Dr John Coulter ✍ With post Mid Term election America still on the brink of a second political civil war, the Irish peace process could provide the blueprint for easing political tensions in the United States during the remainder of this Biden Presidency.
The real problem for the American Right-wing Republican Party is that it did not make the sweeping gains it hoped to clinch, and the supposed meltdown of the Left-wing and liberal American Democratic Party did not happen.
Had the Republican Party marched into Congress with an 1980s-style Ronald Reagan landslide, Biden’s hopes of a second term in the White House after his first term ends in 2024 would have been dashed.
Indeed, they may well be dashed as in spite of not making the substantial gains they had hoped, American Republicans will be hoping the Mid Term poll will act as a springboard to re-capture the Presidency, whether their candidate be Donald Trump or another Republican from the party’s Conservative Right-wing.
With ‘Sleepy Joe’ (as he has become unaffectionately known among Trump supporters on this side of The Pond) Biden still firmly holding the keys of the famous Oval Office, he won’t have his sorrows to seek and like a former Democratic Party President, Jimmy ‘Peanuts’ Carter, Trump supporters will now be hoping his Presidency will be a one-term wonder.
The Donald’s days as the Leader of the Western World may be officially over and he has avoided impeachment, but Trumpism as a radical political ideology is alive and well if the past confrontations at Capitol Hill and the Mid Terms are taken as benchmarks.
For those readers of my vintage who lived through and reported on the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, the Capitol Hill debacle was reminiscent of scenes during the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Council strike and the 1985 and 1986 Ulster Says No and Ulster Still Says No rallies at Belfast City Hall.
In the days after the last Presidential elections, the world held its breath as each vote was painstakingly counted to decide who would occupy the Oval Office as the 46th President of the United States.
Two results were - and are - left in no doubt - Democrat Joe Biden won, and the United States is still a deeply divided nation with chasmic differences on political direction in the wake of the latest Mid Terms.
The ‘Sleepy Joe’ camp supports a programme of progressive liberalism more akin to the former Obama regime, while the radical Right in the form of Trumpism still grips the Republican Party, making the former Right-wing Tea Party activists look like a Sunday school picnic.
This fundamental disagreement - perhaps a political running sore would be a more precise description - on the direction of the US as a nation is witnessed most vividly in terms of policing and the explosion of the Black Lives Matter campaign, not just across the States, but across the globe.
Now the American Republican Right and its supporters have adopted the same street confrontation tactics.
Past years’ violent events in the United States have emphasised that a key objective of a ‘Sleepy Joe’ Presidency will be the need for policing reform as many Democrats see it. But will it be genuine reform, or a policy of appeasement to keep liberals and the Left in check?
In this, Northern Ireland can boast a policing history of reform. But was the replacement of the Royal Ulster Constabulary by the Police Service of Northern Ireland simply an appeasement policy to get the Irish republican movement into government in Parliament Buildings at Belfast’s Stormont estate?
A supposed major success of the Irish peace process has been the ability of mainstream British Unionism and Irish Republicanism to accept not just the need for policing reform, but to actually implement it.
And all this in spite of the collapse of power-sharing with the ‘will there, won’t there’ be another Stormont poll in 2023.
Given the past scenes on Capitol Hill and the political bitterness expressed during the Mid Terms campaign, how the heck will ‘Sleepy Joe’ ever manage to control street Trumpism? Can it ever be achieved if rioting becomes a significant feature of political expression?
In practice in Northern Ireland, the Protestant-dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary has evolved into the Police Service of Northern Ireland which enjoys, generally speaking, the open support of Sinn Fein, but not the so-called dissident republican movement.
To set this ‘achievement’ of the Irish peace process in context, 2021 saw the 40th anniversary of the Irish Republican hunger strike of 1981, which witnessed Northern Ireland at its most polarised.
An estimated 100,000 people attended the funeral of the first Provisional Irish Republican Army hunger striker to die in 1981, the newly-elected Fermanagh and South Tyrone Westminster Member of Parliament Bobby Sands. Sands had been an Officer Commanding (OC) in PIRA in the maximum security prison in Northern Ireland, the Maze.
If you had told that vast crowd that day that in several years’ time, Irish Republicans would publicly support the police, you would have been told to seek psychiatric help. But the peace process brought this about - again, with the exception of the fringe dissident republican movement.
Then again, if you are into conspiracy theories, perhaps the cry from the nationalist community for policing reform was more due to the case that the IRA’s 1956-62 Border Campaign was defeated because of the efficiency and intelligence gathering activities of the RUC’s part-time unit, known as the B Specials, or B Men.
The B Men were based in their local communities and knew the movements of local Irish republicans virtually off by heart!
The IRA leadership of that late 1950s era simply could not mobilise its members to escalate the Border Campaign beyond the Irish border deep into Northern Ireland counties in the same way the Provisional IRA was able to manipulate during the Troubles - until the Provisionals became so heavily infiltrated by the British intelligence community that it had to call ceasefires and ‘go political’.
