LONDON–The centre cannot hold–that has been the received wisdom since in 1921 the protestant bulwark of Northern Ireland was detached from the rest of this catholic- dominated, Irish island and incorporated into the United Kingdom. Now the historic peace agreement between the mainstream protestant unionists and Sinn Fein, the political front of the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, will be put to the test in next week s referendum. It is not a simple choice between the ballot or the bullet, for Sinn Fein has long had a dual Armalite and ballot box strategy. Even now the decommissioning of the IRA’s formidable arsenal has been allowed a two year grace period, enough for the IRA to see if it gets anything out of this deal. But the accord has put the ballot box on a higher pedestal than the bullet and reverses a long-standing, almost sacred, position of Sinn Fein/IRA never to enter into membership of a “partitionist” assembly in the north.
Sinn Fein/IRA, it was always thought, would never give up their goal of a united Ireland, would never participate in northern political institutions that by their existence give further life to the union.
It is, quite simply, an historic shift that can only be explained in cultural, not political, terms. Being Irish these days is more and more a cultural state of being Americans in particular understand this well than being actually in residence as part of country Y or country X.
Such a transformation on the emerald isle itself could only come about because of the rapid changes in the catholic south. (In the north a frozen landscape, economically and culturally, not to say politically, has been the principal stay until now.) The south is not only the fastest growing country in Europe, with growth rates that used to be considered the norm for east Asian “tigers”, but it has changed its cultural spots in a generation in a way that bears comparison with the catharsis of its catholic sister Spain, following the death of its dictator Franco. Gone is the automatic deference to the will of the church hierarchy. Gone are the uptight sexual mores of the old order. Gone is the fixation with the past and its lack of vision for the future. Gone is the quest for fulfilling to the letter the terms of the constitution and re-uniting with the north (what the south will vote to abrogate in its own referendum on the same day).
Instead, southern Ireland, Eire, is part of the new Europe, perennially in the lead group that is pushing for a more federal Europe (thus its enthusiastic membership of the single currency club, and one of the first two or three to satisfy the tough monetary conditions of the Maastricht Treaty). In the new concept of a Europe of regions, rather than Charles de Gaulle s vision of a “Europe of patries”, this old border between north and south is beginning to recede in importance.
Yet to describe it so makes the peace agreement sound inevitable; there is almost a ring of marxist determinism to it. It was not. There were too many hard men involved on both sides, too many passions had been aroused and too much blood shed for peace ever to be a foregone conclusion. This conflict was never likely to simply burn itself out and consume the fringes in its own fire. The centre, until now, was not strong or wide enough for that for that to happen. Just as the Unionist vote in Westminster stymied Tony Blair’s Conservative predecessor, John Major’s near successful series of negociations because he could not rule without their votes, so today the remaining fringes, both catholic and protestant wield a leverage out of all proportion to their numbers. There is already a breakaway IRA, bombing and killing as per usual. On the protestant side the Orange Order and other opponents of the accord are going to stand for election for the new assembly with the sole aim of destroying it. Only if the centre can hold together for long enough to show real success will the fringes start to wither.
The key is Northern Ireland, itself. It needs both cultural and economic change. In fact it has such unrealized potential that once there is peace and it gets going it should have no trouble in emulating the south s economic success. Because of thirty years of conflict it hasn’t had the money to tear apart its historical heritage. Its villages and small towns are still quaint and its marvellous coastline unsullied. Its criminal violence murder, theft and arson is so low that even factoring in the political violence the north ends up being one of the safest parts of the world to live in and bring up a family. As for paedophilia, rape etc., the words are barely in the lexicon. (There has to be something to thank the fervour of religion for.) The unanswered question is will positive cultural change follow economic, as in the south? We have to wait a while for the answer.
Meanwhile, many omens are good. The business community want this peace. The churches want it. Most activists in northern Ireland’s prolific non-governmental organisations want it. In short, the centre has momentum. Maybe this time it can hold, if for no other reason that every voter in these referendums knows how complex, delicately balanced and vulnerable this accord is.
