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While
the final outcome of the current negotiations between
the various parties to the Northern Ireland conflict,
described by the Sinn Féin leadership as ‘the
most important since partition’, has yet to emerge,
the broad outlines of the deal are already clear.
In
return for the restoration of the northern Executive
and further demilitarisation by the British, the Provisional
IRA will effectively cease to exist as a functioning
military organisation. Whether the IRA’s active
service units are formally ‘stood down’
or not matters little. It has been made abundantly
clear that the IRA is to be ‘removed entirely
from the equation’ and given the fact that the
SF leadership has as its declared objective ‘the
ending of physical force republicanism in Ireland’
there is clearly no fundamental disagreement of principle
between the various players that the IRA’s days
are numbered and all that remains to be settled is
the modalities of this process, whereby the Army will
become nothing more than a disarmed and toothless
‘old comrades association’, while SF returns
to Stormont and assumes its role in the management
of the RUC/PSNI.
How
have we arrived at a point whereby what has been generally
acknowledged as one of the most effective guerrilla
organisations in the world has been reduced to this?
At the culmination of thirty years of struggle, it
seems appropriate to seek to evaluate the outcome.
Ever
since the ceasefire of 1994 and its 1997 restoration,
the mantra has constantly been repeated that the struggle
remains ‘undefeated’ and that the goals
of the Movement remain the same, but that the methods
of that struggle have simply been translated onto
a new and more ‘strategic’ plane. Over that
period a seemingly endless series of defeats for republicanism
have been presented as ‘strategic advances’,
one sacred cow after another being casually slaughtered,
as SF’s acceptance of the Mitchell Principles
was followed by the de facto acceptance, indeed administration,
of British rule; of partition; of the Unionist veto;
and of the ‘decommissioning’ of IRA weaponry.
The imminent winding-up order on the IRA and SF’s
endorsement of the RUC/PSNI are merely the latest
steps in a process whose direction has for several
years been painfully obvious to all apart from the
wilfully blind. Clearly the main advantage of drawing
lines in the sand is the ease with which the traces
can be kicked over.
Several
questions remain to be answered by the incorrigibly
faithful, those who insist on seeing the endless march
away from the Republic and into the arms of Stormont
and British rule as strategic advances towards unchanged
goals.
The
first is the one which I make no apology for asking
yet again. Where is this alleged strategy? I, for
one, remain willing to be convinced by anybody who
is able to do what no-one has so far even attempted
i.e. to explain how an end to partition and to British
rule in this country are to be brought about by a
so-called strategy which has at its core the affording
of a constitutional veto, enshrined in the Good Friday
Agreement, to a national minority which remains as
steadfastly unionist as ever.
The
closest I have ever come to discerning anything remotely
resembling a strategy lies in the deliberately vague
cliché of ‘making politics work’,
which in practice seems to mean doing whatever it
takes to secure the growth of SF as a political party.
This, it seems, is to be accomplished by shedding
any ideological baggage along the way, thereby facilitating
the growing electoral strength of a party which has
become so estranged from its identity as to be at
a loss as to what to do with this increased support,
thus explaining the apparent paradox that SF has continued
to grow in electoral support at precisely the same
time that republicanism has suffered one defeat after
another.
Secondly,
if the current and developing political situation
does not constitute defeat for a movement which spent
a quarter of a century waging a struggle with the
declared objectives of ending British rule in Ireland
and bringing about a united Ireland, what would defeat
actually look like? Assuming that the theoretical
possibility of a defeat of the struggle, as opposed
to a cleverly disguised strategic advance, is conceded,
what would be the outline of such a defeat? If you
bumped into defeat in a dark alley, how would its
face differ from what we have now?
Thirdly,
imagine that around about 1990 a British Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland had asked one of his/her
civil servants to prepare a briefing paper summarising
the elements of an ideal ‘best case’ settlement
to the troubles from the point of view of the British
Government. How would such an ideal settlement on
British terms be fundamentally different from the
outcome of a process which has enshrined British sovereignty
over the north, with the explicit acceptance of both
the Irish Government (removal of articles 2 &
3) and of the State’s former military adversaries,
who have unilaterally abandoned the armed struggle,
are committed to participation in the government of
the north as a part of the United Kingdom and are
soon to endorse the paramilitary police force of the
British State?
