“Only Nixon could go to China” is a phrase that dates to the visit in 1972 of the US President to Beijing, where he met with, and shook hands with, Mao Zedong. The import of the phrase is straightforward enough: Had Nixon not been President, and had some other President gone to Beijing, Nixon the famous anti-communist would have denounced the visit as appeasement and a demonstration that his country had gone soft on the threats facing it. Nixon himself was so established a critic of China that nobody could mistake his visit for appeasement.
The thought came to mind yesterday watching Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey deliver a speech to the His Britannic Majesty the King of the United Kingdoms in front of an audience of the noble Lords of Northern Ireland, and senior officers of His Majesty’s armed forces. A speech only the most ardent Sinn Feiner could give, because if anyone else gave it, Sinn Fein supporters would denounce them for a west brit Shoneen lickspittle:
The Speaker of the Stormont Assembly, Alex Maskey, told King Charles III, the Queen "personally demonstrated how individual acts of positive leadership can help break down barriers and encourage reconciliation" during a message of condolence.https://t.co/Orxz65sc6I pic.twitter.com/omtBzgJNsT
— ITV News (@itvnews) September 13, 2022
I do not mean, necessarily, to mock: There is power in symbolism, and in moments. This was not just Alex Maskey the man paying tribute to Elizabeth the woman. It was a hard-line Republican activist from West Belfast honouring the former commander in chief of the paratroop regiment to the current holder of that office. And it was the nephew of Lord Mountbatten nodding graciously in thanks to a representative of a community that cheered his Uncle’s killing. Events like this, however much they raise Republican and Unionist hackles, are much better than the alternative.
But at the same time, I found myself wondering, watching it, what the reaction would have been had it been John Bruton, or even Micheál Martin, giving that speech.
The Nixon rule, really, has been at the very heart of the Northern Peace Process from the start. We often mourn, in the republic, the fact that the peace process wrought the destruction of the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP, respectively, in favour of their more hard-line competitors. That was probably always necessary: Only Ian Paisley could shake hands with Gerry Adams. Only Martin McGuinness could warmly greet the late Queen. And only Alex Maskey, or someone of his pedigree, could give this speech on behalf of Irish republicanism.
But there’s another lesson here, too: These things are not only legitimate because hardliners do them. To this day, John Bruton is unfairly derided by so-called Republicans as “John Unionist” because he was nice to the then Prince of Wales as Taoiseach. Bruton was in reality just displaying the same instincts on that occasion as Maskey was yesterday. You cannot praise Maskey and deride Bruton in the same breath. Praise both, or deride both. Pick one.
Indeed, for all the praise being heaped on the departed Queen, it should be noted here that her successor has ever been a better and more committed friend to Ireland than his mother was: He made an unprecedented number of visits here as Prince of Wales, often and usually in a private capacity because he genuinely seems to really like Ireland, aside from any sense of duty he might have. His accession should be cause for optimism about the future of British-Irish relations, and cross-community relations in Northern Ireland. Heck, if yesterday is anything to go by, he might make a Royalist out of Alex Maskey yet, as he allegedly did to John Bruton all those years ago.