History professor hopeful for Northern Ireland

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH History Professor Bernard Porter credits former U.K. Prime Minister John Major for his work on the peace process in Ireland.

"Almost none of us in Britain wanted to hold on to Northern Ireland. We didn't want the bloody place!" exclaimed visiting History Professor Bernard Porter —who is from England—when offering his views on the problem of Northern Ireland. "I mean, there was money pouring into it, you know? It was a drain on the exchequer."

This week, Porter, "sick and tired of Irish violence," along with the rest of the world, got to see Northern Ireland begin the process of self-rule and develop closer ties with the Republic of Ireland. New agreements strengthened the authority of the new multiparty cabinet in the English province, which includes members of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army led by Gerry Adams, and the Ulster Unionists, who represent the majority Protestants. The Sinn Fein gained infamy as the terrorist group that attempted to scare the Protestant majority into leaving the British administration and unifying with Ireland.

The violence in Northern Ireland has deep historical roots stretching back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Scots came to Ireland and "just overwhelmed the native population at that time and settled mainly in [the northern part] of Ireland," according to Porter. The native population was mainly Catholic, while the invading Scots were Protestant. The British government later ruled Ireland for centuries, tightening its control in 1916 in response to riots in Dublin. Although Southern Ireland was given self-rule in 1921, a civil war broke out. At the close of the war, Northern Ireland was allowed to vote on self-rule from Britain. "The majority of Northern Ireland didn't want it, but some people felt that simple demographics would go against them in the end, partly because the Protestants used birth control and the Catholics didn't," Porter said.

Last year, with the assistance of U.S Senator George Mitchell, the Good Friday Accords were passed by both parties, beginning the peace process. Porter attributed the success of the recent accords to the work of former U.K. Prime Minister John Major, current U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Irish Prime Minister Betty Ahern, and Blair's Secretary for Irish Affairs Mo Mowlaw, "a wonderful woman in all kinds of ways, feisty, brave," Porter said. "Very brave people, you have to be brave to be moderate in politics, you might quite literally get your head blown off, I think. I have huge admiration for those people."

However, there may have been another, stronger factor for peace: "I think probably just the exhaustion after 30 years of a terrible society there," Porter said. "Barbed wire all over the place, children get killed, absolutely ghastly. And I think what turned the tables in many ways were two or three particularly grotesque IRA bombings both in Northern Ireland and in mainland Britain."

But Porter has questions about how successful the new cabinet will be, considering that Catholics and Protestants are guaranteed fixed, equal representation, which was the main product of the accords. "I can't think of any other country in the world where either a majority party or a majority coalition doesn't do what it likes, and it's a very unusual situation," Porter said. "How that will work in practice, I just don't know."

He also was unsure what the new intergovernmental councils might accomplish, except in the area of security. "Security and terrorism has been a pointed issue between the British and Irish governments for some time for the simple reason that it used to be possible—it's not now—for terrorists to set off bombs in Northern Ireland and then go to the South to hide," Porter said. "Then they would just go back to set off another bomb. Understandably, the British didn't like that too much. What other things these councils are meant to deal with, I don't know."

Asked if there will always be split leadership in North Ireland as it assumes a degree of self-government akin to an American state, or whether one leader can emerge as dominant, Porter responded without certainty. "[Ulster Unionist leader David] Trimble is a very impressive figure, I think," he said. "He has come from the far right of his party, and he has tried to lead these people towards the middle. That's a much more difficult thing for any politician to do than to simply whip up right-wing enthusiasm. I think that is leadership, and he has really shown that."

"On the other side is Gerry Adams, and I don't know about him yet," Porter continued. "I think—in common with a lot of English people—I really do distrust him. Trimble was a dogmatic Ulster Unionist, but he was never a man of violence. Gerry Adams was killing people. And we in Britain have never been happy with him, but you know, on the other hand, to have accepted him as a sort of almost equal partner with Mr. Trimble in these talks says a lot for the tolerance of the government."

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