As the 20^th anniversary of the end of the Northern Ireland “troubles” approaches, and one year after the collapse of the region’s devolved power-sharing government, the province continues to struggle with the legacy of the 30 years of low-level warfare that resulted in more than 3,500 deaths, and the prolonged period of social underperformance and dysfunction and the failure of governance to which it has given way.

Two events, occurring within the past few weeks, illustrate the fragility of the hopes for an inclusive future and the intransigence and political calculation of those who continue to play games with the horrors of the past.

The first of these events was the screening in Belfast of a documentary film that chronicles the efforts of John Hume, the civil rights campaigner, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), member of the Westminster and European Parliaments and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, to influence the policy of successive British governments by developing relationships with key politicians and administrators in Washington. Maurice Fitzpatrick, the director of the documentary and the author of John Hume in America, the book on which it is based, tells the story of how his subject, as a young civil rights campaigner, borrowed money to attend a meeting with Senator Ted Kennedy, who, in turn introduced Hume to Congressman Tip O’Neill, the future Speaker of the House. Captivated by Hume’s vision of a future in which the sectarian divisions of the province could be transcended, a vision that Hume had outlined in articles in the Irish Times as early as 1964, these key figures, and the administrations they influenced, from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, bought into Hume’s goals and adopted his strategies to achieve them.

Hume’s achievement was to use his American contacts to influence British policy in Washington, DC, the environment in which its influence was most vulnerable. As Fitzpatrick tells the story, Hume’s triumph was to see the vision he had outlined in his Irish Times articles realized in the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) and the power-sharing institutions that it established. Ten years after Thatcher bowed to the inevitable and granted the Irish Republic a voice in key decision-making institutions within the province, representatives of her successor’s government sat down with the leaders of the paramilitaries against whom it had fought to negotiate an end to the province’s civil war.

Two decades after the ceasefire, Northern Ireland’s divisions haven’t gone away, as the second of these events indicates. The announcement, earlier last week, of the resignation of a Sinn Fein Member of Parliament illustrates the endurance of sectarian feeling in Northern Ireland politics and the continuing significance of international contexts in surmounting local divisions.

The resignation of Barry McElduff, MP for West Tyrone, is linked to the legacy of one of the worst mass shootings of the “troubles.” On January 5, 1976, after a sequence of increasingly deadly tit-for-tat sectarian killings, a bus carrying 12 textile workers was stopped by a uniformed man near Kingsmill, a small town in County Armagh. A further 11 armed men stepped into view, separated the only Catholic worker from his colleagues, instructed him to leave the scene, and executed the remaining 11 Protestants. It took 38 years for a proper inquest to be conducted, and no one has ever been charged in connection with the murders. Nevertheless, on January 5, 2018, the 42^nd anniversary of this massacre, McElduff tweeted a comic video of himself balancing on his head a loaf of bread carrying the branding of the Kingsmill Bakery.

Former Sinn Fein MP Barry McElduff (YouTube screengrab)

Unionists could hardly believe what they were seeing. The sole survivor of the sectarian executions, Alan Black, who had been shot 18 times in the attack, expressed his horror that the massacre could become a subject for humor and accused the politician of dancing on the graves of the dead. But McElduff’s colleagues in Sinn Fein were slower to see any difficulty, and the video was retweeted by the former Lord Mayor of Belfast, a well-known advocate of progressive politics and social inclusion. Recognizing something of the significance of the perception problem, McElduff then denied that his prank had any relationship to the anniversary of the massacre—that his clowning with a Kingsmill loaf on the anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre was just a terrible coincidence—and deleted the video while expressing remorse and regret for the pain that he had caused. But it took his party three days to condemn the video and issue him with a three-month suspension.

