Northern Ireland is getting closer to peace. That statement sounds odd in the face of the weekend’s events, with an impasse over the peace process and confrontation between Catholics and Protestants at Dumcree. But in the past five years a European influence in Ireland, both north and south, is having a slow but profound effect. That European influence, through the European Union, has been delivering a message of peaceful co-existence and co-operation between people of different religions and languages. The other message has been to highlight the price of failure to engage in dialogue and co-operation: the Somme, the Holocaust and more recently Kosovo.
The new European message is one of multi-party dialogue and importance of engaging many community leaders, rather than allow events to be shaped by one or two individuals.
In Ireland the days of the dominance of political events by one or two individuals is over. So, too, are the days of bombing and widespread religious intolerance. The main reason for these developments has not been solely due to Anglo-Irish peace programs. Rather the people of Ireland have seen peaceful co-existence of different racial, religious, national, political and linguistic groups in Europe in places where hitherto there has been blood. They have also seen the barriers between Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom and the Republic or Ireland come down as a requirement of their respective membership of the European Union.
Europe, despite its modern-day claims to be the centre of civilisation, has been a bloody, cruel and intolerant place. The fact it has been so has made the prize of attaining peaceful co-existence that much more fruitful. That picture is reflected in Ireland. Since the Treaty of Rome in 1956, the Europeans have worked harder and more successfully at peace than anywhere on earth. When peace resolution of conflict fails in Europe the results are usually far more bloody than elsewhere, as recent events in Kosovo testify. With that history (particularly recent history) in mind, coupled with the great prosperity that a unified Europe brings, the Irish now have a greater propensity to seek peace.
At the weekend, the stand-off between Catholics and Protestants at Dumcree did not degenerate into the high-level violence of past years. Sure, large barriers were erected to prevent it, but barbed wire has not always prevented violence in the past. This year it was as if the barbed wire were an excuse to avoid the confrontations of the past. The desire for peace is there.
Despite the deliberately provocative marches, something profound has happened in Northern Ireland. Despite the outwardly stubborn refusal of the IRA to decommission all weapons as a pre-condition of going into executive government in Northern Ireland, there has been a fundamental change of political position by the Catholic and IRA leadership in Northern Ireland.
The change has been from an early 1970s view that the only way to get a reasonable share of the economic cake was to protest, bomb, maim and kill. In the late 1990s there has been a recognition, led by Gerry Adams, that if you want to share economic spoils, if you want to prevent economic discrimination, you have to join the political process. He is right, of course.
In moving in this direction, Mr Adams and like thinkers have to bring with them hardliners of both Sinn Fein, the political wing, and the IRA, the military wing. But they are coming, albeit slowly and with reservations.
There has been much said about decommissioning of weapons. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern have made much of it. The two Prime Ministers have also made much of deadlines and last opportunities and critical timing. Far too much. The urgency is only of their making. It is made more because of their own political timing than of any real timing necessity on the ground. No doubt each Prime Minister would like to wrap up Northern Ireland and move on to other vote-catching items on the agenda. But the two Prime Ministers’ timetable couched in months or even weeks makes no sense in the face of Orangemen marching with passion over a battle fought more than 300 year ago. Indeed, there is an argument that July is precisely the wrong time to start imposing artificial deadlines in Northern Ireland.
The two Prime Minsters should relax a little and view the Irish situation in a European context. The great tide in Europe is towards tolerance. The tide in Europe is for armed forces to be used not for national, religious or territorial reasons, but to enforce human rights.
It would be best if the Unionists with political clout saw this trend and humoured the IRA and its political wing a little by turning blind eye to weapons that will not be used. It would be best if the Catholics with clout could persuade their long suffering brethren on the ground to humour the silly men with their orange neck bands and allow them to march through Catholic areas in towns and villages, and to laugh at them or better still join them.
It is now critical for David Trimbole and other newly elected Unionists to get Sinn Fein into the executive government of Northern Ireland. Once they get involved in drains, sewerage, public housing allocation, roads, education funding and the like, permanent peace will inevitably follow. It is not a question of how resources are divided, but a question of having a decent say in how they are divided. That will end the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. European examples abound on how this can be done peacefully and one example stares us in the faces of the consequences of not doing it peacefully.
We are blessed that Gerry Adams is no Slobodan Milosevic, and nor is the Protestant leader David Trimbole.