WeeklyWorker

13.04.2023

Joe’s stopover visit

Kevin Bean looks behind the hoo-ha of the 25th anniversary celebrations marking the signing of the Good Friday agreement

Joe Biden has now been and gone and, of course, the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement closely followed the well-trodden pattern of previous anniversaries: an American president welcomes the end of bloodshed and blesses the outbreak of peace and holds out the promise of US investment and the coming of untold wealth and prosperity.

No celebration of the anniversary would be complete without the voices and thoughts of the politicians who negotiated the original deal, along with media reports and testimonies of how Northern Ireland has dramatically changed since 1998. British and Irish politicians added their praise: Rishi Sunak hailed the “bravery and perseverance of those who accepted compromise” 25 years ago, while taoiseach Leo Varadkar talked of “the sense of hope and liberation” experienced in 1998. In line with the usual choreography of these anniversaries, Joe Biden’s visit was originally designed to be the icing on the cake for these celebrations and to give the imprimatur of the world’s hegemon to the continuing ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland.

So his keynote speech at the opening of the new University of Ulster campus strongly underscored this agreed narrative by stressing how much progress had been made, and hinting at yet more investment and prosperity to come. However, a closer look behind the inevitable tawdry razzamatazz of an American presidential visit showed that, for all the hype and the continuously repeated platitudes about ending the conflict, all was not well.

President Biden’s visit to Belfast was a fleeting one - certainly in comparison with those of his predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Originally designed to be a major piece of political theatre, it had been scaled back considerably and was essentially a flying visit to open a major development in central Belfast. There was a brief meeting with Sunak - more of a coffee break than a serious political discussion - and some small talk with those Northern Irish politicians on the sidelines who cared to show up for his speech at the university. There was no ceremonial welcome to the centre of devolved government at Stormont and no formal summit with the local politicians about future political developments.

By its very low-key nature the presidential visit sent out a powerful signal - especially to the Democratic Unionist Party, whose continued boycott of the executive and the assembly is preventing devolved government from functioning in the Six Counties. According to former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the unionists had blown it and wasted a political opportunity. If the DUP did not get the message from the somewhat perfunctory nature of the trip to Belfast, they would have seen it quite clearly in the very full itinerary of the state visit south of the border - with its formal meetings with Irish president Michael D Higgins and taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and a presidential address to both houses of the Irish parliament. They would also have heard it in the tone and the content of Biden’s carefully constructed speech in Belfast: if the promises of further investment initiatives and support for the regeneration of the North’s economy were the carrot, then the hints that these promises were conditional on the continued functioning of the devolved government in the Six Counties were a lightly concealed stick.

Windsor

It seems that originally great store was set by both the UK and Irish governments on Biden’s visit. The negotiations that produced the Windsor agreement between the UK and the European Union were carried out under a certain pressure for completion before the 25th anniversary: it was hoped that the changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed with the EU would persuade the DUP to come back into government, with a full-scale US presidential visit setting the seal on the deal in a blaze of positive publicity and media opportunities all round.

However, the DUP did not bite and remains opposed to the Windsor agreement, although apparently keeping its options open about possible future acceptance - if certain further unspecified amendments could be made. Moreover, the DUP leadership is not at all impressed with any pressure coming from a US president it regards as anti-British and pro-nationalist. The strongest pressures on the DUP are generated within the Six Counties rather than in Washington or London - illustrating the real dynamics of post-Good Friday politics.

The current hiatus in the governance of the Six Counties is by no means unique. For nearly 40% of the time since the Good Friday agreement in 1998, devolved government in Northern Ireland has been suspended or interrupted in various ways. The latest interruption began in February 2022, with the resignation of the DUP’s Paul Girvan as first minister over post-Brexit trading arrangements between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. This collapsed both the executive and the assembly and - despite subsequent negotiations, fresh elections in May 2022 and the Windsor agreement - the institutions of the Good Friday agreement have not been restored. This is a clear illustration that, for all the talk of ending the conflict and the radical changes that have occurred in Northern Ireland, the agreement has merely institutionalised communal politics and given just another form to the fundamental divisions in the Six Counties.

As the Weekly Worker predicted at the time, far from resolving conflict, as the language of the peace process puts it, the Good Friday agreement simply attempted to manage the battle about the constitutional status of the Six Counties and stabilise a fundamentally unstable political system in the interests of British imperialism.1 This attempt to reconfigure British rule in a ‘new dispensation’ has only resulted in crisis in permanence and recurring political stasis, of which the current crisis is but the latest example.

