Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland
Jonathan Powell
Bodley Head, 338pp, £20
Making peace in Northern Ireland was probably the greatest achievement of the Blair era. As the prime minister’s chief negotiator, Jonathan Powell observed each stage of the peace process at first hand. This is a gripping account of how close the talks came to collapse, but how republicans and unionists finally reached a political settlement.
Powell is admirably sensitive to the human aspect of the negotiations, sketching detailed character portraits of the leading protagonists: David Trimble and Ian Paisley; Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness; Mo Mowlam and Peter Mandelson; and of course Tony Blair himself. The author combines that eye for the messy, sometimes darkly comic, detail with an incisive grasp of the Irish question that has bedevilled British politics since the second half of the 19th century.
The title is taken from the W.B. Yeats’ poem Remorse for Intemperate Speech, reflecting the historically specific nature of the war. Powell insists both that the experience gained in bringing peace cannot be applied indiscriminately to other conflicts around the world, and that democratically elected governments should be prepared to talk to their enemies – even when such contacts appear to offend common decency because the groups concerned are still killing innocent people.
Never allowing the talking to stop – ensuring constant attention and engagement – led to eventual success in Northern Ireland. Were Jonathan Powell still the prime minister’s chief of staff, he would probably be advocating similar talks with Hamas in the Middle East. It is counter-productive to treat Hizbollah, al-Qaeda, Iraq’s Shia militia or indeed Hamas as a single threat, despite President Bush’s insistence on an indiscriminate ideological war against Islamic terrorism.
This Manichean worldview rules out winning extremists over to politics. It refuses to acknowledge genuine grievances and structural causes. Powell advocates an approach to conflict resolution that is about keeping the process moving forward, however slow and painful the steps to peace.