From Sunningdale to St Andrews: a long, winding and bloody road

SO, is the St Andrews Agreement a new deal or an old one, a rehash of everything that has gone before or something entirely innovative and different? Does it matter?

Surely what matters now is the possibility that finally, after nearly 40 years of howling at each other, the extremes of Northern politics have finally, it seems, found a way to begin working together.

I can remember being in the Irish delegation that went to Hillsborough Castle in 1985 to sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

On that day security was so tight that we were flown in helicopters through a cordon of helicopters, something I’ve never seen before or since. But the security didn’t prevent Ian Paisley from getting right up against the castle gate from where his roaring anger could be clearly heard.

He had presided over the wrecking of the previous Sunningdale Agreement and the power-sharing government that flowed from it. And for every one of the 30 years since, the most constant and steadfast thing about Northern Ireland was the certainty of his opposition to any progress.

So when you see in the news today that Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley are meeting face-to-face, you’re seeing something that, frankly, I never thought would happen. I always assumed that progress would occur despite Ian Paisley rather than because of him. If his meeting with the Catholic Primate of Ireland last week was amazing, his encounter with Adams seems incredible.

And most astonishing of all, the possibility now exists that he may accept nomination as First Minister of Northern Ireland in a situation where his deputy will be Martin McGuinness. The world, it seems, is about to stand on its head.

In return for this, Sinn Féin will have to recognise the authority of the police. On the face of it, that might not sound like such a big deal, but when you think about the history of the last 30 years, it surely represents the final about-face for a party that has made many such transitions over the years.

The peace process for Sinn Féin has been a process of gradual shifts. They have been facilitated in this by the willingness of most commentators to refrain from any deep questioning of their changes in position — even when those changes meant they were now fervently embracing the things they had strenuously opposed a short time earlier. Sinn Féin bitterly condemned the decision of John Major to hold Assembly elections in 1996 before entering into direct dialogue with them — many even felt that that decision was one of the key reasons behind the collapse of the first IRA ceasefire. A couple of years later, Sinn Féin were campaigning just as hard to retain the Assembly whose establishment they had opposed. “The people’s institution”, they called it.

Over all these years, one inevitability emerged. These two parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin, would have to find a way of working together in some kind of democratic setting. Without that, government within Northern Ireland would never be possible and a final and inclusive settlement would remain on the long finger. Working together, in this sense, could have included either of the parties accepting the role of democratic opposition — and politics in Northern Ireland will never be real until some parties, at least, accept that role.

But it’s one of the ironies of the current situation that both the DUP and Sinn Féin have finally, it seems, found a way to accommodate each other in a power-sharing arrangement.

The DUP has opposed power-sharing since the concept was first put into practice after Sunningdale in the mid-1970s, and Sinn Féin were excluded from most of the manifestations of the concept.

The other irony, of course, is that the elements of the St Andrews Agreement, once they have been worked through, will remain the same as they have been since the very beginning.

Power-sharing, gradual demilitarisation, an end to violence, a strong North-South dimension and an east-west dimension capable of development — these have all been the key ingredients of a settlement since politicians began to turn their minds to a negotiated solution.

What Ian Paisley may sign up for now is not hugely different, in its main elements, from the agreements negotiated by Garret FitzGerald, Albert Reynolds, John Hume and Dick Spring.

Of course there will be shades and nuances, enough to enable all sides, as usual, to claim they have secured the key concessions that make all the difference. But the truth is that all sides have been struggling towards essentially the same ending to the story for more than 30 years.

THROUGH all the years of their intransigence, thousands of people have died, thousands of families have been destroyed, dozens of communities have been divided. Every time I hear of new progress I remember Gordon Wilson, who heard his daughter’s dying words in Enniskillen and devoted the rest of his life to trying to ensure no-one else would have to bear that pain.

I remember Colin and Wendy Parry. Their son, Tim, together with another little boy, Jonathan Bell, were blown apart in the Warrington bomb in 1993. There were two explosions that day, and both were bombs that had been hidden in steel litter bins, designed to cause the maximum devastation.

Colin and Wendy Parry set about mourning their son the only way they knew how — by building a peace centre in their town and naming it after the two little boys.

If Gordon Wilson had lived to see the developments now taking place, he would have applauded them.

Colin Parry, too, will be happy that a really inclusive settlement seems to be on the horizon. The astonishingly cruel sacrifices people like them have made will not be entirely in vain if, finally, Northern Ireland becomes a place where democratic action is the only kind that matters.

Other names stick in my head, too. Pat and Diarmuid Shields, father and son, were killed by loyalist terrorists. Diarmuid’s girlfriend, Julie Statham, read the lesson at a memorial Mass for him and his father a month later, and then went home and wrote this letter to her own parents: “When they killed my darling, they killed me, too. I have tried to cope for an entire month. Despite my outward appearance, I am dead. I may be breathing and moving, but what use is that when I don’t have any emotions left inside of me?”

Julie Statham took her own life that day, a broken-hearted casualty of a process of political intransigence and community hatred.

Of course, no matter what happens now, there will be lots of unfinished business. Politics is never easy, and it can be especially difficult for people who have used rhetoric instead of politics all their lives.

But as they struggle towards a lasting accommodation with each other, it would be nice to think that the main protagonists in this negotiation remember Gordon Wilson, Colin Parry and Julie Statham, too.

Everyone involved in this process will have their own memories and their own pain. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if, at last, the pain of someone like Julie Statham was replaced by a sustainable democratic peace? No child gets left behind.