The Northern Ireland Peace Process: Ending the Troubles? By Thomas Hennessey. Gill and Macmillan. 248pp, £19.99
A Farewell to Arms? From Long War to Long Peace in Northern Ireland. Edited by Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen. Manchester University Press. 360pp, £45 (hdbk)/£16.99 (pbk) in UK
There is a provisional quality about both these books. Their titles carry tentative question marks - as do individual chapters in the edited work of Cox et al. That is as it should be. We do well to have realistic expectations of how a peace process based on constructive ambiguity can alter the fundamental nature of a long and bitter conflict. Our political leaders are learning slowly, painfully, that the game has changed, and that behaviour necessary at the negotiation stage may not be appropriate for post-agreement implementation. The body language of David Trimble and Seamus Mallon at joint press conferences illustrates that we are only making baby steps in the business of co-operation and joint learning.
But a peace process belongs to more than the political class. The 1998 Agreement was endorsed by 85 per cent of the plain people of Ireland. Admittedly the Unionist community reflected its own trepidation and political schizophrenia in its response to the referendum. Nevertheless the Agreement has been sustained for more than two years, and much of the credit has to go to civic society. And civic society has been enhanced by an Agreement which was based on the concept of inclusion and the removal of fatalism from the Northern Ireland electorate. That has been the real success story of 1998.
Both these books explain how we arrived at that 1998 Agreement. Both are welcome additions to the cottage industry of peace processory, particularly because they travel by different routes. Thomas Hennessey has the historian's eye for detail and a capacity to translate the mandarin language of the bureaucracy. His study reminds us of just how much Northern Ireland must have seemed an adventure playground for those whose business is constitution-making. He gives the grey men - there are no women - their place in the sun. It is painstaking and unexciting but it had to be done.
The result is a book that explains how the compromises were reached and how the language was finessed. Unfortunately, and necessarily, it has the quality of a series of bullet points. More seriously, it is not totally in tune with the temper of the times. If Good Friday was about inclusion and win-win, Dr Hennessey has not recognised as much. The vast majority of his acknowledgements (including his academic contacts) belong in the unionist camp. There is not a single reference to an SDLP player; and, while he recognises the centrality of John Hume to the process, some of his commentary reflects an anti-republican bias. This is true in the section on decommissioning and in his conclusion that, ultimately, republicans lost.
IT IS inevitable that in a book which has 21 contributors, the quality will vary and consistency may not always be easy to maintain. That said, the editors have produced a coherent, accessible and significant study. The contributors, all of them academics with the exception of Kate Fearon and Paul Gillespie - Martin Mansergh deserves the title of, at least, honorary academic - have avoided the obfuscation beloved of their trade. This is a virtual Baedeker of a book, incredibly rich in its sources and catholic in its tastes, with no less than 16 relevant appendices. It resonates with the spirit of Good Friday and eschews the navel contemplation that passed for politics in Northern Ireland. The editors defend their decision to devote eight chapters to the international and comparative dimensions of the peace process.
There was no need to apologise. Undoubtedly one of the strengths of this study (and of the process) is that we have advanced beyond the mean streets and muddy byways of the conflict. That is dealt with in Part 2 (where there is a particularly good chapter by Arthur Aughey on Unionist responses to Good Friday). Besides the context for the peace process and the international dimension, the book addresses civic society as well as the implementation of the Agreement. The value of these approaches is reflected in a book that is highly informative, evenhanded and judicious. Analysis rather than advocacy sets the tone - although Paul Bew's uncharacteristically slight piece falls somewhere between the two.
If we need to know why "Ulster Says No" has moved to "Ulster Says Maybe", we would do well to consult both of these books, Hennessey for his documentation and the edited book for its vast scope and its vibrant analyses. It would be a crying shame if both were consigned to an academic readership. In particular, A Farewell to Arms? deserves a wide readership because an informed electorate enhances the peace process.
Paul Arthur's Special Relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland Question will be published in the next few months