A senior Stormont civil servant accused Sinn Féin of pursuing a “simplistic analysis” of trying to tackle difficulties in community relations in Northern Ireland, declassified Stormont papers from 2003 have disclosed.
In the summer of 2003, the Sinn Féin Assembly member and former health minister Bairbre de Brún wrote to junior Northern Ireland Office minister John Spellar complaining about a consultation document, A Shared Future, designed to address how to improve community relations.
Ms de Brún, according to official Chris Stewart, blamed the British government for ignoring the structural causes of poor community relations. She said that “structural inequality is the principal cause of, as well as a manifestation” of such bad relationships.
Ms de Brún argued that the promotion of equality was key to improving relations.
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Stewart in a note to Spellar said Sinn Féin was “clearly seeking to position or align the issue of community relations within its equality and human rights agenda”.
“This general Sinn Féin position has resulted in a simplistic analysis of community relations which is flawed in its description of the causes and necessary policy response,” he wrote.
“There is, of course, no doubt that a lack of equality has been a contributing factor to poor community relations,” he added. “However, Sinn Féin ignores the many other factors, not least the violent conflict that resulted in over 3,000 deaths.”
“Sinn Féin also portrays poor community relations (for nationalists) as being a purely rational response to the political situation. This ignores the more visceral component of sectarianism, which is all too prevalent in both communities,” wrote Stewart.
In advance of a meeting with the DUP to discuss the shared future proposals Spellar received a briefing document which stated that the party “will probably be uncomfortable with the idea of promoting greater integration and sharing within society, will stress the importance for equality (and rights) for Protestants” and “indeed may express the view that there is nothing wrong with ‘benign apartheid’”.
When that meeting happened on August 15th, 2003 however, former DUP social development minister Maurice Morrow, who was accompanied by fellow Assembly member Peter Weir, said that he had “no problem with sharing the future”.
Morrow told Spellar that the “problems lay in the big issues”, while adding: “There was little interaction between the communities on a day-to-day basis and that segregation had come about because of concerns for security. If the security worry could be addressed then the rest would follow. Spending large sums on projects would only be tinkering with the problem.”
While the meeting was about community relations Morrow, who three years later was made a life peer, pressed Spellar to call Assembly elections “to decide who spoke for whom”.
Morrow said that Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble could not deliver but that the British government should call Assembly elections and see how the DUP reacted. “The DUP wanted to develop a way forward that was acceptable to unionists, the current arrangements had simply transferred the sense of alienation to unionism,” he added.
While the Northern Executive and Assembly collapsed in October 2002 due to allegations that the IRA was operating a spy ring at Stormont Assembly members were still carrying out constituency representative duties. Northern Ireland was run by direct rule from Westminster.
At that time the UUP with 28 seats and the SDLP with 24 seats were the dominant unionist and nationalist parties. The British government did yield to the pressure and called Assembly elections in November 2003, resulting in a dramatic change in power with the DUP becoming the largest unionist party with 30 seats, three seats ahead of the UUP, and Sinn Féin with 24 seats overtaking the SDLP which won 18 seats.
However, it took another four years before powersharing returned to Stormont with the then DUP leader Ian Paisley appointed as first minister and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness as deputy first minister.
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