Northern Ireland: Close to the Edge.

In 1649 England invaded Ireland. Over the next 400 years this has caused numerous wars, invasions, counter-invasions, uprisings and massacres. The most recent of these, known as "the Troubles" began in the 1960's when street fighting gangs evolved into fully fledged paramilitary organisations. The mostly Catholic, Republican paramilitaries were fighting to make the six most northern counties of Ireland part of the Irish Republic while the mostly Protestant, Loyalist paramilitaries were fighting to keep the same counties part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The fighting continued for best part of the next part of 40 years with neither side achieving very much other then killing thousands of people.

Then in 1997 the newly elected British Government under Tony Blair came up with a possible "third way" to resolve the conflict - Devolution. Put simply this involved giving Northern Ireland it's own Parliament with the power to control local issues such as limited tax raising powers, healthcare spending, local development spending, control over policing and limited power to pass new laws. This would mean that although Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom and continue to be bound by UK laws it would have much more freedom to organise its society and spend public money. Two things that prior to the Troubles had both been heavily skewed in favour of Loyalist Protestants.

In order to make sure that devolution did indeed lead to peace in Northern Ireland the schedule at which powers and huge amounts of central government funding would be given to the Northern Irish Assembly (the technical name for the Northern Ireland Parliament) would be dependent on two main things. Firstly both Republican and Loyalist politicians had to agree on how these powers would be used and there had to be firm evidence that the various Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups were dismantling their organisations and decommissioning their weapons. After a decade of this peace process most of the powers have been devolved and most of the weapons have been put beyond use leaving really just the huge issue of local policing and legal powers to be resolved. This is by far the most important and contentious power to be devolved because the British Establishment see control of the police and the unrestricted ability to deploy MI5 and the British Army to Northern Ireland as the most important way to maintain British rule over the province. It is also vitally important to the Republicans because prior to devolution policing in Northern Ireland was done by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) who were little more then a Loyalist paramilitary gang more concerned with beating the hell out of Catholics then upholding the principles of law and order.

Ahead of this very important and incredibly complicated negotiation the political landscape couldn't be more unstable if there was a sinister force pulling the strings from behind the scenes. As far back as the London G20 Summit in March/April 2009 dissident Republican groups like the Real IRA (RIRA) and the Continuity IRA (CIRA) had become active again carrying out shootings and the occasional bombing. At about the same time on the British mainland a group called the English Defence League (EDL) who, fascist politics aside, look and sound and a lot like the street fighting gangs that eventually evolved into the Loyalist paramilitary groups at the start of the Troubles. This has raised doubts over the extent to which Republicans have disarmed and the whether the Loyalist ever did disarm. On top of these unnerving developments the two key Republican and Loyalist politicians; Gerry Adams and Peter Robinson have both recently been involved in serious political scandals. In December 2009 it emerged that Gerry Adams younger brother was wanted by the RUC's replacement, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) for sexually abusing children and had fled to the Irish Republic. This forced Gerry Adams to very publicly help the police by appealing for his brother to hand himself in and even more publicly announcing that their father, himself a senior figure in the Republican movement, was also a paedophile. In the old days these are two things that a Republican just would not do.

Then in January 2010 it emerged that Peter Robinson's wife, herself a senior member of the, Loyalist, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) needed psychiatric treatment after trying and failing to commit the sin of suicide. The Robinson's credibility with their hard line religious party further dissolved when the scandal went on to reveal that Iris Robinson had an extra-marital affair and had abused her positions in the Westminister Parliament, Northern Irish Assembly and a local council to secure loans and planning permits for the business her lover was trying to open. The fact that the lover was a 19 year old boy made the 59 year old Mrs Robinson an all too easy target for ridicule. The scandal became so serious that Peter Robinson was forced to avert calls for his resignation by temporarily stepping down from his positions as First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the DUP for six weeks while the allegations of criminal misconduct were investigated.

Without all this extra pressure power sharing talks in Northern Ireland were always going to be difficult to the point of being impossible. With the political positions of the lead Republican and Loyalist negotiators in doubt these talks have rather predictably collapsed. This has prompted the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and his Irish counterpart, Brian Cowen to fly to Northern Ireland and hold a marathon mediation session to see if the original talks can be saved. If they cannot then the expected change in British government could mean that their failure could have severe and dramatic consequences for Northern Ireland.

The most serious outcome could be that the entire peace process collapses, the paramilitaries re-arm and eventually we are all plunged into another endless cycle of violence. This would be as extreme as it sounds so a much more likely outcome would be that the peace process would survive but the Northern Irish Assembly would collapse. This would trigger an election that would certainly delay the peace process and produce a hard to predict result that could forever change the course of Northern Ireland's future. As things stand the Republican vote is united behind Sinn Fein while the Loyalist vote is spread out across a variety of Loyalist factions. If this remained the same it would mean that Sinn Fein would become the dominant party in the Parliament making the British Establishment even less keen to devolve power. Behind the scenes there have also been serious efforts made to unite all the Loyalist factions behind a single party with very close links to the British Conservative party. If these efforts are successful in time for any election then the Loyalist vote would be united behind it making this united Loyalist party the dominant party in the Northern Irish Assembly. As the Loyalists have little interest in devolution the process is unlikely to continue and if it did it would continue in such a way as to be completely meaningless to the Republicans forcing the Republican movement to seriously consider its options.

As if this situation wasn't difficult enough to complicate matters further tomorrow (27/01) London hosts an international summit on terrorism in Yemen and on Thursday (28/01) it hosts an international summit on the future of the war in Afghanistan. Aside from the security situation making everyone needlessly nervous the problem is that much of America's strategy in Afghanistan includes tricks and tactics that have been learnt in Northern Ireland and its peace process. Therefore if the Northern Irish peace process collapses or looks likely to collapse during these summits then Britain will find it hard to offer much support to America's strategy in Afghanistan. On top of that of course there's Obama's State of the Union address and the IMF meeting to discuss debt relief for Haiti.

Although I don't want to tempt fate because Northern Irish politics are tense at the best of times personally I think that the current crisis will sort itself out. This is because the politicians who will be making the decisions have all lived this war and truly know the cost of failure.