The 2012 Lord Merlyn-Rees Lecture
Thursday, 26 April 2012
South Africa and Northern Ireland:
Lessons in Building Democracy.
University of Glamorgan.
Today we take for granted Nelson Mandela’s ‘rainbow democracy’. Yet the defeat of apartheid was painful, bitter and long, until finally once evil oppressors settled into government with those they had imprisoned or tortured.
Observing Northern Ireland today, it’s hard to recognize what was just a few decades ago the theatre for such horror and barbarity, hate and bigotry. Rancorous old enemies have worked amicably together – even smiled at each other – when they had never exchanged a courtesy before Ian Paisley’s first meeting with Gerry Adams at Stormont on March 26th 2007 – the photographs reverberating around the globe.
It was one of those ‘it will never happen’ moments. There were many such later, as the coalition government first bedded down and now – four years later – seems such a normal and stable part of the political furniture that it is unthinkable that Northern Ireland could go back to its hideous past.
Just as I was privileged to help achieve democracy in South Africa in 1994, so I was privileged to serve as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for the two years that led to that political settlement and the devolved government which ended British direct rule – forever, I believe: I was the last direct rule Secretary of State.
But today, both these historic events in building democracy are taken for granted. In fact the struggle for democracy in South Africa took most of the hundred years of the African National Congress’s life, its centenary celebrated this year. Whereas eight centuries of Anglo-Irish history, sharpened by violent conflict, created virulent and seemingly irreconcilable fault lines on the island of Ireland.
In May 2005 when I was appointed Secretary of State, almost nobody believed that a settlement was achievable, certainly not in the two year timescale over which it eventually proved possible. There was a weary pessimism amongst the opinion forming classes of Irish politics, North and South.
The success of the Good Friday strategy of Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern had been built around a core agreement between the then leader of Ulster unionism, David Trimble and John Hulme of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Although intransigent opponents over the years, they were then both the leaders of Protestant and Catholic communities, and constituted a new ‘centre’ of Northern Ireland politics which provided the platform for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and power-sharing.
However, Ian Paisley’s DUP had remained grumpily dissident. They had gone along with, rather than signed up to, Good Friday. Paisley had refused to enter the all-party devolved government which operated for a short time, deputing subordinates to become Ministers.
Meanwhile Sinn Fein, with the IRA still in play though on ceasefire, were semi-detached, and allegations that they had used their positions in the government to retrieve sensitive information and ‘spy’ on opponents led to the collapse of devolved power and resumption of British direct rule in 2002.
By 2005, with the virtual eclipse of the Ulster Unionist party by the hard-line DUP and Sinn Fein taking over from the SDLP as the leaders of Nationalism, the ‘centre’ had been marginalized The ‘extremes’ were now the top dogs. The conventional British wisdom, pursued from John Major’s time as Prime Minister and successfully progressed under Tony Blair, that a settlement could be built around a core of centrist parties, was in tatters.
That explained why everyone I met around Westminster or Stormont in those early weeks of taking office – from civil servants and MPs to journalists – were gloomy.
However, the more I looked at it, the more I felt that having the DUP and ‘the Shinners’ in charge could be a positive. I recalled from the anti-apartheid struggle how the deal there was eventually done between the two most polarised groups in South Africa: the Afrikaner politicians who were the architects of apartheid, and the leaders they had imprisoned: Nelson Mandela and his comrades.
Over the years, repeated attempts by the West to court centrist groups – including Mandela’s Zulu rival, Buthelezi – had proved futile. And although the two situations were very different, in Northern Ireland there was also no force of any real significance more extreme on either side of the DUP and Sinn Fein.
I felt that if we could get them to agree, it really would stick where the centre parties had been unable to make it do so, and started to articulate this thought as I got to grips with the politics and built relationships with the key politicians – albeit as something of a lone voice for optimism amongst the seasoned, sceptical peace process practitioners around me, Tony Blair included.
I began by starting to treat Paisley and the DUP with proper respect: they were outsiders and had always said ‘NO’. I needed to get them to become ‘insiders’, able to say ‘YES’ by assuming the responsibilities that always come with leadership. They would not do that if they were continuously being treated with disdain as ‘the problem’, ‘the troublemakers’.
For their part, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were the most professional and tough negotiators I had encountered in politics. Well read and meticulously prepared, they were courteous and straightforward, a similar political generation to me, also schooled in the radical turmoil of the late 1960s, though in their cases moving into the IRA. I got on well with them, they were informal with a good sense of humour and would invariably end our conversations with a “God Bless.”
