'Protestant Perceptions of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland' edited by Dominic Murray (2000)

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PROTESTANT PERCEPTIONS OF THE PEACE PROCESS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Edited by
Dominic Murray

Published by
Centre for Peace and Development Studies
University of Limerick

ISBN 1-874653-61-5

2000 Centre for Peace and Development Studies

For Fergal

Preface

The Centre for Peace and Development Studies is a research centre of the Department of Government and Society, University of Limerick. Its principal aim is to provide research evidence concerning conflict and its resolution both in Ireland and in other countries throughout the world. Through its research and teaching it attempts to contribute to an understanding of how conflicts develop both within and between societies and how they may be most effectively resolved. The first stage of this process is to provide reliable and objective information on both division and co-operation. In this regard previous publications of the Centre have included A Comparison of the Education Systems in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; A Register of Cross Border Links in Ireland and Private Pain, Public Action: Violence Against Women in War and Peace.

A priority of the Centre is to engage in policy related research and it is in this context that the Centre is publishing this new report on Protestant Perceptions of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland. The work is timely since it is becoming clear that this community feels it has been badly, and in many cases, wrongly portrayed. The contributions to the book also demonstrate the existence of diversity within the Protestant community - a fact not generally appreciated outside Northern Ireland.

I am grateful to all of the contributors who gave so willingly of their time and effort. I would like also to acknowledge the support of the University of Limerick Foundation which made this work possible.

Professor Dominic Murray
August 2000 

 Contributors

May Blood worked for many years in Blackstaff Linen Mill in Belfast and at the same time engaging in part time community work. For the past ten years she has been engaged full time in community endeavours with a particular interest in the long term unemployed. She is currently located in the Greater Shankill Partnership Programme. Her cross community work includes membership of the Springfield Inter-community Development Project and the Blackmountain Action Group, both of which are located on the peace line. She is also a founder member of the Women’s Coalition. May was awarded an MBE in 1996 for her work in labour relations, and an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Ulster in 1998. She was made a life peer in 1999.

Alderman Gregory Campbell was first elected to local government in 1981 and has been re-elected every four years since. He has contested assembly and parliamentary elections on behalf of the Democratic Unionist Party. He was first elected to the new Northern Assembly in 1998 as representative for East Londonderry. He is the security spokesperson for the DUP and is one of the senior party members. He was involved in the multi-party talks during 1990-91 and 1996-97. Gregory has written widely on the question of discrimination against the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. His publications include Discrimination: the Truth; Working Towards 2000 and Ulster’s Verdict on the Joint Declaration.

Robin Eames is Archbishop of Armagh and Church of Ireland Primate of all Ireland and Metropolitan. He was educated at Queens University Belfast, where he was Chairman of the Law Society, and Trinity College Dublin. He also holds Honorary Degrees from Cambridge University, Lancaster University and Aberdeen University. His publications include The Quiet Revolution: The Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and Chains to be Broken. Archbishop Eames is one of the most significant figures in debates about, and negotiations within, Northern Ireland. This has been especially so with regard to the recent controversial Orange marches at Drumcree.

Chris Gibson was born in Northern Ireland. He was educated at Campbell College and Queens University Belfast. He has worked in a number of roles within Irish and British based companies covering Ireland North and South, Great Britain and continental Europe. He was awarded the OBE for his services to industry and is currently a Pro-Vice Chancellor of Queens University Belfast and the regional Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry in Northern Ireland.

Duncan Morrow is a lecturer in Politics at the University of Ulster. He is a member of the Community Relations Council and a Sentence Review Commissioner for Northern Ireland. His publications include Northern Ireland Politics (with Arthur Aughey) and A Worthwhile Venture? (with Karin Eyben and Derick Wilson).

Dominic Murray is Professor of Peace and Co-operation Studies and Director of the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Limerick. His publications include Worlds Apart: Segregated Schools in Northern Ireland and Culture, Religion and Violence in Northern Ireland.

Barry White is a journalist with the Belfast Telegraph who has been writing about Northern Ireland politics for many years. He has filled many roles in the Belfast Telegraph, mainly as political correspondent, columnist and chief leader writer. He has won several journalism awards in Northern Ireland and has been a runner-up in the British Press awards for his weekly column. He contributes to newspapers and magazines in Ireland, Scotland and the USA. He wrote the first biography of John Hume whom he encountered before and during his coverage of the 1968-9 civil rights campaign.

INTRODUCTION

Dominic Murray

It is clear that after the initial goodwill and optimism reflected in the positive vote for the Referendum and Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, a general sense of unease and perhaps mistrust has appeared, especially within the Unionist community there. To date these sentiments have tended to be articulated through radio and television 'soundbites'. More often than not these have depicted the Unionist community in terms of intransigence and obstructiveness. Of equal importance, is that such sources of information tend to reinforce the strong perception in the Republic of Ireland (and I suspect, elsewhere) that the Unionist population is a homogenous group. This is simply not the case. I have become convinced that this depiction, at the very least, gives a far from accurate picture of the range of views within that community and fails to do justice to either the character or mood of the Unionist community as a whole.

It was my intention as editor to seek accounts which, for the first time, might illuminate the diversity which exists within what might be described broadly as the ‘Unionist community’. It is becoming clear that this community feels that they have been badly and, in many cases, wrongly depicted. These accounts will go quite some way to redress this by allowing for reasoned and rational positions to be articulated by representatives of various sections of that community. The objective is that they will make a contribution to a more effective understanding of reactions to the rate and direction in which the peace process is proceeding. The contributors present perspectives from backgrounds in politics, the media, education, religion and community work.

The appropriateness of someone from a Nationalist background editing such a work might well be questioned. In the context of identity (and some would argue, ethnicity) it may be argued that I would lack an understanding of, and empathy for, the unionist psyche. This may well be so, but I doubt if such a uni-dimentional phenomenon exists. In addition, I feel there are advantages in casting a detached eye over the editing process. This is not to suggest that, in keeping with everyone else in Northern Ireland, I am not ‘blessed’ with my own stereotypes and certainties. However, the editing process made me more aware (and therefore more careful) of these.

A further concern is that the title of the book may give the impression that the conflict in Northern Ireland is fundamentally a religious one. I have always argued against such an assertion. However, more recently, I have come to believe that religion, or rather religious labels ("the Protestant people of Northern Ireland") are playing an increasingly important part, not only in the conflict, but also in the emerging peace process. I think this applies more on the Protestant ‘side’. One of the reasons for this might be that, since the Implementation of the state of Northern Ireland in 1921, there has been a comforting unity among the Unionist community simply in being unionist. Duncan Morrow claims that Unionist internal unity was seen as a prerequisite of all successful politics, understood in practice as Protestant domination of the key instruments of power. However, over these past years, and certainly since the Good Friday Agreement, this unity has been under increasing pressure. Splits and fragmentation have emerged on issues such as police reform, decommissioning, sharing power with Sinn Fein and the parades issue. In even more recent times, similar divisions have appeared for different reasons between the various loyalist paramilitary groups. All of this has taken place in the context of what Morrow refers to as increasing British indifference. One of the consequences is that currently, being unionist may imply divergence rather than cohesion. In fact, in terms of a shared identity, perhaps the only unifying thread which now exists is a Protestant background and culture. It is this which I perceive to be being increasingly stressed in claims and counterclaims in Northern Ireland.

Much has happened in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement, the holding of the referendum and the setting up of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It has been argued by several of the contributors that the Protestant community did not fully appreciate the full implications of the Agreement when they contributed to such a highly positive response of the referendum. They now feel that they are giving everything and getting nothing in return. They have conceded, or been forced to concede, on issues such as the early release of prisoners, the re-routing of marches, the introduction of North-South structures and the Government of the Republic of Ireland having a say in their affairs. Many are feeling what might be described as the ‘pain of parity’ to be unbearable. But what action can they take?

I think that most action and reaction in this context can best be understood in the context of Identity. I am treating the concept here in terms of identity with rather than identity of individuals and groups. What is important therefore is the extent to which the different cultural groups have related to (and therefore, identified with) institutional and legal structures, State bodies and, when it existed, the Northern Ireland Government itself. Basically, of interest here are the differential perceptions of services (and forces) and policy making bodies, either as natural and effective support systems or meddlesome and perhaps discriminatory intruders. It is this aspect which gives most insight into the civic and social behaviour of the major cultural groups.

This approach to identity is obviously political in nature and is best understood in terms of the circumstances precipitating and nurturing the conflict in Northern Ireland. In this context, the implementation of the State was carried out almost exclusively by Protestants. The Roman Catholic population, most of whom being convinced that the system would not last, took little part in proceedings and were content to await its inevitable demise. The fact that the State proved rather more durable than anticipated had two main implications. In the first place, Catholics were badly represented at policy making levels and secondly, more concern was afforded to Protestant aspirations and values in the formation of legislation and administrative structures. Since the power base was indisputably Protestant in nature, it resulted in further avoidance by Catholics and reciprocal suspicion and exclusion of them by Government. Positive identity on the one hand and alienation and separatism on the other have become deep-rooted over the years.

These differential institutional identities remind us of the concept of the Nation/State. This has become a popular area of discussion, especially since the breakdown of the former USSR and the subsequent efforts of satellite states to attain autonomy. Within these discussions, the State is most often defined in terms of geographical boundaries with politics, law and citizenship being essential elements. The Nation on the other hand is a construction based on elements such culture, ethnicity and identity and sometimes religion. Simply put, Statehood implies citizenship, while Nationality suggests ethnic affiliation. It is claimed that a Nation/State exists when all those living within the boundaries of a state identify with it, i.e. a polity where territorial/judicial boundaries coincide with ethnic boundaries. While France and Spain are often put forward as examples, I doubt if such an attribution is either appropriate or attainable and I rather suspect the Bretons and Basques would agree. Returning to a point made earlier; in general, Unionists in Northern Ireland identify with the State and relate to it as their Nation. Nationalists differ on both counts in identifying with an all-Ireland entity and viewing that as their natural Nation. Caird (1995) argues that there are occasions when national identity can be argued to supersede the requirement of submission to the prescription of the State, in various aspects of public life. There have been times in the histories of most European nations when the State has placed a restriction on some of their citizens in giving total expression of their national identity. Nationalists might point to the selective Flags and Emblems Act in this regard while the Orange Order might cite the restriction of their traditional freedom to walk the Garvaghy Road. However, problems tend to emerge when the emblems of power and authority of one group are paraded as tokens of national identity and are used to evoke a chauvinistic expression of that identity. It is not difficult to find examples of such action ‘on both sides’ in recent months and years.

A major consequence of all of this was that emerging political structures and institutions were equated by Catholics with a Protestant establishment and as such to be distrusted or at least, treated with caution. The structures not only provided tangible evidence of a Protestant ascendancy but also, to a minority, ‘legitimate targets’. For Protestants on the other hand, there are few such targets, in any sense of the word. Since, within that community there is a general identity with state structures, an assault on any of them is in fact an attack on themselves. Thus we see the recent contradictory and, for outsiders, paradoxical demonstrations of the Orange Order in blocking the Queens highway in order to demonstrate their freedom to march on it or coming into conflict with the very police force which they so strenuously defend.

It is difficult to see how such protests can advance the cause of Protestants either in the context of marches or in terms of what is seen as more general human rights or political issues. Although problematic, it would seem that the priority now is to search for alternative strategies. In subsequent chapters, contributors consider such strategies and their possible consequences. Chris Gibson for example, cites Sugarman’s optimistic claim that

"Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognised a problem and turned it into an opportunity."

Duncan Morrow, on the other hand, in Chapter one, presents a rather more sombre picture in claiming that while all Unionists are agreed on the goal of opposing Nationalism and upholding the relationship with Britain, the strategic and tactical consequences of this allegiance split the Unionist parties and their voters into two increasingly bitter blocs. In his view, Protestant security lies not in exclusivism or in reliance on the British State, but rather in a new and untested relationship with Catholics and Nationalism in Ireland. He concedes however, that emotionally, government with Republicans remains counter-intuitive and undesirable for many.

Gregory Campbell, in Chapter five goes further in contending that the Unionist population perceive the process unfolding before them as the culmination of many years preparation by the Nationalist/Republican community. He argues that the Unionist people are now being patronised through promises of a brighter future, if only they will co-operate in their own demise.

Chris Gibson, in Chapter two, sees the future of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland in terms of good governance. This concept takes in the State but transcends it to include civil society and the private sector. Within this approach, all three strands are critical: the State creates a conducive and legal environment; civil society facilitates political and social interaction by mobilising groups to participate in economic, social and political activities; and the private sector generates jobs and income. It is to the latter that Chris gives most attention. He argues that the business community is not isolated from constitutional and political issues dealt with in the Belfast Agreement and must play an integral and fundamental role in the evolution of the new society which we hope to create.

May Blood, in Chapter three, emphasises the role of civil society in the peace-building process. She argues that rather than initiatives which the various governments have put together, it has been committed community people that have made the most significant contribution to holding the community together. There is nothing that the two communities cannot achieve by working together. She argues that in the past, community action has been either sidelined or ignored by elected politicians and that the proposed new Civic Forum, if properly organised, will provide a platform for community activists for the first time. She, like Gregory Campbell, feels that the Churches have made ‘little or no’ contribution to peace and that they have in fact let the Protestant people down.

Robin Eames, on the other hand, in Chapter four, argues that the period of the Peace Process has not been an easy chapter for the main Protestant Churches in Northern Ireland. During the years of violence pastoral support for victims, condemnation of the endless cycle of injury and death, seemingly endless funerals and appeals for an end to the mayhem co-existed at an official level with calls for political action to fill the vacuum. Once the first tentative steps towards dialogue emerged, the Churches appeared less confident in their official utterances. He emphasises that leadership is not confined to the representation of opinion: it calls for prophetic utterance.

Barry White, in Chapter six, again, highlights the diversity among the Protestant community, ranging from the born-again to the ‘devoutly secular’ and retaining all the Presbyterian characteristics of individualism and non-conformism. In addition, there exists within the broad Protestant Community a largely apolitical section of the middle-class which does not identify with the stereotypes of Unionism or Nationalism. He sees the main political effect of the process so far as introducing more splits into the Unionist family while Nationalists have remained comparatively stable. He raises the possibility that within a generation, there could be a democratic majority in Northern Ireland demanding either a much closer association with the Republic of Ireland, or indeed formal unity. He also cites another scenario wherein, since the Unionist majority is dwindling, Protestants might become increasingly defensive of their British identity and culture, at the same time as Catholics become more assertive. He suggests that it is just possible that Northern Ireland’s ‘split identity problem’ may have found a unique solution in its all-inclusive executive.

Underlying all of these accounts is the concept of diversity in terms of politics, religion and identity. These differences would seem not simply to exist between the major cultural groups, but also to obtain within them. In this context, the main task of the Northern Ireland Assembly, in attempting to develop a state more acceptable to all, might be to moderate these definitions of identity and accommodate different perceptions of nationhood.

References

Caird, A. R. (1985), Protestantism and National Identity, Belfast: Co-operation North.

CHAPTER ONE

NOTHING TO FEAR BUT…? UNIONISTS AND THE
NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS

Duncan Morrow

THE SLOW DEATH OF MAJORITY RULE
The collapse of the Stormont system in 1972 and the four years of trauma which led up to the abolition of Unionist majority rule remain the pivotal events in Northern Irish politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In a sense, they together represent Northern Ireland’s political anno domini. Thereafter, hindsight confirms, all efforts to restore Humpty Dumpty were doomed. A political culture of Unionist domination, public tranquility and submerged but ever more polite sectarianism gave way to chaos, open and violent inter-communal division and direct rule.

In ripping the umbilical cord connecting Ulster Unionism and political power in Northern Ireland, the British Government was embarked, logically if not explicitly, on a revision of the constitutional arrangements for Ireland devised in 1920 and 1921. The British Government, however vaguely, now accepted the need for an examination of the fundamental political construction of Northern Ireland. The state, and Unionism, was at least part of the problem. This more than anything else was the real break with Unionist rule.

There was no single plan, no blueprint or even conscious intent to embark on wholesale change on the part of many of the politicians involved, but the arrival of William Whitelaw as first Secretary of State for Northern Ireland within the UK Cabinet confirmed a formal re-engagement of the apparatus of the United Kingdom state with its chaotic devolved offspring and the renegotiation of the political basis for any British state presence on the island of Ireland.

Whereas, before direct rule, Unionists monopolised direct and organic access to the political, administrative and security apparatus in Northern Ireland, after 1972 the British Government signaled its intent to bring Nationalists and Catholics into the staatsvolk even in the context of a vigorous and violent IRA campaign. The events of 1968 and 1969 had destroyed the claims to political neutrality of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the eyes of an ever-more critical audience outside Northern Ireland. The complete failure, in both political and security terms, of the introduction of internment without trial in 1971 and the events of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972 heralded the end of British attempts to resolve the problem of civil unrest among Catholics by security means alone. While the IRA campaign, especially as it spread to the British mainland, was the central concern of all policy, the security stick was thereafter supplemented with a bunch of carrots aimed at building a cross-community governmental structure, reducing social and economic differentials between Protestants and Catholics, encouraging pluralism in education and community provision and supporting inter-community contact.

Although by 1968, a more liberal element within Unionism had accepted the need for civil rights reform, there was a substantial group unwilling to acknowledge anything which would attribute fault to the design of the state, however tacitly. Northern Ireland was, in this view, a fully functioning protestant-led democracy threatened by republican and authoritarian terror. In this view, the problem was defined as a threat to the security of the state requiring a strong security response. As the level of republican violence rose, many set their face against any concessions. The abolition of Stormont came as a profound shock to this school of thought and inevitably drove most varieties of Unionism into direct, if paradoxical, opposition to their own government.

But if the abolition of Stormont represented the zenith of Unionist unity in the late twentieth century, it was a unity only maintained on a common defence of the past. As early as 1974 the more moderate leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) sought to engage with the British reform agenda. The result within Unionism was division and political paralysis when Brian Faulkner’s Unionist-led power-sharing executive quickly collapsed under the pressure of the (Unionist) Ulster Worker’s Council strike.

While the strike destroyed Unionist participation in power-sharing, it did not, in the long run, divert either the British Government or political Nationalism from a determination to create an inter-community administration. In fact, the strike reinforced rather than destroyed the argument that Unionism was part of the problem of Northern Ireland rather than its solution, in spite of the majority Unionist report of the 1975 constitutional convention . Over time, the cross-community principle which surfaced in the power-sharing executive was slowly but inexorably expanded while Unionist Party access to the levers of power was becoming an increasingly distant memory.

BEHIND THE MONOLITH
Unionism is a movement whose unity consists largely in its common rejection of all things Nationalist. There have always been a number of distinct elements within Unionist ideology which compete for precedence. These include religion, allegiance to the crown and an ideal notion of British liberty. To these can be added the problems of all catch-all movements or parties around class, regional and rural-urban differences. In the male-dominated world of Unionist politics, gender has never formally surfaced as a political cleavage. The events of the 1960s and 70s and the reintroduction of proportional representation in 1973 allowed the full political expression of these differences.

By the 1980s, four inter-connected but distinctive political strands within Unionism could be identified. Enoch Powell, an Ulster Unionist MP after 1979, was a powerful influence on many Unionists arguing for the full integration of Northern Ireland into the Westminster parliamentary system. Intellectually, integrationist Unionism understood itself as a preference for a distinctive citizenship rather than a claim to national self-determination with direct parallels to Irish Nationalism. Of course, full-blooded integrationism would ultimately destroy the rationale for the existence of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) itself. Given Unionist hostility to many British government actions in Northern Ireland, integration was always an idea with greater intellectual than practical appeal especially beyond the relatively peaceful and prosperous areas in suburban Belfast. Integrationism also had to overcome the profound opposition to it within the leaderships of the large British parties. Both Conservative and Labour Parties resolutely preferred to maintain their remaining neutrality in governing Northern Ireland which alone accounted for their greater freedom of movement in governing Northern Ireland compared to local Unionists. Even after grassroots pressure forced the Conservative Party to agree to field candidates in Northern Ireland in 1989, the leadership of the party acted to limit the effect of the decision.

This contradiction partially accounts for the emergence of a new ‘contented class’ who eschewed any active involvement in Unionist politics and were generally supportive of British governmental efforts to establish economic and social stability at the price of political inaction. While instinctively and culturally Unionist, they experienced their Britishness as an identification with the mainstream of British cultural and political life through the institutions of direct rule and the integrated aspects of the UK economy. In effect, they resolved the contradiction of Powellite by adapting to the imperfect structures of direct rule and absenting themselves from direct involvement in party politics.

Integrationist influence was never universal, however, and even competed with other elements inside the UUP who remained committed to devolution and to a distinctive Ulster Unionist tradition. This was particularly true among rural Unionists, who were traditionally more hostile to central control, and among those who were strategically committed to Unionism as a cross-class and cross-party alliance for the defence of the Union in Northern Ireland. This alliance had to be broad enough to include religious, rural and working-class critics of direct rule under a single strategic umbrella. By far the largest of these groups outside the UUP was the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) with Ian Paisley as its leader. The DUP continued to articulate Protestant fundamentalist opposition to Catholicism, thereby distinguishing themselves sharply from all other parties at Westminster. Although vehemently opposed to power-sharing, the DUP were strong advocates of devolved government. In effect they spoke for a distinctive ‘Ulster Protestant Nationalism’ with few links to political parties outside Northern Ireland and characterised by populist campaigns and Protestant fundamentalist ideology. Finally, paramilitarism and the loose political organisations surrounding the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) provided a further forum for political debate. Although the lack of ideological cohesion in this period meant that they were most easily distinguished from other brands of Unionism by their urban working class culture and the overt acceptance of paramilitarism. Nonetheless, the rise in loyalist violence after the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the rise of the Ulster Clubs suggested that support for direct political violence could quickly spread beyond these core constituencies.

THE ANGLO-IRISH 'DIKTAT'
If the abolition of Stormont was the single most crucial event for Northern Ireland as a whole, then the Anglo-Irish Agreement signed in Hillsborough in 1985 represents the watershed within Unionism itself. Until that Agreement, Unionist proposals for the future of Northern Ireland largely sought to avoid any commitment to power-sharing or inter-community government. The fact that a British government, indeed a Conservative one, had signed a treaty with the Republic of Ireland without any direct consultation with Ulster Unionists came as a profound shock to the Protestant community. Unionists were especially hostile to the establishment of a joint British-Irish Civil Service secretariat based outside Belfast.

Like the abolition of Stormont, the initial reaction of Unionists was a common rejectionist front. Through the ‘Ulster says No’ campaign, Unionists of all shades united in an attempt to undermine its operation at every level. Huge public demonstrations were backed up by a campaign of civil disobedience orchestrated through Unionist-led district councils and the mass-resignation of Unionist MPs of all shades. There was dark talk of disquiet within the police force and a measurable rise in loyalist terrorist activity. Leading mainstream politicians, including Ian Paisley, associated themselves with new organisations like the Ulster Clubs and Ulster Resistance who made thinly veiled threat of resort to paramilitary violence.

In spite of the furore, the British Government continued to back the new arrangements and, by 1989, the energy behind Unionist opposition to the Agreement had largely dissipated. The mass demonstrations evaporated, the police held the line as Orangemen were rerouted in Portadown and the local council protests foundered on the rock of court cases and the objections of Protestant constituents who found services withdrawn. Although Unionist MPs could claim that their resignation strategy proved majority hostility within Northern Ireland to the new Agreement, the case was weakened when one MP was defeated at the subsequent by-elections. While active loyalist terrorism rose above pre-1985 levels it did not precipitate any new security crisis.

