Richard Haass on the need to create a larger context

In my last post on Richard Haass here, we learnt one thing. Negotiations require you to look behind your adversary and to take into consideration what forces lie behind them. In the video discussion above hosted by Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria), Richard Haass looked at the two main tensions in that can hold up negotiations.

One, was on the tension between passionate minorities and passive majorities. Richard Haass said:

"These passionate minorities in the full sinlight of public opinion can really lead to the unravelling of an agreement. So it's never enought to concoct a deal that has trade-offs that may make sense. You've got to always think, how do you prepare the world for it, so the [negotiating] individuals can sell it to their constituencies."

Two, concerned the tension between the politicians and their vocal minority base. He explained the need to prepare, explain and contextualise the dispute to the vocal base group on each side.

"We went to extraordinary lengths to try and shape the context [in Northern Ireland] and still it proved to be not enough... Even if you can get agreement among the experts... unless you've created a larger context, where they feel confident to be able to politically, not to mention physically, survive, then you haven't accomplished that much."

The two world's of Northern Ireland, Ctd internal émigrés

Brian Feeney wrote in The Irish News of January 1 2014:

In April 1982 Sir Peter Frogatt, vice-Chancellor of Queen's, told Sir Ewart Bell, head of the Northern Ireland Civil service, that there was "a considerable exodus to British universities especially on the part of the Protestant community."

Ewart Bell reported this to the then proconsul Jim Prior and said he regarded it as "another step towards the extent to which the Protestant community is 'opting out' of Northern Ireland."

Brian Feeney said:

"None of these internal émigrés participates in or endorses the antics of the yahoos waving flags or hammering big drums outside Catholic Churches... Yesterday's [Haass talks] failure will simply reinforce the majority of unionists in their opinion that, in the words of Alex Kane, they prefer to go to the garden centre that bother voting."

Brian Feeney concluded:

"It seems the out-working of Ewart Bell's 1982 warning about students will be extrapolated to society in general so that as the nationalist vote increases Sinn Fein will take ownership of the north. The DUP can still change but they can't stop it. If they weren't so pig-headed and bigoted they could influence it before they become a minority."

Read me blog post on professor John Brewer who said that the silent majority needs to reclaim the peace process here. My blog post on Fionualla Meredith who said people need to speak up and pound the streets here. With contributions from Pete Shirlow here. My blog following Richard Haass comment that a majority want peace is here. My previous posts in 'The Two Worlds of Northern Ireland' series here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

When are we going to have an honest conversation about the conduct of PUL parades?

In response to the failure of the Haass talks, Alliance Leader David Ford said: "The real issue with parades was never about structures - the problem was behavior." This is interesting since the Belfast City Centre Management report here on the 12th July parades delivered a stinging indictment against the bands and Orange lodges that march through the capital city. It found tourists who complained of an "intimidatory atmosphere", "louts roaming around drunk" and an untidy public realm.

In my earlier post here I cited a 1925 essay by the Ulster MP W.D. Allen on an Orange demonstration in Tyrone.

"Silently, humorously, doggedly, they mass around a dripping platform, a remarkable feudal, patriarchal, tribal, historical anachronism in these days of moderation, toleration – whine, don’t fight – enlightenment."

I also looked at John Hewitt's 1970 poem, 'Conversations in Hungary' here:

"Our friends in Budapest
days later also, puzzled, queried why,
when the time's vibrant with technology,
Such violence should still be manifest.

Between two factions, in religion's name.
It is 300 years since, they declared,
divergent sects put claim and
counterclaim to arbitration of the torch
and sword."

Conor Cruise O'Brien said in 1996:

"I have, in an Orange context at an Orange House, urged them to see that marching through areas that don't want them is not good policy for the Orange Order itself or for the unionist community."

The first "Orange riot" on record was in 1824, in Abingdon, New York. The 'Orange Riots' of 1870 and 1871 in New York here were infamous. After this, the Congregationalist minister Merrill Richardson from the pulpit of his Madison Avenue church said that the time had come to take back New York City, for if "the higher classes will not govern, the lower classes will."

A tiny minority makes us all look like loosers

A commenter from Northern Ireland, now living in America responded to a guest blog I produced for the Loyalists Against Democracy blog here. He said of the flag protests:

"I am currently studying Politics in The United States as part of a BA international from University College Dublin. An American Student asked me this question the other day. 'The guys in Belfast marching about the flag are Protestants ya?' I said yes they are. He then asked me 'Why do those people always behave like such freaks?' I said its only a tiny minority, he replied, 'well that tiny minority makes them all look like a bunch of losers dude' - This conversation sparked a discussion in my class (I am studying in California, where the majority of the students are American or of European decent, only one with any Irish connection) I was genuinely shocked by the discussion. They all had such a terrible view of Unionism, undeserved in my view. But the point is that unionism is being destroyed at home and abroad by these idiots."

Richard Haass has said here that the riots and instability has scared off international investors.

Richard Haass - Understand who is behind your political adversary

In a discussion here from 2011, Dr Richard Haass talks about the peace process in Northern Ireland. He said:

"In any negotiation, it's not enough to look behind you at maintaining your own domestic position, you've also go to look behind your adversary and ask yourself what he has to do to maintain his domestic position. In a funny sort of way negotiations only succeed if each side to some extent becomes an implicit partner of the other side." 

Richard Haass - Majority in Northern Ireland want compromise

"My own sense from the bulk of the submissions is that the vast majority of people here are ready for compromise, are ready for progress, are ready to move on."

Richard Hass in full here. You can submit your submissions to the Panel of Parties in the NI Executive here.