Clinton's Ulster odyssey

By Gavin Bowd
The organisers of United States President Bill Clinton's last official visit to Northern Ireland did not fail to provide the media with telling symbols. Clinton was to address 8,000 people in the Odyssey Sports and Culture Centre, Belfast, a new building which gave concrete form to the "peace dividend." The ice rink was melted for the President's meeting, just as, it was hoped, the peace process, frozen by disputes over decommissioning and policing, would thaw. And the name of the centre was welcome material for the politicians' speech writers. For Seamus Mallon, nationalist deputy first minister of the province, Bill Clinton had been a major companion on Ireland's "odyssey" towards lasting peace. However, on contemplating these symbols, it could be wondered if Clinton's role in the peace process has in fact been mythic, and if the Irish road to peace will indeed take on epic proportions.
Certainly, it can be argued that President Clinton and his envoy, Senator George Mitchell, were crucial in bringing about the current uneasy cease-fire in Northern Ireland. The United States of America, with 45 million inhabitants claiming an often hazy Irish descent, was a preferred interlocutor for the government of the Irish Republic and for Sinn Fein/IRA. By granting visas, five years ago, to republican leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Clinton demonstrated the rewards for those serious about peace. Bill Clinton was the first US president to visit Northern Ireland, and last week's flying visit was his third. Clinton, it is argued, by cajoling the different parties in the dispute, helped the Good Friday Agreement become a reality.
However, Clinton's role hardly merits the adulation which he received in Ireland. The peace process was initiated in 1993, by a Conservative British prime minister, John Major, and the now-disgraced Irish Taoiseach (Premier) Albert Reynolds. The current uneasy peace, with Martin McGuinness as Ulster's minister of education, is unthinkable without the considerable concessions made by the majority of the Unionist community.
What Tony Blair calls "the Clinton magic" was not decisive. The peace process is now in a very delicate phase, and may be blocked indefinitely. Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) are demanding the full implementation of the Patten Report on policing, which, among other things, will entail ridding the Royal Ulster Constabulary of its symbols of Britishness. The demilitarisation of Ulster is sought, notably in the "bandit country" of South Armagh. At the same time, the IRA is refusing to cooperate on arms decommissioning. It is in this situation that Clinton's most recent intervention must be judged. His itinerary sent out quite unambiguous signals. First of all, he landed in Dublin, rather than on UK territory. He then visited the border town of Dundalk, "stronghold" of the extremist Real IRA, perpetrators of the Omagh outrage in 1998. The trip to Dundalk demonstrated Clinton's hostility to terrorism. At the same time, in Dublin and Belfast, Clinton could be seen enjoying a pint of Guinness with republican leaders. His long-suffering wife, Hillary, was even pictured kissing Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. In his Odyssey speech, Clinton called for decommissioning, but appeared to put it on the same level as the reduction of the British Army's presence. Unionists and Republicans had to "jump together." In this, Clinton was close to the thinking of the political wing of the IRA. Such an intervention was scarcely going to reassure the Unionist community, the majority of which seems tired of concessions for nothing.
Clinton did grant an audience to the Democratic Unionists, hostile to the Agreement, but the body language indicated a wide gulf of opinion. For David Trimble, this visit was an irritant, an unwelcome interference which merely emboldened his nationalist opponents.
Why did Clinton have to make this visit? Perhaps as a mark of gratitude to the Irish New Yorkers who voted for his wife. Perhaps to bask in adulation for what was presented as his one foreign affairs success.
Clinton's legacy would not provoke sniggers: instead, he had brought peace to a benighted corner of the planet. But this process, whose paternity is debatable, is far from over. Elsewhere, the peace brokered in Bosnia, Kosovo and Palestine is either uneasy or under intolerable strain. The last day of Clinton's visit was eclipsed by news of the election of George W Bush. The valedictory praise heaped on the outgoing occupant of the White House suggested fears that American foreign policy may forsake Northern Ireland. A cynic might say that the incoming president, who has never visited Europe, could not tell Belfast from Berlin. There is no "ethnic" motivation for Bush's engagement in the peace process: he is from a WASP ("White Anglo-Saxon Protestant") tradition more favourable to the British. Northern Ireland has little strategic importance, and certainly no oil. Meanwhile, the "odyssey" continues, with a whole forest of symbols for Ulster's tribes to pick through. If and when the peace process reaches a satisfactory destination, American President or no, the true role of William Jefferson Clinton can be soberly assessed.
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Decommissioning the peace process 5 - 11 August 1999
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