British-Irish Association Conference - 5 September 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be here again at the BIA and to share this platform with such eminent company.

On these occasions, I guess for many politicians invited to speak, there is the challenge of following a path between saying what you wanted to say to your audience in the first place, and at the same time remaining true to the overall theme chosen by the organisers.

When I was originally invited to speak, I thought that it might be worth telling the distinguished BIA audience how difficult it really is in Government, in a four-party system 100% controlled by two parties.

I might have illustrated this by sharing some insights about how the Executive works in practice. For example, how no business can be brought to the Executive table by the SDLP or UUP unless it is first approved by the two bigger parties. I might have mentioned that in addition to having 11 of the 14 seats around the Executive table, the two bigger parties add eight DUP/Sinn Fein advisers to that numerical advantage. The 11 and the eight meet outside the Executive. Then they circulate papers previously unseen and expect the three UUP/SDLP Ministers, deliberately unsighted and unsupported, to fanfare their approval. You all know what Reg Empey’s description of this was. I think he was probably being unfair to hucksters!

I might also have spent some time on the issue of the devolution of policing and justice – needed urgently – despite the financial and other difficulties. I would have said that responsibility for policing and justice could be a poisoned chalice for any Minister – but I would have made the point for anyone who believes in democracy, particularly those who demanded respect for their mandate, while they continued to support violence against our people, that it is the SDLP’s poisoned chalice to endure.

But I will not dwell on these matters today. That would be discourteous to our hosts. So what about the question of interdependence?

Of course we are interdependent on two levels:

Taking the last one first – surveys show that 80% of people want to live together rather than live apart. Studies have also shown that there is a major economic cost attached to division – so if we want a better future, we’re going to have to share it, and whether we like it or not, we need each other.

The second interdependence is the interdependence at Government level and it is more interesting. No-one can doubt the political progress that has been made over the past fifteen years. We’ve had an end to the campaign of violence. Guns have been largely silent for some years now – and I think I can safely say that we are all grateful for that. We also have an unprecedented degree of political stability, with Unionists and Nationalists locked together solidly in government.

So, with the absence of violence and with political institutions in place you would like to think that our society could move on. That what John Hume called the healing process could begin. Yet, if we are honest, we have moved on very little as a society despite the success of the Peace Process.

As we are only too well aware, we still live apart, we are educated apart, we mostly socialise apart – that is just not normal. As you know we are living in a way that can feed the prejudice and sectarianism that inevitably lead to that violence. And apart from the violence, our institutional arrangements make it difficult to move forward generally. The interdependence at the Centre which gives it unprecedented stability completely denies it room for manoeuvre and flexibility. The parties are locked so tightly together that, even with goodwill, movement is difficult. Like the tragic case of Siamese twins, togetherness is unavoidable, but forward movement is extremely difficult. The desire for movement is there, but the practical difficulties are overwhelming.

A further concrete example – huge effort went into some issues, issues like victims, dealing with the past and even academic selection, but forward movement was torturously slow. Less generous commentators have likened the togetherness to that of a pantomime horse careering across the public stage with little co-ordination or direction. I’ll say nothing, and you can surmise for yourself who might be at the front and who might be at the back.

For my part, I do not pretend to have the Executive power that resides at the Centre, but paradoxically, I do have a lot more room for manoeuvre. I can develop a proposition to an advanced stage before having to convince others – at the Centre that is quite difficult to do.

I have responsibility for social development, which includes housing and regeneration, and a much wider remit for how our society and community develop generally.

Whilst I cannot speak here for the whole of Government and moving on is not the sole responsibility of DSD, it has certainly struck me in my work that we can and must do something to reduce the extent of segregation. In the area of urban regeneration, for example, we don’t just need shiny new buildings. We need shared spaces. Anyone should be able to walk through our city or town centres without fear of being attacked because of their political or religious or racial affiliation. So I have decided to put Shared Future at the top of my agenda. Some people think that Shared Future is a pious, wishy-washy aspiration – I do not believe this to be the case. In fact, I am more concerned about the use of the term good relations; because it implies that we will always have two communities. So if any of you have a better term than shared future, I would be happy to have it.

So what have I been doing about it? While I have my own ideas in DSD, I wanted to find out what others have to offer or say.

This summer I decided to host a series of public meetings across Northern Ireland - to ask people what they thought, to listen to the ideas and the problems faced by communities right across the North. So far I have held meetings in Ballymena, Derry, Newry, Bangor, Omagh and Enniskillen. Further meetings are planned in Belfast, Craigavon, Lisburn and Downpatrick. The meetings have been well attended.

So what are the issues being raised? Well:

As a community of politicians we have to be honest about our own tribal behaviour and knee-jerk reactions. We have also collected ideas relating to housing, shared space, parenting children, integrated education, inclusion and many others. I will be drawing all of this together over the autumn and presenting it to Executive colleagues.

But, in the end, all of this comes down to leadership and trust. We know there is a massive agenda to transact to achieve a shared future and I know that some of what I am likely to propose will be challenging for all and for my own party – but we have been dancing around this subject for too long. I am determined to use all the power available to me to move a shared future of the top of the political agenda.