Sinn Fein and the Belfast agreement

Thursday December 19, 2002 16:15

by Jim Monaghan

Developments with Sinn Fein and the Belfast agreement, A socialist Democracy view.

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Thursday, December 19, 2002 02:50:48 PM

From: [email protected]
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Subject: [FI-P] IV347Ireland (again)
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Note: this article was inadvertently sent out yesterday with an article on
Germany attached - to avoid confusion, here it is as intended

Ireland: Goodbye to Good Friday
John McAnulty

The history books will undoubtedly list the collapse of the current version
of the Good Friday agreement as stemming from the British raid on Sinn
Fein's Stormont offices on 4th October. The history books will be wrong.
The collapse occurred on September 16th with the decision of the Ulster
Unionist Party to pull the plug on a number of the institutions of the Good
Friday agreement and force Sinn Fein out of office. The raid brings much
worse news for Sinn Fein. The pipe dream that the British would reward
them and punish unionism for the crisis is just as false as their other
illusion that the forces of Irish capital would stand shoulder to shoulder
with them in their hour of need. To add insult to injury big brother, in
the shape of George Bush, immediately endorsed the call by the British for
the IRA to disarm
The Stormont raid has however a significance all of its own. The police
raid had all the symbolism of jackboot rule. It was a travesty of
democracy, indicating the harsh reality of British rule behind all the
pretences of the Stormont assembly. It's only purpose was to pull the plug
on the assembly, while making it clear that the republicans will have to
concede even more to earn a return of their ministerial seats. Howls about
background IRA activity are neither here or there. The disbandment of the
Ira was not a condition of the Good Friday agreement - now for the
unionists, British, and Sinn Fein's erstwhile friends in Dublin - it is.
This time it's for real. After a whole string of crises which have in fact
been a permanent feature of the unstable settlement in Ireland the
reactionary offensive by the unionists has guaranteed that the Good Friday
agreement, in its present form, will not survive into 2003. In a pattern
repeated over and over again during the many attempts by imperialism to
settle the Irish question, the trickle of unionist opposition has become a
flood, the flood has become a torrent and now the unionist leadership has
effectively changed. Following the victory of dissident Geoffrey Donaldson
at the Unionist council meeting of the 21st September, supporters of the
unionist leader, David Trimble, are being deselected at constituency
meetings and it was quite clear that the unionists would pull the plug on
major structural elements of the Good Friday agreement in January. At the
September meeting the party agreed to withdraw from the Stormont executive
if the IRA had not effectively disbanded by January. This may not be
enough to save the unionist leadership. Polls indicate that Ian Paisley's
Democratic Unionist Party are likely to overtake the Ulster Unionists in
2003 and become the major unionist party.

The standard model

There is a standard explanation for this pattern within unionist politics.
That is that unionism is split into reactionaries and progressives. Fear
spread by the reactionaries or 'provocation' from nationalists tilts the
issue under discussion towards the reactionaries. All the other forces in
society, from the British Government in Sinn Fein, must join together to
support the progressives.
Sinn Fein holds a left version of this theory. They demand that the
Unionists find a leader - a De Klerk - who will represent their true
interests and fully support the Good Friday deal. They accuse
'securocrats' in the state forces and civil service of blocking the real
interests of Britain - to bring peace to Ireland. The nationalist family
and US imperialism must ensure that there is no backsliding by the
unionists and British.
The truth is rather more complex. There has never been a moderate wing to
unionism in this process. The so-called moderates were led by David
Trimble, formerly a leader of the semi-fascist 'Vanguard' organisation,
'hero' of Drumcree after leading a triumphal march through the Nationalist
Geravaghy Rd a few years ago. More recently he was strutting his stuff in
East Belfast, standing in front of a beseiged Short Strand and accusing the
nationalists within of responsibility for the sectarian attacks launched
upon them. Trimbles' favourite tactic when under attack from the right is
to immediately throw himself in front of the reactionaries, adopt their
demands and lead them forward.
This tactic has led the Trimble wing, already composed of sectarians and
reactionaries, to move steadily to the right and become more strident and
absolutist in their demands for an unconditional Republican surrender.
However at the same time the opposition has moderated its demands.
Trimble's arch-rival, Donaldson, has never demanded the scrapping of the
Good Friday agreement and has on occasions stressed his support for it.
The DUP, once committed to the smashing of the deal, now want it amended to
exclude Sinn Fein.

