Newton Emerson: The reality is Sinn Féin still needs to be house-trained

The SDLP is to set up a New Ireland Commission to "build consensus on our future constitutional arrangements".

Announcing the initiative, party leader Colum Eastwood said a conversation on unity could not be led by Sinn Féin as it was "toxic to unionists and that's the reality".

The commission’s vision of developing relationships through the institutions of the Belfast Agreement is identical to the “shared island” aim in the programme for government.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin, whose party is in a partnership with the SDLP, has presented the unit’s work as a direct alternative to Sinn Féin’s “divisive” and “partisan” push for a Border poll.

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There is a danger all these well-meant invitations will lead unionists to believe nationalist Ireland is offering to sideline Sinn Féin en route to the 32-county promised land.

The reality is there is no future without Sinn Féin as a decisive player. It is within a hair’s breadth of being the largest party, North and South, and may well lead an Irish government this decade.

The logic of Eastwood's position is not to bypass Sinn Féin but to focus all nationalist efforts on making it less toxic. That was how the SDLP began the peace process, with dialogue between John Hume and Gerry Adams to secure an IRA ceasefire.

The result was Sinn Féin eclipsing the SDLP, for which republicans have shown no gratitude whatsoever.

Polls

Martin and Eastwood may want to avoid that history repeating itself but they need only look to the polls to realise it is too late. Sinn Féin has already eaten their lunch. All they can do is use Fianna Fail’s next few years in power – perhaps its last few years in power – to make republicans fit for the table.

What use Fine Gael will be in this is open to question. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has taken only a month to start publicly briefing against the coalition, showing even less gratitude for his inclusion than Sinn Féin showed the SDLP.

It seems clear Fine Gael is pondering future arrangements in the Dáil, possibly for the quite near future. The certainty across much of politics and journalism in the Republic that Varadkar’s party would never go into office with Sinn Féin looks rather quaint from the vantage point of Northern Ireland, where the DUP has been running a government with republicans for 10 years. The fact that Stormont power-sharing is mandatory does not make it much less remarkable.

The reality is Sinn Féin does still need to be house-trained, and it is always angry regardless

Detoxifying Sinn Féin goes far beyond reconciling it to unionism, which of course has poisonous qualities of its own.

It is in everyone’s interests, including republicans, to clean up the “republican movement”. This applies whether a united Ireland is on or off the agenda, imminent or decades away. If Sinn Féin is not delivering or running such a country it will be planning to deliver or run it. In the party’s present form, all these scenarios mean a bumpy political ride.

A first step Fianna Fail could take is to specify the terms under which it would accept Sinn Féin as a coalition partner. Obvious requirements include the retirement of “shadowy forces” and delivering government in good faith at Stormont.

Concrete measures

A series of concrete measures could be set out, much as was done in the early years of the peace process. It is lamentable this was not done in the run-up to February's general election or in the months of negotiation afterwards. However, doing so now need not amount to a new draft programme for government or undermine the current coalition in any way. Fianna Fáil would be setting a bar so low, by legal and democratic norms, that only Sinn Féin could fail to meet it.

Fine Gael might then feel obliged to set out its own terms, in what would hopefully be a race to the top; a contest to secure the most republican reform.

If this is too combative for the three-party coalition, it has agreed plenty of avenues for a collaborative approach.

Among the 60 items in the shared island unit’s work programme are “deepen multi-agency cross-border co-operation on crime” and “address the painful legacy of the Troubles”. If this does not mean an end to laundering paramilitary cash and lauding sectarian murder, it means very little.

Sinn Féin will also presumably attend most of the forums and events planned by the shared island unit, where it can be leaned on by everyone else. A key lesson of the peace process is that republicans respond to such pressure.

Sinn Féin is angered by any suggestion it needs to be "house-trained", a phrase notoriously used by former UUP leader David Trimble at the time of the Belfast Agreement.

The reality is it does still need to be house-trained, and it is always angry regardless.

The purpose of training, as unionists must be left in no doubt, is that neither they nor Sinn Féin will be locked out of the house.