Republican News · Thursday 11 October 2001

The politics of exclusion

BY JIM GIBNEY

I suggested to Danny Morrison on Monday as we travelled to the Assembly at Stormont that whatever the political distance for republicans to travel to Stormont, it was too far for unionists. They could not accept equality with nationalists and republicans and sit in the same administration.

That view would become depressingly real in the course of the debate in the Assembly chamber that afternoon.

As we entered the hallway of the Assembly building, there was the atmosphere of a wake about the place. Small groups of press people from various parties mingled with Assembly members and the press corp who have covered much of the last 30 years of conflict and the twists and turns of the tortuous peace process since 1994. Sombre faces greeted my eyes.

I've been in the middle of a few of the big events over the last number of years since the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement as part of Sinn Fein's team. On this occasion I was there as an anxious observer hoping against hope that David Trimble would have decided to pull back from the brink.

I knew the Paislyites wouldn't. They thrive on this type of sectarian grandstanding. It is their meat and drink; a diet of Old Testament theology and the arrogance derived from supremacist attitudes that produce childishness, pettiness and sectarian vitriol in large measures. And they doled them out at the debate.

Martin and Briege Meehan joined Danny and myself in the queue for the public gallery. They are both Sinn FÈin councillors newly elected in May. The areas they were elected for, Antrim town and Newtownabbey, represent the areas where Sinn FÈin is rapidly expanding.

In these areas Sinn FÈin picked up the extra votes which led to them achieving an unbelievable breakthrough and becoming the leading nationalist party in the six counties. Republicans have made so much headway over recent years that this development, unthinkable a short while ago, is hardly commented on.

I thought about Martin Meehan and his political journey over recent years. He started out his republican life in 1966 as a militant activist and spent over 20 years in gaol for his activities. Yet here he was, a staunch backer of the political and the peace process - a man who has experienced the war at first hand yet has embraced the work of a peacemaker with the same enthusiasm.

I also reflected on the previous occasions when debates of importance were taking place. I remember when the Executive was established and Bairbre de Br˙n and Martin McGuinness were appointed ministers. I remembered the gasps of disbelief that swirled among the unionists in the public gallery as Martin was confirmed as Education minister. I was delighted. They were stunned. My delight was justified because I knew something the unionists didn't and that was that Martin would be a first class and scrupulously fair minister, which he has been.

As I sat in the gallery on Monday and watched Trimble deliver his speech I knew the peace process had turned into a cul de sac. I've been in close proximity to the man on a number of occasions. I've seldom seen him relaxed. I've seldom seen him smile. I'm more used to seeing him red faced, given to histrionics, a bundle of nervous energy.

But as he proposed his motion to exclude Sinn FÈin, this was a man composed, relaxed, smiling. He spoke uninterrupted for nearly 30 minutes. It struck me that he thought he was back at Queen's University at a podium lecturing law students on the nuances of jurisprudence as he did in a previous occupation, oblivious of the consequences for millions of people of his words. He seemed to me as if he was actually enjoying himself.

d in a dispassionate and matter of fact tone, he declared the manner in which he would destroy the Executive and the Assembly (having already neutered the all-Ireland Ministerial Council), and set us all on a course the outcome of which is unpredictable.

As I listened to Mr. Trimble in the ornate and somewhat unreal surroundings of the Chamber, I thought of the schoolchildren from Holy Cross school and their horrendous daily journey through unionist street bigotry; the sort of bigotry Mr. Trimble toyed with during his days in the Vanguard Party in the '70s.

He had moved on of course, or at least he had learned the art of concealing his Vanguard views, but as he likes to say himself and as Gerry Adams in his remarks later on reminded him, 'Because you have a past it doesn't mean you can't have a future'. I wondered did he ever think he has a responsibility to help move on the bigots on Ardoyne Road? Does he think he has a responsibility to crusade against the UDA's nightly bombing campaign against the Catholic population of the Six Counties?

Before Gerry Adams rose to reject Trimble's assertions of republican bad faith, I looked at him and Martin Mc Guinness sitting relaxed side by side.

The men who led the Republican Movement out of a 30-year armed conflict. The men who launched the republican ship onto uncharted waters and who have steered it through good and bad days. Two men who have earned the admiration of the world as peacemakers.

I wondered from where they get the patience when dealing with small minded unionists and bigots and a British government that lacks the metal and vision to deal with a handful of wreckers but can organise a worldwide operation to bomb Afganistan.

d then it was Seamas Mallon's turn to take the floor. He wearily climbed to his feet. He needn't have said anything. His body language said it all.

With his head slightly bowed and his voice hardly audible, I thought of the number of times past in a similar setting but without republicans in a chamber he had appealed to unionists to treat their nationalist neighbours with respect and equally. Those words were rejected many times before and on Monday they were again rejected.

It wasn't just that the DUP harangued and shouted abuse at Gerry Adams and Seamas Mallon. David Trimble, a partner in the Executive, didn't have the decency to listen to either man. He shuffled about, spoke to his backbenchers and made it clear that he was impatient and wanted to leave.

As Danny and I left the Chamber, Harold McCusker's words from 1985 rang in my years, 'unionists and nationalists are mutually exclusive people'. He was a unionist MP for the old Westminster seat of North Armagh. I thought he was wrong at the time. After Monday I'm not so sure but I want to be convinced. Nationalists and republicans are waiting and willing...

Lift

In a dispassionate and matter of fact tone, Trimble declared the manner in which he would destroy the Executive and the Assembly (having already neutered the all-Ireland Ministerial Council), and set us all on a course the outcome of which is unpredictable