1998_09_september_leader05sep nireland

The Irish Republican Army and its political wing, Sinn Fein, have at last seen their true objective. They have rearranged their priorities, and in doing so might achieve their long-term aim sooner. The IRA’s stated aim has always been a united republican Ireland embracing the whole island of Ireland and free from British rule. Until very recently that had been its immediate aim and it would bomb and kill, refusing to talk, until it got it.

But the real aim should not have been a united Ireland, at least in the short and medium term. The real aim should have been to ensure that the minority Catholics in Northern Ireland lead better lives. That means and end to discrimination in economic, social fields and an end to violence and the threat of violence that have scarred the Catholic community in Northern Ireland as severely as the Protestants. After nearly 30 years of violence the long-term aim of a united Ireland is no closer, nor did the violence help Catholics to a better life.

Far from a campaign of violence, the only way for Catholics to achieve better lives must be for them to re-enter civic life in Northern Ireland. It must mean the replacement of violence with negotiation and ultimately power-sharing. Only with a foot in the civic door can Catholics in Northern Ireland end economic, political and social discrimination. While ever the Protestants have domination over civic life, they will dominate and determine the allocation of money down to the last drain in the last public-housing estate. Only by re-engaging in the civics of Northern Ireland, can the Catholic minority hope to end economic repression.

Gerry Adams has apparently realised this and he is now apparently determined to convince his IRA compatriots to join the cause.

Once the Catholic minority gets a track record in civic engagement in a non-violent society, it may be possible for the Protestant majority to see that union with the south is not such an impossible thing, particularly in the framework of the European Union with its overriding rules on human rights and in the framework of a very-much-changed Irish Republic. In the past decade the republic has become a much more secular society.

The important thing now is for Mr Adams to convince the IRA to begin to hand over weapons. Actions will speak louder than deeds. Already the Protestant side has shown some good faith. Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble has abandoned his earlier no-talks stand and called for all-party talks with a view to the sharing of executive power in Northern Ireland. It is critical that the Catholic community, through the Social Democratic Labor Party and Sinn Fein, become part of the executive arm of government in Northern Ireland. Only then will ordinary Catholics have the means of redress against economic discrimination, in both the public and private sector.

History shows the problem.

Up to the 16th century Anglo-Norman settlers from England tended to assimilate into the Gaelic Irish culture. There was a crude form of power-sharing and no systemic unrest. Outside the Pale, a small region of Ireland surrounding Dublin which remained firmly loyal to the English crown, Irish lords ruled only nominally for the Crown. Alas, the English Reformation brought pressure to make the Irish to conform to religious edicts that reserved official positions of power to Anglican Protestants. By 1691 the Protestant Ascendancy, spurred by deposed King James II’s defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, was complete. Anglicans, representing only about one-tenth of the population, gained control of land and political office, excluding Catholics from civil rights. In 1801 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence.

The union was not popular in Ireland and agitation for Home Rule began. In 1912 a home rule measure was near passage when the Ulster Unionists prepared for civil war, so it was abandoned. World War I intervened. Irish rule was only obtained at the cost of partition in 1921 and the creation of the Irish Free State (after 1937, the Irish Republic) and the six counties in the north which remained with Britain became the province of Northern Ireland.

The minority Catholics in Northern Ireland and the IRA were always unhappy with that arrangement. Increasingly, Catholic civil economic rights in the north were transgressed and Catholics withdrew from civic life.

But they did not drift south. From partition to the early 1960s Belfast had more economic opportunity than the south and British social security provisions were superior. There was no advantage going south, but there was still comparative disadvantage (against Protestants) staying in the north. That caused inevitable resentment.

So by the late 1960s there was a Catholic minority in Northern Ireland that took, and could not take, any part in civic life.

The IRA, which had fought a violent battle with the English in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to achieve independence was reinvigorated. The British troops which were welcomed by Catholics in 1969 to protect them against the excesses of the majority Protestants, were soon seen as a foreign occupying force and became the target of IRA violence, particularly after British troops were involved in the shooting of Catholic demonstrators.

Nearly 30 years of violence have ensued. Nothing has been achieved by it.

Much, though can come from the re-entry of the Catholic minority in civic life. They can share in the allocation of resources. They can end discrimination. Ultimately, they might convince their Protestant Irish neighbours that their joint destiny lies with a united Ireland. Something bombs could never achieve.

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