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Morning View: Unionist ease with change of scenery
From NEWS LETTER December 17th, 1999
ANOTHER week, another milestone - or two. On Monday Bertie Ahern brought
his full cabinet team to Armagh in what appeared to be the Republic's entire
fleet of well-polished limousines for the first North-South Ministerial
Council. Today sees the first meeting of the British-Irish Council, provided
for in the Good Friday Agreement at the behest of David Trimble and his
negotiating team. Writing in the Irish Times yesterday, Mary Holland likened
the scene on Monday to an invading army arriving to dictate surrender terms
to the defeated enemy, and complained that the Irish government had failed
to understand the need for discretion and sensitivity in these early months
of building a durable peace. She was right to criticise. But unionists have
grown accustomed to displays of nationalist triumphalism, whether in the
form of tricolour-waving cavalcades through Belfast to celebrate IRA ceasefires,
or southern politicians arriving in Ulster like lords of the manor. It is
what we have come to expect, and consequently its impact is diminished by
its predictability. Another Times reporter was reminded on Monday of a Mafia
funeral, a view which might well have been echoed by the absent DUP. Certainly
the unionist contingent was heavily outnumbered. Wouldn't it have been better
for Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds to have added their combined strength
to the unionist cause when set against such strong representation of the
pan-nationalist front? Instead they were notable by their absence, choosing
to gallivant, as one local wag put it, around the republican terrain of
south Armagh, and without a security escort to boot. Messrs Robinson's and
Dodds' visit to victims of violence in the area was a worthy exercise, but
one which could have been conducted with equal gravitas at any time. On
Monday, they should have been there, in Armagh, to eyeball Bertie Ahern
& Co. and remind Dublin that unionism still includes a significant grouping
of dissidents opposed to any skullduggery, and that they too are part of
the overall equation. Unionists of all shades will be much more comfortable
with the change of scenery and context today, when the British-Irish Council
meets in London. Forget a united Ireland; a new Millennium beckons and today's
meeting represents the coming together for the first time in almost a century
of the united islands, with the British input far outweighing that from
south of the border. Yet Dublin politicians will enter into the fray with
enthusiasm, and with good reason. As people in Donegal will testify, the
Celtic Tiger is rampant mainly in Dublin and its hinterland. Much, though
not all, of the Republic's remarkable economic growth has come from its
special status in Europe. The expansion of the EC will envelop nations still
stuck in the economic Third World, and it is to them that the major European
funding will be directed in the early part of the new century. The need
to build sustainable east-west relations, while nurturing the political
friendships which have developed as a direct result of the Ulster peace
process, is well understood in Dublin. In the past five years the Republic
has exported three times as much produce to Northern Ireland as to the British
mainland, despite the fact that the mainland's population is 35 times greater.
There is rich symbolism for Dublin in the setting up of north-south bodies,
but for them the real cherries in this commercially-driven age are to be
found by looking west, not north. |
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