Goodbye to Sinn Fein

This can all be predicted from the deal. What the Good Friday agreement
offered in effect is a sectarian structure in which each group is given
equal sectarian rights. Following its publication an academic think tank
that advises the British government pointed out that it could not possibly
work. There would be no point in equality of sectarian rights. One group
would have to be dominant to ensure stability.
The unionists agree and have mounted a vicious and violent campaign, on and
off the streets, to ensure that the agreement is modified to recognise
their dominant sectarian privilege.

Holy Cross

Perhaps the key event in that offensive was the raw intimidation of
Catholic schoolchildren by loyalist paramilitaries at the Holy Cross
primary school in Ardoyne. Rather than meeting with the condemnation of
'moderate' unionism the unionist political organizations were quick to
justify the attacks and advance the sectarian demands for apartheid - with
Catholic families to be locked in ghettoes and refused homes in
'Protestant' areas. A loyalist commission was set up involving the
sectarian gangsters and leading advisors to the Unionist leader Trimble.
Although the loyalist campaign involved a constant barrage of armed attacks
and a number of brutal sectarian killings the politicians felt no need to
keep their distance. One of its more striking statements from the
commission was a 'no first strike' statement - this meant that the random
sectarian killing of Catholics could be justified as long as the killers
could point to some imagined provocation that preceded it.
In fact the unionist politicians now openly bid to outdo each other in
their open support for raw sectarianism. David Trimble issued a statement
in September accusing the nationalist victims of the loyalist violence of
responsibility for the violence. He was quickly outdone by Peter Robinson,
a government minister representing the Paisleyite Democratic unionist
party. Robinson was interviewed by police after stopping traffic on the
main road into East Belfast while the loyalist sectarians gathered for a
street party to celebrate the imprisoning of the nationalist population
behind a series of 'peace' walls. Needless to say, the walls were built by
the British.

'Progressive' unionism

The sectarian unionist offensive knocks away one major element of the peace
process - the assumption that there was within unionism a 'progressive'
wing anxious to build a new society in the North of Ireland. In reality
the unionists have behaved as any sober analysis would have suggested -
pocketing the massive gains for them built into the Good Friday agreement
and pushing constantly to move it to the right and make it more sectarian.
The difference between Trimble and his critics has been that he has been
anxious to retain all the structures of the agreement while forcing the
British to amend it, while his opponents are happy to collapse the
executive in the expectation that what will emerge will be more to their
liking.
It is Trimble's opponents who had it right. Again it was the Holy Cross
attacks that clarified British policy. Initial horror at the Loyalist
bombing of schoolchildren was instantly replaced by a definition of the
situation as 'community conflict'. The role of the 'reformed' RUC/PSNI was
to force the parents and children to run a gauntlet of sectarian hate and
demand that the parents negotiate with their tormentors. The eventual
outcome of this policy of managing 'community conflict' is that the
unionist demands for apartheid were met and Holy Cross school faces
closure, under siege and without any genuine protection from state forces.

Appeasement

The desire to appease loyalism was far from local. In a major speech
following Holy Cross British secretary of state Reid announced that the
Good Friday Agreement had made the North of Ireland 'a cold house for
Unionists'. The intent was clear. The agreement had to be bent further to
the right and the republicans had to make further concessions. British
Prime minister Blair issued a statement blaming Sinn Fein for the violence.

Reid's speech was followed by a wave of sectarian attack and killings from
the loyalist gangs. Wave after wave of sectarians openly attacked Catholic
areas while the RUC/PSNI looked on. The new Chief constable, Hugh Orde,
announced blandly that the police were unable to act without the full
support of the community - in other words, if Sinn Fein wanted protection
they would have to sign up to the new police boards. Days later the Chief
constable announced that the level of violence was such that he would have
to retain the almost exclusively Protestant RUC reserve that was slated for
disbandment under the Patten proposals on the police. At the same time the
British intensified a long-standing policy of encouraging moderates within
the loyalist sectarian gangs. Unfortunately the gangs had moved so far to
the right that the moderates were now 'Mad Dog' Johnny Adair and his
henchmen. Not only did they keep up sectarian killings while talking to
the British, they followed up with a full-scale loyalist feud.

