A Journey (35 page)

The two sides rarely see each other’s pain. Even the most progressive Israelis I know can seldom understand the humiliation of a middle-aged Palestinian man being searched by a young Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in front of his family (and let us assume not always with exemplary politeness). Palestinians will justly mourn the latest innocent Palestinian victims of an Israeli raid, but find it really hard to sympathise with the parent of an Israeli child blown up in a suicide attack.

Then there are attitudes which, to us, seem absurd, comic even, but to them are defining. I remember before the 1997 election a leading Orangeman describing me as unfit to be prime minister because my wife was a painted jezebel who claimed her allegiance to Rome. When I first heard it, I puzzled over it, misunderstanding Rome as the seat of the Italian government rather than the Vatican and wondering what on earth Cherie had been saying to Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister.

The notion that there is ever going to be one moment in time when peace occurs is an error. The peace has to mature, put down its own roots to displace the roots of conflict, and allow over time a different set of attitudes to take shape and make their impact.

Sometimes I used to try to describe it by this analogy: it was like a car driving away from a crash. The sight of the wreckage does not disappear straight away. It grows more faint over time. There is a constant look in the rear-view mirror even while the eyes strain to see the road in front. The passengers are shaken up, and the memory of what has happened competes for space in their minds with the hope that better times are ahead. There is no immediate release from the pain; it continues far and deep and only gradually diminishes before eventually disappearing.

What this implies for the process is that you have to work at persuading each side that the other’s faltering steps as they travel the journey are not born of a lack of good faith or a change of mind about peace, but are a natural consequence of the experience they have been through. It is an unavoidable feature of resolving the conflict.

7. The path to peace will be deliberately disrupted by those who believe the conflict must continue. Be prepared for such disruption. Do not be deflated by it. People often forget that the worst terrorist attack in the history of the Troubles came
after
the Good Friday Agreement, not before it. Thankfully it was also the last.

On Saturday 15 August 1998 at 3.10 p.m. a massive bomb went off in the market town of Omagh and twenty-nine people died. Many others were badly injured. Still more will bear the mental scars for life. Among the dead was a woman pregnant with twins, whose mother and daughter also died, and four youngsters from Spain and their escort who were on an exchange visit. The bomb was the work of the dissident group the Real IRA, formed in protest at Sinn Fein’s embrace of the peace process. In the event the Catholics killed outnumbered the Protestants. The terrorists had given a warning, but for the wrong place, and the police had unwittingly moved the crowd right into the path of the bomb.

I was on holiday in the south-west of France at the time, in a little village called Miradoux. We were staying with our friends Maggie and Alan, he having been secretary to the PLP and she an old friend who gave Cherie and me a billet in her house in Stoke Newington when we searched for our first home as a newly married couple.

I was informed around 3.30 p.m. By 5 p.m. the savagery of the attack was clear. I gave a short press statement on the steps of the village church in a suit borrowed from one of my security people, my emotions a mixture of shock and anxiety as to the consequences for the process.

The next morning I went to Northern Ireland and visited the injured. Even now I cannot think of it without tears. I met a girl who had lost her sight but was determined to make the best of her life, as she later proved, and I met the father of the pregnant woman. If the families had been angry or taken it out on me – ‘If you hadn’t started this, they would still be alive’, a sentiment voiced by some – I could have kept my composure; what completely broke me down was their quiet dignity, their limitless sadness for the loved ones they would never see or hold or speak to again.

Even at that point of supreme human tragedy brought about by evil beyond understanding, I had to think politically. We were faced with a choice: either to throw our hands up in horror and say, ‘These people will never make peace’, or to use the horror as the reason to go on, to say, ‘These people want this process to stop, and our response is to drive it faster and further.’

In the event, and to the great credit of all (helped by another presidential visit by Bill Clinton), the key participants in the process chose the latter course. What could have been a turning back, was a turning point. The Real IRA never recovered. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness condemned the attacks unequivocally. David Trimble rose to the occasion. And most of all, so did the people. One of the bereaved said to me, even as he mourned the loss of his wife: ‘Don’t be put off, carry on, and make my wife’s memorial a lasting peace in Northern Ireland so that no one ever again feels as I do this day.’

This attitude is in contrast to the Middle East where, unfortunately, the opposite usually happens when a terrorist attack occurs. The response there is often to clamp down in a way that alienates the peacemakers as well as the terrorists, and to see violence by a faction as showing the futility of trying to make peace with those not part of the faction. The problem is the moment such a course is taken, the keys to the process are put in the hands of the terrorists. Their purpose is to lock up the process. That’s the sick rationale behind the terror. Once you concede that terror does indeed lead to possession of the keys, they’re in charge. Keep the keys firmly in the hands of the peacemakers.

Terror is the starkest example of the extremes trying to block progress, but pressure to lock up the process also comes from perfectly respectable and democratic elements on both sides who accuse their own party of selling out. David Trimble was subject to an unrelenting barrage from those in the DUP and elsewhere who saw each concession as a betrayal, and the process as a whole as a sell-out of their community. To the outsider, this seems unreasonable and unpersuasive; not so to the insider. David, I think, took the view that I did too little to assist him; I took the view he never quite stood up for the positive, tending rather to share and sympathise with the Unionist propensity to see plots and conspiracies against them. But he had an extraordinarily difficult hand to play, and if he didn’t always play it as I would have done, he played it with a courage that rightly won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

8. Leaders matter. Any peace process calls for political risks, even a sense of political adventure and certainly political courage, sometimes even personal courage. The quality of leadership matters; it is a
sine qua non
.