It was at that point that, unusually, Sinn Fein lost control of the media narrative. On January 14, as unionist outrage intensified and after the nationalist-leaning Irish News noted the leniency of McElduff’s punishment, the state broadcaster in the Republic of Ireland brought Alan Black on to RTE One, where he recounted, in detail, how his ten workmates had died. The interview reminded southern voters of Sinn Fein’s long-standing connection with the largest republican terror group, the Irish Republican Army, a link that has been obscured in the party’s solid growth in recent elections in the Republic. The publicity was too much. On January 15, McElduff resigned.

It is certainly possible that McElduff’s excuses should be taken at face value. Perhaps the timing of the prank was just a horrible coincidence. But the slow speed at which his party addressed unionist concerns about the symbolism of his skylarking may be much less ambiguous. Unionist publications represented McElduff’s stunt as ridiculing the victims of an overtly sectarian massacre. The week-long delay between the offence and the resignation has contributed to the corrosion of trust that has been both a cause and consequence of the collapse of the devolved power-sharing government, and it has confirmed the fears (and prejudices) of many unionists that the largest nationalist party in the province does not care about the victims of republican terror and is insincere about building an inclusive future. But the incident also suggests that unionists may have stumbled upon their version of John Hume’s diplomatic strategy. For, if Sinn Fein’s belated response does reflect its indifference to the hesitations and fears of northern unionists, it has also highlighted its acute vulnerability to public opinion in the south. The Sinn Fein response may reveal a crucial pressure point: It is more sensitive to public opinion in the south than in the north. This suggests that unionist diplomacy should be developed in Dublin as much as in Westminster or Washington, DC.

The growth in support for Sinn Fein in recent elections in the Republic may, paradoxically, have provided unionists with an unanticipated opportunity. Unionist strategists must be calculating what they can learn from Hume’s legacy, wondering whether the best way to achieve their goals is through diplomacy rather than determined opposition, whether obstacles should be avoided rather than confronted. Unionism may need its own “southern strategy,” for, in the Republic’s traditional parties, Northern Ireland unionists may find allies—or at least co-belligerents—in their struggle against Sinn Fein. Unionist strategists may need to pick their way through the reconfiguration of Irish nationalism, realizing that the key to reconciliation in the north may first require alliances with constitutional nationalists in the south, where Sinn Fein has revealed its new weakness.

Nevertheless, as McElduff’s resignation triggers a by-election, the parties may not be planning for politics as normal. The West Tyrone constituency is overwhelmingly nationalist, and Sinn Fein won 50 percent of its votes in the last election. But there is some suggestion that in this election the traditional nationalist-unionist binary may be overturned. For unionist parties and the cross-community Alliance party appear to be uniting around the idea of a single non-partisan candidate. This candidate would have little prospect of victory, unless she or he were also to be endorsed by the SDLP. But the support of the SDLP cannot be taken for granted. After all, the West Tyrone by-election will also encourage unionists to ask why a children’s playpark in Newry, a town located about five miles from the site of the 1976 massacre, has been named after an IRA member who was arrested in possession of a gun that was used in the Kingsmill shootings—a decision that has been supported and defended by Sinn Fein as well as SDLP councillors. Recent news that Gerry Adams will be replaced as Sinn Fein president by Mary Lou McDonald will help to distance the party from the memory of the “troubles.” But, as the controversy about the naming of the children’s playground suggests, both Sinn Fein and the SDLP will need to decide how far to distance themselves from these painful memories of the past. Hume’s legacy haunts those who would build upon his achievements.

In Northern Ireland, the pantomime of politics continues, and intransigence is identified as leadership. As the two largest parties max out the sectarian headcount, and as their voter split equalizes, Sinn Fein and the DUP will win elections by motivating their base rather than by inspiring members of the “other community” with a compelling vision for a better future. Nevertheless, in West Tyrone and elsewhere in Northern Ireland, nationalists face a choice between John Hume’s legacy and that of the political representatives of the paramilitaries whom he brought to the negotiating table. McElduff’s prank illustrates the challenge—Northern Ireland’s nationalists need more than bread and circuses.