End of the Agreement

by John McAnulty

The April cancellation of elections to the Stormont assembly marks a significant new stage in the decay of British plans to bring about a settlement of the Irish question on their terms. The indefinite suspension followed an earlier temporary suspension of elections and the dramatic closure, in October last year, of the local Stormont assembly itself and the dissolution of the executive amid a mass police raid on the parliamentary offices of Sinn Fein.

The Good Friday agreement, signed five years ago, was presented as Britain withdrawing gracefully from the North. In practice the British kept appearing from behind the comic-opera façade of the Stormont assembly to make further demands on the republican leadership, further concessions to their local supporters in the Unionist party and to redefine the terms of the Good Friday agreement. They moved to suspend and collapse the local structures, making it that all the claims of a new democratic dispensation in Ireland are false. Just how comic-opera the Good Friday structures are is indicated by the fact that all the Institutions were replaced by just three British labour party backbenchers!

But the April events do not represent the collapse of the Good Friday agreement - that happened with the collapse of the executive. They represent the stillborn death of Good Friday mark two and this collapsed before it was launched, despite the involvement of George Bush and Tony Blair and despite repeated, and ever more desperate, attempts by the republican leadership to indicate its support for the new state institutions and willingness to disband the IRA. This collapse led John Taylor, to predict that it would be a generation before a Stormont assembly would re-convene.

It was the same John Taylor who pointed out the fatal flaw in the original deal. This agreement saw the Irish bourgeoisie follow an earlier de facto recognition of the Northern colony with a de jure recognition. A few cosmetic all-Ireland committees were draped around this legal shift and nationalists were promised places in a power-sharing coalition in a local parliament. British rule in Ireland was to continue, sectarianism was to continue. The major shift was that nationalists, completely excluded from political power in the old Stormont regime preceding the troubles, were to have their share of sectarian privilege. The republicans, militarily at a dead-end and moving towards a more right-wing and nationalist orientation decided to climb on the bandwagon and claim victory

The British pinned their hopes on ‘moderate’ middle class unionism led by the arch-bigot David Trimble. The problem was that the Trimble wing never had a programme of reaching an accommodation with nationalism. Their argument was that it was through the structures of the GFA that they would best be able to defend their sectarian privileges. The republicans were well aware of Trimble’s position, but believed that the British would punish the unionists if they broke the structures of the agreement. They also believed that the nationalist family of the Irish capitalist parties and of Irish America would hold the British to their word.

The British saw things differently. If the North was to remain a colony to ensure capitalist stability in Ireland, it would need to continue to base itself on sectarian privilege and on a mass unionist base. Their method was to placate unionism as unionists demanded, and got, the destruction of IRA weapons by the republican leadership. This emboldened the reactionary forces to the right of Trimble. It became clear that only the public and unconditional surrender of the IRA would save the agreement. In the absence of this the agreement collapsed.

However the nature of the collapse indicated that the republican analysis and strategy had collapsed also. Good Friday mark one failed because of Unionist protest at allegations of ongoing IRA activity. In fact this activity did not break the terms of the Good Friday agreement, based on an IRA ceasefire. These ceasefire activities kept the IRA ticking over and helped prevent internal discontent. Given the level of penetration by British intelligence and the abandonment of the republican programme by the leadership there was absolutely no prospect of that activity leading to a new conflict.The Unionist protests were in fact cynical ploys to add a new element to the agreement – the demand for disbandment.

The big shock to Republican strategy was the British response. The police raid on Sinn Fein’s parliamentary offices kicked away the illusions of a parliamentary democracy. It served notice that the British would not negate their history in Ireland and play a progressive role, that the British supported Unionist demands, that Sinn Fein would have to do a great deal more if they wanted to preserve the pretence of power and that the demand for IRA disbandment would be the starting point for future negotiations to establish a new agreement. In a visit to Belfast Tony Blair spelt it all out. The promises of the Good Friday agreement, supposedly set in stone, were now conditional on the unconditional surrender of the republicans.

Sinn Fein offered no resistance. The period from October to March was spent in carefully crafting these conditions. At their centre was to be an IRA declaration that they would surrender arms, run down background activities and were moving towards disbandment and that Sinn Fein would unambiguously support the structures of the new state by joining the police boards. In case this was not enough Dublin and London would establish a commission that would oversee the winding down of the IRA and punish Sinn Fein if the military wing showed any sign of activity. The reward would be a reduction in military levels. Some border watchtowers would be demolished, and the British army would be reduced to ‘only’ 5000 soldiers and 14 bases.

The sectarian colonial structures at Stormont would be re-established, repressive legislation would be redrafted – not to meet human rights demands but to allow nationalist influence on various boards and quangos. There would be some pretence at reform of the police and a small number of ‘On the Runs’ would be allowed to return home.
A first attempt to make the deal at a summit led by Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Aherne ended in disarray when the Unionist parties walked out. The final deal was crafted, only to be torn away from the fingernails of the Sinn Fein leadership as they made lunge after desperate lunge to meet British terms.

The republicans were told that the IRA statement, carefully worded so that it would read surrender to the British and yet be sold to the republican base, was insufficient and unclear. Desperately Gerry Adams stepped forward to provide that clarity. The British responded by declaring that this was real progress – if only Gerry had used the word ‘will’ instead of ‘would’. Adams provided the missing word, but this was not enough. “What part of absolutely no activity do you not understand?”, asked Adams. But it was clear that no words would be enough.

The reality was that unionist opposition to sharing power with Sinn Fein was absolute. There were no conditions to meet because there were no conditions under which the Trimble wing of unionism would a coalition government with Sinn Fein. The Unionists would not share power with Sinn Fein and even hints that they would share power with any nationalist looks uncertain. Under these conditions the British role was to pull the plug, defend unionism and condemn republicans for not giving enough.However this is not a re-run of the October collapse. The indefinite postponement of the elections is in fact their cancellation. With the elections goes much of the structure and political content of the Good Friday agreement. There will be no Autumn election because the agreement itself contains provision for a review that will inevitably become negotiation for a completely new settlement.

The outline of that settlement should be clear. Britain will chair the new negotiations and set the agenda and only one conclusion is possible - the weakness of the Good Friday agreement was that it was too radical! It gave nothing to Irish democracy, but that nothing was too much for unionism! Any new arrangement must shift away from coalition structures to even weaker structures with a greater shift of power towards direct British patronage and appointed committees, where the Unionists are able to ensure that they maintain the lions share of privilege. The republicans will be made an offer they can no longer refuse – a more humiliating surrender and less reward for it.

The most immediate sufferers will be the republicans. The British can continue to reward them but they cannot give them the rewards they really need. Only parliamentary seats and ministerial positions in the North can hide the absolute collapse of their strategy of reform and give momentum to the only tactic they have left – to use their Northern electoral success to propel themselves to greater electoral success in the formally independent 26 counties.

However the outlook in the longer term is ominous for the British. Negotiating a new agreement and making it work will depend on a capitulation to unionist sectarianism by the nationalists. A settlement, if it is established at all, will depend for its operation on the absence of any largescale resistance. No amount of bribery seems sufficient to keep the thugs in the various loyalist groups at bay.

Britain has had a situation in which they had absolute support for their strategy from the vast majority of the Irish working class. They weren’t able to translate that support and their massive economic, political and military power into a stable, let alone democratic solution. The Marxist analysis suggests that imperialism will never be able to do so.

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