If republicanism in Ireland was to have any chance of achieving Irish unity, it needed to have the B Men out of the way. This it achieved in 1970 when the B Specials were disbanded.
Northern Ireland, however, has demonstrated how a community - polarised under sectarian divisions for decades - can move, albeit very slowly, forward. That’s not to say that sectarianism and racism, or any other ‘isms’ have been totally eradicated; just to note that not as many people are being murdered because of religious or political tensions as, for example, in 1981 or 1991.
Granted, given the three-year suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly which lasted from 2017-20, and the current collapse of the power-sharing Stormont Executive, our lack of ‘moving on’ abilities have not shown the world our peace process in a very good light and there are still many glitches in the system.
But those who believe passionately in the Irish peace process need to tell post-Trump America and indeed ram it home to the ‘Sleepy Joe’ administration - here’s what we learned and you need to avoid the opportunities we’ve missed, otherwise the political healing process in the United States will take much longer than any four-year Presidential term.
The twin pillars of the Irish peace process have been compromise and concession. It has even been generally demonstrated among the main political parties which comprise the Northern Ireland Executive (before the latest collapse in February!) at Stormont when it came to tackling the coronavirus pandemic.
However, compromise and concession as political terms, and if the Capitol Hill scenes are taken as a benchmark, seem to have been eradicated from the latest American political vocabulary.
This is a tragic situation we in Northern Ireland can relate to, particularly in the late Sixties during which Northern Ireland descended into what became the Troubles - and around 3,000 deaths over 30 years.
Could this be the violent fate which awaits America if it does not grasp the need for ‘compromise’ and ‘concession’? Given America’s gun laws, the nation is no stranger to armed militias roaming streets.
In spite of the extensive Irish American community and lobby in the United States, there are many, and differing aspects, to the Northern Ireland and US situations.
But in Northern Ireland, we have learned three key lessons which could form, not just the basis of a wannabe stable ‘Sleepy Joe’ Presidency, but also form a crucial practical bedrock to assist America in healing itself in time to have a Republican President back in the White House by 2024.
These lessons are - by approaching our political discourse with respect for difference, ensuring that our governing institutions are reflective of the communities they serve, and everyone wanting to move on from conflict, we can build a better society.
In politics, we will always have disagreements on the direction of the nation and the way in which the world should be governed. That difference, especially in the areas of a free Press and freedom of expression, are the cornerstones of democracy. Without these twin pillars, a society is veering off the democratic path and taking a side road to totalitarianism.
As former wartime British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill once noted - ‘it is better to jaw, jaw than war, war.’ The key, therefore, to ensuring a society remains on the democratic route is the ability to maintain face-to-face talking.
That can never be replaced with so-called megaphone diplomacy where the various sides yell at each other either in the mainstream media, through the vitriol of social media, or even in cantankerous debates in elected chambers. Unfortunately, for many years, Northern Ireland was - and still remains to a certain extent - a prime example of such confrontation politics.
Indeed, even now in the United States, we are witnessing political discourse plummet to the point where certain leading activists are calling into question the legitimacy of institutions. This situation is unsustainable.
In Northern Ireland in 1972, street confrontations and terrorist violence caused the original Stormont Parliament to be prorogued to be replaced with decades of Direct Rule from Westminster by politicians whom the voters in Northern Ireland could not elect.
Then again, one could say that once a working institution was established - namely the power-sharing Sunningdale Executive - the Unionist Right-wing with the help of loyalist paramilitary muscle caused its collapse.
The problem in 1974 was that Unionism lacked a workable alternative to Sunningdale. Unionism relied on sheer weight of numbers and voters to maintain its ‘Not An Inch’ and ‘No Surrender’ strategies. By not thinking ‘outside the box’ ideologically, Unionism now finds itself electorally as a minority ideology in Northern Ireland.
In the United States, Trumpism - given the past Presidential election and the Mid Terms poll - still has some 70 million plus voters at its disposal. If only a fraction of that support can be mobilised into street action, that’s one heck of an internal security migraine for ‘Sleepy Joe.’
The success of the Irish peace process in 1998 (often dubbed Sunningdale for slow learners!) was a realisation of the need to talk about issues; about introducing the practical realities of concession and compromise into the Irish political vocabulary - Unionism had to work politically with republicanism, and nationalism had to recognise Northern Ireland’s right to exist.
Whatever the solution to current or past issues in Northern Ireland and the United States, one thing that is certain is that we need to share our public arena. Once you introduce a street dynamic to political discourse, then you open the door to your political views being hijacked by extremism.
We need to listen to each other, and to respect difference. The United States has its ‘checks and balance’ systems in the House of Representatives, the Senate and respecting the Constitution - or so we thought until that public explosion at Capitol Hill.
