Talks show that the British
Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for Norther Ireland, clearly has a good public relations department.
They have created a public image of an archetypal upper class English bumbler with Irish roots and an intuitive feel for Irish his tory and society, who by virtue of his limitless capacity for listening can win people with the most diverse opinions round to his way of thinking. The fact that Brooke's Irish credentials rest on the fact that he comes from a family of English landlords who benignly extracted the rent from Irish farmers is a neat counter point to his present role.
There is no doubt that the exploratory talks begun by Brooke's administration are an extremely serious initiative. Much of the obfuscation which surrounds them is certainly being generated by the British government. Nobody will say for certain what exactly is being discussed: is it talks about talks? is it a "power sharing' administration; or is it a straightforward retum to Stormont?
Much of the vagueness is due to the fact that none of the participants is exactly sure of what they can achieve and what they are likely to get. The fact that lan Paisley and James Molyneux, the two Unionist leaders, emerge from meetings with Brooke smiling and a couple of days later John Hume of the SDLP comes out of his meeting also grinning like a Cheshire cat suggests that they are being told rather different versions of the same story.
The one thing that does unite the SDLP. the Unionists, the British and Irish governments is that they all have an interest in the retum of a devolved goverment, though for different reasons. For the Unionists the Stormont regime gave them positions and power in their own statelet. For British imperialism a local administration run by Unionists allows it topresent the situation actually caused by its presence as as nothing but a local conflict between the adherents of two religions, the origins of which are lost in history.
The SDLP is the political expression of the Northem Catholic bourgeoisie's capitulation to loyalism and imperialism, and as such is not capable of leading a struggle against them. But it has to be seen to oppose them, and quite apart from careerist reasons, a local administration with some sort of legislative Paqe 30
FEATURES have no solution
by Liam Mac Uaid chamber would be the ideal forum. For Dublin, the thom in their side is not British imperialsim but the part of the population which is struggling against the imperialists. They want to be seen to participate in the establishment of the new arrangements, which can be sold an historic step forward towards peace and eventual unity.
But everything is very unstable. Seamus Mallon raised the flag for the green wing of " TORTURE. IRELAND NO JURY END COURTS 0 : THE H BLOCK® SILENCE Things here have changed since the "blanket" protest and huger strikes the SDIP and part of Dublin's ruling Fianna Fail when he declared that the Maryfield Secretariat would stay open while the talks are in progress. The Secretariat is an office near Belfast where some Irish civil servants are based, purportedly to deal with complaints from Northern nationalists who feel "alienated" from the British Army after their house has been wrecked in a search.
For Unionists this sop to the Irish government from the Anglo Irish Agreement is symbolic and irritating and they have demanded that it be closed before they participate in real talks. Mallon's remarks were said by Hume to have been "misunderstood", but Mallon was clearly making a deliberate point. One blushes to think of the rather plainer speaking that went on inside the SDLP as a result of Mallon's comments. The leader and the deputy leader were publicly disagreeing on one of the Unionists' most important demands.
The problems are not confined to the nationalist camp. Paisley's deputy Peter Robinson has made statements which are
more conciliatory to Dublin and the SDLP than is the rest of his party's line. He is, for example, ready to grant the SDLP the facesaver of having Dublin involved in peripheral talks about European matters while the main talks involving the Unionists, the SDLP and British take place. He has also said that a satisfactory relationship with Dublin is a necessary condition for the creation of devolved govermental structures. Paisley
Calagha brutal would not say that sort of thing publicly even if a gun were held to his head, but Robinson's comments must reflect what part of the DUP is now thinking.
