Long term aim should be to move towards voluntary coalitions in Northern Ireland
Issued : Tuesday 9 February, 2010
Speech by Eamon Gilmore TD
Leader of the Labour Party, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade
I want to join with my colleagues who have spoken earlier in congratulating the parties in the Northern Ireland Executive, who have agreed yet another strategic step forward in arrangements for devolved government in Northern Ireland.
I also want to extend thanks and congratulations to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and their officials who, on the behalf of all of us here, spent so much unexpected time and lengths of time away from here – or sometimes between there and here – in an effort to secure a successful outcome to the talks concluded by the parties.
And thanks are due also to all others who gave a hand in facilitating the agreement, in Washington, London and Dublin.
But, Ceann Comhairle, I want to reflect also on the number of times in which we in this House have made statements over the years on agreements, usually assigned as final agreements, that have been squeezed, eventually, from the Northern Ireland parties.
About how many times we have welcomed statements, along the lines of the most recent, that: “this text is an affirmation of our shared belief in the importance of working together in a spirit of partnership to deliver success for the entire community”.
About how many times these attempted agreements, notwithstanding the encouragement and facilitation of Dublin, London and other capitals, have failed eventually to meet expectation – or at least to end up having the expectation deferred.
About how many times is it realistic to foresee similar down-to-the-wire collapses of talks in Northern Ireland and the resumption of the always existing threat: the abolition of devolved rule and the resumption of direct rule.
I believe it is appropriate to do so in the week that a former colleague of mine, Tomás MacGiolla, was laid to rest and also in the week in which a still serving colleague , Mark Durkan, has passed on leadership of our sister party in Northern Ireland to his elected successor, Margaret Ritchie.
Tomas MacGiolla was a man of great principle and personal courage. He played a central role in weaning the Republican Movement away from its violent roots. If more people had listened to Tomas MacGiolla in the late 1960s, 30 years of violence and more than 3,000 deaths in Northern Ireland might have been averted.
Tomás MacGiolla was a genuine republican, in the tradition of Wolfe Tone. He was an early advocate of the civil rights strategy in Northern Ireland and a fierce opponent of sectarianism. He was shocked and appalled by the campaigns of sectarian violence that blighted Northern Ireland for so long.
And although he and I took different political paths in recent years, I always retained a huge respect for him which I believe is shared by many on all sides of this House
Second, as regards my colleague Mark Durkan’s resignation and the election of his successor, Margaret Ritchie, I want to put this on the record. The SDLP was born out of the civil rights movement in August 1970. The SDLP has been, for four decades, the voice of democratic nationalism in Northern Ireland. As a members of the Party of European Socialists and Socialists International, it is a sister party of my own Labour Party and it is solidly internationalist and strongly social democratic in its outlook.
Throughout the course of the past 40 years, the SDLP has never deviated from its core values. They have always stood completely opposed to all violence, arguing that it was not only morally wrong but politically bankrupt as well, because violence always destroys that which it claims to defend.
From its earliest days – as illustrated from as long ago as their 1972 Policy Document "Towards a New Ireland" – the SDLP has argued for an agreement that addressed the three core sets of relationships:
• between Nationalists and Unionists in the North,
• between North and South, and
• between Britain and Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement was always an agreement first designed and promoted by the SDLP – in Seamus Mallon’s famous phrase: “Sunningdale for slow learners”.
I want to pay tribute to the designer of the Good Friday Agreement, John Hume, his successor as party leader, Mark Durkan, and his successor last Sunday, Margaret Ritchie.
Mark Durkan was a key member of the SDLP team during the negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement and he was, in many respects, its chief draftsman. In 2001 Mark replaced Seamus Mallon as Deputy First Minister. He also succeeded John Hume as SDLP Leader.
Mark Durkan has represented the interests of nationalism, his party and his constituency with distinction since 2005. He has spoken strongly, including directly to my own Party, about justice issues, economic development, healthcare and children’s rights. He has a well-established reputation as a leading advocate on international development. And he will continue to speak vehemently, I hope, at Westminster about these issues.
Throughout the worst and most disastrous weeks, months and years in Northern Ireland, the SDLP has always adhered to its conviction: that argument works better than violence.
As regards the latest agreement, the Hillsborough Agreement, I am hopeful. But I have to recollect that in my own parliamentary lifetime, I can recollect similar statements, welcoming breakthroughs in talks and fresh agreements coming from, for example, the Downing Street Declaration, the Good Friday Agreement, the St Andrews Agreement and now the Hillsborough Agreement.
In fact, we have recently seen a quotation from the Guardian newspaper, greeting yet another previous breakthrough in Anglo-Irish talks. The Guardian opined that: “The impossible has happened and the Irish controversy … is, to all intents and purposes, settled. It is a splendid achievement … Let us thank Heaven that that chapter of our history is closed and that a new one opens today”.
