Posted on 10/12/2002 9:52:13 AM PDT by Happygal
There will be no political stability in Northern Ireland until that monstrous pile at Stormont is dismantled, razed and ploughed with salt.
Stormont is a shrine to sectarianism, a theatre of bigotry, a monument to Britain's political ineptitude. It would make a good luxury hotel, except the receptionist would still find herself asking guests: "Catholic or Protestant?"
On Good Friday 1998, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair promised what they knew they could not deliver: IRA disarmament and a stable power-sharing executive at Stormont. They were too intoxicated by flashlights, glamour and spin to think straight. They declared peace and left, scattering Nobel prizes as they went. Since then there has been no decommissioning and power-sharing has three times collapsed.
Exasperated by the IRA's continued defiance, the unionists have had enough. This weekend it appears the Good Friday fudge is dust.
It is always possible that some new fudge can be fashioned from the shambles. It will not last. But for all the shrill name-calling we shall hear this weekend, failure cannot be blamed on republicans or loyalists, nationalists or unionists. Collapse was certain from the start. Rotten political institutions have no need of terrorists when they have constitutional lawyers to hand.
The Northern Ireland constitution was a classic colonialist confection. I was told it was modelled on Zimbabwe's, with blocking thirds, reserved ministries and bloated bureaucracy. Northern Ireland has 30 ministries. A third of the population in some sense works for the government. London is now preparing to resume its addiction to direct rule, a third of a century after first acquiring the habit. On any showing this is the longest-running failure in UK public administration.
I try to write about Northern Ireland without a mention of its history. Yet its history constantly trespasses on the present. Who cannot sympathise with David Trimble, sold down the river for five years by Blair? Who could disagree with the Democratic Unionists that Britain has blatantly appeased republican terrorism? Who could quarrel with Gerry Adams that walking away from devolution plays into the extremists' hands? Decommissioning was never on the cards. All Northern Ireland's gangs are armed to the teeth.
The argument of the past 30 years in Northern Ireland has been over legitimising local government, no more nor less. Throughout the peace process now more a stasis the province has gone about its business, prospering on the back of subsidy. Community apartheid has intensified. Education remains segregated. Peace walls have proliferated rather than diminished. Only the symbols of local administration betray continued conflict, but they do so with a vengeance. Government offices and barracks are heavily fortified. The police are armed. Stormont's politics are conducted against a background of permanent sectarian rant.
The job of any constitution is to minimise rather than entrench communal division. It should build consent for governing institutions upwards from below, not down from above. Imposed consent is no consent at all. The 1998 Stormont constitution ignored this. British political parties were banned from formation. Religious sectarianism, of which most people are heartily sick, was given pride of place. The 'power-sharing' executive was crafted to require cross-community compromise. Yet it rendered such compromise vulnerable to extremist opposition. As always under coalition rule, the extremes polarised in concerted opposition to the centre.
Thus the moderate unionism of David Trimble has been helpless in the face of the extremism of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists. The moderate nationalism of the SDLP could not deliver the Catholic vote and has proved electorally vulnerable to Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein itself has seemed unable to marshal the wilder elements within the IRA.
In other words, the new constitution has driven politics to the extremes. None of the main participants in power-sharing can mobilise moderate opinion or calm the power of the backwoodsmen. When Downing Street negotiated decommissioning as merely a vague pledge, it gave the IRA an effective veto over the entire settlement. This meant the IRA could at any time goad the unionists into collapsing power-sharing, as this week.
The British approach to devolution has been gradualist. From James Prior's Rolling Devolution of 1983 to Margaret Thatcher's Anglo-Irish agreement and John Major's Downing Street declaration, on offer has been what the nanny state calls 'earned autonomy'. Local democracy is regarded not as a right, let alone as an essential tool of local accountability. It has been a prize conferred by central government on those whom it regards as deserving.
Gradualism not only cheapens devolved democracy. It has not worked. Responsibility is not delegated because true power is retained at the centre. When Trimble hits trouble he does not hack a compromise with Adams. He goes to Downing Street. He briefs Washington. When Adams hits trouble he too goes to Downing Street and shakes hands with any passing US president. Both travel with a tour group of colleagues because each needs strength in numbers. When such recourse to glory is on offer, why bother with compromise? Northern Ireland may be no bigger than Essex, but the British will always carry the can.
Stormont should go. Its denizens are the ranters and shakers of a local politics that is obsolete in 21st-century Europe. They and the tribal associations from which they spring are museum pieces, more akin to former Yugoslavia and points east. Men such as Trimble, Seamus Mallon, Adams and Paisley have been around for a third of a century. By installing a constitution that handed local government to such men, Britain froze Northern Ireland into political immaturity.
