Topic 4

Establishing acceptable negotiation arrangements

In the Northern Ireland peace process there was a period of twenty-two months between the announcement of the paramilitary ceasefires and the beginning of formal negotiations. Even then one of the bigger parties, Sinn Féin, was not involved and when it later became involved, two other parties, the DUP and UKUP withdrew. This itself is an indication of how difficult it is to create a format for negotiations with which the parties will feel comfortable. They are each concerned that the arrangements for negotiation may favour their opponents. They will often set preconditions to ensure that their interests will be protected, while their opponents may have their own preconditions. In Northern Ireland the protagonists were manoeuvring to establish arrangements for negotiation which did not weaken their own position. In the end not every party was willing to take part in the arrangements which were worked out.

Dodds, Mag Uidhir, Barnes and Kent describe the different concerns of the parties and the probable impact of different proposals. The issues mainly revolve around 3 questions:

who should be involved?

how should they be represented?

should there be any preconditions about the agenda, or about specific commitments or actions participants have to make before they can be involved in negotiation?

An election process was used which gave legitimacy to the participation of the parties but the actual form of the elections was chosen to ensured an inclusive process with a broad range of groups.

Exercise 1

1. Read the extracts below.

2. Individually list aspects of the proposals for talks about which there were disagreements. (10 minutes)

3. You may wish to present your conclusions in a chart or diagram that demonstrates how the different issues relate to each other. Can they all be traced back to a basic problem? (10 minutes)

Exercise 2

One aspect about which there was disagreement was how inclusive the talks should be - i.e. should small parties be included? The DUP favoured a format that would only involve bigger parties. The government eventually implemented a scheme that included very small parties.

1. In small groups identify the arguments used to back each position, based on the extracts and your own judgement: e.g. self-interest? justice and fairness? efficiency? necessity? others? (10 minutes)

2. Assess the validity of the arguments. (15 minutes)

Exercise 3

Another issue was the participation of parties associated with paramilitary groups. The government and unionists argued that a party with links to a paramilitary group should only be allowed entry to the talks after the paramilitary group had decommissioned.

1. Imagine that you are a leading member of Sinn Féin in 1995 during the first ceasefire who has to write an article for the Belfast Telegraph defending the party’s position on decommissioning. Prepare an outline of the article. (30 minutes)

or

Imagine that you are a leading member of the Democratic Unionist Party in 1997 just after your party has left the talks on the entry of Sinn Féin. You have to write an article for the Boston Globe in the USA and it is an important opportunity to present to both middle American and the republican lobby in America your case on refusing to talk to Sinn Féin without decommissioning. Prepare an outline of the article. (30 minutes)

2. Publish the outline article by pinning them on the wall. Allow time for group members to read them. (10 minutes)

3. In small groups discuss how far the articles were persuasive. (10 minutes) 4. Did the authors avoid revealing the difficulties that the issue creates for them or were they frank about them? Which approaches were more effective in enhancing their negotiating position? (15 minutes)

Exercise 4

Most parties will not admit that their own self-interest may influence their preferred design for negotiation arrangements. In small groups, consider how the positions each party adopted actually fitted with their interests.

1. Taking each party in turn discuss what you think were the reasons it chose the approaches it adopted. (15 minutes)

2. Can you identify the concerns that the party had about the process that influenced its approach? (15 minutes)

3. Can you think of other ways those concerns could have been dealt with more effectively? (15 minutes)

Exercise 5

Séan Mag Uidhir argues that one concern of Sinn Féin was that strong emphasis should be given to equality, justice and human rights. How could this assurance be given in an effective way? Role play a bilateral meeting between the UK government and Sinn Féin examining what can be done about human rights.

1. Allocate roles with two or three people given the role of the delegation from Sinn and Féin and two or three people taking on the parts of representatives of the UK government. (5 minutes)

2. Each group prepares separately for the role-play. The Sinn Féin group will want to consider if there is any commitment to human rights on the government side or if they will have to try to demonstrate its central importance for Sinn Féin. They will also have to decide the practical steps that they would want taken. The Government representatives may decide that they want to stall on the issue or they might approach it as a joint planning session at which they will work together to see how human rights can be incorporated into the process. (10 minutes)

3. Following the role-play discuss any new insight into how human rights issues could be embedded in the negotiation process. (10 minutes)

Exercise 6

A point of disagreement was the involvement of the Irish government. The final arrangement provided for its participation in some strands but not in others. Set up a debate on the issue.

1. Divide participants into two parts, one to argue the case for Dublin participation, the other arguing for its exclusion. (5 minutes) 2. Each group prepares its case, using the actual positions shown in the extracts, and also considering the weakness in the alternative position. (15 minutes) 3. Hold a debate. (20 minutes) 4. In the whole group, discuss the debate and consider which arguments seem most valid. (15 minutes)

Extracts

Throughout this period leading up to the talks the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was concerned that negotiations should take place on a level playing field and that to be involved parties must be fully committed to democracy and the pursuit of political objectives by exclusively peaceful means. It also emphasised the necessity to delineate carefully the respective roles and inputs of Her Majesty’s government and the government of the Irish Republic. As far as the DUP was concerned the Dublin government could not be given any role in any negotiations about the internal administration of part of the United Kingdom. It was also emphatic that in any negotiations the parameters must permit an outcome acceptable to the unionist electorate.
Nigel Dodds (Democratic Unionist Party)

