Financial Times Editorial Comment: A breakthrough in Northern Ireland

Financial Times Editorial Comment: A breakthrough in Northern Ireland
Copyright by The Financial Times
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: February 7 2010 17:48 | Last updated: February 7 2010 17:48
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5577d0dc-140e-11df-8847-00144feab49a.html


Nationalists and Unionists in Northern Ireland have reached a historic deal on a shared way into a future that is not going to be easy. But it has as its cardinal rule that any change must emerge from democratic consent within the rule of law. That makes it a landmark for Northern Ireland and a beacon for other countries struggling to emerge from intractable conflict.

The agreement to devolve policing and justice to the Stormont coalition – reached after 10 days of tense brinkmanship – is the last brick in the wall of the power-sharing pact that has gradually brought peace and stability to the north. The 1998 Good Friday agreement was the breakthrough; the 2006 St Andrews agreement tried to nail it down; and last week’s deal now simply has to deliver.

The other event to remember now is January 2007, when Sinn Féin, the party of Irish independence as well as the political arm of the violent campaign for a united Ireland, in effect joined the establishment of the United Kingdom by winning republican endorsement for a new legal order in the six counties of the north of the island of Ireland. That is the moment when the provisional Irish Republican Army finally stood aside.

Last week’s unanimous decision by the Democratic Unionist party to back the devolution of policing under shared stewardship with Sinn Féin is every bit as momentous. The DUP has travelled a long way from its roots in Protestant fundamentalism and the politics of “No Surrender” espoused at its birth by the Reverend Ian Paisley.

Peter Robinson, the DUP leader almost felled last month by a sex-and-money scandal involving his wife, showed political courage in holding out for a self-imposed two-thirds majority of his assembly members. He was two votes short last Monday, on a 22-14 split; by early Friday morning he had secured unanimity, and legitimacy.

Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, and Brian Cowen, the Irish taoiseach, also deserve credit for standing firm as guarantors of the still fragile peace process.

Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin’s deputy first minister said this “might just be the day when the political process in the north came of age”. For that to happen both sides must set aside the past and commit to co-operation – as servants of all Northern Irish citizens.

Until now, devolved government has often been about distributing sectarian patronage: anything seen to advantage one community had to have an offset for the other, as though Belfast were Beirut. This mindset now really has to change.