Belfast not so agreeable

Robin Wilson (Belfast): The world’s media descended on Northern Ireland today in even greater numbers than for the Belfast agreement of 1998 – better known as the ‘Good Friday Agreement’, the last before this one, setting up a power-sharing administration. Despite numerous such attempts since the old Protestant-monopoly regime was despatched in 1972, none has lasted more than 14 months. Today we heard the new leaders at Stormont set out visions of the future which conjured up an embattled past. The first minister, the old Protestant-fundamentalist warhorse, Rev Ian Paisley, began: ‘How true are the words of holy scripture …’; the deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, for decades a leading IRA figure, opened with ‘I am proud to stand here today as an Irish Republican who believes absolutely in a united Ireland.’ Already there are problems. Mr Paisley calls Mr McGuinness ‘Deputy’, insisting the latter is ‘not co-equal’ and refuses to shake his hand. Folk memory of oppression has engendered huge Catholic sensitivity to such slights. Last week’s planned launch by the parties of Community Relations Week had to be cancelled—because they could not agree on it. Working together could make even bitter enmities ease, but the power-sharing arrangements are really about sharing out power: i.e. they organise division rather than unity. This is the legacy of last year’s St Andrews agreement. On the ground it is spelt out in the 46 ‘peace walls’ and ‘interfaces’. And now a new fence is to be built in north Belfast. This will corral an integrated primary school—symbol of a genuinely shared future—into a ‘loyalist’ area. The world media will leave acclaiming a perpetual peace and a great achievement for Prime Minister Blair. Those of us who stay here are less optimistic.