Stooping to pressure on policing
BY MICHAEL PIERSE
Adding to the general thrust of negative forces now attempting to isolate Sinn Féin and impede the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, the SDLP's decision to accept this week's policing proposals amounted to little more than a genuflection to John Reid.
The SDLP decision also revealed why they are traditionally referred to disparagingly in some quarters as the `stoops' - or `stoop down low party'. Browne reminded readers in Wednesday's Irish Times that there is no point in trying to push through policing legislation without the support of Sinn Féin, because ``however unfortunate it may be, the SDLP and the Catholic hierarchy don't matter. They went along, for the most part, with the reformed RUC of 1970 - and remember what happened to it?''
In an act of establishment choreography, the Dublin government, followed by the Catholic bishops, followed by the SDLP, endorsed a very watery dilution indeed of the Patten Report. It still fires plastic bullets, still refuses to take an oath on the upholding of human rights, cedes the power to block judicial inquiries to the British Secretary of State and the RUC Chief Constable, and is based on a grey implementation plan which is not to be set in train until the end of 2002 - a grey package endorsed by all the grey elements of Irish society.
Clearly, this falls short of what nationalists and republicans require in terms of policing - their rights, now, and in black and white. The SDLP, as Mitchel McLaughlin put it, is prepared to accept ``half a loaf''. Sinn Féin is not. As a result of the SDLP decision, the British Secretary of State, John Reid, is now maintaining that the policing debate is closed - ``non negotiable''.
Colombia hysteria
Not only have the SDLP been strengthening John Reid's hand this week, but the securocrats have been at it as well. The arrest of three Irish men allegedly carrying false passports in Colombia has formed the basis for more speculation than the deaths of JFK, Elvis Presley and Vladmir Rasputin combined. British Intelligence have peddled tales of IRA Volunteers procuring everything from drugs to napalm bombs in the Colombian jungle.
It was claimed that the three were caught on Colombian cameras training FARC guerillas. This was later retracted. It was claimed that the three had traces of bomb-making material and cocaine on their clothes. This was retracted also. It was claimed that one of them was charged - retracted again. Sinn Féin rubbished reports that one of the men was the party's Cuban representative - such a position does not even exist. On Wednesday, the men were charged but the Colombians have yet to come up with any substantive evidence that the men were engaged in any illegal activity on their journey to Colombia.
Indeed, the family of one of the men, Niall Connolly, has now asked Dublin Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen to intervene, expressing deep concern for the men's wellbeing. They can be held for up to eight months while the Colombian authorities attempt to build a case against them.
The incredible thing about all of this is that the vast bulk of the establishment media has been prepared to take the word of British securocrats and print and reprint allegations that they had no hope of substantiating. Incredible also, that the arrest, without charge, of three Irish men, 5,000 miles away, has warranted, in one week, more media coverage than the 200-or-so loyalist attacks on nationalists and republicans this year. The hypocrisy is baffling.
Unionism benefits
For unionism, as An Phoblacht observed last week, recent events have been going very much their way. David Trimble's intention of collapsing the institutions, creating a crisis and blaming it all on republicans has, with a little nifty MI5 media manipulation, worked a treat.
Again, the choreography was perfect. The IRA makes a proposal on arms, which is summarily rejected by the UUP. The British government takes the perverse step of backing up the UUP position by suspending the Agreement institutions, leaving the IRA with no choice but to revoke its proposal, citing UUP intransigence and British government failure to keep the process on track as their reasons for doing so.
Now, with the support of the SDLP, the two governments and even the DUP, the erosion of the Good Friday Agreement Trimble prophesised after ``crisis'' and ``suspension'' is regrettably coming to pass.
What is lost in all of this is the principle of democracy. The SDLP's decision to support the new policing proposals was heralded as the historic acceptance of policing in the Six Counties by nationalists, while John Reid says the proposals are non negotiable.
But the proposals themselves take democratic power away from the people in that it is not the people of the Six Counties, or their elected representatives, but John Reid and Ronnie Flanagan who are the final arbiters of what amounts to a repackaged RUC will look like. They must be reminded that fair, impartial, accountable policing is not a concession. It's a right.
Brits out poll
The UUP's Michael McGimpsey stated this week that Sinn Féin is ``isolated'' and ``out of touch''. But disturbingly for unionism, there is another democratic trend running contrary to what David Trimble and, indeed, the British government are trying to achieve. According to an ICM poll, published in The Guardian newspaper this week, only 26 per cent of British people think the Six Counties should be occupied by Britain, while 46 per cent support a United Ireland. The other 23 per cent, the Guardian surmises, simply don't care. While unionists can take succour from the behaviour of British spooks and Irish stoops this week, in the long term it is they, rather than Sinn Féin, who are facing isolation.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)