A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  Then in the most unlikely of roles, Ian Paisley – for years the wrecker, the spoiler, the scourge of all in Unionism who sought accommodation – took over and completed the process.

  Ian Paisley was definitely a strange political figure, a product of the unique concatenation of political circumstances in Northern Ireland. He is a genuine and committed Christian, a true God-fearing man; he is a passionate Unionist; he is clever, shrewd, occasionally even sly. He had a great grasp of strategy and tactics and could spot the difference between the two.

  The unanswered question is: did he change or did the situation change? He would say the latter, and that he was always prepared to make peace if the IRA forswore violence. But I think two things also happened to change him. First, after a long and debilitating illness which, as he used to remark, he knew he would survive (though many hoped his wish was misplaced), he had a sense of impending mortality, political and personal, and wanted to leave behind something more profound and enduring than ‘no surrender’. There was a really rather moving moment during the course of the talks at St Andrews in October 2006, when it was discovered that he and his wife Eileen were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. At the end of the meeting, there was a little ceremony at which each party congratulated him, including Gerry Adams, and Bertie then presented him with a piece of wood from a tree at the site of the Battle of the Boyne. He made a gracious and benign reply (and Ian was perfectly capable, even when being congratulated, of being neither of these things) and I felt this was a man looking into his own soul and feeling differently. He hadn’t exactly matured; but he had in some indefinable sense broadened.

  The other change was that Ian was nothing if not a politician with his ear firmly tuned into the people. In the course of late 2006 and early 2007, he heard the people telling him it was time for peace, and even, in particular, time for him to make the peace. During those meetings, time and again it was Ian who wanted to push forward, Ian who was prepared to seek creative solutions, Ian who took care always to leave the door open. He and I would often meet alone in the Downing Street den. Jonathan used to be highly amused when I described the meetings, which almost always dealt with the issue at a spiritual rather than temporal level. It’s true: we were both fascinated by religious faith as well as being people of faith. He gave me a little prayer book for Leo.

  Once, near the end, he asked me whether I thought God wanted him to make the deal that would seal the peace process. I wanted to say yes, but I hesitated; though I was sure God would want peace, God is not a negotiator. I felt it would be wrong, manipulative, to say yes, and so I said I couldn’t answer that question, that only he could and I hoped he would let God guide him.

  People could never understand it when I used to say how much I liked him. But I did. I think my granny’s reverence for him made me have a soft spot.

  On the nationalist side, too, there were leaders of real calibre. John Hume was, is, a great political figure and genuine titan. He had vision and imagination and foresight when others were resolutely still in blinkers. Seamus Mallon and Mark Durkan, the leaders of the SDLP, were moderate and reasonable, and felt both qualities counted against them. They were always in a difficult position. The trouble was Sinn Fein had to be brought in from the cold, and so inevitably more time, energy and focus were given to them. This caused deep resentment; but it was an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of making peace. Nevertheless both Seamus and Mark were significant figures in their own right. Both, incidentally – and I don’t know if the SDLP have a special training school for this – were masters of the sound bite, really first-class speakers, who outside of Northern Ireland’s politics would have been major players in any political party.

  Of Bertie and his contribution, I have spoken. Then there are Gerry and Martin. They were an extraordinary couple. Over time I came to like both greatly, probably more than I should have, if truth be told. Again, either would have been a big political leader in anyone’s politics. They did not merely understand, they were supreme masters of the distinction between tactics and strategy. They knew the destination and they were determined to bring their followers with them, or at least the vast bulk of them.

  A lot was written about the Provisional Army Council and their membership of it and thus their relationship with the IRA. Many people, including a large part of British intelligence, thought Sinn Fein and the IRA were indistinguishable. When Gerry and Martin would say they would have to talk to the IRA about something, the joke was always they could look in the mirror and ask.

  I always thought the relationship was more complex than that. The idea that they could just instruct the IRA never felt right to me. I don’t doubt that on many occasions the difference between Sinn Fein and the IRA was an artifice, a divide used for tactical reasons. I know that both could be clever and manipulative; but so can I. And my sense was that, in certain situations, they were persuading and negotiating with others, not giving orders. I came to the view that the SF/IRA relationship was a bit like that of the Labour leadership and the Labour Party NEC: yes the leadership is powerful, yes it usually gets its way, but not always and rarely without a lot of persuasion and negotiation.

  Throughout, Gerry and Martin feared a split, as had happened before to Republicanism, with disastrous consequences. This meant taking their people step by step, leading them, cajoling them and not always being totally upfront as to what the destination really meant. It was a tough task and they performed it with immense skill.

  Ultimately, they understood that the IRA’s existence had become not the way to a just settlement, but the barrier to it. It took real political courage to implement that insight, and whether you like them or not, and no matter how strongly you disapprove of their past actions, they had courage in abundance.

  Then there were the leaders of the minor parties, often the odd ones out in the conflict but whose leadership, when there was nothing in it for them, was rather inspiring. People like David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, the Alliance leaders, and the marvellous women’s coalition whom I used to see just to remind myself there were normal people in Northern Ireland.

