Opinion

Both governments need to take ownership of talks

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and British Prime Minister David Cameron at Stormont House in December. Niall Carson/PA Wire
Taoiseach Enda Kenny and British Prime Minister David Cameron at Stormont House in December. Niall Carson/PA Wire Taoiseach Enda Kenny and British Prime Minister David Cameron at Stormont House in December. Niall Carson/PA Wire

John Hume has to take a fair amount of the blame. He began the practice of packing a complex principle into a catchy phrase and repeating it until it became part of common parlance. ‘You can’t eat a flag’; ‘it’s people, not territory that needs to be united’.

But there are plenty others who have unthinkingly fallen into the same habit. I shout at the radio every time I hear a commentator say that it is up to the local political parties to sort out the problems of the north.

I even heard someone quote Churchill in reference to the interminable negotiations going on up in Stormont House. ‘…as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again’. My beef with that sentiment is that it infers that he and his whole breed and seed in British governments have played no hand or part in making and maintaining Fermanagh and Tyrone in dreariness. And I will stand shoulder to shoulder with any unionist who wants to equally blame successive Irish governments for keeping us in our misery.

We are no Martians. We are the legacy of British and Irish history. That is the reason the Brits and the Irish are chairing the meetings up in Stormont. They didn’t want to and both would have preferred to throw us off but they are discovering that we are as dogged as we are impossible. Both have issued comforting statements that they are prepared to help the parties to get over their difficulties. Such drivel. That is the same drivel as Churchill’s dreary spires stuff. It is patronising and insulting and more importantly, it is untrue.

We are where we are because the Brits and the Irish convinced the Provos that the violence had become futile and, once it had stopped, they created a table that every party had to sit around and come to a pragmatic compromise. When anyone huffed and puffed and walked away, they didn’t stay away too long. They eventually felt the cold and came back to the room. It is called politics.

What has changed? It is certainly not the love factor. We are as embroiled in the battle between Britishness and Irishness as strongly as ever. We are as embittered as we were twenty years ago – not perhaps so much among the former combatants - but certainly among what would be described as the middle ground. But even though we are not in love, we certainly have become more malleable. Out of tiredness and disgust we are far more ready for compromise than we were twenty years ago. No party has the ability to bring thousands onto the streets and no party is gasping for an election. Every party has become somewhat cautious of the verdict of the electorate and even more afraid of their apathy.

The only thing that has changed is the governments. They have stopped being owners and directors of the project and instead have become reluctant facilitators. Instead of bossing the project, they have allowed themselves to be dumbed down into cajolers, accommodating the huffs and puffs of spoiled brats. Instead of driving through an agenda and a timetable that is now so well documented and debated that negotiations could and should be wrapped up in a few days, they have allowed themselves to be swamped in the quicksand of political immaturity and self-interest.

It is sometimes claimed that it is because the Good Friday Agreement was brokered under Labour’s Tony Blair and Fianna Fail’s Bertie Ahern that the present incumbents are lax and disinterested. Perhaps, but it was Conservative’s Maggie Thatcher and Fine Gael’s Garret FitzGerald that brokered the Anglo/Irish Agreement. And those two parties are now the governments. It is that agreement that is the foundations of everything else that has been achieved up to now and will continue to be the foundation for anything good that will be achieved in the future.

So, unless the governments get their finger out and become owners of what is going on in the negotiations and stop saying that it is up to the local parties, there is every prospect of the dreary steeples dominating the view.

But to be fair to Churchill he said something else that is more pertinent when he said: “It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best’. You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary”.