The nationalist goal of Irish unity remains a major obstacle to political progress in Northern Ireland, writes Dennis Kennedy
The Belfast Agreement is beyond repair, and a fresh approach to ending sectarianism and achieving a stable settlement in Northern Ireland must begin with a fundamental rethinking of both nationalism and unionism.
In Beyond Belfast, Where now in Northern Ireland? the Belfast-based Cadogan Group - a non-party think-tank - argues that seven years of trying to work the agreement have revealed fundamental flaws in the approach it embodies and in the institutional arrangements under it.
Crucially, the majority community in Northern Ireland no longer supports it. The mandate narrowly secured in 1998 no longer holds. Since then, the refusal of the IRA to "go away" and the steady flow of concessions to the republicans have eroded trust in the Blair government. The problem in Northern Ireland has been dragged back, in many respects, to the stark tribal hostility of nationalism versus unionism; community relations are worse than before the agreement.
The long-awaited IRA act of decommissioning and the announced end of its campaign of violence, while welcome, do not change that reality. Nor will positive reports from the Independent Monitoring Commission. Large-scale republican violence may have ceased, but few believe that criminality will also stop.
The IRA act of decommissioning is almost irrelevant. As one relative of a victim said on TV, the guns did not kill people, those who fired the guns did, and nothing has happened to them. They are unconvicted, unpunished, and unchanged in their views. The decommissioning, so piously witnessed, was, among other things, an officially sanctioned destruction of the evidence that might have secured the conviction of killers.
It is still unthinkable that a party which refuses to recognise that the suffering caused by its armed wing for 30 years was in any way futile or immoral should be admitted, let alone welcomed, into government. Yet this is the party which the nationalist people have voted into leadership and, in so doing, have indirectly made Ian Paisley supreme on the unionist side.
There is no easy way back from this, but it must begin with a radical rethinking of the meaning of nationalism in Northern Ireland in the 21st century. More than 30 years ago, fresh thinking among younger nationalists broke the surly stalemate that had been politics for half a century, and by pursuing internal reform rather than constitutional change opened the way for sharing power in government in Belfast. Tragically, mistakes, events and accidents intervened and it did not last. The fresh thinking had shallower roots than it needed, the response was less than generous, and the progress made was lost in violence and renewed tribal prejudices. Fresh thinking is needed now more than ever. It is unlikely to emerge in inter-party talks.
The two governments still tell themselves the unworkable agreement solved the problem. Only a profound debate among those who call themselves nationalists, in the Republic as well as in Northern Ireland, can offer hope of breaking the impasse.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP, all parties in the South, even Michael McDowell, are all "nationalist", placing the achievement of Irish unity as their prime political objective. Yet all, in theory at least, also accept the principle of consent, meaning that the achievement of that goal is now entirely dependent on majority will inside Northern Ireland - that is, it is unobtainable.
What is the point of focusing nationalist political activity on the impossible? It may serve emotional needs in minds of nationalist voters, but it is the cornerstone of the sectarian division within Northern Ireland. Nationalists will not stop being nationalists, but some serious thinking on what constitutes nationalism within the circumstances now prevailing in Northern Ireland is long overdue. Nationalists should ask, and be asked:
*Can an Irish identity be expressed and enjoyed only within an independent Irish state?
*Why make unification the defining factor in nationalist political endeavour when it is impossible without (unobtainable) majority consent?
*Why persist in this approach when it is the greatest single factor keeping Northern Ireland a divided sectarian society?
Not all the rethinking has to be done by nationalists. If unionists want a peaceful Northern Ireland within the UK they have to do what they can to ensure that it is a Northern Ireland in which nationalists can feel at ease, and which is not "simply British".
Unionists should ask themselves whether defending the right of every Orangeman to walk where he always did is the proper way to go about this.
The agreement was not a settlement, but an agreed document. Consensus was made possible by "constructive ambiguity". It failed because the same words meant different things to different parties, and because it was undermined by the IRA's tardiness in disarming. But it also avoided the real issues.
Does a proper basis for powersharing at government level exist in Northern Ireland? It was generally accepted until it became clear that it would mean sharing power with those inextricably linked to terrorism. But political scientists maintain that fundamental agreement on the actual area to be governed is the essential prerequisite for sharing power in its government.
A political determination by one side to dismantle the state, along with a reluctance to accord it full recognition, is the worst possible basis. Only a major nationalist rethink can surmount that obstacle.
Instead of trying to juggle with irreconcilable visions of the future and versions of the past, governments, parties and the people of Northern Ireland have to confront the reality of the impasse they have reached and ask whether the agreement, and indeed the "peace process", actually address the basic problem, or, in fact, further cement the sectarian divide.
Dennis Kennedy is a writer and member of the Cadogan Group: www.cadogan.org