AN PHOBLACHT/Republican News recently carried two centrespreads on a 'Charter for Justice and Peace'.
The Charter was presented to the 1995 Sinn Fein Ard-Fheis by the Ard Chomhairle (National Committee) and is intended to open a debate, to which readers were invited to put ten news Under the headings of Self Determination, Covenant with Protestants, Strengthening of Democratic Participation, Law, Protection of Rights, Policing, Civil Society, Cultural Rights, Economic Regeneration, Social and Implementation and Transitional Arrangements, the document, written by AC member Tom Hartley, clearly represents the views of the leadership on these questions.
Calling for a debate in APRN rather than discussion and voting at the Ard Fheis makes the exercise more a consultation exercise than a real debate: Tony Blair has nothing to teach the Republican leadership on party democracy.
The Charter itself is a nondescript collection of good intentions and non-controversial proposals which could easily be embraced by the Alliance Party and the SDLP in the North of Ireland and anyone to the left of the Tory Party in Britain.
It calls, for example, for the incorporation of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into "domestic law", cultural pluralism, and equal treatment for the Irish language and declares itself in favour of pre-school nursery provision, all worthy proposals in themselves -but hardly very radical.
The most significant point about the Charter for Peace and Justice in Ireland is that it applies not to Ireland but to the Northern State.
Irish self-determination, it says, "can best take place after a defined period of national reconciliation (the transitional period)".
Twenty five years into the current phase of the struggle, the Sinn Fein leadership defers Irish self determi- then? nation to the end of an undefined transitional period.
Demands on British Its Charter for Justice and Peace in Ireland is in reality a series of demands on the British direct rulers for the reform of the Northern State, a set of demands less radical than those put forward by "Official" Sinn Fein before the 1969 split. The Charter might be called Sinn Fein's Framework Document.
The Framework Document agreed between London and Dublin is clearly based on the Unionist veto. Neither the Tories nor Labour will act as persuaders of the Unionists.
In her public statements since becoming Labour's Northern Ireland spokesperson, Marjorie Mowlem has strongly supported the Framework Document and concentrated on reassuring Unionists of Labour's neutrality on the question of a united Ireland.
Labour's policy of unity by consent, insofar as it still exists, places much greater emphasis on the "consent" rather than on "unity".
If the British won't try to persuade the Unionists of the value of a united Ireland, then presumably that task will be left to the "nationalist family" and possibly the US government. Neither has been successful in the past.
If, at the end of this transitional period the Unionists still say "no" as they certainly will, in the separate referenda on both sides of the border, what will Sinn Fein's response be They will have no alternative but to finally accept the Unionist veto and, following that logic, the Northern State itself. Will they take their seats in the new, devolved government at Stormont Castle?
In this situation, there is one sense in which the demands of the Charter might be radical and that is because the Six County State has in the past shown itself to be completely incapable of reform.
Basic democratic rights such as "one person, one vote", the fair allocation of housing and the ending of employment discrimination against Catholics were all impossible in the regime run from Stormont until the British abolished it in 1972.
Even after 23 years of direct rule from Britain, Catholics are 2.5 times more likely to be unemployed than Protestants. The chances of reforming what Charles Haughey once called a "failed political entity" are zero, even if Dublin provides some guarantees for Nationalists as envisaged in the Framework Document.
The Orange State was built on the partitionist settlement imposed by the British in 1921, a settlement which denied the Irish people the right to self determination.
Its bigotry, reaction, sectarianism and discrimination came not from the peculiarities of the Unionists but flowed directly from the need to maintain itself and the Union.
The Unionist veto is the denial of the right to self determination, the Northern State its physical expression and the British its guarantor. Any "settlement" within this framework is, by definition, the opposite In the new For a Workers' Republic Joumal of the Irish section of the Fourth International 'Outlook International to Box 1109, London N4 2UU.
Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness has abandoned his former to partition of self-determination.
Self determination is not divisible. Holding referenda on both sides of the border to rubber-stamp whatever emerges from future talks is not self determination but the denial of self détermination. It is designed to legitimate Britain's rule in Ireland.
The tragedy is that the organisation which for more than 20 years led the struggle against British rule is now retreating to a kind of partitionist thinking which forgets the lessons of Derry 1972, when the demand for Civil Rights was drowned in blood by the British army.
IRELAND UNFREE