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- The Observer,
- Sunday January 4 2004
He had even set a date when he would be in Belfast and suggested to Adams and Paisley that they should meet him outside the City Hall and then walk arm-arm with him along Royal Avenue in a gesture of reconciliation.
The letter arrived at the news desk in the autumn of 1989 with terrorist violence still raging and the loyalist killer gangs preparing for a brutal offensive on the nationalist community. The IRA, meanwhile, was still indulging its own murderous fantasies of a military victory in the so-called 'armed struggle'. Given this bleak background the captain's letter was dumped in the bin and forgotten about - until an irate man in a seafarer's cap turned up at the door a few weeks later. He had just been to the City Hall but found neither Paisley nor Adams.
After a brief exchange the captain was re-directed to a rival newspaper which, he was told, would be extremely interested in his tale of unrequited peacemaking. Minutes after he left the phone rang and the news editor of the rival paper blasted out a torrent of expletives at us for having landed him with a 'f- lunatic'.
Reading the recent speculation in the press, including quality broadsheets, about the chances of a deal to restore devolution brought back memories of the retired sea captain's quest for peace, particularly as some of the coverage has been as naïve and unrealistic as that decent but deluded ex-sailor.
Journalists and commentators have been circle-squaring over the festive period, concluding that because the DUP are a pro-devolution party Paisley's acolytes will eventually do a deal with Sinn Fein. In a crude piece of reductionism they have deduced that because the DUP has quietly ditched its policy of not engaging with republicans in television and radio studios the Paisleyites will get real and sit in Cabinet with Sinn Fein.
Moreover, just because Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds ran their Ministries with efficiency, the argument goes that there is no other place for these men of obvious ambition and talent to go but back into powersharing government with Sinn Fein.
There are several reasons why the above scenario is highly unlikely in the short-to-medium-term. First, the DUP's stunning performance in last year's Assembly election was in large part a protest vote. Protestants and Unionists used Paisley's party to punish Sinn Fein and Tony Blair.
Why, after reaping such a harvest, would DUP strategists such as Robinson switch policy now given that there are Euro and general elections within the next 18 months? Robinson, Dodds et al know that if they back-flipped on their stance regarding Sinn Fein the votes won from the Ulster Unionists would melt away.
In addition, love or loath them the DUP mean what they say when the party calls for a wholly new agreement that would see the number of Stormont Ministries slashed, the number of Assembly members reduced and cross-border bodies brought under the sole control of the Belfast Cabinet. This latter demand would of course be totally unacceptable to nationalists, particularly Sinn Fein who need the north/south fig leaf to cover up their acceptance of what is a partitionist settlement.
Finally, there has been the recent bellicose IRA New Year statement, which entails no further offers of decommissioning, transparent or opaque, let alone a promise from the Provos that they are going away for good. In these circumstances does anyone really think that the DUP will meet Sinn Fein halfway between now and the Westminster elections?
The elevation of Sinn Fein and the DUP as the two leading forces in their respective communities merely reflects the central paradox of the peace process in wider society: the guns are silent, hundreds of lives have been spared but we are left with a state more deeply divided than ever. How this situation can give rise to optimism is a mystery to anyone who cares to check the facts on the ground rather than write, comment or broadcast what the Northern Ireland Office, the Department of Foreign Affairs and retired English sea captains want to hear.
· Perhaps a greater mystery is the absence of bonfires in republican redoubts across the north since Martin O'Neill accepted his Order of the British Empire in the New Year honours. One would have thought that thousands of cease-fire Celtic fans from Ballymurphy to the Brandywell would be burning the famous shirt along with posters of O'Neill in protest at the manager's willingness to take up such a totem of British Imperialism.
One explanation: maybe the republican fan base has concluded that O'Neill's award is like the TUAS strategy - Tactical Use of the OBE.
· henry.mcdonald@observer.co.uk
