Isaiah Berlin in Two Concepts of Liberty observed that few governments have found much difficulty in causing their subjects to generate any will that the government wants. Since that was written 40 years ago the techniques and technology for control have improved a hundred-fold. The triumph of despotism is to "persuade the slaves to declare themselves free". Or, in the case of the Belfast Agreement, to acknowledge that it meets the requirements of violent republicanism while simultaneously strengthening the Union.
But few of the television reporters circling like barracudas around the dying whale of the referendum issue were much concerned with Berlin's philosophical conceits.
The people of Northern Ireland believe they have made the most important political decision of their lives. The copy of the agreement delivered to their homes could well have come from a Soviet publication of the 1930s. It carried the legend "It's Your Decision" when in fact, by the exercise of state power, media manipulation, and propaganda the government has already appropriated that decision as its own.
A unionist people first caricatured as intransigent bigots and then burdened with political guilt had been made the object of every kind of pressure. Murdered, maimed and pillaged by Sinn Fein/IRA, they displayed such fortitude that their tormentors were forced to coerce them by proxy, and attack a less resolute community on the British mainland. Britain, it appeared, was not prepared to endorse a level of violence which for 25 years successive governments had deemed "acceptable" for its citizens in Northern Ireland. To resolve the conflict which threatened the City of London, truth had to be stood upon its head. Unionists had either to accept the Government's solution or be transformed into obstacles to peace. Thus was born the "peace process," the twisted offspring of violent republicanism and British expediency. Having been alternately bombed or blackmailed with the threat of renewed bombing, the unionists were to be bullied, bribed and brainwashed into submission by their own government.
When a section of people, be they unionists or Jews, become the victims of the unjust exercise of power by a government supported by a compliant media and unrestrained by opposition parties, those people are not the only victims. Democracy, decency and justice also suffer. However desirable the attainment of a Yes vote was deemed to be, values essential to the maintenance of a fair and just society were trampled underfoot in the rush to get it.
The Yes vote was achieved with a degree of government interference, support and bias that would have instantly been declared illegal in the Republic. The publicity given to the visit by Tony Blair, John Major, William Hague, Paddy Ashdown and Gordon Brown, to say nothing of the exhortations from Bill Clinton, was extraordinary. Politicians were not the only celebrities called in aid. During a free concert given by Bono of U2, David Trimble - now featured as a radical - did a jig with the blessed John Hume and was redeemed from his Drumcree role when, as a "red-faced triumphalist," he danced with a different partner to a different tune.
This organised procession of the great and the famous gave both the BBC and UTV scope for an orgy of publicity for the Yes campaign. Professional monitoring of television coverage of the referendum, from April 20th to May 21st, revealed that UTV had devoted 65 per cent of its coverage to the Yes campaign, while the BBC weighed in with 71 per cent. RTE eat your heart out.
Northern Ireland's local newspapers showed even greater bias over the same period. In column centimetre terms the Irish News gave the Yes campaign 72 per cent, the Belfast Telegraph 70 per cent, and the News Letter 67 per cent. In real terms the News Letter, now part of the Mirror group, was the most outrageously virulent in its anti-No content. Not satisfied with its efforts as a newspaper, the main roads in North Down - the writer's constituency - were plastered with its posters extolling the Yes vote.
The referendum results are unlikely to be mirrored in future elections. Hype and hysteria, though successful in raising the turnout to 81 per cent, are effervescent. The turnout increase of 14 per cent over the May 1997 general election, represents some 166,000 people who rarely vote, if at all. They are scarcely a secure political asset. All reliable exit polls and the government's own forecasts indicate that 99 per cent of nationalists voted Yes, so their contribution to the No vote was negligible. In the 1997 general election, the combined unionist vote was about 370,000, and the No vote on Friday represents more than 70 per cent of that rather more constant electoral asset. Moreover, the government's capacity to interfere in the coming election will be much more limited than the licence it enjoyed in the referendum campaign.
A foundering campaign by Mr Trimble was only saved by the direct interference of the Prime Minister, pledging his credit in his own handwriting. Almost certainly Sinn Fein/IRA will prevent that pledge, which desperate circumstances made necessary, from being redeemed. A truly Faustian dilemma lies ahead for Mr Blair when he has to answer upon his bargain.
This agreement is unlikely to succeed because it will institutionalise communal and sectarian differences. It will undermine both public confidence and the rule of law. It will make Northern Ireland permanently unstable as Sinn Fein emphasises its transitional nature. It will elevate the unreal expectations of some nationalists and deepen the distrust and anxiety of many unionists.
The price of England's conflict resolution with IRA violence to protect the mainland is a concession to terrorism and the reward of its exponents. In buying off terrorism it has fed political monsters of all shades, with which the entire community will be forced to live.
The means never justify the ends: and democracy, decency and justice have been sacrificed for an agreement which has not excised the belief in violence within Irish nationalism, but strengthened it. On such a foundation, no lasting peace can ever be built.
Robert McCartney QC, MP is leader of the UK Unionist Party