  There were Ronnie Flanagan and Hugh Orde, the two chief constables I dealt with, whose very special position as head of the Northern Ireland police meant they had a role to play which was of the essence. They played that role not in an overtly political way, but with political sense.

  I also like to think that, in this instance, at least, I chose well in the people I appointed. Secretaries of State and ministers performed really well. They were very different, mind you: Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson, John Reid, Paul Murphy, Peter Hain were all unusual people in their own right, but really talented, and each made a significant, even crucial, contribution.

  Whether they were already in place or were appointed later, leaders mattered. Every step required decision-making that was complicated and a political sense that was acute. But it is not just the leadership internal to the key parties that matters: external circumstances must also be propitious.

  9. The external circumstances must militate in favour of, not against, peace. I have described how the changes in the south of Ireland helped create the context for progress. Such a change is almost invariably crucial in a conflict. These conflicts rarely invoke strong feelings only in the immediate zone of dispute. Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Kosovo: in any of these cases, external players also have a role to play, for good or ill.

  The classic example is the Israel–Palestine dispute. The ramifications are region-wide, even global. The external players, especially in the Arab world, are vital. Actually, there’s a potential change in their attitude to peace: for years the Palestinian cause was used and often abused, but now they, like Israel, fear Iran and its influence in the region.

  Starting with the Crown Prince Abdullah Peace Initiative in 2002, the Arab nations no longer want to exploit the dispute, but to settle it. It offers an enormous opportunity to Israel. Likewise, a world troubled and threatened
by a global terrorism based on a perversion of Islam needs the dispute resolved. The objective conditions are today benign. That is why grasping the possibility and pushing on to peace is so self-evidently right. But it will take perseverance. Which brings me to:

  10. Never give up. Simple but essential; never stop working on it and never give up on it. This is not just about gripping the conflict; it is about refusing to accept defeat. As we used to say in Northern Ireland: if you can’t solve it, manage it until you can solve it; but don’t walk away and leave it untended. A peace process never stands still – it goes forward or back. You have to believe a solution is possible even when others don’t, even when conventional wisdom is against you, even when those most intimately concerned – the parties themselves – have given up hope. And remember: it is better to try and fail than not to try at all.

  These are my ten principles. More or less, we applied them to Northern Ireland. There were many times it did indeed seem hopeless, but fortunately something or someone kept hope alive.

  The historic day came about on 8 May 2007, just over nine years after the Good Friday Agreement, when I went to Stormont to witness the reinstatement of the new Executive government of Northern Ireland. Ian Paisley was the first minister, his deputy was Martin McGuinness.

  That day I saw things that had you predicted them ten years before, people would have laughed, ruefully maybe, but still laughed. The meeting I had with Bertie, Peter Hain, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, the two of them sharing jokes, the three of us sitting there a trifle dumbfounded, wondering if we were in a dream; the ceremony itself, where up in the balcony previously sworn enemies were sitting together exchanging pleasantries as if the previous decades had never happened. People who had wanted to kill each other were now wanting to work together. Remarkable, moving and satisfying.

  At the gates of Stormont there was another protest. Every time we set foot in Northern Ireland there were protests – large, small, peaceful, violent, some Unionist, some Republican – always showing how divided the politics of Northern Ireland was from that anywhere else. That day for the first time there was a protest not about Northern Ireland, but about Iraq. When I saw it, I felt that Northern Ireland had just rejoined the rest of the world.

  SEVEN

  ‘WE GOVERN IN PROSE’

  ‘You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose,’ the former governor of New York Mario Cuomo once said. In the summer of 1998, after just over a year in office, an uneasy feeling gripped me.

  I had come to power believing the Labour Party was its own worst enemy. I looked back on a century of existence and saw a party that was essentially Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The periods of government were intermittent, and the psychology was not that of the decision-maker but that of the protester.

  However, we had come on an incredible journey of change. The party had accepted things that would have been unimaginable even a decade before. I had always thought if you led from the front, bold and striking out in a perpetual advance, they would stick with the leadership; and so they did. It wasn’t merely the product of eighteen years of Opposition; there was a cadre of people who believed in New Labour and understood it, instinctively and emotionally as well as intellectually, but they were small in number, uncertain in influence and still feeling their way, as in a sense I was.

  The body of the Labour Party, and particularly the older generation – not all, but most – were for a Labour Party modernised from the ways of the 1940s, but they stopped around the 1960s. Roy Hattersley was typical of this group: absolutely solid against Militant, in favour of a private sector alongside the public sector, and knowing Labour had to be sensible on defence. In other words, for him and many others, the Labour Party had to stop being extreme and go back to its proper set of positions. This was a mindset away from the destructive nonsense of the Labour turmoil of the 1980s, yet there was still a long way to go in terms of the way the world had changed. To cease being extreme was necessary, but it was also insufficient.

