1. If politics is traditionally defined as the art of the possible then it can be argued that we are on the threshold of new opportunities and potential within the politics of Northern Ireland. If these opportunities are seized, we might even be on the verge of developing a radical politics that is prepared to address, the question and discuss the fundamentals of our inherited political systems and beliefs. But then I recognise that both I, and indeed the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, are optimists – and it is that very sense of optimism that keeps us actively participating in politics. Politics is the art of the possible, and the standing challenge is to be imaginative and open to the range of possibilities.

2. The Good Friday Agreement emerged out of a number of new and radical approaches to politics and peacebuliding. Since 1994 these have included:–

• The questioning of majoritarianism as a form of governance; New Electoral systems being implemented to facilitate a more inclusive involvement of diverse political views;
• A questioning of the dogmas of potical ideologies and positions; The active involvement of a wider range of sectoral interests; interest groups and civic society in policy-making; and
• A new sense that procedures and political systems inherited from Westminister (and from her daughter, Dail Eireann) are not the only ones on offer. <.i>Realisation the Northen Ireland was not simply a standard western democratic society that had suffered an aggravated crime wave for thirty years, but was in fact a divided contested society.
  

3. so certainly in Northern Ireland there was a radical new political approach that fashioned the Good Friday Agreement – a Potitics that fashioned the Good Friday Agreement – a politics that was subsequently endorsed by a majority of the electorate both North and South. The question as to whether this agreement opens the way to a new political era in Ireland poses a different set of considerations; not least being influenced by the lack of effective political socialisation of both citizens and the political elite in the potential of the new political framework. There is still too much of a zero-sum game approach of the 'you win' therefore I lose' syndrome in our politics to allow us to speak with any sense of certainty about a new political era in Ireland. The historical cartoon representation of voting for a donkey covered by a particular flag has now been modernised to support for the nationalist agenda – which according to Unionist is always in the ascendant – or the unionist agenda, which according to Republicans still controls large swathes of institutions in our society. We have yet to move beyond the politics of defense, vulnerability and victimhood.

4. However those who are committed to a radical new politics it is now timely to lay the seeds of ideas that might yet become the accepted wisdom. One of the most effective tactics of radical politics is to create and incite support around expectations, not demands; and the greater one's expectations the more it challenges people to achieve them. Unlike demands which as often as not generate anger, expectations can lay basis for a network of support and involvement. So what then are the new opportunities and potential that we can generate expectations around ? One that the Northern Ireland Women's coalition has consistently argued for is the creation of a recognised place for active citizenship.

5. In the study entitled 'Deep Citizenship' Paul Berry Clarke remarked that "Politics is at its worst when there is a single voice, and at its best when there is a multitude of voices in a forum where each can be heard". In addition to the elected Assembly, the Coalition argued for the creation of a Civic Forum in an effort to create the space for even more voices to both listen and be heard. We felt this was particularly important here in the Northern Ireland, where, to a large extent, the same individual politicians had been negotiating with each other over two decades, and in many cases, for longer.

Thus, if we take active citizenship to mean the voluntary participation with ideas and activities that extend the concept of politics from the narrow management of the state, to enabling groups and individuals to share in the fashioning of society and societal relationships, then we can challenge more restricted interpretations of politics and the usage of power. Active citizenship moves people from the passive to the proactive, and in the process can develop skills, capacity and knowledge, as well as engendering a real sense of shared ownership of the political project. This is particularly necessary in a contested society such as Northern Ireland.

However, we are not naïve enough to think that citizenship is automatically inclusive in nature. As women we know how often it happens that notions of citizenship can manage to smuggle real live men into seemingly abstract and innocent universals that nourish political thought. In short we have learned the hard way that for empowerment and inclusion to be meaningful it has to be backed by the practical means to bring them about.

6. It has been argued that Machiavelli did Western politics a disservice by defining politics as the capture and retention of power and the management of the state. If we have learned anything in Northern Ireland over the last 30 years it is the difficulty of disentangling the public and the private. We can relate to the Athenian thinker Solon when he argued that the distinction between private and public can be false – "When evil falls upon public life its scourge invades the private lives of all men. A man who thinks it can be escaped by hiding within the jurisdiction and confines of his own home is not secure…Such public evil vaults over the wall of his courtyard, however high that wall might be and finds him out…"

Thus politics can often go far beyond the boundaries of what might be deemed as legitimate state activity. Indeed it one of the questions set by the Irish Association for this morning's seminar, there is just a nuance of this division, when the question is asked – Is the 'new politics' in Northern Ireland 'real politics' or merely a device to draw protagonists away from the conflict? Is this suggesting that the conflict was not political in nature – and that 'real politics' is a monopoly of elected politicians who abide by a certain set of rules? It is my firm belief drawn on the experience of involvement in the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement that Yeats was wrong in his glorification of the political centre in Ireland.

