are then left with the question: where do we go from here?

It’s a good question, and the truth is that the future is simply hanging in the balance at the moment. But it would be the most remarkable thing if the two parties who conspired to bring down the 1974 Sunningdale Agreement, condemning us to twenty further years of violence, were also party to bringing down the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which Seamus Mallon once called “Sunningdale for slow learners.” However, I wouldn’t bet against that happening.

We need to examine Paisley and Adams’ initial comments again. Paisley really wants to “humiliate” Adams in this scenario, but by saying it he already has humiliated Adams, who just wants to be his friend (à la David Trimble). Adams’ credibility was rock bottom after Paisley’s rant and even the swift moves in Dublin to announce the imminent release of the killers of Garda Jerry McCabe didn’t undo the damage.

Both Paisley and Adams are playing a role in this political shouting match. They’re like actors playing out roles in an epic movie story. They would be up for Oscars on their performances to date, I’ll admit that, but life is not a movie. The fact is that these two cardboard cut-out leaders may well look good on the big screen but the real world is different to the one they inhabit. They can inspire the ugliest emotions and the most threatening fears in us but they cannot deal with the real world.

In Hollywood Paisley and Adams would be great leaders in charge of cliques and inspiring great loyalty on the basis that they’re prepared to do anything to achieve their goals. But there would be only one hero living at the end of the day.

In real life it all becomes a bit complicated as real people are involved and not all of them are prepared to waste their lives in jail or to die for the cause on their say so. It ends up with the two demagogues in a coalition government rather than two heroes shooting it out in the gunfight at the “not-okay” coralle.

The religious fundamentalism of the DUP meets the communistic Sinn Fein. Of course, just as Jesus Christ would undoubtedly disown the DUP, Marx or Lenin would probably laugh at the very suggestion that Sinn Fein support any sort of –ism.

These parties believe in nothing except “our side” winning. They are not parties of conviction or of idealism, but of a pragmatism so ugly that it results in death and destruction on a massive scale.

Yet we see now a supposed coming together of these two ugly pseudo-ideologies into an alliance of the guilty, those who can admit no sorrow other than crocodile tears for the innocent who have died over the past thirty-five years.

A DUP-Sinn Fein alliance can never be a stable government for the North. If people wanted power-sharing to work they should have voted for the SDLP and the UUP. But these two delinquent parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, have given people an option that can never exist under power-sharing, the option of victory for one side over the other.

For peace to endure and thrive, in my opinion, people must seriously consider their voting options. There must be a move back to the SDLP from all sides, back to the party of idealism, equality, social democracy, and the acceptance of diversity.

*John O’Connell is Derry-based author.

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