Opinion

Latest Stormont stunt is much ado about nothing

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

First Minister Peter Robinson (centre) at Stormont surrounded by DUP colleagues as he announced there will be no further routine meetings of the powersharing Executive until the political crisis is resolved 
First Minister Peter Robinson (centre) at Stormont surrounded by DUP colleagues as he announced there will be no further routine meetings of the powersharing Executive until the political crisis is resolved  First Minister Peter Robinson (centre) at Stormont surrounded by DUP colleagues as he announced there will be no further routine meetings of the powersharing Executive until the political crisis is resolved 

``An executive that doesn’t work, doesn’t deliver, isn’t going to meet: big deal.'' Jim Allister’s dismissal of Robinson’s self-important announcement delivered in self-consciously portentous tones in Stormont is the best summary of much ado about nothing.

On the face of it, it was an elaborate facade for doing nothing about the faux outrage the more anti-agreement members of his own party had whipped up after the PSNI’s ill-considered public voicing of their opinion on the killers of Kevin McGuigan.

Robinson’s real venom was reserved for Mike Nesbitt whom he didn’t name but if he had the ability or talent he could have done a King Lear. ``I will have such revenges on you…That all the world shall - I will do such things, - what they are, yet I know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth.'' Huh.

On closer examination Robinson’s empty performance was more than a cover story. Yes it was bluster designed for the grinning assassins grouped behind him but its content also betrayed an attitude of mind among unionists. Like unionists in general he needs to feel in control of republicans, to be in charge, laying down the law, not bound by any constraints that apply to normal relationships. In short to be superior.

Unionists feel the need to police republicans and nationalists. It’s the same urge that drives Orangemen to march through republican districts, intimidate republican streets. That’s how and why Orangemen in 1813 caused their first riot in Belfast by marching into the only Catholic district in the town firing shots one of which killed two Protestant bystanders.

This urge will dictate the futile and fatuous attempt to abolish the IRA. Unionists aren’t happy with the PSNI’s assessment that as an organisation the IRA is engaged purely ‘in promoting a peaceful republican political agenda’. You could appoint some monitoring body but that wouldn’t satisfy unionists either any more than the decommissioning body satisfied David Trimble.

You might remember that during the Troubles unionists were never satisfied with the RUC and UDR. Repeatedly Paisley tried to set up his own militia to police nationalists resulting in the farcical Third Force and the Carson Trail which actually distracted the police from their work.

The bottom line for this whole attitude of mind is the refusal to contemplate living on equal terms with the rest of the people on this island which was the fount and origin of unionism itself in the nineteenth century. This refusal to accept mere equality prevents them seeing themselves in the same light as nationalists and republicans.

Thus, for example, when Arlene Foster defected from the declining UUP to the rising DUP did she try to ascertain whether Peter Robinson had sold his Ulster Resistance red beret on ebay? Did she or Jeffrey Donaldson try to find out what had happened to Ulster Resistance’s share of weaponry smuggled into the north in 1986? Did it ever occur to them? Why would it since unionists never viewed UR in the same light as the IRA?

How would they know if the DUP still had links to Ulster Resistance or indeed if some DUP members were still members of it or the UVF or UDA? How could they know? How then could anyone know if someone has left the IRA? Or is a member of the IRA? It’s a criminal offence. To say you’d left would mean admitting you’d been a member and as we all know the only person who doesn’t know he was a member is Gerry Adams and no one can prove he knew and it’s not for want of trying. But how would anyone prove they’d left? Get the adjutant-general to swear an affidavit?

Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again to day. I wish, I wish he’d go away.

It’s a wild goose chase, a piece of political idiocy inaugurated by Mike Nesbitt which Robinson didn’t have the leadership strength to rubbish.

Now it’s aided and abetted by our clueless proconsul whom Charlie Flanagan and the Irish ambassador to Britain met on Monday to try to explain how stupid and dangerous is her pandering to that idiocy.