The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.16           April 27, 1998 
 
 
UK Troops Out Of Ireland! -- Agreement registers weakening of British imperialism  

BY PAUL DAVIES
MANCHESTER, England - The governments of Britain and Ireland, and the parties participating in the all-party talks in Northern Ireland published an agreement at the conclusion of their negotiations on April 10. Each of the party leaders will now present the agreement to their executive body or membership for ratification.

The parties that drew up the agreement include the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the Progressive Unionist Party, and the Ulster Democratic Party. The latter two are linked with loyalist (pro-British) paramilitary groups. Also participating were the reformist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the bourgeois Alliance party, and Sinn Fein, the party that is leading the struggle to end British rule in the six northern counties and establish a united Ireland.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said, "This is a phase in our struggle. That struggle must continue until it reaches its final goal." At a plenary session at the end of the talks Adams also explained, "We have resisted attempts to force us out, to marginalize us, to silence and intimidate us....

"These negotiations and the new arrangements which result from them are part of our collective journey from the failures of the past and toward a future of equals.... British policy in Ireland has manifestly failed. Partition has failed. The decades of unionist rule in the north were exclusive and partisan. Those days are gone forever. There is no going back to the failed policies and structures of the past, to the domination of a one-party unionist state supported by the British government."

The agreement establishes a 108-person Northern Ireland assembly, to be elected by proportional representation. It states that there will be "checks and balances to ensure unionists cannot dominate nationalists as they did in the previous Stormont parliament, until it was abolished in 1972." The Stormont assembly was abolished following a rise in the national struggle in the early 1970s, and Northern Ireland has been ruled directly by the British government in London since then.

Sinn Fein will discuss whether to participate in the assembly at its national conference April 18-19. The party's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, told reporters he would urge the meeting to give the agreement "fair wind." Sinn Fein will be able to take its seats in the assembly without the Irish Republican Army (IRA) "decommissioning" its weapons. Until recently, the British government had insisted that decommissioning take place before and during the talks that just concluded.

The talks were extended past their initial deadline on April 9, as Sinn Fein threatened to walk out after the UUP and SDLP agreed on a deal establishing a three-year time scale for the release of political prisoners. Following an intervention from U.S. president William Clinton, this was rediscussed and a two-year time frame was established. Washington has taken a hand in the negotiations -former Sen. George Mitchell is serving as chair - with hopes that a more stable arrangement for governing Ireland will provide openings for U.S. business interests there.

There are an estimated 698 political prisoners in Northern Ireland, 47 in the Republic, and 12 in British jails. The majority of prisoners are nationalists who have been imprisoned for their role in the struggle to end the British occupation of Ireland. The agreement to release the prisoners extends only to those prisoners who belong to organizations that London acknowledges as having maintained a cease-fire.

The agreement on this front has angered some right-wing politicians, including former Conservative government minister Norman Tebbit, who spoke out against the release of prisoners. Tebbit called the agreement "a considerable victory for the IRA."

After the wrangle over releasing prisoners, UUP leader David Trimble tried unsuccessfully to get Clinton to urge the other negotiations participants to write the decommissioning of IRA and loyalist paramilitary weapons into the agreement. Clinton did not come to Trimble's support. Following the talks' conclusion, former British prime minister John Major demanded that IRA decommissioning begin if Sinn Fein takes its seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The agreement does not contain any commitment to end the British military occupation. Instead it calls for a "security arrangement consistent with the level of threat... the removal of security installations, [and] the removal of emergency powers in Northern Ireland." A reminder of the reality of British rule was given in the final week of the all-party talks when the army held Sinn Fein president Adams at a checkpoint. British forces in north Belfast have also just begun to build a new "peace wall," a militarily fortified barrier segregating Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

Forces among the British ruling class hope the agreement, which will be presented in a referendum in Northern Ireland and in the Republic, will shore up their declining role around the world and put them in a better place to intervene against their imperialist rivals and against other peoples struggling to end imperialist oppression. An April 11 article in the Financial Times noted that "in the short term officials believe that the agreement will provide a helpful backdrop to [British prime minister Anthony] Blair's efforts to restart the Middle East peace talks during his four day trip next week."

Liberal Democratic party leader Paddy Ashdown claimed that with the agreement, "Britain now has a number of assets which allow us to pursue a completely different foreign policy.... If this works we would be able to claim a success in reaching a peaceful solution to the most difficult tribal conflict against the most successful terrorist organization in the world. At the same time, a settlement would free up military resources which could be redeployed in peacekeeping roles elsewhere."

