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Contribution to “Off The Fence”

The proposed agreement to resolve the stand-off in Northern Ireland and restore local democracy has failed at the last ditch. I am afraid it was always doomed to do that because I had never had any faith that the IRA would keep their word. So many times before have they promised to put their weapons verifiably beyond use but they always resist in the end, saying that it amounts to surrender.

Ian Paisley and the DUP have maintained their hard line – as they were bound to do this side of a British general election. What he is seeking to do is maintain the gains that he made in the elections in Northern Ireland and become the largest unionist party in Westminster. Sinn Fein wants to do the same and I fear that the two moderate Nationalist SDLP members will be blown away when it comes to the British election.

Whether thereafter the two hard line parties will decide to do business is questionable. Both Paisley and Adams want to get their hands on the reins of power and it could just be that they will swallow their misgivings and give it a go. But this will have to depend on the IRA finally giving up their weapons in a way that satisfies everyone who wants to see the democratic process as the only way forward in Northern Ireland as it is in the rest of the kingdom. This should not be too much to ask – indeed, it is not a question asked anywhere else in the world – but the IRA have always been like that.

Meanwhile, direct rule is to continue and the possibility of some outrages by dissident Irish terrorists remains real. It is all rather depressing but that is the price, as I have said in this column in earlier years, of not holding the IRA to the terms of their pledges in the Good Friday Agreement.