PEACE AT LAST! That's the popular conception of the vote on the Stormont agreement. Tony Blur, walking on water across the Irish sea, persuades the warring tribes to shake hands.
If that sounds like the old racist stereotype of the Irish question that's because it IS the old stereotype reborn, serving as cover for a policy as reactionary as any in the new labour arsenal - the pacification of Ireland.
The problem for socialists is that the outcome of the Irish referenda was a triumph for imperialism and a mass endorsement of it's policy, a triumph made greater because it marked publicly the political collapse of the republican movement.
The central element of the British triumph is the return of Stormont, "improved" by promise that some elements of sectarian privilege will be reserved for the nationalists and that they will have a protective veto.
The second element is that the British will become invisible. The Stormont shield will disguise the fact that they retain direct control of the sectarian statelet through security and finance.
The third element is the global acceptance of the unionist veto over democratic change on the island which the British can now argue represents the exercise of self-determination and removes that issue from political discourse and the history books.
The bourgeois nationalists get stability, an advisory role for Dublin and junior partnership for the SDLP in the running of the sectarian northern assembly. The unionists get a restoration of power and increased sectarian privilege.
The promise of a lesser level of sectarian privilege for the SDLP was enough to ensure that the bigots got almost 50% of the unionist vote. The deal was so embarrassingly pro-unionist that Paisley was reduced to complaining about prisoner remission and the fact that Sinn Fein was likely to be a very junior partner in the executive!
For the republican movement their endorsement of the deal was a clear indication of what the whole peace process had been for them - a gradual process of assimilation by the politics of bourgeois nationalism.
This means participation in a process of re-establishing British rule in the North with a new program of reformism around a promised "equality" agenda as vague and ambiguous as the proposals on Stormont are sharp and unambiguous. On the back of the republican collapse has come a whole tide of reaction. The Women's Coalition, a post-modernist feminist organisation that has dispensed with the need for a programme, has, with the help of the Communist Party, established itself as the "left" of the peace process. Together they are helping to give a leg-up to the representatives of the UVF death squads in the "Progressive" Unionist i Party and establish them as the "left" representatives of Protestant workers. The far left have fared little better. The Socialist Party, formerly Militant Labour, held a meeting immediately after the deal was agreed and denounced it as institutionalising sectarianism. However their conclusion was to call for a 'yes' vote on the grounds that this would give the working class The breathing space. This unionists get a tits in well with their call for a Storrestoration of mont parliament power and strong enough to increased bring in socialism!
The sectarian Worker's party privilege re-established themselves as un-serious, problem with an imperialist victory that handed power back to the bigots! They ignored a request for united action from Democracy, and a week later were meeting to discuss "the lessons of May 1968". The lessons of May 1998 seem to be beyond them.
Offering nothing to nationalists: Mowlem and Trimble British strategy had been all along to get moderate unionism to accept some sharing of sectarian privilege so that it could continue with a mass loyalist base to support its occupation and still draw upon the support of the catholic middle classes and the Dublin government.
One of its problems was that unionist "moderation" was represented by the hero of Drumcree, Trimble. In the end the British played the Orange card, publicly endorsing the unionist case during a spate of loyalist killings and forcing Dublin to accept Trimble's 'heads of agreement' as the basis for settlement rather than the original framework deal.
Paisley and the others who could not be reconciled wanted the old unionist program - military repression of all nationalist opinion and a full and undiluted expression of their sectarian privilege.
Loyalist consent
The problem of a settlement based on loyalist consent quickly became evident. The fact that imperialism was assured of a majority 'yes' on both sides of the border was not enough.
The only democratic mandate that would count would be a majority within the Protestant/unionist community. The campaign became a mass intervention by the British government to conciliate the bigots without actually conceding to them.
Blair bent the agreement inside out to assure the far right that Sinn Fein would be humiliated when it tried to enter the executive. Interpretation of the vote in the North is not easy. There was no division into electoral wards and only the overall percentage was recorded. However the overall vote of just over 71% indicates success for the British, with slim majority of unionists supporting the deal. The difficulty in winning unionist SUDport is an indication of the overall instability of British rule, but in the short term' divisions within the "no" unionists should erode their effectiveness.
They will however have the potential to wreck the agreement if they achieve a high assembly vote so the British will need more conciliation of the bigots, more sweeteners for Trimble and so on through the election, the setting up of the assembly and indefinitely into the future. The nationalist vote in the North was overwhelmingly in favour, with a no vote of 4-5% and a high turnout. This indicates that Sinn Fein has managed to dump its programme and bring its base with it: the republican opposition is small and isolated. In part this is because there is a "new" Sinn Fein that offers a material base for reformism in a large community and voluntary sector funded by British and European money.
There are however many problems ahead for Sinn Fein. The base for reformism is not a base for reform and there is no way that the needs of their working class supporters can be met in the sectarian hell-hole the North is re-inventing.
At the moment pragmatism (in reality opportunism) rules all, with Gerry Adams telling the Ard Feis to vote 'yes' (for the leadership) and "whatever way you like" in the referendum. The belief is that a growing Sinn Fein vote will destabilise unionism and force the British to step in and improve things. A drop in the Sinn Fein vote would tend to A column from Democracy, Irish section of the Fourth International destabilise this, and this is a possibility with "old" Sinn Fein, who provided the base of the machine, quietly retiring.
The vote in the South to amend the constitution and recognise the unionist veto, with a 'yes' vote routinely in the high 80s or 90s, appears overwhelming and will be used by pro-imperialist forces to argue that the Irish working class were given their right to self-determination and chose to negate it.
It's important to remember that all the major parties in the South, including Sinn Fein, united to tell workers that the yes vote was a vote for peace.
In these circumstances, with northern nationalist workers appearing to endorse the vote and in the absence of struggle what's surprising was the low turn-out of just over 60% and the fact that nearly 10% voted against.
In the same poll, on an issue on which many workers had a clearer view of their own interests - the Amsterdam treaty - the yes vote was down to 60%.
When Bernadette McAliskey visited America after the Stormont deal she was asked by US socialists what could be done now. Her answer was; "Two things. We have to look for opportunities to mobilise people on specific issues, even limited ones.
"We also try to engage in political discussion, encourage people to examine the basic realities of the relationship between Ireland and England. We need analysis an new thinking. It has been a problem in the Irish movement for some time that there has been litte study of history or political discussion. This has got to be overcome.
"The deeper the understanding that people have of the basic issues, the less likely they are to be misled. This is the first step that has to be taken before we can start to move forward again."
Socialist Democracy will be part of such a regroupinent. We will bring to it a class analysis that enabled us to understand correctly the evolution of the peace process from the Hume-Adams talks to the political collapse of republicanism.
We will struggle for the independence and self-organisation of the working class and we will from the beginning try to root out the illusion in militarism and nationalist unity that even republican opponents of the peace process cling to.
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