Anyone who doubts the effects of terrorism on the British Government has only to look at Mo Mowlem's pathetic scurry into the Maze Prison to see the leaders of the loyalist death squads of the UDA/UFF and the LVF.
The LVF has been killing Catholics all year but it was only when the UFF joined in that Mowlem rushed to placate them. Now the "peace" talks can continue but the Taigs have had a good lesson: drop the mild demands for reform or you'll be massacred.
Which, by some fluke of history is what Bloody Sunday in January1972 was about, except that time the lesson to the uppity Taigs was dished out by the British Army. Their demands, an end to discrimination in housing, an end to internment without trial and one person, one vote, could not be conceded by the Unionist regime at Stormont. This was not only because the Unionists were bigots (which many were) but because the Six County statelet itself had been built on sectarianism and the smallest concessions could cause the whole rotten structure to collapse. Both of these events show the true nature of Unionism.
Unionism and its working class variant, Loyalism, is an alliance between the British ruling class, the Unionist bourgeoisie in Northern Ireland and a substantial part of the working class organised in the Orange Order. The "democratic" rights of the Unionists are neither democratic nor right.
Partition was imposed by the British in 1921 under the threat of "immediate and terrible war" against the democratic wish of the majority of people in Ireland. Sectarianism is the tool used by the Unionists to divide the working class. Every attempt at reform comes up against the same threat of a sectarian bloodbath.
In case you think this an outrageous slander on "new" Labour consider the recent ramblings of John Lloyd, Deputy Editor of the mouth piece of New Labour, The New Statesman. Lloyd has recently been very publicly welcomed by the Daily Telegraph to "Friends of the Union" meetings.
This unsavoury mixture of Tories, Unionists and their media supporters, has one merit. It is open about its aims - no deal whatsoever with Irish Nationalists. Lloyd is in favour of doing a deal with Gerry Adams, though nothing can be conceded which endangers the Union. If Adams doesn't deal then "Adams and the IRA must be taken on". According to Lloyd the Nationalist position cannot be justified (on democratic grounds), Partition (in 1921) saved Ireland from civil war (!) and the South's "claim" to the North is (wait for it) "likely to be worthless if tested in international law".
So Britain's claim to the North of Ireland in the 1920 Government of Ireland Act is perfectly all right then. I only mention this ignorant bovine rumbling because of what it shows about the direction of Labour's policy on Ireland.
Blair is a unionist: we know because he's told us. He wants to underpin the British State using, among other things, devolution. The settlement on offer to the Republicans, since at least 1994, is a newer model of the old Stormont Government abolished in1972 after Bloody Sunday. No British withdrawal,
no self determination, no Irish unity, though there may be a few cross-border committees dealing with tourism and spending EU money.
If there's no threat to the Union, as there clearly isn't, why the "Friends of the Union", why the refusal by a significant part of the Unionists to take part in the "peace" talks which are designed to put the stamp on these proposals? Why the murderous sectarian campaign of the late and unlamented Billy Wright and his Loyalist Volunteers?
The main reason, correctly seen by loyalists and "Friends of the Union" alike, is that the Six County State cannot be reformed. The most minor concession exposes its undemocratic core. It was imposed by force against the wishes of the majority in Ireland and it can only be kept in place by sectarian gerrymandering and corruption which was the hallmark of the Stormont regime.
Even after 25 year of direct rule, Catholics are still nearly two and a half times more likely to be unemployed as their Protestant neighbours. Any reforms, however minor, could bring the whole undemocratic structure crashing down.
This is what lies behind the ongoing complaints and threats by Unionists about the "concessions" which Blair and Mowlem have apparently made to the Nationalists. The truth is that, apart from transferring some prisoners to Ireland and setting up a parade's commission, the British have given nothing to Adams to sell to the base of the Republican movement.
In order to keep the Unionists in the talks Blair's Framework Document even takes back some of the meagre gestures already made. The tensions in the Republican movement are straining to breaking point.
There is undoubtedly within the British security apparatus, as there is in Dublin, a significant element which, in John Lloyd's words, wants to "take on the IRA". These elements, (correctly) seeing that there can be no compromise between the British ruling class and Irish Republicans, are represented politically by "Friends of the Union". If the "peace" talks collapse following a Unionist walkout (and, remember it was the Unionist veto which prevented a broadly similar deal being done in 1974), or because of a sectarian murder campaign by loyalists angry at "concessions" to Nationalists, it is easy to see a slide back into a bloody war between the Loyalists and the British on one side and Republicans on the other.
The Socialist Party and Workers Liberty (among others) see the British presence in Ireland as at least preventing the civil war which would, they believe, follow British withdrawal. Treating the Unionists in the Six Counties as a democratic majority leads them to portray the Nationalist's struggle as anti-democratic and also dovetails neatly with the justification used by the British ruling class for its continuing presence in Ireland and for calling the IRA terrorists.
We have been here before. Militant (as they were then) remained neutral on the Malvinas War on the basis that Argentina was a military dictatorship, a thin enough fig-leaf to cover their refusal to break from the British ruling class's definition of "democracy". Their stance, should there be a renewed outbreak of war in Ireland, is easy enough to predict support for the British State against the "undemocratic" republicans. Objectively, this would be to take the side of the British State as it pursues a genocidal war against Irish Republicans - the ultimate response of all British Governments to anyone who threatens its interests, but fought, of course, in the name of "peace" and "democracy".
Which brings us back to "terrorism". The Loyalist paramilitaries are the only true terrorists in Ireland in the sense that they kill nationalists indiscriminately in order to cow them into submission. The important point is not whether the British also use these methods - they undoubtedly do, directly and indirectly, but the fact that their political aims are identical to those of the Loyalists, as Lloyd's outburst shows.
Many on the left in Britain refuse to support withdrawal on the basis that it would lead to a bloodbath: such an outcome is much more likely to follow from Britain's desire to remain in its oldest colony.