In Northern Ireland, we have the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which encourages power-sharing. America needs a Good Friday Agreement between the 70 million plus voters for ‘Sleepy Joe’ and the 70 million plus voters for Trumpism - as well of the millions who voted for the rival Republican and Democratic parties.
Watching the policing and racial injustice events in the United States as well as the Capitol Hill showdown unfold in the global media were reminiscent of the problems we faced in Northern Ireland in the lead-up to and during the Troubles. That bubbling vitriol was still evident in the Mid Terms.
The scenes surrounding the death of George Floyd and rioting aftermath in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020 and the January 2021 confrontation on Capitol Hill were reflections of the rioting in Northern Ireland in the late Sixties.
In both scenarios - Northern Ireland in 1969 and America in 2020 and 2021 - the make-up, actions of, and attacks on the police and other institutions reflected the divisions in society.
Policing is a pivotal issue to healing. In Northern Ireland, we had the reform of policing which has worked incredibly well, albeit its forced on the pro-Union community.
In the United States, we’ve seen calls to defund policing. What they really need is investment in community policing.
This has been the key to successful policing policy in Northern Ireland. The community needed a police force it can trust to be impartial.
Education is also at the core to the healing process, too. For decades, the way children have been educated has reflected and reinforced division of communities in Northern Ireland. Mind you, the Catholic and state grammar sectors have consistently turned out an impressive array of talented students over the decades, sparking the maxim - if it ain’t broken, why fix it?
In recent decades, the integrated education sector has begun to change things, or is it merely re-inventing the wheel? There is also the tremendous work being done in terms of integration in Northern Ireland’s further and higher education sectors.
While the United States does not have Democrat of Republican schools, across the country there are instances where people have stopped talking to each other; people are afraid of each other.
As ‘Sleepy Joe’ is quoted as saying, there are ‘no blue or red states; we have the United States of America’. Maybe the past events on Capitol Hill and the repercussions of the Mid Terms may cause him to rethink that observation.
Just as we’ve learned in Northern Ireland, there can be no quick fix to bringing people together, whatever their age and background, but with persistence, it is possible.
In this respect, it’s not just politicians who need to talk - communities need to engage with each other through workable initiatives. Beyond the institutions, on the ground, community-oriented organisations, such as Corrymeela in north Antrim, Hope For Youth NI, and interface groups where Catholic and Protestant families are living side by side, have played an invaluable role in laying the foundations for bringing groups of different religious and other backgrounds together.
The International Fund for Ireland has been crucial in financing highly successful cross-community projects. Supported through the Fund’s Personal Youth Development Programme, these projects have provided opportunities to build resilience and self-confidence and improve education and employment prospects.
In the United States, there have been similar Cross-Center Initiatives by the Urban Institute to help various communities gain a better understanding of the challenges they face.
While recognising that the causes of the United States and Northern Ireland conflicts are very different, we can only look to the future, not the past.
Legacy issues will be important, but both nations can only move forward if reconciliation is taken seriously rather than reduced to mere well-meaning speeches; there has to be a willingness by all partners in a conflict to work together.
Paying lip service to reconciliation will only result in the conflict boiling over again in later years. ‘Sleepy Joe’ needs to recognise that Trumpism did not disappear in the Mid Terms, just as the American Republican Right-wing needs to remember there is still a Democratic President in the White House.
My late father, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, was an Ulster Unionist Party Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) at Stormont for the constituency of North Antrim between 1998 and 2011. He attended a trip to South Africa during the early years of the fledgling Northern Ireland Assembly and met President Nelson Mandela for tea in his home.
Chatting to dad upon his return, it was clear from his conversation with President Mandela that the ability of all the sides in any debate to talk reconciliation is the key to any peace process. It is no use simply saying there is a need for healing; the various sides have to want healing.
In spite of the historical links between Northern Ireland and the United States, the reconciliation and healing situations in both nations are different, of course. But both to reconcile differences and to move on from the past, we can all heed this message, policy-makers in NI and the US alike - reconciliation must involve personal pro-active dialogue, not passive speech writing. If we want a better future, we’re going to have to want it. And work for it.
Democracy is always a work in progress. The foundation of this work is progress is blatantly simple - We need to work at respecting one another.
In Evan Osnos’s book on Joe Biden, American Dreamer, he quotes Biden as saying: “I thought you could defeat hate. You can’t. It only hides… It crawls under the rocks, and, when given oxygen by any person in authority, it comes roaring back out.”
This is just as relevant to United States as it is for Northern Ireland almost 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement. When it comes to how we conduct political discourse, run governing institutions, and moving on from conflict, we all have a responsibility to respect difference.
We have to want to heal. We have to want to build a better, shared future. We have to want to promote better, more respectful political discourse. I rest my case!
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Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. |
Has US democracy snatched renewal from the jaws of breakdown, possible civil war and the coming of a Gilead-style nationalist theocratic state? We can only hope so!
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