A letter from Doug and Elaine Baker in Northern Ireland
February 2010
Northern Ireland Update
Dear Friends,
The first two months of 2010 have been turbulent times in Northern Ireland. There have been major scandals affecting key politicians, a near collapse of the Power-Sharing Executive, emergency talks, new agreements, a marked increase in violence, further decommissioning of paramilitary arms, and the ugly specter of contentious parades and protests raising its head again.
To begin to make sense of all of this there are three things that need to be remembered about the political peace process dealing with the conflict in and about Northern Ireland:
1. The first is that it is a process. There have been key events along the way, but this political process has been going on for over twenty years and is far from finished. As well as being a process, it is also organic in the sense that it is like a mobile hanging over a child’s crib. Movement of one bit tends to cause movement or threaten stability all over the place.
2. The second is that more often than not the political battles or power struggles are taking place between different parties on respective sides of the main unionist (pro-UK) / nationalist (pro-Rep. of Ireland) divide, rather than between unionists and nationalists. Because allegiance to either broad unionist or broad nationalist agendas is largely determined along ethnic lines, there is very little swing vote between them. However, with several unionist political parties and several versions of nationalist or Republican political leadership, there are frequent struggles for who will be the dominant voice of each side.
3. The third is that in spite of major political agreements reached over the years and new political structures implemented on a power-sharing basis, there is still very little trust either between politicians or on the ground between those from differing backgrounds. Hence, what structures and mechanisms have been put in place can be easily upset.
SCANDALS
In December Iris Robinson, MLA, MP and 59 year-old wife of the Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Peter Robinson, announced that she was stepping down from politics for personal reasons. Shortly afterwards Peter Robinson called a press conference to confirm that his wife had been suffering from acute depression, involved in an extra-marital affair, and had attempted suicide in March 2009. Within days the BBC Spotlight program revealed that the affair had been with a nineteen year-old family friend, for whom Iris Robinson had also arranged two ‘loans’ from property developers to help him establish a restaurant at a government-owned park. Receiving the franchise to do so was granted by Castlereagh Borough Council, on which Iris Robinson sat and apparently did not reveal any personal link to the applicant. Public reaction to the extra-marital affair was heightened by the fact that Iris Robinson had presented herself very publicly as an evangelical Christian and had strongly denounced homosexuality a few months earlier. That perceived hypocrisy could cost the DUP some votes in the next election. However, the legal ramifications of this focus more on the money which exchanged hands, what might have motivated those developers to offer it, the decisions made in contexts where Iris Robinson may not have revealed what she should have, and what Peter Robinson knew when and what he did with that information. Following the revelations most commentators thought Robinson could not survive as First Minister or as DUP Leader for more than a week. He did step aside for a period and another DUP Executive Minister, Arlene Foster, temporarily covered his duties. While ongoing investigations into the legal issues continue, Peter Robinson has publicly received the backing of his party colleagues and moved back into the role of First Minister.
The second scandal involves Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams. It was revealed his niece had come to him in the early nineties stating that his brother had repeatedly sexually abused her. Again, the crux of this scandal is what he did with that information and when. Adams claims that he encouraged his niece to go to the police with it, long before Sinn Fein offered its support to the police. However, his brother continued to be a youth worker in West Belfast and Sinn Fein party activist long after Gerry Adams claims to have notified authorities about him and driven him out of the party. Others have now come forward saying that a blind eye was turned to sexual abuse by other Sinn Fein members during those years when they were telling the community to rely on them and not the police to handle anti-social behaviour and justice matters in nationalist areas. This may cost Sinn Fein votes in the next election or make it easier for Dissident Republicans to discredit the Adams-McGuinness wing of Sinn Fein, which Dissidents see as traitors by accepting the1998 Belfast Agreement
Both scandals have rocked trust between parties and between leaders and their electorate.
NEAR COLLAPSE OF THE POWER-SHARING EXECUTIVE
The Robinson scandal in particular had the potential to bring about the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive and force new elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, particularly if Peter Robinson had been quickly proven to have taken part in a cover-up. However, even before it surfaced the DUP and its main coalition partner Sinn Fein had been at loggerheads for months over the devolution of policing and justice powers from the national U.K. Parliament in Westminster to the N.I. Assembly in Belfast. Sinn Fein felt that the DUP were continuing to put obstacles in the way of this happening and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness could have walked away from the Executive. If after seven days no election of a new Deputy First Minister had been achieved, the Assembly could have been disbanded and fresh elections called. The DUP could not risk this, given that their Leader’s image was in tatters and a breakaway faction which had formed (the Traditional Unionist Voice) would seize the opportunity to whittle away at DUP grassroots support. So, it may even be the case that Peter Robinson’s personal problems forced the DUP to come to the table sooner that it might have otherwise, rather than further delaying it doing so because it was occupied with other tricky matters.
EMERGENCY TALKS AND NEW AGREEMENT
Many people think the Northern Ireland situation was resolved through the Belfast Agreement signed on Good Friday 1998 by the British and Irish governments and ten of Northern Ireland’s political parties. It was a pivotal step and established a framework for the future. However, it also left many issues unresolved and one of the parties which was not involved in those negotiations and did not sign the Agreement is the DUP.
Because of civil conflict, for most of the period from 1972 onwards, the Northern Ireland Parliament was suspended, and affairs it would have handled were controlled directly by the national U.K. Parliament in Westminster (“Direct Rule.”). The 1998 Belfast Agreement provided for the devolution of powers again to a regional Northern Ireland Assembly. However, certain powers — namely oversight of policing and justice — remained with Westminster because they were still deemed too sensitive to be handled by the N.I. Stormont Assembly.