Ultimately, the ‘Ulster says No’ campaign foundered on the fact that the British Government had achieved a degree of political autonomy from Ulster Unionist pressure by 1985. The Anglo-Irish Agreement itself, unlike the power-sharing arrangements of 1973, was not dependent on Unionist participation and operated on an inter-governmental level. The Unionist campaign was also severely hampered by internal weaknesses, including the fact that Unionists did not agree on any single proposal to replace the Anglo-Irish strategy and by a deep aversion to any identification of Unionism with vigilantism among a core element of Unionist support. The growing political power of Nationalism meant that campaigns such as the Council boycott were only effective in areas with overwhelmingly Protestant populations. Finally, in spite of real bitterness and ideological anger, the effect of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, confined as it was to inter-governmental, security and bureaucratic arrangements, had only an indirect affect on daily life. In an improving economic climate the culture of political apathy in large sections of the middle classes ultimately predominated.

FROM BOYCOTT TO CEASEFIRE
By 1989, the Anglo-Irish Agreement had clearly achieved a degree of functional legitimacy. Although there were increasing attempts to force British political parties to organise in Northern Ireland, focused initially on the personality of Robert McCartney and the atypically middle-class area of North Down, Ulster Unionist leaders had little choice but to re-enter the local negotiating fray. More than ever, they appeared as the opposition coming in from the cold. By 1991 both main Unionist parties agreed to enter talks involving the SDLP, the Alliance Party and the British and Irish governments.

The talks were interrupted by the British General Election in 1992. The chief significance of this event for Unionism lay in the defeat of the only serious Conservative candidate in North Down by the sitting independent Unionist. With hindsight, the fact of talks aimed at devolution combined with the loss of momentum among the integrationists was decisive. In spite of integrationist Robert McCartney’s victory in a subsequent by-election the dynamic behind full institutional integration was coming to an end

The outcome of the so-called Brooke-Mayhew talks was ultimately of little long-run significance, finishing in stalemate and considerable bad feeling between the Unionist Party leadership and John Hume, in particular. However, the talks did establish a new series of precedents and a common basis for negotiations between governments and the two great streams of Northern Irish politics. For the first time, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) accepted and recognised a role for the Irish government in formal negotiations about Northern Ireland. In addition, the UUP accepted the so-called three-strand agenda - internal arrangements for Northern Ireland, North-South relations within Ireland and British-Irish relations as a whole - on the supposedly safe basis that ‘nothing was agreed until everything was agreed.’

The distance which Ulster Unionism had travelled since 1985 can be measured by the reaction to the events of 1993. The Anglo-Irish Agreement convinced a new generation of leadership, that Unionism could not simply oppose British policy in Northern Ireland, and expect thereby to veto all change. Re-engagement with a British Government-supported agenda for Northern Ireland meant the acceptance, at minimum, of the power-sharing agenda, something recognised in effect by the Brooke-Mayhew talks.

After 1985, Unionists were deeply suspicious of the potential for secret deals. They thus reacted with extreme wariness when it was revealed that the SDLP leader was involved in a new and unpublicised round of negotiations with Gerry Adams the leader of Sinn Fein. Rumours that Hume and Adams had reached a secret accord and had involved the Irish government, were greeted with Unionist fury. In the midst of the outrage a bomb exploded on the Protestant Shankill Road killing ten civilians. Within a week, a loyalist terror brigade had responded with a shooting spree at a pub in the largely Catholic village of Greysteel.

In this context, the British and Irish governments accelerated efforts to produce a new accord, culminating in the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993. While the Declaration was largely a reformulation of the Anglo -Irish Agreement, there were three main distinctions. For the first time since 1920, Fianna Fail, the inheritors of the anti-Treaty tradition in the Irish Republic signed a formal arrangement with a British Conservative Government. The creation of a political umbrella of this width carried considerable implications for all parties in Northern Ireland. Secondly, much of the language in the Declaration was geared at enticing the IRA to renounce political violence.

The Irish government was in simultaneous contact with John Hume and Gerry Adams and the Declaration represented an attempt by both governments to create the conditions for a new dialogue, this time including both governments, Unionists and Sinn Fein. To Unionist chagrin, although hardly to their surprise, the British declared that they had ‘no selfish strategic or economic interest’ in Northern Ireland. But while bending to Sinn Fein notions of Irish self-determination, the Declaration also modified the claim to include the notion of parallel consent, North and South. Finally, unlike 1985, the UUP leadership was consulted on aspects of the negotiations between the governments. As a result, although the DUP denounced the new proposals, the Ulster Unionists took a much more pragmatic stance. Within the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) there was a strong feeling that total rejection along the lines of the Anglo-Irish Agreement would be disastrous. Party leader James Molyneaux contented himself with a muted non-commital response and an ongoing attempt to impose parameters on both the British government and IRA from a Unionist perspective especially around the conditions for any future talks.

In the immediate aftermath of the Declaration, the IRA seemed to be prevaricating uncomfortably, seeking endless ‘clarifications’ from the British government. The announcement of a ‘complete cessation to all operations’ caught many observers by surprise and simultaneously created tactical problems for Unionism. On the one hand, an IRA ceasefire was an event of such magnitude in Northern Irish politics that it could not be ignored. Its very popularity handed Republicans a propaganda weapon should Unionists be accused of refusing an offer of peace. On the other hand, the reflex instinct of all Unionists when faced with an apparent ‘gift’ by the IRA was to question the contents.

The refusal of the IRA to use the word ‘permanent’ to describe the ceasefire became the lightening conductor for Unionist suspicions of IRA motives. In order to reassure them, John Major promised that any political Agreement would be subject to the approval of the Northern Ireland parties, the Westminister Parliament and a Referendum in Northern Ireland (the so-called triple lock). Six weeks after the IRA ceasefire, loyalist paramilitaries responded on the basis that ‘the Union is safe’.

UNIONISM REALIGNED?
Since the early Home Rule crises, Ulster Unionism has been concerned with securing the British identity of Ulster. In the face of British indifference, Unionist internal unity was seen as a prerequisite of all successful politics, understood in practice as Protestant domination of the key instruments of power. While this Protestant domination is not central to the ideology of all forms of Unionism, it becomes essential, because the pursuit of security within Britain requires a minimum standard of loyalty. For many complex reasons, upbringing within the Protestant tradition becomes and often became the easiest effective shorthand for the exercise of the presumption of loyalty or disloyalty.

After 1920, the most effective way to achieve Unionist goals was through identification with the institutions of Northern Ireland. After 1972, these institutions no longer existed. By 1994, Unionism had lost any positive institutional focus and was instead divided on whether the goal was integration or devolution. The ceasefires further altered the political map. In spite of the abandonment by the IRA of its ceasefire between February 1996 and July 1997, the central political focus in London and Dublin after 1994 was on the construction and maintenance of a maximally inclusive framework for political dialogue. Problematically for Unionists, ‘inclusive’ was ultimately a euphemism for the inclusion of Sinn Fein, and through them of the IRA, in political negotiations. While the IRA was active, Unionist arguments that negotiations with Sinn Fein were tantamount to the appeasement of terrorism had defined the limits of political dialogue in Northern Ireland. The SDLP thus acted as the only recognised representatives of Irish Nationalism. The outcome of the Hume-Adams dialogue was to fundamentally alter this division.

Negotiating with republicans represented an existential challenge to Unionists. But given the support of the British and Irish governments for the ceasefires, not to negotiate represented an equally difficult choice. In seeking to answer the question of how to respond, Unionism found itself deeply and bitterly divided. The fact that the division of Unionism was a long-term strategic goal of republicans did not make the choices any easier.

The depth of the divisions only became visible over time. In September 1994, the ceasefire was widely regarded by most Protestants as a tactical Trojan horse whose intent was to prosecute the war by other means. The alienation of Unionism from the British mainstream since 1972 and 1985 meant that the engagement of a British government in the process provided no specific guarantees of security. Even the triple lock, although technically watertight, was regarded by many Unionists with the pessimistic suspicion of people who had ceased to believe in anything watertight.

Nonetheless, the momentum behind the process kick-started by the ceasefires was considerable. British and Irish public opinion and all political parties were enthusiastically committed to the new process. The involvement of the American government had increased enormously even before the ceasefires, when Gerry Adams had been granted a visa to visit the US against British Government advice in spring 1994. After the ceasefires, the European Union signalled its intention to support all movement towards peace through the creation of a ‘Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation’ which sought to underpin movement at elite political level with financial support for social and economic development on the ground. In a province heavily dependent on the economic beneficence of these partners, the emerging international unanimity was a powerful influence on political leadership, if only indirectly so on the electorate.

Within Northern Ireland, the mere fact of the ceasefires was widely popular. Nationalists in particular regarded the IRA gesture as a radical change and demanded a political response. Under James Molyneaux, the UUP adopted a position of pragmatic scepticism, relying heavily on their connections with the Conservative Party at Westminster for influence and firmly declining the invitation to be involved in the National Forum for Peace and Reconciliation established by Albert Reynolds in Dublin. Acutely aware of the dangers of political marginalisation as demonstrated in 1985 by the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Molyneaux could rely on broad, if unenthusiastic, support from the mainstream of the UUP and among the leadership of key civil institutions such as business and the largest Protestant churches.

To the surprise of many who had failed to observe changes in working-class Unionist politics, the strongest support for talks came from among loyalist paramilitaries and in particular from former loyalist prisoners. Two new political parties emerged - the Progressive Unionists (PUP) attached to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) drawn from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) - both of which advocated direct dialogue with Sinn Fein and campaigned against the DUP in its urban working-class heartlands. Given the paramilitary connections of the new ‘fringe loyalist’ groups, there was never any possibility of a formal alliance with the PUP. Indeed the UUP leadership emphasised that direct negotiation with Sinn Fein was dependent on the prior decommissioning of paramilitary weapons and extended that demand to all paramilitaries.

IRA weapons were the emotional heart of the appeal of Unionist opponents of the emerging process. The decommissioning of those weapons became the essential symbol which alone could confirm to Unionists that Republican violence was at an end. The theme was first introduced by the British Government and presented by Sir Patrick Mayhew as a precondition for the opening of talks involving Sinn Fein. It was categorically rejected by the IRA. For the next five years, this was the issue which defined the negotiating dilemmas of Ulster Unionism. Within the Protestant community as a whole, there was near-unanimity, outside of paramilitary circles, that decommissioning was a precondition for democratic legitimacy. In contrast to Republican assumptions, the overwhelming conviction of the Unionist community was that IRA terror was barbarous crime.

Paisley and the DUP opposed any co-operation with the Anglo-Irish strategy and made clear that they would not participate in direct dialogue with Sinn Fein under any circumstances. Paradoxically, he was supported in this by his erstwhile opponent, Robert McCartney. It was clear, even for the Ulster Unionist Party, that negotiation with a still-armed IRA with no intention of disarming would open them to powerful charges of appeasement and betrayal.

Molyneaux’s leadership was severely shaken by the publication by the two Governments of the ‘Framework Documents’ in 1995 which contained British and Irish proposals for North-South harmonisation and an emphasis on an all-Ireland dimension. For his critics, both within and beyond the UUP, the Documents were evidence of the limitations of Molyneaux’s strategy of influencing events from behind the scenes at Westminster. Six months later, Molyneaux resigned his leadership of the party and was replaced by David Trimble, widely regarded as the candidate most hostile to political negotiation.

UNIONISM SINCE 1995
The new dividing line in Unionism was in many ways a repetition of the divisions in Unionism in the late 1960s and early 70s. On the one side were those who laid emphasis on non-negotiable ideological positions and on the other was a resurgent civic Unionism which sought a pragmatic compromise which would allow the emergence of less violent politics within the framework of agreed partition. The new pragmatists laid emphasis on the risks inherent in refusing to engage with a process in which the British political elite was heavily invested, pointing out that refusal to engage in a process which had the wholehearted support of all major parties at Westminster would weaken rather than strengthen the Unionist case. They argued that negotiations could provide a forum to secure major strategic gains for Unionism, particularly the abolition of the hated Articles Two and Three of the Irish Constitution. Furthermore, and in spite of the events of 1974, many local councils had institutionalised power sharing at local level between the UUP and SDLP. What had once been controversial had become locally routine.

David Trimble’s elevation at a young age to the post of Ulster Unionist leader came as a shock, not only to outside observers, but to many of his older, more traditional colleagues in a party which has traditionally venerated experience. His success had been cemented by his public participation, alongside Ian Paisley, in a stand-off between Orangemen and Catholic residents at Drumcree in his own Upper Bann constituency in July 1995. An attempt by the Orange Order, traditional bulwark of Unionism and Protestantism, to march through an area predominantly populated by working-class Catholics was prevented by police when residents organised a counter-demonstration. Matters were only resolved after days of intense and increasingly tense negotiations and a small local parade was permitted. In the aftermath, Trimble and Paisley were greeted as heroes by flag-waving Protestants as they marched hand in hand through the centre of Portadown, to the bitter anger of the Catholic residents. Far from ending the matter, however, marching generated a legacy of intense conflict on the streets which was to be a constant theme of the next years.

So long as the British Government was prepared to support the demand for prior decommissioning, the initial focus of dispute was between London and Republicans. As the Conservative Government was rapidly losing its parliamentary majority, the potential leverage of the Ulster Unionists was growing in direct proportion. In spite of his reputation, Trimble made clear that he would retain the strategy of sceptical engagement, albeit with a markedly different style.

So serious was the decommissioning dispute that the process was only saved from collapse in November 1995 by the appointment of an international Commission to investigate decommissioning under the chairmanship of former US Senator George Mitchell. In February 1996, the Commission proposed that decommissioning should happen in parallel with negotiations. An unhappy British government proposed that negotiations could begin but only after elections to ensure democratic legitimacy. Citing British procrastination and deliberate obstruction, the IRA ended its ceasefire by exploding a massive bomb at Canary Wharf in London in February 1996.

Nonetheless, and to the dismay of Unionists of all shades, the subsequent elections produced major gains for Sinn Fein and emphasised the divisions within Unionism. Protestant votes were spread between two large Unionist parties, three smaller parties and the cross-community Alliance Party. The UUP, although the largest Unionist grouping, gained less than 50% of the Unionist vote, emphasising the seriousness of the cleft between permanent rejectionists and potential negotiators. The splits surfaced almost immediately when the DUP and UK Unionists rejected George Mitchell as the chair of the proposed talks while the UUP, after some hesitation, agreed to accept him.

ENTERING NEGOTIATIONS
For its supporters, the summer of 1996 represented the most difficult period in the peace process. The IRA was actively bombing targets in England and was thus precluded from entering any talks. From the point of view of Irish Nationalism, the purpose of the peace process was to bring Sinn Fein into direct negotiations. Talks without them were, in the words of one anonymous Irish official, ‘not worth a penny candle’.

The strong preference of Unionist leaders was to conduct negotiations with the SDLP as the sole legitimate representative of Nationalism. But any remote possibility that such a strategy could succeed was removed by the rioting and widespread public disorder which followed the blocking of an Orange parade by the RUC at Drumcree in July. When the police decision was later reversed, Catholic anger with the RUC and with Unionism extended far beyond core Republican circles.

David Trimble’s personal participation at the stand-off, complete with Orange sash and rumours of face-to-face meetings with leading hardline loyalist paramilitaries, illustrated the dilemmas of the UUP leader. On the one hand, Trimble’s position within Unionism depended on the support of core elements of the party. Drumcree was, and is, in his own constituency and less than a year previously he had become Unionist leader with the support of Orange Order votes. On the other hand, it could be argued, that the events at Drumcree in 1996 strengthened the determination of Nationalists to secure long-term change and weakened Trimble’s position in wider negotiations. Television cameras relayed pictures of the events to a world-wide audience which were widely interpreted as illustrating Unionist bigotry. There was a measurable deterioration in community relations throughout Northern Ireland and the events seriously undermined the already weak capacity of the RUC to be accepted as an impartial police force by Nationalists. More immediately, the SDLP withdrew from any engagement with the newly-elected Forum in protest, thereby effectively destroying any potential it had for indirect negotiation or reconciliation.

There was also soul-searching among Protestants. Images of Orangemen and armed loyalists in direct and bitter confrontation with the RUC and the obvious humiliation of the police when forced, under Orange pressure, to reverse their decision was not without problems for Unionism. There were boycotts of Protestant businesses in areas where Catholics were in a majority and the number of protests against marches merely multiplied. Within the Protestant churches, many questioned the commitment of the Orange Order to remain within the law. If nothing else, Drumcree 1996 illustrated the nature of the alternative to negotiation for Unionist as well as Nationalist.

Real momentum towards negotiation only returned after the landslide Labour victory in the British General Election of May 1997 and a rather narrower victory for Fianna Fail in the Irish Republic a month later. The new Labour Government, freed of any reliance on Unionist votes in the House of Commons, represented a powerful challenge for Unionists. Not only was the Labour Party historically sympathetic to Irish Nationalism but the new Government was committed to constitutional reform of the United Kingdom, starting with devolution in Scotland and Wales. In effect, the option of integration into a single imperial parliament, the dream of a substantial section within Unionism, was now stone dead. The only question at hand was whether to participate in British-sponsored attempts to negotiate devolution.

When the IRA called a second ceasefire in July 1997, the UUP could no longer avoid a critical strategic choice. Without any guarantee of parallel IRA decommissioning, Sinn Fein were promised immediate entry into political talks. The spotlight necessarily fell on the UUP, divided as ever on participation. To counter the obvious charge of betrayal leveled by the DUP and even from within his own party, Trimble embarked on a formal consultation with civic leaders within the Protestant Churches and business circles. In spite of strong Orange Order opposition, there were clear indications that key elements in Unionist society now advocated negotiations. Although DUP protests were supported by, among others, a number of UUP Westminster MPs, Trimble agreed to participate in the multi-party talks with the proviso that there could be no bilateral meetings between UUP representatives and Sinn Fein before decommissioning. Throughout the negotiations, the Unionists held to this condition. The participation of the smaller loyalist parties ensured that over 50% of Unionist voters at the Forum elections were now represented. Decommissioning, however, was not forthcoming.

In the course of seven months of detailed negotiations, there were no final breakdowns, despite breaches in both loyalist and Republican ceasefires. Eventually, after hours of last minute negotiations, the Good Friday Agreement emerged, based on the three strands established in 1991 and including provisos for a new Northern Ireland Assembly, institutionalised power-sharing, new North-South bodies exchanged for the ending of any territorial claim by the Irish republic and a new British-Irish Council. During the negotiations, primary emphasis was laid on the importance of constitutional structures. But the Agreement also included provision for the early release of prisoners convicted for paramilitary offences, an independent review of policing arrangements and a commitment by all parties to ‘use what influence they have, to achieve decommissioning within two years’. Subsequent to the Agreement it was clear that it was these additional themes which created turmoil among Unionists.

UNIONISM SINCE THE AGREEMENT
A matter of hours before David Trimble agreed to sign the Agreement, one of his most high-profile lieutenants, Jeffrey Donaldson, walked out of the talks. Donaldson objected to the provisions for early release of paramilitary prisoners and to the lack of any guarantee that decommissioning would begin before Sinn Fein entered government. He quickly became the figurehead for those within the UUP who opposed Trimble’s strategy including six of the UUP’s ten MPs at Westminster. To counter the potency of these accusations, Trimble obtained a handwritten letter from Prime Minister Tony Blair confirming his understanding that decommissioning should start immediately the Agreement was signed.

The governing Council of the Ulster Unionist Party met to debate the Agreement clearly and openly divided. In spite of opposition, Trimble won 70% of the Council’s votes in support of the Agreement. Nevertheless, the division within Unionism was profound. More than half of the party’s MPs remained opposed and joined with DUP and UK Unionists in the campaign to defeat the Agreement at the referendum.

Although the Agreement technically required a majority of 50% plus one to come into force, it was clear to all observers that the structures of the Agreement, built as they were on the notion of ‘sufficient consensus’ between Unionists and Nationalists, required at least half of all Unionists to support the deal. During the campaign, the Agreement’s opponents highlighted the principles at stake. Under the slogan ‘It’s right to say No’, they attacked the Agreement’s provisions for the early release of Republican prisoners and the absence of any secure guarantees for decommissioning. Opinion polls conducted during this period recorded the volatility of Unionist electors. Less than a week before the referendum, polls showed a majority of Protestants opposed. Among Unionists, the campaign in favour of the Agreement was surprisingly muted until the final week, when David Trimble agreed to high profile photo opportunities with Tony Blair and John Hume of the SDLP.

In the event, 71% of all voting electors supported the Agreement in Northern Ireland. The turnout, at over 80%, was well above average for elections in Northern Ireland indicating that a considerable proportion of the ‘contented’ classes had decided to participate. Although the result was only released as a single figure, opinion poll data confirmed that the Agreement had won the support of the overwhelming majority of Catholics. According to one exit poll, every parliamentary constituency with the exception of North Antrim recorded a majority in favour of the Agreement (Sunday Times, 24 May 1998).

It was clear, however, that interest in the Agreement had roused a number of voters to the polls who had largely ceased to participate in Northern Irish politics. This was especially true in largely Protestant eastern Ulster. The participation of the contented classes, traditionally supportive of British policy, combined with the fact that the polls used the term ‘Protestant’ rather than Unionist, thereby including many Alliance voters in the Protestant bloc, resulted in some difficulties in interpreting the results. Whatever the case, there is little doubt that the division within overt Unionism was almost 50-50.

The results of elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly, which took place one month later, certainly confirmed the same pattern. Protestant votes were distributed among five competing Unionist parties, the Alliance Party and a number of mostly anti-Agreement independents. Although ending up with the largest number of seats, the UUP was beaten by the SDLP in terms of first preference votes, for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland. Although the UUP (28) and PUP (2) held a slight advantage in terms of seats over the DUP (23) and UKU (5), the fact that a number of UUP members nurtured serious doubts about the Agreement made David Trimble’s position precarious.

The UUP leadership survived an immediate crisis over Drumcree, but the death of three boys in Ballymoney as the result of a sectarian attack, followed one month later by a bomb in Omagh illustrated that potent opposition remained. It was also becoming clearer that the doctrine that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ which was intended to create a degree of safety for all those negotiating the Good Friday Agreement had not applied in the case of decommissioning. In the absence of any IRA willingness to begin the process, the UUP leadership stalled on further political developments. Excepting the smaller paramilitary-linked parties, any disagreement within Unionism over the Agreement itself was removed on the question of IRA arms. Successive attempts to resolve the issue foundered, most spectacularly in July 1999. The impasse was only broken by George Mitchell in autumn, when he manoeuvred the leadership of both Sinn Fein and the UUP into direct face-to-face meetings, away from the glare of the media.

When it became clear that the resulting deal still did not guarantee actual decommissioning, Trimble’s leadership came under renewed attack. Ultimately, at a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in November 1999, 58% of delegates agreed to support the creation of a new all-party executive for Northern Ireland, on condition that decommissioning had begun by February 2000. As the executive came into being several days later, the scale and depth of Unionist divisions over the issue were visible to all. There were audible gasps of disbelief when Martin McGuinness, widely believed by Protestants to have been chief of staff of the IRA, was named by Sinn Fein as the Minister of Education. In spite of a relatively successful devolution, decommissioning failed to materialise by February. The Secretary of State, after some delay, stepped in to suspend the executive, simultaneously saving Trimble’s leadership and outraging Nationalist opinion. The extreme vulnerability of the leadership was demonstrated in April when Trimble was re-elected as leader by only 57% of the Ulster Unionist Council.

CONCLUSIONS
By 1999, Unionism, the dominant ideology in Northern Ireland since 1920, was split into two bitterly opposed camps. The division was not one of goals or loyalty. All Unionists were agreed on the goal of opposing Nationalism and upholding the relationship with Britain. However, the strategic and tactical consequences of this allegiance split the Unionist parties and their voters into two increasingly bitter blocs.

