Issue 240 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published April 2000 Copyright © Socialist Review

In the Irish Republican pantheon of British crimes deceit, roguery and double-cross appear a long way from the bottom of the list. Without doubt this view will have been strengthened over the past few weeks, as the government has collapsed the assembly, and thrown the peace process into turmoil.

For years we heard lectures about how all the problems in Ireland were down to the militarism of the IRA. 'Let the guns go silent', we were assured, 'and peace, jobs and progress would follow.' This has turned out to be the biggest Irish joke of the lot. For as Republicans seem to strain every fibre of their tradition and ideology to deliver this precondition, Ulster Unionism, and more crucially the British government, seems to have been only too happy after some flirtation to reject the advances crudely.

Think of John Major (you remember him?), dancing to the Unionist tune, as he desperately clung on to office, throwing the whole peace initiative back in the faces of the IRA, leading to the collapse of the first ceasefire. In the background stood the hollow death mask of Ulster Unionism. How they wept and mourned for 'victims of IRA violence' yet how dismayed they looked when the IRA abandoned this violence, only to perk up no end once the violence resumed.

For two years and more now, though, the undertakers' mournful gloom has returned to their faces. The IRA are not waging an armed struggle; in response Ulster Unionism tries desperately to derail the process. Simultaneously the undertakers have competed amongst themselves in a battle to bury the body of peace. Trimble, the backwoods bigot reinvented as a man of reason, peace and Nobel prizes, hides behind the more blatant bigotry of Donaldson, the lickspittle lawyer with his own eyes on the prize. What a prize they fight over, the leadership of a bankrupt party with a bankrupt ideology, holding on to a bankrupt dream of returning to run a bankrupt state.

For these minnows and that sad prize, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson are happy to break agreements and dissolve assemblies. For there was nothing in the Good Friday agreement that said the assembly should be dissolved if decommissioning wasn't carried out, yet guns that were silenced for over two years are used as the excuse to put the whole process at risk.

When the Good Friday agreement was signed, it involved two governments and a number of parties. It said nothing of February deadlines. That was a Unionist invention. Indeed even the May deadline only stated that Sinn Fein should make its best efforts to encourage decommissioning. Indeed Sinn Fein was elected by a sizeable section of the Nationalist population they won the right to be there by the electoral rules, not always easy to achieve under New Labour, as we know. Yet the British government, without any say-so from its fellow signatories, the Irish government, pulled the plug. It did so in order to satisfy Unionist inventions and Unionist ultimatums. Oh, how things have changed since the days of Lloyd George.

Yet strangely all this feels topsy-turvy. Republicans have been remarkably enthusiastic for this whole process and for very little. One after another they have abandoned articles of faith in order to get to this position. They abandoned abstention from the Irish Dail (up to then viewed by them as a neo colonial puppet parliament). They abandoned abstention from British parliamentary elections (to an 'illegal and occupying' parliament), and stood for elections in Northern Ireland (an 'illegitimate and sectarian statelet'). They called two ceasefires, swapped mortar bombs for handshakes as a means of entering Downing Street, and ended up having ministers in an assembly which a few years ago they would have dismissed out of hand.

For what? Surely years of armed struggle for an Ireland 'united and free' couldn't really have been about being Minister for Education under the enlightened administration headed up by Trimble. Yet as the armed struggle reached impasse, and a united Ireland appeared no nearer, Republicans have been selling the idea to the Nationalist population that this is a great leap forward. Nationalists seem to have concurred, at least electorally, with rejectionists making no impact at all.

Meanwhile Unionists have had their state copper-fastened by guarantees, and have seen those who have opposed and ruptured that state lay their arms down. They have been offered the head of, and majority of, an administration, and they have seen Southern Ireland relinquish all territorial claim to the North.

Yet the main electoral alternatives for Unionist supporters comprise of either sullen and reluctant agreement but with endless get-out clauses (Trimble); complete rejection, without ever quite saying so (Donaldson); or out and out rejection and burn the pope alive while you're at it (Paisley). So those who have little to gain become cheerleaders, those who have nothing to fear become opponents. Of course there is one thing to gain, and this is what gives the process its appeal to Nationalists, and to sections of Loyalists. The absence of armed struggle, an end to fear, death, loss, imprisonment and untold sacrifice.

After years it appears people are happy to accept very little in the hope that it's better than what went before. In reality, though, the Unionist establishment for the most part was spared this hardship and suffering; for them it is easy to play games. So they create bodymen where none exist, spread fear when there is no need, maintain and encourage hatred and division as a means of dividing and ruling. That has been their historical role.

By dancing to their tune and casting aside treaties and promises, it appears the British government is still fulfilling its role.