  For most of this older generation – old right, as well as old left – it was enough that New Labour had taken us out of the darkness of Opposition, but they didn’t believe in it. Actually they thought New Labour had no beliefs, and bought the then conventional Tory press opinion that it was in essence a marketing construct, a PR creation; head without heart. They were convinced a winning formula had been discovered which was clever, but not sincere.

  In order to circumvent the party, what I had done was construct an alliance between myself and the public. Throughout 1994–7 and certainly in this early period of government, the alliance was firm and unshakeable. The party had little option but to accept it. Any sign of indiscipline invoked the memory of all those years of Opposition. Now we were on the up; why on earth go back? It was a simple, crude, electorally perfect argument to keep the party in line, and it meant I could go out on the end of a branch, knowing that the strong and steadfast trunk of public opinion was supporting me.

  But it was high-risk. I knew also that as time passed, the branch would get longer and thinner and the trunk ever more likely to be shaken and its strength tested.

  One of the roots of my unease was that, in Opposition, the public will support a leader taking brave decisions because they are taken in respect of the leader’s party, and the public are to some extent spectators; in government, however, decisions are taken in respect of the people. They are participants. Their lives are in play.

  I had studied our party history closely, and concluded that to win, the party had to move beyond itself, and the leader had to be more than a party leader; but I also derived an appreciation of the danger which all progressive parties face, when instead of the alliance being one between leader and people, it becomes one between party and people against the leader.

  You might ask why that is a danger; surely the party simply ditches its leader, finds a new one more in tune with what the public want, and marches on to electoral success. The danger is that while the party and the public may be in common opposition to the leader, they can be opposed for very different reasons. With progressive parties, the public can become disillusioned for all sorts of reasons – in our case it was to do with insufficiently rapid progress on public services, the cost of fuel, taxes, crime and immigration, often centre-right concerns; but the progressive party is itself more likely to be disillusioned because it thinks the leadership is insufficiently radical in a traditional leftist sense – spending and taxing too little, sacrificing cherished positions and doctrines, doing too much for the middle class and not enough for the poor. Nonetheless, the party convinces itself that the public dissatisfaction vindicates its own dissatisfaction. The result is not electoral success but disaster.

  I remember back in the early 1980s, in the course of one of my many failed attempts at becoming a parliamentary candidate, being harangued by a questioner as to why Labour had lost in 1979. His basic pitch was that we had trimmed to the right, betrayed our class, forgotten our left roots, etc. I was trying desperately to keep hold of myself, knowing it was crazy in party terms to dispute this thesis, while also knowing that the thesis was crazy in public terms. I mumbled something vaguely conciliatory and cowardly. Another person started up; then another; and I couldn’t help myself. I erupted: ‘If the public thought Labour wasn’t left wing enough, why on earth would they vote Tory?’ I said, ‘Are they stupid? Did they think the Tories under Margaret Thatcher were going to be more left wing than Labour under Jim Callaghan? Are you really saying they are that dumb?’ And of course they were saying that.

  As we completed the first Comprehensive Spending Review in mid-1998 – which would put an end to the tough self-imposed public spending constraint which applied for the first three years after 1997 – I was also uneasy because something wasn’t right with the way we were governing. The rhetoric and intellectual analysis were fine – investment plus reform; hand up not handout on welfare; rewarding the good, getting rid of the bad in teaching; cutting waiting
lists in the NHS – but there was a gap between the quality of the rhetoric and the quality of the reforms themselves.

  We still had 1.3 million people on waiting lists as inpatients, most waiting over six months. However, the waiting didn’t start as an inpatient, it started with the doctor’s appointment. At the time there were no minimum standards in terms of getting to see a doctor. After the doctor, the waiting began to get on the consultant’s outpatient list. That could take months. Only after waiting on the outpatient list could you get on the inpatient list. The six months waiting often wasn’t six months at all; it could be twelve or eighteen or even more.

  The NHS was great, heroic even, in terms of dealing with emergencies and the chronically ill, but as a service, it was uneven, good when good, truly appalling when bad. It was certainly underfunded, but money was not the only problem; and more money was therefore not the complete solution.

  Across the piece it was the same. We were starting to cut class sizes for infants. It was what we had promised. It was what we were delivering. Some extra money was flowing into school buildings. But the truth was that we still had 40 per cent of eleven-year-olds leaving primary school without being able to read or write properly. David Blunkett’s literacy and numeracy strategy was starting to take hold and, again, making a difference. But we both knew the real challenge lay in secondary schools. There were only thirty London secondary schools that got over 70 per cent of their pupils to five good GCSEs. In my heart of hearts I knew I wouldn’t send my own children to most inner-city secondary schools. Discipline was variable, sometimes awful. Teachers were often, unsurprisingly, demoralised. There was often no organised school sport in the inner city, and sometimes little out of it.

  In welfare, we were getting people off the dole. With the economy in reasonable shape and after Bank of England independence, there was a sense of macro-stability for the long term. So naturally, unemployment was falling. We took this as a sign that our tougher welfare policies were working. But, again, I felt the rhetoric was considerably ahead of the actual measures.