WHO would want the job? Mo Mowlam was riding high in the wake of the Good Friday agreement last year; at that stage, she was entitled to feel that she had actually contributed something substantial to bringing about a peaceful solution to the awful conflict that has disfigured life in Northern Ireland for so long. She had worked closely and effectively with people at grassroots level. She had won the confidence of Nationalists in general, and of Sinn Fiin in particular. And she was part of the team responsible for bringing David Trimble on board and for securing Unionist assent to the Belfast Agreement.
Sixteen months on, she s been kicked from pillar to post. Unionists take every available opportunity to put the boot in. Nationalists squawk if Parades Commission decisions go against them. And even Tony Blair seemed ready to cast her adrift as the North s marching season came to a head. She s survived so far, but she must be feeling battered and bruised, and considerably the worse for wear.
And that was before the latest piece of IRA skulduggery threw the entire peace process into a further spin.
To begin with there was the plot to import arms from the US a curiously amateuristic effort if newspaper reports give an accurate account of what actually went down in Florida. The murder of Charles Bennett, a Catholic, of apparent Republican sympathies, followed. And then, five youths from Dungannon in Co. Tyrone were told that if they didn t leave the country, they d be shot.
As one betrayal piled on top of another, it seemed that someone in the IRA was out to get Mo Mowlam. With friends like these guys, who needs enemies? It was almost as if the agenda was to exact revenge on Mowlam for the fact that the RUC had forcefully broken up the residents protest against the Apprentice Boys march on Ormeau Road.
Had the IRA broken its ceasefire with the murder of Charles Bennett? Unionists were in no doubt, and it was, for once, hard not to sympathise with their literal-mindedness. In a cartoon in The Irish Times, Martyn Turner brilliantly captured the irony underlying any other interpretation. One balaclava-wearing IRA man is complaining to another: It s typical of the sectarianism of this State . . . they re saying it s ok for us to kill Catholics . . .
Who knows what mental anguish Mo Mowlam went through before delivering the judgement that was hers to make under the Sentences Act? Who knows what counsel she received, and from whom? Clearly she was on a hiding to nothing, whichever way she leaned. She d be damned if she decided that the murder of Charles Bennett did indeed signal the breakdown of the ceasefire. And she d be damned if she didn t. Who, in the circumstances, was it preferable to be damned by?
In the event, she made the best decision available, relying on the peace process version of theology to explain why sanctions against Sinn Fiin would not be appropriate. But it was sad, in a way, to contemplate her statement, and the awful compromises that she has been drawn into.
I want to make entirely clear that I have come very close to judging that the IRA s ceasefire is no longer for real, she stated. Would another murder of an alternative Charles Bennett next week be enough to convince her otherwise? Or might it take two? And is there someone within the IRA who is strong enough, and determined enough to force a return to violence, who will ensure that these killings take place?
The peace we have now is imperfect but better than none, Mo Mowlam conclude. She is right. But what a fate, to be put in a position where your decisions can be depicted as condoning murder.
What a terrible thing to actually have to say: we ll keep you in the frame, despite the fact that your hard men are blowing people away.
The fact is that Republicanism has created a monster in the IRA. People in Sinn Fiin seem to have operated under the illusion that the gunmen (and women) would simply ride off into the sunset once the decision was made to lay down their collective arms. But that doesn t reckon with the psychopath, the bully or even the merely disgruntled. It misses the grim truth that people enjoy wielding power through violent means. It ignores the fact that some of the people who enlist for paramilitary service are simply thugs. And it sweeps under the carpet the naked hatred, racism and sectarianism that remains an ever-present factor in Northern society.
And so the prognosis is scarcely encouraging. You look across the Northern landscape and wonder where the breakthrough is likely to come from? Even on the anniversary of the Omagh bomb, the different sides were at each other in the streets. Neither Republicans nor Orangemen seemed to be willing to back down in the interests of compromise or accommodation or even, on that occasion, in deference to the memory of the dead and the feelings of the permanently wounded.
Anyone with a shred of sense could outline the shape of a final agreement tomorrow. Everyone knows that it ultimately must make sense to meet halfway on the constitutional issues. And yet the further we get from the Belfast Agreement, the more intransigent the hardliners on both sides have become.
As the summer peters to its sorry conclusion, Mo Mowlam must be feeling not just wasted and wounded, but tainted too. Who d want the job?
You d need to be mad to. n