In January 1995 the DUP presented the Prime Minister with an alternative which proposed an election to a Northern Ireland Convention charged with considering issues relevant to all three strands (internal Northern Ireland matters within Strand One; North—South issues within Strand Two; British—Irish issues within Strand Three). The Irish Republic would be consulted in relation to Strands Two and Three while the British government would of course be involved in relation to all three strands. The DUP made it clear that it would not sit down with the Dublin government unless and until the Republic removed its illegal and aggressive claim of jurisdiction over Northern Ireland from its constitution. This was consistent with the view that negotiations should take place between parties on equal terms. The UUP also supported the idea of elections.
Nigel Dodds (DUP)

The DUP focused on providing a forum for active politics to fill the political vacuum, while at the same time ensuring that representation at negotiations would reflect the actual balance of political views in the country. This was always a key consideration for the DUP in its approach to the talks process. All parties would of course be free to stand for election and take their seats in the elected convention. The DUP has consistently maintained its opposition to negotiating with Sinn Féin given its inextricable links to IRA terrorism. The election process for a convention preserved that position while effectively creating an inclusive process in which others could negotiate with whoever they chose.
Nigel Dodds (DUP)

Republican activists were told clearly that John Major’s British government and the unionists were not willing participants in the peace process. They would accept change only where there was no other credible way out. The dynamic in the peace process would be the axis of Adams, Hume and Reynolds. While there was still some nervousness in republican ranks, the movement was united in its determination to try to make the peace strategy work.
Séan Mag Uidhir (Republican)

Sinn Féin remained barred from talks because it had not fulfilled the requirement of a commitment to exclusively peaceful means and to the democratic process. All unionists at the talks united to adopt a series of proposals in the early summer of 1997 that would have required the IRA to hand in weapons before entering talks. Prime Minister Blair and Secretary of State Mo Mowlam simply ignored this and announced that by the start of September substantive talks would commence with Sinn Féin present, provided there was a restoration of the previous conditional IRA ceasefire.
Nigel Dodds (DUP)

In 1997, aware of a likely change of government, the UUP, along with other unionist parties, now stressed the differentiation between “decommissioning” and “the terms of entry for Sinn Féin “. Tedious and pedantic as the differentiation seemed to some, it indicated that David Trimble was trying to establish a justification for remaining in talks in the event of the admission of Sinn Féin after a second IRA ceasefire.
Mark Durkan (Social Democratic and Labour Party)

At the end of 1994, Gerry Adams issued a series of warnings that the process was in trouble but it seemed that no one was listening. Many had confused the IRA cessation with the achievement of peace, but for republicans conflict resolution meant dealing with the whole range of issues that had sparked off and then sustained the conflict. Some commentators accused Adams of sabre-rattling. Adams however had his finger on the pulse of the republican community and understood perhaps better than anyone that the cessation could not hold without movement by the British government at least on the core issues of equality, justice and human rights.
Séan Mag Uidhir (Republican)

The election system was manipulated to ensure that those parties with links to paramilitary organizations would qualify even though they would not gain sufficient votes to be elected under the normal system of proportional representation. The ten parties with the highest total vote would be entitled to two seats. It meant that the smallest parties at the talks had fewer votes across the whole of Northern Ireland than the bigger parties had in one constituency. Yet all the parties, regardless of size, were given two, and at most three, seats at the negotiating table in a clear negation of the democratic process. The elected body was boycotted by nationalists and republicans precisely because, in the view of the unionists who remained, it did reflect the political balance in the community.
Nigel Dodds (DUP)

With the decision of the DUP and the UKUP, which together represented almost half the unionist electorate, to stand by their election pledges not to negotiate with Sinn Féin and to remove themselves from the talks, the government had failed to ensure an inclusive process.
Nigel Dodds (DUP)

Sinn Féin did very well in the Forum elections, achieving its highest result for many years, and came close to overtaking the constitutional nationalist SDLP of John Hume. Sinn Féin’s success reflected a widespread desire among many Catholic voters to boost what was seen as the peace faction within the republican movement.

The electoral system drawn up for the Forum elections allowed increased representation for smaller parties such as the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) — linked to the two main loyalist paramilitary groups. This also boosted the peace factions within the loyalist coalitions. For the first time, the newly formed Women’s Coalition and the small Labour Party, both of which supported inclusive negotiations, won seats.

The government determined the terms of decision-making in the negotiations — the principle of ‘sufficient consensus’. This required majority support for key measures within unionist and nationalist blocs and meant that the PUP and the UDP could ally with David Trimble’s majority UUP to deliver the unionist part of this equation without having to rely on the votes of Ian Paisley’s hardline DUP.
Harry Barnes (Labour Party) and Gary Kent

There was however, broad acceptance of the leadership’s assertion that the movement alone was not strong enough to bring about the conditions necessary to end partition and that allies were needed. The advantages of republican involvement in negotiations were clear ... and just being there would stiffen the backbone of the SDLP who were likely to accept less than republicans.
Séan Mag Uidhir (Republican)

The DUP, in line with its consistent view that any negotiating process must have the capacity to produce an outcome acceptable to unionism, rejected the attempt by the British and Irish governments to impose upon talks participants their own set of ground rules and procedural guidelines for the conduct of the substantive talks. This was clearly an attempt to dictate the course of the talks. Similarly the pre-selection of the American chairman without consultation with talks participants indicated that ownership of the process was not to be given into the hands of the delegates if the governments could possibly avoid it. This resulted in a protracted period of discussion over the basis of the talks. Misrepresented as procedural wrangling by opponents, it was in fact an assertion of the fundamental principle that primacy and control must rest with the parties in the talks process themselves.
Nigel Dodds (DUP)

Top | Northern Ireland | Contents | Education Pack