Most of the left welcomed the Good Friday agreement - the Morning Star’s CPB, SWP, SPEW, etc - in the name of class politics and overcoming sectarianism. And yet, the intensification and reproduction of a sectarian, communalised politics was inevitable, given the structures and political arrangements of the Good Friday agreement. Parties have to define themselves as unionist, nationalist or other, and electoral battles are fought for political dominance and leadership within the communal blocs. Thus, by participating in these institutions and accepting the framework of British rule, Sinn Féin has abandoned its anti-constitutional project for a 32-county republic and become instead a constitutional nationalist party. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald has been predicting a vote for Irish reunification “within this decade”. A vote which, of course, under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, relies on the consent and active participation of Westminster.

Unionist crisis

The criticisms aimed at the DUP for collapsing the Stormont institutions and not immediately accepting the Windsor agreement will, its leaders calculate, do it little political harm. Indeed, it is possible that even the mildest, implicit criticisms in Biden’s speech will actually strengthen its position with its base. Many unionists had voted for Brexit as a way to reassert the visible forms of British sovereignty in the Six Counties: they saw the debates over the border and the economic questions resulting from Brexit as their chance to weaken the power-sharing elements and the institutions of the Good Friday agreement, and regain some lost ground for unionism. For the DUP’s electorate, the dynamics towards an ‘all-Ireland economy’ and the withering away of the border, that many nationalists saw as implicit in EU membership, were anathema. Although Rishi Sunak secured some concessions in the Windsor agreement, these are still insufficient for the more hard-line elements within the DUP.

Given the electoral threat posed by unionist ultras in the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and the opportunities for the opposition to any sell-out on Brexit to mobilise during the marching season, the DUP is unlikely to agree to the Windsor agreement any time soon. Finding Sinn Féin as the largest party in the assembly and its Northern Ireland leader, Michelle O’Neill, as first minister designate after last May’s elections was a profound shock for both DUP and unionism more generally.2 This palpable sense of unionist retreat was further reinforced by the psychological blow in the 2021 census which showed that Protestants were no longer a majority and that Catholics were now the largest single group in the Six Counties.3

It is not immediately clear in what direction the DUP and the wider unionist population can go. Although some of the DUP’s assembly members have hinted that they want their party to go back into government, if only to deal with immediate budget and health service issues, the leadership, its Westminster MPs and other senior figures want to stay out. Given this strength of feeling and electoral calculation, the DUP is certainly capable of resisting both Biden’s carrots and sticks, and it is in no rush to make the necessary concessions to go back into Stormont - especially if it means playing second fiddle to a Sinn Féin first minister.

Although the political and social power of unionism is very much weaker than in the 1970s and 1980s, the institutions and communal structures of the Good Friday agreement, such as the need for cross-community consent and the petition of concern4, give unionist parties an effective veto. Moreover, it is clear that no British government will either directly face down the unionists in a confrontation or return Northern Ireland to a period of extended direct rule. In the short term, the current dispensation - riven as it is with recurrent crises - is the only realistic political option open to Westminster. The same applies in Dublin, where the stability of the status quo on both sides of the border, not any form of transition towards reunification, is the settled will of the Irish bourgeoisie and political class, notwithstanding the strong showing of Sinn Féin in opinion polls.

So the basic parameters shaping the current crisis will continue to determine the pattern of politics in the Six Counties. The British state still holds the key and is the ultimate decision-maker - as the Good Friday agreement laid down 25 years ago. Dublin will continue to act as an important partner, helping to stabilise and manage the frozen conflict in the shared interests of both the British and Irish states. The United States will likewise continue to act both as guarantor of the status quo and protector of its own geo-strategic interests in these islands, in an increasingly unstable world.

Joe Biden’s visit, both in the ways that were expected and in those political reactions that were less easy to predict, shows this configuration and how it will continue to shape the politics of the Six Counties for the foreseeable future.

  1. . ‘Blair’s province of crisis’ Weekly Worker September 2 1999: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/302/blairs-province-of-crisis.↩︎

  2. . ‘Crisis in permanence’ Weekly Worker May 12 2022: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1395/crisis-in-permanence.↩︎

  3. . www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/22/catholics-outnumber-protestants-northern-ireland-census.↩︎

  4. The Petition of Concern is a mechanism whereby 30 MLAs can petition the Assembly requiring a matter to be passed on a cross-community rather than a simple majority basis.. ↩︎