They’re calling it the deal of all deals, and for once you can forgive the hyperbole. The two men poised to agree on it — don’t expect them to shake hands just yet — have seen the other as the devil incarnate for more than three decades. For those long years, their names served as the very definition of polar opposites, magnetically repelled. North and south, chalk and cheese, Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams.
Yet here they now are, the leaders of two inherently incompatible ideologies — hardline Ulster unionism and Irish Republicanism — engaging with each other, if not directly, then with great seriousness. The goal, which both sides say is within reach, ready to be grasped next week if not this, is an enterprise that would once have been the stuff of laughable political science fiction: joint government of Northern Ireland, with the Reverend Ian Paisley as first minister and Martin McGuinness as his loyal deputy.
What might count as an equivalent? Imagine George W Bush naming Tariq Aziz as his running mate and you get close. Or perhaps Ariel Sharon teaming up with the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In a world where a Paisley-McGuinness ticket is a serious prospect, truly anything is possible.
We shouldn’t get carried away. No deal has been done yet — and veterans of the peace process were much less chipper last night than they had been 24 hours earlier. Those who have lived through Northern Ireland’s repeated psychodramas have learned to keep their scepticism on full alert: just last year, there was a single October day that began with talk of a new dawn and ended in a dusk of deadlock.
Besides, there are countless obstacles in the way, with our old friend the decommissioning of Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons first among them. Paisley, like his predecessor as the de facto leader of Ulster unionism, David Trimble, insists he cannot go into government with a political party that has a ”private army” at its disposal.
Previous IRA acts of disarmament were not enough for Trimble and they are certainly not enough for the man who has made a religion — and a career — of saying no. I’m told that, even now, he has presented a list of 20-plus questions, including some that would be almost impossible to answer.
Paisley wants witnesses beyond the international overseer, the Canadian former general, John de Chastelain. He has won agreement for two churchmen, one nominated by him the other by Sinn Fein, to watch the IRA put their arms beyond use. But now he would like some photographic proof. Republicans are wary of that, fearing that Paisley will wave the pictures aloft, brandishing them as images of Provo surrender.
This is hardly a groundless fear. ”The IRA needs to be humiliated,” the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader told supporters in Ballymena last weekend — in front of BBC cameras. ”And they need to wear their sackcloth and ashes, not in a backroom, but openly.”
Republicans always expected Paisley to shore up his own hardliners on the eve of any deal, but talk like that has made them anxious that he will exploit an IRA move on arms — maybe even pocketing this most symbolic of concessions and then refusing to concede any ground of his own.
On the other side, there are stumbling blocks too. Sinn Fein wants to be sure that responsibility for policing and criminal justice transfers swiftly from the British government to a revived Belfast Assembly — which has been suspended since October 2002. It also needs to prove to its own constituency that they are winning some valuable prizes: the removal of British army watchtowers from South Armagh is high on their list. Like Paisley, Adams has hardliners to keep sweet.
So much for the potholes ahead; what about the journey that has brought us to this point? How has it been possible? The big-picture explanation remains the same as it was when the peace process began in earnest a decade ago. Both sides came to the realisation that they were never going to win outright. Ireland was not going to be united by force, nor were the province’s Catholics simply going to disappear. They had fought each other to a weary stalemate. They would have to negotiate their way out.
More recently, Sinn Fein and the DUP have understood that they are locked in a strange embrace. Both want to enter government, but they cannot do so without the other. Only the consent of the other party will allow them in. The Good Friday agreement of 1998 is wired in such a way that it leaves the fates of enemies entwined.
Still, the explanation for this change does not rest entirely with the parties themselves. Both sides admit that, this time, the British and Irish governments are ”playing hardball”. In the past, British Prime Minister Tony Blair handled Trimble gently, aware that the DUP leader had risked much by signing up to Good Friday. But Blair owes Paisley nothing.
Therefore, Blair has made clear, there will be no bending over backwards to keep the DUP leader happy. If Paisley doesn’t like the deal on offer, then he can lump it. The prospect of the IRA effectively winding itself up is too big a prize to refuse: Blair is going to grab it and no unionist, not even Ian Paisley, is going to stop him.
Blair wants a deal in Northern Ireland badly: success in this once strife-torn part of his own backyard is his calling card as an international peacemaker. Similarly, Republicans have decided that a place in devolved government advances their goals; and unionism is now led by the one man with the hawkish credentials to do a deal — if he wants to.
Paisley need not fear an attack from his right because there is no space to his right. It is Northern Ireland’s fortune that all these stars have come into alignment at the same time. Once again the people of the province face a holiday season that could bring great blessings — or a badly wasted opportunity. — Â