Republican News · Thursday 10 October 2002

Blair's responsibility

Did you ever get that sense of déjà vu?

Once again, the peace process is in crisis. Once again, the PSNI have shown their true colours. Once again, the unionists are threatening to collapse the institutions. Once again, the British government's handling of the peace process is to blame.

Two weeks ago, the Ulster Unionist Council dictated the Unionist Party's future policy, and the road ahead was anti-Agreement. A list of impossible demands outside the scope of the Good Friday Agreement was unveiled as cover to secure the UUP's withdrawal from the Agreement's institutions in advance of next year's Assembly elections.

The UUC came up with a January deadline, but in the event the PSNI came to their assistance early. Last Friday's raids, arrests and subsequent charges gave Trimble all the ammunition he needed to call, in typically inflated tones, for Sinn Féin's imminent expulsion from the Executive, or else.

The DUP's two ministers, meanwhile, seeking to steal a march, quickly resigned from the Executive. Their only demand is that this whole power-sharing nonsense should be binned in favour of good old-fashioned unionist dominance. If it was good enough for their forefathers, it's good enough...etc.

Today, Gerry Adams leads a Sinn Féin delegation to meet Tony Blair in London. Apart from protesting the Stormont raid, arrests and charges, they will remind him that the British government has not lived up to its responsibilities under the Agreement, a discussion in which acceptable policing is sure to arise. They will also tell him that the British government's unwillingness to defend the Agreement in the face of increasingly hysterical and unrealistic unionist demands has led to this current crisis.

David Trimble may have lacked the courage or the will to try to sell the Agreement to his party, but the British government's actions have contributed to the malaise that has constantly gripped the peace process.

Tony Blair must rein in the securocrats who have sought to return to the certainties of conflict. He must deliver the required amendments to policing legislation to get back to Patten. He must insist that loyalist paramilitaries are not allowed free rein.

But most importantly, he must show the rejectionist unionists that there is no alternative to the Good Friday Agreement.

A positive response from Blair may be unlikely, but as Martin McGuinness said this week, there is no going back.

However long it takes, unionists are coming back to the Agreement, an inclusive agreement with Sinn Féin in government in Stormont and within the North-South institutions.

The rejectionist unionists are going to have to accept the fact that the Good Friday Agreement is the only show in town.