Northern uproar

Hell’s bells, is it that time already? The lights are lit, the ads are on the telly, the letters are popping in the door offering all manner of hamper and special present service. I must have blinked. Last week was autumn. I was still eating Irish apples. Goddamn! The Christmas season just crept right up on me. Dark evenings, chill winds, shouting in the streets and fairy lights.

And that’s just the Northern Assembly elections! The results are pretty stark. All change here for No Change. The jig is up. It’s a place apart. People will spin and spin, but you can’t escape two core messages from the elections.
The first is that a lot of people in Northern Ireland are alienated from politics and what passes for political process. A lowish voter turnout is explicable in Ireland or the UK ‘mainland’. There’s broad agreement about the big pictures and the structures in those jurisdictions. But not so in Northern Ireland. After all, it’s still emerging from a three-decade long conflict (inter-ethnic, sectarian or post-colonial, as you please) and there’s massive disagreement about the most basic structures and values. So, it’s incredible that two people in five didn’t vote.
The second is that Northern Ireland is now more polarised than it was five years ago. Notwithstanding that Sinn Féin has become more centrist and ‘political’, and that even the DUP is developing some hints of pragmatism, the centre is losing out to the extremes.
The DUP will be the biggest party in the Assembly. Also, a few anti-Agreement unionists were also elected for the UUP, which basically means the Good Friday Agreement’s goose is cooked just in time for Christmas. Yes, the Irish and British Governments say otherwise and yes, a majority supported pro-Agreement parties, but you can’t escape the basic fact – the DUP is the biggest party.
It could be that pro-Agreement politicians will agree to form an Executive. But let’s face it – the jibing and jeering from the members of the biggest party and its supporters would be untenable. If anything is to happen, it’ll require some very fancy footwork indeed.
Looking at it all from the outside (and I mean exactly that), it’s all rather depressing. But that’s democracy.
And there’s the paradox. The biggest beneficiaries of the democratic process in Northern Ireland are the two major parties that have been most selective in their espousal of democracy.
Now, I’m not saying the DUP is neo-fascist, but it’s the closest this island has to a north European hard right party, the kind that has links with Combat 18 and similar groups. And those with long memories will remember Paisley parading about with groups of armed men, shouting about resistance. He has associated with some very unsavoury forces in his time.
As against that, in last week’s election the DUP played the game almost to perfection, using the proportional representation system to the max. Game set and match.
On the other side, let’s not forget that it isn’t long since members of the Republican movement – whether from the political or military wing – were out intimidating citizens into observing their diktats.
Sinn Féin will always insist that its members were not involved in outrages like the La Mon or Enniskillen bombings, or the murders of Jean McConville, Tom Oliver or Garda Jerry McCabe, or in countless bank robberies, or intimidations. But there has always been overlap between Sinn Féin and the IRA, and some senior members of Sinn Féin were members of the IRA Army Council when very unpleasant things were done.
Does it matter? Does anyone remember? Probably not. Another paradox: Sinn Féin is the party that benefits most from reminding everyone of Britain’s perfidies throughout the centuries, but it also benefits from the decline in the study of history in both parts of the country.
Most people under 30 don’t know what happened in the 1970s or 1980s and don’t much care. If they did they would be a lot more leery of Sinn Féin than they are. Indeed, there are some younger people who actually think that Sinn Féin and the IRA were responsible for finding Jean McConville’s body, not for burying it. You’d weep, but it would do no good.
A final paradox for today: many people in this jurisdiction are pissed off with the mess in the health service, with crime, with drug dealing, with corruption, with inflation and rip-offs and property speculation. We have become vicious and unforgiving towards crimes like drug dealing, robbery, taking bribes, violence and sexual abuse but not, it seems, towards politically motivated violence, intimidation, murders and bank robbery. So, many will vote for Sinn Féin in the forthcoming local elections.
If that happens after rigorous questioning, fine. If Sinn Féin is put through the wringer, not by journalists and political opponents but by citizens demanding to be convinced before they allocate that most precious of rights, their vote, and still gets elected, then so be it. That really is democracy. But if it happens by default because, on the whole, they just want it more, then shame on us all.
Ditto Northern Ireland today…