AS DUP leader Peter Robinson was forced to step down as First Minister – albeit temporarily– amidst lurid headlines claiming financial and sexual impropriety at home, the British government urged Northern Ireland’s political parties to refrain from making political capital and focus instead on saving the power sharing Executive from collapse.

Britain feared that the scandals besetting Peter and Iris Robinson would undermine the DUP’s capacity to negotiate with Sinn Féin around the thorny question of devolving law and order responsibilities from Westminster. Broadly speaking, with the mechanisms for devolution already in place, Sinn Féin had been pushing for a firm date for the final transfer of authority over policing, courts and prisons, while unionists continued to drag their feet, unhappy about sharing the levers of power with their erstwhile enemies.

Apart from grumblings around political ‘trophy-ism’ as republicans appeared to be wresting police powers from the ‘Brits’, many unionist politicians appeared genuinely fearful that a few years down the line republicans might find themselves in sole charge of the North’s criminal justice system. Even before Mrs Robinson’s dalliance with the butcher boy hit the headlines and notwithstanding skeletons rattling round the Adams family cupboards, Sinn Féin had been signaling its intention to walk away from the whole power sharing deal. Yet once again, as Robinson and Adams put their personal troubles aside to re enter negotiations this weekend, it appears that far from threatening to undermine the ‘peace process’, the dynamic of perpetual crisis is the only thing that keeps everything moving forward.

The drive to prop up the Northern Ireland Executive at almost any cost appears inexplicable in the context of widespread public apathy towards the political process. While dissident republicans have demonstrated the capacity to inflict violence, they enjoy no significant popular support, so most people disregard the threat of a return to war. In terms of progressing towards a stable, productive or future orientated society, the political process has failed to deliver, yet for those of us who live and work outside the power sharing circle, questions of political success or failure seem remote and disconnected from everyday concerns.

As the ink dried on the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) there were 26 permanent barriers dividing nationalist and loyalist communities in Greater Belfast. Twelve years on, according to a recent report by the Community Relations Council, the figure has risen to 80. In 1985, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield commissioned a study on the extent of poverty in Belfast, identifying massive levels of unemployment, low pay and job insecurity. Twenty five years later, across most indicators, from earned income to numbers receiving benefits, Northern Ireland still compares unfavourably with England, Scotland and Wales. In terms of rebuilding the economy, the NI Executives’ 2008 programme for Government report spelled out the scale of the challenge: rising property prices and consumer credit may have stimulated the fastest growth in employment in UK between 2003 and 2006, but had made no meaningful improvement to regional productivity. Employment growth, predominantly generated by the private services sector, tended to be low paid and low value-added. In spite of high levels of public spending, NI remains one of the most deprived areas of the UK, a low wage, low skill economy, with little to offer in terms of public transport, arts and cultural infrastructure or other public amenities. Educational performance may be relatively high, but the number of working age people with no qualifications is currently almost 10 per cent above the UK average, while many of those with sufficient skills and qualifications move away to find work, including 64 per cent of young people moving to Britain for study, who do not return.

Whatever their failure to deliver stability and economic growth, the North’s power sharers measure their own success in terms of the ability to keep talking to one other, amidst the chaos of unresolved antagonisms that inform Northern Ireland’s post-GFA political process; this they achieve by re-fighting old battles, historically arising from questions of national self determination and Northern Ireland’s disputed constitutional status, in the language of cultural difference. For in bestowing equal legitimacy upon diametrically opposed political ambitions- unionism and republicanism - the GFA has effectively drained both projects of meaning, while leaving their shells intact. Successful operation of the Agreement therefore demands both sides conform to their unique cultural configurations, while abandoning any ambition to transform the political consciousness of the other.

In the interests of keeping the peace, serious political contestation around who or what will determine the future has given way to the wary negotiation of difference, where the celebration of diversity, ours and theirs, consumes political energies, infiltrating almost every aspect of public life from urban planning to cultural policy, education, neighbourhood renewal, employment and the arts. For all the millions poured into promoting good relations and measuring equality impacts, the reorientation of public life around the exigencies of conflict management has done little to foster goodwill, as outside the official hegemony of formal respect for diversity, new battlegrounds emerge around access to power and resources. With little space to consider how we might improve the way we live or how we might live in ways which differ from what already exists, the paradoxes of post-GFA Northern Ireland can appear striking and surreal: as physical divisions harden in the domestic sphere and inter communal ‘peace walls’ proliferate, unionist and nationalist politicians sit together in the devolved assembly, talking to one another in three languages. Not so much stuck in the past as buried alive inside an interminable present.

The Northern Executive claims its overarching aim is to build a per cent peaceful, fair and prosperous society in Northern Ireland with respect for the rule of law, supported by a vibrant and dynamic economy and a rich and sustainable environmental heritage.’ But is the energy, not to mention the money, expended on keeping the political process afloat simply distracting us from the potential to imagine, let alone build a dynamic, democratic future? As recession begins to bite and already threadbare public services face savage cuts, when will we call time and let the house of cards fall?

Pauline Hadaway is a convenor of the Belfast Salon

PREVIOUSLY ON FORTH:
Jason Walsh said rejecting processed peace isn’t the same thing as calling for war, James Heartfield explained why the British elite hates the Irish, unionist and republican alike and Tommy McKearney said that despite his good work it’s time for Gerry Adams to step down as Sinn Féin leader.

Belfast Salon event with forth as media partner

In homage to the spirit of 18th century political salons, Pauline Hadaway, Acitore Artizione and Siobhan O’Dwyer founded the Belfast Salon in 2007, wanting to broaden public space for argument and debate. Membership is growing substantially as the Salon meets monthly to discuss and debate the big ideas of the day. The French Salons were typically organized by aristocratic ladies and yet become centres of radical thought and intellectual ferment ushering in a new revolutionary age. We may lack aristocratic credentials, but we share a passion for ideas and argument, not only for enjoyment’s sake, but because we believe ideas are important and because we want to know where the world is going and how we can play a part in shaping its future.

Next month the Belfast Salon presents

Northern Ireland- democratic future or peace at any price?

From media, education and culture to policing and justice, is the duty to promote the peace corrupting public life in NI? Have government and political structures simply been co-opted as mechanisms for conflict management? What are the implications for building a dynamic, democratic future? Is the obsession with keeping the Executive afloat distracting us from the potential to imagine, let alone build a dynamic, democratic future? As recession begins to bit and already threadbare public services face savage cuts, has the tie come to accept that devolution is no longer viable- a ‘luxury none of us can afford?

Speakers: Jason Walsh (editor, forth and Ireland correspondent for the CS Monitor) and Owen Polley (freelance journalist)

BelfastSalon.com

Part of Belfast Exposed‘s Exchange Mechanism