Dr No Finally Said Yes

I heard with a certain delight this afternoon, the news that Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams agreed to deal concerning power-sharing in the Northern Irish Assembly. For the first time in his life, one can say that the man known as Dr No said yes.

It is worth remembering that the political journey of Ian Paisley, from the sixties up to now is closely linked with episodes of refusal and unrest which sometimes led to violence. Denying the fact that Northern Ireland was a ‘cold house of Catholics’ is impossible, despite warnings by the senior unionist Edward Carson not to alienate the Catholic populations as soon as Northern Ireland assembly was formed in 1921. From this date up to the sixties, most of the senior politicians in charge including the Prime Ministers of Northern Ireland themselves, did nothing to alleviate sectarianism, which was a long term necessity in order to foster any feeling of allegiance on the part of the Catholic community, preferring in their own words to rule ‘a protestant province for a protestant people’.

Ian Paisley political involvement started in the sixties, by campaigning against the moves made by the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Terence O’Neill, toward the Catholic community. The failure of theses policies was an important factor leading to the Troubles. An attempted earlier power sharing agreement in 1973, known as the Sunningdale Agreement, was brought down by a strike with support from Ian Paisley. The same thing happened to the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985. Ever since the Good Friday agreement was signed, he refused to serve in the executive as long as Sinn Fein members served in it.

While it might be argued that being careful with Sinn Fein was a good choice, a great deal of harm was done by the overtly sectarians overtones coming from Paisley’s DUP, which only created more mistrust between communities.

Today’s agreement between the two bitter enemies, was only born out from pragmatism on the part of both sides, the objectives of both parties remains the same and without viable support the devolved government formed will be very vulnerable. Yet for the first time in decades, the harm done in the past can be healed. This process will certainly be slow, but as I outlined in my previous post on the same subject, things are now different in Northern Ireland. During the next five years, if the executive stays in place, progress will be made on a wide range of areas like infrastructures and schooling. Yet this timescale must now be used, by the more moderate parties and by parties like the Conservative Party, in order to retake the ground from the extremists. Trust will slowly be re-established and a functioning devolved assembly and executive will surely help in that respect. Once some kind of trust exists on both, sides Northern Ireland will be able to once and for all to forget almost a century of sectarian division. The relationship between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic, will also improve at the same time, since this issue has always been a burden on both sides and perhaps pragmatism will prevail on subjects, were ideology and sectarianism once prevailed.