They had travelled a long and hazardous journey from IRA commanders to principal political strategists for a democratic peace settlement. I well understood that they had to keep their republican hinterland on board, a notoriously difficult task, given the long history of splits in the IRA, some viciously violent. Adams was haunted by the memory of Michael Collins, the IRA leader assassinated from within his own ranks in 1922. This followed Collins’ agreement to the Anglo Irish Treaty the year before which partitioned Ireland into what was to become an independent republic in the south, with the north remaining part of the United Kingdom. My task was to work with them to get the IRA finally to end its war and with Sinn Fein to sign up to support policing and the rule of law – all objectives unthinkable to anyone who knew the violent terrain of Irish politics and history.
Like the other leaders I was dealing with, I always tried to find a point of human contact beyond the tensions of the politics. Adams could expound at length about his love for shrubs and trees, and how he was husbanding new plants in his garden. Once, during a lengthy interlude in negotiations at Hillsborough Castle, he explained how he had walked its gardens and came across some shrubs he fancied, surreptitiously digging one out and placing it carefully into his car boot to transplant back home. What the IRA bodyguards who always drove him around in an oldish grey Mercedes made of this, he never said.
Martin McGuinness, shorter, wiry, also well-mannered and polite, and always asking after family, made the two hour journey back to his wife at their home in Derry at the end of every day in Belfast. Unlike Adams, who was rather disdainful about anything sporting except Gaelic football, McGuinness like me was a keen football fan. He would report on Derry City’s progress and, like I did, watched big matches on television if he had the time.
Incredibly for a diehard Irish republican, he was also a big fan of the English cricket team, able to recite match statistics and comment expertly on each of their batsmen or bowlers. England’s victory over Australia in the Ashes series in 2005 especially enthralled him, and we marvelled at Welsh fast bowler Simon Jones’ then novel ‘reverse swing’ technique.
Ian Paisley and his fellow DUP leaders were an entirely different kettle of fish. Ian I found to be a real gentleman with old fashioned manners of the kind with which I had been brought up; perhaps why we got on so well. Like Adams and McGuinness he had moved on, and appeared to have mellowed from the ranting bigotry of his past. With a sense of humour I warmed to, he was extremely shrewd, hugely popular and very wary of the British embrace.
Putting Paisley and I together – high Presbyterian and inveterate agnostic, right wing veteran and left wing upstart – might have seemed a combustible cocktail, but we got on very well. Despite our numerous arguments, I sensed he wanted to do a deal if it was possible – though on terms which seemed on the surface to be insurmountable.
I decided to invite him and his family to celebrate his 80th birthday at an official dinner at Hillsborough, and he was delighted. The Castle’s full banqueting table was engulfed by tiny grandchildren and adults to his huge enjoyment, reminding me of my own close and extended family. The only problem for me was it was a dry evening – alcohol was a no-go area for the Free Presbyterian Paisleys.
I was at the sharp end of the negotiations, the arguments, the hostilities and histrionics, the breakdowns, the ultimatums, eventually the progress, and finally the Spring 2007 deal. Many others had worked hard on the process for years and, of course, to Tony Blair must go the credit for seeing it through from the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and all the subsequent crises to the triumphant end most were deeply sceptical would ever, ever occur.
So the question is: can lessons from ending the horror that was Northern Ireland now offer hope to other areas of the world locked in bitter conflict, violence and terrorism? Can lessons be applied from bringing together in a political settlement people who were not simply political opposites but sworn enemies?
Of course no one would suggest that there is a ‘one size fits all’ model for conflict resolution coming out of Northern Ireland. But I believe there are some fundamental lessons that reward a closer look.
And talking about ‘conflict resolution’ to build democracy means recognising that it is an ongoing process in Northern Ireland which will take some time – probably generations – to complete: segregation is still widespread in schools and housing, prejudice and divisions still exist, there are still isolated bombings.
Similarly, the joy of a non-racial democracy in South Africa since 1994 has not by any means abolished the awful legacy of apartheid: poverty and unemployment amongst the black majority remains horrendous. Nor was the change achieved quite as miraculously and smoothly as some suggest: remember that in the four years between prisoner Nelson Mandela walking to freedom and being elected President, there were more killings of, and violence against, his followers than at any other time under apartheid.
