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Ten
years after Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was spotted
by a journalist in the company of SDLP leader John
Hume, speculation about the Northern Irish peace process
is as rife now as it was then. It is amazing that
something generally viewed as terminally boring can
still draw media interest — like a moth to the
flame. Whatever the reason for this the politicians
will take enormous succour from it given that the
peace process has come to define them. Who would be
interested in them otherwise?
There
are some who believe that the peace process may be
slipping off the radar screen. It would be more accurate
to view the institutional framework that supports
the Good Friday Agreement as being in greater danger
of facing such a fate. The peace process is here to
stay.
As
the utterly hopeless campaign of physical force by
republicans has demonstrated all too readily, any
resumption of an armed struggle by the IRA would be
doomed to failure. It would be lacking in both ethical
justification and popular backing. Consequently it
would negatively impact on Sinn Fein’s ever-increasing
support, forcing the party back into the ghetto from
which it has so assiduously devised an escape.
The
problems confronting the Good Friday Agreement are
growing more intractable by the day. At one point
it could have been plausibly argued that a major public
act of IRA decommissioning could have kept the show
on the road. That is no longer an option.
That
section within unionism who would have been amenable
to such a gesture has been considerably weakened by
the recent challenges to the leadership standing of
David Trimble. There are now strong grounds for believing
that the anti-Trimble lobby has as the objective of
its strategy a permanent situation of direct rule
which would preclude any return to a devolved parliament.
In
this sense it is no great surprise to find the anti-Trimble
lobby aided in their manoeuverings by the former party
leader and integrationist Jim Molyneaux. Direct rule
suits many unionists. It means less hesitancy about
the strength of the union, a perspective reinforced
by not having to share power with Sinn Fein. For republicans
it would mean that their reward for fighting the war
was an end to the war. The balance sheet — a
comprehensive victory for unionism.
The
unionist demands for more are coming at a time when
Sinn Fein may be finding itself in a position to give
less. This tends to leave the gap unbridgeable. The
Sinn Fein leadership is determined to see the re-establishment
of the political institutions. But by it having failed
to rein in the IRA sufficiently those unionists who
share Sinn Fein’s enthusiasm for the institutions
are finding
themselves in a very vulnerable position within their
own community.
Sinn
Fein, while usually adept at getting its own grass
roots to perform summersaults and slaughter republicanism’s
own sacred cows, is finding itself confronted by a
reluctance on the ground to embrace the repressive
structures of the state.
The
republican base simply does not share its leaders’
eagerness to support a renamed RUC. The force by continuing
to conduct highly visible raids on working class homes
in nationalist communities, while effectively allowing
organised crime to flourish, serves to reinforce a
hostility towards the policing structures.
An
additional constraint on Sinn Fein is the growing
unease within its grass roots at the volatile situation
in Maghaberry Prison. Republican prisoners there are
on no-wash protest and Security Minister Jane Kennedy’s
absurdly intransigent defence of the prison regime
— in language borrowed directly from the Northern
Ireland Office’s prison handbook of the 1970s
and 1980s — is doing
little to allay a widespread suspicion that republican
prisoners are being maltreated.
With
talk of possible hunger strikes floating ominously
in public discourse, Sinn Fein representatives have
been straining at the leash to have the situation
resolved before the prison situation spirals out of
control with the potential to recreate the precarious
polarised situation that prevailed during the 1980
and 1981 hunger strikes.
An
autonomous republican grass roots pursuing a confrontational
protest agenda is the last thing the party leadership
wants. This has been evidenced by the party’s
determination to curb any disturbances during this
month’s Orange marches.
Overall,
it appears that republicanism’s options are being
whittled down to the point where only the complete
disappearance of the IRA as a military force will
loosen up the process sufficiently to allow republicans
to make an unassailable case for the return of devolved
government.
From
the British Government’s point of view the peace
process was the cul de sac into which the IRA could
be safely corralled. As this becomes more evident
to republican grass roots opinion the Sinn Fein leadership’s
ability to bite the bullet for one last time is being
called into question.
Our
interminable conflict it seems is set to stay in Cold
War mode for some time to come and the British and
Irish premiers may give up on any notion of discarding
their Northern Irish season tickets.
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