Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Political failure and institutionalised sectarianism to blame for continuing violence

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

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

A police officer lies injured following violence over the New Lodge bonfire which protesters climbed on to prevent its removal. Pictures by Hugh Russell 
A police officer lies injured following violence over the New Lodge bonfire which protesters climbed on to prevent its removal. Pictures by Hugh Russell  A police officer lies injured following violence over the New Lodge bonfire which protesters climbed on to prevent its removal. Pictures by Hugh Russell 

Whatever happened to the peace process? With Stormont in continued political quarantine, 445 attacks on churches and religious buildings in the past three years and a killing and an attack on the PSNI this week, some politicians and commentators are now worried about what they call a return to violence.

There have been over 160 politically related killings since the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) 21 years ago. So has the peace process failed, or is it just going through a difficult patch?

The truth is that violence never went away, you know. Of course, the level of violence is much lower now, but an average of about eight deaths a year suggests a significant underlying problem in our society. So why does there appear to be a new generation willing to repeat the mistakes of the past, even if it is on a much smaller scale, and what are we doing to stop them?

There would appear to be three inter-related reasons for continuing low-level violence: the political settlement was designed to enshrine sectarianism, rather than tackle it; it failed to progress agreement on constitutional issues into much-needed radical social policy and the resulting growth in economic inequality continues to fuel the sectarian division on which the political system is built.

The GFA may have been marketed as creative ambiguity, but it soon degenerated into political schizophrenia. Sectarian electoral rivalry had somehow to be translated into political co-operation within a compulsory coalition. Both sides defended the right to sectarian electioneering, but bore no responsibility for its consequences while in government.

The theory behind the agreement was managed sectarianism. The two most extreme parties would rise to the top of the political system, where they would remain through an administrative inter-dependency concealed from the wider public by sectarian posturing. So it is rather inconsistent to have supported the GFA and to now complain about continued sectarianism.

The theory failed for two reasons. The first was that Stormont did not deliver on public expectation. It dramatically reduced public services at a time of continuing scandals about expenses and exorbitantly paid special advisers.

Health, education, social security, housing and infrastructure all declined in quality and/or quantity and the main parties blamed each other. That process reached a peak when Sinn Féin walked away from Stormont over RHI, a scheme which it had actively promoted.

The theory's second reason for failure was that while sectarianism could be managed in Stormont, it was more difficult to manage on the streets. Blaming the other side for poor social and economic conditions was political play-acting in Stormont. But it was swallowed whole by large sections of working class communities, which are still being encouraged by the two main parties to express what is called their cultural identity.

(When bonfires, many bedecked with flags and election posters, are classified as culture, we have a problem. When some of those bonfires are subsidised by £45,000 of rate-payers' money, we have a publicly-funded problem.)

So the difficulty with the peace process is that it defined peace as the transformation of war into political belligerence, rather than the development of a non-sectarian, egalitarian society.

That belligerence was based on worshipping difference: two nations (how do republicans justify that?), two "cultures" and two sets of attitudes on everything from academic selection to Brexit. We live in a politically bipolar society, where even the effectiveness of policing is calculated on a sectarian headcount.

The existence or otherwise of Stormont makes no difference to all of this. It is now merely a half-forgotten sideshow to the deepening divisions in society.

In 1971, British home secretary Reginald Maudling said the troubles here represented "an acceptable level of violence". Our politicians today have settled for an acceptable level of peace.

The reason that some of a new generation are carrying on the same old sectarian behaviour is because the previous generation designed government and society around institutionalised sectarianism. Don't just blame young people. Blame those who shaped the society in which they live.