Governments shut down because of budget disputes all the time — we know that all too well.
But because of a murder? That’s new. And that’s what just happened in Northern Ireland.
To understand how a crime can bring a government to its knees, you have to understand how Northern Ireland’s politics have been steeped in violence. From 1968 to 1998, the province was at war with itself. The mostly Protestant unionists wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, while the Catholic republicans — the minority in Northern Ireland — wished to be reunited with the Republic of Ireland.
Both sides sprouted paramilitary groups. The Irish Republican Army and its loyalist equivalents used bombs, guns and fists to reach their aims. Ultimately, more than 3,600 people lost their lives in the conflict. It wasn’t until 1998 that Sinn Fein — the political arm of the IRA — and the leaders from the Ulster Unionist Party were able to agree to try resolve the conflict using politics, not violence. Northern Ireland could govern itself. Seven years later, the IRA disbanded.
So there’s the powder. Here’s the match:
In August, former Irish Republican Army assassin Kevin McGuigan was murdered. The police believe his killers were fellow IRA members seeking revenge — which means that the paramilitary organization may still be active. On Sept. 9, a Sinn Fein political leader, Bobby Storey, was arrested in connection with the murder. He was released a day later, but the damage was done: Is Sinn Fein a bulwark of the government or the public face of a lingering terror organization?
When the legislature failed to stop working while the claims against the IRA were investigated, First Minister Peter Robinson made good on an earlier threat and resigned on Sept. 10. Robinson, who leads the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, took 14 of his 15 cabinet members with him.
The problem is that the two major political parties — Sinn Fein and DUP — must be represented in the province’s executive office or else the power-sharing system created in 1998 can’t function. So now, with the sole remaining cabinet member of the DUP as acting first minister, the Northern Irish government teeters on the brink of collapse.
It’s happened before. Back in early 2000, the British government suspended the province’s newly formed government. Less than two years after the “Good Friday” peace agreement cemented a budding truce between Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants, the IRA took the government hostage in a new way. It refused to give up its weapons, so the unionists refused to form a government with Sinn Fein.
The next five years saw the British repeatedly sweep in to take control of the gridlocked government; it wasn’t until summer 2005 that the IRA finally agreed to put down its arms. Since that summer, things have been relatively calm. Northern Ireland quietly set a standard: Power could be shared, even among enemies.
But the fresh threat of a revamped IRA — and its Protestant counterparts — has unhinged that hope and left frustration in its place.
Robinson has the power to keep the government deadlocked. For now, he’s stalling for time, trying to take care of what his party has called “the cancer at the heart” of the government. But the longer he stalls, the greater the chance it will all collapse. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has already warned that it “could be a very long time” before things get back to “what you might call normal.” Neither Kenny nor British Prime Minister David Cameron seems keen on intervening beyond attending the crisis talks.
But the government at Stormont doesn’t need Big Brother Britain or Ireland. It is its own best chance at keeping the province together. To step away from its shared government would be to step toward the past, toward chaos, toward violence.
So rather than watching the work of nearly 20 years burn, unionists — and republicans — would do well to stamp out the fire. Now. Because peace — just like war — is a choice.