Karl Marx once said: 'Men make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.' Our recent history is convincing enough. One of the crucial issues facing the political parties is that of sanctions. Unionists need them to sell any deal involving Sinn Féin. They cannot risk going back to the Ulster Unionist Council without substantial movement and a mechanism to penalise any party violating the principles of the Good Friday Agreement. Republicans see this as a demand focused exclusively upon them and insist that Sinn Féin is not the IRA and cannot be held accountable for the paramilitary group's actions.
Surely it is not beyond the wit of politicians to come up with sanctions that apply across the board. Republicans are not alone in having engaged in or encouraged violence. Some unionists toyed with paramilitarism, instigated violence or tried to restrain loyalists from stopping violence. Sanctions can be applied across the board so that any party or individual, passively or actively, supporting violence should be considered ineligible for seats on the executive or any committee linked to it.
Republicans don't need reminding that certain anti-agreement unionists will never eschew violence under every set of circumstances. To assume that only republicans need sanctioned is to succumb to the warped logic of the DUP. Penalties should therefore be designed for all who break the commitment to solely peaceful means.
Republicans have everything to gain from continuing with their chosen political path whatever happens. The circumstances facing unionists remains more problematic, largely due to the activities of the IRA, which undermined the credibility of the agreement in many eyes and made the unionist position very tenuous. It is bad enough having Burnside, Paisley, Donaldson and Robinson harping on about sell-outs or depicting the agreement as a united Ireland process and the sight of Sinn Féin ministers in government seems to confirm their worst fears because the IRA remains inextricably linked with that party.
The republican movement has undoubtedly made enormous strides away from violence but people have long memories and remain acutely conscious of the atrocities perpetrated against their community. Yet republicans seem to reject responsibility for fostering trust among unionists. In this they are mistaken. Republicans have deeply hurt many and whatever the past wrongs in this society these could never justify the violence inflicted.
It would seem therefore that we are in for a very long haul towards the resurrection of the executive and assembly and the full implementation of the agreement. Everyone should have understood this from the beginning.
The origins of the conflict stretch back decades and perhaps centuries and collectively we carry heavy burdens from this past. Thus we are so near and yet so far from finally stabilising peace.
Meanwhile the DUP strain at the bit believing they have an ace card in their pack. This card is the resurrection of the executive with Sinn Féin still on the inside. For the DUP, republicans at the heart of government constitutes a convenient stumbling block to be utilised to trip up the UUP in the context of their vicious rivalry. Spying at Stormont, break-in at Castlereagh, the Columbia debacle and names of community activists with the IRA. These, and more, represent matters to be hyped up as grist to the DUP mill. One can imagine them in full electoral mode whipping up old fears with a vengeance and they might succeed in exchanging their duplicitous words for more ill-gotten gains.
Republicans may have a point when they complain that pro-agreement unionists have not effectively sold the agreement to their own community. However, circumstances in parts of the unionist community constitute a barren wasteland. Seeds of sectarian strife and bitterness proliferate and these weeds destroy the seeds of peace and prosperity. It is difficult to make history under such circumstances.
Attention has to be centred upon cultivating more fertile soil in which good plants can grow. Instead of focusing all our hopes upon the new political institutions we need to build a new society as free as possible from sectarianism, cant and hypocrisy by working from the bottom up. This means starting at primary school and teaching children how to live with their neighbours given our troubled past and carrying this on throughout the school life. We cannot build a truly new world while condemning young people to the same old diet of apartheid schooling. Serious decisions and actions must be contemplated if we are to change our historical circumstances and create a sound basis for the inclusive edifice we have dreamt of. Politicians alone can't do it. They are restrained by the enmity that haunts our lives, our schools, our streets, our towns and our villages.
