Big Ben isn’t working. The massive four-faced Victorian timepiece that bonged four times an hour from atop of the Queen Elizabeth Tower overlooking Westminster, the Thames, is as iconic a symbol of London as the red buses, the Tower of London, the Underground and umbrellas as you can get.
It hasn’t been working for months.
Along with the rest of the palace of Westminster, where the 650 members of parliament from England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland gather, it’s undergoing a huge renovation. Estimates say the work on Westminster could take up to 30 years to finish, and could cost as much as £5 billion (Dh25.2 billion) to complete.
Westminster Palace is also where the House of Lords gathers and offers sober second thought. It’s the only Upper House in the world where there are more members — 800 — than elected MPs, and it’s made up of “Lords Spiritual and Temporal”. It includes 24 bishops, 92 hereditary peers whose ancestors were appointed, some going as far back to 1014, senior law lords, and appointees of all major British political parties.
Most of them haven’t worked in months, attendance figures attest.
In the House of Commons, where the Conservative party of Prime Minister Theresa May is propped up only with the support of 10 MPs of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) — and a £1 billion inducement for their critical votes — there is but one order of business that matters to the British: The process of Brexit.
And that hasn’t quite worked as May had planned. But for the citizens of Northern Ireland, there is another pressing matter: The process of governing their own affairs through the Northern Ireland assembly.
That hasn’t worked for months either.
After Monday, May’s government will have to decide sooner or later that it’s time to pull the plug on eight months of political stalemate in the province and political negotiations between Sinn Fein, the largest Republican party that represents those voters who seek a united Ireland, and the DUP, the largest Unionist party who represent voters who want the British-ruled province to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Talk about playing with a rigged deck. You just know how that’s going to work out.
Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought about an end to more than three decades of political violence in the province, the Northern Ireland Assembly, in effect a regional parliament sitting at Stormont just outside south Belfast, shares a power-sharing executive, or cabinet. The agreement also included new cross-border institutions with the Republic of Ireland to the south of the divided island, with the Dublin government that runs the 26 counties there agreeing to drop its constitutional claim to the six counties that form Northern Ireland.
The deal ended Europe’s longest-lasting and bitter terrorist conflict that claimed more than 3,600 lives since the late 1960’s.
The last power-sharing administration collapsed when Sinn Fein walked away over a green energy rebate scheme, which was the brainchild of Arlene Foster — the leader of the DUP set the scheme up and is ultimately responsible for its collapse. That cost Northern Ireland taxpayers £500 million, and it is Foster now who dictates the policies and politics of the 10 DUP MPs May relies on. James Brokenshield, the May minister with responsibilities for Northern Ireland, has been trying to get both Northern Ireland parties to reach a new power-sharing deal. There were new assembly elections in March, the Westminster general election in June, a whole series of talks, and nothing has managed to break the deadlock.
Sinn Fein are adamant that the new power-sharing government deals with language rights, which means that Gaelic, one of the 24 official languages of the European Union, must be afforded equal status as English, as it is in the Republic of Ireland. The DUP is having none of it, and the stalemate continues.
So, power-sharing isn’t working just now.
In the past two weeks, Brokenshield has threatened to suspend the £49,500 annual salaries of the assembly members to entice the sides to reach a deal. That hasn’t worked. Brokenshield has given until Monday for the Northern Ireland parties to reach a deal, and then the Dublin and London governments will offer a joint proposal. Both governments are trying to frame a deal that would avoid the prospect of direct-rule from Westminster. As far as Sinn Fein are concerned, given the DUP’s role propping up the May government, direct rule would simply be DUP rule.
And that’s not going to work for Republican voters.
By November 8, Brokenshield must draw up a budget for Northern Ireland, and not able to manage finances is the one sure sign of direct rule.
Now, that seems inevitable.
Slowly, though, the peace process that has been in place since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement is taking place — if simply because the province now has a second generation who no longer know what it like to see armed soldiers in the streets, bombing and shootings, terrorists and terrorised. Children from both sides have mixed together, played games, and sat in the same classrooms. Young adults have mixed in the same bars and restaurants, grown up in cities and towns without security gates and constant body searches and pat-downs, and know a little more about each other.
There might even be an element of trust.
A month ago, with little fanfare and hardly a mention outside of the province, one of the oldest “peace walls” separating Catholic and Protestant communities in Belfast, was dismantled. “Peace walls” were steel and brick structures that were erected from 1969 onwards to keep the antagonists apart. They cut through cities, leaving deep scars that prevented both sides from mixing, meeting, marching and murderous intent. This particular “peace wall” cut off Springfield Road from Springfield Avenue in west Belfast, and had been in place since 1989. During the three decades of dark days, more than one-third of the 3,600 deaths took place in this general area of the city.
Seamus Corr, the project coordinator behind the wall’s removal said last month at the time: “The removal of the Springfield Avenue barrier is a significant step forward for the local community. This is about more than just changing the physical look of this area. It shows that communities are willing, with support, to work towards positive change.”
He also noted that it was neither a beginning nor end, but rather a “significant milestone on the journey towards a positive future”.
There are still another 108 peace walls in place in Northern Ireland.
That’s where the real work needs to be done.
