Re: Of Decommissioning and Opportunism

["D OC" <donaloc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

As might be imagined, I have a slightly different take on recent events here
than Danielle has. I haven't been able to get back on this sooner as I'm
very busy.

> The Provisional Irish Republican Army completed a third act of
decommissioning this week, which the British government required
before it would call new elections in the North of Ireland. More
accurately, the PIRA's political wing, Sinn Féin, wanted its share
of seats on the Northern Ireland Executive so it could do its part in
administering British rule as it had done before the Executive was
suspended last year.

Anyone who wants to know *accurately* what happened should read the wording
of statements released as opposed to reading second hand opinions. Sinn Fein
has said that the recent negotiations were not about merely getting
elections but rather to reestablish the structures of the GFA. In the end,
political unionism (in connivance with the British and Irish Govts) decided
that they couldn't or wouldn't run with the agreed arrangements going into
the election. What is clear is that the potential of the GFA in terms of
opening all elements of the six county statelet's basis to contestation is
now clear and equally clear is the inability of those who oppose this
process to successfully engage in the political space offered by the
Agreement. The collapse of the most recent agreement reinforces the crisis
in political unionism, not to mention the despair of the British and Irish
Govts who looked on the GFA as a means to institutionalise and split
Republicans.

> The PIRA's final ceasefire was declared in 1997, but for the wrong
reason - reaching an accommodation with the British government. When
the Irish National Liberation Army called its ceasefire in 1998, it
was solely on the basis of its analysis that the armed struggle had
ran its course and could not advance the national liberation and
class struggles any further at this stage. I believe that was a
correct reason to call a ceasefire.

This is not a very deep analysis. If the INLA thought (correctly) that the
armed struggle had run its course, then we have to ask ourselves why. The
answer is clearly that in the context of an alternative means to develop our
(shared) struggle, that the local population would prefer the armed struggle
wound down. The other thing is that your analysis lacks any dialectical
aspect - Peace is, in my presentation, contingent upon the advancement of an
effective and meaningful Peace Process.

> The INLA's political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party,
stated that the alternative to the armed struggle was to "renew the
struggle on the doorsteps of the people, in the housing estates, in
the workplaces, in the factories." That is exactly where SF failed.
Its leadership had no intention of renewing the struggle by non-
military means, they were simply opportunists looking for a way out
of the struggle for their own benefit.

That is untrue. As for the IRSP doing campaign work on doorsteps - it must
be very small scale as I've never heard anything. The only thing I heard
from the IRSP recently was when they complained at being excluded from a
discussion on the future of Long Kesh (I think that the people organising it
just forgot about them by accident).

Sinn Fein has recently published a "Rights for All" document which sets out
a blueprint for a rigorous set of Rights: Social, Economic, Political and
Cultural which should underpin an Ireland of Equals. This document is now
being taken forward to civic society at all levels. The idea is to replicate
what the ANC did in 1957 with their Freedom Charter or similarly with the
Bolivarian Constitution in Venezuela.

Aside from this and other work, I'll admit that in some respects we fell
short in terms of our work in the institutions but since we've done a very
thoroughgoing self-critique, learnt many lessons and taken action to ensure
we're more effective in the future. As an example, I think it was an
indictment that there was not one single private member's bill proposed
under the last Stormont Administration.

> The roots of the current path of the Provisional Republican Movement
lie in the rise to power of the opportunistic Gerry Adams-Martin
McGuinness leadership in the early 1980s. By 1986 they had pushed the
traditionalist wing out; by the early 1990s they began to do the same
to the left wing. By the end of the 1990s the centrist, middle class
Social Democratic and Labour Party, which had been the dominant
nationalist party in the North, lost ground to SF when the
nationalist capitalists and middle class began to see SF as the
better vehicle for their interests.

