The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Northern over exposure? A potential significant error by the Republic. May 17, 2011

This isn’t the worst day to consider the following…

Quite a good piece in the Backroom column in the Sunday Business Post which runs through the recent Assembly elections in the North. It’s probably not worth paraphrasing it in its entirety, amongst the interesting thoughts is the point that the TUV brand of ‘DUP old rhetoric’ failed markedly. Though one could argue that the UUP has in some ways shifted towards that terrain – not least in the Elliott outburst on the day of the count, though the writer acknowledges this when s/he writes ‘It’s still busy alienating its former supporters by its more extreme positions while simultaneously not being credible to old-style DUP voters’. Though how many of the latter exist who are not well pleased with the DUP itself is hard to gauge. The DUP has a remarkable hold, and in some ways a remarkable evolution, that it has managed to become increasingly technocratic in many ways is no small achievement. It’s also, and this is also an achievement, become oddly positive, replacing dourness with a sort of efficiency.

On the nationalist and republican side we see interesting times too. As the writer notes: ‘[the SDLP] is mature enough to celebrate its role in bringing the extremists into the mainstream. But it hasn’t broken out of a clique-driven malaise which makes it look more like a vehicle for personalities than a party’.

To which many will say ‘same as it ever was, so’. But the writer has a point that it still has a solid enough councillor base and it could probably do more.

The column doesn’t mention Sinn Féin, except in passing, but like the DUP it remains pre-eminent. Is that sustainable? On some levels I’d tend to think not, and then I think of – say – Labour in Britain, or perhaps the SNP in Scotland and the idea that it could increase further in size – within the constraints of NI politics – doesn’t seem entirely off the wall [to use the technical term], perhaps ultimately leaving the SDLP as a rump. That said it will be interesting to see how the SDLP operates from here on out and how it addresses its base in class and other terms.

Still, the column makes a very important point when it notes that ‘… the failure of either Enda Kenny or Eamon Gilmore to make any significant outreach in their first two months in office shows that the North has slid well down their agendas. This is understandable given the economic issues which have to be addressed. At the same time, however they should remember that they are custodians of a peace process built up over many years, and partly through the determined commitment of their predecessors’.

And crucially it notes:

Take your eye too far off the issue and you’re running a risk. There are still militants and there are still unfulfilled national ambitions. Everything is looking good and stable for the time being, and those in Leinster House need to show a bit more interest to make sure it stays that way.

Politically there’s little question that there is a greater degree of stability than might have been expected even twenty four months ago. While some of the votes for non-SF candidates was respectable I doubt they or the SDLP are quaking in their boots. And though that could change in the medium term dependent upon the nature and depth of the recession the intrinsic coherence of SF in particular provides a significant barrier to others. This operates in some ways like those dissidents wedded to armed struggle. It’s not simply that they’re small and isolated and capable only of minor operations, it’s that others tried it before and on a much larger scale and failed and therefore the gap between where they are and where they want to be is further underlined.

This is true politically too – and in some ways there’s the basic point that those who dissent from the GFA structures have literally nothing else to operate within. Grand for a critique but not necessarily the best position to build up support for counter-arguments. None of which is to suggest that there won’t be political dissent or that this may not grow, but more to posit that there are constraints, at least at this point in time.

But the second point is – from a position in the South, more important again.

One of the great failings of the South was to effectively eschew responsibility for the North (an approach that was for much of the 20th century a reflection of a British refusal to take responsibility either and instead sub contract out to Stormont). When the situation spun out of control this merely added to a combustible mix and it deepened a sense (and an actuality) of isolation on the part of Northern nationalism.

It would be profoundly dangerous for that to be replicated, even in a muted form. One of the clearest ways to maintain a relatively settled polity in the six counties is to ensure that the linkages already established are worked. As important is that the government remember that the GFA institutions are central to the political process in Ireland. And all of this can and should be justified on utilitarian grounds, if nothing else.

By the way, on a slight tangent, half a good word for Lucinda Creighton and the sitting of the Oireachtas where NI MEPs were invited. It was good to see MEP Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin in the Dáil chamber and to see some evidence of a recognition that this is a very small island indeed. That approach is important for precisely the reasons pointed to by BackRoom.