At the time of the Belfast Agreement the SDLP was the largest nationalist Party and the Ulster Unionists were the largest unionist party. They, therefore, held the key roles in the new Northern Ireland Executive, and the DUP provided the real opposition. Subsequent elections to the N.I. Assembly saw Sinn Fein surpass the SDLP on the nationalist side and the DUP surpass the UUP on the unionist sides. The gap between them was much wider that that which had existed between the SDLP and UUP, and they were not able to establish a working Executive. In 2007 emergency talks led by the British and Irish governments and primarily between the DUP and Sinn Fein were held in St. Andrews. They resulted in a new Agreement, which dealt with some matters the Belfast Agreement had not — but did not change any of its main principles. As with most negotiations, each side came away feeling confident — or at least telling their supporters they were — that various concerns of theirs would now be dealt with agreeably.
As time went on both DUP and Sinn Fein felt the other had ‘gone back on,’ ‘let them down on,’ ‘not delivered on’ various aspects of the St, Andrews Agreement. Probably the most significant area was the devolution of policing and justice. For Sinn Fein devolution of those powers to Northern Ireland is a key step in the reduction of what they view as improper British involvement in Ireland. From St. Andrews onward, though, the DUP has said there needs to be greater community confidence before devolution can happen. IRA decommissioning was part of what they meant by that, but it goes much wider. From their perspective, the threat (and the experience) of Republican violence has not gone away, and huge fear exists amongst their supporters about what would happen if Sinn Fein ended up with any role in overseeing security matters.
The crisis which came to a head in early January led to new emergency talks led by the British and Irish governments at Hillsborough Castle. In reality, those talks primarily involved the DUP and Sinn Fein with other Northern Ireland Parties once again largely sidelined. In addition to the devolution of policing and justice, a range of other issues were placed on the table, including promotion of the Irish language, resolution of parading issues, the future of post-primary education, and the proper functioning of the power-sharing executive itself. In one sense the governments and the two major parties viewed this as an opportunity to get everything outstanding dealt with at one go. However, the other way of understanding this is that nothing in the Northern Ireland peace process is really agreed until everything is agreed — and there are matters which each major political party feel are critical to resolve.
A formal statement was issued which you can download. 
In terms of the devolution of policing and justice powers it calls for a vote in the N.I. Assembly on the 9th of March to test cross-community support for the provisions outlined in the agreement and anticipates that devolution could be complete around the 12th of April. In terms of resolving contentious parades and protests, an inter-party group of DUP and SF MLAs has been set up to bring proposals to the Assembly. In terms of improving the functioning of the power-sharing Executive another working group has been set up. It is co-chaired by the Ulster Unionists and SDLP, which is recognition that they have felt left out of not only the Hillsborough talks but also the real work of the Executive in spite of each having ministers on the Executive.
Speculation is that if devolution goes ahead David Ford, Leader of the cross-community Alliance Party, is likely to be appointed as Justice Minister, although the SDLP feel that under existing Assembly rules it should go to one of their members.
PARADES (AND PROTEST)
The fact that resolving contentious Parades occupies a major section of the Hillsborough Agreement shows this remains a contentious issue in some local areas. However, at least half of the population is simply sick and tired of it. Even a leading Loyalist paramilitary leader, Jackie MacDonald, said this week that Orangemen should simply walk away from areas where they are not wanted by local residents.
INCREASE IN VIOLENCE / LOYALISTI DECOMMISSIONING
Although the level of violence remains low compared to the worst years of ‘the Troubles,’ violence does continue and there has been an alarming increase in Dissident Republican attacks in particular. On January 8th a booby-trap car bomb critically injured Peadar Heffron, who as an Irish language specialist and captain of the PSNI GAA team is one of the highest profile Roman Catholics in the police. In October, a dissident group planted a bomb under another policeman’s car in east Belfast, which injured his partner. February 23rd a car bomb exploded outside Newry Courthouse and there have been several other car bombs in various settings which have failed to explode. All of which makes it somewhat surprising that the Loyalist UDA paramilitary group put the bulk of their weapons beyond use by the mid-February deadline for the dissolution of the international body set up to oversee and verify decommissioning.
ELECTIONS ON THE HORIZON
All of this takes place against the backdrop of elections to the U.K. Westminster Parliament likely to be held on May 6th. Opinion polls show the Conservatives ahead but having only a slight edge. That could mean no single party getting a majority in Parliament. Hence the Conservatives have been looking at how they might secure backing from some Northern Ireland MPs as well. About a year ago the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists formed a pack to field joint candidates in each Westminster constituency in Northern Ireland. Then in January word leaked out that the Conservatives had also orchestrated secret talks in England between Ulster Unionists and the DUP about how to maximize ‘unionist’ votes in the upcoming election. In practice that means the UUP and DUP each only standing in constituencies where the other is not, so that the ‘unionist’ vote is not divided and the seat goes to a ‘nationalist.’ It has also leaked out that the Orange Order convened similar talks between the UUP and DUP. For many who view the Orange Order skeptically this is further proof that it primarily has a political rather than a religious agenda. Any united ‘unionist’ front for the next Westminster or Stormont elections seems unlikely, though, given that both the UUP and the TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice) have been highly critical of DUP negotiations at Hillsborough.
To finish on a slightly brighter note, just today it was announced that The First (DUP) and Deputy First (Sinn Fein) Ministers have at long last reached agreement on a community relations strategy to secure a positive shared future in Northern Ireland. This is something the Alliance Party was insisting be produced before entertaining the possibility that their Leader, David Ford, might take on the Justice Minister’s post. What that agreed strategy is has not yet been made public. So, watch this space for that and other developments.
Doug Baker, PC(USA) regional liaison for Ireland and the United Kingdom
February 24, 2010
The 2010 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 190
