Sunningdale, the Ulster Workers' Council strike and the struggle for democracy in Northern Ireland

David McCann, Cillian McGrattan

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526108395
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

The 'Sunningdale experiment' of 1973-4 witnessed the first attempt to establish peace in Northern Ireland through power-sharing. However, its provisions, particularly the cross-border 'Council of Ireland', proved to be a step too far. The experiment floundered amid ongoing paramilitary-led violence, finally collapsing in May 1974 as a result of the Ulster Workers' Council strike.Drawing on new scholarship from some of the top political historians working on the period, this book presents a series of reflections on how key protagonists struggled with notions of power-sharing and the 'Irish dimension', and how those struggles inhibited a deepening of democracy and the ending of violence for so long.

Part I
Introduction and overview of the Sunningdale Agreement

1
Introduction

David McCann and Cillian McGrattan

Conceptions of democracy and ideas about democratic practice lie at the heart of debates on and about Northern Ireland. They have inspired violence and continue to precipitate division, confounding those who seek to explore non-conflictual ways of filtering antagonism. In this regard, Richard Bourke has argued that ‘[t]he case of Northern Ireland highlights the existence of a shortfall between our basic political aspirations and what in actual fact transpires in the world we have inherited’ (2003: 7). Sunningdale, the Ulster Workers’ Council Strike and the Struggle for Democracy in Northern Ireland aims to explore this disconnect by focusing on the first attempt to implement a power-sharing democratic framework in Northern Ireland and analysing, from a number of perspectives, reactions to that framework at the time and in subsequent years. Those reactions spoke to foundational ideas about democracy including how we think about and implement notions of inclusion, transparency, justice, fairness, accountability and plurality. The aim of this book, then, is to examine how the lessons that actors took from the 1973–74 ‘experiment’ of these notions impacted upon the experiment itself and later attempts at trying to reach a political settlement.

The arguments and ideals that characterised the Sunningdale era, of course, continue to resonate in contemporary Northern Ireland – often in violent and aggressive ways. For example, Loyalist protestors besieged Belfast city centre in early December 2012 to vent their anger at the removal of the Union Flag from the top of the city hall. The issue had been debated within the council chamber and on the streets for a number of weeks beforehand. The city's Unionist community, who tend to favour maintaining the constitutional link with the United Kingdom, held that the question represented the crystallisation of their fears that their identity was being eroded in the public sphere. On the other hand, the city's Nationalist population, who tend to favour a reunification with the Irish Republic, believed that the flag should be removed completely since it represented for them an alienating presence in their city. In actuality, the 3 December decision by Belfast city council's elected representatives was to curtail the flying of the flag to ‘designated days’ of historic and symbolic importance. This option was suggested by the cross-community, middle-ground Alliance Party, as a compromise between removal and having the flag flying every day. Despite a decade and a half of peaceful politics, the flags protest spiralled into violence: politicians (particularly from the Alliance Party) and journalists were issued death threats and their homes and party offices were targeted with nail bombs and shooting; the police were subject to attack from petrol bombs and by the New Year the rioting and road blocks that brought the city to a standstill had resulted in over a hundred arrests and had been estimated at costing up to £15 million in lost revenue, police time and clean-up operations.

