Hope on Ulster's Political Fringes

...Essentially, there are two schools of thought on the matter...

...The Peace People maintain that these and similar police powers merely undermine respect for the law, that in the long run they hinder rather than advance efforts to establish a stable society...

...Once armed with carefully reasoned, widely approved findings, it will assume the role of another lobby against the Act in its present form...

...But contributors to the pamphlets include an impressive array of Ulster's top legal minds and leading politicans, like Labor's Lord Gardiner, who chaired the first conference...

...To date the bipartisan undertaking cannot point to any tangible results...

...Yet as is true of the first two, '' nonpartisan" would be a more correct term...

...It also permits arrests without warrants, the holding of one-judge/no-jury trials for accused terrorists, a heavy reliance on uncorroborated "supergrass" testimony, and the use of dubious interrogation techniques...

...Or, if one prefers social science jargon, the North has so far failed to conceptualize an approach toward a solution of its problems...

...It believes it has a responsibility to serve if elected to the Ulster Assembly (the two mainstream Catholic parties have refused to take their seats), and it recognizes Westminster as one of the actual—if not rightful—powers it has to deal with...

...An example is the Community of the Peace People...

...Although none of the reconciliation groups has at this point actually embraced a constitutional course, several are showing an increased proclivity to work within the political framework, or at least to speak in political terms...

...As one might expect, the CAJ's tone has been decidedly low-key...

...And the organization regularly sponsors reports by various experts outlining ways for the two Irelands to work together with themselves...

...Defining themselves by their stances on what may be the only absolutely intractable problem in Ulster, the legitimacy of the border, they have tended to ignore more immediate economic, social and political concerns...

...Consequently, despite holding to the typical Loyalist antipathy for power sharing, it emphasizes the poverty of Ulster's working classes as a basic problem that politicians must address...

...Hugh Smyth's Progressive Unionist Party, pursuing a different path, has incorporated certain socialist economic theories into traditional Unionist politics...

...The EPA grants security forces far greater powers of search and seizure in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom...

...Instead, the foremost concern of this "secular, socialist party" is reconstruction of the entire Ulster community through job creation, increased civil liberties (including a bill of rights), better housing, integrated education, equal rights for women, improved health services, increased welfare benefits, and better care for the aged...

...Born out of the appalling wholesale sectarian bloodshed of the mid-1970s, the Peace People has become one of the North's best-known and most successful reconciliationist networks, thanks primarily to the philosophy of radical, Gandhian nonviolence that it adopted soon after its founding...

...Political parties in Northern Ireland have historically been nothing more than arms of the battling sectarian communities...

...In fact, one of the significant aspects of the still minimally effective operations of all three groups has been the willingness of many who have been alienated from politics to reconsider their position...

...Indeed, its manifesto for the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly elections did not mention the border issue...

...Moreover, unlike the SDLP and Sinn Fein, the WP is committed to operating within the system...

...The so-called reconciliationists hold that a political/ constitutional settlement is impossible until basic social issues—such as the province's relative deprivation, widespread fear of political violence, and sectarian inequity—are substantially ameliorated...

...The Nationalist ranks, meanwhile, have been broken by the Workers' Party (WP), formerly the Republican Clubs/Workers' Party...

...The colloquy attracted prominent figures in public and private transportation from Ulster and the Republic alike...

...By refusing to pay more than lip service to nonconstitutional issues, these principal parties have extended Northern Ireland's religious and social divisions into its political life...

...Through a series of thoroughly researched and well-written position papers, the organization has taken its message to Westminster...

...The activist leaders, for their part, by over-idealistically steering clear of the political arena, have relegated themselves and their generally excellent community organizations to a dream world of untenable and unheeded proposals...

...This, plus the sharply focused nature of the CAJ's activities and a firm commitment to moderation, adds to the probability that it will have an impact in London's halls of power before long...

...The polarized atmosphere has left politicians, whether Catholic Nationalist or Protestant Unionist, in a quagmire...

...In a related move, several ranking members of the Peace People have been instrumental in founding and furthering the work of the Campaign for the Administration of Justice (CAJ...

...Nevertheless, after long and heated internal debate, the group decided in recent years to lobby for certain political changes...

...Thus both the Official Unionist Party and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party favor devolved, or autonomous, government for the province, but reject any "power sharing" scheme that would grant to the Catholics either weighted representation or veto power...