The loyalist working class is abstaining from politics at the moment. An attempt by the Unionist leadership to mark the last anniversary of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement by emulating the human chains of the Baltie nationalist movements was a fiasco. Only a few hundred people tumed out and Molyneux comforted himself with the obser vation that "Ulster folk don't like holding hands in public
It is true that there has been an increase in activity by loyalist murder gangs recently but this is a consequence of the demoralisation of their population. There have also been riots in loyalist working class areas and attacks on the homes of prison staff in support of the demand for segregation from Republican prisoners. Again this has been organised by terrorist groups, It is not likely that these organisations will profit from the crisis of Unionist leadership in any significant way. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990
969 Clapad a naoine 1989 HeRe bitam 1e ENSORED Sinn Fein Ard Fheis: movement faces "appalling crisis of perspective" They have only been a significant political force when they have been in alliance with the two main Unionist parties and are not politically sophisticated enough to provide an alternative leadership. In any event there are deep economic reasons which explain why the big Loyalist industrial battallions in Shorts and the shipyard have not been roused into action by a threatened settlement.
The Republican movement is faced with an appalling crisis of perspective. It is a marginal force in the South and its support is limited to the Northem ghettoes and poorer rural areas. From this distance there seems to be little evidence of a discussion of how to break this isolation. This means that there will be no mass organised resistance to whatever settlement may eventually emerge, since the Republican movement is the natural core of a leadership for such a campaign. As with so many other matters which "practical revolutionaries tend to dismiss, this has a pressing practical significance.
While it still remains true that mass support for Republicanism prevents Britain from consolidating its rule in Ireland by relying on its historical alliance with Unionism, this is not the threat of these talks. The direction of British policy since the 1970s has been to criminalise and 'Ulsterise' the national liberation struggle. Arming Loyalists and dressing them in British aniforms, removing political status from Republican POWs and present altempts to exclude Sinn Fein from political life are all parts of this strategy. Ultimately a durable imperialist settlement depends on crushing the Republican movement. Repres SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990
FEATURES 1003020 10 300 sion and marginalisation are two means of achieving this. When Republicanism is forced down to its bedrock support it becomes easier for the British to do this and for Dublin and the SDLP to acquiesce to it.
In Socialist Outlook 24 Geoff Bell quoted Churchill's famous remark to the effect that whatever happens in the world the Irish situation remains the same. Broadly speaking Churchill was right, so long as Britain stays in Ireland. But even Unionist neanderthals have televisions, and they have seen what has hap pened in Eastem Europe. They know that 1992 will have an impact on relations within Europe and feel that they may subverted by events beyond their control.
John Hume has theorised that European integration may make Ireland's border irrelevant, one assumes because the whole island will become a peripheral offshore province of a centralised European state. Nevertheless all this adds to the uncasiness of the Unionist leaderships, who for more than twenty years have been living with the constant fear of betrayal by London and a sense of siege at home. Movement frightens them and their fear of British withdrawal, or at least abandonment, as Britain seeks to co-opt the Nationalist bourgeoisie is greater than ever before.
Add to these anxieties the state of the economy. Half the population of the North of Ireland is employed by the British state. The traditional local industries have been destroyed, and with them the traditional ruling class and economic rationale for the Protestant bourgeoisie's own parliament. Recent reports
Sinn Fein. on the economy have concluded that the soldtion to the unemployment problem is to train a workforce in the skills needed for the British and European labour markets, Put more bluntly this means that the educational system should be geared towards training for mass emigration. Without its own protected areas of employment the shortage of jobs also affects the Protestant population and contributes to its demoralisation.
The talks mark the collapse of the Anglo-Irish Agreement but were made possible by it. The Irish bourgeoisie is committed to being a partner to whatever for of settlement imperialism can force through, in the absence of any resistance to it. The most likely variant to gain acceptance from all parties is a Unionist administration with the SDLP allowed to parlicipate in some policy-making committees.
Yet it is not certain that an agreement will be reached or that it will not founder on some combination of Loyalist and Republican resistance once it is in place. Despite the economic arguments, consciousness adapts less quickly than the material world.
All that is certain is that Britain can only give the Irish people a lasting peace by withdrawing. Our duty in the British labour movement is to begin to organise to thwart any imperialist solutions and ensure that a struggle is waged in the Labour Party to prevent it from supporting them. This task will become more critical as the possibility of a Labour government becomes more real.
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