While it criticised the violence, the protests were immediately framed by the Belfast News Letter (a daily whose readership is mainly Protestant and Unionist) as being about a battle over democracy. Thus, its editorial argued that ‘[t]he current crisis over the Union Flag has its origins in nationalist intransigence. The consent principle recognises Northern Ireland's place in the UK, yet Britain's flag is objectionable’ (News Letter, 10 December 2012). While the News Letter’s allusion to the consent principle spoke to the idea that a majority within Northern Ireland advocate maintaining the constitutional link with Great Britain, the allusion itself speaks to and brings to light (even if by way of deferral) distinctions in how democracy is conceptualised and practised in Northern Ireland. This point about distinctions in thought and practice was evident in a series of short position pieces by Belfast city councillors that had appeared in the same paper the previous day. Tim Attwood of the moderate Nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), for example, pointed out that while his party favoured a policy of flying no flags, the idea of restricting the Union Flag to flying on designated days represented ‘an honourable and reasonable way forward’. Consensual politics, he said, were possible in a divided city like Belfast, pointing to agreements reached between Nationalist and Unionist councillors about how to commemorate events from the critical period 1912–22; however, people needed to focus on important issues that effected everyone such as economic regeneration. Attwood's message was reiterated by the Alliance councillor Máire Hendron, who argued that ‘instead of sending out a message to the world that yet again Northern Ireland has retreated to traditional tribal positions, we should demonstrate clearly that we can act in a mature manner on such a sensitive issue’ (News Letter, 10 December 2012). A contrary view was offered in a retrospective analysis by the Ulster Unionist Party counsellor Alderman Jim Rodgers who accused Alliance and the Nationalist parties of the SDLP and Sinn Féin of betraying the people of Belfast. The restriction of the flying of the flag, he argued, ‘was a blow against consensus politics and very much represented the politics of the past … [The] decision created untold anger and impacted community relations in a way that hasn't been seen for years … the out-workings of which continue right up until today’ (News Letter, 3 December 2013). In such ways are differences over ideas about consent and voice often masked by or worked through attributions and allegations of blame and responsibility: the lessons taken from events therefore often reaffirm pre-existing ideological and ethnic sentiments.

Linked in with these battles over symbolism was a sense of illegitimacy that was linked to a similar concept that loyalists used in 1974. Despite the fact that the flags’ decision was taken by democratically elected councillors, the protestors argued that the Loyalist community has stopped voting and is effectively disenfranchised from the political process. Since 1998, turnout in elections has steadily fallen from around 70 per cent to 54.5 per cent at the 2011 Assembly election. In recent elections despite the tendency for people from working-class communities to vote there are proportionately around 10 per cent more Catholics voting than Protestants (Garry, 2011). This in effect bolsters Sinn Féin while eroding support for Loyalist parties like the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). The declining turnout and demographic shifts have turned what used to be a solid Unionist majority into a hung council with Nationalists holding a slight edge. This loss of a majority and the removal of the Union Flag fuelled the narrative of a culture war against the Loyalist community by what they perceived as an illegitimate decision. This sense of disengagement was in large part what gave the protestors justification to adopt similar methods to the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) of blocking roads at peak times during the day. A mural in East Belfast showing Loyalists celebrating the collapse of the 1974 power-sharing Executive illustrates the resonance of these lessons of alienation, disenfranchisement and contested legitimacy that continue to underpin Loyalist claims-making today.

Agreeing to disagree?

This politics of claims-making often circles around feelings of justified grievance and the allocation of blame. As Alvin Jackson has pointed out, the problems of causation and blame intersect with analysis and explanation, giving rise to a central question ‘why did the power sharing executive fall, and who carried the responsibility?’ (2003: 268). The Sunningdale Communiqué of December 1973 has often been described as an ‘agreement to disagree’ – resolution of key issues surrounding the establishment of cross-border bodies and police and justice reform was postponed and instead devolved power sharing was established. The parallels with the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement are not simply in the fact that the latter covered much of the same ground (hence its description as ‘Sunningdale Mark II’ or, more infamously, by Seamus Mallon of the SDLP and a former Deputy First Minister, as ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’). Several contributors to this book explore the implications of Mallon's somewhat scathing remark – targeted, as it seemed to have been, against republicans – and the logic that lines of thought and policy can be drawn across time (see, for instance, Aughey, Campbell, O’Kane and Hennessey). Parallels might also be found in the political choreography in which ‘wicked’ questions concerning constitutional frameworks, policing, prisoner release and victims’ rights were dealt with, fudged or left aside; certainly, as several contributors point out, the ambiguities surrounding what was actually agreed and what was left to be agreed or ratified at a later date helped to establish power sharing but also worked to undermine its legitimacy – particularly in the eyes of the unionist community (see, for instance, Gillespie and Aveyard and McDaid). Indeed, the ‘Agreement’ that was reached in December 1973 between the two governments, the Ulster Unionists, the SDLP and the Alliance Party, was actually a ‘communiqué’ that, in effect, noted a consensus on the fundamentals but deferred full implementation.