The centre could not hold because of the inability of essential elements of t to move beyond their inherited certainties – good democrats all no doubt! It was often the foot soldiers on the extremes who moved, and facilitated movement to take place, albeit at different levels and at a range of paces. It was also the organisations, groups and sectoral interests within civic society that provided the Greek chorus of support, while the political cynics and supercilious as often as not played the role of prophets of doom. So my answer to the question posed is that the new politics in Northern Ireland is both real politics and a device to draw protagonists away from political conflict. In addition, thankfully what many of the latter have come to realise is that armed struggle is a limiting factor on effective participatory democracy given the inevitable organisational elitism and doctrinal rigidity that is associated with such struggles. Thus even politically motivated armed struggle limits any prospect of a politics of inclusion and participation.

7. The challenge remains for elected politicians as to whether they can develop a politics of inclusion and participation which allows space for active citizenship. Can traditional party political clientelism either co-exist, or develop in such a way that it can accommodate the concept of citizen rights rather than voter dependency? Can our new politics see the citizen as something other than the ordinary decent voter who votes for them at election time, and then relies on their elected representative to both define and look after their interests until the next election? Unfortunately, the traditionally divisive nature of the macro political systems in Ireland – both North and South – have tended to re-enforce this approach. Indeed, in Northern Ireland one of the concerns the Women's Coalition has had since the re-establishment of the Executive is whether power-sharing would in effect become a means for accommodated clientalism between the largest political forces. We are currently monitoring the situation with interest.

8. Before leaving the issue of active citizenship, I would like to pay tribute to the immense contribution made by many voluntary and issue based groups in the development of some of the most important aspects of the Good Friday Agreement. The genesis of the ideas around Human Rights and Equality issues came from organisations outside of the governments; and many of the political negotiators drew heavily on the expertise of such groups. It was community-based groups working with the Victims of the Troubles who developed much of the wording around the victims of violence and the northern Ireland Women's Coalition that argued and won inclusion of that paragraph on the advice of such groups. Women's organisations also spoke out strongly for a government commitment to the advancement of women in public life.

Similarly, such groups have been actively involved in lobbying for the implementation of aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, as have parallel groups in the South – particularly in terms of the commitment to Human Rights. It is not a matter of saying to community and voluntary groups thank you for the role that you have played in holding together some sort of normality in the country over the past 30 years of violence, but it is now time for you to step aside to leave space for the politicians to return to their traditional role as power brokers. The challenge for any new politics is to develop a variety of places, spaces and even ambiguities within which politics, active citizenship and freedom can be exercised in an inclusive manner.

9. Moving on to the question as to whether a fully inclusive government and established North-South links make it possible to move away from the rigid unionist-nationalist divide in the North and whether there will be a defusing of the partition issue in the South? – the answer to my mind is that there is likely to be more movement in the South than the North in the foreseeable future. Personally, I feel that there was considerable movement away from the partition issue in the South since the mid-1970's, when a mixture of abhorrence of the violence; concern with issues in the Republic, and sheer boredom about the North, resulted in the majority of people only taking a passing interest in developments north of the Border, unless they happened to impinge directly on the South as a result of an overspill of violence.

We have come a long way from the popular anger displayed in the Republic in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in Derry; or when southern political activists of many hues travelled North to join the early Civil Rights marches. If anything many people in the South have become more partitionist in their thinking over the past two decades – seeing Ireland and Irish in terms of the 26 counties. One of the few gestures to the North is the inclusion of a small token representation of Northerners in the Seanad and one Northerner sitting on the National Economic & Social Forum. Having said that, even this small element of tokenism has not been reciprocated in Northern Ireland.

10. Closer to home the unionist-nationalist divide still remains strong. Perhaps one of the saddest developments in recent years is how cultural identity has been used to exacerbate this divide. It is doubtful if either Cuchullan or Douglas Hyde would have recognised the cultural battles that are taking place in their name. Faced with an increasing Irish language and cultural hegemony, Unionists have responded with an inflated Ulster Scots identity, that they police in terms of parity of financial and esteem equity. This is the 'black pig's dyke' defensive mentality in practice. What it in turn reflects is the collective sense of siege and vulnerability of the Unionist community in particular. It reminds us forcibly of the fact that the political dilemma in Ireland is that we are faced with a double minority perspective – a minority of nationalists in Northern Ireland, and a minority of unionists on the island of Ireland.

