WHAT do we mean by a shared future? I’m not sure, but I do know that you can’t have a shared future if there is no agreement on the future to be shared. It really is that simple.
There is no agreement between unionists and nationalists on the future because Sinn Fein and the SDLP remain focused on eventual unification: and in the ongoing unlikelihood of a majority vote in favour of unity they will continue to push for the erosion and blurring of the cultural/political signs, symbols, touchstones and benchmarks that define us as an integral part of the UK.
The fact of the matter is that it is not in the interests of either the SDLP or Sinn Fein for Northern Ireland to be a long-term political success. They don’t want it to be a warm house for nationalists.
They don’t want nationalists shrugging their shoulders and saying: “It’s not really that bad – so let’s not rock any boats by pushing for unity.”
What was the purpose of the Good Friday Agreement? Well, its primary purpose, I suppose, was to produce a political settlement and associated institutions into which all of the key players could buy.
Some may even have believed that it was a process of conflict resolution, producing an outcome in which some issues were satisfactorily resolved at the outset, while others would be dealt with as the institutions bedded down and trust grew between old enemies and opponents.
But it hasn’t turned out like that. We have ended up with a situation in which the overwhelming majority of those who do vote are voting for the same five parties which have been on the scene for decades: and the DUP and Sinn Fein have now worked out a power-sharing arrangement between themselves.
It’s conflict stalemate. Okay, it’s better than lobbing bricks and planting bombs, but it certainly doesn’t amount to a genuinely shared future. It’s a partitioned future.
Can it be transformed into a shared future at some point? Not if the constitutional issue continues to be the key question for most people. For those who aspire to a united Ireland the constitutional question will remain vital and they will continue to support parties which point in that direction. The same applies to unionists.
But what about those who aren’t really hung up on the issue, like the Greens and Alliance, who, as David Ford says, are ‘agnostic’ on the issue?
That question seems to answer itself by the fact that Alliance remains a minority interest. It campaigns on a platform of ‘division costs’ and argues in favour of integrated housing, education et al: so there must be reason to believe that their fifth party status is either because people don’t like Alliance (and it does veer towards the sanctimonious) or they aren’t really all that fussed about sharing with their neighbours.
The Northern Ireland Conservatives – or whatever they choose to call themselves – will have exactly the same problem. No amount of talking about ‘normal’ politics can disguise the fact that ‘normal’ politics requires, at the very least, agreement on the status of the country to be governed.
They will pitch themselves for the pro-union market, which means they will, from the outset, be taking a side: and in taking a side they become part of the ‘abnormal’ political system here. It’s one of the reasons they failed between 1989 and 2011 and one of the reasons they will continue to fail. But hey, that’s another story!
What about the increasing numbers of people who don’t vote – are they interested in a shared future? I suppose the only way of testing that would be if there were a couple of post-conflict parties (or even just one!) which were prepared to make that objective the sole reason for their creation.
Yet I’m still not sure how they escape the elephant that is the constitutional issue.
Mike Nesbitt says one difference between the UUP and DUP is that the UUP believes in a shared future and not a shared-out future.
Back in 1998 the UUP, along with the SDLP, Sinn Fein and the two governments clearly negotiated a shared-out future: although the hope was that it would be mostly shared out by the UUP and SDLP!
Ironically, one of the best ways of promoting the shared future platform would have been for the UUP to detach itself from the Executive on April 2 and set about building an alternative to the DUP-SF axis of blinkered mutual convenience.
That said, my gut instinct is that the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland – voter and non-voter – have no particular interest in a shared future that involves bringing them closer together.
They are reasonably content in their own areas, pubs and sports pitches, reading their own newspapers and nodding quietly at each other in shopping centres and multiplex cinemas.
They are glad to be freed from the fear of a bomb attack or assassination: they are glad that the days of bomb-scare traffic jams are gone; they are glad that something resembling political stability is in place and that the parties are getting on with Assembly business-– even if they don’t know much about it. Basically, they are happy enough to rub along.
But I think that that’s about the height of it at the moment. Unionists think they have done enough for the peace process. Nationalists believe that this is just a holding position. The non-voters (from both sides) are just turned off by poor government.
Trying to push them towards a shared future – which they don’t actually want and which would probably only make matters worse anyway – would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Conflict stalemate is, in reality, the only form of shared future that will work here for the foreseeable future.
No other form is possible while both the SDLP and Sinn Fein continue to push for a united Ireland and the disappearance of Northern Ireland as a separate country within the UK.
Maybe I’m wrong (it has been known to happen!) yet it seems to me that unionism and republicanism must always be irreconcilable and contradictory positions.
Yes, we can share space, albeit demarcated, but for so long as republicans don’t want to live in the UK and unionists don’t want to live in a united Ireland then I’m not sure how we ever create the framework for a shared future.