W2E-005 Fortnight editorials-2.txt
The final phase

Robin Wilson

Last month, most of the political class in these islands was still asking the wrong question. 'Will the republican movement accept the joint declaration?' was answered in December (Fortnight 324). The real question is 'Can IRA (and other) violence be brought to an end?' The answer to that could now be yes.

The Economist rightly attacked both government last month for their lack of forethought at the time of the declaration as to what they would do if the IRA did not accept it. Subsequent inertia in London has let Sinn F&/ein roll forward off its heels with the endless, synthetic calls for British 'clarification' - as if a 16-page document from an Irish government wasn't good enough! Last month, that inertia entailed an unbelievably stupid defence of the Prevention of Terrorism Act - as if to validate those defiant IRA mortars at Heathrow - in continued contravention of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Yet Dublin has also encouraged northern nationalist immobilism, echoing the Hume-Adams rejection of an 'internal settlement' - when, as the Social Democratic and Labour leader himself surely appreciates, the very dichotomy of 'internal' versus'external' pertains to a period of absolute 'national sovereignty' obsolete in the modern Europe. The genius of the Opsahl report was to address 'internally' - via legal recognition of northern nationalism and other innovations - aspirations it was traditionally conceived could only be met by 'external' means.
In the light of the defeat of the 'liberal' Chris McGimpsey at the Ulster Unionist agm and the histrionics by the Democratic Unionist leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, in Downing Street, the Economist was also right to conclude: "Northern Ireland's politicians cannot, and probably will never be able to, formulate among themselves... a settlement." But it continued: "Nevertheless, polls show that a vast majority of people in Northern Ireland are fed up with the province's [sic] political stalemate as well as the convoluted rationale given by the IRA for its violent campaign... The two governments must now exploit this desire for a settlement, and the growing anger at the IRA, by proposing how peace, and justice, in Northern Ireland can be achieved."
Just so (Fortnight 326). Start with the right question. And the initial answer is that already IRA violence has been constrained, by such evidence of popular anger as the recent north-south poll for BBC's On the Record. Civilian casualties are now out, as are huge bombs in Protestant towns.

Result? Only two IRA victims this year, as we went to press. That's no consolation to the five Catholics slayed by sectarian assassins, but even that killing rate, horrendous though it is, is down on the last two years of bloody loyalism. No one has been killed by the police or army since November 1992.

The republican leadership is also hoist by its own petard. As after Heathrow, every act of IRA violence now only devalues Mr Adams'peace-loving credentials. The web of three governments SF drew around itself, party via Mr Hume, is falling apart - as impatience grows not only in London but in Dublin and Washington, and is no longer even concealed by Mr Hume's party colleagues.

The Andersonstown News could not be further, in class or national terms, from the aloof assuredness of the Economist. But last month it set out a fuller answer to the (right) question: "It surprises us that usually sane people should thing that, after 20 years of armed conflict and thousands of deaths, the situation could be rectified without a fundamental and radical change in society."
And it went on, echoing Opsahl: "No matter about the nitty gritty of constitutional change or the argument about self-determination, the ethos of the state here has to change to accommodate the identity and outlook of all its citizens."
It's an argument compellingly made inside by the leader of SF on Belfast City Council, Alex Maskey (p28), in a demand for real parity of esteem. In this state, such liberalism and pluralism would be 'fundamental and radical change'."

It's been the role of this leader column in recent months to point the way through the impasse by highlighting this legitimate republican demand for empowerment of the northern minority, as against perpetuating in intractable 'argument about self-determination'.

In last month's Lords debate on Opsahl, the former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Rees said: "The report is a remarkable document... It influence and should influence the steps that are to be taken." Its beauty is that, should IRA (and other) violence become increasingly perfunctory, it provides steps - such as a bill or charter of rights - which republicans can welcome to ease them out of the political ghetto into a wider realpolitik, yet which liberals and pluralists can endorse as a necessary substratum of new institutions.

And, just as importantly, its overall recommendations - supported by a 'vast majority' in the subsequent poll as they were - provide a basis on which the two governments can establish just how 'peace, and justice' are to be secured.
