The view from my Belfast bus: tribalism as the enemy of prosperity

At Stormont on Saturday, we observed a minute’s silence for the dead of Paris. Our conference group of Brits and Americans had convened two days earlier to discuss conflict resolution, the idea that nationalism and tribalism are the enemies of peace and prosperity, and how all this might relate to the migration crisis; so the moment could not have been more poignant. We had reached the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly by way of a bus tour that was a potted history of the Troubles: up the Catholic Falls Road, through a gate in the ‘peace wall’, back down the Protestant Shankill Road and across Loyalist East Belfast; onwards through leafy suburbia to the government estate with its elevated view across a huddled city where very little, it seemed, has been forgiven or forgotten.

Murals of masked gunmen still adorn the gable ends. The graffito ‘Stick Haass up your arse’ was a reminder to our American friends of how US diplomat Richard Haass was received when he tried to broker agreement on ‘parades and flags’ a couple of years ago. Our Stormont host, a deputy speaker of the Assembly, apologised that none of his senior colleagues could join us because the leaders of the province’s five main parties were locked in talks, with British and Irish officials, over ‘legacy’ issues, continuing paramilitary activity and welfare cuts.

Evidently all points are sore in talks that have already dragged on for weeks. But in a region where the public sector accounts for more than 60 per cent of the economy, and youth unemployment stands 40 per cent higher than the UK average, the prospect of Westminster-imposed cuts to match those on this side of the water is a particular provocation. Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness has declared them a threat to the fragile power-sharing and devolution arrangements currently in place.