Northern Ireland's elections on 30 May looked like being little more than the usual sectarian headcount as Socialist Review went to press. Touted as being an essential preliminary to all-party talks they were in fact a Unionist tactic to shore up support for their parties. Major's dependence on the crucial votes of the Unionist MPs to maintain his fragile majority meant he was guaranteed to agree to their demands. So far from being an exercise in democracy, they are merely a chance for the Unionists to bang their sectarian drum and promote fears about the likely outcome of the forthcoming talks.
Unionist leader David Trimble's campaign message was that 'anyone who stays at home will be giving a vote to nationalists'. The tensions whipped up by this kind of campaigning made a return to sectarian killings look more likely. In May Loyalist paramilitaries planted a bomb at Dublin airport and it became clear that some of them favoured a renewed campaign of sectarian assassinations.
At the same time, however, it seemed that the British government was willing to make some concessions to encourage a renewed IRA ceasefire and restart the 'peace process'. Patrick Kelley, a Republican prisoner, was transferred to a prison in Dublin. He has skin cancer and Michael Howard's blocking of his transfer was said to be a factor in the IRA's decision to end its ceasefire. John Major, writing in the Irish Times, also seemed to suggest that decommissioning would not be allowed to stall other aspects of the promised all party talks.
But since the IRA ceasefire in August 1994 it is Major and the Unionists who have continually blocked progress towards peace talks. The Unionists recently responded to the prospect of a renewed ceasefire by demanding the complete disbandment of the IRA as a new precondition to talks.
The Fight for Peace, a new book by Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, is a fascinating account of the events which brought the ceasefire about in August 1994 and the dishonesty and incompetence on the part of the Tories which led to its breakdown. Mallie and McKittrick had access to many previously secret documents and interviewed most of those involved in the talks. They provide useful insights into the utter political bankruptcy of all the traditional parties in Ireland.
In 1993 John Major declared to parliament that if the implication of a question from Dennis Skinner was that 'we should sit down and talk with Mr Adams and the Provisional IRA, I can say only that it would turn my stomachÉ We will not do it.' This was a lie. The government had been secretly talking to the IRA for three years. In fact the SDLP leader John Hume, Protestant leaders and the Irish government had all been talking to Republicans. These largely secret talks provided the basis for the Downing Street Declaration and the IRA ceasefire.
In the mid-1980s the Southern Irish establishment began to see the Republican movement as a threat to the stability of its state. In 1986 Sinn Fein voted to abandon its policy of abstentionism in elections to the Irish parliament, the Dail. The then Taoiseach (prime minister), Garret Fitzgerald, was among those who expressed horror at the prospect of a few Sinn Fein TDs (MPs) holding the balance of power in Dublin. This was followed by the discovery that Libya had supplied the IRA with tonnes of arms and ammunition, in particular large amounts of semtex explosives and surface to air missiles. It seemed the IRA was better equipped and organised than ever before.
But the Republican leadership was faced with a dilemma. The British were unable to defeat the IRA militarily and knew it, but neither could the IRA defeat the British. Its electoral support in the North was shrinking back into the nationalist ghettos. Any prospect of an electoral breakthrough in the South disappeared in the aftermath of the Enniskillen bombing.
Talks with John Hume, Albert Reynolds and a number of influential Irish Americans suggested another way forward. An internal Republican briefing paper said:
'The leadership decided that if it could get agreement with the Dublin government, the SDLP and the Irish American lobby on basic Republican principles which would be enough to create the dynamic that would considerably advance the struggle, then it would be prepared to use the TUAS (totally unarmed strategy) option.'
Days after the ceasefire Gerry Adams joined with Reynolds and Hume, the three leaders of Irish Nationalism, in a symbolic three way handshake outside the government buildings in Dublin. Then he was off to meet Bill Clinton at the White House. But the Republicans' new friends were unable or unwilling to put pressure on the British government. Within weeks of the ceasefire the Reynolds government had collapsed in the wake of a child abuse scandal involving Catholic priests. Clinton was happy to use involvement in the 'peace process' to secure Irish American votes but little else. The Tories placed one precondition after another in the way of the promised talks. The Labour Party failed completely to oppose any aspect of Tory policy. The final straw was when Major rejected the report by the Mitchell Commission which had been set up by the government to find agreement on decommissioning and instead announced his plan for elections.
The whole process has exposed the dead end of Republican politics as much as the increasingly fragile nature of Unionism. For the IRA, resumption of the armed struggle is not impossible. The oppression and discrimination to which they are a response remains, but the leadership has told the rank and file, and indeed the world, that they do not have the forces to achieve their goal. Its allies in the pan-nationalist front, including the SDLP, are only interested in stabilising the status quo rather than bringing about a united Ireland. This means Adams has little choice but to agree to the Mitchell Commission principles, in effect accepting the legitimacy of the sectarian state and a Unionist veto on the outcome of any talks.
Even if the talks do not collapse on the first day, which is by no means certain, it is difficult to see them getting very far. The very best that seems to be on offer is an institutionalisation of sectarianism. Nationalists and Unionists will compete for the control of their own areas and the Irish and British governments will act as overseers.
All of this makes the need for a revolutionary alternative to traditional politics all the more urgent . As Trimble and Paisley slug it out for the mantle of the staunchest defender of the Unionist cause there has been little enthusiasm for the elections among ordinary workers. The level of apathy, in an area where the turnout in elections is usually much higher than in Britain, so worried the government that it launched a television advertising campaign simply to get people to go out and vote. Most people desperately want peace and think the talks should begin immediately without the charade of an election.
There is a growing questioning of traditional political loyalties in the North of Ireland. The last few years have shown that the level of working class struggle in Britain - the defence of the NHS and education, for example - has a direct impact on building class unity among Protestant and Catholic workers and creating the space to build a socialist alternative.