In South Africa, the transformation was achieved principally by resistance to apartheid, led by Mandela’s ANC but supported by many, many others, including in the Wales Anti-Apartheid Movement.
In Northern Ireland Tony Blair had decided from his first day in office in 1997 that it would be more of a priority than it was for any of his predecessors. He had an absolutely unshakable belief that not only could it be resolved: it would be, indeed, had to be resolved – and that belief never wavered.
Three objectives guided his approach for over ten years. They were: the necessity to create a space without violence during which politics could begin to flourish; the identification of individuals with the courage and intention to lead their communities; and the search for a political framework which could accommodate the needs, aspirations and scope for compromise by all involved.
In the years after 1997 the Labour Government, in which I was a Minister, very consciously took risks to achieve and maintain the IRA ceasefire, because the absence of conflict was an absolute prerequisite to progress.
What is so destructive about terrorism and violence is not just the wrecking of lives but the impact on the psychology of a community. With 3,000 murders and about 35,000 serious injuries in a Northern Ireland population of just 1.7 million – Wales nearly twice that size – almost every family felt the horror of thirty years of ‘The Troubles’.
Above all, terrorism obscures the natural desire of the majority for peace by entrenching bitterness and creating an entirely understandable hysteria in which constructive voices can no longer be heard.
It is desperately hard for people to focus on politics when they are under attack: when, in the case of Republicans, their communities have felt under assault or siege by agencies of the state, and in the case of Unionists, many friends and relatives have been murdered or maimed under the constant shadow of IRA attacks.
This for our Government meant making concessions that went deeply against the grain, not only for unionists, but also for much mainstream British opinion.
An example was the controversial and painful republican and loyalist prisoner releases at the time of the Good Friday Agreement, including individuals who had committed unspeakable atrocities.
But it was essential to show paramilitary groups that a commitment to peace brought gains which could not be achieved by violence.
Thereafter, continuously moving forward with small steps was to some extent an end in itself because time was critical: the longer the cessation of violence, the stronger the desire for peace could grow, and the more difficult the return to conflict could become.
To ‘keep the bicycle upright and moving’ was a key objective and required constant intervention, and even more constant attention of a forensic nature, from the very top.
The transition to peace had to be completed. But this could only be achieved through relationships of some trust with leading Republicans who had themselves been party to terrorist attacks, including in Britain.
One of Tony Blair’s core beliefs was that people and personalities matter in politics, and that building relationships of trust, even where deep differences remain, is vital.
This may seem very obvious. But it is surprisingly often relegated to a place well below ‘issues’ in resolving conflict. It is also notable how political enmities can block the way to even tentative contact – just look at virtually all the main conflicts across the world today, especially between Israel and the Palestinians.
The key challenge for our Government was to identify the positive elements within the opposing communities and to encourage and sustain them.
That meant establishing a relationship of trust with the individual leaders and understanding the pressures on them from within their own movement or party, as well as from outside. Ultimately this meant making judgments about the extent to which those pressures were real or tactical.
But judgments about the good faith and courage of individuals ultimately have to be political and personal, based on instinct, and at crucial junctures, the product of private conversations between the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and individual leaders.
The consequences of those judgments about individuals have been far-reaching: most of the decisions taken by the British Government after 1998 were coloured by the need to build or maintain confidence in one community or another, or to allow one leader or another space to manage their sometimes intransigent constituencies.
Judgments about key leaders within Northern Ireland were complemented by the alignment of international interest. Tony Blair, prepared as British Prime Minister, to devote unprecedented time and energy to solving the problem as a real priority, came into power to find a strong, confident Irish Government, led by Bertie Ahern, and a US President in Bill Clinton who felt a strong personal attachment to Ireland and who was influenced by the large and politically significant Irish American community and open to providing positive intervention or support.
Crucially, all three were prepared to work to a shared strategy, all were prepared to be bold.
As other parts of the world have discovered, these alignments of leadership and circumstances do not come along often: failure to seize the opportunity can mean condemning another generation to conflict.
It is one thing to feel that a dispute – whether in Northern Ireland or the Middle East – will eventually be resolved, but another to grip it in such a way that resolution does not wait for generations, with all the intervening violence and turmoil.
There is no inevitability about the timescale of a conflict, however ancient, however bitter, however intransigent. Northern Ireland was emphatically all three.
The internationalisation of parts of the process – for example the management of IRA weapons decommissioning by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning under Canadian General John de Chastelain, Andy Sens from the USA and Tauno Niemenen of Finland – made an important contribution.