Struggle opens over `marching season'
The agreement was reached just days before the start of the "marching season," when the Orange Order and other pro- British groups organize sectarian and triumphalist marches through predominately Catholic communities in Northern Ireland, which aim to reinforce Protestant domination. These marches have become a flashpoint in the nationalist struggle in recent years. The newly formed Parades Commission re- routed the April 13 march by the sectarian Apprentice Boys along Belfast's Lower Ormeau Road, a small Catholic enclave. Only a handful of rightists showed up for the march, and they did not try to challenge the rerouting.

But the chairperson of the Parades Commission, Alistair Graham, indicated that there should be "one or more Loyal Order parades along Lower Ormeau Road in 1998." Responding to this threat the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community (LOCC), which has mobilized residents and others to block the parades in recent years, said it thought Graham's remarks "had no basis." The LOCC statement read, "The Parades Commission statement indicates their true agenda - to get Orange feet on the Lower Ormeau Rd." The LOCC called on the Orange Order to engage in direct discussion with Catholic residents about the routing of the parades.

More than 4,000 people marched through the Garvaghy Road area of Portadown at the end of March to protest the forthcoming parades by the Orange Order in that town.

Unionist political forces, which London has relied on to help maintain its rule since it partitioned Ireland in 1921, have come out of the talks weaker and more divided. This was reflected on the last day of the talks, when leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Ian Paisley was jeered and heckled by other loyalist supporters as he tried to hold a press conference at Stormont. The DUP have refused to take part in the talks. Several of Paisley's former supporters shouted such abuse as "You are a dinosaur. Your days are over."

Senior members of the UUP have challenged Trimble's support for the agreement, opposing the gradual release of political prisoners. At a meeting on the day after the talks, a third of Trimble's UUP executive committee voted against the agreement.

The document also contains proposals for the establishment of a North/South ministerial council, to be made up of representatives from the government in the South and from the new assembly in the North. According to Stephen Dodd, writing in Ireland's Independent on Sunday, the ministerial council will have no executive powers. However, an article written in the Observer states, "The Unionists claim victory since the body is accountable to the assembly, but the nationalists say it has an executive, and therefore has independent powers."

The Irish government has agreed to put to a referendum the replacement of articles two and three of the Irish constitution, which lay territorial claim to the six counties held by Britain in the north. The proposed new wording would read "A united Ireland shall be brought about only by a peaceful means, with the consent of a majority of the people... in both jurisdictions in the island." The British government has agreed to repeal the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It has also agreed to introduce laws allowing further referendums on Northern Ireland every seven years "if it appears likely that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease being a part of the United Kingdom and form a part of a United Ireland."

Adams indicated that he would oppose the removal of articles two and three of the Irish constitution. Northern Ireland's six counties, he said, "are Irish counties. Nothing can change that."

The IRA published a message commemorating the 82nd anniversary of the Easter Rising, following the all-party talks. The 1916 Easter Rising was the first major revolt by the oppressed and exploited in Europe following the outbreak of the First World War. Although London quelled the uprising and executed its leaders, they were unable to crush the nationalist revolt, and by 1921 had to sign an agreement with bourgeois nationalists in Ireland to partition the country and grant independence to the south.

In the message the IRA reaffirm its commitment to "ending British rule in Ireland and the reunification of our country." The message applauds the Sinn Fein negotiating team at the talks and says, "We will carefully study the outcome of the talks process... and face the future with the determination that republican people have shown over the last 30 years."

Speaking at a rally on Easter Sunday, Adams said that the agreement would "see us through to make more significant advances towards our goal of a free and independent Ireland." According to a Press Association report, Adams received a "thunderous reception" at the commemoration rally in Carrickmore.

Adams gave a more detailed assessment of what had been accomplished on April 11. "The republican struggle so far has come through a series of phases from the civil rights days and the mass and popular uprising of the early seventies through intense periods of armed struggle and the prison struggles including the hunger strikes, into electoralism and the Sinn Fein peace strategy. That struggle goes on," he said. "The real significance of last week's events for unionism was that the Ulster Unionist Party was moved further than it wanted to go. But if it is to play a positive role... unionism will have to move even further.... It is my view that this will happen. But only when there is no alternative.... That is why the focus of all democratic opinion must be on securing changes in British policy and removing the [unionist] veto."

"The agreement registers a weakening of British rule," said Pete Clifford, the Communist League candidate in the May council elections for Angell Ward in Lambeth, London. "Prime Minister Blair spoke of the hand of history being on his shoulder. But the truth is it's London's bloody hand that divides and oppresses the Irish nation. It is a tribute to nationalist fighters over the last 30 years that Westminster can no longer rule in the old ways. Now is the time to stand with these fighters for self-determination and press for Britain to go - at the center of which must be the withdrawal of the source of violence in Ireland: British troops."

Paul Davies is a member of the Amalgamated Electrical and Engineering Union in Manchester.  
 
 
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