There is no mistaking the difference in style between Peter Hain and his predecessor as Northern Ireland secretary. Paul Murphy’s hallmarks were the patience of Job and an ability to listen. Hain is no safe pair of hands. He is a rock’n’roll sort of guy sent in by Tony Blair to shake the local political scene into some sort of settlement before Gordon Brown takes over.
With Hain, both nationalist and unionist strategists can see which way the wind is blowing. If there isn’t a devolved power-sharing administration, there will be a steady drift towards shared decision-making with Dublin and cantonisation of local government. The economy will be trimmed down then plumped up, to make Irish unity more attractive both for the people of the province and voters in the republic.
The bottom line is cutting the £60-a-week subsidy that the British exchequer presently pays to each man, woman and child in Northern Ireland by increasing the local tax base and cutting back on public-sector employment. At the same time, the push is on to build up manufacturing and knowledge-based industries so that the province can stand on its own feet.
This is Britain’s default position and Hain isn’t afraid to pull economic levers to advance it. However, if Stormont is restored, local politicians will have an opportunity to influence the direction of policy.
Anyone who has any doubt about where we are heading if direct rule continues only has to look at Hain’s utterances over the years. Back in 1981, he said: “What I think, above all, is that the objective of withdrawal has to be credible.” Withdrawal may not be a firm objective at this stage, but it is an option that will be kept open, and it will become more likely if people are won round to it by the failure of local political institutions.
Last week in New York, Hain expressed himself in economic terms, but the message was clear. He described the Northern Ireland economy as “not sustainable in the long term”, adding that “in future decades it is going to be increasingly difficult to look at the economy of Ireland north and south except as a sort of island of Ireland economy”. He spoke of “deepening north/south co-operation in a number of areas”.
“I don’t want the Northern Ireland economy to be a dependent economy as it is now, with a sort of UK ‘big brother’ umbrella over it,” he warned.
What he means by getting rid of the British umbrella is clear enough. He wants us to pay our own way and face harsh economic choices head-on. Between now and Christmas the shape of things to come will become clearer still with two initiatives taking the axe to the top-heavy quangos and boards that govern Northern Ireland in the absence of local democracy.
On Tuesday, the long-awaited Review of Public Administration will ring the death knell for the province’s 26 powerless local councils, replacing them with seven super-councils that have real work. Three nationalist-controlled super-councils will cover the west and south of the province, running the entire length of the border, and three largely unionist ones will cover most of the eastern and northern seaboard, stretching westwards to the Bann. Belfast will be shared between the two blocs.
The education boards will be scrapped and the Catholic Council for Maintained Schools, with its 60 staff, £2.5m annual budget and palatial headquarters in Holywood, will be reduced to a consultative body. The days when it directly employed 8,500 teachers entirely at public expense are coming to an end and its exemption from fair-employment legislation must soon come up for scrutiny.
Health boards are going to need a similar long hard look in next Tuesday’s announcements. It is likely that the existing four boards and 18 regional health trusts will be replaced by either five or seven subregional health agencies. Only the ambulance trust will remain unchanged.
That is just next Tuesday. Before Christmas there will be the announcement of a 10-year spending plan in which, it’s safe to predict, spending on growth will be balanced by increased efficiencies. In the new year a further impetus will be added by a big American investment conference.
In the longer — but perhaps not that much longer — term the sheer waste involved in duplication of resources along sectarian lines will come in for scrutiny. A prime example is education, which somehow sustains separate Catholic and Protestant schools, as well as smaller integrated and Irish-language sectors, but currently has 45,000 empty school places with 75,000 predicted by 2010. Can that last as Hain’s public-spending umbrella is slowly withdrawn?
The last sacred cow may well be the 11 Stormont departments, where nobody can really justify more than six or seven. They were introduced during the Good Friday agreement to make for a more equitably sectarian carve-up of power, and now some parties are suggesting adding on a 12th to cover justice and policing.
There are already two education departments, one called education and the other employment and learning, and many other departments will have their functions “hollowed out” as powers are transferred to the new super-councils.
That may not be announced straight away, although Hain hinted in a UTV interview at cuts in the numbers of senior civil servants. That, in itself, will mean a reduction in departments.
As Hain forces through these efficiencies he is able to buy off the local parties with a string of petty sectional concessions, just as colonial traders bought off Third World chieftains with bags of beads and bottles of whisky. Getting an RUC widow appointed as victims commissioner, or rates remitted on Orange halls, may seem pretty good to the Democratic Unionists, just as getting a few fugitives allowed home and a commitment to devolving policing powers may boost Sinn Fein’s self-esteem. The question is how good these achievements will look to voters faced with fundamental structural, economic changes.
Increasingly the electorate will look to parties to steer the process of change and to sort out what is really important, rather than attempting to block progress in an attempt to shake down the Brits for more baubles.
After the DUP became the largest party, Ian Paisley said that he would be in the driving seat and would know how to use the brake. Over the next few months the message may sink in that letting go of the steering wheel ends up allowing the whole vehicle to lurch towards increased cross-border co-operation, making the DUP look irrelevant.
Sinn Fein is also finding that the old tricks no longer work. The dream of holding power in a Dublin coalition and dealing directly with the British over the heads of the unionists is receding by the day as potential partners reject them over their links to crime and their voodoo economic policies.
As Northern Ireland emerges blinking in the sunlight from the years of violence, its politicians need to realise that the era of special pleading and claiming unique grievances is drawing inevitably to an end. It is now time for hard choices, for putting a price on the prejudices we have sanctified as principles, and for using power before we lose it.
Welcome to the world of the grown-ups.