The problem is that that particular quote from the Guardian, republished in the history pages of The Irish Times, came from its editorial opinion on the Anglo-Irish Treaty, published almost 90 years ago, in 1921.
For almost 90 years since then, politicians north and south, east and west, have been doing mostly not enough but sporadically doing their best to achieve progress.
Tremendous damage has been done in the interim, by people with irredentist views, who put politics above any value they place on human life and who have destroyed human life on an industrial scale, in the interests of what they regarded as political progress.
Meanwhile, politicians have attempted agreements, most recently with the political representatives of those most responsible for the most devastation.
And each successive experience of devolved government in Northern Ireland has had to be re-rescued, by talks led by the two governments..
Let us all hope that the latest agreement now arrived at will work.
This latest agreement moves things on. But politics has also moved on in Northern Ireland. At the time of the Good Friday Agreement it was hoped that the centre would strengthen; that in a climate of peace, moderate politics would thrive. Instead the political initiative and support has moved to those on the harder line. It is now Sinn Fein and the DUP which are the dominant parties, not the SDLP and the UUP who led the making of the Good Friday Agreement.
And power is being shared between two parties which have yet to convince that they believe in the concept of sharing power between themselves on a daily basis, in an atmosphere of trust and with a hope to building a shared future.
While I welcome agreement about modalities for the appointment of a Justice Minister in Northern Ireland to administer policing, I am concerned at the manner in which the process for selecting the party to hold that office has been altered.
Under the D’Hondt system used to allocate every other Minister, the SDLP would be next in line for the post. That process is being ignored on this occasion and the Alliance Party is clearly being lined up to get the position.
I do not begrudge David Forde the post. The Alliance Party is a thoroughly decent political movement, which have preached partnership and power-sharing throughout its existence. It is deeply committed to creating the shared future between all the people in Northern Ireland, that so many of us recognise is required.
The over-riding of the SDLP’s right to achieve this outcome does public trust in the political system no good whatsoever and it adds to the perception that this deal has been made at the insistence of the DUP and Sinn Fein.
I fully understand the need to accommodate all shades of political opinion and cross-community representation in post-conflict societies. But, as Mark Durkan said 18 months ago, we need to begin thinking about removing some of the “ugly architecture” around the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive. This may not yet be the time, but moving towards voluntary coalitions rather than the mandatory system that is there at present must be a long-term aim of all parties in Northern Ireland.
In reality, I think all parties in Northern Ireland are living in a context of “voluntary coalition”, even if the concept is anathema to some of them; but power-sharing is still a fragile concept.
If last week’s agreement shows that more work can be done and will be done by the two major parties involved, then it is a good day’s, or 10 day’s work.
Voters on both parts of this island shared an important part of a journey when they voted overwhelmingly to support the Good Friday Agreement. Their votes were the strongest mandate for a new departure in Irish politics, north and south of the border.
To appreciate how far we have come we should take stock of what we have left behind. More than 3,500 deaths on this island, over 30 years, were directly linked to the sectarian conflict in the North. Around 100 people a year on this small island were murdered every year since 1969, simply because of who they were, where they came from, who they voted for or what church they prayed in.
And, for every murder victim, there was an ever-increasing circle of the injured, the bereaved and the frightened.
Some politicians calcified the bitterness, handing it on to their successors. Communities were brutally segregated. The politics of the last atrocity overshadowed the wider tragedy. The ‘national question’ dominated Irish life for decades, when we could have been questioning what kind of social and economic future we wanted for ourselves and our children.
But that is the past. And we need to be ambitious for the future. We need to be ambitious for peace. We need to be ambitious for a peace that is not simply the absence of aggression. About a peace which is not simply a new rewriting of a complicated deal about power-sharing.
We need to be ambitious for a peace that results from a willing and easy sharing of space, a peace between people at ease with each other and working to assist each other.
The sad fact is that, while all this drama about devolved government and its arrangements is played out, meanwhile on a daily basis, the scourge of sectarianism remains and infects the lives of people in Northern Ireland.
Although the latest and long-awaited high-level engagement and resolution between political leaders is always welcome, the fact remains that society in Northern Ireland is now more sustained in its divisions, such as where people live, where they socialise and where they send their children to school, than it was three decades ago.
And the saddest fact of all is that, although they can agree about policing and justice, “Shared Future” agenda for improving community relations on a daily basis, for improving the lived experience of their own constituents, is still the last agenda item that Sinn Féin and the DUP can agree upon.
The agreement just made provides for the devolution of policing and justice. This is, by any standards, great progress. We must now look more and more to the kind of society which we should build, North and South. A society based on fairness and tolerance and rooted in democracy.