Unionists who supported the Agreement argued that no Ulster Unionist strategy which relied on permanent and outright opposition to British policy in Ireland was ultimately coherent. Power-sharing was the acceptable price of an Agreement which resulted in Irish Nationalist support for the principle that the boundaries of Northern Ireland could not change without the expressed consent of a majority of voters in Northern Ireland alone. The rewording of Articles Two and Three of the Irish Constitution, the emergence of a society freed from serious terrorism and the engagement of local politicians in local decision-making were all held up as measures of the success of Unionist negotiators.

Unionists who opposed the Agreement argued that it had come about through the appeasement of terrorism, resulting in an agreed role for the Government of the Irish Republic in the affairs of Northern Ireland, a concession of the principle of majority rule and the abandonment by Britain of any attempt to defend Britishness in Northern Ireland. More potently, they argued that the Agreement had not delivered IRA decommissioning while accelerating the release of convicted murderers from prison.

Emotionally and rationally, the Unionist population reflected the depth of the dilemmas facing the Unionist parties. On the one hand, there was widespread antipathy to government with a still-armed republican movement and open hostility to prisoner releases or any attempt to change the symbolic face of policing. On the other hand, the prospect of renewed violence and the strong international support for the Agreement argued for an acceptance of its broad terms.

The depth of the dilemmas posed created difficulties for all Unionists. The UUP was openly split, with six Westminster MPs opposed to the Agreement and a number of UUP Assembly members expressing considerable doubt. By the end of 1999, the pro-Agreement Unionists in the UUP relied on the paramilitary-related PUP to control even half the Unionist seats in the Assembly. Furthermore, Trimble’s leadership of the party depended on the willingness of the IRA to engage, at least symbolically, in some recognisable act of decommissioning.

Those who opposed the Agreement had their own dilemmas, however. Although the DUP remained united, they were forced to participate in the institutions set up under the deal. Pro-Agreement Unionists therefore continually accused their opponents of hypocrisy and opportunism. Furthermore, the Anti-Agreement forces were split between four parties in the Assembly, with only the distant prospect of greater co-ordination.

The crisis facing Unionism is a crisis of predicament. Outside Northern Ireland, there is negligible support for the traditional Unionist view of democracy, whereby Unionists have a right to power in Northern Ireland by virtue of their electoral majority. The only prospect for a return to active participation in Government is through an acceptance of the Agreement or something very like it. Nonetheless, to accept this premise is to accept the ultimate failure of the Unionist and Protestant project as it has been conceived since the early Home Rule crises of the 1880s. Security, in this view, lies not in Protestant exclusivism or in reliance on the British state but in a new and untested relationship with Catholics and Nationalism in Ireland. While such a new relationship carries huge compromises for traditional Nationalism and Republicanism in the medium run, the immediate institutional changes are all weighted against the traditional Unionist-dominated structures. Emotionally, government with republicans remains counter-intuitive and undesirable for many. To favour the Agreement is to begin, and as yet only implicitly, to acknowledge that the traditional Unionist state has failed and the Britishness in Ireland must be negotiated not imposed.

In such a context, any number of events might pose a threat to the continuation of devolved government: a failure by the IRA to decommission, the implementation of the proposals of the Patten Report on policing reform, a DUP victory at the next Assembly elections, serious riots resulting from an Orange march, a sustained republican bombing campaign by a splinter group. On the other hand, the determination of the British and Irish governments and their international supporters to continue with the search for inter-community consensus remains a serious problem for those who would bring the Agreement down. Support for a government structure in Northern Ireland which reaches beyond the traditional Unionist heartland remains a critical commitment in all such strategies. All of the current indications suggest that the only replacement for a formally devolved administration is a strategy of direct rule by the British Government on broad lines agreed between the Government of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The outcome of the 1990s peace process may ultimately depend on the strength of these contradictory forces on the Protestant mind and behaviour.

CHAPTER TWO

A BUSINESS PERCEPTION OF THE
PEACE PROCESS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Chris Gibson

"Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognised a problem and turned it into an opportunity"
Joseph Sugarman

BACKGROUND
I grew up in the 40’s and 50’s with all the experiences of what now might be described as ‘a privileged Protestant background’, the son of a farmer who involved himself in local community and agricultural business activities. Our family meal times were often the opportunity for discussion on the political and wider issues effecting society during the aftermath of the Second World War. There were, as we can now reflect, dramatic changes occurring within, and arising from, the experience of conflict on a wide scale which accelerated economic and social development. The provision of health care and the changes in the manner in which social services, including housing, were looked upon by society were amongst the drivers of this change. The provision of universal secondary education for all sections of the population changed the context of many people’s lives.

Most importantly on a personal basis, I picked up areas of interest which have influenced me to this day. Firstly, an interest in people and secondly, a curiosity about how things work in a technical sense which of course led me to a scientific career in the chemical business. The third area was an appreciation of the island of Ireland as an entity without political connotations. This probably came from the fact that the cows which provided our livelihood came from Kerry and gave rise to a few visits there during my more impressionable years. These visits were to prepare me for a context in which to place the physical environment in which I have spent most of my life and also a conceptual framework through which to view the massive changes which have and are taking place.

My first experience of meeting and really getting to know a Roman Catholic as a friend was a doctors son at Queens University Belfast in 1958. Separate education was the disadvantage of our time. By 1965 I obtained my first job with the famous East Belfast firm of Richardson’s Fertilisers, located in Short Strand and therefore with a mixed workforce from both traditions. I, like many of my peers, could understand the underlying forces and clear messages of the civil rights movement but could not agree with, or in any way condone, the eruption of violent revolt.

This was said to be done in the name of the Catholic section of the population in 1969 but only seemed to isolate and destroy any progress made in the 60’s and seemed to make reconciliation a distant dream.

My own journey through my life of work continued with a posting to Londonderry in that year. Seeing local people being killed and injured in ‘the troubles’ and indeed being ‘under fire’ myself, whilst at my office, in an engagement between the IRA and the British Army, have been experiences which were part of life in Northern Ireland and which shape ones thinking. I accepted a move to Dublin in 1973 to work for ICI and it was from that perspective that I was to observe the happenings of the next 20 years.

The protection of a multinational company may be criticized as another privileged position, which it was, but the vantage point was indeed unrivalled to see the changes which were transforming Irish society during the 70’s and 80’s. The position of the Roman Catholic Church and its influence on society, and indeed government policy, may have waned during this period but it seemed a major factor to even a liberal Northern Presbyterian. The emerging self confidence of Irish indigenous industry and its capacity to change and adapt was very clear to an ambitious young manager with a strong product portfolio and a desire to develop an ability to seek out opportunities for commercial advantage. It is indeed a strange irony that the mainspring of the Celtic Tiger, the youthful well educated adaptable young workforce, may have arisen from the favourable demographics created by the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude to birth control. These young people, many of whom went abroad, have now returned reinforcing new liberal and demanding attitudes but at the same time supplying a highly developed workforce for both indigenous and inward investors.

During this period of living and working in Dublin, the subject of Northern Ireland was a frequent topic. There were exceptions but I formed the clear impression that the business community far from pressing the ideal of the ‘national question’ (or Irish unification) moved further and further away from doing anything about the subject. They recognised the negative impact on their opportunity to grow and develop their business in the same manner as business people in any other part of the world. Indeed they saw conservative ideological positions as a barrier to economic progress whilst at the same time they saw the opportunities in creating a consensus around some agreed social objectives and a basis for reducing conflict in the workplace which became known as National Agreements.

There are of course exceptions to every rule and I encountered some people who were forceful and antagonistic to this lone Northern Presbyterian far from the support of his own community. An understanding family was however a strong basis to survive these exceptions. These people were as objectionable to me as I am sure the more strident voices of extremism are to whichever viewpoint you emanate from in Northern Ireland.

It is from this set of experiences that I realise the strong formative pressures on each of us from whatever background we emerge and can sympathise with, but not condone, the motivation of those who wish to act speedily to influence a situation by forceful means.

Indeed it often seemed strange that the issues involved, although incredibly important to the survival of the United Kingdom, did not seem to be addressed until the Major and Blair governments of the 1990’s. ‘An acceptable level of violence’ was a policy option too long allowed to remain as the status quo, and seemed only to change when violence hit the City of London itself. It might be argued that the ‘cease-fires’ or ‘suspensions of the armed conflict’ really only happened when the Loyalist community, through an armed intervention equal to the republicans, proceeded to enter the conflict in an organised and serious manner in the 80’s.

This activity was paralleled by others not resorting to violence but with equally strongly held views on either side of the argument. This enlightened self interest at least started the analysis of the ‘Northern Ireland condition’ which has since led to actions of many forms. The activity to which I refer being the Citizens Inquiry coming from Initiative 92 and leading to the Opsahl Report published in 1993. Many unrecorded and unrecognised dialogues and contacts took place. Other initiatives, including the Hume-Adams discussions, changed the context of the exchanges between the protagonists. These and many other initiatives quietly progressed and are too numerous to mention but led to the Belfast Agreement between the Irish and British Governments and the political parties active in Northern Ireland. This received the endorsement of the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the two Referenda and has hopefully changed the debate forever.

THE BUSINESS VIEW

"Business is many things, the least of which is the balance sheet. It is a fluid, ever changing, living thing, sometimes building to great peaks, sometimes falling to crumbled lumps. The soul of a business is a curious alchemy of needs, desires, greed and gratification’s mixed together with selfishness, sacrifices and personal contributions far beyond material rewards."
Harold Geneen (b.1910), IT&T., former Chief Executive

The Business Community, whether viewed from the shop floor or the boardroom, has played a vital role in the stability of Northern Ireland over the last 30 years. It has been said that business ‘opted out’ when the going got tough. It could be said that business continued to do what it does best and that very action gave that continuity which has been so vital in providing a platform for our politicians to engage in their contribution to the Peace Process.

Business in Northern Ireland reflects the communities of which it is comprised with the difference that it also reflects the sentiments expressed in the above quotation. All colours of opinion will therefore be reflected throughout the business community in a political sense. The Confederation of British Industry in Northern Ireland has, along with others, worked tirelessly to encourage, criticize, support and sometimes demand that we move forward towards an accommodation of our differences on the ‘national question’. Also that we remove violence both physical and verbal and build a society capable of tackling the complex problems and challenges of the modern world. Business clearly understands the self-imposed constraints to growth and development of not achieving these goals and of course pursues, as you would expect, a course of enlightened self-interest!

Business as a human activity, by its very nature, tends to be pragmatic and attempts to follow clearly the interests of its stakeholders. The primary task of business is to create value and subsequently wealth which may be used to the benefit of the stakeholders. They may be defined as the customers, the employees, the management, the investors, the suppliers and the surrounding and interacting communities. There are many and various arguments, from the right and the left, as to the strength of the justifiable claims of each of the stakeholders. The truism exists, nevertheless, that if there is no wealth created there can be no distribution of what is not there.

Large public companies or indeed any company lose their credibility and certainly can compromise their position if they, as corporate entities, align themselves with particular parties or partisan viewpoints of any description. This is most certainly the case if the issues are connected issues of a political nature especially in contentious areas or areas of conflict, where serious damage may be done to stakeholders interests. However in a conflict resolution or peace building situation, it is my assertion that an additional responsibility rests on business to build relationships and create pathways for communication. This, of course, may be based on the objective of enhancing long term profit potential and may also contribute to the corporate citizenship profile of the organisation. It has also the potential, in our situation, to deliver the prize of mutual understanding, peace and stability.

The economic health of people and communities are enhanced by this process which may also relieve some of the negative pressures in society but will also lead to the production of new customers and consumers. Trade is a major vehicle to enhance and create a global interdependence and, in that way, create bonds between people rather than the conditions for conflict. Perversely, it will also build competitive marketplaces served by an inexhaustible supply of innovative and competitively priced goods and services.

A major assumption on the relationship between business and peace may therefore be that international or indeed inter-regional or inter-community business can be a positive, mutually beneficial proposition for all participants. Another is that business is not an isolated activity but an integral part of the social and political fabric of society. A third is that business, when conducted with social and environmental consciousness, can be a major force for positive change within society as a whole and governmental systems in particular. Finally most business recognises that there can be no sustainability or long term success from business in our rapidly globalising world without peace.

It was against this background that in 1991 the two major business organisations in Ireland, the Northern Ireland Region of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Irish Business and Employers Federation (IBEC), recognised the scope for increasing the level of trade and business contact between both parts of Ireland. Initially they established the Joint Business Council and subsequently the Business Development Programme. The Council (or the addition of the two separate Councils) initially was just as disconnected as most other institutions and activities within the Island and just as suspicious and fearful of the others’ intentions!

The Joint Business Council rapidly established four main aims:

• To promote cross border trade.

• To encourage business development and co-operation on the island of Ireland.

• To enhance industrial competitiveness on the island.

• To maximize the benefit of the European internal market.

Latterly a fifth has been added, as the logic and benefits of expanding East-West trade has been appreciated and understood on a wider basis.

The operating vehicle of the Joint Business Council had been the Business Development Programme which has acted as a catalyst to maximise cross border trade and business development and to identify and make recommendations to the two governments for the removal of real and perceived barriers to growth.

The Programme has operated in the areas of engineering, food, cereals and animal feeds, clothing and textiles, building materials and aerospace. These six sectors accounted for 75% of the north-south trade. The aim was to develop relationships between large indigenous companies; small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and multi-nationals.

The Programme gave a high priority to creating a genuine single market on the island for public sector purchasing by liaising with government departments and state agencies, identifying the potential of one part of the island to supply the public sector of the other and by communicating opportunities for import substitution. Since the start of the Programme, there has been some 40% growth in inter-island trade and perhaps as many as 10,000 jobs have been created from the resulting economic activity. The economic interactions themselves are important, but even more vital have been the interpersonal relationships which have resulted. Opportunities have been provided for people to work with each other on mutually beneficial projects from very different backgrounds and political aspirations. The removal of the important psychological barriers to north-south trade, just as important as the physical or financial, generated a genuine interest and goodwill amongst business people in both jurisdictions.

Within the Unionist community, this was perhaps not recognised as rapidly as within the Nationalist. As we move out of the 90s, it is now generally clear that business cannot afford a hidden political agenda which does not relate to economic reality. All shades of Unionist opinion, openly or otherwise, support the concept and reality of inter-island trade and co-operation to aid cost competitiveness or increased market penetration inside or external to the island market.

The next phase of development of business on the island, or indeed within the United Kingdom through the evolution of the European Single Market, will be even more dynamic than the changes throughout the 90’s. The climate of this development in the political context over the next 10 years will either accelerate or hinder our capacity to grow and compete on a global basis. The effects of this regionalism are therefore going to be felt more quickly and painfully within society than before, but also can be remedied or altered by collective action with more precision and more rapidly than in previous generations, provided that we have both the mechanism and the will to allow this to happen.

In this interdependent and increasingly integrated world we need to be aware of others’ views and conscious that their decisions and actions can have both positive and negative affects on us. This external encouragement for the Peace Process has been an important factor in our progress so far. I hope that it will lead to a cultural shift in our business and society at large. We need a culture which generates a common commitment to economic success based on inclusive and effective partnership, which honours entrepreneurs and encourages others to emulate them, which is confident in its own ability, which ensures that the fruits of economic success are widely and fairly shared throughout society.

THE AGREEMENT AND THE WAY FORWARD

"I think the skill of waiting has to be learned in the same way as the skills of creating. The seeds must be patiently planted. The soil must be watered and the plants must be allowed to grow over a time that they themselves determine. History will not be outwitted in the same way that plants will not be outwitted. But history too may be watered every day and with patience. Not only with understanding, not only with humility, but also with love."
Vaclav Havel, Czech dissident, playwright and President

The business community is simply a reflection of the larger community at work and it therefore reflects all the characteristics, both positive and negative, of its constituents. However within a business context there are some specific factors which become important. Business is, as I have commented, about the coalescence of common aims and purposes around the pursuit of profit or described in another way, it is wealth creation. This places some constraints on behaviour and also some clarity on processes and a necessity for analysis and review to be enabled to repeat the activities leading to successful outcomes. It also places a premium on the ability to quantify and measure that success, in a manner which is communicable to others, in order to pursue the goal of sustainability. The prerequisite for any business plan is a clear vision for the organisation.

For Unionism that question was asked in 1967 by the leader of the Unionist Party and Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in his television address ‘Ulster at the Crossroads.’ "What kind of Ulster do you want?" was the question asked. We have heard or indeed have had forced upon us by Republicans and Nationalists many different answers to that question which, by my business logic and presumably their perception, is simply a subset of the old national question. But what of the Unionist argument? We have heard many and various answers to O’Neill’s question. Indeed a few are probably within other chapters of this book. We have not yet, as far as I am aware, come to an agreed Unionist position worked through in a visionary way to provide a basis for debate and agreement with our Nationalist and Republican co-inhabitants.

Perhaps I have been absent for a greater portion of this debate or more likely have not been listening properly. If however the process has taken place one might expect at this stage, if interested, to be able to quickly grasp the clear picture of an inspirational collective answer to O’Neill’s question.

The position within Nationalism seems much clearer from the output of the Forum conducted in Dublin. The even clearer picture from Republicanism is still too often painfully apparent to us all, stridently articulated and applied with force to recalcitrant listeners.

In the period before the signing of the Belfast Agreement, the many constituents who make up that broad swath of the population which has become known as ‘civic society’ took a much greater part in the political debate. Indeed they both criticised and supported politicians and parties openly and in private. This was not wholeheartedly welcomed but started a dialogue and return to the more normal operation of these sections of society, in relation to the elected representatives who are such an essential component of any democracy.

In many ways the positive Unionist case has been under-represented in the debate since the Agreement and subsequent Referenda, largely against a background of the continuity of the ‘No’ campaign. The totality of the Agreement, whilst acceptable if it achieves its aim of peace and prosperity for all the people of Northern Ireland, contains a number of components which are distasteful to democrats of whatever political background. A major issue is the release of terrorists who have not served their complete sentences. They have been tried and convicted in a situation where the legitimate forces of law and order have been constrained under rules of engagement seen at the time as suitable for combating civil disorder, when the opposing force was in a state of war. This does not seem to provide a level playing field and has been strongly promoted by those antagonistic to the Agreement.

The international world of business must correctly conform to many rules and regulations to ensure equity and maintenance of a moral framework. It is important that any civilised society should conform to natural justice in all aspects of its life and work. However it is equally important that people can agree on a common purpose, work together to achieve common goals and understand the power of collaborative advantage and indeed how to bring it about. It is against this background that many in the business community came to the conclusion that though imperfect and not without flaws, the Belfast Agreement at least provided the ingredients for our situation to be moved away from the use of violence to resolve the argument between our deeply held convictions using techniques more favourable to the latter half of the 20th Century.

This argument around the acceptance or rejection of the Agreement is, I believe, based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the process. A process like the journey of our collective lives is ongoing and, as it comprises all of us, does not have a beginning, a middle or an end. It could have an end of course. However the creation of a nuclear holocaust as the answer to an argument about mankind’s existence seems to be a large price to pay for not achieving your aims of providing justice and a better life for all as your goal.

As the fudged or non-decisions in the Agreement come back to haunt us, I believe this understanding of how the process must work will prove vital. A major question is on what basis can we implement or develop answers for the gaps in the Agreement to progress our small corner of the world in a volatile and highly technological new century?

As education of people played its role in providing the means and mechanisms of delivering a creative solution to the conflict of the last 30 years, I having argued that economics has been a substantive glue which holds people together. However this will not form a robust foundation if the ethical basis of the process itself does not withstand the heat of attack from all quarters. To put it at its simplest we cannot remain in a Wonderland as Alice did where "words can mean precisely what I intend them to mean". Surely a fundamental tenant of human existence, not to mention of civilisation, is that all have a right to life? We have spent billions of whatever currency you care to think of in the advance of medicine, including the creation of a vast pharmaceutical industry, in pursuit of this goal. On what basis can one continue to pursue one’s legitimate aspirations by killing those who hold a different view, whether they be from the opposing viewpoint or simply differ on the basis of how ones own goal is to be achieved? We have reached a fundamental point in this process.

We need to decide if the violent war is at an end. If this is indeed the case, Republicans, who control the means, need to say so, in an appropriate manner which fits with their traditional values. Having done this there would seem to be no longer any need for the means to propagate the war. As the loyalist case is built on defence, it would also be logical that they would no longer need their reactionary arsenal. Indeed we as a society no longer need the legitimate armed protection of the state through the constitutional forces ranged around us and could proceed to put the resources released to productive use to benefit those members of society who currently are deprived.

The establishment of what might be considered a forced or contrived coalition is, I believe, in the circumstances acceptable, though in the long-term undesirable. It has been postulated as a necessary and useful mechanism to achieve a degree of forward progress from an undesirable situation for us all. The essence of any collaborative arrangement to give collective advantage must be that all see a clear answer in their own terms to the question ‘what’s in it for me?’ The establishment of a coalition and its effective, if not its efficient, operation requires that all are open and transparent about their aims and purposes in participation.

We are indeed in a major experiment of governance, if not of democracy, in the current proposals. All political participants to this experiment need to understand the process of collaborative advantage more clearly than most of us have demonstrated our grasp of the concepts in the wider process of the run up to the Agreement and in subsequent months.

The establishment of a governance mechanism, be it an executive or indeed any other proposal, needs to arrive at a position where it assumes power and authority based upon a respect and trust not readily evident throughout our society. If we are to enjoy the advantages of local democracy, which is that people familiar with the issues and the connections can more rapidly recognise and resolve the problems, then we must encourage and sustain those engaged in trying to bring this about. We will and are being tested each step of the way.

This process involves crucial questions. Do the ends justify the means? What bottom line does our position hold? What exactly does a specific principle mean to us? From the pragmatism of a business life at least these questions are not unfamiliar. The ethical principles and the embedded experiences of all of us seem to make it difficult for us to face the choices which each generation, so far, have struggled to conquer. We live at a time of more accumulated wisdom than any period of mankind’s history, with more technological power and capacity to handle data than ever before. Can we demonstrate that we in our Age of Change, can create a more sustainable answer than our predecessors, and therefore attain our goal of a happier, healthier and more invigorating place for our children to live their lives than the generations gone before?

These are the questions we must answer to ourselves and to the world at large before it is too late. The truth is that having been on the world stage for a number of decades we will not get much sympathy if we have now raised expectations that we collectively fail to deliver upon. We may think we can live in grand isolation and continue as before, however that ignores the evidence from all around us.

THE WAY FORWARD

"… You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try."
Beverley Sills (b 1929), Opera Singer and Manager

What can the business view contribute to the way forward for our society?
If it is accepted that the business community is simply ‘society at work’, then business people have a right and a duty to make the maximum contribution to our society at all levels and through all channels. The world we are already living in is not the comfortable world some of us grew up within. The opportunities are greater both for success and failure. Let me describe some of these.

In the 20th century, as I have already made reference, we have developed many capabilities including the capacity to destroy ourselves through a nuclear holocaust. We indeed have misused and abused many of the more enlightened scientific discoveries made during the century including the ability to damage mankind through biological warfare. However we have developed the capacity to lift human existence to a new level using science and technology, we have also developed the capacity to enable the eradication of hunger and disease and provide economic advance in many ways through automation and new technology.

Notwithstanding the pressures and the problems of our lives in Northern Ireland, I am sure we recognise that we live in an age of rapid change and multitudinous choices with fewer and fewer constraints in many areas. The worlds markets are so fast, so competitive that 90% of new products are off the market within two years of being launched. Financial markets are so powerful that they trade in a day $1.3 trillion - more than the reserves of every government in the world put together. Within the top 100 economies of the world 40 of them are corporations not countries or national entities.

