Michelle O’Neill looked confident and calm as she descended the marble steps of the Northern Ireland Houses of Parliament on the outskirts of Belfast on Saturday. She smiled as supporters on the balcony erupted in applause. But the determined way she walked and the seriousness in her eyes conveyed the gravity of this moment.
The party she represents, Sinn Féin, is a group of Irish nationalists in the region who dreamed of reuniting with the Republic of Ireland and reversing the 1921 partition that left Northern Ireland under British rule. was formed by decades of bloody struggle.
For the first time, a Sinn Féin politician has been sworn into Northern Ireland’s highest political office, marking a landmark moment for the party and the wider region as power-sharing government is restored. Until now, the role of first minister had been held by a trade unionist politician who was committed to remaining in the UK.
“As the first minister, I am committed to continuing the work of reconciliation for all of our people,” O’Neill said, noting that even her parents and grandparents never imagined this day would come. . “I never ask anyone to move forward, but all I can ask is that we move forward.”
The idea that Northern Ireland would have its first nationalist minister, much less someone from the Sinn Féin party, which has historical ties to the Irish Republican Army, was once really unthinkable. There wasn’t.
But the story of Sinn Féin’s transformation – from a fringe party that was once the political wing of the IRA to a political force that won the most seats in the 2022 Northern Ireland election – is a story of changes in the political landscape and the 1998 It is also the story of the election results. The Good Friday Agreement ended decades of sectarian conflict known as the Troubles.
“This is certainly of great symbolic importance,” said Katie Hayward, a professor of political sociology at Queen’s University in Belfast. “This speaks to how far Northern Ireland has come and in many ways the success of the Good Friday Agreement and the use of democratic and peaceful means to achieve cooperation.”
It is not yet clear what Sinn Féin’s first minister will mean for the people’s hopes of reuniting the island after a century of separation. Mary Lou McDonald, president of Sinn Féin, which leads the opposition party in Ireland’s parliament, said last week that the prospect of a united Ireland was now “within touching distance”, but experts say it is still a long way off. .
For now, the region’s two main political forces, trade unionists and nationalists, are united in a power-sharing arrangement set out in the Good Friday Agreement.
The deal collapsed over the question of how Northern Ireland’s political forces would view themselves post-Brexit.
Northern Ireland’s main unionist party, the Democratic Unionist Party, will come to power in 2022 following Brexit, which created a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. I resigned. The DUP, wanting to protect its relationship with Britain, feared that a maritime border would be the first step in tearing the two countries apart.
A boycott of parliament last week came after the British government agreed to cut customs checks, strengthen Northern Ireland’s position within the UK and hand over 3.3 billion pounds (about $4 billion) in fiscal relief. has ended.
Having won the most Labor seats in the 2022 election, the DUP had the right to appoint a deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengery, to work with Mr O’Neill on Saturday.
“We can never forget the past, with all its horrors,” Little Pengelly said of herself as a child during the unrest, and how, aged 11, she saw the devastation of an IRA bomb outside her home. I talked about it. But she added: We are shaped by our past, but we are not defined by it. ”
The roles of the first prime minister and deputy prime minister are officially equal and cannot act alone to prevent one community from dominating the other. “People often say you can’t order clips here without each other’s approval,” Hayward said. However, the title and the fact that the first minister’s role reflects the maximum number of seats gives rise to the concept of “first among equals”.
And Mr O’Neill’s appointment has inevitably brought to the fore talk about the prospect of Northern Ireland one day reuniting with the Republic of Ireland.
Experts say that while powerful Sinn Féin could give further momentum to its cause, the party’s rise is more a result of post-Brexit trade unionism than a broader rise in Irish nationalism. He said it reflected the rift that had developed between political parties. Current opinion polls show that the majority of the population across the island does not support unification.
Jonathan Tonge, a political science professor at the University of Liverpool who specializes in Northern Ireland and has extensively analyzed opinion polls on the issue, said: “They made the outlook look realistic and Brexit helped because it made the outlook look realistic.” This is because support has increased slightly.”
“There’s still a long way to go,” he said, adding that with elections looming in the Republic of Ireland in 2025 and a Sinn Féin government potentially forming in the country, “it’s huge in that respect.” he added.
He pointed out that a quarter of a century ago, few would have predicted that Sinn Féin would have its first minister.
Part of that success is due to Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Macdonald, who helped change perceptions of the party.
Robert Savage, a professor at Boston University and an expert on Irish history, said: “These two women do not have the baggage of IRA membership or close ties to the IRA.” “They are young, articulate, popular and especially wise to address the concerns of young people.”
Ms O’Neill, 47, comes from a prominent republican family in Cork, a county on Ireland’s south coast. Her father served in prison as an IRA member and later became a politician for Sinn Féin. But she is already working to make herself the first pastor for all. She attended both Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and Charles III’s coronation last year.
Many trade unionists associate Sinn Féin with the history of the IRA, as do some nationalists and people who do not belong to either group. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the party has appeal, especially among young people.
In the Republic of Ireland, the party won the popular vote in 2020, in part by focusing attention on social issues such as housing and establishing itself as an alternative to the status quo. But its popularity did not extend to older voters who remember the violence of the unrest.
In some ways, the rise in nationalist political representation is not surprising. Northern Ireland is undergoing major demographic changes, with the gradual decline of the Protestant majority being caused first by the Catholic Church’s opposition to birth control, and secondly by economic factors such as a decline in industrial employment, which was predominantly Protestant. It is believed that this is caused by a number of factors.
Catholics will outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time in 2022, according to census figures. And Northern Ireland is not the binary society it once was. Decades of peace drew in newcomers and, like many islands around the world, the island became increasingly secular. The labels Catholic and Protestant have remained clumsy shorthand for cultural and political divides.
Since leaving the EU, support for Northern Ireland remaining in the UK has declined, while support for a united Ireland has risen. Many voters saw the island’s break with Europe as economically damaging and threatening cross-border relations, after decades of EU membership had helped strengthen peace. .
For now, Belfast’s reconstituted government has more pressing matters to deal with. Last month saw the largest strike in recent memory in Northern Ireland, with tens of thousands of public sector workers going on strike in protest over pay. The health sector is in crisis, with rising costs of living being felt more acutely than in other parts of the UK.
“Look at what happened when people sat around the table and tried to build peace here. The Good Friday Agreement was born from there,” he said in one of Northern Ireland’s most disadvantaged communities. , said Councilor Paul Doherty, who represents West Belfast. “I think we need to rekindle the spirit that we had in the ’90s.”