King George V, when opening the Stormont Parliament in Northern Ireland on June 22, 1921, used these admirable words: “I appeal to all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and forget and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment and goodwill.”
The king, I suspect, would have been thrilled to witness the fulfillment of those wishes at Stormont on May 8, 2007. Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, were present to watch the historic, and long searched for, formation of a power-sharing Northern Ireland government. The achievement partly lies with the close cooperation of the United Kingdom and Ireland within the framework of the European Union.
The Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and an 80-year-old fundamentalist preacher, swore an oath of office to become first minister, and Martin McGuinness, who is proud to have been chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, swore a similar oath to become deputy first minister. There must have been many present, including among the 108 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, who would have thought such a day would never dawn.
Direct rule from Westminster, close to being on colonial lines, had been largely in place since 1972, when the Stormont government, regarded as too biased toward the Protestants, was abolished. Northern Ireland is now to have ten local ministers to head its government departments.
The ending of direct rule is a personal triumph for Tony Blair who will be out of 10 Downing Street by July after ten years in office. Unlike Iraq it will be an extremely positive aspect of his legacy. One paper described Blair at Stormont looking like a proud father at a school prize-giving. He made mistakes along the way, but it has been an astonishing personal achievement after countless hours of work and a large number of visits to Northern Ireland.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) was a bit of a joke when I was still a schoolboy — rather simple Irishman in stained mackintoshes with antiquated pistols in their pockets. In the 1980s Libya supplied them with two shiploads of sophisticated weapons and a good supply of Semtex. In the early 1990s the Provisional IRA (PIRA), which had become the mainstream organization after a split, had sufficient arms and explosives to equip the equivalent of two infantry battalions. It had two SAM anti-aircraft missiles, over twenty heavy machineguns and forty Russian-made rocket launchers. It had recruited 300 dedicated and ruthless members and was regarded as the most formidable and experienced terrorist organization in the world.
In September 1994 the PIRA stated “there will be a complete cessation of military operations”, after 25 years of murder and mayhem which cost the lives of some 3,500 people mainly in Northern Ireland. Their leaders had realized they were making no political progress and had been contained by a well-equipped and highly professional British Army, which understood it could never defeat them. The PIRA had been infiltrated by the intelligence services and many of its members assassinated by Ulster extremists. Then followed the slow but successful “decommissioning” of illegal weapons. In a clever move, an International Commission was created, which gained the respect of all parties and inspected the secret arms dumps.
Politicians from the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Republican Movement, finally come together because they could no longer tolerate the crucial decisions on Northern Ireland being taken in London rather than in Belfast. I believe also as the economy in Northern Ireland has gone from strength to strength following the end of “the troubles”, the politicians had begun to fall behind public opinion — which desired peace and prosperity rather than further bitterness and bloodshed.
In the opinion of The Times (May 9): “Money will flow in from London, the European Union, the United States and, most importantly of all, from private enterprise.” With Ireland today having a remarkably strong economy there must be high hopes for a similar advance in Northern Ireland.
That said, there are still 26 “peace walls” or permanent barriers keeping Protestant and Catholic communities apart in Belfast. (The Americans are copying the idea for Baghdad.) There is a vital job of work to be done bringing the two communities properly together. It is a pleasure for once to be writing a hopeful piece on the international scene. In my lifetime apartheid has been driven out of South Africa, the Berlin Wall has both been built and demolished and peace has returned to Northern Ireland. Cyprus remains divided but some movement has taken place. Palestine is the one major international dispute that is going backwards.
