BELFAST TALKS

Talks between political parties have started again in Belfast.

About how local devolution of political powers can be made to work.
From a British point of view devolution seems a good idea. That is what they have in Britain, supreme power rests in the Monarchy and power is devolved down from Monarchy through the Houses of Lords and  Commons. To , as they say, the common people - eventually.

People find it  hard to believe this is the British system of power sharing in Britain itself but that is the way it is. Devolution from the source of power in the Monarchy down through the Lords and the Commons , the latter  representing, of course, the common folk.  Devolution  is a normal part of the  British  system under which we are ruled. In Britain this  devolution works, even though it is  not a voluntary system but  was imposed by force through hundreds of years and many think there is nothing particularly wrong in it. One disadvantage of the system is that if Monarch, army and what is called "the upper class" ( nowadays the state Church is not as influential  as it used to be)combined they could  take over power without breaking the basic  laws which are the British government system, or  constitution.  A  British commentator on the realities of this devolution  wrote that  this devolution of power from monarchy down to the representatives of the people  seems to open the possibility of power being  taken over from the top.  However, he adds reassuringly, there is a kind of gentleman's agreement that this will not happen!

Like the safeguard   mentioned by a character  in the BBC series  Yes (Prime) Minister ,  against any abuse  in the bank of England :  Really one chap doesn't let down other chaps in the City…..a  safeguard which we in Ireland who are democrats rather than monarchists  consider insufficient for anything.

So devolution  of powers from an already devolved government in London  down to  the even more devolved  one in Northern Ireland seems normal within the system but there are  problems there too. The Irish area of devolved government was carefully carved out in the nineteen twenties in order to be ruled and able to be ruled by, and only by, one  unchangeable party favourable to union with Britain.  This was done not only when imperial powers were doing much the same in the Middle East but when Irish nationalists and churches and many other  people in Ireland thought that belonging to an empire, to The Empire, the most prosperous  of European ones,  was a good thing. Even Nationalists had   fought  and  died for empire.

But empires dissolve and new ideas  about government arise from  the dust where they have been lying  not at all  forgotten by those who believe less  in being governed than in governing themselves.

One group of  people who are influential in the present  political talks in Belfast still hold on to the idea that empire brings strength and  government  dominated forever by one party in a small area specially carved out  for it is still possible ; another set of people believe that there cannot ever be good government - and good government is what the talks should be about - while the shape of that selfishly constructed political unit  remains as it is, part of a Province which was  given the name of the whole province , to be ruled over for ever  by  one unchangeable party , its unchangeableness assured by various devices which have in modern times become very  - but not completely - unpopular as undemocratic and offensive.  

 
Whom do we expect to be talking to each other in present  political talks in Belfast then ? People who say  good government is possible by some powers of the already internally devolved British government being devolved into an artificially devised Irish situation on the one hand , and  on the other hand people who say that if good government is to be had , the political shape of the area  to be governed has to be changed.

 Devolved government  in  Ireland was enforced, adjusted, re-adjusted  and  mended - at one period it seems there was  a new arrangement of it in N.Ireland once every two years or so - one might say all those failed experiments prove that  democrats  took devolution by successive downward steps and even diminishing powers as a serious  possibility to lessen the worst enormities of the system but from which we could progress towards a democratic solution.   

If another  interim repair to the system  is made this  time it will  need to be fair, reasonable, practical and constructively temporary. Negotiators  are intelligent enough to look at this reality if we insist that they do . They need not be  split by false promises and other government-generated nonsense including financial inducements.  

The  arrangements we make if  this present one fails will have to be definitive  and radical.   

We cannot keep trying yet another one, and another one and another one for much longer.  

You don't, as many of our fellow citizens might say, keep hoping, however long you keep trying, to gather figs from thistles.

Or grapes from thorns ( or thrones?).