Ireland
Congratulations to Dave Riley and Chris Slee for being brave enough to have a go at interpreting the Northern Ireland peace deal. It has given me the courage to also have a go.
I am sympathetic to the agreement. If I was in Ireland I would have voted yes. The problem is that I do not live in Ireland and I am not prepared to denounce it outright.
I have some sympathy with those who oppose the removal of Article 2 and 3 from the constitution of the Irish Republic but it must be remembered that these articles were constructs of the opportunist De Valera who was big on symbols and often short on substance. The two articles did not come out of the struggle.
Sinn Féin has to take advantage of the decimation of the unionists and conservatives at the last British general elections — it is a good time to push the unionists. Not that Labour is any less supportive of the unionists, but unlike Major, Blair is not dependent on them to stay in power. The peace deal has driven a wedge through and weakened the unionists.
Is a united Ireland on the agenda in the short term? No and probably was not even in Collins' time. Partition is an objective reality maintained by loyalist and British guns; it does not exist purely because someone signed the wrong bit of paper.
Sinn Féin's policy of trying to engage the unionist community and isolate the more intransigent elements is correct. It is logical that if Sinn Féin wants to engage the unionist community, at some point it will be participating in a joint governmental assembly with unionists. The argument that participating in such an assembly equals reformism is ultraleft.
If such an assembly proves an edifice to loyalist domination then community struggle will have to bring it down like it did 25 years ago. The danger for Sinn Féin is that they do not lose touch with the community that fostered them and become another cog in the loyalist statelet.
Darwin
[Abridged.]
Ireland II
I fear that Chris Slee (Write On, #319) is trying to teach me to suck eggs. The Good Friday Agreement legitimises partition in Northern Ireland precisely because it fails to deal with those same salient facts Chris sees fit to remind me of: the presence of British troops and the cooption of the Protestant section of the working class.
Instead the agreement attempts to recycle a series of old "solutions" which at one time or another have been employed by Britain to placate one or other of the contending communities in the Six Counties. The only thing really new is that which has been delivered by Dublin: accept the border or there is no deal. So despite the justice of their cause and the scale of their grievances the nationalist community is sentenced by this agreement to outbreed the Unionists if they want to win their rights.
However, at least for Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army, there have been some pluses in the process that led to the recent referendum. The agreement has split the Unionist forces and publicly exposed their intransigence. The IRA cease-fire has now been matched by the Unionist paramilitia. Sinn Féin has broadened its base of support in the nationalist community, recruited significantly and been formally accepted by Britain. Finally, and the feature Sinn Féin made the most of during its recent conferences, many Republican prisoners who now languish in British jails may soon be paroled.
Sinn Féin may be happy, but I fail to share their enthusiasm. As for guaranteeing peace — let's just wait until the Protestant marching season is over before we all get too excited.
Brisbane