Armistice

national | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Tuesday April 08, 2008 10:37 by Weary

There is no permanent peace in Northern Ireland.

A number of popular myths are doing the rounds.
The most dangerous is that the war is over and the peace is permananent on this island.

Across the political spectrum North and South there is complacency even among the most inveterate cynics that the "peace process" has been a success and the war is over.
The popular myth is that Messers Blair, Ahern and Paisley have either exited or are exiting the political stage, with achievement of peace in Northern Ireland as the political legacy. Blair, fatally wounded by the mess in Iraq, take consolation the triumph in Northern Ireland. Ahern resigns in disgrace but his hagiographers believe the history will redeem him for coming to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement still wearing a black tie on the same day as his mother's funeral.
Paisley, the firebrand sectarian bigot who stoked up loyalist extremism, turned over a new leaf.
Adams and McGuinness persuaded the men of violence to abandon the gun and the bomb, kept Republicanism united and and turned Sinn Fein into a mainstream political party, destined to replace Fianna Fail as the dominant nationalist party on the island of Ireland which they hope to unify within the next twenty years.
Meanwhile the Protestant and Catholic sectarian divisions will evaporate and Northern Ireland will become prosperous like the southern 26 county Republic.

The likely replacement of Paisley with Peter Robinson, means that the connection with the Free Presbyterian Church, the dynamic engine within the DUP is severed. It is likely that the UUP will find the going easier at the ballot box now that Paisley is yesterday's man.
This will surely spell the end of a joint Unionist/Sinn Fein government. To win votes from the DUP the UUP will have to play the hardline Orange card and seek to exclude Sinn Fein once again in order to demonstrate they are the true bastion of loyalism. The Free Presbyterian element are also likey to break away and form an alternative to the DUP to keep the flame of loyalism alive.
Unionists bitterly resent the concessions that won IRA disarmament and are likely to row back on them the first chance they get.

Adams and McGuinness are also bitterly resented in dissident republican circles because without the threat of an armed struggle, Sinn Fein is just another political party. From their perspective the return of Stormont and the return of a Unionist dominated assembly means that the armed struggle achieved no change in the political situation in Northern Ireland which remains part of the United Kingdom.
The political strategy in the last election South was an abject failure. Sinn Fein hoped to increase its representation in the Dail but it remains static as a supposed ground swell of support failed to materialise.Adams's disastrous performance in political debates on RTE televison has convinced many Southern Irish voters that Sinn Fein is a one issue party obssessed with political unification with no other serious policies especially in relation to key economics issues.

If anything sectarian divisions are greater today than they ever were even at the height of the Troubles.
The centreground unionist and nationalist parties, the UUP and SDLP, have become political irrelevant with the electoral success of the DUP and Sinn Fein.Neither is there a possibility of a serious left wing party that stands up for the economically deprived underclass of both Protestant and Catholic communities regardless of creed. Integration between both communities simply does not exist and more peace walls are going up across the province.Unionists and loyalists are still deeply insecure, convinced that they are being forced into a united ireland and are still deeply suspicious of the intentions of the South.Nationalists in Northern Ireland have never abandoned their goal of a united Ireland and the abandonment of violence was never due to weariness but due to expectations of success promised by Adams, McGuinness and co.

The UVF and other paramilitary organisations still exist and control loyalist areas.The IRA still exists and still controls republican areas.
Violent men who committed unspeakable crimes have been released and are on the streets and if circumtances change will go back to war. Loyalists and Republicans are still recruiting young men into their ranks.

Northern Ireland is not at peace but is experiencing an armistice.

The powder keg can easily be exploded once again.