Ireland after the 'yes.' (Ireland's peace agreement)

A precarious peace

It's great to be in Belfast during a week when history is being made," Bono, lead singer of the Irish rock band U2, told a rock concert and media event two days before the May 22 vote on the Irish peace agreement. Before launching into a particularly heartfelt rendition of John Lennon's "Don't Let Me Down," he brought two men on stage who, he said, "had taken a leap out of the past and into the future."

Fittingly, from opposite ends of the stage came John Hume, leader of the largest Catholic nationalist party in Northern Ireland, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and David Trimble, head of the dominant Unionist group, the Ulster Unionist Party. Hume and Trimble, with Bono between them, shook hands and left without saying a word. The following day, this gesture of reconciliation was plastered across the front page of every newspaper in Ireland and Great Britain.

Hume and Trimble had been campaigning for weeks in favor of a yes vote to ratify the "Good Friday" peace agreement signed in April. But it was the first time they had appeared together in any forum - a testament to both the caution of the "yes" campaign and the delicate balancing act that is essential for political survival in Northern Ireland. Getting too close to the "other side" can be lethal there.

The "yes" vote of just over 71 percent in Northern Ireland has now been welcomed by most political leaders north and south as a historic step. The positive vote guaranteed that elections to establish a new political assembly will take place on June 25. Still, a divided Protestant vote - only 51 percent voted in favor of the referendum - revealed deep fissures that could make the new political body in the North unworkable.

Unionists, supporters of continued political union with Great Britain, have a wealth of experience saying "no" to change in Northern Ireland. During the 1970s and '80s, previous attempts to create political structures that offered a modicum of accommodation to Catholic nationalist aspirations succumbed to often-violent Unionist intransigence. In 1974, a power-sharing assembly, set up after the so-called "Sunningdale Agreement," was brought down when the Protestant Ulster Workers Council initiated a general strike that paralyzed the country.

This time it would be different. Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party was on board, and the major Protestant paramilitary groups endorsed the peace agreement. Opinion polls three weeks before election day indicated that only 15 percent of Protestant voters in the North were adamantly opposed, a very small percentage considering their historical fear of change. But in Northern Ireland, the past clings to the present and won't let go.

Part of that past is embodied in the person of the Reverend Ian Paisley, a seventy-two-year-old, Bob Jones University-educated evangelist who has generated broad populist appeal in times of political crisis. His focus on Protestant historical grievance and political insecurity has generated a voter base that had surprised both Protestant and Catholic opponents.

Four days before the election, he met in Omagh with the local Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organization best known for sponsoring provocative parades through Catholic neighborhoods during the summer "marching season." His speech was vintage Paisley - a bellowing Talmudic dissection of the peace document that was "stamped with the words of murderers and liars."

While Trimble tried to explain arcane constitutional changes in the agreement at campaign stops, the "no" campaign had the advantage of a simple and visceral message: "Keep terrorists out of government." They were referring to Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator and reputed ex-IRA commander. The "yes" campaign's task was made more difficult a week-and-a-half before the election when IRA prisoners, released on a one-day leave, were enthusiastically welcomed at the Sinn Fein conference that endorsed the party's entry into the Northern Ireland Assembly. It was not a scene that engendered a sense of serenity in the minds of Unionist voters.

It is likely that at least Adams will become a minister in a Northern Irish Executive Committee after the June 25 assembly elections. The thought of Adams running part of the government makes a substantial body of Protestants in the North apoplectic. But the alternative to a broad-based political solution is continued war. At a polling station in East Belfast, a self-described Unionist voter stated that "Ian Paisley doesn't speak for all Protestants here, and when it comes right down to it, he doesn't offer a real alternative."

Sinn Fein did not even campaign for the referendum. The party was officially "neutral" in deference to the large number of Sinn Fein supporters who questioned both entry into Northern Ireland government and the acceptance of a deal that fell far short of a united Ireland. Over beers at the Telstar Pub in working-class Derry, Gary Donnelly, a young construction worker and veteran of the notorious Maze Prison, said he was voting no. "This agreement does not face up to the core issue. There is no declaration of British intent to withdraw. The war will not be over until the British are gone," he said.

At an election-day press conference, Adams said that it was "time to push forward an equality agenda that is essential for pushing the peace process forward." He had to shout to reporters as a British Army helicopter hovered overhead, virtually drowning out his voice. It was an appropriate metaphor for the challenge Adams faces in the new Northern Ireland Assembly. Sinn Fein's "voice" must be heard for dramatic "changes on the ground" to take place, legitimizing Sinn Fein's drift into parliamentary politics.

Sinn Fein has to deliver economic and political gains to a membership base that has deep skepticism regarding the liberating potential of Northern Ireland political institutions. Catholics in Northern Ireland are twice as likely to be unemployed as their Protestant counterparts. Additionally, in Catholic communities the 95-percent Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary is considered an oppressive police force that must be disbanded.

Adams welcomed the strong "vote for peace" but added that the political status of the North was still "in limbo," a delicate way of saying that a great deal of pressure must be applied both inside and outside the new political institutions to achieve real progress. But limbo is greatly preferable to the war of attrition that has claimed more than 3,000 lives over the past thirty years.

For Hume, the referendum is the culmination of years of tireless nonviolent political work [see, Mary Pat Kelly, "A Different Kind of Politics," Commonweal, December 14,1984]. As leaders of the largest Catholic party, a point often missed by the American media's focus on Adams, he will likely be elected first deputy minister, the second highest office in the new assembly. As a "safer" nationalist than Adams, Hume will be the primary intermediary with the Unionists. But he must also help keep Adams and McGuinness close to power as they adapt to the world of high politics.

The critical issues that were left ambiguous in the peace document will now have to be dealt with. Trimble, the likely first minister in the new government, has stated that decommissioning of arms must take place prior to the establishing of the Executive Committee of Ministers, a position that the IRA will never accept. And prisoner releases, scheduled to take place within two years, is another highly contentious issue that Trimble is attempting to link to arms surrender.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair traveled to Northern Ireland three times in the two weeks before the election to reassure Unionists that the link with Great Britain was safe as long as the majority of people in Northern Ireland desired it. He also stated he would initiate legislation in Parliament to strengthen provisions in the agreement to keep anyone associated with paramilitary activity out of the new assembly.

The June 25 assembly elections will be the most important and hard-fought elections in the history of Northern Ireland. And in early July, the Unionist "marching season" begins, characterized by the Orange Order parades through many Catholic areas. It will be the first crucial test of whether new political arrangements can ameliorate this yearly ritualized street conflict between deeply divided communities.

It's difficult to say whether Northern Ireland has wrenched itself away from the recalcitrant clutch of its bitter history. You would not have lost money betting that previous attempts at reconciliation would somehow break down. But it is clear that most of the people of Northern Ireland are willing to give this peace a chance.

Kelly Candaele is a free-lance writer from Los Angeles who has written extensively on Irish politics and history.