Ironically, northern nationalists are more concerned with what the British Government is thinking, and northern unionists spend a large proportion of their time looking in apprehension at the Republic. Added to this mix is the spectre of demography, both at local and at regional level in the North, which reinforces the territoriality and the mentality of 'the scalded memory'. The rigid nationalist-unionist divide cannot be overcome by mere force of will, it will require the slow growth in shared vision and hope.

11. Having said this, the Coalition did feel that an important step was taken by the good Friday Agreement in untangling the concepts of citizenship, allegiance and national identity. This is most clearly set out in the initial section on Constitutional Issues. There is a recognition and acceptance of the diversity of the identities and traditions of the people of Northern Ireland, and an acknowledgement that such diversity is linked to national aspirations. There is the provision that both British and Irish citizenship can be held, and indeed can outlive any future change in the constitutional position of the North; and there is the recognition that allegiance may either be to the union with Great Britain or to a sovereign united Ireland.

Thus I would argue that the current controversy over the siting of an Irish passport office in the North is in direct contravention of the open and inclusive approach taken in this section of the Agreement. In essence what this approach offers is the ambiguity which should allow creative and facilitative political thought to create the space for people from both and every tradition in our divided society. A fully inclusive government and the establishment of North-South links may well by a first step in the implementation of the terms of the Agreement, we still need the development of political forces that are committed to the intent of the Agreement, and that are not simply engaged in ongoing negotiation on behalf of their respective nationalist or unionist constituency.

12. In essence it is important that we recognise that politics in Northern Ireland is not only about management of the state, but is about both the creation of a consociational democracy and the management of change. Our civil servants can give us pointers on the former, albeit that their control approach will need to be broadened out, and made both transparent and accountable; we have less role models for the development of a shared state and in the management of change. However, from experience we do know that change will never be managed successfully if politicians

• (a) initially deny the change is taking place;
• (b) contest the need for change; and
• (c) decry the change as a victory for the 'other side'.
  

An alternative, and more effective approach would be that adopted by martin Luther King during the civil rights movement in the United States – first you create a vision of the future; then you disbelieve the prevailing power of the other side; and finally, you believe that your side has already won – it only remains to make the victory a matter of public record. In many ways this strategy was repeated by Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Roelf Meyer who negotiated with Cyril Ramaphosa in the South African situation strongly re-iterated the point that as a political leader whatever you do you should never sell political change as a defeat for your constituency; always highlight the positive elements of change.

13. History tells us that political change is not only possible, but inevitable. It is with this understanding that I hesitate to answer the question as to whether Sinn Féin has sufficiently entered democratic politics to enable it to become part of a Dublin Government? There are those in Government in the Republic whose parties have emerged from 'slightly constitutional' backgrounds – and not only Fianna Fáil or Democratic Left – yet there are few who gainsay their involvement.

Perhaps the political continuum between political violence and constitutional politics is rather too recent, both North and South, for this question to be seen as anything other than patronising. However, clearly this is an issue for individual political parties in the Republic, and indeed for Sinn Féin itself, who I believe would be tactically wrong to go into coalition as a very minor partner, if the past experience of such Coalition partners is to be taken into account.

From the Coalition perspective, however, the fact remains that the political leadership in Sinn Féin did take risks for peace by driving through support for the Good Friday Agreement. They have played an active part in peacebuilding, even though the process of eventually eradicating community-level violence will take time, energy and the development of effective alternatives.

How much more a positive situation are we in today when elected Sinn Féin politicians make their way to Stormont or Dáil Éireann, rather than the scene described by Bowyer Bell in the conclusion to his book 'The Secret Army' in 1970, where he talked about "the invisible army of the Republic marches and counter-marches to martial pipes audible only to the faithful". There is now greater realisation than ever before that the real politik of the next period of time means that the loyalist calculation of '6 into 26 won't go' makes more political and mathematical sense than the Republican Sinn Féin formulation of '6+26=1'.

14. I want to conclude my contribution to this Seminar by citing Gandhi's dictum – 'First they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win'. This may be particularly appropriate for proponents of a new radical politics to remember. In real terms it is often the outraged, and even outrageous, group or individual that has moved forward the principled morality of society, as eventually reflected in political change. We currently have a window of opportunity to exploit the potential of the Good Friday Agreement and to rebuild people's faith in both politics and politicians. For its own reasons, and because of recent controversies in the Republic, the south may also find it timely to join with us in exploring the options for a dynamic political system In the case of Northern Ireland, we have no alternative but to address these issues.

August 2000.

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