IBIS - Institute for British Irish Studies: UCD (University College Dublin)

On 16 November 2010, IBIS member Dr. Cillian McGrattan, an IRCHSS postdoctoral research fellow, delivered a speech to the Trinity College Dublin politics society. The subject title for the debate was, ‘Changing Discourse in Northern Ireland’, and Dr. Sarah Campbell, UCD school of history and archives and Robin Wilson, Platform for change, also delivered speeches.

Cillian’s speech is re-produced in full below:

Northern nationalism

I wish to approach the question(s) of whether the debate in Northern Ireland can move beyond sectarianism and division and whether a new politics can emerge in two ways.

I wish to suggest that the idea of a Northern Ireland problem is itself reflective of an intensely problematic problematisation of what might be seen as conflictual political dynamics. That is to say, the very structuring of the question lends itself to a teleology, a vision of the end-times, that does violence to the very different constitutional and cultural aspirations of the two main communal groups in the North. More than that, in reproducing what is an essentially ethnicised image of the North – namely, of a bad violent past marred by sectarianism and division rather than say a past marred by sordid sectarian assassinations – it is counterproductive of its unarticulated aim of transcending the imagined though not imaginary sectarianism.

This teleology has manifested itself within Northern constitutional nationalism. This has occurred because the transition from violence to peace has created a political dilemma: namely, what does it mean when a revolutionary style of politics is brought within the state? In particular, it has given rise to a question of how constitutional parties react to the inclusion of the revolutionary approach within a process of conflict transformation. What does this mean for how the constitutional style of politics is articulated in terms of policy direction, but – perhaps more problematically – in terms of identity?

The dilemma poses a particular urgency for individuals and communities, torn between political parties: how do they articulate their identity in periods of transition and upheaval, how do they keep faith with their historical forbears – that is, how those forbears, those communal historical narratives, those ‘spectres’ from the past, return to demand adherence to continuity and tradition and thus disturb ideas about the nature of political change.

Although the SDLP has increasingly emphasized its civil rights heritage since the fortieth anniversary of the key civil rights march in October 2008, the essentially teleological narrative of visionary politics that triumphed over adversity and intransigence continues to form the core of the SDLP’s response to that dilemma. As such it encapsulates much of its current self-image and political program:

After so much violence and destruction, the [1998] Agreement saw other parties sign up to principles the SDLP had consistently advocated … While the Agreement’s implementation was frustrated for many years, the SDLP held nothing back and wants only to take the Agreement forward.

While this retrospective perspective is perhaps inevitable given Sinn Féin’s aptitude in the art of borrowing political concepts and language (in this case the SDLP’s) in order to woo the median voter (in this case, arguably, middle-class Catholics), there is limited political mileage in espousing a policy program based on retrospection. Is a very practical and party political concern.

There have been a couple of attempts to move beyond it:

The first is that articulated by Conall McDevitt and younger nationalists – namely, the attempt to reconceptualise the ‘Northern Irish problem’ through a ‘federalist lens’ (perhaps paradoxically, a notion that was explored by Sinn Féin in its Éire Nua policy during the 1970s). This conceptualisation emphasises both the separateness of ‘Ulster’ or ‘The North’ as a distinctive version of Irishness, but one that includes institutional proposals including the retention of the Northern Ireland Assembly within a federalist, united island.

This owes more than a little to consociationalism. It implies the retention of Stormont and the UK welfare state – aspirations that are coated in the rhetoric of regionalism: “The stronger the region, the stronger the island”; Strong regions can “accommodate the divergent nationalistic aspirations because [they] allow another layer of identity to emerge”.

The second attempt is that articulated by Margaret Ritchie who differentiates between what she calls the ‘authoritarian nationalism’ of Sinn Féin and the ‘progressive nationalism’ of the SDLP. The latter, she says, stands for a shared society and embraces differences. Its ethical vision is, arguably, based on the political and ethnic need to claim the moral high ground: The SDLP has ‘a much higher ambition for our society’. The response of the ex-Sinn Féin spokesman, Danny Morrison, who spoke to the same conference, is perhaps indicative of the gulf between the two political styles:

Their [the SDLP’s] holier-than-thou attitude is so quaint and laughable. They are certainly chafing at Sinn Féin having overtaken them at the polls. For fuck’s sake, get over it! Some of them are clearly in need of therapy to deal with unresolved hostility. Austin [Currie] [an ex-SDLP political representative] continues to make the cardinal mistake of holding republicans responsible for the past … without accepting that the state was born out of and in violence, that the forces of the state employed violence to maintain the status quo and thus provoked much of the other violence.

Morrison’s response speaks to the first dilemma that I alluded to – namely, the problematisation of Northern Ireland as a ‘problem’ and as a problem that has definite solutions – the overcoming of sectarianism and ethno-religious division.

Talking of a new Northern Irish political discourse, it seems to inspire two further responses. Firstly, there is the suggestion that the compulsion to discover what is new and transformative in Northern Irish nationalism has resulted in an analytical saturation that obscures the continuities and ignores scholarly critiques and alternative visions based particularly on class or power. While this backlash might be characterized as being essentially ideological – based on complacent anti-revisionist Irish nationalism – it is also saturated with ethical imports – it creates a tautological straightjacket that matches the politicians’ teleological one, and its selective use of source material and abuse of language results in a politicized narrative where the word ‘revision’ becomes a catch-all synonym for any number of forms of moral expediency.

