IN MAY 1974 a strike organised by the Ulster Workers Council brought down the Sunningdale Agreement. The key to the strike was the Ballylongford power station which provided most of the electricity for the North of Ireland.
The Wilson Government, which had just defeated Heath's Tories in the "who governs?" election of February 1974, couldn't persuade the army to intervene against the loyalists and the "Power Sharing Executive" set up by Heath and Whitelaw collapsed.
General Frank Kitson, a key theorist of "low intensity warfare" , was Northern Ireland commander at this time.
Nui surprisingiy, chis was aiso a nigh point of the campaign of sectarian murder by loyalists.
However the "framework document" being negotiated at the moment between London and Dublin is not another Sunningdale, being, in the words of one SDLP activist, "less than what we were prepared to accept in 1974"
Twenty years after the "Power Sharing Executive" and the never-convened Council of Ireland, de eh, with the able assistance of Alt evolds and John Hume, ric iowards an agreement recar: 1921 Treaty which partitioned Ireland.
Previous efforts at an internal settlement, which complemented the counterinsurgency strategy, have foundered either on loyalist opposition, as in 1974, or more often because the nationalists, and particularly John Hume's Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), refused to participate.
Now, the unionist bloc has broken into its class components and the bourgeois elements, for the most part back the new deal. The decisive change has come on the nationalist side.
Doubtful
Having failed so often in the past, the British were doubtful at first that what they were offering - a "democratised" Six-County state - would be enough to win nver the nationalists and to bring an IRA cease-fire.
Hume and Reynolds persuaded them otherwise. Apart from his belief in the "European Union dimension" and in the clear desire of capital on both sides of the border for some settlement which brings closer cross-border co-operation, Hume's trump was in delivering Adams.
The Hume-Adams statement, which has never been made public, even to Sinn Fein members, is simply Hume's strategy for delivering Sinn Fein's key demand - Irish unity.
In essence, Hume asks Sinn Fein to become "persuaders" of the unionists that a united Ireland is in their interests. The British, possibly surprised at how easily political gains can be plucked from what looked like a 20-year-old political and military stalemate, seem determined to go for a Treaty Mark 2.
Mayhew recently upped the stakes, saying in an interview in the Daily Telegraph that Articles Two and Three of the South's Constitution were an obstacle to progress and that there would be no joint authority over the North between London and Dublin.
While Hume was the fixer in the whole process the political current which has carried the process along has come from Dublin.
The Dublin bourgeoisie, now economically less dependent on Britain, shares Hume's belief that national unity and independence is less relevant in a "Europe of the Regions".
It got a bad fright from the rise of Sinn Fein combined with the economic crisis in the early 1980's, and went along with the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement for that reason.
Its strategy for defeating the republicans is, it believes, more subtle than that of the British, especially the Europhobic right wing of the Tory Party.
The 1921 Treaty originally established the unionist veto, though the promise to nationalists was that it was a stepping stone to a independent 32county state.
Dublin is happy to change Articles Two and Three of the Constitution as part of an overall settlement which gives them some role in guaranteeing the position of the nationalists in the North. They are looking for the right form of words to sell such a deal in the South.
Dilemma The dilemma for republicans is acute. For some, the answer will be to continue the military struggle which many accept AN is not sufficient, on its own, to drive the British out. On the other hand, a ceasefire, would remove their main leverage in any talks which followed.
It was the mass mobilisations around the question of the prisoners which put D) mosi pullúvai pressure on the ruling class in London and Dublin during the period 1977 to 1985. Relying on Albert Reynolds and the US Government to press concessions from the British in return for a ceasefire is a disastrous NF strategy which will destroy the gains of the last decade and a half.There can be no return to 1921.
The campaign against any return to the rotten, sectarian Orange state, or any modern version of it must be stepped up. Self- determination for the Irish people as a whole!
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 67, August 1994, Page 14