15 Years of Failure

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Thursday April 11, 2013 12:26 by Gan Ainm - Republican Network for Unity

Examining the Good Friday Agreement, 15 years on

Fifteen years on from the signing of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ it is imperative that Irish Republicans and the people of Ireland give careful consideration to the merits, mechanisms and leftovers of what was offered to the country that reportedly historic day.

In April 1998, our people were still living under the threat of Loyalist/State violence, a factor which added a sense of urgency to the common perception that traditional republican demands and aspirations needed to be re-written and re-packaged.
Considering our collective tragic past as, well as the prospect of future conflict, it took very little to persuade the republican base that the task of re-packaging republican aspirations could be left safely in the hands of Sinn Feín.
Yet in their hands, what was actually delivered was a rounded package of petty reform, designed to temporarily diffuse the causes of conflict without actually addressing them.

Furthermore, stipulations within the GFA ensured that the price of reform would be no less than the long term destruction of the revolutionary movement itself, its goals, world-views and spirit.

The contradictions between what was agreed that day and republican principles, lay not in Sinn Feíns rejection of the tactics of war, but in their much wider acceptance of what were ‘sure to fail’ proposals by the British State and Irish Nationalism.

The GFA has ensured that partition; political policing and prison disputes (the inevitable fruits of continued British rule) have all re-surfaced as real and immediate concerns. The exponents of Good Friday have to a man proved incapable or unwilling to challenge the absolute dominant role of British military intelligence in the running of the PSNI. Instead we are presented with circus displays of apparent accountability, staged community meetings which offer no more than the chance to quiz PSNI offers on cosmetics and peripheral activities, while the dark hand of the RUC and MI5 still operates in the background, recruiting the vulnerable and imprisoning the steadfast.

Much lauded ‘cross-border’ initiatives have not in-fact seen the border gradually wither away, nor have they increased popular aspirations to National Unity or Sovereignty amongst our people.
The Provisional movement conceded a great deal for this, and now finds itself armed only with a minimal electoral mandate, as its leadership stand accused of ignoring the plight of republican prisoners (including its own) who as in previous generations suffer the worst excesses of judicial and penal abuse.

So within both constitutional and operational areas of what had been the Liberation struggle, the legacy of Good Friday has proved to be the outmanoeuvring and gradual dismantling of the most basic National aspirations. And in this crucial area of political manoeuvring, there is no plan B which has been rationally explained to the republican population.

‘Parity ’, - the concept of equally measuring out scarce resources and limited opportunities before dividing them between two artificially created communities – should never have been accepted as a viable alternative to actually destroying sectarian divisions, another basic republican objective.

Yet parity was accepted as an alternative, and as a result our communities - protestant and catholic alike - learned not only to lower their aspirations and accept the least in terms of employment, housing, human rights and welfare provision, they also learned how to resent gains made by that the ‘other side’.

This pattern of division did not strengthen the hand of the people. It weakened it, leaving out as it did any potential of unity in struggle between protestant & catholic communities in their common demands for better living conditions. As we know, more ‘peace walls’ have been erected since the GFA, our people remain as polarized as ever, with young people still becoming trapped in the ideologies of false patriotism and its ever present potential for present and future conflict.

Predatory Capitalism, the only force which truly benefited from the ‘New dispensation’, has had its honeymoon period on the back of the GFA; gaining subsidies, tax breaks and the benefits of a low paid workforce. We now know that financial elite actively lobbied for this political/economic set-up and only to avail of government incentives, not for the good of the Irish workforce.

We are also learning that the rise to prominence of capitalist priorities came at the expense of working class cohesion, and that given the current threat to community services and welfare provision, taking our eye off the ball in this regards was a grave mistake. And with every firm that pulls out of Ireland, lured elsewhere by the fruits of globalisation, the Trade Union movement here as well as the established ‘left’ (including Sinn Feín) has much to answer for, in both promoting the GFA as the only show in town as well as not predicting the current crisis.

It must be conceded, that in 1998 those who represented the alternative to what was occurring, got many things wrong in terms of organising, articulation and general approach. However it is also safe to say that in swimming against the tide of reformism, it was the priority of many to simply keep their heads above water.

Once again, it should be emphasised that the contradictions between the GFA and republican aspirations were not merely about who would pursue ‘war or peace’, and it was a grave mistake (on the part of many who dissented) to believe that this should be the case.

The GFA benefited greatly from the absence of a credible revolutionary political movement, -emerging from within the Provisionals - and capable of pointing out the flaws mentioned above and of building a street based alternative to what was an exercise in reform, a project which suited only the state and its backers.

It is the position of Republican Network for Unity, that republican principles should not have been re-written or repackaged in April 1998, furthermore we hold that the maintenance of those principles did not require a return to armed conflict.
A third way was possible following the republican ceasefires, one which rejected the limited principles of the GFA; principles which were inherently partitionist, inherently sectarian and inherently capitalist.

This third way should have involved the building of a truly Anti-Sectarian and Anti-Capitalist people’s Republican movement, capable of challenging partition, British rule and the dominance of the financial elite. Irish Republicans & Socialists failed to build a credible alternative to the GFA and we are all suffering as a result.

Supporters of Good Friday have often accused its republican opponents of lacking a credible analysis or alternative to their strategy. With the launching of RNUs twin documents ‘Standing outside the Peace Process’ and ‘Revolutionary Republicanism’, this can no longer said.
We state openly that within these documents lies a full and accurate explanation as to why the Irish people deserve better than the Good Friday Agreement and how we can set about assisting the Irish people in the task of establishing true independence, equality and Freedom in Ireland.