People are getting fed up
BY MICHAEL PIERSE
Intensified loyalist attacks, another suspension of the Agreement institutions, four weeks into a violent loyalist attempt to prevent Catholic children from going to school, yet all the while `IRA decommissioning' dominates the headlines.
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British Secretary of State John Reid's remarks at the weekend, in which he concentrated entirely on IRA weapons and ignored the escalating bomb attacks by the UDA - including 12 pipe bomb attacks at the weekend - beggared belief
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Rarely has any political lobby done as good a job as unionism has recently of rocking their own boat and persuading everyone else that there's a storm at sea.
Disillusioned at the pace of progress and frustrated with the hypocrisy and cynicism of anti-republican elements, it is with increasing astonishment and anger that republicans and nationalists have viewed the unfolding of recent events.
British Secretary of State John Reid's remarks at the weekend, in which he concentrated entirely on IRA weapons and ignored the escalating bomb attacks by the UDA - including 12 pipe bomb attacks at the weekend - beggared belief. In a matter of weeks, the count on attacks perpetrated by loyalists on nationalist areas this year has gone from 200 to 250. Yet, with characteristic insensitivity, most politicians and the bulk of the media in this country, and in Britain, have ignored the onslaught on nationalists.
Somehow, active loyalist bombs are less of a threat than silent IRA weapons in the eyes of the Indo and the Times; if you're a Catholic your life and general safety warrant less column inches than rehashed arguments for IRA decommissioning. To anyone who has any feeling, or compassion for those children who face a daily gauntlet of loyalist hate, or those nationalist communities forced to live with the constant fear of loyalist attack, political and journalistic indifference to this reality must seem absolutely sick.
Ronnie Flanagan's announcement that there was ``ample evidence'' that the UDA had re-engaged in ``acts of terrorism'' was a belated statement of the obvious. It came as British Army bomb disposal experts discovered two unexploded pipe bombs at the rear of a Catholic house in Rosapenna Street, Belfast, on Wednesday, and after attacks on a Catholic home at a flashpoint in Newington Street. While Flanagan expressed his opinion that there is ``no doubt'' that UDA members have been orchestrating attacks, a decision on whether the organisation had breached its `ceasefire' was up to John Reid, he said.
But Reid, who should have declared the UDA ceasefire to be over long ago, was concentrating on the silent guns held by the IRA. ``What we need to break the impasse, and hopefully it will come soon, is for the IRA to take that step they said they were prepared to take,'' Reid said. In its statement of Wednesday 19 September, however, the IRA made its position abundantly clear. While it has pledged to re-engage with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, the Army outlined its reasons for revoking its 8 August proposal to put arms beyond use: ``The IRA leadership's ability to speedily and substantially progress the decision was completely undermined by the setting of further preconditions and the outright rejection of the IICD statement by the UUP leadership,'' it said. ``Further actions by the British government, including a continued failure to fulfil its commitments, removed the conditions necessary for progress. On August 14 we withdrew our proposal.''
The British government has shown no sign of fulfilling the conditions necessary for progress. If anything, it is prepared to exploit any opportunity it gets to attack the IRA and exacerbate republican anger and disillusionment. John Reid's suspension of the institutions - the third such suspension announced by a British Secretary since the Good Friday Agreement was ratified - was a massive blunder. Despite the options available to him, that of declaring a review of the Agreement or in the event of a failure of that reviw, of calling elections, Reid chose to undermine the institutions and vindicate Trimble's obstructionism.
Together, David Trimble, the British government and the UDA have engaged in a strategy that amounts to a veto in the one hand and a pipe bomb in the other. While they have been prepared to ignore the 250 sectarian, racist attacks on nationalist areas, gunfire from a nationalist area of North Belfast on Monday night provoked a disproportionate hubub of condemnation from establishment unionism. Nigel Dodds of the DUP, who has supported loyalists attacking children in Ardoyne, was declaring the IRA cessation at an end, while British `security' minister Jane Kennedy said that the validity of the cessation would have to be reviewed. And what of the UDA?
The failure in British and unionist circles to exert pressure on the UDA to stop their campaign of violence against Catholics amounts to a tacit acceptance of that campaign. Furthermore, their constant focus on the IRA is affording the UDA the moral vacuum in which to operate. While political unionism attempts to pull down the Agreement's institutions and to exclude Sinn Féin, the UDA continues its bombing campaign, while the British government remains silent and the media plays its part by playing the warped `balance' card that has always downplayed loyalist violence.
It seems that the British government is prepared to squander an unprecendented opportunity for a lasting peace on this island. While republicans remain wedded to this process, there is a seething and justifiable anger at the hypocrisy of Britain's fixation on silent guns and blind eye to unionism's attacks on the peace process.
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