Celebrations of our ‘peace accord’ have made news around the world. Yet, in their reports, both British and Irish journalists described the accord as an ‘imperfect peace’. However well intentioned, such terminology does a descriptive disservice to our peace architects and what the peace process was originally designed to do. Understandably, such terminological inaccuracy requires immediate clarification.
In 1998, we, the people, dared to describe our Agreement as a ‘positive peace’, not an imperfect one. For such reasons, our peace process became valorised around the world. Yet, since then, with the drip, drip, drip of daily media discourses, peace has transformed from ‘positive’ to ‘imperfect’.
In theory, the peace process was to have evolved through three stages: conflict management, conflict transformation and conflict resolution. Becoming stuck in the first cycle of conflict management, rather than transform into a ‘positive peace’, after 2007, the Dublin academic Conor McCabe observed ‘a double transition’ taking place, from socio-sectarian violence to ‘peace and neoliberalism’.
The Canadian academic Audra Mitchell described this development as ‘a violent peace’, while Belfast’s New Lodge-rooted London academic John Nagel saw more of a ‘Potemkin village’ being built rather than a ‘positive peace’.
Given its global valorisation, international sponsors, funders, national/local politicians and their news posse have been reluctant to acknowledge such scientific facts that speak ill of this ‘neoliberal peace’ dropping slowing into their area of benefit.
Through this form of what I call peace washing, the ‘positive peace’ people dared for in 1998 got ‘processed’ to become ‘an imperfect peace’: where the Stormont Brake appears to be the only civilised type of ‘good government’ available for those who’d dare to vote for a positive peace.
Now, as the celebrations conclude, and we make our way back into the trenches, we could do well to also recall that in 1998, peace was not violent. Then, peace was to expect a doctor at your door within the ‘golden hour’; a house that could become a home; a job that enriched, not exploited; and a shift in power from ‘the sovereign with his sword’ to ‘the citizen’ with her ‘rights’.
Once, ‘sweet dreams’ were made of this ‘positive peace’ but now, to preserve people, peace and planet, something else is required ‘to set the darkness echoing’ in our new global quest, to preserve life, as species. Imagine.
SEÁN BRENNAN PhD
Belfast
Fiddling while NHS burns
‘Peace by peace, our health service is being privatised’, observes Patrick Murphy (April 22), which is now a common refrain among some commentators.
When I retired as a heating engineer some 20 years ago, my basic charge for servicing an oil-fired boiler was circa £35 and the sector’s public voice, OFTEC, had just negotiated a call-out rate with the insurance industry of £100 for the first hour and £50 per half hour thereafter.
At the time I covered DAFT (Down, Armagh, Fermanagh and Tyrone) with the odd foray into DA (Derry and Antrim), and the prices cited above would have been commonplace irrespective of whether the customer resided in the public or private sector.
The question going begging then is if the general public are willing to pay these rates to maintain the health of their heating boilers, why would they expect to pay any less to look after their own personal health?
Having raised this question, the follow-on is why don’t GPs in Northern Ireland resign en bloc from the NHS to begin charging the going rate for appointments and health treatment of patients?
This would force the Northern Ireland Assembly to adapt to this change to pay the fee on behalf of those receiving Universal Credit and other benefits, but this would be balanced by a concomitant drop in the subsidy paid to GP surgeries.
One would expect to see a surplus generated for the NI Treasury – it’s about time they created one – that could in turn offset the deficit elsewhere in the NI Budget.
The same rationale can be extended to the rest of the health sector, with those who can afford to do so paying up front for immediate treatment instead of suffering on ever-longer waiting lists as the Neros in the DUP fiddle while the NHS (metaphorically) burns.
DR BERNARD MULHOLLAND
Belfast BT9
Enduring achievements
Two Irish sportsmen have tragically died in the last fortnight but their achievements will live on in perpetuity.
The adventure world has been plunged into mourning with the death of renowned Co Down climber Noel Hanna (56), a 10-time Everest summiteer who died on returning from the summit of the 8,091-metre Annapurna mountain in the Gandaki Province in north-central Nepal.
Years ago, while in Nepal, I embarked on the Annapurna Experience. During the 30-minute flight one can observe fantastic Himalayan peaks, lakes and glaciers.
In 2019 the deceased accompanied American Decatur Boland (12) – the youngest person ever to climb to the summit of the highest volcano in North America – along with his father Daniel.
News of the tragedy came days after Waterford rally driver Craig Breen died following a test-driving crash while preparing for the Croatia Rally. His co-driver James Fulton was unharmed. The 33-year-old began his rallying career in 2009 before moving into the WRC seven years later.
Their deaths were premature. But their achievements will not be forgotten.
Suaimhneas síoraí don bheirt acu.
GERRY COUGHLAN
Dublin 24
Government emergency
“You need something to frighten people with, to prevent them from paying attention to what’s really happening to them” (Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, 1998). Thus we got on Sunday the government-inspired emergency alert test designed to help people to “take specific protective action during an emergency” (2014 report, Cabinet Office).
Most of the media commentary focused on complaints from the public about receiving the alert either late or not at all. Similarly, if the government was handing out boots to the groin there would be people, no doubt, complaining that they hadn’t received one, or else, lamentably, received it late – the mainstream media undoubtedly reporting events like the obedient servant it is to major power blocks happy to echo government propaganda.
LOUIS SHAWCROSS
Hillsborough, Co Down
