European context helps underpin Northern accord

On his arrival in Northern Ireland this week Mr Tony Blair remarked that words are all-important in this peace process. As Sir John Maffey, British ambassador to Dublin in 1945 put it, "phrases make history here". It is worth reflecting carefully, therefore, on the fact that the new treaty between the two sovereign governments in these islands is being described as a British-Irish and not an Anglo-Irish document.

Within this change of nomenclature there can be discerned a critical change of circumstance compared to the Sunningdale agreement in 1973. Yesterday's extraordinary agreement will be all the stronger for being embedded in a wider process of Anglo- British renegotiation. Mr Blair came to power with a mandate for constitutional change in the United Kingdom, which he has prosecuted in office with exemplary despatch by introducing home rule all around. Scotland and Wales are to have their devolved assemblies, London its mayor and the English regions are beginning to discuss their own forms of self-rule.

He sold the Northern Ireland peace process within the same parameters and with the same determination, arguing, as his party colleagues have in Scotland, that devolution would maintain rather than break up the union. He did not go on to say, as they have across the water, that it would kill off nationalism for a generation. That is a foolhardy statement in the light of recent opinion polls showing the Scottish National Party neck and neck with the Labour Party. The SNP leader, Mr Alex Salmond, says that if the trend continues and his party becomes part of a Scottish executive it would insist on a referendum on independence. If carried it would negotiate Scotland's separation from the United Kingdom. In that case the next EU enlargement would be towards the west, not the east.

This agreement will obviously effect the political balance of forces in Britain as well as Ireland. It is likely to reinforce the process of decentralisation through devolution that may be described as asymetric federalisation (presumably making Scottish independence less likely, at least in the short to medium term).

Thus Scotland (and London) will have tax-raising powers, while Wales won't. There has been little discussion of such powers in the new Northern Ireland assembly and it is not clear yet precisely how the North-South bodies will be financed. The expected peace dividend will be constrained in the longer term by Westminster's need to review and possibly to off-load with greater devolved fiscal powers the heavy burden of transfers from Westminster built up over the last generation.

Home Rule all round (the phrase comes from the pre-1914 quasi-federal discussion in Britain about how best the Westminster parliament could be streamlined to discuss imperial, foreign and defence policy effectively) has cut the ground from under the feet of integrationist unionism of the McCartney - or indeed, the Molyneaux/Powell variety - just as it has altogether undermined the Scottish Conservatives.

Mr Trimble took the risk of going along with Mr Blair's programme rather than accompanying the Conservatives into their sovereignty binge in opposition to it. He also developed a close personal relationship with him. Part of the new structure making it easier for him to accept the outcome is, of course, the inter-governmental council of these islands, which will bring together the Dublin and London governments with new regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales. (And why should there not be representation of other Irish regional assemblies - Connaught, Munster - in due course?)

Within this new East-West framework there will be opportunities to orchestrate quite new elements in British-Irish relations going into the new millennium. These would include, for example, a new forum within which to discuss the welfare of Irish emigrants and communities in Britain, who have indeed, sought representation within the new structures.

Political parties in Scotland and Wales have also looked enviously at Ireland's economic progress in recent years and at its achievements within the European Union. Public opinion in both of these nations has been much more Europhile than that in England over recent years. This tendency is likely to be reinforced in coming years if there is undue delay in Britain joining EMU.

Orthodox opinion assumes that constitutional change in Britain will contribute to what the political scientist Helen Wallace has described as a "retarded Europeanisation" which will make it easier for the UK to be more at home within the EU. This is undoubtedly in keeping with Mr Blair's overall agenda, which has been reinforced during the current UK presidency of the EU. But sceptics remain to be convinced that he will have the determination to push ahead with the other elements of constitutional change, such as electoral reform, which will consolidate his agenda. There are still political tripwires ahead between him and his second term in office, and the possible revival of Conservative fortunes; but it must be admitted that the agreement has given Mr Blair a great political fillip.

It has to be recognised that implementation of this agreement will coincide with the creation of a new currency border between the UK and Ireland, as we join EMU and the UK stays outside from January next. When the referendum on the North and the Amsterdam Treaty are both held on May 22nd, it will be a (confusing) carnival of constitutional change to match what could herald end of the carnival of reaction Connolly foresaw in partition - exemplified by the anniversary accounts of John Charles McQuaid's career this week.

The working assumption among Irish policy-makers is that the UK will join EMU in due course, so that this will not be a permanent barrier. In the meantime it will be more difficult to translate the cross-border bodies into dynamic economic co-operation while the currency difference is institutionalised.

There is, of course, an opportunity to orchestrate such differences within the North-South and East-West frameworks. There will be many areas within the designated policy spheres in which EU policies make the best sense for co-operation. And it remains an important truth that from the Irish perspective the European dimension is an indispensable underpinning for a Northern Ireland settlement.

It has helped dissolve irredentism, has equalised relations between Dublin and London and has held out the promise of multiple identities, parity of esteem between nationalities and the creation of a new constitutional patriotism in the North. A severe rupture in Britain's relations with the EU, or prolonged semi-detached status, would undermine such possibilities. In that sense it must be hoped that asymetric federalisation within the UK will make it easier for the UK to come to terms with a similar process within the EU.