She turned down the bed at the Jurys Inn in Belfast, a Protestant maid with a sweet smile and a certain opinion about why her homeland was known around the world for nothing so much as trouble.
“It’s the fellas, you know,” she said. “It’s the fellas who want the fighting. The girls, they want no part of it at all.”
It was a new resentment heard in a country of old and persistent resentments. It has always been Catholic against Protestant. She viewed it as boys against boys. The girls wanted no part of it.
And sure enough, it’s the boys who are sounding the harshest opinions as the campaign begins toward the most compelling election in modern times, the referendum on whether Northern Ireland will move toward peace or brace for more war.
Boys like the Rev. Ian Paisley, the demagogic minister and political leader whose modern church building in Belfast houses a medieval mind. Paisley’s influence has waned since his heyday at the height of Northern Irish violence in the 1970s, but he still has a constituency and he is rallying it for one last stand against peace.
The historic agreement reached on Good Friday must be approved by voters in Great Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland. If any one of those constituencies rejects it in voting on May 22, it will die.
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This is to be a hold-your-breath election. The first poll taken after the peace agreement suggests that the campaign for approval starts out in good shape. In Britain, 81 percent support the agreement. In the Irish republic, 61 percent voice approval. And at ground zero, in Northern Ireland, 73 percent say they will vote in favor of peace.
By American political standards, poll numbers like that a month before an election would signal a lock. But this will be a different election dynamic than anything seen in the states. In a normal campaign, you appeal to the middle. You fashion themes that appeal to many and alienate few.
Political operatives, here’s a question: How do you wage a campaign in which every good argument for victory is also a good argument for defeat?
That’s the situation facing everyone attempting to sell people on the peace agreement. It’s not enough to argue that the agreement holds the opportunity to end a war that has taken 3,200 lives. There are still too many resentments.
Leaders have to argue that they won, or at least that they didn’t sell out to the people who for decades have been killing their friends and family.
And so, David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, which commands about half the Protestant vote in Northern Ireland, is arguing that the Irish Republicans have no grounds to claim any kind of victory from this agreement. On Saturday, the 800 members of his party’s council will vote on whether to support the agreement.
“For all their rhetoric, Sinn Fein/IRA have gained nothing in their efforts to bring about Irish unification,” Trimble said Thursday.
On that score, though, Trimble will find agreement in an unlikely place. His argument that Sinn Fein has nothing to show from the deal is precisely the argument being made by the most radical Republicans who seek to defeat it. They defected from Sinn Fein ranks during negotiations. They tried an unsuccessful coup against Adams. Now they want to kill the agreement, and their argument is that Sinn Fein and the IRA have gained nothing in their efforts to bring about Irish unification. David Trimble has become their most effective advocate.
For his part, Adams has been telling Sinn Fein supporters that they can declare victory because British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed Trimble to make many more concessions than Trimble wanted to.
It’s hard to find two people with more different motivations than Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, but on that score, they are singing the same tune.
Paisley refused to be part of the peace talks, and tried to goad Trimble’s party to walk out of the talks at every sign of concession. Now Paisley seeks to pluck off Trimble’s supporters by wondering aloud how Trimble could be pushed by Tony Blair to make so many concessions on a deal that will release scores of convicted IRA prisoners within a year.
You wonder if, even in a land with such a fine oral tradition as Ireland, it’s time to pipe down. On paper, there is hardly anything in the peace agreement to alarm anyone. On paper, voting in favor of this agreement is as easy as voting in favor of motherhood.
It gives Northern Ireland an elected government, something it has not had for a quarter of a century. It has rules for that new government that safeguard against a tyranny by the majority. It has rules that will force Catholic and Protestant politicians to seek consensus.
It guarantees the right to free political thought, freedom of religion, freedom to live where one wants to live and equal opportunity in the workplace.
And it says that when the time comes that it becomes evident a majority of the people of Northern Ireland might want to be independent of Great Britain, there will be a vote. You’d never tell from the rhetoric on both sides, but that day is a long way off. Not just because Catholics still make up slightly less than 40 percent of the population of Northern Ireland, but because many Catholics in Northern Ireland actually enjoy being a part of Great Britain.
You wonder what would happen if the leaders in Northern Ireland simply talked about an agreement based on freedom of expression and freedom of religion. Ah, well, boys will be boys.