Campaign dilemma
As the Orange marching season gets under way, the unionist
leadership has reached a crossroads in its campaign to smash the
Hillsborough Agreement.
Nineteen months on, the Agreement is still in place. It has not
yet delivered any reform which might have got the unionist
community's backs up, but the Secretariat at Maryfield is
operating nevertheless. Thatcher has been re-elected with a safe
majority which precludes unionists being in a position of
bargaining power for at least four years. Her Dublin counterpart,
Charles Haughey, who in opposition had expressed criticism of the
agreement, has now given his backing to it.
Meanwhile, the unionist campaign of boycott is dying away.
Unionist councillors are drifting back into the councils under
the threat of court injunctions or the pressure of local voters
and community groups. The Westminster boycott is unofficially
over, although unionists are saying that there will only be a
return to ``normal parliamentary practice'' when negotiations for
an alternative to the Hillsborough Deal are under way. When the
British parliament reopens today unionists will be there.
As for the campaign of street agitation and civil disobedience
promised by Paisley and Molyneaux, by and large it has not
happened. Harold McCusker and Ken Maginnis of the OUP are at
present the only two prominent unionists who have spent a few
days in Crumlin Road Jail for refusing to pay road taxes or TV
licences. The unionist community will march once a year, but it
seems it has not got the stomach for protracted campaigns.
Loyalist paramilitaries registered their protest against the
Hillsborough Agreement in the only way they know how: by killing
Catholics. But that had little effect on the British government's
determination to implement the Agreement.
Phoblacht 25 June 1987
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