Along with the international element to the Independent Monitoring Commission (which included Dick Kerr, a former CIA Deputy Director), it has reassured key constituencies at critical moments, injecting trust which the British and Irish Governments could not on their own provide.
It is also worth noting that those with experience and credibility from other conflicts played an encouraging role.
The advice and reassurance of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, including the active involvement of its former General Secretary Cyril Ramaphosa, was particularly helpful to the republican movement. ANC figures (some previously involved in armed struggle) helped Gerry Adams to persuade grass roots republicans to pursue the peace strategy.
With space and momentum created by the absence of violence and the regular energetic intervention of Tony Blair, the challenge was to find a political framework which could allow opposing political leaders to govern together without compromising the basic principles of their constitutional identities.
The strength of the Good Friday Agreement and other negotiations culminating in the St Andrews Agreement of October 2006 was its attempt to be comprehensive.
It did not simply address the constitutional framework, but looked at the broader political hurdles: policing, human rights, victims, ending discrimination against Catholics and promoting equality.
All these emotive issues – especially policing, prisoner releases, decommissioning of weapons – touched the daily lives of so many individuals. It was these ‘bread and butter’ issues, rather than ancient hostilities over the constitutional framework itself, which threatened the process on so many occasions. Dealing with them helped create a better climate for political leaders to be more flexible. I always noted that it was no coincidence that under Tony Blair’s government ending mass unemployment (especially amongst Catholic communities) created more positive circumstances for peace to take hold.
Equally, however, there comes a point when the process needs to be brought to a head.
This was one of the key issues I faced as British Secretary of State during my time from May 2005, and I decided that real deadlines had to be set in 2006.
I determined, with the backing of both Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, that the Government had to take the risk of the process collapsing in order to force the parties to resolve their differences.
Furthermore, that the costs of failure to the parties would be serious where previously they had not. This was, first, in terms of loss of salaries and allowances for Assembly Members together with very substantial public funding of their party organisations which they had enjoyed for years.
And, second, the wrath of voters opposed to some of my domestic reforms, notably the introduction of charges for water supply from which Northern Ireland alone in the United Kingdom was exempt.
Water charges proved to be the dominant issue of the election campaign in February/March 2007, the age old hostilities and divisions paling by comparison, as the voters told the parties to get the Secretary of State out by getting in to power themselves and sorting it! Who would have imagined water as an incendiary incentive to peace?
At the heart of this process – and arguably as its ultimate objective – has been the necessity for dialogue at every level.
It is worth reflecting on this for a moment, because I know that the risks and compromises involved in establishing dialogue often dominate, and frequently destroy, the chance of progress almost before it begins. Pre-conditions can (and do) strangle a process at birth.
That much is certainly a feature of the Middle East peace process, where, from time to time, both sides have imposed pre-conditions which effectively have blocked any dialogue from beginning. Today, Israel’s Prime Minister will not countenance talking to Hamas (democratically elected by the Palestinian people) because Hamas will not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Both also have launched violent attacks against each other.
It is true that entering into dialogue – especially secret dialogue – with paramilitary groups carries huge risks. The real risk may not be just one of serious political embarrassment, but also the danger of encouraging an armed group in the belief that its campaign is working.
Yet, if one of the keys to resolving conflict is identifying positive elements and encouraging those leaders who are prepared to contemplate an end to violence, then dialogue is the only way one can make that judgement.
And my view is, that in order to achieve results, it is worth erring on the side of being exposed for trying to talk – even to those seen as ‘the enemy’, and maybe still engaged in paramilitary or illegal activity, and therefore ‘outside’ a process.
That was attempted with Republicans from the early 1970s when they were bombing and shooting. And, despite public criticism, I engaged in 2006-7 with loyalists linked (and in the case of some individuals directly) to the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association whose brutal record of violence and criminality has been much more current. But the outcome was more positive than it would otherwise have been.
Dialogue brings in those elements of the ‘extremes’ in a conflict or process that are capable of delivering the most obdurate constituencies. As Northern Ireland and South Africa both show that can be absolutely critical to ensuring that any deal sticks.
That cannot be achieved without dialogue, even dialogue through a third party – in the case of Northern Ireland with the British Government acting as a conduit between DUP and Sinn Fein. Or in South Africa through various ‘deniable’ intermediaries Democratic Governments should have the self-confidence in their own values to be able to take risks for peace in cases where it is much more difficult for those locked in ethnic or communal struggle to engage with each other.