The sudden fall of the power-sharing Assembly in May 1974 amidst a general strike organised by the paramilitary-backed UWC has tended to overshadow consideration of what might be called the democratic lessons contained in the ‘Sunningdale experiment’. Instead, historical and political debate has centred on questions of blame and counter-factuals surrounding Sunningdale as some kind of tragic missed opportunity. A populist history by McKittrick and McVea, for example, ambles around the question of whether Sunningdale was a ‘new beginning’ had it not been for the ‘schizophrenic Unionist attitude towards law and order and legitimate protests’ (2001: 108). As Aughey points out, the notion of missed opportunity was at the core of debate in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the executive. It is, as McKittrick and McVea's reflections demonstrate, ultimately tautological as it is derived from an idea that Sunningdale was was an idea before its time. The politically toxic atmosphere that existed over bodies such as the Council of Ireland and North–South ministerial meetings was nearly erased by 2007 as the then First Minister and leading opponent of the Sunningdale Agreement, Ian Paisley, gave a warm public embrace of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Speaking about the event Paisley spoke about the ‘release’ of emotions that had built up over time. Likewise, O’Donnell points out how it was politically difficult for the then party leader, Jack Lynch, to get the Fianna Fáil party to give its support to Sunningdale due to concerns over constitutional recognition (2007a: 12). Yet in 1998, with a great deal of ease, Ahern managed to remove the territorial claim on Northern Ireland from the Irish constitution but also reform the party's policy platform on Northern Ireland.

Seemingly, the lesson of this is that legitimacy is linked to, or defined by, what is politically viable. The point is arguably underscored by Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, a senior civil servant at the time of Sunningdale and adviser to the Unionist leader, Brian Faulkner. Bloomfield pointed out that the actual text of the Communiqué was especially formatted so as to have one side of the page devoted to the Irish government's position on the agreement and the other to the British government (1994: 193). This failure to agree on some of the most fundamental issues such as the constitutional position of Northern Ireland is the first thing that becomes apparent within the Communiqué as the first three substantive paragraphs set out the failure to agree a common policy, instead recognising the right of the Irish government and the SDLP to aspire to Irish unity alongside the Unionists’ desire to remain British. What was a selling point for the Irish government, to say that no compromises had occurred in relation to ideological aspirations, was in reality detrimental for Faulkner as fears around the border and security issues were the main drivers of opposition within the Unionist community from 1970 onwards.

While the Agreement fudged the issue of constitutional recognition; it none the less made provision for the establishment of a Council of Ireland, which would facilitate the harmonisation and consultation of joint initiatives in areas such as tourism and electricity. The Council would be run by a Council of Ministers (seven members from each government) with a consultative assembly for advisory and review functions. In reality, the Council had very limited scope or real power. Maurice Hayes, a Northern Irish official, for example, recalled that trying to assign tasks to the new body in 1974 was a particularly slow process as government departments were reluctant to cede too much power or control (1995: 174).

On the critical issue of border security, the Communiqué recorded the concerns of the Unionist and Alliance parties that those who were committed to violence be brought to trial. The Irish government shared a similar concern and agreed to undertake legal steps to ensure that people who had been accused of murder in Northern Ireland would stand trial. The Communiqué noted that ‘problems of considerable legal complexity’ were involved in this area. All that was agreed, however, was that a commission set up by the British and Irish governments would examine proposals from all parties and recommend the most effective way of dealing with those who had committed crimes. Gillespie notes the early failure of this approach as the Irish Justice Minister, Patrick Cooney, just three days after the signing of the agreement, promised only limited changes to the Irish Republic's existing laws (1998: 104).

Recriminations over the collapse of the executive began immediately. The Irish News (a nationalist daily), for example, argued that ‘Power-sharing was possibly the last hope for the Six Counties [Northern Ireland] of political survival … Inevitably now, this area [Northern Ireland] would seem to be facing a lengthy period of direct rule. At the end of it – what?’ The paper's editorial set out a number of options – try again with power -sharing, integrate Northern Ireland into the rest of the UK or reunification. While its preferred option was the latter, it was in no doubt where the blame for the failure o...