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DUP crux exposes fault lines in power sharing
29 November 2009 By Tom McGurk
At best, matters in the North can be surreal, but last weekend, two events symbolised a new and deepening political crisis.
One was the fact that, on the Saturday, thousands of Catholic children sat entrance exams not recognised by the education authorities, to enter schools in a system which government seems determined to end. Here was the encapsulation of the educational chaos resulting from Sinn Fein’s determination to end the old 11plus selection system - and unionism’s equal determination to retain it. Remarkably, state and Catholic grammar schools, and their pupils’ parents, seem united in defence of the traditional grammar school against Sinn Fein’s comprehensivetype ambitions.
The other significant event last weekend was the DUP’s annual conference - the first since Ian Paisley retired as party leader. It took on added importance as it was being held within months of the next general election to Westminster.
In the North’s European elections last June, Jim Allister, former DUP member of the European Parliament, formed the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party and gave the DUP the fright of its political life. Just months after its formation, Allister’s new party won 13.7 per cent of the vote as against the DUP’s 18.2 per cent. The TUV came within 11,000 votes of eliminating the DUP’s Diana Dodds on the third count and capturing Paisley’s traditional seat. Astonishingly, within just a year of setting up the TUV, Allister has succeeded in splitting the DUP vote in two.
The TUV is a lurch to the political right: never before in its history has theDUP been challenged like this. Now Allister is planning to challenge Paisley - father or son - in the Westminster North Antrim constituency. It’s a measure of the DUP’s growing nervousness that it has not yet decided whether the father or son will stand.
It was Ian Paisley’s victory in North Antrim in 1970 that launched his political career, and now Allister is challenging history to repeat itself. Essentially, he is setting out to do to the DUP what Ian Paisley once did to the Ulster Unionist Party, and already he’s making waves.
Worryingly for the DUP, even a moderate TUV vote splitting the unionist vote in three (DUP, UUP and TUV) in other constituencies could endanger a number of DUP seats. While Allister may amount to not much more than a pint-sized Paisley - singing all the political golden oldies about ‘‘terrorists in government’’ - his TUV is determined to wreck the power-sharing executive. Further down the road - and most alarming of all for the DUP - is Allister’s threat that even a moderate TUV performance in any Assembly elections would leave Sinn Fein as the largest party so Martin McGuinness would become First Minister.
Bizarrely then, at the DUP conference last Saturday, the party was reduced to attacks on Sinn Fein - its partner in government. First Minister Peter Robinson did warn the TUV about its political blindness to the voting threat posed by a growing nationalist population, now 40 per cent, but one sensed the party was essentially reduced to posturing. Regular conference comedian Sammy Wilson told jokes about Gerry Adams now planting trees instead of bombs, while crooner Rev William McCrea remarkably led the assembled faithful in a version of the old civil rights anthem ‘We shall not be moved’.
Paisley the Elder turned up in a specially provided armchair and sat watching it all with what must have been a deepening sense of foreboding.
A decade on from the Good Friday Agreement, the TUV has proved that an increasing number of unionists would prefer direct rule to sharing political power with Sinn Fein.
To many others, devolved government just isn’t making much difference. But perhaps most worrying of all for the governments in London and Dublin, the dynamic needed to fuel genuine power-sharing appears increasingly absent.
So far, the power-sharing executive has had to resolve four significant and controversial items of business, and has failed on every one of them. Three years on, there is still no cross-party agreement on the 11-plus, about what to do with the Maze prison, on what role the Irish language should have, and, most recently, the burning question of the devolution of justice and police powers from London. So frustrated has Sinn Fein become with this issue that McGuinness has threatened, unusually, that if the situation is not resolved by Christmas, there ‘‘will be trouble’’.
Once it seemed that, having finally got both sides in the door to the Northern power-sharing executive, the rest would be easy. Agreeing to share power is one thing - doing it is another. Increasingly, it seems that you can elect politicians to the executive but you can’t make them share power.
They dress up and go to work every day, but the willingness to concentrate on the bigger picture and leave the horrific past behind is absent.
Some, such as sports minister Nelson McCausland, will even use his brief to refight old battles. His attacks on the GAA and the Irish language are no more than cultural and sectarian coat-trailing. How Sinn Fein and SDLP ministers continue to sit around the executive table with him is astonishing. But for Sinn Fein, the continuation of power-sharing is important. It’s the party’s principal political achievement, given its failure to crack the traditional political headcounts in the Republic; nobody needs reminding about the price of it all.
However, were the Assembly and power-sharing to collapse, Sinn Fein might be more concerned than the DUP.
Now that the smoke has cleared and the Troubles are over, for many unionists a peaceful North with direct rule may even be preferable to a devolved government involving their political enemies.
By contrast for Sinn Fein, any collapse would be catastrophic. Power-sharing at Stormont was originally sold as an engine towards Irish unity. For many in the Republican movement, direct rule minus the North-South institutions - such as they are - would be difficult to accept.
Meanwhile, emerging like defiant Japanese soldiers from the jungle of some Pacific island, come the Continuity IRA.
The war is over. Nobody wants them, nobody supports them, but that has never deterred paramilitaries.
With everyone looking over their shoulders towards the Westminster election, the Northern power-sharing experiment is suddenly exposing serious and endemic fault lines. We can only watch and hope. Remarkably, we are still reduced to making it up as we go along.
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