No return to unionist rule

By Gerry Kelly
I couldn’t have described it better than Jim Allister! The old Stormont, that is, which practised ‘not an inch’ when it came to nationalists. It was certainly the most “wretched, useless government anywhere in the western world.”
Except, of course, that Allister at his weekend conference was referring to the modern power-sharing arrangement at Stormont into which, first David Trimble, and next the DUP, were dragged against their prejudices.
The nationalist community, through its resistance and sacrifices, through standing strong, ensured that never again would it live under one-party unionist misrule. The price for devolution was that traditional unionism had to adapt, had to share government and had to accept the legitimacy of our aspirations as expressed in the all-Ireland bodies under the Good Friday Agreement.
Jim Allister is a throwback to an earlier age who would blindly walk the unionist community into a cul-de-sac and whose speeches are propaganda manna to dissident republicans wishing to present the unionist people as being beyond change.
There is no doubt that the DUP has continuing difficulty coming to terms with the reality of life today. After all, the DUP itself perpetuated the notion of unionist supremacy, that it was going to ‘Smash Sinn Féin’ and not go into government (ironically, the very slogans now used by the TUV to taunt the DUP).
Unionists had no problem administering ‘justice’ and ‘policing’ as long as those departments were under the control of unionists, as they were prior to 1972 and consistently used and abused. But now the DUP has a problem with justice and policing being devolved to the people of the North where there can be scrutiny and accountability.
Initially, we were told that the missing requirement was proper funding. Then, when that was resolved through negotiations with Downing Street and to the satisfaction of the PSNI Chief Constable, more preconditions were introduced, the latest one from Jeffrey Donaldson who stated that policing and justice will not be devolved if the full-time police reserve is phased out, as agreed in the Belfast Agreement. Earlier, we had talk that unionist confidence could only be built if the Parades Commission was abolished.
With a growing list of demands sounding very like blackmail, we then have Peter Robinson turning the English language on its head and accusing Sinn Féin of blackmail for insisting that the DUP stick to the undertakings it gave!
It is hard not to conclude that the DUP leadership is guilty of running away and is taking a huge gamble with the whole process.
Sinn Féin has taken real risks for peace and continues to do so.
But, let it also be said, that we will not let the DUP turn back the political clock to unionist rule or anything like it.