Successful leaders are often refered to as 'opportunist' by their defeated
opponents - its an easy term to level at people. IMO, the traditionalist
wing i.e. O'Bradaigh et al were too rigid for a 'struggle of position'. As
for shifting against the left wing in the early 1990s - I don't see much
evidence of that - I'm not sure what you're referring to. Its certainly true
that the nationalist middle-class are now beginning to support SF - but
that's a sign of strength in that they're coming under the leadership of a
disciplined working-class movement.

> Indeed, since the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1997, the
primary beneficiaries have been the North's rich, who have increased
their personal wealth from investment drawn into the North on the
basis of low wages and the absence of open street warfare - all of
which has happened without any real opposition from SF, either on the
streets or in Stormont (SF's pseudo-leftist rhetoric aside). A recent
report on the North's economy from the Democratic Dialogue think tank
found that nearly a third of the people were afflicted by economic
deprivation and that the North "is one of the most unequal societies
in the developed world."

And so it will remain. SF's involvement in the institutions of the Six
Counties should not be considered to be an empowerment. All other parties
opposed our radical agenda. Where we did have significant power we did get a
flavour of where we might go - abolition of the classist 11+ examination,
removal of lists of school performance, opposition to water rates increases,
etc and at our best we did take these discussions down to grassroots level.

Admittedly it was all minor stuff - but we were the fourth largest party,
not the largest or second largest. The challenge would be to deliver in a
situation where we had much more power (although still subject to the
limitations of British overall control).

> Of course, this is nothing that hasn't been seen before in Irish
politics. The dominant political party in the South of Ireland,
Fianna Fáil, was formed by IRA members in the 1920s. Since it
first came to power in 1932 it has been a center-right party which
has done its part to maintain the status quo, both border-wise and
economically.

True, but FF was only organised in one side of the border. I think that the
degeneration of that party is partially related to that fact. Sinn Fein has
roots deep in local communities and is committed to achieving Irish Unity
and the 'Ireland of Equals'. Sinn Fein is the only party in Ireland which
actually has a working strategy to achieve Irish unity and Equality.

> But while the PIRA's third act of decommissioning largely satisfied
the British government for now (to the British, getting the PIRA to
decommission weapons and SF to administer British rule is a victory),
the Ulster Unionist Party (the dominant pro-British party in the
North since 1921) threw everything into chaos again by saying the
PIRA hadn't done enough - despite the assurances of the head of the
International Decommissioning Body, a retired Canadian military
officer, that it was a significant act of decommissioning.

Again, your words are inaccurate in my view. The British strategy is clearly
two-fold: to limit the growth and development of Sinn Fein and where this
fails to get us to run their system. In the context of the Peace Process, I
don't think that there's a huge amount of 'back-slapping' in Whitehall over
the IRA putting arms beyond use. The failure of 6 Co unionism to stick to an
agreed arrangement just shows the pressures that are boiling within
political unionism and their state. This is all part of a process of
substantial change in the six county statelet.

> Events since 1997 have shown a widening gap between the British
government and unionists, of which this is only the latest example.
British interests are largely satisfied with the current course of
events. Unionists, however, still suffer from the attitude that
nationalists are an "enemy within" who need to be subjugated, even
when it comes to a political party like SF which has signalled its
support for the status quo.

Indeed, weakening the links between British and Irish unionism is a key
strategic objective in all this work. I think that the unionists understand
the extent to which equality would undermine the six county statelet - their
political support base would not sit too well with real equality. That's
precisely what is offered by the Peace Process.

At the same time, I wouldn't be hugely surprised to find that Trimble and
the pro-agreement UUP were happy to go into an executive with Sinn Fein the
other side of an election. Right now, he can play the hardline and perhaps
save his bacon against Paisley and the DUP. The other alternative is that
the UUP does melt-down and then Trimble will go perhaps replaced by Empey or
McGimpsey. Does anyone doubt that these guys would cut a deal but if they're
not strong enough to sell it to their own base, the Brits will have to find
a way of driving things on without them. Joint Authority perhaps?

Is mise
DoC.

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