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From
observing Sinn Fein discourse in recent months it
is apparent that the foot has been pressed to the
pedal in a bid to create the image of an unstoppable
momentum towards a united Ireland. An element in this
imagery of acceleration has been the call to the Dublin
government to draw up a white paper on unity. Running
parallel with this is the claim that unionism is devoid
of any vision for the future.
Listening
to this view being expressed on BBC Radio 4 today
by a spokesperson for former republican prisoners
puzzled me. Having watched Martin McGuinness perform
first against Jeffrey Donaldson on Hearts and Minds
and then opposite Peter Robinson on Insight, it seemed
that the Sinn Fein politician was the only person
devoid of any vision. At one point in the non-debate
with Robinson, McGuinness displayed the limited talents
of the archetypal corner boy-cum-heckler who was reduced
to shouting ‘chicken’. To win, Robinson
had merely to say nothing. This was amazing given
that Peter Robinson was clearly nervous in a manner
which I had not previously witnessed. Of course, belonging
to the DUP and sharing a table with Martin McGuinness
- an old hand at the media game - in front of a television
camera are not exactly nerve calming ingredients,
particularly when being at the same table was the
first instalment in a future DUP leadership’s
declaration of intent to do business with Sinn Fein.
In the other challenge, where the two participants
actually spoke to each other, the performance of the
soon to be former education minister, left a lot to
be desired. Jeffrey Donaldson savoured a rare victory
over republican opposition. These two exchanges came
on the heels of another equally abysmal performance,
this time by Gerry Kelly, on Spotlight where the Sinn
Fein North Belfast Westminster candidate was left
like a rabbit caught in the headlights by Dermott
Nesbitt.
Overall,
the shock upset, to draw an analogy with the sporting
world, was the performance of Martin McGuinness because,
being one of Sinn Fein’s consistently solid performers,
so much better is expected from him. Gerry Kelly usually
comes second and any Sinn Fein inquest will only consider
the distance between him and Nesbitt at the point
when presenter Mark Carruthers mercifully called time.
What
jutted out from this week’s televised exchanges
was that unionists do not have a vision for a united
Ireland only because they do not feel the need for
one. They are not going to make the mistake of those
Jamaican poets whose poetry revealed their own visions
of snow only to be castigated by Michael Manley because
there was never snow in Jamaica and the poets were
only reading from someone else’s script. Apart
from alarmist calls in a bid to out do each other,
a united Ireland simply does not appear on the radar
screen of unionists and they show no inclination to
read the Sinn Fein script.
Yet
they leave little room for doubt that they very much
have a vision for the future. And it is a future based
on partition and the continuation of British rule
for as long as a majority in the North wish that to
be so. It is also a future based on an internal solution
which was achieved through the Good Friday Agreement
and which will lead to the dissolution of the IRA.
Republicans by contrast have a dream of a united Ireland
based on counting nationalists jumping over the demographic
fence. Martin McGuinness said as much at the Ulster
Hall. That it is a dream founded on absolutely no
strategic vision is evidenced by Sinn Fein president
Gerry Adams who acknowledged that ‘out-breeding
unionists may be an enjoyable pastime for those who
have the energy, but it hardly amounts to a political
strategy.’
Each
night as they dream, Sinn Fein may indeed have a vision
of a united Ireland. In real time as they perform
their day job they will go back to administering the
internal solution or pleading to be allowed to do
so, knowing that without their participation the ‘failed
political entity’, of Northern Ireland, would
not have succeeded.
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