Has the distance between Mary Robinson and Gerry Adams grown or lessened? HAVING promised talks within three months of a cease-fire, the To. ries continually moved the goalposts Just wich talks sectico to be about to start. Canary Wharf was the result.
But ending the cease-fire has left Kep cans in a to cany woke o sition. The "pan-nationalist alliance" embracing the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Dublin parties and Irish America, on which they relied so much is now pressunny them to make even more concessions.
The bombs put the Dublin Govern. ment in an even stronger position.
Commenting on the end of the IRA cease-fire, a senior member of the Dub. lin establishment is recently reported as saying should be permanently removed from the island of ireland' Other than provoking the gung ho elements in the British ruling class and in Dublin, the Canary Wharf bomb has changed nothing.
But Republicans now appear as the main problem-just when it was be. coming clear that the British are the During the whole 18 months of the cease-fire the Republicans made some effort to get movement on prisoners. the unblocking of border roads and the dismantling of fortifications. Their main demand was for negotiations backed up by the threat of a renewed military campaign. ous campaign around the demand for negotiations—not merely because of their reflex militarism but even more posed by their new friends in Dublin.
If there is a new settlement it will be brokered by Dublin on its terms.
The Dublin bourgeoisie got a bad fright in the early 1980s and has no desire to see the fusion of militant republicanism arain with the economi crisis in the south. They are opposed to Irish unity, but want enough from the new settlement to sell the constitutional changes which they want to defeat the Other elements take a more relaxed view of the end of the cease-fire than the British. They know that they are the only card the Republicans hold.
they may be more worriso 30001 all IRA split than the British: it would be destabilising making the oorcome more uncertain.
Most Republicans accepe that the war was a stalemate. A large section go one step further to draw the wrong the British out, nothing eise can.
It is this which has led a soction of the leadership to the contortions over self determination. They and John Hume of the SDLP are groping to find CROSSMAGLEN & DISTRICT SUPPORT THE HUNGER reconcue the apparenus #reconci able—-Irish self determination and the Unionist veto.
This identifies the Unionists rather than the British as the main obstacle to Irish unity and concedes incit night of veto in a completely convoluted way.
It is worth going through the arguments step by step to show how mis. taken they are.
The Irish people as a whole have the right of self determination but also the neat to decide now that nigat shodid oc exercised. They can decide that self determination can be decided separately by the two parts of Ireland.
Basically, the Irish people can concode self determination to the Unionists. Irish self desermination - the right of the whole people of Ireland to determine their own future - becomes, in this topsy turvey world, its opposite.
The Unionist minority on the island in clicci deleine the towie or ure land. The majority find that the exer. cise of the right of self determination is not the exercise of self determination at It is still not too late to withdraw rott this far Bernadele Mealskey's call for a Republican Congress open to all, and for a renewal of the cease-fire until after it has met, could begin to lay the basis for building the kind of mass movement needed to get the British out of Ireland.
The choices are stark. Another 25 ycars or miliary staremare or participa tion in a process whose outcome is the copperfastening of partition.