Knowledge Partner
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist
At one point, I was in Washington and called with the then Irish ambassador to the US. He took me with him to an evening recep * on at the home of an influen * al Irish- American lawyer who had been asked by the Irish government to look at the PaQen process and advise Dublin in due course. He came to Northern Ireland and I took him to meet people, including the prisoners’ leaders in the Maze Prison. My
With support from friendly governments, the Paaen Commission reached out across the world in the search for good and relevant policing prac @ ce, from New York to Oaawa to Cape Town and across Europe.
purpose was for him to inhale the conflict and have it inform his senses. I took him out on the ground before he returned to the diploma * c dinner tables. In turn, Mr PaQen and his fellow commissioners engaged with me and my colleagues. They were about the business of structural change; ours was the long, slow grind of changing police culture. Changing structures without changing culture is ul * mately ineffectual. And the reform of policing in Northern Ireland is a good example of how fruikul diplomacy can be. Diploma * c ac * vity on police reform helped develop consensus between governments and helped prepare the ground between poli * cal leaders in Northern Ireland. And, in terms of the work I was doing as leader of a local NGO, the PaQen Commission increased our credibility and relevance.
In another useful twist during those years, the then Bill Clinton-led administra * on in the US introduced a programme to fund groups from Northern Ireland undertaking field trips to the US. Thus, over a four-year period, the US Department of State enabled us to bring senior and middle rank police officers and a number of civil society leaders to New York, Washington, New Jersey, Boston, Atlanta and San Diego. I should add that we did not ask the Americans to teach us how to police Northern Ireland – that was a task best lej to our own police and people. However, what the US field trips did do for us was to provide useful parallels from the challenges facing‘ Community-Oriented Policing’ in the US and, as importantly, to enable key people to spend * me together away from the heat of our conflict. And it should be noted that this study programme was another product of diplomacy: somebody had lobbied in Capitol Hill for such funds to be created in the first place and, as it happened, I was brought‘ up the hill’ to brief Irish American poli * cians about how US tax dollars were being spent on suppor * ng police reform as part of the opera * onal outworking of the Northern Ireland peace process.
Over the years of the Northern Ireland conflict, before, during and ajer the peace process, various US senators and members of Congress lobbied and agitated in support of peace efforts in Ireland. It should be noted that, apart from their personal interest and commitment to Ireland, the energy driving US interest came from the massive Irish-American diaspora. An es * mated 44 million Americans claim to have some Irish blood in their veins. Thus, harnessing the poten * al power of the relevant diaspora is a lesson worth
learning for those concerned with conflict diplomacy in other troubled parts of the world.
Image 26: The Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland was established in 1998 as part of the Belfast Agreement, intended as a major step in the Northern Ireland peace process. Chaired by ConservaLve poliLcian Chris PaBen, it was beBer known as the PaBen Commission.( The Report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland)
In terms of‘ conflict diplomacy’ I would observe three significant types in support of the Irish peace process:‘ Track One’( official, governmental and inter-governmental), principally by the Bri * sh and Irish governments working in close partnership and, at key moments, suppor * ve ac * vity by successive US governments and, laQerly, by the European Union;‘ Track Two’( non-governmental) ini * a * ves and ac * vi * es by civil society leaders, NGOs and academics within and without Northern Ireland. Seminars, trainings and conferences abroad provided cover for poli * cal players to meet, away from the glare of the media. At one point, a Boston-based Irish academic organised a trip to South Africa for poli * cal leaders and party strategists. The trip included a well-publicised mee * ng with Nelson Mandela and, to this day, photographs with the great statesman hang on office walls in Belfast and appear in poli * cal memoirs. The South Africa trip infused a * mely dose of morality and vision into the par * es, in advance of the final nego * a * ons for the Good Friday Agreement.
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