POLITICS

The Ulster peace process is morally flawed, and so it ought to be

BRUCE ANDERSON

The Ulster peace process is morally flawed and always has been. From the out- set, it has come under withering fire from High Tories such as Robert Cranborne, Charles Moore and the Daily Telegraph's leader writers. Everything that these critics said was as true as it was trenchant. But it was also irrelevant. The Tory critics of the peace process have found it easy to occupy the moral high ground, and impossible to plan for the amoral low ground on which most political conflicts are won or lost. The strongest argument in favour of the peace process is the lack of a realistic alternative.

The Telegraph school, who deny this, advocate a twin strategy: integration and a vigorous campaign to defeat and imprison the IRA. Both sound so tempting; they ought to be the instinctive response of every Tory. Alas, neither would work.

If the British people were as committed to maintaining the Union with Ulster as they were to recapturing the Falklands, there would be no problem. The prime minister of the day would announce that Britain would bear any burden and pay any price, and the argument would be over. But that is not the case. If Mrs Thatcher or Mr Major had come out for integration, Labour and the Liberals would both have denounced it, as would Dublin, Washington, Brussels, plus the whole of international bien-pensantry and its British domestic allies. The Tory party itself would not have been solidly behind such a demarche, which would have been seen, not as a settled expression of national will, but as a partisan gamble that would not survive the adminis- tration which had embarked on it.

The attempt to defeat the IRA would have run into similar problems. There would have been no co-operation from Dublin, so the terrorists would have had safe havens in the South, made all the more comfortable and dangerous by the millions of dollars they would have raised in the USA. Would the British public have had the stomach for a long campaign in defence of a cause for which they feel little sympathy?

John Major thought all this through. He also rejected another option: inactivity. Early on in his premiership, he decided that he was compelled to intervene. If there had been regular bombings and shootings in his constituency of Huntingdon, he would say, this would be the principal issue in British politics, and so it should be when those homicides were taking place in Belfast. He therefore embarked on the peace process; he told me early on that the odds for success were four to one against. But it had to be tried.

From the beginning, the peace process depended on creative ambiguity, with politi- cians speaking out of all four corners of their mouths in order to deliver different messages to different communities at the same time. The Unionists had to be reassured that the Union was safe, while the Nationalists and Sinn Fein were not to be discouraged from believing that the Brits were fed up and wanted out. This was a tricky exercise; it is not easy to spin one message for the Shankill Road and a different one for the Falls Road. But John Major had the required persis- tence, subtlety and deviousness. He also had two long-term objectives, which dwarfed and justified the machinations. The first was the maintenance of the Union on the basis of majority consent. The second, the incorpora- tion of Sinn Fein into democratic politics, and its obligations.

Mr Major began the process, but could not conclude it. As so often in Ulster, per- sonalities exercised a baleful influence. While it would be absurd to deny that there are underlying sources of conflict in the Province, the influence of individuals over the events of the past three decades has often been crucial, and usually malign. In this case there was a difficulty with the Union- ists. In part, this arose from the Anglo-Irish Agreement: 'If Maggie could do that to us,' many Unionists had concluded, 'how can we ever again trust a British government?' But there was also the problem of David Trimble and Sir Patrick Mayhew.

Paddy Mayhew is one of nature's democrats: a man with no side, at ease with anyone. He is also tall and patrician. Bour- geois Ulster tends to have a chip, because it fears that its accent leads the English to underestimate its place in the social regis- ter and, albeit unwittingly, Sir Patrick did occasionally stir that chip into action.

David Trimble is a humorous and well- educated man; he can also be thrawn and truculent. With him and Sir Patrick, it was dislike — even hatred — at first sight. A couple of hundred years ago, it would have been pistols for two and breakfast for one.

In the 1990s, there was no peace deal under the Major government. At the same time, Mr Blair, then leader of the Opposi- tion, was trying to woo Mr Trimble, who still insists that Mr Blair is a better demo- crat than the Tories were: a curious view. In his dealings with the Unionists, Tony Blair had one asset: his determination to fling every old Labour tradition into the nearest skip. Mr Blair knew nothing about Ireland, but he did know that old Labour had been sentimental nationalists committed to Irish unity — so that must be wrong.

Premier Blair started with great advan- tages. His political ascendancy quickly seemed to turn into a moral ascendancy. No one in Dublin and Washington — hardly anyone even in Ulster — was prepared to gainsay him, otherwise there would have been no Good Friday Agreement.

But by grievously mishandling the vital question of decommissioning, Mr Blair has now almost frittered away the opportunity he created. As it pronounces sentences of exile, the IRA feels under less pressure than ever. With the assistance of Mo Mowlam and, it would appear, Chris Pat- ten, it is able to humiliate the British gov- ernment and the Unionists with impunity, and thus destabilise the entire Province.

Senator Mitchell's forthcoming review is likely to increase the pressure on David Trimble to allow Sinn Fein to join the exec- utive in exchange for a promise that decommissioning will begin immediately. But even if Mr Trimble was minded to take such a risk, it is not clear that his supporters would agree. The Unionist mood has never been sourer or more embittered, alternat- ing between rage and despair. If the Patten report on the RUC is half as bad as the leaked versions suggest, Mr Blair may not find any Unionist to talk to who has any political weight in his own community. David Trimble is vital to the peace process, and David Trimble's leadership of Union- ism is now gravely threatened. Yet there are alarming reports that at least by Tues- day evening, Mr Blair, still in post-holiday euphoria, had no idea how bad things were in the Province. He should leave such frivolities to Mo Mowlam.

A tremendous amount of work has gone into the peace process. it, or something like it, is still the only basis for a settlement in Ulster. Yet it is now in jeopardy, because, with the brief exception of Good Friday, Tony Blair has proved an incompetent steward. He has proved incapable of carry- ing on where John Major left off.