The second response is to ignore questions of class and power, victims and perpetrators, and look to soft responses based on culture, storytelling and the verbiage of pluralism and inclusivity.

One can only wonder why Lady Gaga, one of the most influential celebrities in the world pulled such a stunt on Saturday night.

Lady Gaga producing an Irish tricolour during her concert in the Odyssey Arena, Belfast, caused much confusion and unease in the crowd.

Many stated that they go to concerts for entertainment and to escape from everyday life, not to be reminded of issues which divide the community.

Either Lady Gaga was confused where she was or she purposefully created controversy to prove to the public how ”daring” and ”unpredictable” she is.

Or who knows maybe Lady Gaga wants to air her political opinions..

Were Gaga’s actions down to confusion or was she just pulling a publicity stunt?

Prof. Jennifer Todd, the Director of IBIS, presented some initial results from an ongoing research project at a seminar titled, ‘Patterns of Conflict Resolution: How to Learn Lessons from Northern Ireland,’ on Wed. 27 October 2010 at the Institute for Transitional Justice at the University of Ulster in Belfast.

The one-year project, ‘Patterns of Conflict Resolution: Mechanisms and Sequences of Peace-Making and Peace-Building: How to Draw Lessons from Northern Ireland,’ is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Conflict Resolution Unit of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.

Academic experts in conflict resolution from around the world are contributing to the project, which compares the Northern Irish peace process with other attempted peace processes in Mindanao, Zanzibar, Macedonia, Cote d’Ivoire, and the Great Lakes region of Africa (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo).

Todd opened her presentation by saying that perhaps there are not that many lessons to be learned from Northern Ireland. She said the Northern Irish context was unusual because it:

• took place within a strong, democratic, stable state,
• it received exceptionally effective interventions from international actors such as the US and EU,
• the socio-economic inequalities between conflicting parties had been narrowed considerably over time, and
• the peace process came in a late phase of a very long running conflict.

Todd then shared results from the research on Mindanao, the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, Zanzibar and Rwanda. Like Northern Ireland, these places had a series of peace settlements, negotiated by elites, which initially failed to ‘stick.’

She said that some of the reasons for their failures were:

• the inability of states and/or the international community to support and ‘sell’ the agreements to ‘spoilers,’ people who might see themselves as ‘losing out’ under the terms of the agreements,
• a failure to address socio-economic inequalities (thus mitigating a major contributing factor to conflict), and
• a failure to implement institutional reforms, such as reforming police and security structures

For me, what these results reveal is a consistent and a striking failure on the part of policy-makers and implementers to really tackle the underlying causes of conflict.

Do would-be conflict resolvers pour resources into, for instance, international mediators and negotiators at the expense of reform measures that would really ‘bed-down’ the peace?

Is the main lesson from Northern Ireland that peace of a sort came because Western wealth opened the way for people to work for economic equality and better relationships on-the-ground?

Todd seemed to be getting at this when she warned against what she called a ‘synchronic’ approach to conflict resolution, which takes a relatively short-term view of peace processes and focuses nearly exclusively on political agreements, security dilemmas and strong international interventions.

Rather, she advocated a ‘diachronic’ approach. This approach, while not discounting the importance of establishing power-sharing political structures, also devotes attention to what’s happening outside of the ‘high politics’ of negotiation and mediation.

This means addressing the issues that potential ‘spoilers’ might use to mobilise opposition to peace agreements, such as high inequalities and discriminatory educational and hiring practices. This may involve recognising that the state itself bears responsibility for the way in which its own institutions produce inequalities, so that state reform may also be necessary.

In short, peace agreements aren’t worth the paper they are written on unless they are supported by meaningful reforms that address the causes of conflict.

She added that outside of Northern Ireland, there have been few examples in which meaningful institutional reforms have taken place (as in the case of the Police Service of Northern Ireland), or in which civil society peace activists have received the level of support and funding that has been available through the EU and the British and Irish governments.

I too think that Northern Ireland is exceptional in this regard, although I fear that this is often overlooked in comparative international research that is enamoured with the minutiae of consociationalism.

I am not sure if simply advocating a ‘diachronic’ approach will do enough to draw attention to the fundamental role that institutional reform and civil society must play in peace processes.

Todd and her team are still collating the results from the country case studies, and while some general themes are emerging, it is clear that the research will not result in some ‘check list’ of steps that must be taken to have a ‘successful’ peace process.

Rather, Todd stressed the importance of context. She said that it is most helpful to compare the various elements that come together in each context to create processes both of conflict and of peace, and that these processes have their own dynamics.

Thinking about peace and conflict as dynamic processes requires a certain flexibility of mind and a willingness to take a holistic approach.

For me this highlights the importance of getting policy makers to think beyond the letter of political settlements and to attempt reforms that mitigate inequality and support processes of change, forgiveness and reconciliation among people on the ground.