Despite the resounding 71 per cent approval for the peace plan in Northern Ireland, and 95 per cent approval in the Irish Republic, peace is by no means guaranteed. It remains fragile. The forces against it come from the usual two places: the Irish Republic Army and the extreme Ulster unionists.
An election is to be held on June 25 to elect a 108-member Assembly which will run Northern Ireland’s affairs. The assembly will produce an executive which will work with the British and Irish Governments in matters that go beyond purely Northern Ireland matters.
The giving to the Irish Republic some say in the governance of Northern Ireland has stirred the opposition of some unionists who see Northern Ireland as part of Britain. These unionists, headed by the uncompromising Reverend Ian Paisley are determined to wreck the assembly and any co-operation with the Irish Republic. Given the overall vote of 71 per cent and the fact that 90 per cent of Catholics would have voted Yes, it seems that about 40 to 45 per cent of unionists voted No to the peace plan. With this amount of the vote, enough anti-peace unionists could be elected to the Assembly to wreck its proceedings. The head of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, who campaigned for a Yes vote, leads a divided camp. He hopes to bring on board those who voted No last Friday. But it may run the other way. Rank and file Ulster Unionist Party members may inadvertently select No voters to stand as candidates. The election will be by proportional representation, so the party will have to be careful with its list. Mr Paisley is from a separate party whose members will all stand as an identifiable ”wreck-the-assembly” block. It may mean, that the wreckers will get more seats in the Assembly than they deserve according to their popular vote.
Aside from the split in the unionists, the relations between Mr Trimble and Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political arms of the IRA are likely to remain difficult. Mr Trimble’s party has never held direct talks with Sinn Fein though the two shared a negotiating table with six other Protestant and Catholic parties for months in the lead up to the Good Friday Belfast agreement.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams wants that meeting, but Mr Trimble has reservations. He wants some movement towards the IRA decommissioning its arsenal of weapons and explosives. It may well have been a pious and foolish hope three years ago, but in the face of last Friday’s vote, the IRA should now take active steps towards decommissioning.
Ideally, a new executive will come from the new Assembly which will include both Unionists, Sinn Fein and other republicans. Asked whether he would sit with Mr Adams in the new executive, Mr Trimble said the IRA would have to start to decommission weapons first. He said the IRA must make real steps toward decommissioning within six months. That is a reasonable suggestion. Mr Adams has said he will do all he can to bring about decommissioning, without saying when it would start. It is a further indication of the uncertain relationship between Mr Adams and Sinn Fein, on one hand, and the IRA on the other. Mr Adams might want decommissioning to start, but he might not be able to deliver.
For his part, Mr Adams insists there must be change in the overwhelmingly Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police force, which he accuses of harassing Irish nationalists. Of course, any Catholics who dared join the RUC in days gone by were intimidated by threatened or actual violence or even murdered by the IRA. So Unionists might feel this demand is a little rich. It indicated how complex and deep-seated the Catholic-Protestant divide is in Northern Ireland. But times have changed with Friday’s vote.
The important thing is that step by step the people of Northern Ireland build on the things that can unite them and help them work in peace, rather than the things that divide them. the new assembly, the new British-Irish Council (comprising the British and Irish Governments and the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) and the British-Irish Inter-Governmental Conference to deal with all bilateral issues between the British and Irish governments will be forums in which Protestants and Catholics will be able to work together and for each to see the others are human and not ogres. The only ogres will be those who oppose co-operation.