'We will not be pressured into an agreement'
MOST of last week was spent in the stately grandeur of Hillsborough Castle in a room which is nearly the size of my house.
The castle is beautiful, the gardens are my dream come true but I will be glad when I can finally leave the place and return to the routine of life. The talks at Hillsborough and the crisis atmosphere in which they have been held have attracted a baying press pack which would do the Hillsborough Boxing Day hunt proud. Every piece of spin, every rumour, every scrap of information, sent them off howling in pursuit of a line to fill their news bulletins.
I don't usually listen to local radio, watch TV or read local papers, but incarcerated with colleagues who are news junkies and with long periods when we were waiting for papers or meetings, I must have heard and read more local news coverage last week than I have in the previous six months.
What I heard left me bewildered and I often wondered was I at the same talks. Comments such as: "They are refusing to talk to each other; There are shouting matches; They are close to a deal; They are nowhere near a deal; The sticking point is this march or that march; The whole world is watching this charade (it just about got a mention on Radio 4); Investors from around the world are watching and threatening to turn their back on Northern Ireland" – and so it went on.
Sinn Fein manufactured a crisis by threatening to pull the Assembly down. They added to it by demanding that the Prime Minister come here to sort this out and the crisis was then choreographed by a news hungry media. The final ingredient was to paint the picture of a populace who were up in arms about the failure of politicians to reach agreement.
They found people who wanted all politicians to have their wages stopped, sacked, flogged, strung up. There was no difficulty finding people who believed that all politicians are useless, that the Assembly and the Executive had never done anything since it was set up, and that despite an impressive response to the present economic crisis, local politicians were not concerned about the impact of the present recession on people's lives. And of course the crowning story was some rubbish about how the Prime Minister had been humiliated by our intransigence which meant he had to leave Northern Ireland without an agreement.
The fact of the matter is that Gordon Brown, like any politician, finds himself in that situation regularly. His own party don't let him have his way on a weekly basis. Not getting your way is a hazard of political life. The skill of politics is to judge when you have got the best compromise to a problem, strike a deal and then explain to your electorate why it is the best solution and hope that they will go along with it. Frankly that is easier to do if the agreement is not reached in the contexts of threats or outside pressure, one of the reasons why we never wanted the Prime Minister involved. For those taken in by Jim Allister's strategy of collapsing the Assembly and bringing back direct rule, it is worth noting Sinn Fein's faith in direct intervention from Westminster to deliver their demands. Sinn Fein's call for Gordon Brown to get involved is a timely reminder that direct rule has never been a benefit to unionists.
I got the week and its drama into perspective when I took Friday away from Hillsborough to deal with constituency issues. From 8.30am until 8pm I met with a range of individuals and groups. Many of them wished me well in the talks and expressed their hope for a successful outcome and their desire that we would not lose the Assembly and the access which it gave to decision makers. Others expressed surprise that it had been possible to see me at this time and were appreciative that I had been able to make myself available to deal with their problem, but none of them had the obsession with the issues which dominated the news all of last week.
A community group was more interested in my help in getting the paperwork sorted so that they could apply for a vital community facility in their small village. The residents groups were more concerned about getting the repairs carried out to the houses in their estates. The community workers were more focused on how they could sustain the excellent work they were doing in helping the elderly and diverting young people away from the destructive activities which were making life a misery for everyone. The individuals who came to see me were only interested in the help which I could give them in sorting out problems with their children's education, difficulties they were having in getting planning permission, disputes with their employers, growing their businesses, and worries about how the health service was dealing with their medical problem.
It was refreshing to leave the hothouse of Hillsborough and be reminded of the value of political institutions and my involvement in them, to the lives of the people who vote for me. It emphasised to me the importance of preventing our institutions from being destroyed.
However, it also made me cautious about agreeing to anything which might be a cheap fix today, and if seriously flawed will only lead to a crisis in the future. That is why I will be back in Hillsborough and will work hard with my political colleagues and opponents to sort out this problem. We will offer solutions, we will be prepared to make compromises, we might fail but it won't be for want of trying.
However, we will not be pressured into an agreement to provide the press with a headline, pander to a vociferous public minority or just to please the Prime Minister.
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Weather for Belfast
Saturday 11 February 2012
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Light rain
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
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