Torrent of reaction

By this stage the wave of reaction had become a torrent. Preparations were
made by the Sinn Fein leadership to sign up to the new police boards, with
a statement from leading figure Mitchell McLoughlin that the British had
accepted many of their demands for reform but, given the level of police
involvement in the sectarian attacks, this was leading to fist-fights at
local Sinn Fein meetings. The leadership split the difference yet again -
announcing that the main problem with the policing boards was that many of
their members were unable to join because of convictions they had gained
during their period of struggle against the British.
It was far too late. Trimbles' policy of squeezing them until they bled
inside the agreement was replaced at the September meeting of the Unionist
council with a decision to collapse elements of the Good Friday structure
and force them out.

Analysis

Sinn Fein's analysis of the October 4th raid at Stormont is quite accurate.
The arrival of an army of RUC members at their Stormont offices and the
arrest of chief administrator Denis Donaldson was not an investigation into
allegations that they spied on the British administration - something that
the unionists have done routinely throughout the troubles - it was a stunt
to establish that it was they, Sinn Fein, who are to blame for the British
suspension of elements of the local government and it is they who will have
to make further concessions in the next round of discussions.
The problem for Sinn Fein is that it is not possible to blame this on
low-level servants of the British state acting against the British
interest. This is the state itself declaring its interest in the
preservation of the sectarian unionist organisations as the basis for its
rule in Ireland. The nationalist family, in Sinn Fein's eyes the bulwark
against any backsliding by the British, stood alongside the British and the
US in effectively demanding the disbandment of the IRA and the local
representatives of Irish capital, the SDLP, supported the proposals to
abandon the Patten reforms of the RUC. The fact that Dublin widely
publicised the charge that a group, arrested in Bray and claimed to be
planning a robbery were IRA members is a strong indication of the pressure
the republicans are under and the total failure of their analysis.
The next period will be grim. Tony Blair set the tone in a major speech in
which he demanded the absolute surrender of the IRA. What was even more
interesting than the threats to the republicans was the carrot he held out
to their leadership. Capitulation would ensure a stable Northern Ireland -
precisely what the Provisional IRA was set up to prevent! The British and
the Unionists are now able to bank all the gains that they have made from
the Good Friday agreement. Some of the sectarian structures set up will be
preserved. The current hysteria by Dublin and the SDLP is an
acknowledgement that only the immediate disbandment of the IRA would be
enough to prevent the complete collapse of the existing agreement. This is
an impossible demand for the Sinn Fein leadership to meet, at least on any
short time-scale. The upshot will be a re-negotiation of the agreement
either explicitly or implicitly around the core demands of unionism. These
have nothing to do with the IRA. The main demand is for superior sectarian
rights - a demand that can be achieved either by the exclusion of Sinn Fein
and the retention of an SDLP rump within the existing structures or by
changing the structures to retain an inner core of government for Unionism
alone. In either case the RUC must remain their private army and any
pretence that at some time in the future it will be made up of equal
numbers of Catholics and Protestants must be brought quickly to an end.
The response of the Sinn Fein leadership has been pathetic. They can
describe what is happening easily enough - they are simply unable to
acknowledge who is doing it. They call upon the unionists to be the
unionists of their imagination rather than the unionists of reality. They
call on the British to protect the agreement as the British tear it up in
front of their eyes. Mitchell McLoughlin announces that the way forward is
nationalist unity - as nationalist Ireland turns as one to demand the
disbandment of the IRA. RUC chief Hugh Orde and Secretary of state Reid
explain that the nature of the Stormont raid was a terrible mistake - and
Gerry Adams thanks them for their gracious response! He responds to
demands for IRA disbandment by saying that he supports the call! In
statement after statement the Republican leadership made it clear that
nothing will break them from the Good Friday agreement - plan B is to do
plan A all over again even while plan A is in tatters!
The republican response indicates the extent to which the British remain in
command of the situation. However in the long run this is a major setback.
The Good Friday agreement involved the complete capitulation of the
republican resistance. The British and their allies had massive popular
support. They failed to capitalise on this and an attempt to put together
a more reactionary version of the current settlement will have a weaker
base and be even less stable. Even now there is a sharp taste of
dissatisfaction in the republicans working-class base in the North of
Ireland. It will take some time for the working class supporters of Sinn
Fein to walk away. It will take longer for them to leave behind the
republican opposition who simply want to roll back the film to the
situation that led to republican defeat. However long it takes there is
nowhere else to go. There is nothing in the Good Friday agreement - Mark I
or Mark II - for the working class but imprisonment in a sectarian hell.
However unpalatable the vision that faces the workers, it is at least a
vision of the real world - not a republican pipe dream where Irish
capitalism and British and US imperialism combine to bring justice and
peace to Ireland!

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