It
has been argued that the outcome of the struggle is
not to be seen in terms of victory or defeat, but
rather that it represents an honourable compromise
flowing from a political and military stalemate. If
this idea of an ‘honourable negotiated compromise’
is to stand up, this would involve all sides making
meaningful concessions in order to strike a deal with
their adversaries.
The
painful concessions (sorry, ‘strategic advances’)
made by Republicans, as listed above, are immediately
apparent and clearly these remain very much work in
progress. But what have the British Government conceded
in return?
We
can swiftly dismiss the argument that the British
have conceded anything fundamental on the constitutional
issue, since the frankly pathetic cross-border bodies
established under the GFA are considerably weaker
and less ‘green’ than those set up under
Sunningdale thirty years ago. Furthermore, the argument
that cross-border co-operation between two sovereign
states represents a weakening of the British position
here demonstrates a failure to understand the increasingly
interdependent nature of modern international politics,
coupled with an ignorance of the changing strategic
interests of the British State in Ireland.
It
is perfectly clear that going back as far as 1973
Britain decided that its interests would no longer
be served by an uncritical underwriting of the unionist
position and that Britain’s most prized allies
here have since been the comprador/gombeen ruling
class of the 26 counties, a class which shares with
Britain the goal of ‘stabilizing’ the six
counties, thereby removing any threat which the northern
troubles might pose to their own position. For this
class, putting the lid back on the north was all that
mattered and the political character of any settlement
which could achieve this objective was of little importance,
irrespective of ‘constitutional imperatives’.
The
other elements of the GFA package which have been
presented as advances for Republicans i.e. the release
of prisoners, the ‘equality agenda’ and
such limited demilitarisation as has occurred (don’t
mention South Armagh!) may be welcome in themselves,
but again these do not represent concessions of key
interests by the British. Why would Britain want to
spend huge sums of money in maintaining a sophisticated
‘security’ infrastructure and keeping prisoners
in jail, when the organisation to which the prisoners
belong is no longer a threat to British interests?
Similarly,
the decreasing importance of Unionism to Britain has
for a long time meant that the British simply do not
have a problem with the de-sectarianisation of the
northern state. Quite the contrary in fact, since
improving the social and economic position of the
nationalist community and being seen to address the
worst excesses of unionist discrimination undercuts
the social base of opposition to British rule, while
enabling Britain to project internationally an image
of the north as a thoroughly modern and essentially
‘normal’ society.
Furthermore,
the ‘equality agenda’ and the reaction of
elements of Unionism to it have the additional advantage
of strengthening the position of a SF leadership at
no cost to the British, since it enables that leadership
to mollify grass roots rumblings by adopting the frankly
sectarian practice of implying to its own supporters
‘If the GFA antagonizes the Unionists this much
then it has got to be good for us’.
In
summary, was the struggle lost?
There
are two possible interpretations of the outcome of
the last thirty years, since we can leave to the wilfully
blind any belief in victory and can allow the incorrigibly
faithful to continue ‘trusting the leadership’
that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the
final working out of this alleged strategy will lead
to a united Ireland at some indeterminate point in
a mystical future.
The
first interpretation is the straightforward answer
that the struggle was indeed lost and that, faced
with this reality, the leadership had a choice between
two alternatives. One was to turn around to the Republican
base, hold up their hands and say honestly ‘We
have tried our best, but the odds against us were
too great. We cannot win this, irrespective of how
long we continue, therefore there is no point in continuing
under current circumstances and we believe that this
phase of the struggle should be ended in order to
save lives and wait for a better day with our principles
intact.’ This is a position which Republicans
have adopted in previous generations e.g. at the end
of the civil war and also in 1962 at the end of the
border campaign.
Instead
the decision to seek a settlement from a hopelessly
weak negotiating position, based upon an alliance
as subordinate partners with forces castigated throughout
our republican history as being anti-republican, counter-revolutionary
and class enemies has brought us to the current sorry
position in which, as one senior member of SF (Francie
Molloy) has openly stated ‘The principle of partition
is accepted. We are prepared to administer British
rule indefinitely.’ In plain language, if you
can’t beat them, join them.
The
second interpretation is that the question of victory
or defeat, implying, as it does, a contest between
adversaries, no longer has any relevance, since the
GFA and its subsequent outworking represent the straightforward
and entirely logical outcome of the political reality
that the ideological jettisoning of everything other
than an entirely rhetorical commitment to the attainment
of republican objectives means that for several years
there has simply ceased to be any fundamental conflict
between the interests of the British State in Ireland
and those of SF as a political party.
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