On being the meat in a Bertie-Ian sandwich

I was on BBC Radio 4’s The World At One today and I feel like curling into a foetal position and weeping.

The other contributors were Bertie Ahern (proof positive that there is life after death) and Ian Paisley. I caught just a bit of what Bertie had to say: it appeared mainly to consist  of soothing murmurs and modest stammers as he said, effectively, sure lookit, the whole thing  could all be tied up by Easter.

I was next (no discussion between the three participants permitted). I did what I could to emphasise that the talks had been given a three-week life, they’d been interrupted by (i) St Patrick’s Day holiday; (ii) the death and funeral of Martin McGuinness; and (iii) the fact that the DUP never do politics on a Sunday. So a narrow period of time became even narrower.

I tried to focus on the importance of addressing the legacy issues, and how they involved dozens of disputed cases, many decades old, of people who had never had an inquest. I pointed out that one of the difficulties in resolving this knotty problem was that some unionist politicians, and Conservative politicians, and the British Prime Minister, had claimed that there was excessive focus on  ‘security’ force involvement in killings,  whereas 90% of the killings had been the work of the IRA. This of course is, what shall I say – I know – a lie. The PSNI have released figures showing that around 30% of cases involve the ‘security’ forces and there are charges of said ‘security’ forces, at the time,  releasing deliberate misinformation about bombings, for example, claiming they were the work of the IRA when they weren’t;  charges of state collusion in the killing of innocent people; charges of inept police investigation of cases; charges of a shoot-to-kill policy when IRA members could have been arrested.

In response, the presenter asked me not a single question, even though (or because?) I’d indicated that the PM among others had made, um, misleading statements about ‘security’ forces and the extent to which they were involved in legacy cases.

Then Ian Paisley came on, and if he said ‘Gerry Adams’ once he said it five times (has Arlene been coaching him?). The talks, apparently, could easily be resolved, and Bertie A was right to say, oh, two and a half weeks, but it would all depend on Gerry Adams, would Gerry Adams Gerry Adams Gerry Adams have the right stuff to really engage in discussion and compromise?

There are four things I’d say about IP’s contribution:

• He is cementing what is obviously now DUP policy: put all the emphasis on   Big Bad Gerry. The fact that Michelle O’Neill is now the Sinn Féin leader in the north is unsatisfactory, since she can only be linked to the IRA by way of her attendance at commemoration ceremonies for IRA volunteers, which really isn’t  good/bad enough. Besides which, mental images of Arlene v Gerry sit much more comfortably with unionists than Arlene v Michelle.
• I’d agree with Bertie that a time-limit should be put on talks (nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of a guillotine), but the idea that they could be wrapped up in two-and-a-half-weeks is laughable. I mean, is the DUP going to accede to the request of the Lord Chief Justice for funding to deal with legacy cases or not? The idea of compromising on that is absurd. And that’s just the funding. Will unionist politicians, conservative politicians and the British PM admit that the PSNI are dealing with 30% of cases involving ‘security’ forces, and that these cases involve an appalling vista: state forces killing citizens and/or arranging for the killing of citizens in collusion with loyalist gangs. Maybe the DUP and the British government will agree to such investigation, following the bloody trail of command however high it may go. But I can’t see it in two-and-a-half weeks or even two-and-a-half years.
• There has to be a complete turnaround of unionist politicians’ attitude to those with opposed political views. That’s necessary if the various things signed up to in the various agreements are to be implemented, and there would need to be a timetable for the implementation of these matters. When the interviewer on The World At One pointed out that Wales and Scotland had Language Acts, so why not Northern Ireland, Ian side-stepped and spoke of how much money was spent on the Irish language. That’s great, Ian. Now would you be good enough to answer the question?
• If you thought a while back that Ian Paisley might be the de Klerk figure that unionism sorely needs, forget it. Ian Paisley may have his eye on Arlene’s job but he’s no de Klerk. Au contraire.

So I came out of the BBC building, not for the first time, feeling something between depression and fury. Radio is like statistics : interesting in what it covers, shocking in what it doesn’t cover. If the English people are taking their picture of what is happening here from The World At One, then superficial doesn’t begin to describe the picture they’re getting.

These talks require a resetting of the entire unionist approach to agreement and reconciliation. If unionist politicians persist in silly stuff like Ian Paisley’s focus on Gerry Adams rather than a fundamental change in attitude to resolving the problems that should concern us all, I  see no prospect of progress.

One thing Sinn Féin must not do, for everyone’s sake, not least their own, is allow the DUP to pressure them into the same-old same-old not-an-inch Stormont rut. Anything would be preferable to that.