Gerry Foley Archive | ETOL Main Page
From Green Left Weekly, Issue 235, June 19, 1996.
Abridged from International Viewpoint.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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The “peace process” strategy of the Republicans was based on an alliance of all Irish nationalist parties, including bourgeois forces such as the Social Democratic and Labor Party, and the Dublin government. It was aimed at forcing the British to make concessions in the direction of equal rights for the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland and of developing cross-border links between the two parts of Ireland. |
Question: Why did the cease-fire break down?
First, the cease-fire was called with the belief that within some definable period it would bring about some form of dialogue that would involve Sinn Féin in direct negotiations with the British government. And 18 months later that had not happened.
Second, there was an internal reason. If you go back to the announcement of the cease-fire, it was received with great enthusiasm by the Republican rank and file. It was presented as a victory. Basically, people went along with this out of loyalty to the leadership. This was despite the fact that at no stage had the rank and file, indeed anybody in the organisation below the leadership, had any knowledge of the long-term negotiations that led to the cease-fire. There was a belief in the initial stages that a breakthrough had been made through a secret agreement. But that was not true.
In fairness to the Republican leadership, Gerry Adams [president of Sinn Féin] and others said at the time that there was no secret deal. Yet the thing did not make sense to the people unless there had been a secret deal. And so you went from one theory and expectation to another, with people hanging in and hanging in, and then disillusion starting to set in.
So, I think finally the leadership took a calculated risk in the Canary Wharf bombing in order to reassert its own authority within its military ranks. In my opinion, they made the assessment that if they did not move at that time they were heading toward a real possibility that some element of their own organisation or people who had drifted away from it would, out of frustration, make some military move on their own.
Question: In the United States, nobody in the movement really knows what the Republicans are doing.
That’s not any different here. The Canary Wharf bombing might have resolved an immediate tension within their own military organisation. But the Republicans remain caught up in the logic of the process they started. As far as the public is concerned, they shifted the aim of the Republican movement from a 32-county Ireland (socialist or otherwise) to all-party peace talks for an agreed Ireland. And the IRA cease-fire was called on that basis.
So, people are confused about what the Republicans are doing, since they must have known that a return to military actions would not get them back to the table easily without their being confronted again with the whole issue that was brought up at the beginning, that is, non-violence and decommissioning [disarming of the IRA].
Question: An editorial in the Andersonstown News [the main community newspaper in Republican West Belfast] a few months ago said that it didn’t do any good to get people out to demonstrate for vague demands such as peace talks; that it would make a lot more sense to get them out to campaign for concrete demands.
Once the Republican movement got into secret negotiations and was putting that forward as the Sinn Féin party position, there didn’t seem to be a strategy for continuing the broad grassroots movement. Everything revolved around decommissioning or not decommissioning, a date for all-party peace talks, the shape of the table and so on. So, people started to worry that the issue of basic human rights, the issue of discrimination in employment and all sorts of broader issues, such as minimum wage legislation, the extension of the European 48-hour work week, women’s issues, all the issues that had been a vibrant part of the life of the community, were being sidelined.
Sinn Féin were taking people out onto the streets to demand all-party peace talks now, when prisoners were still being denied their basic rights, and at the same time, the grassroots, not knowing what the strategy was, were paralysed, prevented from acting independently of Sinn Féin because they didn’t want to be rocking the boat.
Question: A recent opinion poll suggests that a majority of the Catholics would accept internment of all known and suspected Republican activists “for the sake of peace”.
Sinn Féin was an integral part of creating a dynamic that they cannot control. They created the slogan “give peace a chance”. They created the initial demand for peace talks. But they had no basis for determining or even having an influence on which issues those peace talks would take place, because they were allowing the Irish government to play their hand for them. So they have actually, unintentionally, disempowered the Republican community, who are confused about what’s happening.
On the opposite side, they empowered a whole layer of people who are now very active against them. They have empowered a very broad spectrum of Irish America whose interest is in peace at any price, and they certainly have opened up the way for a lot of propaganda by the southern state.
Question: What can be done?
It’s a very difficult position. I have a hard time comprehending how the Republicans could fail to see how deep the water was that they were getting into. The first step in was failing to reject decisively the parameters of the Downing Street Declaration.
Finally, the Republicans said they were opposed to it, but by that time they had already been working within its framework for six months.
I think that the Republicans have gotten themselves in an irreversible position. I don’t believe that a return to military operations is an effective option. I think that if they go back to military operations within the climate that they themselves were a party to creating, then military defeat, for the first time in 15 years, becomes a very real possibility.
Question: But what about a return to mass campaigns?
The real question, of course, is how do you build the mass campaigns within the current context, because there is still an expectation on the part of the broad base of the nationalist community that the present negotiations, when they get started, will somehow lead to a peaceful and fair settlement. Now, that is not the case.
What is very clear from all of those talks is that we are looking at the solution which the British put forward in 1972, some kind of power sharing between the two power blocs [nationalist and Unionist], a referendum to determine the balance between the populations every 10 or 15 years and such economic and commercial cross-border trade links as are required by the end of the century economic necessities of the European Union. No more and no less.
Question: What about the discussion in the Republican movement?
Over the 18 months, the problem has been the stifling of discussion. Within the broad movement, not just Sinn Féin as a party, that has led to a lot of hostility.
When people are unable or unwilling to defend their political position politically they defend it by making attacks on the personality of the individual who is challenging their political position. There’s been a lot of that kind of thing, which we not have seen since the 1970s. The net effect has been that people simply do not discuss their differences. What is basically happening is that people who become disillusioned, or begin to see that the thing’s not working, just walk away.
In order to ensure that they can put on a good show for the British-American media, Sinn Féin has to mobilise their troops. And so, all the people who are totally loyal to the leadership, regardless of the debate, will be brought to the ard-fheis [conference]. But that in turn denies the leadership any real feedback.
Question: Is there no alternative?
I think that the way forward is first of all to make an honest assessment of where we are. I think we should hang on to the cease-fire. The special repressive legislation is still on the books, but we can initiate mass action and continue campaigning against that. If we don’t go back to war, there’s less chance of everybody being slaughtered.
I think Sinn Féin should get out of the “peace process”. Our presence in this process can do nothing to affect it. Our campaign should be based upon insuring that whatever mechanics they put on this country, we will demand equality of citizenship, as long as we are citizens here, we will demand equal opportunity, we will demand our national identity, we will demand our fundamental human rights, and begin to build a political campaign around that.
I think we can begin to build a political movement raising fundamental social, class and national issues, and one that is free to do that because it is not tied to the apron strings of the Irish government and the Hibernian [bourgeois nationalist] alliance.
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