Political streetfighters may fancy a move to the middle of the road

HAVE the lunatics taken over the Assembly? The Northern elections have left us seeing through a glass darkly as regards the future shape of things on this island.

A hostile, bigoted DUP appears to dominate unionism. Pessimism about the DUP may not be justified, as things turn out. But the SDLP, which has done more than any other party to defend civilised politics in the North, may be permanently sidelined by a political force with plenty of bully-boys, intimidators and fraudsters in its ranks.

There are a number of reasons for the SDLP's downfall, and the first of these is structural. The party has always been a series of political fiefdoms Derry, South Armagh, South Down, and a middle class entity in Belfast rather than a unified political party.

The fiefdoms were held together until recently by a charismatic leader and a monopoly on constitutional nationalism. But in Westminster, MPs joked that the only thing uniting John Hume and Seamus Mallon was their common dislike of Eddie McGrady, the MP from South Down. This territoriality led to the choice of Mark Durkan, Hume's favourite, as party leader. But in recent weeks, with Durkan floundering in debate against the subtle and smooth Gerry Adams, it was hard not to think that an independent, able communicator like Brid Rogers would have done better.

Money is also a factor. The SDLP's late importation of public relations help from the Republic and Britain was too little, too late. Sinn Féin is reputedly the wealthiest political party in these islands.

It has glossy advice centres everywhere, including middle-class Warrenpoint where, in 1989, 20 year-old Joanne Reilly was killed in an IRA bomb attack on an RUC base. This is a constituency where the Sinn Féin vote was traditionally under 5%, yet the nationalists of Warrenpoint and Rostrevor each have a Sinn Féin councillor now.

Nobody is sure how Sinn Féin stocks its war chest. But whereas the SDLP traditionally depended on its friends abroad for help (people like the Labour MP Kevin McNamara or the Kennedys in the US), Sinn Féin was more proactive and opened offices in London and the USA. Sinn Féin appeals to young middle-class Catholics for a number of other reasons: it has turned its back on the armed struggle, but still flaunts its danger-men. Its leaders are charismatic and its policies populist.

Most of all, it got a free ride from the SDLP for far too long. SDLP insiders talk about the suicide pact John Hume made with Sinn Féin the pact where only one side swallowed the pills. Hume seemed to embrace the eclipse of his own party as the price of Sinn Féin's entry into peaceful politics.

And sure enough, the SDLP failed until recently to challenge Sinn Féin over its uncosted economic proposals, its position on the euro or even the presence of a certain thuggish element within the party a class of local boss more commonly found in Balkan states than in a western democracy.

This last point is the most significant. One of the SDLP's defeated MLAs, John Fee, complained last week that the electorate had "put streetfighters in, instead of diplomats and peacemakers." This was more than sour grapes. Because while Sinn Féin has a credible and able front line of politicians, the quality down the ranks leaves a lot to be desired. The nationalists of Northern Ireland may not want a drug-ridden, corrupt, hollowed-out Northern Ireland, where the local bosses are involved in diesel smuggling and excise fraud. But it is far from clear that Sinn Féin has the kind of talent or the inclination to stop it.

It seems impossible to imagine that Ian Paisley's DUP would have anything to do with such an entity, and tempting to think that we are doomed to stalemate for the foreseeable future.

But here is where things get more hopeful. It is wrong to see the DUP as a monolithic, sectarian, anti-agreement entity. In reality, there are two DUPs, the Evangelical Protestant wing of the party, led by Paisley and son, and the pragmatic wing led by Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds.

In the first flush of victory last week, the anti-agreement voice dominated. Paisley declared that any member of his party talking to Sinn Féin would be expelled. And yet, Papa Doc himself struck a more conciliatory tone on Monday. After his meeting with the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Paul Murphy, he dispensed with his usual sermonising rhetoric. We heard diplomatic language.

"We want to meet with the Prime Minister to ensure that he understands our position and respects the positive agenda we are pursuing," Paisley said.

That transformation was not miraculous. Paisley was simply using the carefully chosen language that the pragmatists had scripted for him.

ROBINSON and Dodds are both capable of the kind of sectarian-sounding toughness that DUP rank-and-file members find very reassuring. They both want to lead the DUP. But they both know that fundamentalist evangelical religious leaders can speak in absolutist terms, but real political parties cannot.

They also know that parties of protest, if they are elected to govern, don't have the privilege of protest any more. For example, the sudden electoral success of the Pim Fortuin group in the Dutch general election a couple of years ago was short-lived because the protest movement couldn't transform itself into a credible governing force. The DUP's younger leaders are ambitious. It took a major row after the last Assembly elections but Robinson and Dodds both got their way and joined in the Northern Ireland executive. Robinson's Transport and Regeneration Ministry became highly regarded as one of the executive's best-run departments.

The DUP also knows that the people of Northern Ireland expect results. An opinion poll conducted by the Belfast Telegraph in October showed that 73% of DUP supporters say 'yes' to participation in the institutions provided the IRA carries out 'acts of completion.'

Some people in the DUP might prefer direct rule from Britain to dealing with Sinn Féin, but there are a number of problems with this. Firstly, direct rule would come with a strong green tint of Dublin influence which unionists could not control.

Secondly, the DUP must now deal primarily with Sinn Féin if it wants to negotiate any alternative to the Belfast Agreement, in a context where the reasons for maintaining union with Britain are not as great as they used to be.

In Sir James Craig's day, the people of Northern Ireland had major textile and shipbuilding industries and access to a market of one billion people scattered throughout the British empire. Now the future seems to lie with a Europe of the regions.

It is too early to contemplate that the people of Northern Ireland might vote for a united Ireland. The Belfast Telegraph opinion poll showed that 23% of Catholics would prefer to stay in the union and that, overall, 61% support the union as against just 26% who back a 32-county state.

In that sense, the union is secure for the moment. But the DUP knows that if it fails to stabilise the agreement there will be calls for something more than green-tinted direct rule.

Full joint authority could be on the cards. And Northern unionists are not ready for tricolour hanging over Stormont, even if the Union Jack is alongside it.