Thousands of bombs exploded, 22 on the streets of the capital on just one Friday; thousands of people interned without trial; pitched battles with the armed police forces and the British Army in urban streets; whole areas of cities effectively closed off to the security forces, run more by paramilitary organisations than the state; communicants of two rival denominations of the same religion engaged in an unending cycle of ‘reprisals’, bombing, murdering, kidnapping and torturing. Were I commenting on today’s world, this would be a description of Iraq, but welcome to one corner of the United Kingdom in the early 1970s (of course, the two situations are not the same…). Exact figures are impossible to ascertain - it is often unclear whether a murder was motivated by sectarian hatred - but more than 3,500 people have been killed in the Troubles since 1969.

‘Northern Ireland’ is not a Clare Politics blog category; nor does it feature on the English news very often, outside of election seasons. I obsessively followed the election results over two days of STV fiddling, but that’s because I’m strange, I doubt many other English people who have never even been to Ulster did the same. The fact that it can be largely forgotten by the media is itself a testimony to how much the place has changed.

Peter Hain writes in today’s Observer about how the current situation was once unimaginable. Ian Paisley - here famously shouting “never! never!” - and Martin McGuinness - who the BBC quote as having said in court, ‘We have fought against the killing of our people. I am a member of Oglaigh na hÉireann and very, very proud of it’ - may well be soon at the head of a power-sharing devolved government. The electorate of Northern Ireland had the opportunity to endorse anti-power-sharing candidates, both nationalist and unionist, and they were decisively rejected. The crucial grievances were over domestic rates (council tax) and water charges, not sectarian issues. The Green Party gained its first Stormont seat. It is tempting to say Northern Ireland has moved on.

The truth, however, is less welcome. The cross-community Alliance Party gained an extra seat, and saw their share of the vote increase slightly, but still only one in twenty voters chose them; in some areas they barely figured, in largely republican West Belfast they received just 127 votes. The vast majority, more than 90%, of the electorate chose a party which is explicitly Catholic and nationalist or Protestant and unionist. More than this, the hardline parties of the DUP and Sinn Féin saw their votes increase over the more moderate UUP and SDLP. In interviews with the latter parties, they spoke hopefully of belatedly receiving the credit for their bravery over the Good Friday Agreement, for which party leaders David Trimble and John Hume shared the Nobel Peace Prize; this did not happen.

While the Northern Irish politicians have a fantastic opportunity to make a deal - much rests on the willingness of Ian Paisley to trust Sinn Féin after IRA disarmament and recognition of the PSNI - the fundamental divide in Ulster society remains. Distrust between the two communities remains endemic, and the basic disagreement over Northern Ireland’s constitutional future endures. This month could see an important step in the right direction, but the story is not over.

Filed under: religion, tonyblair, ukpolitics on March 11th, 2007