Northern Ireland’s peace process has been mercifully pretty strong on the “peace” but severely lacking in the “process”. Though armed thugs from both sides of the divided Roman Catholic and Protestant communities continue to terrorize their local neighborhoods, and at least one Republican IRA breakaway group continues to be active, the British province of Northern Ireland is, in its own past bloody terms, at peace.
It is the process of bringing about a lasting end to the internecine violence, on the basis of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, that has been taking far too long. The sticking point has been the refusal of the Provisional IRA to destroy its arsenal of weapons, by May 2000, (subsequently revised to last month) as it apparently agreed to do. Without the Provisionals disarming, the rival Protestant groups have made no more than token gestures toward giving up their own weapons.
Protestant Unionist leader David Trimble has had enough. On Sunday, his well-flagged resignation as first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly came into being. There are now six weeks before his successor must be chosen. However, the Unionists will not make that choice. As the largest party in the assembly, they will force its dissolution and consequently a further election.
Trimble has proven himself to be a political animal of immense tact and patience. Against a rising storm of criticism in his own party, which at one point threatened to unseat him as leader, he stuck doggedly to the line that the IRA would have to deliver its end of the bargain. The Unionist community in Northern Ireland is deeply aggrieved because it feels that it has given ground again and again, for instance over the root and branch reform of the Ulster Constabulary, once an icon of the old Protestant ascendancy, while the Republican terrorists and Sinn Fein have delivered nothing in return.
Trimble has played a clever hand. By committing the Protestant community to a reasonable and patient approach, he has managed to shift the pressure onto Sinn Fein and lined up the British, Irish and indeed US governments behind him. The only blot in the Protestant copy book are the triumphalist marches of the Protestant Lodges, whose season is now upon us. The primitive need to assert themselves in this way is the Achilles heel of the Protestant case. It demonstrates, at worst, unedifying bigotry and, at best, a profound stupidity, since it seems the marchers have no concept of what an ugly impression their parades make on world opinion.
However, providing the parades do not mar its effect, Trimble’s resignation gambit looks astute. If the Provisional IRA do not destroy their weapons within the next six weeks, the people of the province will effectively be asked to vote on the matter, when they elect a new assembly. Though the recent general election demonstrated a worrying weakening of the political middle ground, the overwhelming referendum endorsement of the original Good Friday Agreement should not be forgotten.
