The scene at Hillsborough this week at times resembled a French bedroom farce, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Last week one of the newswire services reported Gerry Adams declaring he was "weathered to the peace process". This is the sort of thing that can happen when journalists on the ground are phoning over stories to copy-takers. Lawyers and their clients have made huge money from more serious garbled transmissions.
We all know Adams is wedded to the process. He has told us so hundreds of times with that very phrase, the last time no later than Wednesday morning. Or was it Tuesday night? But after two days and nights and almost 30 hours outside and inside Hillsborough Castle, "weathered" seemed a perversely appropriate word. For the reporters, photographers and camera crews outside there was a wind-chill factor flowing from somewhere north of Siberia that pierced and lodged in the bones. It was an endurance test. We felt very weathered indeed.
It was also an endurance test inside the castle for the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. At least they had central heating. Over the two days they were stuck in the small Lady Gray room of the castle - which is reputedly haunted - granting audience to a very demanding, very vocal and sometimes very obdurate bunch of Northern politicians.
When they finally emerged at midnight on Tuesday, their ashen appearance was blamed not on the ghost, but on the politicians, chiefly those from Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Party.
The object of the negotiations was to fashion a blueprint that would allow the IRA go out of normal business; that would see the huge structures on the south Armagh hills crashing down and most troops back in barracks, if not in Britain; that would have Gerry Adams telling young nationalists of the merits of a career in the PSNI; and that would have Northern Ireland politicians in charge of criminal justice and policing.
The main stumbling-blocks, we learned, were whether IRA decommissioning would be in secret or filmed for mainstream television broadcasts and whether Sinn Féin Assembly members should face any penalties for future IRA transgressions, if devolution was restored.
A pretty ambitious project, all told, but the omens were generally good. Much of the spadework already had been done. There was detail to be tied down. There were scores of officials from numerous British and Irish government departments to assist the leaders, their ministers and the squadrons of pro- Belfast Agreement politicians in that enterprise. So many, in fact, that when Blair overnighted at Hillsborough on Tuesday, some of his officials ended up sleeping in the lavatories, such were the over-cramped conditions. Remember, though, that in the case of Hillsborough we are talking palatial privies.
During the long working hours, every available space in the castle was commandeered, as politicians and officials waded through the various issues. "It's rather like a French bedroom farce," explained one official.
No place was sacrosanct. In the Queen's boudoir the parties discussed criminal justice and policing. It was a gruelling session. Brid Rodgers of the SDLP just managed to resist the temptation to take 40 winks on the four-poster canopied bed.
The mood was upbeat throughout Tuesday. Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams did their regular "walk around the compound", to use the phrase of former Maze inmate David Ervine. Adams was dressed for the conditions, but McGuinness was in his shirtsleeves. We thought he must have been hardened by all those nights spent in ditches when he was on the run. But even Sinn Féin's chief negotiator is no master of the elements. By Tuesday he was still promenading with Adams, but dressed in the heaviest, woolliest overcoat you could hope to have in your wardrobe.
It says much for Blair's commitment to the peace process that, instead of heading home on Monday night, he decided to battle ahead through Tuesday. A possible benefit here was that the longer the talks went on, the longer war could be avoided in Iraq. Ahern returned home on Monday night - "he's afraid of a coup," said one wag - but was back early for day two.
Now it was clear that sanctions were the big obstacle to progress. Decommissioning would sort itself out, seemed to be the prevailing view, although, like the spectre in the Lady Gray Room, it could come back to haunt the process. So, a full day to deal with one item which, while important in the grand scheme of what was already achieved by the politicians and expected from the IRA, seemed eminently soluble.
It was difficult at times to get a tight grasp on the story, which probably explains why one London editor got very excited to learn his photographer had a picture of Gerry Adams eating a banana. Hold the front page.
Maeve, an A-level grammar school student, had unfortunately picked these two days for some work experience, to help decide whether a career in the fourth estate might be the life for her. On day one, she nearly perished from exposure. For some reason, quoting former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee's line about journalism being the "first rough draft of history" failed to ease the chill. The draught she felt had nothing to do with history.
On Tuesday afternoon we were told that the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister would be winding up proceedings at around 5.45 p.m. and holding a press conference in time for the main teatime television news broadcasts.
"Wouldn't it be great to see the two leaders face to face," we said to Maeve.
But she had it sussed. After day one, Maeve knew that deadlines were as movable as the sand. In the early evening, her mother collected her. Alas, another potential Kate Adie lost to journalism. By Tuesday evening, word was filtering out that the Assembly elections would be put back from May 1st to May 29th to allow the parties sell to their constituencies the deal on offer.
The parties expressed horror at such a possibility. This caused scepticism in journalistic ranks considering that David Trimble would happily accept elections being postponed for six months or more, that such a delay would help Sinn Féin beef up the electoral register with its currently disenfranchised voters, and that it might also assist the electoral preparations of the SDLP.
"Postponing the election is like extra-marital sex," said a colleague. "Everybody would like to try it, but nobody is prepared to admit it."
When there was no sign of a breakthrough by 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., one sensed the frustrations and tensions creeping in. David Trimble driving out of Hillsborough so that he could catch a late flight to London for parliamentary business and Prime Minister's question time the following day prompted quite a stir.
"If he wants to question the Prime Minister, why doesn't he bloody well question him when he has him here in Hillsborough," said one exasperated politician inside the building.
Outside, an individual with a sectarian, pathetic, mono-ethnic, mono-cultural accent had a scoop. "We've had an act of completion," he said.
We turned to him interestedly. "What's that?" we asked.
"David Trimble is a complete b****x."
Yes, yes, this was of course ill- mannered, but it was black humour that reflected the deepening sense of vexation and fraying of nerves on both sides of the castle gates. But perhaps Trimble's view of proceedings was jaundiced by having reportedly received at lunchtime that day a police warning that he was on an IRA surveillance list.
At least his departure gave a headline to those journalists with earlier deadlines than the rest of us. There was also a rumour that Sinn Féin was so generally irate that it had been planning to up sticks until Ahern had persuaded its representatives to stay at the crease. Sources couldn't or wouldn't confirm.
The last few hours of discussion were taken up with trying to find middle ground between the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Féin over sanctions. By 10 p.m. it seemed a hopeless cause. With their leader away, the remaining Ulster Unionist negotiators were hardly in a position to compromise, while Martin McGuinness in particular had the air of a man who would still be horse-trading at Hillsborough today if the leaders were stupid enough to stay there.
McGuinness is Sinn Fein's chief negotiator because he has an important trait in common with Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, not that he would like the comparison: he needs very little sleep. Four hours is ample for him. That gives him an advantage over ordinary mortals.
By 11 p.m., Ahern and Blair probably had that figured out. They decided to go for plan B: they would make sanctions an issue between the two governments and an international monitoring body, and bad cess to the unwillingness of Sinn Féin especially, but also of the UUP, to sort the matter out.
Which is where we are now. Most of the package is in place. In the coming weeks, Sinn Féin must decide whether to acquiesce grudgingly to the governments' compromise on sanctions or take most of the flak for the continuation of direct rule. It would seem more in Sinn Féin's electoral interests to buy into a deal, although that is no guarantee of a real breakthrough when Bertie and Tony come back to their beloved Hillsborough with their blueprint in four weeks' time.