One group was left out of the new agreement at Hillsborough

THE DEVOLUTION of policing and justice to the Northern assembly will take place on April 12, 2010. Sinn Féin and the DUP, the two main parties in the assembly, came to agreement in the early hours of February 5.

Speaking this morning at a press conference announcing the agreement on the devolution of policing and justice to the North, British prime minister couldn’t but have felt the dead hand of history on his shoulder – or perhaps around his neck.

Speaking in triumphant terms the British prime minister Gordon Brown echoed his predecessor, Tony Blair, who grinned his way through more Irish peace press conferences than anyone from Ireland ever did.

“This agreement belongs to the people of Northern Ireland – all the people,” said Brown.

Standard issue political rhetoric, of course, but it does remind that in 1997 the prospect of a permanent end to conflict did create a genuine public enthusiasm, perhaps euphoric and verging on hysterical, but popular nonetheless. Today, however, the public feeling is one of boredom and irritation.

Of course, people still want peace and are perhaps used to having at least no conflict. On the other hand, it seems to me that the political machinations are more divorced from the public than ever.

A full thirteen years since negotiations began, the North has not magically transformed into a normal society. People get on with their lives as they always do, and the absence of bombs and troops on the streets make it significantly easier to do so than in the past, but this does not indicate that politics has meaning – quite the opposite in fact.

Speaking to Dawn Purvis, the Progressive Unionist Party assembly member for a news story on the (lack of) agreement last week I put it to her that people are, on the whole, sick of the endless rounds of negotiations and inching ‘progress’ that the peace process delivers. Purvis stated quite plainly that the politicians were aware of what the people think of them. This may well be the case but even if they are aware of growing public disengagement, the structures of the peace process, to which all of the parties are committed, leave no room for manoeuver.

Politicians in all developed western nations complain about voter apathy. Whether or not that is the case anywhere, it is certainly not the problem in the North. Lower turnouts are not a result of the people abandoning politics but the political parties abandoning politics.

One could argue that it’s easy for people to complain about politicians but that someone has to hammer out some kind of agreement. On the other hand, the Hillsborough talks were pretty ugly and off-putting – and reminiscent of the endless to-ing and fro-ing over any issue imaginable.

Tellingly, the agreement includes the creation of a committee to examine the ‘dysfunctionality’ of the assembly. So, in the great bureaucratic tradition we will now have an inquiry into why an institution that is defective by design is, well, defective.

Constant references to plans by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to host an investment conference, along with Brown’s announcement of a future £800m (€916m) in financial assistance indicate what has really happened: they political parties have been bought off. Again. Reportedly the failed Presbyterian Mutual savings and investment scheme was also part of the negotiations.

Indeed, all the assembly is good for is carving-up handouts on a sectarian basis.

Both Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness have repeatedly said there is no going back to the past. So what? Everyone knows that. In fact, the very people who continually raise the spectre of a return to the ‘bad old days’ are the politicians themselves.

Bribed and threatened, the carrot and stick politics of the North are an offence to the public. Every time something is announced in relation to the peace process “the people” are trotted-out like a stage army but the people are the one group who never get a real say in what goes on in the North. No wonder they’ve switched off.

By JASON WALSH