Another feature of world economic development is the growth of Regionalism against a background of liberalising of world trade. Within Europe this is being identified as the economic organisational structure of preference for the future. Within the United Kingdom we can see this in an economic form through the changes emerging from devolution. Around the world nationalism is changing and being expressed in new and different ways. It is only in certain ‘hotspots’ that it is causing turbulence, however because of global communications, we all know about it virtually as it happens.

Within society in general confusion is widespread. We all realise that we live in a world of increasing complexity but are uncertain about how to tackle the many fundamental problems around us. The old rules and what seemed like certainties no longer apply. Society has lost many of the old class and structure barriers including changes to the fundamental family unit. A fierceness of individual competitiveness has been substituted throughout so many aspects of our lives, from the farm to the factory, from the school to the sportsfield. We also live in a world so full of dynamism and freedom through democracy that we have unleashed power into peoples hands that would have been unimaginable even mid way through this century. The challenge for all of us is how are we to use these newly found freedoms and choices in ways which contribute to those around us, rather than destroying them and ourselves in the process?

Traditional structures and organisations do not seem to be capable of withstanding the profound changes underlying our time. Things are changing at an unprecedented rate in the world around us. The stark choice for our society at this time is how do we face these issues after the period of trauma and terror experienced by us all over the last 30 years. The collective changes we have made through the Belfast Agreement could form an integral part of our capability as 1.6 million people in the north-eastern corner of a small island, to deal with this situation. Many of the issues dealt with in the Agreement cause pain and anguish to different people and I have referred to some of these earlier.

One thing I believe is clear; the Ireland of the 20th century is changed forever. The pressure for change, of which I have given you a flavour, is irreversible. The technological advance of the microchip is a tornado. The globalisation of organizations driven by markets and the aggregation of core competencies to gain economies of scale and reach is a hurricane. The demographic situation, two billion people added to the worlds population in the next 25 years, 95% of them outside the OECD area, is a deluge. Between now and 2015 the number of new jobs required to keep unemployment rates unchanged in the developing world will exceed the populations of North America and Western Europe. Trade patterns and investment flows cannot be unaffected by such profound upheavals. All this cannot and will not be rolled back. When this is combined with our power to transmit information and data across the airwaves we have clearly a major force for changing many of the accepted norms of the past.

An exercise which involved the participation of the public and private sectors to redefine and describe the collective economic strategy of the Northern Ireland economy has been attempted by a government-led initiative through the Department of Economic Development. It involved over 300 people directly (including the author of this chapter as a member of the steering committee) and many others collectively through their many and diverse organizations. It has been called Strategy 2010 and has not only started the dynamic of strategy building within the economic community but the even more difficult task of resolving divergent views between people of strong conviction and even stronger rhetoric. The vision statement flowing from Strategy 2010 envisages

"[a] fast growing, competitiveness, innovative, knowledge-based economy where there are plentiful opportunities and a population equipped to grasp them".

This vision cannot be created in isolation and not only requires the substantive support of the majority of the population but also mutual understanding and encouragement of our neighbouring regions within the UK and Ireland. We need other regions of the world that can see an ‘enlightened’ self-interest ‘to take note of our situation and acknowledge us by inward investment or trading links’.

The analysis contained in the document tries to set out an honest review of Northern Ireland’s strengths and weaknesses. Our problem of long-term unemployment and benefit dependency is addressed, so too is the aging and traditional industrial structure and the need for its reorganisation. The document discusses the high level of grant subsidy throughout our community. It indicates that in terms of job-related education and skills we fall behind other regions. It points out the low level of R&D and innovation in Northern Ireland, again compared to external benchmarks. The slow uptake of IT and E-Commerce in our business community is identified. The high cost of energy sources, the geographic peripherality of Northern Ireland, our complex public and economic administrative structures and public sector dependency are all outlined in considerable detail.

Equally on the positive side, our favourable demography is pointed out as a very strong plus for Northern Ireland. The large numbers of young people coming into the work force, the level of our educational attainment and the strength of our two universities and higher education sector are considerable competitive strengths. So too is the availability of labour, excellent telecommunications and attractive working and living environment which is affordable in Northern Ireland, as well as the great opportunity offered by peace. These are all listed as positive features in Northern Ireland’s business landscape.

During 1998 CBI Northern Ireland put forward a paper in relation to the economic governance of the Province derived from suggestions from within the membership. This took as its starting point research highlighted from the Northern Ireland Economic Council as to lessons from other prosperous EU regions. 

• A strategic and integrated policy approach with a culture of commitment.

• Co-operation, trust and networking, frequently with links into the global economy.

• Enabling and facilitating institutions both within the public sector and civil society, and between them.

• Focus on competitiveness and growth supported by policies and structures to ensure cohesion.

To enable us to match if not surpass these successful regions of Europe it is essential that we move our society forward.

We must address the following key issues:

• We need strong co-ordination and integration of policy within a strategic framework. (Follow on of Strategy 2010)

• We need to focus on wealth creation, competitiveness and social inclusion within key policy areas. (They are not mutually exclusive)

• We need to create real and effective public/private partnerships.

• We need to create a shared vision of Northern Ireland - not just within the business community.

• We need to link strategic top-down decision making with bottom-up local community creativity, innovation and enthusiasm.

• We need to ensure policy making at higher levels within the UK and Europe is better informed of our regional needs.

These issues are not isolated from the constitutional and political issues dealt with in the Belfast Agreement. The business community must play an integral and fundamental role in the evolution of the new society we hope to create. Partnership seems to be a much-used word. It is only during the last decade or so that business has generally recognised the need for it and built partnerships within their own organizations. This has been accomplished with both employees and externally with suppliers. We all, including those of us in business, have much to learn on how really to build the trust upon which true partnership can only prosper.

We also need to regain our self-confidence. This self-confidence was self-evident at the turn of the last century when the north east of Ireland really was showing the way in textiles, shipbuilding and agriculture. It was evident in the financial successes of the time although we might now, with the luxury of hindsight, debate the equity of the distribution of the economic success. However it is certainly true that the management and workforce had the skills and the competencies to meet the business and trading challenges of the day. It is this sense of self worth in ourselves which we need to create across the divided communities as we enter the new century. We need an economic vision of a new Northern Ireland at peace within itself and with its neighbouring regions together with a rediscovered Ulster dynamism which seems to have been submerged or diverted down destructive channels over the past three decades.

There are some basic principles which, although contained in Strategy 2010 in an economic context, should also be applied to our society in general if we are to regain this collective self-confidence. We need to build an integrated community based on the not so revolutionary idea of self-help. We should focus on practical actions to build on our indigenous strengths, through partnerships with people with whom we may not have realized we have much in common. We need to reward enterprise and encourage entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirit in everything we do. It is through the seeds of innovation and risk taking that a fulfilled society is created. When this is combined with the principles of wealth creation a fully prosperous society may possibly emerge. We need to look outwards because the world does not owe us a living, but if we direct ourselves to the issues we can make our way in the global economy of the future. Competitiveness will be the key to survival and success and competitiveness in turn will depend on matching and surpassing the standards of competition in whatever aspect of life you are engaged.

To achieve success as a region we need nothing less than a cultural revolution in our businesses and in society at large. We need a culture which generates a common commitment to success based on inclusive and effective partnership; that honours the entrepreneurs and encourages others to emulate them; that is confident in its own abilities; that ensures that the fruits of economic success are widely and fairly shared throughout society.

I do not apologise for spending the last part of my chapter on the economic world we live within. The world does not owe us a living and we have been given world attention and support in our process of self-help as our politicians piece by piece built the Belfast Agreement. Many in our society would throw all this away and start again.

Business teaches you that you cannot start from the same place again. If this deal does not work then our society cannot and will not receive much external support but most importantly the building blocks of a future deal will be very different from those we currently contemplate. The young people who will start work this year will be in their early 50’s by the year 2030. If you look back 30 years we are talking about 1969. Which of us would have been brave enough or foolish enough to predict with precision the world we live in today? What will they have to say about a generation that had a solution, had done all the work, but failed to grasp it at the implementation stage?

We will see around us people dealing with this situation in three ways. Firstly, denial; resist the changes, say it is not happening, certainly not to me. Secondly, acknowledging the need to change; to be different, to try and stick to the status quo as long as possible, effectively delaying the inevitable. Thirdly, by embracing the changes; by saying I am going to make the new situation work, it may be difficult but I will make my contribution to the new society where peace and prosperity become the goals and we leave dogmatism and destruction behind us.

Any society is comprised of people with varying abilities, interests and outlooks. We will never achieve complete unanimity on every issue but if we go forward using the compromises arrived at through the Belfast Agreement we will be providing hope for our young people. We will have to continue with the painstaking work of attempting to achieve a ‘joined up’ society. Let us hope that we have a ‘joined up’ administration, led by a "joined up" assembly to assist us in this journey and that a normalised society can tackle the massive challenge of living together peacefully in the 21st century.

"Peace comes dropping slow, dropping from the veils of the morning where the cricket sings."
W.B.Yeats

So peace for each of us has a personal definition. For many of us outside the world of politics it is certainly a condition the achievement of which I hope we in the practical world of business have made our contribution to hasten. If the politicisation of an issue is the mobilisation of public opinion, then this should not be left to politicians alone. In a world of instant communication which is fully interconnected and no longer contained in neat units, then the methodology of the past will not produce satisfactory outcomes. The complexities must be replicated in the methodologies adopted to create answers which are acceptable to people with wide ranges of backgrounds, desires and demands.

We the people, politicians and those of us engaged in business have to accept the challenge of change and set out on the path to the future. We will need to recognise that the only vehicle available is the one we have built and the only sustainable fuel to run it on is the trust which must continue to be built between us all.

CHAPTER THREE

PEOPLE AT PEACE

Baroness May Blood

FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES
I believe that people are shaped to a large extent by the context within which they are born. I was born into an area in Belfast which was religiously 'mixed', although in those days it wasn't called 'mixed'. People just lived beside one another in a natural way. In one sense too you were born into a labour-recruiting camp, because we all shared a common factor - poverty - and the labels 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' simply didn't come into it. Where I grew up, Catholic and Protestant children went about together and did things together, there was no such thing as 'you dare not do this and you cannot do that'. So there was a natural relationship with the 'other' community. This background has helped shape the way I think about society today.

I worked in a mill which was predominantly Catholic. We had 450 workers and only 70 of them were Protestant. It would have been quite easy to say "well, the majority here is Catholic so we'll go along with what they say", but we Protestants were able to maintain our own culture. We negotiated around the 12th July to have our bunting up and all that kind of thing, while at other times of the year our Catholic fellow-workers put their bunting up. There was little animosity about it, there was still an underlying

friendship among us all, and some of those friendships last to this day. One example of this took place six months after the mill closed. The word went round - because we still keep in touch with each other - that one of the girls had died. We all went to her funeral in St Paul's Roman Catholic chapel on the Falls Road and I actually witnessed Protestants taking communion at her funeral Mass and I thought that was just unbelievable as this was in 1991 when the violence was still going on.

With the Troubles in 1969 being followed by internment, there were some very difficult times for Protestants in the mills. My factory remained open and we had to go to work at a time when the whole Catholic community was in turmoil. For example, the time that Bobby Sands was dying, and indeed the whole Hunger Strike period, was a very anxious period for Protestants within the mill as was the time when Michael Stone went into Milltown Cemetery and shot three Catholics dead. Mill workers were not remote from what was happening all around them: Protestants worked alongside women whose men had been arrested and interned for IRA membership, while Catholics worked alongside people whose husbands had been imprisoned for UDA or UVF activity. These circumstances could easily have made things very nasty for the Protestants in the factory.

As a senior shop steward I had to negotiate all the time with such issues. I can remember way back early in the Troubles, when the soldiers came onto the Falls Road and they were welcomed with tea and biscuits by Catholic residents.

However, I also recall one young woman I worked with marrying one of the soldiers in the short time they were there. Quite soon, the British Army became the enemy on the Falls and this woman found herself married to one of them! It was a very difficult situation and it was all about supporting her through that time when her family insisted she pull out of the marriage, and for a Catholic that was a difficult a situation to handle. So not only did we have to confront issues like low pay and poor conditions, but we also had to work through the impact of what was taking place in the wider community. But in the process, one gradually helped to build up people's belief that they could not only make a difference to their working conditions, but, as far as the wider issues were concerned, it was possible to help them realise that, even in the most difficult of situations, there could still be possibilities for solutions if people were willing to look for those solutions.

In all, I worked in the mills for 38 years, and anyone who has done likewise will agree that it was like a small community of its own. This is really what sustained my hopes and my optimism. The girls in the mill showed their support for each other time after time. During tense periods, usually following some bad incident or whatever, the Catholic workers would have escorted us out of the mill and up the road to the safety of Merlin Street or Lanark Way. One particularly difficult time was during the UWC [Ulster Worker's Council] strike in 1974 when my workplace, Blackstaff Mill on the Springfield Road, took the decision to remain open. That decision left the Protestant workers

facing a very real problem. They either got to work or lost their wages. While some of them chose not to come, the majority of Protestants did decide to go to work and had to climb through barricades and brave the threats of people in their own community just to do so. As a shop steward, I felt I had to be there, I had to make that stand, because nobody was going to keep me out of my work, whether it was the IRA or the UDA.

Yet despite all those difficulties, some of them very serious, many Protestant and Catholic mill workers have remained friends over the years. All this coverage in the media about most Protestants hating Catholics just isn't true in my experience. I think you form friendships that grow with you, and you are determined, come what may, that while those friendships might have to change or adapt to circumstances in some way, they are not going to be lost.

I have one particular Catholic friend, a very good lifelong friend, and we have different points of view and have had many an argument about the political situation, but nonetheless that girl would remain to this day one of my best friends. Even in the days when she could no longer visit my home in Springmartin, we would meet in neutral territory and we have always kept that friendship up. Neither of us think of it in 'romantic' terms of a Catholic and a Protestant maintaining their 'cross-community' friendship. We are simply two human beings who have supported each other through a lot of bad times.

In fact, I think it would find be difficult to find anybody in Northern Ireland who doesn't have such a relationship with someone from the other community. No matter how fierce a Protestant, no matter how much they might criticise the Nationalist community, they will inevitably finish up by saying "but I do have a lot of Catholic friends"! By the very nature of this place - we are a small country here - it would be very difficult for it to be otherwise.

I think too that my experience is replicated over and over again in different workplaces. It makes one strong, and some very strong individuals have emerged from within our communities. Indeed, if you asked any Protestant or Catholic community worker who has really been outspoken or is strong in their beliefs, you would find that in their past experiences there has been similar networking and forming friendships together and simply realising that people are people and that if we only could work together there would be a far better future for us all.

COMMUNITY STRENGTH
One of the unifying factors in Northern Ireland has been the fact that committed community people on the ground have always tried to make a difference, and that's what has really held this community together. It hasn't been the politicians, it hasn't been all the initiatives that the British Government, or the Irish Government or the Americans or whoever have put together. It has been people right down in the community. People who have said "we're here and we're

going no further". Right across Northern Ireland there is a remarkable amount and variety of community work going on, including cross-community work or joint community work. So that gives me hope that even if, God forbid, the Executive does not last, we would never go back to the bad old days because there has been that whole community infrastructure built up.

Throughout the past thirty years it has been community groups which have, not only sustained communities, but at times have helped pull people back from the brink. Yet, people outside those communities probably don't understand what it's like to actually live in an estate abutting the 'peaceline'. For many years people living there were perceived in terms of 'troublemakers'. Often they were described as that 'poor community up there'. Strategies were employed such as 'let's give them some financial help and let them form their own wee community associations’. But even in the context of funding, these communities suffered because they were seen to lack a track record. The reality is however that even with their daily problems of poor health, poor housing conditions and poverty the communities are still vibrant. They are still working together to improve people's lives.

Despite a catalogue of horrendous atrocities, people in both communities (at the worst of times perhaps only a few brave individuals) were still prepared to cross the 'divide' and reach out to one another. In my own community, the Shankill bomb of 1993 was probably one of the most dreadful things ever to happen to the Protestant community in the Greater Shankill area. People were stunned, and rightly outraged. There was a real sense that some kind of limit had been reached. Yet, despite all the anger and all the real fear that existed, the community was able to get itself up again, and when the next atrocity occurred, this time to Catholic people in Greysteel, people from our community were able to go to Greysteel and hold their hand out and say "we know where you've been".

As with many other aspects of life, if one hits rock bottom and knows somebody else in the same position, there tends to be an immediate affinity with that person. Religion doesn't come into it or anything else. You each know what it is like to be confronting such circumstances so you both help each other to get out of it. This has been one of the bridging elements in Northern Ireland over the years. Omagh is just the latest example of this. When the Omagh bomb exploded in 1998, it was devastating for the community there, and yet that same community is recovering and is now doing the most amazing things. The same kind of thing is happening all over Northern Ireland. In almost every community there is an incredible amount of untapped potential. Although it seems people just don't appreciate the resourcefulness they have, they should realise that our communities, no matter how low they get, still have that capacity to pull themselves up again and that there is nothing that our two communities cannot achieve by working together.

But it has been difficult. There was a time when even to be talking in a 'cross-community' manner carried risks. Women's groups have always worked across the peaceline, but ten years ago it would have been done more secretly.* People had to find ways around this problem, and they devised imaginative ways of taking certain people away for a day, usually to a 'neutral' venue, to expose them to the views of the other community. I can remember being at a conference in the Europa when we looked at things affecting people living along the peaceline in West Belfast. It was a fairly unpleasant experience, and I personally found myself under great verbal abuse because of misconceptions some people had of the 'power' I was assumed to have within my own community. But yet we all learnt something about each other from that experience. 'Cross-community' work may be somewhat 'fashionable' at the moment, but there have been many community workers who really stretched themselves and took many risks at times when it wasn't so fashionable.

There were many occasions, of course, when all the effort put in seemed to be in vain. I used to work with young people and would be trying to build up their confidence and get them to believe that there was a better way forward. Then another shooting or bombing would occur and everything seemed to be undone. Often for example, work would have taken place for months getting both communities together on a particular issue, perhaps something to do with socioeconomic realities on the ground, only for such an incident to happen and wreck the process. Yet still, people went out the next day and began to do the same thing all over again. Sometimes when you heard news of yet another atrocity elsewhere in Northern Ireland, even though you were appalled by it, you found yourself being grateful that it didn't happen in the Shankill because you knew you would have to start from scratch all over again. The point is that many of our politicians would not have that experience because they have lived in a different world remote from all that. They haven't lived in the 'political' world such as exists at the grassroots, where you have to take chances and risks if you are ever going to achieve anything.

THE BIRTH OF A NEW CONFIDENCE WITHIN THE PROTESTANT COMMUNITY
I believe that the holding of the 'Beyond the Fife and Drum' conference2 in 1995 in the Shankill, was the biggest watershed in politics ever in the Greater Shankill area. The Conference was set up by a number of community workers. The word ‘beyond’ in the title was designed to reflect a development of the traditional perspective of Orangism and represented deeper thinking in the Protestant community. That was an event which opened people’s eyes. From that time, there was a remarkable upsurge of interest in politics. Another extremely important influence on this process was

the fact that many ex-paramilitary prisoners were coming back into our community who had obviously developed a new political analysis. This had the effect that, while hitherto, politics was something done by somebody else, ordinary people were now taking an active interest in the process.

A further factor of great significance affecting the political process in the Greater Shankill area, was the birth of the small Loyalist parties (the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party for example). These encouraged the community to see a different facet of politics. For the first time, people engaged in politics were talking the same language as the people on the ground. These people knew their problems. They did not talk down to them but rather talked with them. It was at this time that the whole scene changed in the Shankill.

These smaller Loyalist parties are still trying to build up a support base in the community. Similar, in a way, to what Sinn Fein have built up within Nationalist areas. Sinn Féin were very active in the Catholic community long before the ceasefires and they have built up a strong relationship at grassroots level. Whatever Protestants might think of their politics, Sinn Féin are there on the street when people need help, and they are expert at dealing with everyday issues. I think it is important that the Loyalist parties try to build this same kind of strong relationship with the grassroots. It is important however that they go about it the right way. In one sense they are seen as 'Johnny come lately' and they

haven't yet convinced all Protestant community workers that they are actually there for the good of the community, rather than just seeing grassroots work as a means of securing votes in the future. They will have to tread very carefully, because the Protestant community has been down that road before. Both the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party have always claimed to be working for ordinary working-class Protestants, but the Unionist Party have never had any real interest in grassroots issues, and the DUP is now pursuing policies which I feel bear no relevance to the real needs of the community in which I live.

These smaller parties must always remember to listen to what people are saying at community level. Many in these parties would have been former community workers and that's good because they should know what's happening at the grassroots. But the people cannot afford to just sit back and allow the PUP or the UDP to be the voice of working class Protestants. The community must not be pushed into the background again, even for these new voices. This is especially so, since quite apart from those now involved in the 'new politics', there have always been many community workers, on both sides of the interface, who are not only capable of working for the benefit of their own small localities, but are also quite capable of working on issues which impact upon the wider society.

I accept, however, that community activists always need to be watchful that they don't get 'incorporated' into the system, to the detriment of grassroots needs. Some years ago, when I was at the Stormont Talks as part of the Women's Coalition team, I was told by an NIO official (a leading figure in the Government now): "I see you have taken the Queen's shilling". # I took great offence at that. I firmly believe that you can't win if you are not 'in', but that does not mean that you have to become part of the establishment. In this regard, for a number of years, the government has tried to 'buy' the support of community workers. They were invited to dinners and events of all kinds. But many community leaders on the Protestant side have now seen through all that and, while they are prepared to work the system, it doesn't mean that the system will easily work them.

My experience has always been that if you get a committed group of people together, irrespective of their gender, religion or whether they are able-bodied or not, there's nothing they can't do. I travel extensively, speaking to a wide variety of groups and the energy and the commitment that people are giving to their local community is truly impressive. Because of all the effort that has gone into this intense community involvement, the Protestant working class, in West Belfast in particular, is increasingly developing a more vibrant and purposeful voice.

CURRENT FRUSTRATIONS
For many years people on both sides of the peaceline had to work extremely hard just to sustain their own communities. As they grew stronger and more confident they found that there were things they could do together and cross-community contact gradually increased. Indeed, it is true to say that it was directly because of the effort and energy put in by local community people that the conditions were created in which the ceasefires could be brought about. These ceasefires brought a real buzz at the grassroots and a lot of hope was generated when the Multi-Party Talks commenced. When those Talks culminated in a massive ‘Yes’ vote in the Referendum, there was a sense of euphoria among many at the grassroots. Furthermore, it looked as if a new Assembly was going to be set up in Stormont. This building was a source of great pride to the Protestant community as it had housed the original Northern Ireland government. The Protestant community was devastated by its demise at the hands of the British government in 1973. Admittedly, there were many people in the Protestant community who had difficulty with the early release of paramilitary prisoners and the unresolved decommissioning issue, but they were prepared to say 'Yes' and give it a chance.

In late 1999 however, it would appear that we are almost back at the stage where, in terms of 'real politics', our communities are being kept behind closed doors and we are only being drip-fed what the media tells us. For many in the Protestant community, the peace process seems to have lost its focus.

During the worst of the Troubles, community groups just got on with the work that had to be done, and proved so effective in what they were doing that eventually many of them were courted by government agencies. But now, when it looks like the elected politicians are going to take over again, I suspect that those politicians will try to sideline or ignore community groups. We are now being told by the politicians that they are the elected ones and that it is they who will work out the solution. However, I firmly believe that no one section of our society - politicians, community workers or whoever - has that right. Everyone in Northern Ireland needs to make a contribution to the peace process. I view it like a patchwork quilt. Everybody makes their own little square and it will be put together and bound round by the peace process. No particular group has the right to say 'stand aside and we will take it from here'. This is why it is so important that the Civic Forum, which has been proposed as part of the Good Friday Agreement, really proves effective.

POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES
One major difficulty to reaching an accommodation at present is the perception that each community seems to have different expectations from the peace process. On the Catholic side, the assumption is that all Catholics are looking for a United Ireland and on the Protestant side it is that all Protestants want to remain firmly in a British state. Yet the referendum proved that a lot of people on both sides were willing to make compromises. The 'No' camp constantly point out that Protestants were split right down the middle in the way they voted, that it was the massive Catholic 'Yes' vote which resulted in the final figure of 72% in favour. If that is the case, this means that the Catholic community have decided that they could accept a new Stormont, that they will participate in an Executive and that they are willing to play a full part in a new Northern Ireland. It is difficult to see what possible problem we, as Protestants, can have with that. Surely that's exactly what we want to see the Catholic community do? But instead, we have Protestants who say that it's only a sham, it's only a step towards a United Ireland, therefore we shouldn't be part of it. So how do you reconcile two such different perceptions? I don't really know, and the problem is that I don't think many of our politicians want to know because I think it is easier for them to 'manage' two absolutes.

At the moment the peace process is being held to ransom because of these two absolutes. Unionist politicians are telling us that it's a case of: 'no guns, no government'. On the other side there is the counter-claim, 'no government, no guns'. But there is a middle opinion in all of this. I talk to many Protestants who say the 'decommissioning issue' is a red herring, because everybody knows that if the paramilitaries handed in all their guns tomorrow, they could buy them the next day. And if many Protestants believe that to be the case, then who is it telling the First Minister David Trimble and the other Unionists that decommissioning is something which definitely has to happen before we can all move forward? What has happened is that we have elected people who have polarised themselves once again, who are going back to the bad old days when they won't speak to each other. It makes one wonder where we go from here if the Agreement falls. The DUP, under the leadership of Dr. Ian Paisley, quite clearly state that they will never work with Sinn Féin. But how do they know that that's what the majority of the Protestant people want? Are they more concerned with party needs rather than really determining what is best for the community? I think people in the community should be asked their opinion on these 'absolute' positions, but we are not being given that opportunity. Only the smaller parties have actually consulted with the grassroots. Ordinary people are, once again, not being consulted by the bigger parties.

THE CIVIC FORUM
I have very definite ideas about the proposed Civic Forum. I think that it should be representative of every area in Northern Ireland and there has to be a mechanism found whereby local areas can elect their preferred person to Civic Forum. However, I feel that this is unlikely to happen. It looks rather that it will be a hand-picked body and that specific organisations will be asked to select people to sit on the Civic Forum. However the Civic Forum will only work if the people selected for it have the definite remit of looking after the people on the ground. They have to be determined to put the community's point of view forward. It would be a pity if the people who are eventually nominated are the 'great and the good', the people who already sit on numerous quangos. I think too that one of the fears emerging in the community sector concerns the bodies which the government may feel have a right to be represented on the Civic Forum (the churches for example). In this regard, I believe the churches have let the Protestant people down. My view is that since the churches made little or no contribution to peace during the Troubles, they do not now deserve seats oin the Forum. There are of course a few church people who have made a real impact, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule.

It can be argued that it will be disastrous for Northern Ireland if the Civic Forum becomes just another layer of bureaucracy. If a new society is to be created, it can only come about in partnership with those at the grassroots. It must always be remembered that it was working-class areas which suffered most during the Troubles. They were torn apart in the course of it. It is vital therefore that people at the grassroots must have some means of getting their voice heard, if only to ensure that they are not dragged down that path again.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND GROWING AWARENESS
The Protestant population of West Belfast have no political representation at Westminster. Ironically, the people of the Shankill are being 'represented' by Gerry Adams as Sinn Fein Member of Parliament for West Belfast. However, he refuses to attend at Parliament in London and take his seat there. First Minister David Trimble supposedly represents the broader Unionist/Protestant community, but he is not representing the day-to-day needs of the people of the Greater Shankill directly. In addition, we were given a very limited choice in the Assembly elections, because politically it didn't look as if it was a winnable seat. Therefore the Protestant people who live in the Greater Shankill area are effectively disenfranchised, apart from representation at City Council level.

In the past, we were represented by the Unionist Party. At the time these were referred to locally as the 'fur coat brigade'. I lived in the most appalling conditions as a child, we actually had to squat in a house and yet we were Protestants - the supposedly 'privileged' people. Later I worked in very low paid work, in a mill where the conditions were atrocious. It must be asked who was representing me in those days? Who was fighting for my needs? Certainly not the people we continually voted for. This apparent paradox was made possible because, in those days, working-class Protestants felt they had to support the Unionist Party. As a child and as a young adult I can remember the border with the Republic of Ireland being the biggest issue. This was despite the fact that we lived in terrible conditions and I had poor health as a child.

I can remember being asked why the Protestant working class did not join with Catholics on the Civil Rights marches. The argument was put to me that this would have been an opportunity to make working-class voices heard. The reason however was quite obvious. It was because the Civil Rights movement was sold by the government to the Protestant community as an underhand way to bring about an all-Ireland. The Protestant community accepted such an analysis because people were probably not as politically aware as they are today. We were all very naive in those days. In fact, when the Civil Rights thing started I remember having a discussion at home and someone saying that it wouldn't last. It would be all over in two or three months. This was because people at that time did not have any inkling that things were about to explode. We had certainly no idea then that we were going to go down a road of sheer thuggery for thirty years that had nothing to do with political beliefs.

Since that time the Protestant community has become much more politically aware. This awareness may still only be in its infancy, but I think it's something that is going to grow. Evidence of this is the fact that in a number of meetings I've been to recently in the Shankill I notice that you can now hear different opinions being expressed quite confidently and quite forthrightly. Five or six years ago you wouldn't have got that. In addition, think tanks have been established to consider new ways of governance and community work. These have given people the opportunity to express and deal with issues that previously, few wished to hear. Often people responded to the emerging literature by saying ‘hey, that's exactly what I thought too, but nobody ever asked me before’. For all of these reasons, I am convinced that, if the Assembly becomes established and some kind of a peace settlement is achieved, then awareness of, and participation in, what might be described ‘ordinary politics’ will reach unprecedented levels among the Protestant community.

At a more formal level, I have always considered it a grave error that my own union, the Transport and General Workers Union, supported the view that the British Labour Party should not organise in Northern Ireland. This was a mistake since there is a real core thinking around what might be considered priority issues of labour at grassroots level. The Labour Party itself, by not organising here, prevented people from having an opportunity to vote for such 'bread and butter' issues.

Within the Women's Coalition too, there is a lively and healthy debate taking place. The prime objective of the movement was to ensure women’s access to ‘Talks’. The setting up of a new political party was never envisaged. Perhaps the greatest success of the coalition is the way in which it succeeded in liberating women within the other political parties to actually claim their ‘rightful place’. I was at a meeting recently at which there were about 70 or 80 women all engrossed in debate. Within that room there were very staunch Nationalists and very staunch Protestants, but they were actually getting down to discussing real issues. This kind of interaction is going on to a very large degree at the moment. It might not be that visible to the general public. This may be partly due to the fact that it does not seem to hold great interest for the media perhaps because it is not 'glamorous' enough. But it is happening. For many years, women avoided politics. But now that is changing and already there are young women who are eagerly anticipating the next election. I think those women will bring a real sense of their community with them.

THE WAY FORWARD FOR THE PROTESTANT COMMUNITY
Despite the growth of a new awareness at grassroots level, the divisions at leadership level within Unionism constantly work against the real interests of our community. Within the Protestant community, throughout all the years of the Troubles, the Unionist parties, of whatever shade, seem to have spent more of their energies fighting each other than on addressing issues which are more relevant to our real needs.

It's probably unrealistic to expect the political parties to change their behaviour significantly. However, it is unfortunate that even at community level we have divisions within the Protestant community. If those of us working at grassroots level could just join forces and utilise all the energy which exists, it would be of tremendous advantage to our community. Regarding the Protestant community in general, we have to begin to convince people that the diversity of opinion which exists within the Protestant community, rather than being viewed as divisive, should instead be seen as their real, and perhaps greatest, source of strength.

If, however, we in the Greater Shankill Partnership want others to hear the diversity of opinion within the Protestant community, and learn about the healthy debate which is going on, then it must be widely promoted. Until we are prepared to tell our own story, nobody is going to learn about it. Quite often however, the media cannot find spokespersons from the Protestant community. It has always been a failing in the community that individuals are loath to come forward in any real numbers to let their voices be heard. This has resulted in a lack of knowledge and understanding of the community both within Northern Ireland and further afield. For example, when we first went to the United States, most Americans I met assumed I was a Catholic simply because the group was from 'West Belfast'. They did not realise that there were 7,000 Protestants living in West Belfast. Such misconceptions are solely the fault of the Protestant community. They are not telling their story, yet it is essential that this story is both told and understood.

This situation is made worse by the fact that more often than not the media tend to focus on the most negative aspects of the Protestant community. We don't challenge the media enough and so allow them to perpetuate all these unfavourable stereotypes. That wouldn't happen on the Catholic side. There, Sinn Féin has the slickest 'PR' machine imaginable. We don't have that. What tends to happen on our side is that most shun the media because of a distinct lack of trust in it. The result is that the media is left to print whatever it likes. As aforesaid, the Protestant people in Northern Ireland have an important story to tell. They have had their share of ups and downs, they have certainly had their fair share of the bad times, but they have also played their part in holding our communities together.

I was at a big conference in the States earlier this year and this Sein Féin woman got up and gave us the '800 years of oppression' - or her version of those 800 years, particularly the last 30 years. A young woman sitting beside me was from one of the Loyalist parties and she got up and gave her version. There was quite a heated debate over the differing versions. The girl from the PUP said: "look, I don't agree with a word you said, but I respect your right to say it." When those two women went outside together, they didn't go away as friends, but they understood each other's position better. More importantly, they weren't shouting at one another in megaphone diplomacy as some of our male politicians have a habit of doing. They were calmly talking about what they might do, and what they could do, and I think that's the way forward. I personally don't agree with an all-Ireland, but at the end of the day Catholics could come to be the majority in Northern Ireland and that could be their wish, and as a democrat I would have to accept that.

I often find myself in certain meetings with someone pushing a really republican point of view about something. But it's good to be able to listen to them and then say: "well, that might sound good from where you're coming from, but let me tell you where I'm coming from." It is then possible to sit down and to respect one another's positions. That is one of the things that happened at the Women’s Coalition. In it there are a number of very strong-minded people on both sides, but their common objective, of getting women into the Talks, transcended their differences.

It is also important that my own community becomes more confident in itself. I would like to see a belief developing in the Greater Shankill area, and indeed the whole Protestant community in Northern Ireland, that they can take part in whatever the future holds, and firmly establish our role in that future. This should not be through any sense of 'taking over' but through a genuine desire to work together. The most important factor which is lacking at the moment in the Protestant community is a confidence in the future, and a preparedness to play a full part in it.

One interesting facet of community work in Northern Ireland is the fact that Protestants simply do not laud their successes. For example, there is a tremendous amount of very sound and farsighted activities going on all around the Greater Shankill area but we seem hesitant to publicise it. For instance, the Springboard project sends hundreds of young people on international trips. Many of those young people have come back and actually got really good jobs. Also, this year for the first time ever from the Shankill community, we have a young man going to Oxford and a young woman going to Cambridge. Maybe if we did laud our achievements more, it would be easier to encourage more such success stories. Those of our young people who have achieved things have had to struggle to get where they wanted and their families are constantly struggling for money to support them. This would not be the case in the Catholic community. There, the people would be likely to do whatever was necessary, through Bingo nights or whatever, to raise the money to help the family.

This demonstrates a negative aspect of the Protestant community and indeed, a major difference between the two communities. In the Catholic community, for example, if you have a small community group starting up, another group will help it to fill in application forms for grants etc. and even provide expertise. But this does not happen in the Protestant community. On one occasion, our community was seeking some legal advice from a solicitor who was living on our estate but he simply would not help us. However, in the Catholic area, people can get all the advice they want through young Catholic solicitors who are training and getting excellent experience at the same time. That's how their community gained confidence and experience. The service was available to both Protestants and Catholics but yet you wouldn't have found one Protestant solicitor there.

At a local level, I attend Ballygomartin Presbyterian Church and am a full member of that Church. We [the Early Years Project] opened the Martin Centre which is just on the other side of the street from the church. As the centre grew, more space was required and I asked the Church to lend me the church hall. The group was willing to pay the church, but under their constitution they couldn't hire it out, so a contribution was made for light and heat instead. After a number of months we were simply ‘evicted’ with no reason given. The minister claimed that it was the church committee which had made the decision not to lend the church hall out to anybody. Now there is a church hall sitting empty, which could be filled with people every day.

Indeed, throughout Northern Ireland, you will see almost all the Protestant church halls closed. It is very rarely that one is open in the middle of the day. On the other hand, across the Province, on any day you will find Catholic church halls used as mother and toddler groups, youth clubs, advice centres and for many other different community facilities.

FEARS FOR THE FUTURE
I believe it will be a real tragedy if, for any reason, the Assembly collapses. However, if this were to happen, then we, at community level, have to engage in some serious debate and try to establish some mechanism to take this peace process forward. We cannot allow all the work that has been done over the last 30 years, both on the ground and at a political level, to come to nothing. Many people have taken great risks over the years, mostly for the sake of all those ordinary people in our communities who have been the victims throughout it all. We just cannot allow the process to collapse in on itself.

Just as I think the Protestant people have a very vital part to play in the future of Northern Ireland, so I also believe they have a vital role to play in the future of the peace process. But we have to be flexible, we aren't going to get everything we want. In any kind of negotiations, you never do. We must find some kind of compromise which will allow the peace process to develop. If the process collapses, it is going to be very difficult for local community people to pick up the pieces again.

I know there are genuine fears in the 'No' camp around the decommissioning issue and all that. Indeed, everybody could have those fears. Nobody wants guns, nobody in this day and age wants armed police walking up and down the street. But the one thing that really annoys me about the 'No' camp is that we haven't actually heard what their 'plan' is. Looking back over this past thirty years, the ‘No’ camp seem to have been saying 'No' to everything. They didn't want the Secretariat at Maryfield, they didn't want this, they don't want that. But surely eventually they have to say ‘Yes’ to something. The problem is that we haven't yet heard what they will say 'Yes' to. They would need to tell us quickly, because I think that sooner or later the British Government is going to want to wash their hands off the whole thing.

At the time of writing, the New Assembly is up and running and I think on a surer footing than before. One thing I am convinced of is that local people want to see it working and its results on the ground. For this reason, I would place a lot of my hopes and reliance on the community itself. We have been led by the nose for so long by politicians making our decisions for us. But I really believe that we are beginning to learn that we can do things for ourselves, and we can change this society for the better. If the politicians fail us yet again, it may be that the only hope for a better future might lie within our two communities.

REFERENCES

1. Conference report published as Life on the Interface, Island Pamphlets: 1, Island Publications, Northern Ireland, 1993.

2. Conference report published as Beyond the Fife and Drum, Island Pamphlets: II, Island Publications, Northern Ireland, 1995.

3. The Think Tank pamphlets, dealing with grassroots realities in both the Unionist and Nationalist communities in Northern Ireland, are published by Island Publications, 132 Serpentine Road, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim BT36 7JQ, Northern Ireland.

Editor's Notes

* The peaceline is mainly constituted of a wall, in places over 23 feet high, built during the worst of the Troubles to separate Protestant and Roman Catholic communities. Originally restricted to West Belfast, it is currently to be found in many parts of North Belfast.

# Originally referring to Irish men and women joining the British army but now often used as a derogatory term to refer to community workers being seen as becoming part of the establishment by working with the Government on peace issues.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR

The Most Reverend Dr Robin Eames, Archbishop of Armagh

"There are those who have expressed their desire to move from conflict to the politics of accommodation. We believe it is consistent with a Christian response to afford them space to demonstrate that the conflict is indeed over, done with and gone." i

PROTESTANT ATTITUDES AND RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS
It is important at the outset to consider the extent to which Protestant attitudes to the peace process are influenced or dictated by religious convictions. However, the problem in addressing any religious factor is one of definition. What do we mean by such an expression and what is its significance in Northern Ireland?

On the one hand there exists the structured and ‘official’ face of Churches through authorised public statements, doctrinal positions and decisions of central Church bodies. On the other is the personalised identification through choice of individuals who are influenced by the teaching or witness of a particular Church. In the first case the public face of a Church represents some degree of corporate responsibility for what is assumed to be the opinion of its membership. If such representation is the result of a Synodical, Conference or Assembly decision then there is legitimacy in such a claim. However in many instances Church leadership is called upon to express opinions or make statements which by their nature are merely an expression of individual opinion. Given the demands of the ‘media age’ such occasions are numerous in Northern Ireland. While a Church leader will be aware of the prevailing opinion of his Church he will also recognise the difficulties of representing all the complex opinions of the membership. Leadership however is not confined to the representation of opinion, it calls for prophetic utterance.

The danger lies in any confusion of that prophetic role with the perception that it is also the opinion of those who make up the membership of a Church. In considering the view of any single denomination on a given issue both of these sources of material need to be distinguished.

The second and less easily defined part of a religious factor falls within the ambit of the personal opinion or attitude to public issues of those who through membership are influenced by the official or stated position of their denomination, or who adopt a stance based on what they would regard as ‘Christian principles’. By definition this category of a religious input is impossible to evaluate in general terms. The occasions upon which an individual will identify his or her opinion or attitude in terms of a particular religious belief are not numerous. Nevertheless in considering the role of religion it cannot be discounted. Faith, belief and practice are interwoven in Christian teaching which is not dependant on the position of any single denomination.

There are few episodes in the history of Northern Ireland which are devoid of a religious factor. Time and again that factor has dictated reaction as much as enabling prophecy on community trends. Protestantism and Roman Catholicism have come to be synonymous with the divisions of a troubled community. But denominational labels themselves denote much more than differing religious practice. They represent the core dilemma of an entire community. The overlap of those definitions with party-political affiliation has dictated the history of the Province at once clouding and defining the reasons why people believe and act as they do.

Within the Ulster Protestant community the diversity of denominational loyalties, the widely differing perceptions and aspirations of social progress and the ease with which people's reactions can be designated in terms of the religious/party political identifications, contain something of the clue to what sort of people addressed the Good Friday Agreement and voted in the Referenda. Those same pieces of a jigsaw which so often defy easy analysis continue to explain something of the attitudes to the Peace Process following the Mitchell Review and the establishment of a power-sharing Executive.

The words ‘a moment of truth’ have become, like ‘a crossroad’, or ‘historic’, synonymous with the chequered crisis vocabulary of Northern Ireland. Time and again commentators have pronounced and warned that our community faces a decision, a moment of crucial importance, which will decide an outcome or course of events of immense significance which in turn will lead to victory or defeat, hope or oblivion. In the on-going tapestry of ‘stop’ and ‘start’ progress towards political agreement and possible stability, which has been the Northern Ireland story, judgement has frequently preceded events and prophecy has outweighed reality. At times, those moments have emerged slowly on the community’s awareness. At others, they have been forced upon us by dramatic developments for which senses dulled by years of trauma and unfulfilled desires have been unprepared.

Like many aspects of the past 30 years, generalisations abound in Ulster. Yet often such judgements or comments have owed more to perceptions and less to reality. Equally so, perceptions have themselves become realities in the cauldron of community reaction to events over which the man or woman in the street has apparently exercised little control. Powerlessness is a subtle yet vivid ingredient to the population which confronted the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement. For years their voice had been dominated by reaction to horror, reaction to violence and reaction to events which, depending on individual political or religious labels, represented hope or despair.

After 30 years of mayhem and disorganised lives, the Protestant community faced such a moment of truth at the Referenda on the political way forward. What was different this time however was that that moment of truth called for an expression of opinion which could be listened to. Somehow the voiceless had been given a vehicle through which collective community judgement could be expressed beyond mere reaction to the latest atrocity. The truth of the ballot box so beloved by Protestant politicians could speak with a new anonymity and in a new way. What that voice would say was another matter - and a matter for another day. It was sufficient for a weary, wounded and disillusioned people that somehow they could influence events in ways which were new to an entire generation. The decisions of the Protestants of Northern Ireland at the Referenda were of much more significance than views on a political blue-print in which for many there lay a simplistic choice - peace or war. It was to be the beginning of a period of self-assessment and self-examination which continues to this day.

Before and after the Belfast Agreement, Protestantism and unionism in the Province has discovered more about itself than perhaps at any single period since the state was established. The lessons of history, the mistakes of history, the deeply held convictions and the inherent uncertainties of the past placed beside the powerful yearning for peace, the longing for ‘an end to it all’, contributed to decisions at the ballot box which have told us a great deal about the ethos, perception and indeed the reality of the Ulster Protestant. That dimension to the Referenda has only been surpassed by reactions since as the peace process has followed its path of hesitation and yet possibilities.

The truth is that the decisions of Protestants when asked to endorse or reject the Agreement had more to do with what had gone before than with what would follow. The euphoria was genuine, but it was a genuineness which stemmed from relief. The real test would come when the consequences of approval became apparent, when the details of approval began to bite on the transparent longing for progress and when the actual cost of making the Agreement work had to be counted. When the realities became apparent would attitudes change? Did those who read the Agreement and then voted really count the cost of what would follow? Had they really read the small print?

The Ulster Protestant has become an identifiable component in the ever-changing sameness of the Northern Ireland story. The identification has been clearer to the outsider than to that community itself. Composed of different segments to the Reformed religious faith, differing expressions of the pro-union or ‘British way of life’, the Ulster Protestants are an enigma to many beyond our shores. Within their own field of experience and aspiration they have been engaged in an endless search for identity. Given the perception that they see themselves as the real victims and targets of 30 years of terrorism allied to the inherent insecurity they feel at all times of prophecy about their long-term future, the emergence of the Peace Process took many of them by surprise.

It was not that they wanted to delay peace. It was not that what they sought was inevitably exclusive. It was more that war weariness, political reality and a community-wide longing to move away from the darkness of the suffering superseded any in-depth understanding of the price to be paid. That euphoria at the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the results of the Referenda together with the psychological belief that ‘things would work out right in the end’ hid from the Ulster Protestant another reality few, if any, were prepared to acknowledge. A lasting just peace would not necessarily give them all they cherished, protect all they felt they had fought and died for or make few demands on that concept so often their enemy in the past – compromise. Hidden behind the euphoria and the excitement of those early days of community decision, certain elements and emotions were yet to make their presence felt.

The real questions and the real answers would take time to surface. The pace of that surfacing would be as important as the issues. It would be brought about not by political developments alone, but by the ways in which others than themselves would handle them. Above all, the pace of change would play a role of vital importance and significance in the reaction of the Ulster Protestant to the Peace Process.

Relief may have dominated the Protestant electorate which recorded its view on the Agreement - what was to follow was dominated by a strange mixture of frustration, at times disbelief and genuine heart-searching as the cold light of day disclosed the real price to be paid for what they had said they wanted. The real question was what price they were prepared to pay to make it all happen - and whether what others in other communities wanted posed too great a threat to their own perception of a future for Northern Ireland? A majority of Ulster Protestants continued to want to see political agreement – but even that majority was to learn more about itself as the Process emerged.

