Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Stormont perpetuates sectarian government where some are more equal than others

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

The Assembly Chamber in Parliament Buildings, Stormont. Picture by Paul Faith, Press Association
The Assembly Chamber in Parliament Buildings, Stormont. Picture by Paul Faith, Press Association The Assembly Chamber in Parliament Buildings, Stormont. Picture by Paul Faith, Press Association

We are all equal, but some are more equal than others.

That's the theme in George Orwell's Animal Farm. It describes how those who claim to oppose inequality in everyone's interest can wrangle political power for themselves and then continue with inequality, because they believe they are somehow above the rest of us.

From somewhere in his heaven, George Orwell looks down at the north and smiles. He can only muse at how his novel is being re-enacted in the theatre that is the Six Counties today. Welcome to the perpetual performance of Animal Stormont.

Those of us of a certain generation can remember how it all started. Unionist injustice was ingrained in the northern state and protected by government-sponsored sectarianism. Belfast council was controlled by unionists, who could close down facilities as they wished, such as swings on Sundays.

This injustice was traditionally opposed by sporadic IRA violence, abstention from Westminster and meek opposition at Stormont. It was all a waste of time.

Nothing changed until the non-sectarian civil rights campaign demanded equality for all. But the campaign produced two equivalents of the pig named Napoleon in Orwell's novel. (By manipulating events in his own interest, Napoleon progressed from common pig to president and thus became more equal than others.) They were the IRA and Paisleyism, which later became the DUP. Both opposed the civil rights campaign.

The IRA said civil rights would merely prop up the northern state. So instead they accepted Britain's offer to go to war and lost. Paisley used the sectarian rhetoric on which the state operated to hold unionism hostage to its own history.

Neither Napoleon-style party was interested in social or economic issues, even though both drew major support from the poorest and most dispossessed. During thirty years of war, the two fed off each other, with help from British agents on both sides. When it ended, Britain decided to keep them feeding off each other, this time in a form of interdependent sectarianism.

Without any reference to social and economic equality, the IRA decided to prop up the state they failed to destroy and Paisley, who would not share power with the SDLP, agreed to share it with SF.

Everybody said their agreement was a wonderful achievement. (I voted against the Good Friday Agreement, because it was clear that a new inequality was coming. If sectarianism was the problem, rewarding it could not possibly be the answer. Few agreed with that view.)

So the two parties assumed power, with ministerial cars, jobs for their friends and special political advisers who needed no qualifications to earn £70,000. Stormont no longer had a meek opposition. Instead it had no opposition. Today, other parties express "disappointment" rather than criticism of the big two.

Poor government was inevitable and Stormont generated scandal after scandal. RHI was just as predictable as flouting their own rules on Covid, exactly as Tory, Dominic Cummings, did. Seeking to explain individual events like these is pointless without understanding how and why Stormont was re-established.

Today SF and the DUP are the Untouchables. They can do as they wish, even to the extent of sitting at home for three years while being paid. The system of government, which they created in their own interests, allows them permanent sectarian power.

The big two did not fight against elitism. They just fought to get in on it. Meanwhile, the levels of poverty and deprivation remain unchanged among their most fervent supporters.

Some say that SF, for example, is above the law. No, they are the law. Like the unionists of old, they can close down Belfast City Council's facilities as they wish, this time in Roselawn Cemetery.

Today, those of us of a certain generation look at the new Stormont and say: "That's not change. That's just the same thing in a different colour."

And from somewhere in his heaven George Orwell looks down and smiles.