Not for decades has politics in Northern Ireland been at the forefront of the minds of people across the Irish Sea and particularly within the halls of Westminster in London. And not for decades has the peace process hung by a thread as it does today.
As British Conservative leader and British Prime Minister Theresa May holds talks with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster to ensure her party enough votes in the British parliament to prop up her majority, those in Northern Ireland are left feeling betrayed, helpless and angry.
This is the DUP that has for long been ridiculed and despised by those fighting for rights in Northern Ireland, and particularly those who have fought for the rights of the nationalist minority in the region. Their bigotry and Christian fundamentalism is renowned, stemming from the founder of the party, the bombastic Reverend Ian Paisley.
The situation in Northern Ireland is complex, but for the past three decades, the peace process has upheld its promise of life as normal as possible for the people who live in the region after generations of guns, bombs, barbed wire and bigotry. The power-sharing executive that runs the day-to-day business of government has generally been a success, due to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which brought the main political parties in the regions together and thrashed out a complicated yet workable arrangement. This was not an easy deal to make, yet it has changed Northern Ireland for the better, bringing relative stability to the region. There is no longer a fear of soldiers, bombs or wearing or saying the wrong thing in public; paramilitary groups have lost their appeal among the populace and sectarian marches and bickering have become a distinctive trait of an older era, an out-of-touch ritual of bigotry and prejudice, which is miles away from the majority of views of many people today.
For the past few months, there has been no executive in Northern Ireland following a refusal of the DUP and Sinn Fein — the two largest parties in Northern Ireland — to come to an agreement to form a government in Belfast. This relates to a scandal earlier from 2013, involving the DUP leader Foster, in which a sustainable heating initiative squandered hundreds of millions of pounds. Calls were made for Foster to stand down as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Executive, following the revelation last year that she may have been aware of the botched scheme.
A deadline of June 29 has been set for the DUP and Sinn Fein to reach an agreement, but now that the DUP has been thrust into the spotlight and become May’s lifeline, this will have a serious impact on the power-sharing executive. The crux of the Good Friday Agreement is the impartiality of the British and Irish governments and the various deals that allow the Northern Ireland Executive to govern on a power-sharing basis, with neither ‘side’ having more power than the other. But this will become farcical if one side is propped up by the British government with the Prime Minister reliant on it to retain power.
The DUP have 10 seats that May needs to form a government, and currently they are in talks over what this will entail exactly. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein, which traditionally does not take up its seats in Westminster because of its All-Ireland stance, won seven seats in the recent general election, prompting calls for the party to break with its rules and take the fight to London. Although the MPs travelled to London last week, they have said they will not be taking up their seats. Perhaps they will change their policy when the DUP/May deal is revealed.
May has vowed that any deal with the DUP will not affect the peace process. Yet, this will hold little comfort for those on the ground in Northern Ireland. The situation has left many people in the North feeling concerned, particularly the nationalists in the region, who could well feel like they have waded into the past, where the unionists have the upper hand. The worry is that hardline nationalists and republicans could also be watching with interest, and who knows what consequences these recent actions will have for the region.
The disdainful way May has treated Northern Ireland throughout the entire Brexit campaign and now in this deal with the DUP, has shown nothing but contempt for the peace process, the power-sharing executive and the people of Northern Ireland. What trust can the people have if May is willing to set up an agreement with the DUP to save her fragile rule? Despite the promises of impartiality that are coming from Downing Street, this will not wash with the people of Northern Ireland. The majority of those people voted Remain in the European Union (EU) in the referendum last June, so there is already a sense of distrust and despair as to the process of exiting the EU, whether there will be a hard or soft Brexit and how this will affect Northern Ireland.
The next four years will be vital in laying out the plans and strategies over the UK’s place in Europe and the myriad deals that will have to be made as the UK is cut from the intricate networks of EU policies and procedures. Before this ‘snap’ general election was called by May, the Brexit negotiations were seen as an opportunity for Northern Ireland to campaign for special status within the UK and Europe, to keep its soft border and indeed to keep up the momentum to drive towards a reunited Ireland, but these seem to have been squashed by the recent developments.
The Good Friday Agreement took years to achieve and we have had peace in this part of the world for a generation, a peace that is as fragile as the paper on which it was written. If we lose it now, we could descend into dark days again. May could well end up being a footnote in history as the British prime minister who plunged the UK and Ireland into a new era of hardship and turmoil.
Christina Curran is a journalist currently studying a Masters in International Relations at Queen’s University, Belfast.
