News from the New Party

Northern Ireland's next step

Yesterday Dr Ian Paisley of the DUP and Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein sat down together and did not shake hands.  In defiance of all sense of proportion, and indeed relevance, the Independent has chosen to mark this notable non-handshake by commemorating some Great Handshakes of History: who can forget Mandela and De Klerk (1990), Reagan and Gorbachev (1985), Begin and Sadat (1979), Nixon and Mao (1972)?  Alongside these notable pairings, and with all due respect, Paisley and Adams hardly figure in the Premier League.  Yesterday's agreement to differ, and to form a devolved administration at Stormont in May, may indeed turn out to be historic, but there is no global significance to be found here. 

Northern Ireland is a small and geopolitically insignificant tract of land, about the size of Yorkshire, with a population about the size of Hampshire.  It has been the site of a squalid and nasty little tribal war which has taken too many lives and blighted too many more for too long.  It is to be hoped that yesterday's agreement will prove to be good news for the people of Northern Ireland, for whom the significance is, potentially, profound.  It is secondarily significant for the people of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, who have been inconvenienced by the inability of the people of Northern Ireland to get along for rather too many years.  There are no universal points of principle to be learned.  Things have been bad, but they are getting better.

That said, it is a tribute to men of greater statesmanship and magnanimity than either Dr Paisley or Mr Adams that this point has been reached at all.  The names of John Hume and David Trimble come immediately to mind.  These men and the parties they led have been swept aside as the hardliners at either end of Ulster's orange-green spectrum have ascended to prominence.  Now, at last, there seems to be general agreement even at the extremes that it is time to let bygones be bygones in Northern Ireland.  However improbable this may seem, given the history of the place, we can at least hope.  Both Dr Paisley and Mr Adams are making reassuring noises and we wish them well.  The time has come, however, for hard work and a real effort to bring stability and sound government to Northern Ireland, so that the people of that province can enjoy the fruits of peace, freedom and democracy to the full.  The prolonged peace process has been painful and the price paid has been high.  Mixed messages have been sent about the wisdom of negotiating with terrorists.  The rule of law has suffered, and even now organised crime associated with paramilitarism continues to cast a shadow.  Northern Ireland still has a long way to go.  Though it has been an unconscionably long time coming, Paisley and Adams have only taken a small step.