So, to summarise the key principles which guided the British Government’s handling of Northern Ireland:
First, the need to create space and time, free from violence, in which political capacity can develop;
Second, the need to identify key individuals and constructive forces;
Third, the importance of inclusive dialogue at every level, wherever there is a negotiable objective;
Fourth, the taking of risks to sustain that dialogue and to underpin political progress;
Fifth, the alignment of national and international forces;
Sixth, the need to avoid or resolve pre-conditions to dialogue;
Seventh, and perhaps above all the need to grip and micro-manage a conflict at a high political level, refusing to accept the inevitability of it.
And eighth, to do so, not intermittently but continuously, whatever breakdowns, crises and anger get in the way.
Even a quick glance at this checklist of key principles throws up some obvious points.
In the Middle East, the conflict has not been gripped at a sufficiently high level, over a sufficiently sustained period. Fly-in, fly-out diplomacy has been the norm. Efforts and initiatives have come and gone, and violence has returned to fill the vacuum. International forces have not been aligned and dialogue has been stunted. Periodic engagement has led to false starts and dashed hopes. Preconditions have been, and remain, a bulwark against progress.
The inescapable truth, however, is that, despite the depth and intensity of bitterness and hatred between Hamas and Israel, neither can militarily defeat the other; they will each have to be party to a negotiated solution which satisfies Palestinian aspirations for a viable state and Israel’s need for security.
Just as legitimate grievances in Northern Ireland fuelled republican sympathies, Palestinian grievances provide fertile territory for extremists. Addressing people’s grievances – from security to jobs and housing – as we did in Northern Ireland, can undercut the extremists who seek to inflame and exploit them, so creating more fertile ground for a political process to complement engagement.
However, the leaders of resistance movements also need to show courage and strength of leadership.
As Middle East Minister I was dismayed by the lack of leadership shown by the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the crucial Summit hosted by President Bill Clinton at Camp David in July 2000. The Israeli Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak came with a comprehensive offer on all the key Palestinian demands: territory, refugees and an independent state. However, his offer gave virtually nothing away on Jerusalem, the iconic religious capital for both Jews and Arabs, and this proved a fatal stumbling block for Arafat, Barak retreating into his shell, later to be swept from office by the right wing Arial Sharon. From Barak’s and Israel’s point of view, the offer was generous and indeed risky. Yet Arafat had refused to engage.
Later I spoke with Barak’s Chief of Staff, Danny Yatom. ‘The trouble with the Palestinian leadership is they never understand that when they reject a deal, the next one (when it eventually comes) is always worse,’ he told me, going back over the history. This bluntly savvy perspective, though typically Israeli-centric, was uncomfortably plausible in a context of Israeli supremacy over the Palestinians. Although I had no illusions about the hard-nosed self-interest of Barak’s proposal, the years of fighting, death and destruction which followed seemed to vindicate my instinct at the time that Arafat should have negotiated, done the best deal he could, and lived to build upon it.
But liberation leaders are not always power brokers. Some (unlike Nelson Mandela or even Gerry Adams), cannot transform themselves from being outsiders to insiders when the opportunity arises. Arafat was one such – a sad conclusion for me as a steadfast backer of justice for the Palestinians and a critic of Israeli intransigence, before, during and after becoming Britain’s Middle East Minister. Terje Larsen, a brilliant Norwegian diplomat active in the Oslo Process, agreed with me that an historic opportunity had been missed by the Palestinians, albeit on a deal which fell well short of their aspirations and necessarily was bound to do so, given the balance of forces ranged against them.
By the time he died four years later in 2004, the Palestinian cause in dire straits, Arafat was widely seen as an obstacle to a settlement, instead of, as before, a Leader bravely willing to take risks for peace. Today, twelve years after the Camp David Summit, the plight of the Palestinians remains desperate.
In South Africa, there were some – including in the ANC – who opposed Nelson Mandela in his willingness to negotiate with the old enemy when the leaders of apartheid finally concluded that their own future could not be secured without treating with him.
Mandela’s capacity for forgiveness is what made him the absolutely critical figure, first during secret negotiations with the Afrikaner Nationalist government in the late1980s from prison, and then after his release. He was acutely concerned at how close South Africa had come to civil war – Buthelezi’s Zulus and Afrikaner extremists even at the11th hour in April 1994 very nearly defied the carefully negotiated settlement. In July 1996, Mandela was still reminding the ANC at a private gathering of struggle veterans: “You mustn’t compromise your principles, but you mustn’t humiliate the opposition. No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated.”
