From the Sunday Times

Comment: Emily O'Reilly: Trimble discovers that Provisionals at peace
are a far more lethal force

Groundhog Day in Northern Ireland. Jeffrey Donaldson is doing his
Jeffrey Donaldson thing. David Trimble is trying — and failing — to
have us believe that the British government might consider ejecting
Sinn Fein from the executive. Observers are talking up the threat
posed to the UUP by the DUP at the next election, and republicans are
tootling away with their plans for a united Ireland by the year 2016.

Trimble stands accused of giving no leadership to his people. He is
contrasted with his counterparts in Sinn Fein who not alone marched
their own constituency all the way up the steps to Stormont Castle
without so much as a pea-shooter between them, but who also armed
Alex Maskey with a tight suit, a bunch of flowers and a suitably
contrite look as he did his bit for Remembrance Day.

Why can't Trimble pull off the same sort of stunts with his lot, tut
tut the observers, the two governments, and the sniggering Sinn
Feiners? Why can't he accept the reality of the Good Friday
agreement, the bona fides of Adams and co and get down and work that
agreement in spirit and in letter? I imagine it's because every time
Trimble shuts his eyes that image of Maskey in the suit with the
flowers and the penitential gait flashes across his cornea. Nobody
has yet dared say it, but every unionist must feel it in their gut:
when the likes of Maskey judge that it's fine to do something
undreamt of by republicans five years ago, something's up. And
whatever it is that's up isn't good for unionism.

Republicans can indulge in the sort of gesture politics they've been
indulging in recently because they feel they're ahead. The gestures
don't really matter. So what if Gerry Adams was to meet the Queen, or
Martin McGuinness was to curtsy before the Princess Royal? So what if
they start to commemorate the dead of the other side, or begin to
issue not-quite-side-of-the-mouth apologies for past atrocities? The
net point is whether anybody thinks for a minute that, in doing all
these things, the republicans are moving any further away from their
long-term political goal. The problem for Trimble — and he knows it —
is that the same doesn't hold true for the unionists. And that
explains everything, from his own political paralysis, to the ongoing
attempts by loyalists to goad the IRA into an executive-busting
retaliation.

For unionists, the scariest thing about the Good Friday agreement is
the absence of a full stop. Political, economic and social links
between north and south can continue to evolve. There are no limits
to the level of integration between the two places. Yes there is the
majority veto over a united Ireland, but that's just a matter of
numbers, not political will, or legal diktat.

By working the Good Friday agreement to its fullest, Trimble is by
definition moving his people in the direction of at least a de facto
united Ireland. An appearance by him at a St Patrick's Day parade
would mean far more politically than an appearance by Adams at a
Buckingham Palace garden party.

Northern Ireland is already part of the United Kingdom; nothing Sinn
Fein can do will make that link any tighter. But if Trimble and his
constituency ever begin to play the game that is the Good Friday
agreement seriously, the erosion of the link with Britain is
inevitable.

In that sense, the agreement isn't a compromise. Or if it is, it is
only a compromise for one side. Republicans aren't asked to get any
closer to the Union — that's politically and legally impossible — yet
unionists are asked to get closer to the 26 counties through a
process of benign integration at every level of public life.

Trimble is flailing now. Last week's little charade at Downing Street
and the House of Commons was little more than a patronising attempt
by Tony Blair and John Reid to humour him. They didn't come close
because what David wanted, David couldn't get. Nothing short of a
full-scale return to violence by the IRA is going to get Sinn Fein
out of the executive, and if such violence did re-emerge, the lads
would be long gone anyway.

When Trimble tried to read into Blair's statement more than was
there, and particularly when he tried to play the secretary of state
off against the prime minister, he was quickly slapped down. Blair
and Reid were at one and a fudge for one was a fudge for all.

By the end of the week he'd achieved nothing. His UUP enemies saw
weakness in his performance, along with further evidence of British
treachery, of a government happy to play the republican game, certain
that it's the only game in town.

And meanwhile Sinn Fein continue their onward march. Another few
boxes have been ticked. The gestures make good PR; their apparent
willingness to break bread with the other side constrasting nicely
with the red-faced intransigence of Trimble, Donaldson and every
other unionist who knows what it is that Sinn Fein is up to and
can't, as yet, do anything to stop it.

The unspoken irony is that unionists were better off when the Provos
were killing people. Few political concessions were on offer then;
nobody was frogmarching unionist MPs across the border to drink tea
with Bertie Ahern and take turns at cutting ribbons.

The Provisionals at peace are a far more lethal force. Provisionals
at peace have hoovered up executive positions, assembly seats,
mayorships right across the six counties, and the ear of every world
leader that matters. Which is why it is so important for Trimble
either to break that peace or convince Blair and others that the
peace is a sham.

The problem for him is that it isn't a sham. Peace has become a
weapon and a far more useful one, the IRA has discovered, than any
number of bombs and bullets. Peace shattered the gates of Stormont.
Peace brought them ministries and power. Peace brought them six Dail
seats and the expectation of much more than that next time out.

So Sinn Fein can afford to throw compassionate shapes. It won't stunt
their growth; it will only enhance it. They make sheep's eyes at
Trimble and lament his inability to respond in kind. But they have
him where they want him, stuck forever in his very own version of
Groundhog Day, while the Provos scurry past, busy boys and girls on
their way to the completion of an agenda that Trimble is so far
helpless to thwart.

END