22.08.2001

Statelet with no future

Northern Ireland remains the weak link of the United Kingdom, where an unresolved national question - the constitutional imprisonment of an Irish-Irish minority in a British-Irish statelet - creates a situation of permanent instability, at least since the civil rights explosion of 1969.

The IRA war might have ended, but Britain cannot return the province to pre-1969 days and unionist domination. Good Friday was a compromise which actually exacerbates the instability inherent in the Northern Ireland statelet. It alienates masses of British-Irish while not satisfying the Irish-Irish. The result must be one crisis after another.

The Good Friday agreement, with its Northern Ireland assembly, institutionalised divisions between unionists and nationalists, far from being viewed by Sinn F?in/IRA as  a satisfactory final outcome, is regarded as a stage to be passed through en route to a united Ireland. This, it hopes, can now be achieved using demography rather than revolutionary methods. Catholics, say the statisticians, will constitute a majority by 2020.

But in the short term Sinn F?in is looking to strengthen its position as a major player in Irish politics both north and south of the border. The Northern Ireland education portfolio in the hands of Martin McGuinness might have been a minor coup for a man who failed at school and is still detested as a terrorist godfather by unionism and the Tory right, but it hardly represents the pinnacle of what Sinn F?in is aiming for. After all, Britain has officially renounced its permanent claim to the Six Counties - so long as the  province?s status can be changed in the distant future, constitutionally and without seriously weakening British imperialist interests (a united Ireland would presumably not become Britain?s Cuba - rather a fully integrated component of a federal European Union). The line in the sand was not oppsition to a united Ireland per se, but opposition to a united Ireland forced on it from below.

Either way, Sinn F?in/IRA has no interest in making Northern Ireland work. With this in mind, we can understand why, for example, it reacted with such apparent outrage and dismay at the 24-hour suspension by Northern Ireland secretary John Reid of the assembly. Clearly suspension was a technical device to allow a further six-week period before which either new elections must be held or a new first minister nominated, following the resignation of David Trimble in July.

But Sinn F?in spokespersons claimed that the suspension represented a serious breach of the Good Friday agreement that would badly damage the ?credibility? of the devolved institutions. And the IRA within days withdrew its earlier proposals for ?decommissioning? its weapons (the term itself has now fallen into disuse, although general John de Chastelain?s commission is still saddled with it as a name).

Just before the previous six-week deadline was about to expire, the IRA had, in the words of the commission, ?proposed a method for putting IRA arms completely and verifiably beyond use?. Its statement continued: ?We are satisfied that this proposal meets the commission?s remit in accordance with the governments? scheme and regulations.? This announcement was greeted by both Reid and the Irish taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in identical terms, and the ?historic? IRA proposal - whose details were completely secret and timescale, if one existed, unknown - was also warmly received by most sections of the British and Irish press.

But the hands of David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, were tied. He had already made too many concessions, and risks losing even more ground to Ian Paisley?s Democratic Unionist Party, which  is set to become the largest force claiming the allegiance of the British-Irish. Remember, originally decommissioning was supposed to have been ?completed? over a year ago and the unionist population had been led to believe that Sinn F?in would be disbarred from the Northern Ireland administration failing this. Well, two of the IRA?s many arms dumps have been checked by the commission three times each, but that is as far as it has gone. So Trimble insisted that some arms at least must be ?put beyond use? immediately.

Of course for the majority of the British bourgeois establishment the existence of these dumps is a secondary question, compared to the process of drawing Sinn F?in/IRA into mainstream, constitutional politics. But for the ultra-reactionary wing of the Conservative Party and for the unionist camp their existence is an anathema. The potential for these two strands to come closer together is perhaps symbolised by Trimble?s endorsement of Iain Duncan Smith, the rightwing candidate, in the Tory leadership contest. We have pointed to the possibility of the increasingly marginalised Tories being themselves tempted by non-constitutional direct action in alliance with intransigent loyalism as a desperate way of spiking the whole Blair project.

So both the UUP and Sinn F?in/IRA have again taken up new negotiating positions. For Trimble the IRA must start to disarm by September 23, the next deadline, while for Sinn F?in not only was this impossible, but its armed wing dropped its previous, more conciliatory position.

The IRA?s proposals, when they were still on offer, had provoked words of condemnation from Ruari O?Bradaigh, leader of Republican Sinn F?in, the split from the Provos, aligned now with the Real IRA: ?The Provisional IRA no longer has the right to call itself an army,? he said. The Real IRA may have very little support among the republican/nationalist population despite its ability to let off the occasional explosive device such as the Ealing bomb, but opposition to even a token disarming does run deep within the republican movement, and indeed the wider community - not least because loyalist death squads remain armed to the teeth.

Sinn F?in/IRA is determined to continue to play the role of heroic fighter-turned-peacemaker in the hope and expectation of continuing to gain support across the board - in the south it hopes to make enough gains in the forthcoming Irish general election to allow it to hold the balance of power.

The arrest of three of its comrades in Colombia was a storm in a teacup which nevertheless gave its enemies the excuse to go onto the offensive. Stories were invented about cocaine, dirty money and the acquiring of new techniques in preparation for a relaunched war in Ireland. Under such thin cover, the SDLP finally accepted, along with the catholic church, proposals for the establishment of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the body that Britain hopes to foist on Northern Ireland to replace the discredited Royal Ulster Constabulary. In all probability this decision has sealed the SDLP?s fate. Electoral annihilation and eventual extinction loom.

For Adams and McGuinness the proposals for the new police body - change of name, removal of the old emblems, establishment of ?district partnership boards? staffed by local politicians - are insufficient. In fact the PSNI, in upholding the Six Counties statelet and the laws of the United Kingdom, is by definition  defined as an institution of unionism.

For communists the fundamental problem is not the RUC, but the Northern Ireland statelet itself. Our aim, however, unlike Sinn F?in, is not simply the unity of the territory of Ireland, but the unity of the peoples of Ireland. That is why the united Ireland we fight for includes protection of the democratic rights of the British-Irish.

Without such a programme the danger is that the poles of oppression will simply be reversed and the working class, though the island of Ireland has been united, will remain divided.

Peter Manson