Socialist Action /July 1999
Irish Peace Accord Unravels
By GERRY FOLEY
The political compromise inscribed in the Northern Ireland peace agreement
was scheduled to go into operation on June 30. A power-sharing executive
was to be set up, in which the political organization representing the
rebellion of the oppressed nationalist people, Sinn Fein, was to hold important
positions.
All parties to the agreement-Sinn Fein, the Irish government, the Unionist
Party leadership, and the British government-agreed that if the deadline
were missed the success of the deal would be in question.
Nonetheless, the Unionist Party leader, David Trimble, adopted a line
that seemed designed to negate the compromise. He insisted that the Irish
Republican Army (IRA) must begin giving up its weapons before Sinn Fein
could sit in the executive.
At the same time, Trimble took a hostile stance toward the British Labour
Party government, demanding the removal of Home Secretary Mo Mowlan, who,
he said, had lost the confidence of the Unionist people.
The Sinn Fein leadership has explained that the IRA will not surrender
its weapons. Northern Ireland has a long history of pogroms and reactionary
terrorism against the nationalist community.
The IRA has been supported by the nationalist population as its defense
force. There is no way it could surrender its weapons as long as the nationalist
people continue to be threatened, as they clearly are.
Only a few months ago, a prominent human rights lawyer, Rosemary Nelson,
was murdered in circumstances that suggested the collusion of Northern Irish
police with reactionary murder squads. The case has aroused an international
outcry, reflected in a major story in the May 2 New York Times.
On June 24, a former British soldier, William Alfred Stobie, was jailed
on the charge of murdering Pat Finucane, another human rights lawyer, in
1989. Stobie was arrested by officers working with the inquiry team headed
by London deputy commissioner John Stevens, which was set up to investigate
the possibility of police collusion in the Nelson murder.
Stobie, who was working as a police informer at the time of Finucane's
murder, denied the charge. He claimed to have warned the police that someone,
he did not know who, was going to be murdered.
In his book, "The Committee," just issued in paperback, prominent
investigative journalist Sean McPhilemy presented evidence of systematic
collusion between the Royal Irish Constabulary and reactionary death squads.
McPhilemy claimed that Trimble, supposedly the leader of the pro-compromise
wing of the Unionist Party, was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate
nationalists. Rosemary Nelson was one of the sources for the book.
Before her death, the murdered lawyer was working with the nationalist
residents' committees opposing the threatening marches of reactionary pro-imperialists
through their neighborhoods.
Trimble, before becoming the Unionist father of the "compromise,"
distinguished himself as a leader of the reactionaries at the flashpoint
of Drumcree, in the Portadown area.
This year, the intransigent wing of the pro-imperialists are stepping
up their threats to the nationalist neighborhoods. The Orangemen maintain
that they are determined to march in Drumcree, even if the British and Irish
authorities try to stop them.
Moreover, the Orange Order has signaled a general attack on compromise
with the nationalists by announcing that it intends to hold 1300 parades
in the next six weeks, 40 of them in Portadown.
Compromisers historically have fared poorly in the pro-imperialist parties.
Even Trimble, who has benefited from Sinn Fein's surrender of one nationalist
principle after another and who has a formidable record as an oppressor
of the nationalist people, is in increasing trouble.
In its June 17 issue, the Belfast Irish-language weekly, An Lá,
noted, with respect to the poor showing of Jim Nicolson, a collaborator
of Trimble, in the recent European elections: "David Trimble is on
his last legs in Westminster after the beating given to Jim Nicolson. He
got the lowest vote that the UUP [the main Unionist Party] has ever gotten,
a fact that was not lost on Ian Paisley [an opponent of the compromise],
who topped the poll."
The paper went on to point out: "It was reported yesterday that
Ken Maginnis, one of the Unionist Party head's [Trimble's] strongest supporters,
is no longer willing to attend meetings of the Unionist Party parliamentary
fraction. That leaves Trimble without anyone among the Unionist MPs who
supports the Good Friday Agreement [the peace agreement] except Cecil Walker.
... But everyone admits that he is the oldest and least effective MP.
"Ken Maginnis accused the deputy head of the party, John Taylor,
for saying publicly that he would only cast a third-preference vote for
Nicolson, after giving the first two to Ian Paisley and Bob McCartney of
the United Kingdom Unionist Party."
The pro-imperialist party vote was split almost equally on the referendum
for the Good Friday agreement, with a small majority in favor. But it now
looks as if the balance is shifting toward the traditional hard line of
terrorizing the nationalist population.
The Northern Ireland colonialist system in fact is quite inflexible.
The state is defined by the largest area in which it is possible to assemble
a pro-imperialist majority. That means that repression of the nationalist
community, now almost half the population, is an integral and unalterable
part of the system.
The Good Friday Agreement is the latest of a series of schemes that have
been put forward with the pretense of conjuring away the basic contradiction
of the Northern Ireland state. Like its predecessors, it is proving to be
an illusion.
The immediate danger, however, is that the nationalist population will
be demobilized by this illusion in the face of pro-imperialist attack. Supporters
of human rights must be on the alert and ready during the Orange marching
season to come to the aid of the oppressed population of Northern Ireland.
Socialist Action /July 1999 |