The point is: the easiest thing for the parties in any conflict to do is hold firm to established positions. An ideology, even a sort of theology, will have grown up around the conflict, reflecting the partisan nature of it. Everything is seen through the prism constructed by such partisan ideology. To hold to it is to tread a familiar path, which may lead nowhere, but whose surface is well worn, whose landmarks produce instant recognition, and where the leaders’ followers feel most comfortable.

By contrast, like Moses with the Israelites, striking out in a new direction whose destination is uncertain, whose obstacles are formidable and unfamiliar and when at least some of the followers will accuse the leader of betrayal, is tough; and it requires the quality that motivates the best political leadership: a desire to do good.

We were very lucky in the quality of leadership we had. David Trimble was instrumental. He began it when it seemed impossible, kept at it when it was most difficult, and paid the ultimate political price (though I have no doubt that his reputation in history is fully secure).

Then in the most unlikely of roles, Ian Paisley – for years the wrecker, the spoiler, the scourge of all in Unionism who sought accommodation – took over and completed the process.

Ian Paisley was definitely a strange political figure, a product of the unique concatenation of political circumstances in Northern Ireland. He is a genuine and committed Christian, a true God-fearing man; he is a passionate Unionist; he is clever, shrewd, occasionally even sly. He had a great grasp of strategy and tactics and could spot the difference between the two.

The unanswered question is: did he change or did the situation change? He would say the latter, and that he was always prepared to make peace if the IRA forswore violence. But I think two things also happened to change him. First, after a long and debilitating illness which, as he used to remark, he knew he would survive (though many hoped his wish was misplaced), he had a sense of impending mortality, political and personal, and wanted to leave behind something more profound and enduring than ‘no surrender’. There was a really rather moving moment during the course of the talks at St Andrews in October 2006, when it was discovered that he and his wife Eileen were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. At the end of the meeting, there was a little ceremony at which each party congratulated him, including Gerry Adams, and Bertie then presented him with a piece of wood from a tree at the site of the Battle of the Boyne. He made a gracious and benign reply (and Ian was perfectly capable, even when being congratulated, of being neither of these things) and I felt this was a man looking into his own soul and feeling differently. He hadn’t exactly matured; but he had in some indefinable sense broadened.

The other change was that Ian was nothing if not a politician with his ear firmly tuned into the people. In the course of late 2006 and early 2007, he heard the people telling him it was time for peace, and even, in particular, time for him to make the peace. During those meetings, time and again it was Ian who wanted to push forward, Ian who was prepared to seek creative solutions, Ian who took care always to leave the door open. He and I would often meet alone in the Downing Street den. Jonathan used to be highly amused when I described the meetings, which almost always dealt with the issue at a spiritual rather than temporal level. It’s true: we were both fascinated by religious faith as well as being people of faith. He gave me a little prayer book for Leo.

Once, near the end, he asked me whether I thought God wanted him to make the deal that would seal the peace process. I wanted to say yes, but I hesitated; though I was sure God would want peace, God is not a negotiator. I felt it would be wrong, manipulative, to say yes, and so I said I couldn’t answer that question, that only he could and I hoped he would let God guide him.

People could never understand it when I used to say how much I liked him. But I did. I think my granny’s reverence for him made me have a soft spot.

On the nationalist side, too, there were leaders of real calibre. John Hume was, is, a great political figure and genuine titan. He had vision and imagination and foresight when others were resolutely still in blinkers. Seamus Mallon and Mark Durkan, the leaders of the SDLP, were moderate and reasonable, and felt both qualities counted against them. They were always in a difficult position. The trouble was Sinn Fein had to be brought in from the cold, and so inevitably more time, energy and focus were given to them. This caused deep resentment; but it was an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of making peace. Nevertheless both Seamus and Mark were significant figures in their own right. Both, incidentally – and I don’t know if the SDLP have a special training school for this – were masters of the sound bite, really first-class speakers, who outside of Northern Ireland’s politics would have been major players in any political party.

Of Bertie and his contribution, I have spoken. Then there are Gerry and Martin. They were an extraordinary couple. Over time I came to like both greatly, probably more than I should have, if truth be told. Again, either would have been a big political leader in anyone’s politics. They did not merely understand, they were supreme masters of the distinction between tactics and strategy. They knew the destination and they were determined to bring their followers with them, or at least the vast bulk of them.

A lot was written about the Provisional Army Council and their membership of it and thus their relationship with the IRA. Many people, including a large part of British intelligence, thought Sinn Fein and the IRA were indistinguishable. When Gerry and Martin would say they would have to talk to the IRA about something, the joke was always they could look in the mirror and ask.

I always thought the relationship was more complex than that. The idea that they could just instruct the IRA never felt right to me. I don’t doubt that on many occasions the difference between Sinn Fein and the IRA was an artifice, a divide used for tactical reasons. I know that both could be clever and manipulative; but so can I. And my sense was that, in certain situations, they were persuading and negotiating with others, not giving orders. I came to the view that the SF/IRA relationship was a bit like that of the Labour leadership and the Labour Party NEC: yes the leadership is powerful, yes it usually gets its way, but not always and rarely without a lot of persuasion and negotiation.

Throughout, Gerry and Martin feared a split, as had happened before to Republicanism, with disastrous consequences. This meant taking their people step by step, leading them, cajoling them and not always being totally upfront as to what the destination really meant. It was a tough task and they performed it with immense skill.