North’s religious-political divide will continue to define its politics

IT looks like leftward-leaning voters in Northern Ireland are going to be spoilt for choice. At its conference in Bournemouth yesterday the British Labour Party lifted a ban which had prevented Northern Ireland residents joining the party.

This change came about solely because of the actions of a 48-year-old Belfast trade union shop steward, Andrew McGivern. McGivern launched a legal action in which, curiously, he argued that he was being discriminated against under Britain's Race Relations legislation because he was not allowed to join the British Labour Party. Labour has decided to head off the spectre of this costly legal action by amending its rules to allow him to join.

British Labour has no intention of organising in Northern Ireland; the motion simply allows people in Northern Ireland to join the party. This, however, hasn't prevented at least one British Labour MP, who favoured the rule change, getting carried away and claiming that the party is now set to alter politics in Northern Ireland in a non-sectarian way.

Here, the Irish Labour Party has been more cautious about involvement in Northern Ireland politics. Somewhat self-importantly, its national conference passed a motion which "recognising the need to build a strong all-Ireland socialist party, uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter" called "on the incoming National Executive to bring forward proposals to develop Labour Party branches and a Labour Party structure in Northern Ireland". However, although the party now allows people in Northern Ireland to join, the party has an official policy of not contesting elections there.

So the Northern Ireland political parties can sleep easy at night.

Neither Labour party is going to risk certain humiliation by putting up candidates there soon. Northern Ireland's politicians need not quake in their seats at the prospect of a Blair-Rabbitte pincer movement on their support base.

Some, particularly on the left, have had a fond belief that if only the mainstream British parties or the Irish Labour Party were to contest elections in Northern Ireland then politics there would suddenly become "normal" and the community divide would wither away rather as the state was supposed to do in Marxist theory.

The European conflicts expert Nicholas Whyte has pointed out that there are numerous examples of societies where a fundamental historical disagreement about the cultural identity of the state transcends other political cleavages. Belgium, with its French-Flemish divide, and Finland, with its Swedish-speaking minority, are just two examples. He argues that in those instances "normal" politics, if it arrives at all, arrives not when the community divide dissolves but when a constitutional framework is put in place which is accepted by both sides as a sufficiently broad base to ensure stability.

The blunt reality is that no issue or policy debate is going to displace the historic religious-political divide as the defining factor in Northern Irish politics at least not in my lifetime. Northern Ireland is a politically and culturally divided society and is going to stay that way. There are instances of tactical voting, particularly in Westminster elections, but when it really matters Northern

Ireland voters show strong community solidarity within their nationalist or unionist blocks not just with their first preference vote but also with their transfers. That is not going to be changed by the well-meaning endeavours of either Labour party or anyone else.

There are no signs that the religious-political mould in Northern Ireland is about to be broken. In fact, the intense battle between nationalism and unionism is squeezing the middle ground even more.

The Alliance Party, the strongest and most credible of these cross-community parties, has felt the pressure most keenly. Its vote share has shrunk in the last 20 years. The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, a new cross-community (although unisex) party has emerged in recent elections but it too has only had a marginal impact. These middle parties do attract votes from both the Protestant and Catholic communities but their vote comes nearly always from middle-class areas and, in the main, from the greater Belfast area.

There are other smaller parties which try to appeal to both sides. These include the Workers Party, the Conservatives (who are an Northern Ireland branch of the British party), Northern Ireland Labour (who are not directly affiliated with either the British or Irish Labour Party), and, more recently, the Greens.

However, none of these has polled more than half of a percentage point in recent elections.

All the signs are that political choice is even more polarised post the Good Friday Agreement. While the middle parties bring much to politics in a divided society and offer an alternative to those who want to vote cross-community, the reality is that at least 90% of Northern Ireland voters will continue to vote for parties within their nationalist or unionist bloc for the foreseeable future.

THIS divide is not confined to politics. Education in Northern Ireland, for example, is also largely a divided activity. An overwhelming majority of students learn in all-Catholic or all-Protestant classrooms especially at primary level.

While non-denominational or integrated education offers an alternative, the majority, of Catholics especially, choose to stay within their own community for education.

The two Northern Ireland communities are now also more geographically divided than ever. Academic studies of the 2001 census have shown that an overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland live in a district where more than 90% of their neighbours are of the same religion. This is not just as a result of the Troubles. Even in the last, more peaceful, decade there is evidence that as they move up the economic ladder, the members of both religions exercise the choice to live among co-religionists.

These realities may be unsettling for some who have a utopian view that all the conflicts would be solved if the two communities could only educate together, live together or vote for the same parties.

However, I don't get despondent at these political and socio-economic trends of polarisation and apartness. The important thing is that Northern Irish politics is now less violent. It may be more polarised but, importantly, it is now more "ballot box" and less "Armalite". Thankfully, it is less on the streets and more in the debating chamber.

Tolerance is the key requirement. Political and cultural confidence within the communities is more important than cross-community political voting.

Confident groups are more tolerant because they are less likely to feel threatened by the other culture.

Cross-community relations are important and can build tolerance, especially in the long term. However, physical proximity or economic or educational integration are not necessarily prerequisites or guarantees of conflict resolution.

I see no difficulty with Northern Ireland's Catholics and Protestants continuing to vote for separate political parties provided there is respect for each other's right to be in the political process. A mutual tolerance for each other's identity and a mutual acceptance of an agreed set of political

institutions will suffice as those other divided European societies have shown.