JOHN Hume's apparent rage at the Prime Minister's announcement of elections in Northern Ireland shocked the Commons: he is usually quietly spoken in that arena. It will not have surprised the Ulster Unionists on the benches behind him, who are more accustomed to such outbursts.
Since last summer the UUP and SDLP have been engaged in much publicised meetings at the Dunadry Hotel in Co Antrim, ostensibly to deal with socio economic matters of mutual concern. Alongside these meetings, private discussions have been taking place over the last two months between representatives of the two parties, focusing more directly on the political process.
Not surprisingly, the idea of an elected body in Northern Ireland as a confidence building measure has former a central part of these discussions. The first of these private meetings took place on January 20th and lasted for four hours.
Mr Hume's claim that he has an objection to an elective process in principle is one the UUP finds staggering, if not disingenuous, therefore.
It has been known for some time that Sinn Fein is warmer to the elected body idea than is the SDLP leader. This was demonstrated by Michael McLaughlin's attempt to pre empt the Mitchell report on decommissioning the week before its original publication date. It was supposed that the SDLP's public reluctance to go down the democratic route was due to fear for its electoral mandate, given the publicity injection Sinn Fein has been handed since August 1994. Opinion polls, however, indicate that the SDLP's support is holding well.
MR HUME feels that he has been the victim of an Orange conspiracy at Westminster. Dick seems to agree, arguing that any proposal emanating from unionists must be resisted. This is patently not true.
The Conservative government has an overall majority of five, which would be considered quite healthy in the Republic. Mr Hume has, in the past, been a great supporter of the bipartisan approach at Westminster which was demonstrated again on Wednesday.
The SDLP leader also feels that the British government has welshed on the Downing Street communique of November 28th 1995. Contrary to what Mr Hume was claiming on the night of its release, the communique did not set a fixed date for all party talks. The only reason that the target data of the end of February is now unrealisable is not because the government has been stalling for the last 17 months, as he claims, but because Sinn Fein - insisted on the precondition that it be allowed full representation at talks while the IRA's arsenal is "outside the door", to use the phrase, Mr Hume must now be regretting.
The announcement of an elective as a means of making progress and sidestepping the decommissioning issue for the moment means that Mr Hume has uncharacteristically and comprehensively outmanoeuvred. He has been thwarted in his attempt to bounce the British Government into issuing invitations to round table talks in the full knowledge that the majority of people of Northern Ireland's representatives would find it impossible to attend and failed to come up with any" other proposal.
The final straw must have been the survey evidence that the overwhelming majority of SDLP supporters agreed with the elective process proposal. Since, as Mitchell found, the IRA would not, rather than could not, decommission prior to talks, the British Government has no alternative but to resort to the confidence building measures Mitchell outlined, one of which was the elected body supported not only by the UUP, but the cross community Alliance Party, the Democratic Left and, significantly since there is a likelihood that Sinn Fein will participate, the DUP.
Unionists, conscious of the unhappy memories nationalists have of previous parliaments, conventions and assemblies, have endeavoured to avoid using any such term. Mr Hume is well aware of the distinction between a time limited body, to which all parties are elected on the basis of being committed to exclusively peaceful methods, charged solely with finding a political accommodation and any assembly with administrative or legislative powers that might arise from negotiations within such a body.
CONTRARY to popular belief, unionists, charged with a new intellectual self confidence derived from the work of the Cadogan Group, among others, are not attempting to avoid discussion of an enhanced relationship with the Republic alongside discussion of relationships between "Northern Ireland and Great Britain, within Northern Ireland and between the governments. One way of approaching this would be by means of a committee to look at North South structures in the new elected body.
Better the SDLP address itself to finding a satisfactory rem it for the body than attempting to fight a rearguard action to frustrate the chosen route to all party talks of its own electorate. Accusations of unionists using obstructive tactics are daily losing their force.
