The joke doing the rounds among republican cynics while the Sinn Fein leadership was involved in the latest bout of negotiating up at Stormont was "What time do you think they will sell us out at?" It was nothing more than a witticism as the vast majority of republicans firmly support the republican leadership. But such facetious barbs have emerged against an atmosphere of unease and hesitancy. And the feeling on the ground in west Belfast on Friday was no longer one of outright confidence that that leadership integrity would not disappear in the vortex of decommissioning. If the proposals announced by Blair and Ahern are carried, unionism will have secured a major victory. Not only will republicans be consigned administer British rule for the foreseeable future, the acceptance by them of the principle of decommissioning has served to delegitimise and criminalise the previous republican resistance to that rule. It also elevates to a higher moral plateau British state weaponry. Basically, republicans are being told that the weapons used by Francis Hughes, the deceased hunger striker, to kill a member of the British SAS death squad are conAhern and Blair keep smiling through, but give Adams little to smile abgut taminated in a manner which the weapons used to slaughter the innocent of Bloody Sunday and the victims of shoot-to-kill are not. The Sinn Fein played it poorly. The strategy only never of 'never, but will' is "never listen merely encourto what the Sinn aged unionism to hold out for a betFein leadership ter deal. Many says it will positions previnever do" ously held had been abandoned in spite of 'never, never, never' ad infinitum. Unionism learned the only never is "never listen to what the Sinn Fein leadership says it will never do". And this helped sustain it throughout the recent months of ping-pong pressure as each side in the dispute was probed for some sign of weakness. Why should unionists blink first when experience shows that Sinn Fein always does? Now we are beginning to see what the Good Friday agreement really meant. Despite repeated promises of no decommissioning, Sinn Fein now accepts that decommissioning as part of the agreement is valid. Republican activists were not told this at the time when they were asked to support the Sinn Fein leadership endorsement of that agreement. People who ventured the opinion that the process might lead to decommissioning were angrily dismissed and ridiculed. In a bid to shield the reality from the grass-roots, the silly statement of the year for 1998 was manufactured by a leading member of Sinn Fein, who informed his audience that, while not transitional, it remained possible to view the Good Friday agreement as a transition to a transition.
Which, by logical extension, meant that the week before Good Friday constituted a transition to a transition to a transition. Perhaps now the audience will be told that last week's outcome, while a transition away from a transition to a transition, is still endowed with transitory potential nonetheless.
One would imagine that this sort of nonsense could only have a limited shelf life. But it has carried the day. Like the pickpocket who tells his victim while he robs him "your personal security 1: brilliant", Sinn Fein told the republican grassroots they were the most politicised people in western Europe while republicanism was stripped away in front of their very eyes. In this sense, the decommissioning issue actually assisted Sinn Fein. The people were told if they could not follow the complexities and intricacies nor penetrate the undemocratic secrecy surrounding the necolallons, then watch the ball of decommissioning. Trust in the process became reduced to that one issue.
Therein now lies the problem for Sinn Fein. Having thrown the baby out it now needs to get rid of the bathwater. But in the process of deceiving its base, it has depicted the bathwater as the baby. And the base is reluctant to let it go.
The unionists may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It would be nice if they did.
But ultimately partitionist administration is their baby. And the likelihood remains that in the future this paper will be reviewing the book by a Sinn Fein cabiminister My fight for a reformed Stormont.