Analysis of the religious make-up of the Ulster Protestant community indicates first its fragmented state. But beyond that is the clear alliance between a religious ethos which sees ‘Protestantism’ as more what it is not, than what it may stand for. Deep in that identity is the anti-Roman Catholic stance. At some levels this factor has been much eroded as the years have passed and the ecumenical pilgrimage from a hesitant start has grown in confidence. Ecumenism is also social in nature. It is more obvious among segments of Protestantism in the middle-class than in what used to be called ‘working-class’ districts. It is also confined in the main to the ecumenical enthusiast who is in turn viewed with immense hostility and suspicion by the fundamentalist unionist of, for example, the Paisley tradition. "The ecumenical clergy" is a frequent phrase of derision by those who see any move towards bridging the traditional gap or joint-worship and witness as ‘a sell-out’ or a sinister move dictated by the arch-enemy, the Church of Rome. Any statement from a Roman Catholic source on a political issue is immediately identified by the fundamentalist unionist as yet one more example of the pan-nationalist or republican movement seeking to undermine the principles of a pro-union family and thereby constituting a threat and one more reason to oppose anything of an ecumenical nature. Clearly such reaction contributes yet again to a perception that Protestantism as a religious entity is of less importance than Protestantism as a party political force. Thus the constitutional issue so long the darling of unionism becomes a religious issue based on the transparent fear that anything stemming from greater contact across the divide moves Ulster closer to the concept of a united Ireland in which the age-old enemy of ‘Rome rule’ can again be shouted from the roof tops in a mixture of fear, revulsion and emphatic proclamation of ‘No Surrender’.

As Protestant Ulster viewed the results of the Referenda and watched the lengthy manifestations of the Mitchell Review the divisions in political unionism became clear. A majority of Protestants were prepared to express cautious support for moves towards agreement, to express even reluctant acceptance and reservations about reform of the police, the early release of prisoners and power-sharing with nationalists and republicans, but to urge something which would give a new start and move society away from the violence. Within their churches caution stemmed from the recognition of the strength of the ‘no’ camp. Church leadership reflected that caution in the main. When I indicated in a radio interview that I personally favoured the positive ‘yes approach’ it was clear from the reaction that opinion was more evenly divided than the Referenda would indicate.

BEYOND THE PEW
In the years leading up to the Agreement it had become popular to analyse the troubles as a consequence of religious division and hatred. I myself have lost count of the times I have been confronted by the question "It’s all about religion - isn’t it?" Across the world Northern Ireland has represented the worst in religious bigotry - a war between Protestants and Roman Catholics. The intensity of religious allegiance in the Province is a phenomenon which is almost impossible to explain in a logical manner to a world of growing secularism. At best it appears strange - at worst naïve. I remember an American correspondent asking me if those involved in a particular riot the night before had been throwing petrol bombs because of disagreement about Papal infallibility.

The truth is that Northern Ireland is a religious community. It is divided on religious denominational lines. Frequent census returns have indicated a large majority of people claiming definite religious affiliation. Something like 80 per cent of the community claims church membership of some sort. In England the figure is closer to 13 per cent. However when such figures are analysed by church bodies in terms of active membership the picture changes dramatically. The flags of convenience of religious affiliation at a census bear little resemblance to identifiable church involvement. However Churchmen continue to be asked for opinions on current affairs on the assumption that religion is a vital part of the life of the northern community and religious education continues to be one of the most sensitive parts of the school curriculum. The truth is that everyday involvement in church life is subordinate for many to a desire to be identified by one or other of the main religious labels which are comforting, traditional and have a significance greater than religious faith alone. For many the religious definition they wish to adopt has as much to say of what they are not as it has to do with what they claim to be. In Northern Ireland allegiance to one Church has often tragically meant opposition to the other. For many Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists, to name but a few, Protestantism comes before the particular teaching of an individual reformed denomination. Many find it hard to explain what this means in positive religious terms. But that same percentage have little doubt what they are not.

The Protestant family in the Province is divided into a myriad of autonomous parts. Apart from the main four denominations there are numerous sects and groups which are strongly evangelical in faith and practice. This fragmentation has a lot to do with the difficulties of seeking a definition of clear religious influence. It also explains the absence of any identifiable clear voice which can speak in a religious sense for all Protestants on every issue on every occasion. Thus the age-old syndrome of religious identity and party political identity comes into its own. To be born into a Protestant home in Northern Ireland involves a lifetime of some form of unionism and to be born into a unionist home involves identification with Protestantism. Equally so to be born a Roman Catholic is perceived to be a prelude to the influence of some form of nationalism or republicanism. However, the alliance of one or other reformed religious traditions with unionism, once unquestioned, is beginning to erode. Impatience on the part of the political activists with reluctance by church leadership to give them a signed cheque of approval in advance on any issue has grown in recent years. The struggle on the part of the reformed Churches to find an independence from party political identity is coming to be a significant characteristic of this decade. As Church leadership struggles to find a 'pan‘Christian' platform, so the protagonists of a ‘pan-unionist’ philosophy find it hard to understand, let alone accept, that the age-old alliance is changing. Perhaps no greater challenge faces the Protestant Churches in Northern Ireland in the new millennium than to convince the community that Christianity is the priority and party political allegiance a matter of individual conscience. There have been, are and will undoubtedly continue to be times when the Church will reflect similar concerns to those expressed by politicians. But the days when either grouping could count inevitably on the support and understanding of the other are disappearing. There is pain in this process but reactions to the Peace Process within and beyond the pew clearly indicate age-old alliances are being eroded. The main-stream Protestant denominations now face the cost of such change in the growing popularity of minor religious groups which in most instances are more ready to reflect traditional party allegiances allied to vociferous evangelism.

SECTARIANISM
Nowhere are these issues more plain than in the traditional and corrosive field of sectarianism. No greater hurdle has to be crossed if the peace process is to succeed.

Sectarianism has taken many forms in the history of the Province. It has sprung from many sources. It has had many consequences. There has been party political sectarianism which has prevented any real political dialogue for many years. Unchallenged use of political power has gone hand-in-hand with structured sectarianism. Social sectarianism has been endemic because of the closeness of this community and as a consequence of the earlier commercial and industrial power being concentrated in relatively few hands. But the most obvious sectarianism, lying at the root of so many of our problems, has been religious.

Religious sectarianism has itself taken different forms, always with disastrous consequences. These include tensions between Protestants and Roman Catholics, mutual suspicion of each other's religious/political identity, ignorance of each other's practices or beliefs, attitudes of religious apartheid which are only gradually beginning to disappear and open hostility to anything ecumenical. Frequent references are made to the allocation of employment or the promotion of employees on purely religious grounds. In the early days of the civil rights movement attention was focused on the accusation that housing allocation was dictated by sectarian considerations and that these were entirely of a religious nature. The ‘one man one vote’ call had as much to do with divisions on grounds of religious identity as it was connected to electoral reform. Ultimately the paramilitary campaigns were to produce the most fundamental blasphemy - sectarian killing.

I recall a visit to the southern states of America at the time of the racial riots and the start of the Martin Luther King era. So much I witnessed and listened to bore similarities to the Irish situation. Here there was also distrust and suspicion, boiling over into violence and there were visionaries and a long history of self-perpetuating community uncertainties. The lesson I learned from both is that reconciliation cannot be achieved by legislation alone. People need to want to be reconciled. For a large number of Protestants at grass-roots level reconciliation like ecumenism is a word of weakness.

If religious intolerance is the outward and visible sign of a sickness in this community, one must ask about its causes as well as its consequences from a religious point of view. If it is a recurring feature of daily life it presents a challenge to the churches. It prompts questions about the relevance of the churches and their influence, about the nature of their teaching and the integrity of the example they have set, about the ways in which Christianity has been portrayed through the generations, about power and control. For the churches the questions are numerous. As more than one commentator has concluded that the churches in Northern Ireland are on trial.

In 1980 the Role of the Church Committee of the Church of Ireland had little doubt as to the way forward. Recognising the existence of religious sectarianism in Northern Ireland, it concluded:

"It is essential that this be acknowledged by all the Churches and that we do all in our power to combat prejudice and remove bigotry where it exists in our own membership or within the community as a whole." ii

Such wording in a church report will seem laudable and worthy of support by many. But several questions arise. Do the Irish churches actually acknowledge the existence of religious bigotry and intolerance based on religious beliefs? Are the churches willing to examine in depth their responsibility for in any way encouraging their attitudes? To what extent are the churches prepared to actively oppose sectarianism in Irish society and to actively make changes in their structures to help in its eradication thus furthering the process of peace?

These questions go to the sensitive root of a great deal of the churches’ activities and even of their witness. To acknowledge the existence of sectarianism and sectarian attitudes is one thing : to acknowledge that we may have had a part in their development is less comfortable. That process has become so clearly a priority in the light of the Good Friday Agreement. The peace process itself has brought to the surface questions whose answers are dictated as much by sectarianism as by any other ingredient. Yet I believe the time has come to not only ask those questions, but to attempt to answer them. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality is undeniably present in the life of Northern Ireland today and religion has a role in this.iii But in many instances what constitutes religion has become an inclusive label for attitudes and actions which are anything but Christian. Both communities have played their part in this process. Sectarianism is not the prerogative of one tradition only.

It is all too easy to cite examples of how ‘the other side’ has fostered negative attitudes towards their neighbours. Extreme Protestantism has been accused of encouraging anti-Romanism, but one must ask is the extremist alone among Protestants in seeing the Roman Catholic tradition in purely negative terms? From the extremes of the anti-Roman Catholic sermons, writings and statements which question the very identity of the Roman Catholic faith as ‘Christian’ to the more moderate view that tends to dwell on the association of the Church with nationalistic or republican philosophies, the thrust is the same. It differs only in matters of degree.

Equally, within the Roman Catholic tradition one has come across a questioning of the willingness of the Protestant Church to speak of justice, equality and truth. Such examples may be infrequent, but they do exist. The late Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal O’Fiaich, once remarked that there was bigotry in both traditions, but that while Roman Catholic opposition to Protestants was influenced by the political situation, in the case of Protestants, prejudice towards Catholics was religious in nature. Experience has taught me that there is considerable truth in that remark.

In my own Church, the Church of Ireland, the report on sectarianism debated at the General Synod in 1999 as the Peace Process continued at a political level, indicated a willingness to self-examine the structures of a Christian Church in the light of what could be described as ‘sectarian attitudes’.iv The thoughtful debate which ensued said much about the struggle for hearts and minds which on a larger canvas Northern Ireland would face when Senator Mitchell’s Review report appeared. In the report, the Church which had been exposed to the full implications for successive stand-offs at Drumcree, had attempted to maintain unity as a cross-border Church and had felt the internal pressures of north–south political and cultural tensions, examined its attitude to the Orange Order, flags and emblems, education and Church teaching. Synodical reactions were by and large predictable. But the debate was to be a cameo of the community-wide analysis of the issues highlighted by the Mitchell Review. Southern Church members could not comprehend the connections between their co-religionists in the north and what they perceived as a totally sectarian movement such as the Orange Order. Northern Anglicans were divided between traditional support for, or involvement in, the Order and embarrassment at the media portrayals of violence and bigotry outside Drumcree Parish Church. Questions surfaced which will undoubtedly engage the Church of Ireland for many years. On the wider scene the belief was general that what was happening to the Church of Ireland because of Drumcree would have repercussions for all the mainline Protestant denominations across the Province. As one commentator put it:

‘The Church of Ireland is bearing the burden for all the other Protestant Churches who thank God it is not happening to them.’

To solve Drumcree would be a major step towards acceptance of the small print of the peace process. To produce a credible peace solution would move Drumcree towards a local accommodation.

On the one side of this problem lies the apprehension that the peace process has been too much one way in that nationalism or republicanism has gained much, to the detriment of unionism or loyalism. Add to that the deep apprehension that refusal to be allowed "down the Garvaghy Road" is but one more erosion of the Protestant ethos and that such a parade is seen as triumphalism in a nationalist area and the intransigence on both sides becomes a certainty.

It is extremely difficult, having acknowledged the existence of sectarianism, to ‘get to the bottom’ of what causes it. A recent sociological survey has suggested that sectarian attitudes are apparent among children as young as seven or eight. The antagonism felt by some Protestants towards Roman Catholics is often classified as distrust of ‘the power’ of the Roman Catholic Church. Extreme Protestant opinion will cite the falling numbers of their co-religionists in the Republic as evidence of what happens when a state is dominated by Roman Catholics. They will talk about the effects of ‘mixed’ or inter-church marriages where rules about the upbringing of children are seen to close the door on any continuing Protestant religious allegiance. They will warn that the rising Roman Catholic birth-rate will eventually lead to a total demographic change. Above all, they will express suspicions about the political aspirations of ‘Catholics in general’, aspirations which they see enhanced and encouraged by the public statements of Roman Catholic Churchmen. All too frequently I hear remarks about ‘the failure of Catholics to support the Northern Ireland state’, their reluctance to support ‘the security forces’ and their ‘constant recital of imagined injustice’. It is debatable to what extent practical ignorance of Roman Catholics has grown out of the pattern of separate communities, living by themselves, working with those who are co-religionists and to a large extent taking part in recreational activities which are not ‘mixed’ in membership, to say nothing of their children being educated in schools which are largely segregated - not by design but by custom - has made such attitudes inevitable. Undoubtedly, these are highly significant factors.

As I have said before, Protestantism, for historical reasons, is a fragmented body. Religious denominationalism is important for Irish Protestants. While at times, particularly in a party political sense, it is possible to generalise about Protestant attitudes to a particular issue, it is not always possible to talk of a united ‘religious’ opinion. In some Protestant churches membership of inter-church bodies is impossible. Reasons given for such attitudes vary, but undoubtedly a common denominator is at best a reluctance and at worst open opposition to involvement with the Roman Catholic Church. As late as 1999 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland voted against joining a majority of Protestant Churches in a new ecumenical structure which would involve Roman Catholics.v

When Roman Catholics have looked towards their Protestant neighbours it is undoubtedly true that their political/religious alignments are what they see first and foremost. Their memories of discrimination, the ascendancy and power of Protestants, come into play, as well as the determination of the Orange Order to parade with ‘triumphalism’ through Catholic areas. When such parades end in a church service the feeling of insult deepens. For many Catholics, Protestant extremism is Protestantism and moderate Protestantism is not as easily recognised. In the years prior to the Good Friday Agreement attention may have been focused on the divisions of the Drumcree controversy. Behind those emotive and dramatic divisions lay much more than claims of the right to walk down a stretch of road by the Orange Order. Drumcree has represented the realities of the Northern Ireland which entered the years of the peace process. It spoke of more than rights or duties. It enforced the raw nerve of traditional Protestant expression of a part of its historic ethos - and the growing confidence of nationalism to express its own perceived rights.

Following the Good Friday Agreement, the Church parliaments of the main Protestant churches discussed the outcome and looked ahead. The debates reflected a mixture of genuine relief and traditional caution. Yet there was a new sense of prophetic vision.

In May 1998 the General Synod of the Church of Ireland passed the following resolution :

"That the General Synod, in the light of the Agreement reached in the recent multi-party talks, calls on our Church of Ireland people in both jurisdictions, prayerfully to consider and conscientiously to determine their response to the choice before them in the Referendum to be held on 22 May 1998." vii

During the debates at the Synod it was clear that a majority of the members, north and south, wanted to be seen to be supporting the Agreement even though some from Northern Ireland were already expressing apprehensions on the question of disarmament of paramilitaries.

Later that same year the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland reflected the realities of the voting on the Agreement:

"The General Assembly recognises the importance of the Agreement of 10th April 1998 and that it was carried by substantial majorities of people in referenda in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland."viii

and, welcoming the possible devolution of power to locally elected representatives further resolved:

"that continued constructive leadership is required and should be exercised in a spirit of generosity and goodwill, integrity and sensitivity, to ensure that the proposed arrangements succeed for the well-being of everyone in both parts of the island."ix

Commenting on the ‘yes’ majority vote at the Referenda, the President of the Methodist Church in Ireland stated:

"The people’s verdict, an overwhelming ‘yes’ must be taken on board by all politicians, whatever their stance before the referendum. Each person’s vote is of equal value, whether cast by a nationalist or a unionist … no responsible politician can ignore the expressed view of the people."x

Experience has taught me that the wording of resolutions and comments by church gatherings usually attempt to steer a middle course in the light of the widely differing views of church membership and avoid in many instances the expression of emphatic opinion. However in this instance the general tenor of official church attitudes was fully supportive of the voting on the Referenda and encouraging of future political progress towards agreed structures of devolution in Northern Ireland.

As the peace process continued at a political level in late 1999 several key issues crystallised the various concerns of northern Protestants both in their churches and in their daily lives.

The continuing release of terrorist prisoners from the Maze and other prisons, the proposals in the Patten Report on policing, the Mitchell Review of the Belfast Agreement and the statements on decommissioning of terrorist weapons opened up yet more evidence of the divisions within the Protestant community. The prospects for the formation of an Executive to include Sinn Fein before decommissioning became a reality threatened to tear political unionism apart. Within parish and congregational life those divisions surfaced among both clergy and laity. The intensity of such feeling was not surprising. Again pressure mounted in many areas for denominational support to be expressed as the traditional tensions became once more evident.

An inter-denominational group of some 200 clergy presented the pro-Agreement parties at Stormont with a statement entitled Faith in a Brighter Future’:

"We the under-signed, Churchmen and Churchwomen, would like publicly to express our support for the efforts you are making at this time to build an historic and lasting peace in our country.

We appreciate the integrity and courage with which you have travelled so far. We encourage you all to take the next steps together.

We acknowledge that considerable difficulties remain to be overcome but we believe that you have the will and the capacity to overcome them. We trust you to do this for us and we encourage others to support you too.

In our pastoral ministry we are left in no doubt that there is an overwhelming desire for political progress that leads to a just and lasting peace.

We continue to pray to Almighty God for you. We believe that you are working towards the creation of new structures that will offer all of us a future where peace, respect and prosperity can flourish. We encourage you to continue to translate this vision into a practical reality."xi

PERCEPTIONS OF PEACE
Inter-denominational prayer groups, long a feature of Church life in certain areas, appeared across the Province with more confidence and individual Church leaders sought to focus religious attention on prayerful support for political parties as the implications of what the implementation of the Belfast Agreement would in fact mean became clearer. This emphasis on spiritual reflection characterised the bulk of inter-Church activity in a period when local congregations inevitably contained those of differing views on a way forward. The realities of change at the top of the party political process produced the church-going radical as well as presenting another platform for the church going political dissident. On the one hand people prayed for steady nerves for those coming under sustained political pressure while, undoubtedly, there were those who prayed for deliverance from what they saw as a ‘political sell-out’.

Not for the first time the raw nerve of experience, emotion and uncertainty mixed with the tentative expressions of support for steps into the political unknown appeared in the pews. Local clergy, themselves representing differing views, were facing congregations which in many cases worshipped in church buildings adorned by memorials to former UDR and RUC members killed in ‘The Troubles’. They worked with families which had lost loved ones at the hands of Republican terrorism. They listened to parishioners who wanted the chance to move into a new era of peace and stability. But they also heard from those who craved for the expression of political ideals which they could understand in clear ways. There was a growing disenchantment with the manipulation of language in official statements where it was perceived words were no longer the vehicle of their idea of fact. Nowhere was this more clear than in the decision that despite evidence of punishment beatings, armed robberies with a political slant and other local incidents of armed activity that officialdom did not consider the ‘ceasefire’ had been broken. The interesting feature of this aspect of Protestant reaction was not that people wanted the peace process to be diverted – but that what they perceived to be the truth had somehow been manipulated for political reasons. As one Church group put it to me : "the peace process certainly, but not at the cost of a debasement of language where truth suffers." Clearly perceptions influence such opinions – but it was interesting to note that somewhere, somehow in the Protestant consciousness factors whether right or wrong had entered the debate – and factors which to those concerned somehow transcended the individual party political outlook.

Protestantism has long proclaimed an ethos which has included the work ethic and principles of personal morality for which justification has stemmed from the Old as well as the New Testaments. Rigid adherence to scriptural truth has long been the characteristic of fundamental Protestantism. Fundamentalism has itself characterised much of Ulster Protestantism. That view-point has also been identifiable in terms of party political philosophy. From the frequent expression ‘For God and Ulster’ has emerged as a catch-word of certain loyalist groupings to rival even in part the equally vehement ‘No Pope here’ rallying call. Yet it has to be noted that part of the difficulty in identifying a religious factor stems from the hijacking of a so-called pan-Protestant religious ethic by those whose interest is entirely tribal and party-politicised.

The period of the Peace Process has not been an easy chapter for the main Protestant Churches in Northern Ireland. During the years of violence pastoral support for victims, condemnation of the endless cycle of injury and death, seemingly endless funerals and appeals for an end to the mayhem co-existed at an official level with calls for political action to fill the vacuum. Once the first tentative steps towards dialogue emerged, the Churches appeared less confident in their official utterances. Naturally a majority of such statements centred on encouragement for the emergence of political movement but with few exceptions the public stance reflected something of the uncertainties surfacing at congregational or parochial level in the Protestant family. The visible swing to clear support for the long party political process really only appeared in the weeks leading to the establishment of an agreed government following the Mitchell Review.

The reasons for this picture of Church attitude are as complex as the process itself. The encouragement of dialogue emerged from Churches which had grown accustomed to the clarity of distinction between the evil of violence and the moral legitimacy of ‘peace’. Ministry to the bereaved, condemnation of paramilitary activity and urging politicians to continue their progress to what would end it all, had brought leadership very close to the rank and file of the religious community. The uncertainty of those who themselves understood the issues of the days of violent mayhem but found it increasingly difficult to adjust to dialogue involving traditional ‘enemies’ influenced what should have been a prophetic voice. The pace of change leading up to the Agreement confronted a church-going people with degrees of uncertainty reflected elsewhere by party political hardening of attitude. Peace was demanded - but had it to be at any price?

In retrospect it is possible now to detect something of the struggle the Protestant Churches in Northern Ireland faced as first signs of the ‘unbelievable’ began to emerge. From providing a necessary religious/social ambulance service to a community in trauma, the transition had to be to the prophetic image of understanding the need to be conditioned to dramatic change. It called for the welcome of change and it called for explanation of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewal. The Christian duty may have been becoming plain - the realities of ‘a house divided’ was less easy to define. It may not be the duty of a religious denomination to tell people how they should vote - undoubtedly the parameters of how society should make up its mind, the sort of issues it should take on board in that process - such ingredients had to be related to Christian teaching and Biblical truth.

Not for the first time these were the very areas of division for religious Protestantism before, during and after the Referenda. Fundamentalism spoke loudly of divine retribution, Biblical revelation of the need to express clear confessions of guilt for past crimes and the ‘immoral concept’ of terrorists having any place in government while arms remained in commission. The broad spectrum of ‘middle of the way’ religious Protestantism urged progress which would include the possibility of disarmament and the recognition that not everyone would achieve all they hoped for in a settlement. Such thinking was allied to the New Testament concepts of forgiveness of others, reconciliation – and the admission that even one’s ‘own side’ had made serious mistakes in the past. The lines were drawn. The divisions became apparent. Yet no one would deny the overwhelming desire to end the causes of violence once and for all.

When the voting figures of the Ulster Unionist Council debate on the Mitchell proposals were announced they were a true reflection of the divisions of opinion apparent in most Church of Ireland, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations in Northern Ireland. Indeed the compromise resolution on a further Unionist review of progress to be held in February 2000 gave a strange comfort to the Protestants in the pew as much as it opened the way for a ‘yes’ vote in the Waterfront.

With the creation of an Executive and the end of direct rule ‘religious Ulster’ continued to reflect the hope and the uncertainty of its people. Presbyterianism spoke of the important movement reflected in the Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionist documents prompted by the Mitchell Review and the bishops of the Northern Province of the Church of Ireland issued a statement:

"We express our prayerful good wishes to the Chief Minister, Deputy First Minister, Ministers, Chairpersons and members of committees appointed to carry special responsibilities in the devolved government of Northern Ireland. We recognise that many demands will be made of them in the days to come and in this period of change we also recognise that many people in the community will find it difficult to adjust to changed circumstances. We pray that all in positions of shared responsibility will be given wisdom, fairness and strength to fulfil their duties for the good of all the people in this society."xii

The pendulum had begun to swing. The first tentative voices of prophecy were emerging. Trust, the real casualty of the Troubles was essential – but safeguards to political adventure were welcomed.