If Mr Blair had half the daring of which he boasted to his party last week, he would abandon gradualism. Devolved democracy is a chasm that cannot be crossed halfway. Mr Blair should recall the Northern Secretary, John Reid, and leave the place to its own devices. He should be 'too busy' to see the whingeing politicians traipsing up Downing Street. He should give Trimble his grant as First Minister and tell him to get on with it. If Trimble cannot maintain local consent, he had better go. If Adams cannot keep Trimble happy, he can resign. They must sort it out themselves. Northern Ireland has been a plague on British politics for long enough. It must be left to grow up.
The only alternative is for Britain to do to Stormont what Margaret Thatcher did to County Hall, the assembly for metropolitan London. She judged it had failed, locked it, sold it and left government to the subsidiary boroughs. Northern Ireland has its six counties and two cities. They have their political life, less glamorous but more accommodating than Stormont. Belfast has a Sinn Fein Mayor, without local unionists demanding his exclusion or storming out. Belfast is simply more mature than Stormont.
The British government must find the courage to hand administration in the province to properly local government, with party majorities and no 'blocking thirds'. There will be upsets and accidents. But this is where Northern Ireland's political future lies, in building up consent through political institutions empowered from below. Stormont should never have existed.
I always found it a little strange that the government of Northern Ireland was "forced" coalition, in which each party tries to carve out its own little bits of territory. I feared that the infighting that would result, could lead to greater sectarian hatred, not less.
The law, and the agreement, should focus on the individual not on the secetarian groups. The priority should be protecting individual rights, not secetarian rights. Were this to be the case, the paramilitaries that operate with impunity in both communities would be put out of business, as their existence is a direct transgression of the individual right to enjoy one's life and property in peace.
I agree with the Mrs. Thatcher approach. Devolve more powers to the individual cities and counties. Let the chips of democracy fall where they may. If a community votes to join the Republic of Ireland, and the Irish agree, let it. It will create a patchwork of territories, but that's how it is anyway.
Love, Ivan
The real truth is that Ireland will only enjoy peace and liberty when the chains of Roman Catholicism are broken by the pure gospel of Christ, and the blight of priestcraft and Popery are banished from the Island forever!
This was Thatchers approach?
Good idea. I am always in favour of decentralisation of power.
So, she disbanded it, and devolved power to the individual boroughs in London. As you might expect, boroughs that voted Conservative were run well, those that voted Labour were basket cases (and many still are).
Hammersmith and Fulham for example, my former home patch of earth, is run by Labour thanks to a built-in constituency in some of the larger housing estates at White City. Across the river is Wandsworth. Both have a patchwork of affluent and not so affluent neighbourhoods. Wandsworth, however voted Tory and their taxes, public expenditure and so on are much lower, their record on crime and cleanliness is much better, etc etc.
Because Labour councils were unhappy that they look like utter fools, they persuaded the Tonester to put in a new London Assembly and a Mayor, who is, of course, Ken Livingstone. Fortunately this has not undermined the power of the boroughs as much as you might expect.
Love, Ivan
Some such houses were built on the same street where my parents live. The site was a lovely little nursery school at one point. With the new housing and the new tenants, as you might expect, crime, public nuisance complaints, etc., have all shot up. But Labour got a few more votes.
This represents some of why my feelings about Labour are rather bitter.
Love, Ivan
So basically my beloved Fulham is the cash cow.
Love, Ivan
Ahh, I see your government is not immune to the chicanery that is rampant in Irish government either.
Darling, I'm of the rather cynical view that "chicanery" and "government" are too often the same thing. ;)
All my love, Ivan
Kinda vibrated your ((TILT))ometer, eh!...
Me too, but What does God need with a religion?.
Theirs(Baptist) included.....
A very sticky wicket over there, what!...
If you go back to the original agreement between Collins et al. and Churchill et al. setting up the Irish Free State, you will find this very concept. Britain never followed through because of the "blocking third" Ulster Protestants. Now may be the time to return to it.
Thanks for the constructive post.
Regards.
Regards.
In this manner, the nationalists get to claim their identity, the unionists get theirs and the territory can neither to be said to be totally British or totally Irish.
Regards, Ivan
I would suggest that contributions to budgets are done on a strict proportion: the proportion of those living in Irish territories to those living in Unionist territories.
Love, Ivan
As for local property taxes, that is at the discretion of the locality, but they will have responsibility for funding schools and perhaps part of health (hospitals).
Love, Ivan
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