Nobody else could have delivered such a healing presidency in such a bitterly divided country with so much vicious nastiness in its history, still lurking in the shadows of the transition and for many years afterwards. A cathartic piece of Mandela magic was in 1995 when, dressed in the very Springbok jersey and cap that Blacks used to see as a symbol of apartheid, he presented the Rugby World Cup to the victorious South African captain, Francois Pienaar. The 62,000 overwhelmingly Afrikaner spectators, tears streaming, saluted “our President”.
This episode is brilliantly captured in Clint Eastwood’s 2010 film Invictus. Watching on television a weeping Kobie Coetsee, the police minister who had first broken the ice with Mandela in prison, realized that everything he had tried nearly ten years before had been worth it: “It was the moment my people, his adversaries, embraced Mandela. This endorses the miracle,” he said.
Mandela was always clear that leaders sometimes had to be ahead of followers. The same was true of Adams and McGuinness. In the late 1980s, they had first to persuade the IRA to try out the peace strategy; then in 2005 to give up its War; and finally in 2007 to support policing and the rule of law – provided it was devolved as in 2010 it eventually was. None of this was easy. All of it involved winning arguments with followers.
Strong leadership was also needed from British Government – and took too long in coming to fulfilment. In the early years of the IRA’s bloody armed campaign over 30 years ago, nobody in the British Government could stomach talking with Republican Leaders, except in surrender terms, since they were regarded as completely beyond the pale after terrorist attacks on London and Birmingham, let alone within Northern Ireland; yet in the middle of all this bloodshed and mayhem, contact was initiated which much later on came to fruition.
However, today’s terrorist threat from Al Qaeda is fundamentally different from the terrorist threat that existed in Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’. It is not rooted in political objectives capable of negotiation, but rather in a reactionary totalitarian ideology that is completely opposed to democracy, freedom and human rights.
Negotiation with Al Qaeda and its foreign Jihadists is therefore politically and morally out of the question. Yet offering individuals attracted to AQ a non-violent, political avenue to address their concerns and frustrations, could conceivably help produce change in years to come. Northern Ireland’s Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, told the London Guardian in June 2008 that discussions with Al Qaeda “wouldn’t be unthinkable, the question will be one of timing”.
Similar issues arise over the Taliban in Afghanistan, although the complexities of War Lords attached to the Taliban more for tactical reasons on the one hand, and the presence Al Qaeda leaders in the area on the other, make the whole process even more hazardous and complex. But one thing is for sure: Afghans will never be subdued by international military occupation. They never have been. Again, political negotiations are the only way forward, on the basis of early international withdrawal.
In Kashmir, supporting efforts to take forward negotiations between Delhi and Islamabad is the imperative. Here, perhaps the lessons are also that a seemingly irreconcilable constitutional conflict can be addressed with ingenuity. The extent of cross border structures (and the planned devolution of policing and justice) was crucial to Republicans agreeing to share power in what remained still a devolved part of the British state they disown. If India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris themselves can agree to an entity with soft borders and greater autonomy for Kashmiris on both sides of the line of control, then maybe progress could be made whilst preserving the interests and longer term objectives of each.
I hope also that resolving the conflict in the Basque region of Spain will make progress toward a final resolution, because the lessons certainly apply there too. Once again those on all sides in Northern Ireland have played and continue to play a useful role, as seems also to be the case in Columbia.
The inescapable lesson is that such conflicts will never be solved militarily. Either side may have temporary advances. But the solution has in the end to be political, and the mechanism has to be negotiation.
When Nelson Mandela was sworn into office on 10 May 1994, the former white leader of the last apartheid government alongside as his Deputy, it seemed to many the consummation of a miracle. What happened on the 8 May 2007, when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness took over the running of Northern Ireland together, was also a decisive moment in which the people, through their politicians, decided to break free from history, to shape a new history of building democracy.
Beginning the process on the basis of politics alone is what really matters – that is the real triumph of the New South Africa and also the new Northern Ireland, and I hope an inspiration to those parts of the world that cannot yet even see as far as the starting point.
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Peter Hain’s memoirs Outside In are published by Biteback (2012) and his biography Mandela by Spruce (2010)