THE FUTURE
When the Patten Report on policing was produced the main reformed Churches spoke of disappointment that there had been insufficient regard for the losses and sacrifice of the RUC during the years of terrorism. The significance of such responses lay much further afield than reaction to a single report. Religious Protestantism has long reflected the burden of the suffering of the community in which it worships. But the translation of that burden into the realities of forgiveness, understanding and reconciliation has become a core priority for the Protestant Churches. Understanding of the first Good Friday at Calvary helps to put the events of Good Friday 1998 into perspective in a Christian sense.

Justice and respect for humanity made in the image of God are essential to understanding the prayer of Christ on the cross. For the hopeful yet uncertain days ahead in Northern Ireland the call to the Church is becoming clear. To preach reconciliation and understanding may reflect the majority opinion of a community in transition but it will continue to be a problem for those who cannot either forgive or forget. Yet there is no alternative for any Christian voice which seeks integrity with that first Good Friday. The Churches must struggle with what peace means, what peace involves and with what ‘love your enemies’ really calls for. The price is great –but there is no other way. From close identity with suffering the Church must move ahead into the uncharted waters of ‘the possible’.

Whether or not future generations will see in our day the first real moves to a new integrity of Protestant Churches in Northern Ireland in which the Gospel of love, peace and justice for all supersedes unquestioning allegiance to a traditional tribal philosophy remains to be seen. Secularism has come of age throughout the island of Ireland behind the smokescreen of the 30 years of war. The Church faces not just the challenge of a process of peculiarly Irish secularism but the corrosive remains of deep and destructive sectarianism. In the on-going Peace Process the challenge could not be greater. The failures of the past must never be forgotten, but equally those lessons must not be allowed to dominate witness and genuine Christian prophesy. Church teaching and activity may well have been and continue to be a part of the problem. Can the Church really become part of the solution?

Perhaps the most significant emotion to emerge within the Protestant community as details of the ‘small print’ of the Peace Process began to emerge after the Agreement was hurt. Certainly within the Protestant Churches, clergy and laity gave expression to that strange mixture of reactions which was evident in the wider community. These included relief, uncertainty, anxiety to push forward - but chiefly, hurt. Memories of personal losses, death and injury surfaced and groupings highlighted such aspects of the Patten Report on policing as a failure to pay adequate tribute to the cost paid by the RUC over the years of active terrorism as well as emphasising the feelings of various victim support organisations. In congregations and parishes, committees and select vestries passed resolutions drawing attention to the cost of the troubles. But the feeling of hurt grew in significance at parish level. There was talk of organising special services and events to mark the memory of those who had been lost and Church leadership was pressurised to find vehicles through which this could be expressed.

It is difficult to analyse the real nature of this particular reaction to events. For individuals and families which had carried such depths of emotional stress and trauma no political development would ever replace the sense of loss or remove the deep sadness. Many expressed resentment that the pace of political change was leaving behind due recognition of the cost of sacrifice. This feeling emerged with fresh momentum when the Mitchell Review led to the nomination of ministerial positions and the Protestant community were faced with the prospect of representatives of what they perceived and indeed regarded as the cause of their loss and hurt, holding office. In more than one parish there was reluctance to pray for "all in positions of responsibility."

The challenge to a Gospel of reconciliation and renewal became really clear. The pressure on Church leadership increased. What was the message that the Church should give to a community which was expressing such a myriad of emotions? Forgiveness is a central core of the Gospel. What forgiveness was to be expected of those who had lost most? Was forgiveness to be forthcoming from individuals if the Gospel spoke of the forgiveness God alone could grant? In the absence of any declaration by former terrorists of regret for their actions, what could be reasonably expected of victims? And where did the demands of reconciliation come into the picture?

Such questions went to the heart of the matter and the Churches at various levels began to confront the implications of the Peace Process in ways that had been kept at arms length by the events of 30 years of pastoral aid to a suffering community.

In the years to come several factors at present uncertain will become clear. Will the process of political progress continue? Will the power-sharing executive survive? Will the political risks taken be justified? Will the paramilitary organisations prove that the war is finally over?

In those same years the Christian Gospel may not be on trial. But the lives of individual Christians most certainly will be.

THE CHURCHES’ ROLE
For years they have urged political dialogue. That dialogue has begun. It has begun to produce results. Those results may not be to everyone’s liking, but results they are. There is no obvious alternative. Beyond the political issues they raise are the moral questions and for the Christian community they pose the realities of Christ’s prayers at Calvary. In a sense the current period represents somewhere between the first Good Friday and the Resurrection. Somehow and somewhere the Church must discover the ability to move from a supportive pastoral agency in a suffering community to a prophetic compassionate yet determined agency for the conditioning of people to change.

Christianity affirms the sovereignty of God not just in individual lives but in that of the community. To love our enemies, to pursue justice for others as well as ourselves and to enhance peace are Gospel imperatives. The achievement of such ends is equalled only by the determination to encourage all means to that achievement. As I stated earlier, political agreements do not achieve reconciliation per se. They merely provide the structures in which hearts and minds can grasp ways of building a just peace. That is surely the point Northern Ireland has reached as 1999 draws to a close. Peace can become a lasting reality and justice for an entire community achieved if the words of the Ulster Unionist and Sinn Fein statements that society had to put behind it the failure to accept legitimate and different identities and that violence had to become a thing of the past can be translated into practice. The years of prayers and the countless calls for a new beginning from pulpit and sanctuary will be answered if people of faith have the courage to match that faith with real and courageous witness. That witness will concern itself with a struggle to understand what reconciliation and forgiveness actually mean. For the Churches of Northern Ireland there is no option. They must be a part of the struggle.

R.S. Thomas in his poem "The Moon in the Lleyn" reflects something of the dilemma facing the Church today in Northern Ireland:

"Religion is over, and what will emerge from the body of the new moon, no one can say …"

Perhaps the real struggle for hearts and minds in Protestant and religious Ulster has just begun.

iECONI ‘Building the Peace’, An Evangelical Response to the Mitchell Review, 24 November 1999.
ii‘Report of the Church Committee to the General Synod of the Church of Ireland: Journal of the General Synod, 1980.
iiiIbid.
ivJournal of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, Committee on Sectarianism Report, 1999.
vSee Report of the Presbyterian Assembly, 1999.
Ibid.
viJournal of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland 1998.
viiReports of the Presbyterian General Assembly, Church and Government Committee, 1998.
viiiIbid.
ixThe Reverend Dr N Taggart, President of the Methodist Church in Ireland.
xChurch of Ireland Press Office, 1999.
xiChurch of Ireland Press Office, 1999.
xiiIbid.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PEACE PROCESS AND THE PROTESTANTS

Gregory Campbell

THE BEGINNINGS OF A PROCESS
Initially as the peace process got under way there was scepticism, incredulity and amazement among the Unionist population. Not simply that delivery of the ‘goods’ was all to Nationalists and Republicans in the form of prisoner releases, North South Bodies and the Patten review of the Police. Not even that it just might lead to a different, better future. It was more fundamental than that. The Unionist population perceived the process unfolding before them as the culmination of many years preparation by the Nationalist/Republican community.

CROMWELL, THE POTATO FAMINE ‘AND A BETTER FUTURE FOR ALL’
A thirty-year war had been conducted on the premise that Roman Catholics had been systematically disadvantaged and, on their behalf, the protagonists were endeavouring to remedy those past ‘injustices’. The ‘war’ was promoted by those in Sinn Fein and acquiesced to by the membership of the Social Democratic and Labour party. They now look upon this entire process as a way of rectifying ‘the wrongs’ of the past. It seems as if the worst excesses of Cromwell, the paranoia of the potato famine along with latter day gerrymandering are all to be displayed for close examination to see if this current process can devise a way of ensuring that the hated ‘Brits’ along with the ‘Prods’ are never again allowed to prevent the freely expressed will of the "people of Ireland" from being enacted. The most galling fact for Ulster’s Protestant community is that Nationalists are doing all of this in the name of acceptance of diversity. A better future for all our children, we are told, is bound to come about if all the cultural expressions on the Island can be recognised. "It is the people not the land that is divided" has become the cliché. If this is rectified then no-one will feel threatened; no-one will be compelled because of their perceived sense of exclusion to resort to violence. When they say "no-one" they mean no Republican will need to take up the gun.

VIOLENCE AND ITS RATIONALE
After talks with Sinn Fein in 1988, six years before the 1994 ceasefire the SDLP;

"conceded there were difficulties involved in persuading the Unionists to move towards the concept of a new agreed Ireland. They claimed that an end to the IRA campaign and, the subsequent demilitarisation of the North would introduce Unionists to the idea of a new Ireland." i

This declaration demonstrates both the deceit of Nationalist thinking and their dependence on pliable Unionism to obtain their desired results. Over the years, it has been patently obvious that the gun has yielded positive results to a considerable degree for Republicans. Successive British Governments have baulked at the very idea of confronting terrorism given the extent of international support for their cause. Every time there was the possibility of a realistic response to the barbaric activities of the Provisional IRA a British Government backed off. When three PIRA ‘volunteers’ went on a mission during 1988 to murder innocent people in Gibraltar, they were themselves killed by the SAS and there was an orchestrated international outcry with the Government scaling down the security response. When an IRA team carried out a full scale attack on a Police Station in Loughgall Co. Armagh the Security Forces, through intelligence gathering, were made aware of it. An SAS team were ready and waiting as the attack unfolded, the IRA were clearly determined and had acquired a mechanical digger to breach the security fencing, they were armed with automatic weapons and numbered eight personnel. That night the Provisional IRA suffered their worst single setback in the history of the troubles as the SAS took on the IRA unit killing all eight men. In that part of County Tyrone, IRA activity was massively reduced over the next year because of this military response to terror. At that point the Government could have decided to launch a huge counter terrorist offensive against the IRA. In fact they had any amount of suitable occasions to use as a launchpad but the truth is that they deliberately chose not to. The reason of course was the much vaunted international opinion. Over the years the IRA learned that the British Government was not prepared to confront them so they were at liberty to vary their tactics, turn the tap of violence on harder when they deemed it prudent to do so and ease it off a little when it was advantageous to do that. They also learned that, just as concessions could be obtained by the outright use of violence, so gains could be got by using the threat of it when there was some war weariness in the community from which they drew their support. None of this alteration and change of gear cuts any ice with the Ulster Protestant. Many in our community view this change of tactic as precisely that, a change of tactic but not a change of mindset.

THE NECESSITY OF BEING IRISH, THE IRRELEVANCE OF BEING BRITISH
Down through the decades the Irish Republican has twisted and turned, changed and amended its short term strategic goals but always kept firmly in sight the long term objective of achieving a United Ireland. This has been maintained because of their perverted claim that Ulster’s people are essentially ‘Irish’. To Ulster’s Protestant community that is a declaration of intent by republicans to have their Britishness removed, obliterated or, if that fails, made completely irrelevant.

ALIENATED? TELL ME ABOUT IT
The present process is designed to ensure that Nationalists and Republicans are at the centre of Government so that their sense of Irishness and Gaelic identification are intrinsically part of the new Northern Ireland. They want people to believe that Unionists were always part of, and controlled, the old pre-1998 Northern Ireland. Unionists are supposed to be content with this process because it is assumed that Ulster’s civic society, business elite, political activity and all the trappings of life in Northern Ireland are already amenable to Unionism. In this context, it must be asked where have these people been for over twenty years?

In that time there has been so much disillusionment among the Unionist people. This was not because they have lost power or because they are finding it difficult to come to terms with these ‘necessary changes’ in the new age. It was rather because, never having the power in the first place, and being accused of misusing it when they didn’t have it, they now see that same power being wielded against them at every opportunity.

INTRANSIGENCIES STOP PROGRESS
Over the decades from 1973 when Stormont was prorogued, each time efforts were undertaken to try and find a way through the impasse that prevailed, unless the Nationalist community gave it’s endorsement those efforts were doomed to failure. The Assembly and Convention in 1974 and 1975 (both designed to try and reach political accommodation) went that way. The Atkins talks in 1979 fell because Nationalists did not approve; the Prior Assembly of 1982 - 1986 suffered the same fate with the SDLP refusing to even attend. The 1991/92 talks under Patrick Mayhew did not succeed because, according to SDLP sources, there was not sufficient recognition of their Irish identity. In relation to policing, the SDLP attitude was a classically intransigent one. Even after 1973 when policing reform had gone through and many Catholics wanted better relationships with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the SDLP still pioneered a rejectionist role. When Community and Police Liaison Committees were set up and ordinary Catholics joined, the SDLP stayed away. In fact;

"by 1974 the SDLP found itself in government, the first ‘Catholic’ party to do so, but still refusing to offer unconditional support to the security forces." ii

Now we have in place a system of Government to which the majority of Unionists do not give support or allegiance. The leader of the SDLP never misses the opportunity to state that the Belfast Agreement offers, for the first time, a system of government which commands the allegiance of all the people. Every electoral test since the referendum on the Belfast Agreement demonstrates the utter fallacy of this premise. The Assembly election in 1998 and the European election in 1999 again emphasised that Unionists were unimpressed and rejected this deal. Despite this, we had a Government determined to press ahead and Nationalists and Republicans saying "We must press on, there cannot be any delay in implementation of the Agreement". No wonder unionists are angry, disillusioned and frustrated.

The Unionist people see Nationalist demands and electoral support as reasons for Nationalist rejection of a ‘unionist’ outcome resulting from any negotiations ‘Unionist’ in this context meaning a conclusion which would be acceptable to the broad Unionist community, while we now have a ‘Nationalist’ outcome in that the conclusion has the almost unanimous approval of the Nationalist community but Unionist demands and electoral support are swept to one side.

UNIONISTS SEEKING SOLACE
Commentators occasionally point to the transient electoral support obtained among the Unionist community for what are termed ‘fringe’ parties. In the elections to the Political Talks Forum in 1996 the Progressive Unionist Party, the UDP and the United Kingdom Unionist Party between them polled more than 70,000 votes. Of course, even among this swathe of voters, a wide diversity of Unionism is represented. But the point is why did more than 70,000 people vote for these parties when they already had other political parties to vote for? This was before the Belfast Agreement, so it was totally separate from any disillusionment which arose afterwards. The answer I believe is Unionist despair and a sense of total frustration at what has been happening politically in Northern Ireland. Having voted for the ‘main’ Unionist Parties for years, the Unionist community wanted to see results in the way that Nationalists saw results from voting for both SDLP and Sinn Fein. Not having seen any tangible productivity they sought solace in others whom they hoped would ‘deliver the goods’.

EQUALITY OF TREATMENT
There will not be Unionist acquiescence never mind wholehearted commitment to the Belfast Agreement or any other deal while the basis of it is to redress Nationalist wrongs. Until there is an acceptance of this fact among Nationalists, Republicans and the British Government it is doomed to be a failure among the Unionist community. This is best highlighted by the irony and hypocrisy contained in a comment by a very prominent Nationalist in 1968 who was later to become a leader in that community;

"when we get our civil rights there will be no revenge." iii

The virtual elimination of Unionism from what they would describe as their territory seems like ample revenge. In fact, Unionists are looking for very similar objectives to emerge from any future process as Nationalists/Republicans are from this one. Just as Nationalists want to see greater recognition of their identity and allegiance from this process so, for any future process to have even the possibility of success at it’s heart it will require to give Unionists recognition of their identity and allegiance. When republicans in particular scoff at this perfectly legitimate demand, they inadvertently place their finger on the very pulse of what is wrong with repeated efforts at solving the Northern Ireland problem.

To the Unionist eye, republican concerns have been addressed a long time ago. Unionists would like to see an Inward Investment Programme where they might see some benefit. An example is the highly commendable number of jobs created in the Londonderry area in recent years. The fact is however that 90% of them have gone to Roman Catholics. Will any future programme have more success in giving Protestants employment? In education, there is a Maintained sector where the Roman Catholic ethos is central to the entire structure of the curriculum. There is no similar State sponsored Protestant educational ethos. The controlled sector, oftentimes referred to as the Protestant school system which it is not, is a sector where many Roman Catholics attend and there is no definitive Protestant teaching in many of the schools.

CULTURALLY DEFICIENT
This point is best illustrated from a cultural and historical vantage point. I have found when speaking with a wide range of students in the Maintained (Catholic) education sector, that there is a general understanding of their historical background. Most have knowledge of the events and many of the famous individuals who helped to create Irish history. From my own experience and knowledge of the Controlled (State) sector there is no such comparable knowledge of the events and people that helped create the Northern Ireland ethos. In the former there is a pride in the sense of ‘achievement’, while in the latter there is reluctance to even acknowledge what occurred. An outstanding example is the magnificent contribution people from the North of Ireland made to the creation of the United States of America. Any other country which could boast of the litany of legal, political and military prowess that emerged from Northern Ireland to form what is now the most powerful nation on earth would trumpet their connection loud and long. Not only is that not the case but the great great great great grandchildren of those very people are almost totally unaware of their place in history. The incredible achievements of Ulster’s more recent offspring are almost totally ignored. The literary talents of, among many others, C.S. Lewis, John Hewitt and W.F. Marshall. The marvelous skills of Harry Ferguson. This is a travesty and, if it were the case regarding a Nationalist cause celebre, there would undoubtedly be a huge furore coupled with a lambasting of the authorities responsible until due recognition had been achieved.

ORANGE RESTRICTIONS, GREEN FREEDOM
A recent publication contained an article by a very well known author who comes from the Nationalist community and was raised in an area of Northern Ireland where Nationalism has been in the ascendancy for almost thirty years. He was writing about his views on the border. He wrote

"the Orange Order in it’s insistence on carrying on it’s demented marches across every nationalist territory within range, on the ground that it has a right to walk the Queen’s highway. This is not a breaking but a reaffirmation of borders, and it is a perversion of any notion of civil rights. The purpose is to confirm that the internal borders are as fixed as the external border; within both, the Orange and Unionist ascendancy wants to persuade itself that it still rules." iv

An award winning literary scholar wrote this. Where he has been for thirty years is not for me to question. It should make some people understand that Unionism feels dispirited when this type of garbage is churned out by a well qualified academic. He is from a part of Northern Ireland where the Protestant community has been decimated and discriminated against for decades yet still has the audacity to consign to print such an unadulterated tissue of untruths and myths. No recognition from this person (or any other of standing within Nationalism) that far from marching "across every Nationalist territory within range" the reality is that nationalist Ancient Order of Hibernians marches proceed unhindered across Unionist territories such as Kilkeel and Desertmartin on a regular basis. However, when it is time to reciprocate, there appears to be determination that a Unionist march shall not pass along the Garvaghy Road.

CIVIL RIGHTS IN 1969 BUT NOT IN 1999
In 1999 a group of people came together to hold what was termed ‘The Long March’. This was to be a walk from Londonderry to Portadown through a whole series of towns. Its objective was to highlight genuine victims of violence, their grievances, and drawing attention to the increasing sense of disadvantage and lack of civil rights for the Protestant community. Before it started, there was a number of Protestant Ministers who, failing either to understand what the issue was about or not wanting to be seen to be identified with such a radical cause, distanced themselves from it. They also called for the organisers to cancel the plans as they said there would be violence since it was being held in the run up to the Drumcree period in early July. Many of us were criticised for disputing that partisan and defeatist attitude from clerics who were supposed to give pastoral leadership to their people. There was no violence. But even at the outset of that walk, with no bands, no orange banners, no music and no flags there was a republican attempt to disrupt a campaign demanding civil rights for Protestants. For some it seemed to be perfectly legitimate for Roman Catholics to march and demand those rights in 1969 but not for Protestants in 1999.

‘SHOW US ANOTHER WAY’
All of this is now a thing of the past we are told; we are lectured regularly by the great and the good who are convinced that the Belfast Agreement and the Peace Process are the definitive ways forward for our community. They base this claim upon the belief that, because the IRA are prepared to reduce their killing output in exchange for a string of concessions, that the future must be brighter in the ‘absence’ of violence. These individuals cannot accept that the IRA machine has been preparing since the mid 1980’s for yet another change of gear. In 1985 I took part in a BBC documentary entitled ‘Real Lives, at the Edge of the Union’.

This film became notorious because it also featured Martin McGuinness and his inclusion caused the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to call for the BBC not to screen it. The issue of censorship became so controversial that it led to the first ever worldwide strike by BBC journalists. In an excerpt that did not receive the significance it should have got, McGuinness made the comment regarding the IRA’s campaign of violence.

"We believe that the only way that the Irish people can bring about the freedom of our country is through the use of armed struggle, I wish it could be done in another way. If someone can tell me a peaceful way to do it I would gladly support that but no-one has yet done that."
Martin McGuinness BBC Real Lives documentary.

It is perfectly understandable that many in the Unionist community who were on the receiving end of the IRA’s line of fire might not see that the IRA were open to achieve their goals by another route. But how the great and the good who have largely been ignored by the Provos missed the point is more difficult to understand. It is not that the IRA were looking to end their war but that they wanted other means of obtaining more gains, more stepping stones towards their goal. When seen in this, its proper context, people should neither be surprised nor elated at this so-called Peace Process. It seems as if having been attacked, maligned and misunderstood for over thirty years, the Unionist people are now to be patronised and promised a brighter future, if only we will co-operate in our own demise. As Nationalist demands grow ever more strident, some Unionists seek comfort in withdrawing ever more within themselves, politically, geographically and socially. Is this the dawning of the bright new day we were promised? Or is the cycle of defeat and deceit breakable?

BRITISH AND IRISH
Where does the Ulster Protestant go from here? It is clear where those pioneering the peace process would like them to go. Remembering their great and wonderful past, clutching their memories like the few remnants their forbears had as they made the long and dangerous way across the Atlantic over two hundred years ago to escape persecution. That is what the proponents of this process would like. Trudging, albeit with reluctance but accepting the inevitability of it all, into some New Ireland. Some accentuate this feeling when they declare that ‘we must not forget the victims’ while proceeding to violate the memory of many of those same victims by promoting a system which elevates their killers. The controversy surrounding the Patten Commission is very similar, some Nationalists say that tribute should be paid to the sacrifice of members of the RUC and then go on to support it’s demise. The Patten Commission on policing seeks to establish a policing service that is not identified with the State which that policing service is designed to serve. Can anyone imagine the sense of outrage which would exist within Nationalism if I were to suggest that we should all pay tribute to the courageous efforts made by many down through the years in the Nationalist community in seeking a United Ireland, salute them as heroes of the past and then proceed to build a Northern Ireland totally and exclusively for those whose loyalties lie within the United Kingdom.

This is neither for me nor for my community. Our sense of Britishness does not, and must not, inhibit Nationalism’s sense of Irishness. Their belief that the constitution of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom itself consigns them to second class citizenship is absurd. There is more to be said for Protestants in the Republic claiming that their rights have been infringed by nearly eighty years of domination than can be said by their Ulster Catholic counterparts.

