Republican News · Thursday 8 May 2003

Insisting on our democratic rights

BY PAUL O'CONNOR

Given last week's events, there are a few matters on which I'd like clarification.

By what right does a British Prime Minister decide whether Irish people cast their ballots or not? And what right has a British government to lecture republicans about democracy while cancelling an election because the predicted result is not the one they would like?

About as much right as Tony Blair has to preach about "exclusively peaceful means" while his hands are wet with the blood of Iraqi children.

But what do we expect? We should know by now what kind of 'democracy' Britain affords its colonies. After all, we have had 800 years' experience.

The process of conflict resolution demands a movement beyond old, entrenched positions. But the past months have seen unionists and the British retreating to the bunkers of prejudice and exclusion. While a seemingly endless list of concessions is demanded of republicans, first the unionists, and now the British government, seem to be pulling back from the Agreement.

The same dreary whine of negativity that unionism has kept up through the entire Peace Process has been raised by several decibels. Republicans have bent over backwards with clarification after clarification to provide them with reassurance, only to have it flung back in our faces with contempt.

Tony Blair has fallen into the old, failed game of backing unionism. Every major party in the Assembly and the Dáil called for elections to go ahead - with the sole exception of the Ulster Unionists. Blair weighed David Trimble in the balance with almost the whole of Ireland - and Trimble carried the day.

What does Tony Blair hope to gain by postponing the election until October? By caving in to unionist pressure, he has rewarded intransigence. Such a lesson can only bolster the rejectionist element in unionism.

Meanwhile, the Dublin government accepted the postponement with only the mildest whimper of protest. As Gerry Adams said last Friday, they have accepted the role of junior partners in the Peace Process. Bertie Ahern and his government are too busy keeping step with Tony Blair as he dances to the tune of Ulster Unionism, to fight the corner for nationalist Ireland. Indeed, they don't even want to. Hasn't Michael McDowell described the Dublin government as "honest brokers" - in other words, neutral?

The Agreement offers the promise of bringing about a united Ireland by peaceful means. Devolution, demilitarisation, and a new beginning to policing will erode the British presence in Ireland, while an evolving North-South agenda renders the border increasingly irrelevant. Worked to its full potential, the Agreement will not be an end-point, but the start of a process leading inexorably to Irish unity.

Republicans have laboured with considerable success to realise that promise, building political strength, pushing relentlessly for the full implementation of the Patten Report on policing, and developing the North-South agenda. Now that success has called forth a determined effort on the part of unionism to call a halt to our further progress. This is why the process is in crisis.

Tony Blair talks of "acts of completion", as if when the Agreement is implemented the problem of the North will be solved, the process of political transformation over. For republicans, the only "act of completion" will be the departure of the last British soldier from Ireland, on the same plane as the last British minister ever to meddle in the affairs of our country.

For the British government, the Peace Process is to stabilise the Six-County state. For republicans, it is the beginning of a process that will see an end to British rule in Ireland.

Instead of defending the Agreement, the British government has capitulated to unionist rejectionism by making demands on republicans that go far beyond its terms and deferring the Assembly elections to bolster David Trimble.

At present, unionists are not looking for a deal - they are looking for a surrender. And that is not something they are going to get.

Bertie Ahern said during the week the assurances offered by Gerry Adams as to the IRA's intent were enough for him, but republicans must offer more to convince unionists. Such an argument is ridiculous. Must republicans keep jumping through semantic hoops to satisfy every capricious demand unionists may come up with to delay the process of change? Does unionism really want to be convinced? The test is not whether unionists are satisfied by republican assurances, but whether they have been offered enough to convince any fair-minded observer - and by Ahern's own admission, republicans have passed this test.

The Agreement was a compromise. The framework document the two governments have concocted under the pressure of Trimble's repeated walk-outs makes demands on republicans over and beyond the Agreement. By linking the re-establishment of the institutions to the effective disbandment of the IRA, and introducing sanctions aimed at Sinn Féin, the governments are pandering to rejectionist unionism.

Unionist demands are driven less by genuine concerns about the intentions of the IRA than by a desire to see the exclusion of the largest nationalist party from the process.

Enough is enough. Unionists cannot have a veto over change. And they will not. In the end, they will have to deal with republicans, because far from going away, we are only going to get stronger.

In the meantime, if Trimble wants to walk, let him walk. We all know how good David is at walking. He won the leadership of unionism by walking down Garvaghy Road hand in hand with Ian Paisley, and he has walked hand in hand with the most reactionary elements of unionism ever since.

What has changed is that republicans are no longer marginalised and excluded from politics on this island. We have not one, but many political options.

Even if the institutions remain in suspension, republicans can press the British government to implement those aspects of the Agreement which depend on it alone. Progress on policing, demilitarisation, criminal justice, the equality agenda, human rights, and the Irish language, is not subject to Trimble's pouting and tantrums.

We can develop the North-South agenda across a range of issues. There is a vast potential, and compelling practical arguments, for cross-border co-operation on many matters, over and beyond those set out in the Agreement. There is no reason why progress on these should be stymied by the suspension of the institutions.

The important issue of voting rights for Irish citizens from the Six Counties in elections in the South lies wholly within the competence of the Dublin government. We can continue to build political strength in the North, with or without the Assembly elections. Above all, we face the task - and the opportunity - of reclaiming the 26 Counties for republicanism.

A republican movement isolated and cut off from the body of Irish nationalist opinion will never, by any method, attain Irish unity. But a republican movement that can carry the Irish people with it need set no bounds to its ambitions. Between 1918 and 1921, such a movement wrenched 26 Counties from the grasp of the world's mightiest imperial power. Demographic, economic and political shifts since have altered the balance of power between Ireland and Britain, and between nationalism and unionism within this island, in our favour. If that sense of national unity and purpose can be regained, nothing will stand between us and the attainment of the Republic.

The same forces will force unionists to do a deal with republicans. Their majority is eroding, if it is not already gone. Economically, they survive on a British dole and must bow to British pressure if it is applied.

Republicans today are stronger than at any time since the beginning of the current conflict. If unionism and the British government want to replay their old failed policies, if Dublin defends nationalist interests with all the ferocity of a startled sheep, that strength remains to guarantee there will be no returning to the past. If history has taught us anything, it is to look to our own efforts to bring about political change. Only republicans will deliver the Republic.

The British government has put enough questions to republicans over the past weeks. Let them be answered by a renewed determination on the part of each one of us to build this movement. Let them be answered by feet on the streets and voices raised in protest on 29 May. Let them be answered by the determination of a risen people that never, ever again will a British prime minister be in a position to deny us our democratic rights.