...The major Catholic alignments, the relatively moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) and the Irish Republican Army's political wing, Sinn Fein, have not strayed from the Nationalist/Republican gospel of regarding a united Ireland as the only acceptable solution to Ulster's difficulties...

...Constitutionalists are dominant in most academic circles, political parties and paramilitary forces...

...Specifically, it seeks to liberalize Ulster's security laws by repealing or revising the Emergency Provisions Act (EPA...

...To be sure, it would be irresponsible to imply that a solution to Northern Ireland's "troubles" is on the horizon...

...Since about 1980, though, small breakaway factions on both sides have begun to offer some alternative...

...A different sort of enterprise is Cooperation North...

...For while it avoids siding with either the Unionists or the Nationalists, it certainly does try to influence the political process...

...terrorist acts of death and destruction had suggested...

...Other Coop North projects include an annual "Working Together" competition, in which students aged 12-25 from North and South submit proposals for increased cross-border and cross-community cooperation...

...At times the WP is heavy on Marxist rhetoric, causing some to be leery about the promise its adherents say it offers...

...Historically, the gulf between the two has been bridged only by the pejorative attacks flung across it...

...To say that the province of 1.5 million people remains profoundly divided is to restate the painfully obvious...

...Therefore they place a premium on grass-roots activities aimed at promoting intra- and inter-community cohesion and peace...

...As if to prove the point, sectarian terrorism is once more on the increase, and many fear that the province is on the brink of yet another wave of paramilitary "actions...

...The CAJ's major function is to foster legal research, with the object of reaching first an internal and eventually a community-wide consensus on how to go about changing the EPA...

...Perhaps this also accounts for the slight progress that is apparent on the stormy political front itself...

...Its professional, extensively documented, pragmatic economic reports contain the kind of analysis that legislators and bureaucrats in London and Dublin, if not in Belfast, are bound to take note of...

...Given the intransigence of both Catholic and Protestant radical elements and the pervasive sense of resignation among the general population, that remains a long way off...

...As a result, it has not been above addressing demands to London...

...But there can be little question that along with the Protestant breakaway groups it represents a modest movement toward a broader, less divisive politics...

...At best, one can take limited heart from the indications that more and more people of good will are working within the system to mitigate Ulster's agony...

...This attempts to bring together Ulstermen from both sides of the political/ reconciliationist split—academics, barristers, probation officers, social workers, political activists, and peace "operatives...

...Like the Peace People and the CAJ, Coop North claims to be "nonpoliti-cal...

...Founded in Dublin in 1979, with offices in Belfast and New York as well, Coop North underwrites a variety of cross-border activrespect to tourism, agriculture, energy, trade, and similar vital areas of mutual concern...

...The Protestant Unionist/Loyalist parties have never budged from the belief that Ulster should always be British...

...To an extent going beyond any other group on the scene, the WP reflects a departure from local custom...

...The members of the other camp, the constitutionalists, take exactly the opposite tack: Political issues are at the crux of Northern Ireland's "troubles," they insist, and without a constitutional arrangement that will satisfy both the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority, peace and social progress will remain unachievable...

...It has held three conferences and published a series of pamphlets ranging from a "how to" brochure on bringing complaints against the police to studies of the emergency security provisions ities, such as the meeting held last September in Belfast on the common problems and potential of transportation facilities in both parts of Ireland...

...Should that happen, the latest string of positive developments could, like so many before, drown in the very blood of the land...

...It is true to its roots in supporting eventual reunification of Ireland, but that is not its raison d'etre...

...In the last few years, however, there has been some evidence that the chasm is slowly narrowing...

...Reconciliationists are to be found largely among neighborhood associations, social activists, peace groups, and religious organizations...

...From the outset, its membership and its literature have fairly bristled with a dislike and distrust of all things political...

...In the Protestant camp, the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party advocates an independent state in Ulster, and believes it could be governed under conditions that would satisfy everyone...

...And since arriving in Ulster this past fall to study the situation first-hand, I have encountered a greater number of hopeful initiatives by responsible individuals on both sides than the headlines reporting the latest Marvin Overby, a new contributor, is currently studying the Irish "troubles" on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship...

...What is remarkable, nonetheless, is that Ulsterites have yet to agree on even the fundamental elements of any sort of positive change...

...Officials and professors decry what they see as the naivete of the grass-roots-ers, who in turn accuse their critics of opportunism, sectarianism, or simply being out of touch with the people...