MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"

Losers

by Kevin Carey

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KEVIN CAREY says there is much to learn from the stalled Ulster peace talks, even for the participants.

The world should not worry unduly about Ulster. Compared with most of the planet, including a good many inner cities in the richest countries, its people live in a land of peace and plenty; both are precarious but set against the twin evils of civil war and famine the obsessively introvert politicians have inflated their problems out of all proportion. Hardly a day has gone by in the last two months when I have not heard somebody remark that Ulster has had more than its fair share of Prime Minister Blair's attention, he was elected to serve all of us; and given the apparent disparity between his talents and those of his Cabinet they have a point.

It is sad not to be surprised that the crudely partisan British press is already blaming Blair for the breakdown but these are the same organs that either could not or, for party political reasons, would not distinguish between Milosevic's deliberate mass murders and NATO bombing accidents. Blair's mistake is supposed to have been the setting off of the ticking clock but if its hands hadn't gone round there would have been no round table talks. It takes a considerable feat of imagination to understand that his room for manoeuvre was limited by the Protestant "Marching Season" during which the Presbyterian peace makers celebrate the humiliation of the resident Catholics 300 years ago. Meanwhile, as the minute hand approached twelve for the last time, Ulster Unionists and British Conservatives combined in the UK Parliament to propose amendments which, if passed, would have wrecked any chance of peace. The moral of this story, well known from Aesop, is that chickens are well advised to ignore the blandishments of foxes; except in this case the predator is a hornless bull in Mr. Blair's ring.

Most commentaries on the woes of Ireland are long on history and short on reality, so I will keep the history brief. Hundreds of years after England subdued Ireland and shortly after it had unified itself with Scotland, Presbyterian Scots occupied parts of Ulster; and when England grew tired of Ireland after the First World War and granted it home rule, the same Presbyterians threatened civil war and forced a partition between an independent Eire and Ulster which stayed part of the United Kingdom. The Protestants, with London turning a blind eye, mercilessly discriminated against the Catholics. In 1969 the Catholics mounted huge peaceful protests, the Protestants retaliated violently, troops were sent in to protect the Catholics which gave their secular/Marxist allies, the IRA, an excuse to start a war against England. The recent protracted peace talks were supposed to resolve these knotty but far from intractable problems which wouldn't rate a single episode in a Kosova or Sierra Leone soap opera.

So what can we learn? First of all, there is no point to being a politician if you have no politics to get on with. The Ulster Unionists who have stalled peace negotiations have prevented the sitting of an assembly and the formation of an Executive in both of which it would have had a majority. Faced with the same behaviour from a winning football team the crowd would want its money back. Secondly, over-estimating one's own importance is fatal. As used to be remarked of Renee Leveque, Prime Minister of Quebec, whose Toronto tailor made him a smaller suit than he liked: "You might be a big man in Montreal but not round here". David Trimble, Nobel peace prize and all, encouraged his intransigent followers to believe there would always be one more concession. Thirdly, because it is wholly self-indulgent, the culture of victimhood, paradoxically adopted by oppressors, thrives on sentiment and soft soap. Mr. Blair's public restraint is admirable but one hopes that he will be excoriating in private.

Why, in all the recrimination, has the IRA got off so lightly when its refusal to de-commission arms has been the one stumbling block to a final peace settlement? Here are two more lessons: everybody knew that the de-commissioning issue was a red herring but on its own that was nothing; more to the point, IRA/Sin Fein remained popular as long as it kept its mouth shut; every time one of its politicians appeared on television its popularity sank. There is a lot to be said for quiet, confidential, diplomacy after all. Interestingly, too, the megaphone monologues on every news bulletin had just about no effect on the Ulster population whose support for the initial Good Friday peace agreement is as strong now as in the referendum over a year ago.

Mr. David Trimble, clearly not a fanatic, might argue that it was his job to hold out for the best deal he could get but in doing so, goaded by his own unelected Party officers, he over-played his hand, got no deal and forgot the people, and in doing so prolonged the illusion that a handful of party apparatciks can veto a settlement that more than two thirds of the people support. If he doesn't publicly crack the whip - "Reform or I will resign" - he will join a shamefully long list of premature peace prize winners.

Above all - and not for the first time, because good practice bears repeating - the whole episode demonstrates the importance of self-restraint. That admirable quality almost got Sin Fein a peace settlement it could hardly have imagined and the lack of it has left everyone a loser. Even for a sad double helix of fanatics that is a hard act to follow.

Of course, the Orangemen had the guns and democracy conundrum on their - one hesitates to use the word - minds but a brief glance at a potted history of decolonialisation would have put that into perspective; late yielders get shot. From a deep sense of the particular and of exaggerated self-importance the lessons of the general and the virtue of humility are easily overlooked.

As the process will be revived in the Autumn it is not too late even for Ulster politicians to learn from their mistakes but, in the meantime, negotiators in the Middle East, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic , in every place where conflict resolution appears intractable, please copy.


KEVIN CAREY is a writer, broadcaster and social entrepreneur. His interests range from the relationship between information technology and social exclusion and the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. He is the director of a UK charity, HumanITy, which combines rigorous social analysis with experimental field projects on learning IT skills through content creation. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard before a spell at the BBC, followed by 15 years in Third World Development, Carey offers a unique perspective on world affairs. He is a politcal theorist, moral philosopher, classical music critic and published poet.

Kevin Carey can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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