By Doug Lorimer
Speaking in Belfast shortly before the Labour Party won the UK general election last year, Tony Blair declared, "I believe in the United Kingdom. I value the union" between Britain and Northern Ireland. Within this framework, on January 12, the British and Irish governments proposed a plan for a "settlement" of the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Known as the "Provisional Heads of Agreement" document, the plan included the re-establishment of an elected assembly in Northern Ireland and cross-border bodies made up representatives from the Belfast assembly and the Irish government in Dublin to promote "cooperation" between the British-created Northern Ireland statelet and the Irish Republic.
There was no commitment in the draft agreement to withdraw British troops, disband the anti-Catholic Royal Ulster Constabulary or release the hundreds of republican movement political prisoners in Northern Ireland's jails. Instead, the Dublin government agreed to accede to the longstanding British demand that it amend the Irish Republic's constitution to renounce its claim of sovereignty over all of Ireland; that is, to formally accept the British-imposed partition of Ireland.
Both the London and Dublin governments said they hoped to conclude agreement on the proposals with parties in Northern Ireland by May, and then hold separate referenda on them in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.
When the terms of the agreement were made public the leadership of the republican movement in Northern Ireland announced that it opposed them as an "internal settlement". In an article published in March, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams charged that while the Blair government "has brought a new approach in style", the "substance of its position in relation to an agreement remains the same as the last government".
Adams argued that "an internal six-county settlement is not a solution and the real question is how do we end British jurisdiction in Ireland". He went on to say that Sinn Féin's objective of a united Ireland was "unlikely by May". Nevertheless, he wrote, "there should be agreement on the peace objective of making the island a better place for all people who live here".
After May, Adams wrote, "if the RUC or the British Army is still patrolling the streets, or if triumphalist [Orange Order] marches go where they are not wanted, or the equality agenda is still only a 'wish list', then there has been no real agreement".
Minimal requirements
Adams put forward what he described as "transitional arrangements" in four areas that were required by Republicans before they would sign any "peace" agreement. They included an all-Ireland body with executive powers with immunity from the veto of any proposed six-county institution; a change in British jurisdiction with no dilution to the claims of Ireland as a nation, along with extensive representation in the Irish parliament to citizens in the North; a shift from "equity" of treatment to equality for Catholics; the end of repressive legislation, the release of political prisoners, disbandment of the RUC and the removal of British troops from Ireland.
Adams described these as the "minimal requirements if a level playing field is to be established" between all inhabitants of Ireland.
On April 10 the British and Irish governments announced the terms of the agreement that they would put to referenda by May 22. The agreement contained all the same basic terms as the earlier London-Dublin proposed agreement.
In his presidential address to Sinn Féin's annual national conference on April 18-19, Adams urged Republicans to subscribe to the agreement because, he said, "on the one hand it upholds the unionist veto over the constitutional position of the North, and, on the other hand reduces the British territorial claim [and] compels unionists to accept key and fundamental changes involving all-Ireland dimensions to everyday life".
Other Sinn Féin leaders, such as party chairperson Mitchell McLaughlin, while urging republican supporters to vote for the agreement in the referenda, acknowledged that it "legitimises the British state in Ireland".
The "key and fundamental changes involving all-Ireland dimensions to everyday life" that Adams hailed in his address to the Sinn Féin conference are presumably those relating to the matters to be dealt with by the cross-border bodies. These will be utterly subordinated to a unionist-dominated Northern Ireland assembly, which will have a veto over any decisions. The proposed functions of these cross-border bodies are limited to such matters as water quality and waste management, teacher qualifications and exchanges, and animal and plant health.
Under the agreement, political prisoners are to be kept as political hostages, with their release dependent on the "permanent renunciation of violence" by their movements.
The RUC not only won't be disbanded, there isn't even a promise of reform. Instead, the British have once again promised "independent commissions of inquiry" into police abuses to report back to London later.
The British conception of what constitutes an "independent commission" may be judged by the composition of the British-appointed "Parades Commission" to supposedly look into re-routing the Protestant supremacist marches. The commission is made up of prominent loyalists and Catholics who work for the RUC. One of those appointed to the commission, Glen Barr, is a leader of one of the pro-British death squads, the Ulster Defence Association.
Pan-nationalist alliance
Despite the fact that the agreement met none of the demands Adams had earlier defined as "minimal requirements" for republican support, in his presidential address he presented the agreement's supposed "positive" features as the first tangible fruits of Sinn Féin's current strategy. "In the last 30 years", he declared, "the struggle so far has come through a series of phases from the civil rights days and the mass and popular uprising of the early seventies through intense periods of armed conflict and the prison struggles including the hunger strikes into electoralism and the Sinn Féin peace strategy."
This strategy has been hinged on a so-called pan-nationalist alliance with the pro-imperialist Dublin government and the pro-partitionist SDLP, assumed to be "nationalist" because it receives the electoral support of most Catholics in Northern Ireland.
In the wake of the May 22 referenda results, in which the unionist veto over Northern Ireland's status was enshrined in the Irish republic's constitution with the endorsement of 94% of voters in the republic, the southern Irish bourgeoisie can now wash its hands of Northern Ireland. Having renounced sovereignty over all of Ireland, whatever happens from now in the Britain's Northern Ireland colony can be ignored by the capitalist politicians in Dublin as an internal "Ulster" affair.
The SDLP is now seeking an electoral alliance, not with Sinn Féin, but with the main loyalist party, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). Immediately after the referendum was passed in Northern Ireland, Seamus Mallon of the SDLP and John Taylor, deputy leader of the UUP, expressed their interest in a deal under which both parties would urge voters to support the other's candidates in the June 25 election to the new Northern Ireland assembly.
unningdale
The current agreement has many similarities to the December 1973 Sunningdale agreement made between London, Dublin and the unionist-dominated Northern Ireland Assembly elected in June 1973. Among other things, the Sunningdale agreement provided for a provincial assembly in Northern Ireland in which the SDLP would "power-share" with the UUP and a "Council of Ireland" would be set up consisting of representatives from the Dublin government and the Northern Ireland provincial executive.
Hailed by Dublin and the SDLP as the first step toward the reunification of Ireland, but denounced at the time by Republicans as a manoeuvre to legitimise the British partition of Ireland, the function of the proposed council was undefined. All its decisions, though, were to be unanimous, thus giving the Unionists veto power. However, the hard-line unionists, led by Ian Paisley, saw it as a step toward the loss of their privileges relative to Catholic workers in Northern Ireland.
The Sunningdale agreement collapsed when the Paisleyites, backed by the loyalist death squads, organised a general strike of Protestant workers which forced the UUP to withdraw from the Northern Ireland provincial executive. At the end of May 1974, the London government suspended the Northern Ireland assembly and formally resumed direct rule over Northern Ireland.
While it is unlikely that the Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party and its allies will be able to mount a similar Protestant backlash against the current agreement, they may secure enough seats in the new 108-member Northern Ireland assembly to block the setting up of the cross-border bodies, thus undermining the whole agreement.
In any case, the agreement does nothing to end the root cause of violence in Northern Ireland — the continued oppression of the Catholic section of the working class at the hands of a British-backed cross-class Protestant religious caste headed by pro-imperialist politicians of the UUP. To the contrary, it legitimises the British-created Northern Ireland statelet and clears the way for a restoration of a new unionist-dominated Belfast administration at Stormont.
[Doug Lorimer is a national executive member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]