THE TIES THAT BIND
The omens are not all negative; there is not among the ordinary people a belief in this fatalism. They are looking for clear decisive leadership. They realise the enormity of the task given the interests that are wrapped up in this process, our own Government, the U.S. Administration, the European Union Governments and, of course, the Irish Government. They are nevertheless convinced that right will defeat might eventually. A cause based not on triumphalism, but on a genuine sense of belonging to the United Kingdom where the wide sense of difference that exists between the Highlands of Scotland and the lush Hills of the Lake District is a bond which unites rather than divides. The Ulster people feel that same affinity whether it be with the disadvantaged ‘scousers’ in the North West or the canny lowlanders in the Burns country region of Scotland. As the U.K. gradually changes there is an acceptance that Northern Ireland’s place within it will change also. The difference is that in the future each component part of the U.K. can decide for itself what its participation (if any) is going to be. Northern Ireland’s people need to be secure in that same knowledge. There is a complete lack of that assurance for the Unionist section of its people. This Irish Government have given no concrete rationale for Unionists to believe that the removal of Articles 2 & 3 which were the Republic’s claim to Northern Ireland territory, mean that a new era in self determination has dawned, as they still seek to merge our two countries against our will.

NORTH SOUTH STRENGTH AND EAST WEST WEAKNESS
The North South Ministerial Council and the Implementation Bodies, when compared to the British Irish Council, only demonstrate in cold stark comparable terms what the future holds. The power, influence, size and remit of the North South bodies when measured alongside the miniscule and emasculated British Irish Council should give any pro Belfast Agreement Unionist doubter cause for concern. Part of the problem is that some Unionists are so desperate to portray the culmination of this part of the battle as a victory, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that they want to believe their own propaganda. The desire and obsession of republicans to obtain the mythical ‘fourth green field’ from this or any other process is always going to have to be confronted. Unless and until a process is devised which allows Unionism to develop and expand in the way that the Belfast Agreement allows Nationalism to develop there is little prospect of success. If republicans continue to force this agenda in the hope that they will eventually be facing a Unionism so bereft of principle and dedication that victory is there for the taking they are making a huge mistake. The very best they can hope to achieve is creating a situation whereby Unionists, realising that there is no hope of dealing with any realistic section of Nationalism, simply abandon the possibility of doing a deal with the Nationalist community. The East of Northern Ireland becomes more Unionist while the West becomes more Nationalist and this or any future British Government simply has to deal with two separate parts of Northern Ireland. If this is the best scenario Nationalism has got going for it then they really have to re-assess where it is going and whether their insistence in pursuing the green coloured crock of gold at the end of the rainbow is really worth the trouble.

The decision of the IRA, in the context of the causes of conflict being removed, to put their weapons verifiably beyond use is of no value. A peaceful society cannot emerge while politically motivated terrorists retain the right, and the capability, to use violence when the political concessions designed to stop them using that violence dry up or slow down.

iMurray, G. 1998.John Hume and the SDLP: impact and survival in Northern Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, p.180.
iiArthur, P. 1945.Government and Politics of Northern Ireland. London: Longman, 1984, p.127.
iiiO’Dochartaigh. N. 1997.From Civil Rights to Armalities: Derry and the birth of the Irish troubles. Cork: Cork University Press, p.101, quoting John Hume.
ivLoghe, P. 1999.The Border: personal reflections from Ireland, North and South. Dublin: Oak Tree Press, p.27.

CHAPTER SIX

THE PEACE PROCESS: A QUESTION OF DEFINITION

Barry White

As someone attempting to comment on Protestant perceptions of the peace process, I should give some background about myself. I am a journalist born, living and working in Belfast for nearly all my life. I spent two years in my early twenties in another country, Canada - something I believe should be obligatory for all the Irish - and have always felt somewhat detached from, although intensely interested in, the politics of the island. I write for the Belfast Telegraph and other publications, mostly about Northern Ireland politics, which I have reported and commented upon for more than 40 years. I come from a liberal Protestant and small-u unionist background, which I hope gives me some insight into the thinking of the majority in Northern Ireland. But I do not have a strong sense of religious or national identity. I feel mostly British, because that is the context in which I grew up, with most of my relations living in England, but I have no difficulty accepting that I am partly Irish, because of geography and part of the culture I live within. Regretfully, I have had too little contact, except through the media, the arts, my work and visits to the Republic, where two of my three children now live, with Irish culture. Here, for simplicity's sake, I use "Protestant" and "unionist" interchangeably.

Peace process is a term that was adopted about the time that John Hume of the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) and Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein began their dialogue in the early 1990s, and it means many things to many people. Essentially I think Protestants see it as a loaded expression, since it implies that there has been a genuine war, waged with a certain justification by republicans, and that by engaging them, one is trying to reach a compromise which recognises that their objectives can be pursued - and perhaps reached - without violence. As many Protestants refuse to accept any justification for the war, they reject the assumption that republicanism can be bought off in any way, regarding all attempts at peace-making as appeasement. But there is little coherence in the response of Protestants, who range from the born-again to the devoutly secular, retaining all the Presbyterian characteristics of individualism and non-conformism.

To me, the peace process is the means by which the two communities in Northern Ireland are beginning to rethink their unhappy relationship and heal some of the hurt they have done to each other over the centuries, and particularly over the past 30 years. To do this, some hard historical thinking has to be done by both communities. Unionists have to accept that the partition of Ireland in 1921 was an unsatisfactory means of dealing with an ethnic time bomb which, left untreated, was bound to explode. Nationalists have to accept that by their ambivalent attitude to the state in which they found themselves and by their natural identification with the Irish state, which continued to pose a threat to Northern Ireland, they left themselves open to exclusion. In contrast to unionist suspicion of a peace process which concentrated on republican concerns, nationalists saw it as a means of advancing the cause of Irish unity by peaceful rather than violent means. Liberal unionists could live with this concept, provided it was based on the principle of consent, but others still hankered after their ideal of military defeat of the IRA. The peace process, as they saw it, was an international conspiracy, consisting of Sinn Fein/IRA, the SDLP, Dublin, London and Washington, to undermine the union and eventually unite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, where Protestants would be in a 20pc minority instead of their current 55pc majority.

Because of these fears, many Protestants are not comfortable with the whole idea of a seemingly interminable process, which to them has no perceivable political end in view which they could endorse. It is important to remember that they already have a constitutional settlement, within the United Kingdom, which suits them ideally. Any alteration to this, to make Northern Ireland more acceptable to the nationalist community, must be a dilution of their British identity, to be regarded with great suspicion if not hostility. They would say that republican paramilitaries have been engaged in an unjust war and that the proper ending would be for the IRA to sue for peace. They resent the fact that because of pusillanimous governments, the IRA is undefeated and in a position to bargain. They speak as a community that has been in a position of superiority over the native Irish Catholic community since plantation days in the 17th century and finds it difficult to come to terms with late 20th century realities, requiring that minority opinion has to be accommodated. It has always relied on numbers and force, rather than political argument, to maintain whatever privileges it enjoyed, and has normally found Britain a willing supporter. Because it has no experience of political debate beyond advocacy of unionism and nationalism, where there is no possibility of conversion, it is badly equipped to deal with opposition based on a subtle combination of physical force and political persuasion, marketed superbly in the outside world. It has a simple approach to right and wrong - state violence right, illegal violence wrong - and cannot understand why British governments have gradually moved away from unswerving support of the unionist cause towards accommodation of many of the objectives of nationalism.

The current peace process, which contrasts so sharply with all previous attempts to quell republican uprisings by force, has to be seen in its historical context. Most unionists have little idea of how Northern Ireland came into being, except that the founding fathers refused to accept any British sell-out to violent Irish nationalism, as they fear could be happening at present. After partition, which northern Protestants accepted as a second-best option to rule from London, they had their own parliament, with their own one-party government in perpetuity. They had peace, interrupted at 10-yearly intervals by IRA campaigns that never elicited support from the nationalist community, and saw no reason to include a potentially-rebellious minority in the institutions of a British state. Only when the Craigavon-era unionist politicians were in decline, and Terence O'Neill took over as a pragmatic Prime Minister in 1963, was there any attempt to secure the goodwill of the nationalist community, particularly the first generation of university-educated Catholics who refused to accept second-class citizenship. It was gesture politics, based on cross-border exchanges with Dublin and visits to Catholic schools, and was opposed as too little or too much by the extremes on both sides. When the civil rights movement tried to achieve real change, emulating street demonstrations on human rights issues elsewhere in the world and uniting Catholics, neither the Protestant population nor the Stormont government knew how to react, except to resist. Reforms were dictated by London and, when the IRA re-emerged in the early 1970s, it was easy for Protestants to see republican violence, rather than underlying injustice, as the cause of the breakdown of law and order.

Catholics were much more articulate, media-conscious and politically aware than Protestants who relied on their inbuilt majority and perceived the history of the 1970s and 1980s as one of nationalist gains and unionist losses. Catholics had the backing of a world-wide Irish diaspora, led by a supportive Dublin government, while the Protestants not only had to face the indifference of Britain but were cruelly misrepresented at

home and abroad by the bigotry of Ian Paisley, combining all the worst qualities of narrow Protestantism and unionism. It should not be forgotten that within the broad Protestant community there is a largely apolitical section of the middle class which does not identify with the stereotypes of unionism or nationalism. It sympathised with the Alliance Party, while it had strong personalities supporting the existing constitutional position as the will of the majority, but there has been a significant falling away in recent years. The class element in the failure of Catholics to challenge Protestant domination in society and politics should not be underestimated. Until the 1960s, the small Catholic middle class, in the professions, tended to keep its head down, like Protestants in the south of Ireland. It was only the leadership of a few, mainly outside conventional politics, that provided the basis for the civil rights campaign, which became a mass movement uniting the new middle class and working class. This unity of purpose between the SDLP and Sinn Fein has largely survived, under John Hume, although the conflict has mainly involved working class Catholics and Protestants, whose loyalties are increasingly split between the conventional parties and those linked to paramilitary organisations.

London made one attempt to create political stability by helping to forge an alliance between moderate unionists and nationalists in the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, leading to a short-lived power-sharing executive. Before it could establish itself, however, the demands of British politics intervened, and a disastrous general election for the power-sharing unionists was swiftly followed by a loyalist-driven general strike which ended the five-month experiment. Unionists continued to resist power-sharing throughout the 1970s, only to see a new menace arrive in the early 1980s, when the IRA hunger strike in the Maze encouraged the revival of Sinn Fein as a potent political force. Alarmed by the success of the republicans ‘Armalite and ballot box’ strategy, Dublin and London countered with the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. This boosted moderate nationalism by creating an inter-governmental council and an Anglo-Irish secretariat, which allowed Dublin a formal role in representing northern nationalist interests. Protestant alienation replaced Catholic alienation and distrust of Britain was heightened when the government responded favourably to the first stirrings of the peace process in the middle of an intensified IRA bombing campaign on the British mainland. Since Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement only a year after an IRA bomb in Brighton nearly destroyed her government and after she had rubbished the pro-nationalist conclusions of the pan-nationalist New Ireland Forum, Protestants felt they had good reason to question British intentions.

The unionists never reconciled themselves to the Agreement, although in practice it made little difference to the form of direct rule from London that had been operating since the breakdown of the executive in 1974. The IRA campaign continued unabated, proving to many Protestants that republicanism could not be appeased, but by the time John Hume re-opened his dialogue with Gerry Adams in 1993 the British and the IRA were already engaged in secret talks, basically because they had reached a stalemate. Both sides knew they could not win, however long the troubles had lasted. Intervention from Dublin and Washington, through President Clinton, helped prepare the republican movement for a historic ceasefire, in 1994, as a preliminary to political talks. Progress was delayed, however, because of the IRA's refusal to consider decommissioning of weapons, and violence was resumed in 1996, only to be halted again a year later after a landslide election permitted the new Labour government to drop the Tories precondition of a surrender of guns before talks. Although Protestants were, and are, wary of any settlement involving a party which Prime Minister Tony Blair accepts is "inextricably linked" to the IRA, the majority supported the talks process, defying a minority led by Ian Paisley and Robert McCartney who urged a boycott. The active engagement of the two Premiers, Blair and Bertie Ahern, was a crucial factor in arriving at the 1998 Good Friday deal that struck a balance between Protestant and Catholic interests, replacing the Anglo-Irish Agreement with a devolved Assembly and abolishing Ireland's constitutional claim to Northern Ireland in return for guaranteed power-sharing in government and powerful new cross-border bodies.

While most Protestants welcomed the improved atmosphere arising from the peace process and the ceasefires, they remained suspicious of the motives of those involved, including the Labour government, Dublin, the SDLP and, particularly, Sinn Fein. Although they stood to gain from the restoration of devolved government and nationalist endorsement of the principle of consent, they had lost, at least psychologically, by having to include Sinn Fein in the new administration. They were fearful for the long-term future of the British link, with devolved structures evolving in Scotland and Wales and with nationalists given equal representation with unionists in the 10-member executive. Despite their reservations, however, especially over police reform and early release of terrorist prisoners, the 71pc pro-Agreement vote in the subsequent referendum is reckoned to have included about 55pc of unionist voters, many of them persuaded by pledges delivered by Tony Blair. A month later, they were less decisive, and David Trimble's unionists finished second in terms of votes, for the first time in history, to the nationalists of the SDLP, although they retained a narrow majority over anti-Agreement unionists. The picture had not improved by the time of the European election in June 1999, after a year of fruitless bickering, and not only did the UUP finish a poor third, just ahead of Sinn Fein, but the anti-Agreement parties polled 60pc of the unionist vote.

Since its inception, on the back of London's declaration of virtual neutrality, the peace process has had a chequered career. It brought comparative peace on the streets, broken only occasionally by the crack of bones under baseball bats or iron bars wielded by republican or loyalist paramilitary law-enforcers, but failed to produce the political stability that was to follow. It was an uneasy peace, between Protestant and Catholic communities that still did not mix at the level where it counted, in the working class, and who still had little trust in each other. Optimists would say this was inevitable, after 30 years of open hostilities, and that the experience of living and working together, in a new political environment, would cement the peace. Pessimists, on the other hand, would argue that since the unionist majority is dwindling fast, Protestants would become increasingly defensive of their British identity and culture at the same time as Catholics became more assertive. Mainstream unionism and nationalism, represented by the UUP and SDLP, were under great pressure from the extremes, making the implementation of a historic compromise between the two, like the Good Friday Agreement, even more problematical. The Belfast deal, of course, was the crowning achievement of the peace process, demonstrating that even when unionists had their backs against the wall, pressurised by British, Irish and international opinion, they were capable of producing a leader like David Trimble, a former right-winger turned pragmatist, like many of his ilk. In return for self-government, an end to the Republic's territorial claim and acceptance by Sinn Fein of the need for decommissioning, he was prepared to sit down with former terrorists in government.

Politically, the main effect of the process so far has been to introduce more splits into the unionist family, while nationalists have remained solid around the SDLP and Sinn Fein. Even before the Agreement, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP) refused to negotiate with any of the parties representing paramilitaries - Sinn Fein, the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) - and since the signing, more breakaway groupings have been formed. In all, there are some eight unionist parties in the field at most elections, helping to shred the unionist vote and demoralise the Protestant community. The loudest dissenting voice is still Ian Paisley, 40 years on, and although his DUP may never overtake the UUP - unlike the position of Sinn Fein and the SDLP - it is a constant threat to every unionist leader trying to make the case for reconciliation.

The high point for unionist confidence in the peace process, and the Agreement, was reached in May 1998 when Tony Blair backed up an earlier letter to David Trimble with a written public assurance that "those who use or threaten violence (would be) excluded from the government of Northern Ireland". Before Trimble would sign the Agreement, he had extracted a letter from Blair saying that decommissioning should begin "straight away", and this was enough to swing the Assembly party. The implication was that if decommissioning did not begin, or if Sinn Fein even hinted at a return to violence, the Agreement would fall, and this was largely responsible for the sizeable pro-Agreement vote by Protestants. From then on, however, the graph moved gradually downwards, beginning with the Assembly election, which left Trimble with an anti-Agreement rump in his own party and needing PUP support for crucial cross-community votes in the Assembly. Slender hopes that Sinn Fein would move beyond the Agreement pledge "to use any influence they may have" to achieve decommissioning of all paramilitary arms by May 2000 "in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement" were soon dashed and eventually David Trimble was forced to choose between collapsing the Agreement or proceeding with devolution, on condition that decommissioning would follow.

Protestant support for the Agreement, which always depended on an end to the paramiltary threat, was slowly eroding but, in a supreme act of faith, the Unionist Council backed its leader's confidence that the IRA would reciprocate. It was a close-run thing, 58pc for and 42pc against, but on 2 December 1999 a new era of devolution for Northern Ireland began, only slightly overshadowed by the knowledge that the Unionist Council would abort it in February unless IRA decommissioning had begun. There was another potential setback when, by the operation of the d'Hondt system of selection, the post of Education Minister fell to Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, a former IRA leader who had left school at 15. Equally unanticipated was the choice of Bairbre de Brun, a vociferous opponent of the RUC, as Minister of Health. With two Sinn Fein members in charge of half the Northern Ireland budget, entrusted with care of people from cradle to grave, the new system faced an enormous challenge, particularly from Protestants.

Republicans had sacrificed some of their core values, like their refusal to recognise partition or the right of Northern Ireland to decide its own destiny, but unionists had to accept that a minister who had participated in an armed struggle was now responsible for their children's education. If the new ministers and institutions, including the north-south bodies, could prove their worth, there was a chance that a majority of Protestants could learn to accept them, but obviously they would be severely tested. The best hope lay with the dual leadership of Trimble and Seamus Mallon, representing the progressive forces of unionism and nationalism, as well as the guiding hand of Peter Mandelson, a subtler political operator than his predecessor, Mo Mowlam, who had lost the confidence of the Protestant community.

There was an understandable feeling, throughout the Protestant community, that their politicians were constantly being outmanoeuvred by the guile of a pan-nationalist front, in league with a British government that simply wanted to insure itself against republican bombs in London. Although the Orange Order abandoned its confrontational stance during the 1999 marching season, and effectively conformed to the demands of

the Parades Commission, there were no apparent rewards. The historic Drumcree parade, the focus of so much resentment, was postponed indefinitely without violence, but the Garvaghy Road residents still refused to indicate what, if anything, they would regard as an acceptable march.

The future of Northern Ireland, as well as the peace process, seemed likely to remain in the balance for the foreseeable future, hovering between a devolved government in which the participants were often at odds and a return to direct rule. George Mitchell returned briefly, and effectively, in the autumn of 1999 to chair a review that finally broke the impasse over the IRA’s refusal to contemplate decommissioning, obtaining a commitment from Sinn Fein that if the institutions were put in place the IRA would appoint an interlocutor to the de Chastelain commission. As promised, Trimble went back to his party with the deal, but to get his majority in a sceptical Council was forced to fix a deadline of the end of January, by which time Gen de Chastelain would have to have issued a favourable report. As doubting Protestants saw it, he kept his side of the bargain, consenting to the inclusion of two Sinn Fein members in government, but the IRA didn’t. Amid last-minute confusion, Peter Mandelson suspended all the institutions that had been so painfully constructed after 72 days, making sure Trimble continued as UUP leader but antagonising nationalists. Under pressure from all sides, they came to understand that devolution was doomed without a positive statement on decommissioning by the IRA. It finally came in May 2000, breaking new ground by proposing independent inspection of some arms dumps, as a confidence building measure, and promising to put arms "beyond use", provided the Good Friday Agreement was fully implemented. Trimble accepted that the IRA’s sincerity should again be tested, agreeing to restore the executive, but even though he succeeded in moderating the Patten proposals in the draft legislation for the new police service, he only won party approval by 53pc to 47pc, a signal that Protestant unease was rising. People still wanted peace, but the price being demanded by nationalists was almost too much.

With some relief, the Assembly and the executive resumed in June where they had left off, although there were two new threats to their existence. Firstly, the nationalist community was so unhappy with the way Patten’s reforms had been diluted in the Police Bill that there were fears not only that support would be withheld from the new force, but that the IRA might not begin the decommissioning process. Secondly, the DUP planned to make a mockery of the executive, by accepting its two posts and then beginning a process of changing its ministers on a regular basis. Trimble was being dared to exclude these rebel unionists, while embracing Sinn Fein - something that might be immensely damaging to the UUP at the next election.

While the future of devolution remained on a knife-edge, no one could be confident that there was sufficient consensus within the two communities for significant progress to be made in the peace process, despite the laudable intentions of the drafters of the GFA. Essentially it was a sectarian solution, based on the entrenchment of two opposing political ideologies, to the challenge of making Northern Ireland work, and it can be argued that far from removing the constitutional issue from politics, it emphasised its importance at a time when the population balance was changing and unionists were feeling increasingly isolated. Although there are many Protestants like myself who see the peace process as a means of helping unionists to accept that there are two legitimate views of Northern Ireland’s destiny, and to try to reach an accommodation, a sizeable minority are likely to continue to resist the change that is inevitable on demographic grounds. In Belfast City Council, Sinn Fein became the largest party, but its nominee for lord mayor in 2000 was defeated by the combined votes of the unionists, including two UUP Executive Ministers, fearful of a hostile reaction by the Protestant electorate.

Protestants have a right to feel that successive governments have never been honest about their intentions in Northern Ireland - dominated, as they are, by the desire to preserve the IRA ceasefire - and that Tony Blair won their consent to the Agreement by false pretences. The implication, in his pre-referendum statements, was that decommissioning would be a condition of Sinn Fein membership of an executive and that without movement by the IRA, the controversial early release of prisoners would be withheld. Little attention was paid, in the referendum campaign, to the independent commission under Chris Patten that would recommend major changes to the RUC in September 1999. It is also indicative of the unionists’ political naivity that they should have been surprised by its radical content. "What else did you expect?" said Patten, when challenged, and it appeared that, outwardly at least, David Trimble and the UUP had been relying on the retention of the RUC name and symbols, despite the need to make a fresh start. Had there been a proper understanding of the implications of voting "Yes" to the Good Friday deal, with all its finely-balanced pluses and minuses for the future of the union, the result might have been much closer, with a small majority of Protestants in the "No" camp. Whereas Protestants were still inclined to believe government spin, often against their better judgment, Catholics tended to be much more sceptical and streetwise. They gave Patten only a cautious welcome, despite Protestant dismay, knowing that what was important was the legislation that emerged, rather than the proposals.

Within a generation, there could be a democratic majority demanding either a much closer association with the Republic of Ireland or formal unity, although Dublin is noticeably cool to the idea. British governments seem to have accepted this prospect and are laying the foundations for a smooth handover, if and when it happens, while they do nothing overtly to encourage it. The big question is whether the Protestant population as a whole is willing or resigned enough to accept such a political process, arising out of the peace process, or will stage some last-ditch resistance. If an inclusive power-sharing executive could prove its effectiveness, and if the new North-South bodies could slowly expand to obscure the political and economic border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Protestants might yet accept a new role in Ireland and the United Kingdom, prior to a form of joint authority or Irish unity. But if the new regime fails to deliver, there must be the risk of a temporary breakdown in the peace process, before international and economic pressures dictate that it be resumed.

The underlying problem will remain the same, finding a political dispensation that can satisfy two separate ethnic communities sharing so little common ground. Thinking Protestants know that change must come, and are ready to argue the case for continuing strong British ties within any all-Ireland power-sharing structures that might evolve from the GFA’s north-south bodies. But it is true that at present, before the shape of Northern Ireland in the new millennium is clearly defined, too many Protestants and Catholics still believe they can have peace without political sacrifice. Power-sharing governments with blocking mechanisms have a poor survival record in modern times - in Cyprus and Lebanon, for instance - and no one can be confident of the outcome when former terrorists are voted into positions where they must take difficult, non-partisan decisions. It could be that Northern Ireland’s split-identity problem has found a unique solution, in an all-inclusive coalition executive, operating without an effective opposition, or it could be that the new arrangements will usher in a period of great uncertainty, with paramilitary organisations wielding influence in government. If violence can be avoided in the long transition to a new Northern Ireland and some form of class politics eventually replaces the sterility of the unionist-nationalist conflict, the many architects of the peace process will have been fully vindicated. They opened doors that seemed to be permanently barred.