Shared institutions are essential to breaking the grip of apartheid in Northern Ireland, writes Seán Farren
Failure to re-establish the political institutions of the Good Friday agreement will have serious consequences for community relations in Northern Ireland. At best, a benign form of apartheid will emerge. At worst, the suspicions and hatreds underlying that apartheid will fester and smoulder risking future explosions.
That, above all, is why a strong imperative exists to ensure as much progress as possible towards restoration over the coming weeks.
Living apart is nothing new for Northern communities. But eight years after the Good Friday agreement was signed, the frosty signs of a deepening apartheid are not what was expected. The fact is that we now live in a residentially more segregated society than ever before, where much of our social life is carried on in highly segregated ghettos.
In such a divided society wearing the "wrong" T-shirt or "wrong" school uniform can provoke an attack sometimes with fatal consequences; the celebration of your team's victory can provoke a riot if you choose to celebrate too near an interface area; buses carrying people to some event or other can be attacked simply by passing close to the "wrong" ghetto; even centre city places of entertainment have become marked as "orange" or "green"; investments and developments in one community are jealously compared to those in the other, etc.
Overcoming and eliminating such manifestations of our sectarian divisions - as well as remaining inequalities - will take time, but tackling them in a concerted way is an almost impossible task in the absence of shared political institutions. People may now increasingly enjoy the same rights but there is little or no sense of social cohesion or mutual responsibility. If political representatives are not working together but instead are seen perpetually at loggerheads, there are no shared examples of how positive relationships can be developed across the North's community divide.
While it is true that in Northern Ireland civic society provides some opportunities for the joint participation of people from all sides, there are large sections of civic society in which participants are monocultural either Catholic or Protestant, unionist or nationalist. As a result of fair employment legislation workplaces have become increasingly more mixed and equal, a situation most marked in the public service. But workplaces bring people together essentially on a functional basis and so tasks and discussions are mainly work focused.
Also, the requirement for neutrality in the workplace, though necessary, does have the unfortunate effect of inhibiting the normal exchanges about politics and events one would expect between workplace colleagues.
Outside the workplace where people come together for social and recreational purposes, the same mixing from different communities does not take place to any significant degree. Churches, schools and sporting organisations have long been where this single identity development has been most evident. Now these networks have been joined by many others.
Over the period of the Troubles and since a wide network of community-based organisations has come into existence, a high proportion of which are monocultural. While many form links with organisations in the "other" community, or with similar groups in the South, their single identity focus is an overriding characteristic.
Cultural organisations which exist to promote the cultural heritage of our different communities are enjoying considerable renewal and growth. Such commendable renewal and growth are inherent to the diversity of our society. But despite the desire to make our cultural traditions open to all, they remain overwhelmingly linked to one community or the other.
In a society where shared spaces are few and fragile, such developments require a wider context in which the policies and support underpinning them are debated and determined in common. Otherwise, the pillars of apartheid will continue to grow side by side with no more than very tenuous links between them.
In the coming weeks we are promised a fresh initiative by both governments. We want to see the governments stand by the agreement - not dilute it or undermine its requirements for equality and sharing. We want to see not only the Assembly but all the other key institutions of the agreement restored and a complete end to direct rule. We want to see it put up to parties to form an inclusive executive and made clear to them that even if they refuse to do so, they will not be able to hold all the other institutions of the agreement back.
Responses would then be anxiously awaited to see how positive politicians would prove themselves to be. Refusal to share power would be exposed for the cynical tactic that it is.
In this context, unless parties show themselves willing to respond positively and provide the leadership which our society requires, they will condemn our people to a long period of moving increasingly and ever more rapidly apart. The permafrost of apartheid would truly have gripped the North.
Seán Farren is an SDLP negotiator