Peter Mandelson is the British minister for Northern Ireland and a favorite to become foreign secretary if the Labor Party wins the next election, which is expected next year. He was the party’s campaign manager when Labor won the last election, in 1996, in a landslide, and is considered Prime Minister Tony Blair’s closest adviser. An Oxford graduate, he has played a major role in shaping the “Third Way” philosophy, somewhere between the Thatcherism of the Conservative Party and the left-wing policies of earlier Labor leaders. Mandelson’s job now is implementing the peace process in Northern Ireland, after the Good Friday agreement in 1998, and the reinstitution of self-rule and a power-sharing government. He was interviewed while in Chicago recently to speak to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Q: The news from Northern Ireland seems to be a litany of one step forward, one step back. Is real progress being made?
A: There has been a transformation since the signing of the Good Friday agreement. We have cease-fires that are largely intact, a peace which, though not perfect, is enduring. We have political institutions working, a new form of inclusive government in Northern Ireland. There is an executive (government) of elected politicians in which every shade of political opinion is now represented. There is a reform of the criminal justice system.
But we have an infant democracy, a set of political institutions that are fragile. If these changes lose the backing of one [religious] tradition or another, then the peace process will stop. Therefore, the spirit of compromise has to be maintained. This means people stretching to recognize and accommodate the needs of others. You don’t emerge from Northern Ireland’s history expecting all those tensions and differences to evaporate. We’re in transition in Northern Ireland from one era to another. We haven’t yet arrived. Dissident Republicans are determined to continue with violence and terrorism, or loyalist dissidents are determined to feud among themselves.
Q: What do you think of the Irish Republican Army’s putting away its weapons in arsenals open to international inspection?
A: That commitment was important, the statement they made to put their arms completely and verifiably beyond use and to create confidence by opening a number of arms dumps to independent inspection. This enables us to repair the rupture that took place earlier in the year, when Unionists’ expectations were dashed. They had gone into the executive to make politics work and found no movement on the Republican side in addressing the issue of arms. That shattered confidence in the peace process, and I had to suspend government institutions to avoid them crashing to the ground, which would have been the consequence if the Unionists had walked out (from the government). Now for confidence to be maintained and for the process to continue, we need a reinspection of those arms dumps this autumn.
Q: What is the British government doing to speed this process along?
A: We have committed ourselves to normalize security arrangements in Northern Ireland. Obviously, the constraint on us is the continued threat from the Republican dissidents. We’ve seen recently, from the bombings and other outrages, that that threat remains very potent. Nonetheless, we have been scaling back the presence of the army. For the first time, we have no British army battalion based in Belfast. The police are reforming security arrangements, closing their holding and interrogation centers.
Q: What can the United States do, either officially or unofficially, to help this process? Or conversely, are there things we shouldn’t do?
A: I’d like the administration to continue to encourage people to move toward agreement and compromise. What I don’t want to see is any suggested solution that meets the needs of only one side of the community. Just as in the Middle East, everyone’s needs must be addressed. There’s another very serious point. The dissident Republicans are a splinter of the movement, but one that poses a potentially lethal threat. Regarding their fundraising in the United States, I want to see people of all political persuasions turn their back on them, keep their hands firmly in their pockets. We will be looking to the American administration to see what action can be taken legally to discourage that fundraising.
Q: So you fear the Irish-American community still may have the power and inclination to upset the peace process?
A: Irish America needs to understand there is no elected party in Ireland, north or south, that supports these dissidents. They pose a direct threat to peace. They have an ability to return Northern Ireland to the days of violence that drove so many people out. The dissidents can turn many young people in Northern Ireland once again into exiles. This is what I want Irish America to set its face against.
Q: What legal action can block this support?
A: [The U.S. administration should ] specify that splinter group (known as the `Real IRA’) as an illegal terrorist organization that shouldn’t be supported anywhere in the United States.
Q: What about vigilante-style punishment beatings rather than turning lawbreakers over to the police? There seem to be about 100 each year. Is that a major problem?
A: There’s residual violence on both sides of the community. We’ve seen recently how loyalist paramilitary organizations fighting a turf war among themselves can spark violence. We’ve talked about dissident Republicans who want to disrupt the peace process. There’s also Republican paramilitary assaults, as well as loyalist, which attempt to bring their own rough justice to the community, with paramilitaries acting as prosecutors, witnesses, juries and judge. The consequence is a lawlessness and lack of respect for decent civic values. People who voted for the Good Friday agreement see that these unacceptable aspects of Northern Ireland society persist. This breeds a cynicism in the community.
Q: Is this what the police reform is all about?
A: Very much so. To defeat paramilitarism requires the unity of the community. We’ll only have a truly effective police service if it’s representative of the community. At the moment, the police service is unrepresentative, with a 9-1 imbalance of Protestants over Catholics. You can’t have a situation persisting in which one side of the community feels that the police service is owned by the other. That’s why we’re going to bring about the most radical transformation of a police service that’s been undertaken in any developed country. We are going to insist on 50-50 recruitment of Protestants and Catholics, using measures that go beyond any program of affirmative action ever seen in the United States.
Q: Are Catholics reluctant to serve in the police? Do they fear retaliation?
A: The IRA killed Catholic members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the former police force) to discourage others from joining. It was a cruel retribution, so not surprisingly, they were discouraged from joining. The police service was perceived by nationalists and Catholics as an arm of Protestant unionism with Britain. Well, that’s unacceptable. The police service doesn’t exist to serve an elite of either side. It’s there to protect the community as a whole.
Q: How’s the power sharing going?
A: We got off to a shaky start. I think the Unionist ministers were taken aback by the appearance of high-handedness of ministers from Sinn Fein (the IRA’s political affiliate). I think that, the second time around, following the suspension, everyone is on a more even footing. There’s a greater recognition of the sensitivities that exist on all sides.
Having to suspend the executive was a very difficult decision. But not only were we able to take forward the decommissioning of arms, but all the institutions are on a firmer footing. This is not to say that we’re not going to experience terrible bumps in the road. There’s a fragility in Unionism that poses a danger. Unionist leader David Trimble’s position is difficult, as we saw in his party’s decision to return to the executive after the suspension. He only got a 53% majority, and confidence remains shaky. If people don’t recognize that, then we’ll run the risk that the Unionists again will have their faith in the Good Friday agreement damaged, possibly destroyed, and Trimble’s position will be destroyed with it.
That’s why this process cannot survive with the backing of one tradition alone. It needs both of them.
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This is an edited transcript.
