Big Ian to the Rescue

By John Spain 

HE has been one of the most destructive, malignant forces in the North over the last three or four decades. His bombastic, bigoted, anti-Catholic, anti-Nationalist rants are legendary, so over the top they are beyond parody. He has been despised and ridiculed in equal measure by people in the south of Ireland for years. 

Yet, irony of ironies, he may yet be instrumental in saving the south from itself. He may yet be responsible for restoring some kind of power-sharing arrangement in the North. And he may yet be the one who puts a stop to the gradual erosion of fundamental democratic values on this side of the border. Step forward, Rev. Ian Paisley, the unlikely savior of Ireland, your hour has come! 

Oh all right, keep your shirts on. I know very well that Big Ian is in many ways as objectionable as ever. But he’s changing. 

The possibility of real power is working its transforming magic on both him and his party. And that transformation could have positive consequences for all of us in Ireland whether we like the old bigot or not.

What’s going on? Well, it turns out that Big Ian is human after all. After 40-plus years as the outsider in politics in the North he’s now looking at the real possibility of becoming prime minister there. 

And since he’s 78 this year he can’t afford to waste time. So he is keen to do business with Sinn Fein with a minimum of delay. 

In fact he’s much more keen than anyone imagined he would be when he became leader of the largest political party in Northern Ireland in the recent election. His party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), is the new Northern Ireland establishment and they are just as keen as he is to get into the prime position of power. 

None of them has any time to waste either. Even the DUP’s Young Lions are getting long in the tooth – you do know, I presume, that deputy leader Peter Robinson is a grandfather. 

Which goes some way to explaining the extraordinary events of the past couple of weeks which have seen Paisley and his right hand men not only having a formal meeting with Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern, but smiling for the cameras when sharing a round table meeting with Sinn Fein. 

The meeting with Ahern, which took place on a snowy evening at the Irish Embassy in London, was warm and friendly. Big Ian laughingly reminded Ahern that 29 years ago he had thrown a snowball at the then Taoiseach Sean Lemass when he arrived at Stormont for a meeting with Terence O’Neill. 

The meeting in the North with Sinn Fein, the opening of the Good Friday Agreement review process, saw Big Ian and the DUP leaders sitting beside Sinn Fein leaders like Big Gerry and Martin McGuinness and smiling (grimly) for the cameras. If ever there was a sign that things were moving on, this was it. 

This new serious and realistic attitude adopted by the DUP contrasts sharply with the provocative and petulant stance they have always taken up to now. Instead of saying “No, No, No,” they are now saying “Yes ...,” but it is a yes that is qualified. 

However, saying yes to anything that involves Sinn Fein or the south is a major step for the DUP and especially for Paisley. And although this is a qualified yes, the qualifications attached are measured and sensible, as befits the biggest party in the North which now recognizes its duty to move things forward. 

The new realism and seriousness from the DUP was evident last week when they unveiled their proposals for the restoration of devolution in the North. It was a thoughtful, innovative document which surprised everyone by how clever its proposals are and how reasonable they are in relation to Sinn Fein. 

The two governments were pleasantly surprised and supportive, and Sinn Fein was stunned into virtual silence. Sinn Fein was, as The Irish Times reported, put on the back foot, where it is still trying to work out a coherent response that goes beyond the usual cliches. 

Sinn Fein’s immediate reaction from a junior spokesman was simplistic, accusing the DUP of trying to go back to the bad old days of Unionist rule and trying to undermine the Good Friday Agreement. After thinking about it over the weekend McGuinness’s considered opinion merely trotted out the same line. 

But it’s not convincing. There is sweet irony in the growing perception that it is now Sinn Fein and the IRA who are saying no, and it is Paisley and the DUP who are attempting to be positive and inclusive. 

So what is the DUP proposing? Basically it has set out three models for the restoration of devolution in the North, which involve power-sharing in different ways. The first and most basic is called Corporate Assembly, which has no cabinet of ministers and resembles a local council. 

The whole Assembly would take decisions and implement them in the same way that a local council does, with the help of the civil service. To protect both sides of the community, decisions would be taken on the basis of a weighted majority vote or on simple majorities of both Nationalist and Unionist sides. 

This may sound complicated, but the crucial fact is that it means the DUP is prepared to see a return of a form of power-sharing with Sinn Fein without prior decommissioning by the IRA. 

Of course this is limited and not a good as an executive with a cabinet of ministers running the departments of state. But it is still a form of power sharing, and the DUP is prepared to participate in this with Sinn Fein without decommissioning. This is a huge step by the DUP. 

The other two models are called Voluntary Coalition and Mandatory Coalition. Under Voluntary Coalition an executive would be formed by parties without links to paramilitaries who would volunteer to take part. Without decommissioning this would exclude Sinn Fein but include the SDLP if it volunteered to join in. 

Under Mandatory Coalition, an executive would be formed from all the parties in the Assembly on a proportional basis, again excluding any party with links to paramilitaries. 

In a nutshell, what all this means is that the DUP is not prepared to share power directly in a government with Sinn Fein unless the IRA has decommissioned. But in the meantime, power could be devolved back to the North to a Corporate Assembly which would allow Sinn Fein some level of power-sharing and give the IRA more time to sort out the arms issue once and for all. 

In presenting all of this, the DUP made clever use of speeches made in the recent past by both British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Ahern and other politicians in the south. Calling them the “Blair necessities,” Peter Robinson pointed out that really all the DUP was asking for was exactly what Blair had set out as the minimum movement required for Republicans to be accepted as full members of the democratic structures in the North. 

He pointed out also the refusal of Ahern and politicians generally in the south to share power in the future with Sinn Fein while the IRA still exists as a private army. In fact if he had gone back further he could have discovered speeches by politicians like Dick Spring saying that an Irish government would not even talk to Sinn Fein on a formal level while the IRA exists. 

Robinson also referred to the recent remarks by the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell here who said that Sinn Fein is still being funded substantially by criminal activities by the IRA, activities that include protection rackets, extortion, cross-border smuggling and robbery. A recent example here was a massive heist of cigarettes from a container truck. 

Much as people here may dislike Robinson, they will see the merit in his argument that it is impossible in a democracy to allow Sinn Fein to play a full role in government, involving finance, security, justice and the police, while the IRA still exists. In the south we could have the absurd situation that the cohorts of the people who just a few years ago murdered Detective Garda (police officer) Jerry McCabe during a cash van raid in Limerick might be looking for the justice ministry in a government here. 

On that level, if the stand now being taken by the DUP acts as a wake-up call for people down here and encourages them to think about what lies behind the smooth words and even smoother suits of the Sinn Fein, they will be doing us all a favor. 

Certainly a lot of people in the south are badly in need of a dose of DUP reality. The media and political love-in with Sinn Fein over the last couple of years – and particularly the deification of Gerry Adams – has had a major effect down here. 

The most recent opinion poll (last week in The Irish Times) showed that Sinn Fein now has 12% of the national vote here, double what it got in the last election a mere 18 months ago. In the greater Dublin area, with all its social problems, their figure is even higher at 15%. 

Given the failure of the IRA to complete decommissioning – or even give us a timetable for its completion – this has scary implications for democracy in the south. Ahern, the great appeaser and compromiser, is doing nothing about it. So distasteful though it may seem, we could yet be thankful that Big Ian and the DUP are there to force a reality check.