Politics is meant to be about power and most of the time politicians are simply gagging to take up ministerial positions and implement the policies that got them elected, or at least make excuses as to why they cannot do so, while hoping that the electorate will forget the rhetoric from the campaign.
In this respect, the north of Ireland is different. It’s a great place for anniversaries of course and another one has just joined the list, because it is a year now since the Stormont executive collapsed. In a culture addicted to parades and marches, one has not heard of any to mark this particular occasion: there are quite enough of those already, thank you very much.
Delay in setting up a government is a serious issue anywhere. The famously-efficient Germans have been dragging their feet lately but you can be pretty sure that particular power-vacuum won’t last a year.
Political stalemate is always a cause for concern but in the north it has an additional, depressing dimension. Given the terrible things that happened in the past and the huge effort that went into the peace process by local and international figures, the current stand-off is dispiriting and sad.
But at the end of an especially-gloomy week, the exchanges between Sinn Féin’s John O’Dowd and Edwin Poots of the DUP on BBC television’s The View gave grounds for hope.
One of the more impressive figures on the scene, O’Dowd’s outright condemnation of the Kingsmill massacre of Protestant workers in 1976 struck home, not least because of his own family connections with victims from the Catholic community who were murdered the night before.
The condemnation by Poots of the murders carried out on O’Dowd’s relatives and his call for an end to the political vacuum with a pragmatic restoration of power-sharing were also most welcome.
No doubt the incoming secretary of state, Karen Bradley, as well as the tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, found the exchanges encouraging in the light of the major task they face in facilitating the return of the cross-party administration.
Looking at the record of secretaries of state down through the years, you would be obliged to give them mixed ratings. The most impressive, on balance, was probably William Whitelaw.
When he arrived in March 1972, the north was in utter turmoil. Bloody Sunday had taken place in Derry only two months previously and paramilitary violence was also rampant. But with Stormont suspended, Whitelaw was now running the show. His decision to introduce special category status for prisoners convicted of Troubles-related offences was a positive one that was foolishly rescinded in later years, precipitating the Long Kesh hunger-strikes and arguably extending the Troubles by over a decade.
Whitelaw’s convening of talks with the Provisional IRA was a brave gesture that bore no fruit, but he was a prime mover in the developments that led to the Sunningdale Agreement in December 1973. In an unfortunate coincidence, Whitelaw was recalled to London around the same time to deal with serious political problems on the home front. Had he remained in post in the north, Sunningdale might have worked out better in practice, but it did at least prove a role-model for the more successful Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
As the new secretary of state takes up her position, she will be aware that there are still major sensitivities and a deep sense of hurt arising from the Troubles.
The offence given by Barry McElduff’s unfortunate video featuring the Kingsmill loaf on his head was a prime example of the wounds that remain unhealed, although in fairness it looked more like a case of bad judgment and lack of foresight than a deliberate insult. Even his harshest critics would hardly say that the West Tyrone MP is lacking in intelligence and to argue that he was consciously seeking to denigrate the Kingsmill victims and their community suggests a level of moronic stupidity on his part that is simply not credible. People with a quirky sense of humour occasionally come a cropper and that seems to be what happened on this occasion.
Secretaries of state can make boo-boos as well: one is reminded of Peter Brooke singing “Oh My Darling Clementine” on RTE’s Late Late Show the same day as the horrific Teebane massacre. The fact that outrages such as Kingsmill, Teebane, Loughinisland and Bloody Sunday are no longer taking place constitutes a major step forward for northern society. The current level of calm and stability has been hard-won and if Karen Bradley can build on the opportunity created by the brave words of John O’Dowd and Edwin Poots and persuade both sides to work together in a spirit of compromise, it will make for a good start to her time in office.
Ddebre1@aol.com
