Monarch’s efforts to heal old wounds seals deal

While it has been claimed that Queen Elizabeth is not “in the business of doing deals”, she is being widely credited with clinching the historic meeting with Sinn Féin.

For while republican leaders have often had to carefully prepare their grassroots for such symbolic moves, in this case it is the Queen who seems to have done the spade work.

Her groundbreaking state visit to the Republic last year made the latest development in the peace process possible.

The series of engagements she carried out alongside the then president Mary McAleese were viewed as healing gestures on such a dramatic scale that they astounded many across the divided island.

In one of the most dramatic moments, the Queen laid a wreath in Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance.

There was also a royal visit to Croke Park, and at a special banquet in her honour, the Queen spoke in Irish.

The cultural gestures had a major impact.

And in a carefully crafted address, the Queen went even further by expressing her wish that Ireland’s troubled history with Britain could have been different.

It was not lost on the Irish public that, while republicans have highlighted the royal family’s role in representing Britain’s armed forces, the Queen has also suffered as a result of the violence.

The IRA murdered her husband Prince Philip’s uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, in a bombing on his boat in Co Sligo in 1979 that also killed one of his twin grandsons, 14-year-old Nicholas Knatchbull, and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell from Co Fermanagh.

A further victim of the attack was Doreen Brabourne, who was mother-in-law of Mountbatten’s daughter.

The meeting in Belfast follows cross-community gestures by Stormont leaders Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness — but both have said this encounter is a major step.

The meeting fits in with Sinn Féin’s stated desire to reach out to unionists.

The handshake may also help the party’s efforts to further secure a position in the political mainstream.

In the build-up to the meeting, Sinn Féinsignalled its need for political choreography around the encounter to help deliver a “do-able proposition”.

Mr Robinson said at the time he did not believe the Queen was “in the business of doing deals”, but it can now be argued that her efforts to heal old wounds helped seal this particular political agreement.