A fter several postponements in a bid
to avoid the "wrong" outcome, the November further unravelled the contradictions of the socalled "peace process" in the North of
Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party came top with 25.7 per cent and 30 seats, Sinn Fein came second with 23.5 per cent and 24 seats. The distortions of the voting system gave the Ulster Unionist Party 27 seats initially - although they got less votes than Sinn Fein, at 22.7 per cent. The Social and Democratic Labour Party trailed in fourth place.
The inherent instability in the situation manifested itself within weeks as three assembly members quit the UP and seem set on joining Paisley. A further three UP representatives share the DUP's anti-Good Friday Agreement (GA) line, meaning that the UUP leadership is not only third place but the FA only has the support of a third of those who vote explicitly unionist.
The eclipsing of the UP is an historical development. This is the party that inherited the mantle of the Unionist Party, unchallenged rulers of the "Northern Ireland" statelet on behalf of London for over 60 years after Ireland was partitioned following the War of Independence in 192l.
This longevity was possible because the border had been deliberately drawn on a sectarian basis that would guarantee a permanent unionist majority. Rule was maintained by an open ideology of Protestant supremacy, systematic discrimination and the violent repression of any challenge to this set-up - through an armed police force and a permanent militia.
The decline began in the sixties when the Civil Rights Movement started marching for equal rights and justice. The unionists were unable to simultaneously present a face of moderation and stability to the world and also buy off a loyalist working class raging at the threat to its marginal sectarian privileges posed by a radicalising nationalist community which was soon challenging the border and British rule.
The rise of the Paisleyites - unionists seeking a continuation of an unreconstructed "majority" (meaning Protestant and British) rule - accompanied and hastened this development.
Britain attempted to meet the challenge of stabilising its rule through power-sharing which, although founded on fine-sounding values emphasising equality and respect, had as its bedrock the maintenance of partition with its inbuilt unionist majority and a veto. It did this firstly with the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, then the Hillsborough Accord in 1985 and most recently with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
The tone of compromise with the nationalist community was enough to outrage and threaten the loyalist base, entrenched the "no surrender" ethos, encouraging a belief that the British state would always have to back down in the face of unionist intransigence.
The FA was supposed to enable the "Communities" to move on from
their respective nationalist and unionist encampments and embrace a common ground in the middle, but its dynamic was in the opposite direction.
By definition the border had to be accepted as a given, its sectarian dynamic institutionalised. With the emphasis on the "equality of identity" of the two communities, the logic of the situation was that parties were bound to represent their respective communities by fighting for a marginally bigger slice within the pie of partition. Inevitably this strengthened the hands of the most sectarian elements within unionism.
The outcome in the long run is more unstable than the devolution that gave rise to "The Troubles" in the first place, and certainly contains all its contradictions. The nationalists have had their expectations raised without any real sign of improvement and the unionists, having lost the certainty of the old patrician hegemony, have had their insecurity stoked up by the most reactionary elements.
Tony Blair no doubt understands this. Like John Major before him for six years he has Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party came top with 25.7 per cent and 30 seats clung to UUP leader David Trimble - like a soul-mate - as representing an illusory way out. This has now become somewhat surrewall Every igh the UUP is now athird rank Some new realignment with Trimble at the ling Street is still flying kites for centre.
The suggestion is that - because some 70 per cent of the voters went for parties who back the GFA - the ascendancy of the DUP to first position can be faced down. Paisley can be forced to accept the "realpolitik" of the situation (that the DUP is in a minority) and share government with Sinn Fein.
But the DUP has absolutely no incentive to buy this. Its electoral position was strengthened precisely on the basis of rejecting it. Almost two thirds of unionists backed anti-FA candidates and there would be a major backlash at any attempt to re-write the rules to enable power-sharing based on a minority of the unionist representatives.
There is no possibility of a "democratic" majority being given power that is not unionist dominated. When British politicians talk about "respecting the will of the democratic majority in Northern Ireland" that is not what they mean by "democracy".
The government's position is therefore a bluff that won't work. The outcome will be stalemate and instability with British credibility eroding rapidly. This political vacuum can only strengthen the Paisleyites' strategy of calling for a renegotiation of the GFA ditching powersharing or watering it down to the point where nationalist involvement is purely decorative.
This raises the question of how republicanism will respond. The IRA's unilateral cease-fire is now a decade old and Adams's response to the current impasse was "it's only a matter of when (the DUP) deal with us, not if". The Sinn Fein strategy is thus to hold on and wait for biology and demography to do the job - through lan Paisley's death from old age and the nationalist "minority" outbreeding the unionists. Site space occupied by the social inn Fein has therefore moved into
Democratic Labour Party in espousing a variety of "constitutional nationalism". This combines nationalist rhetoric with accepting the political veto of the unionists.
The GFA has thus run its course. This is exemplified by the fate of the decommissioning process under General De Chastelain. It was intended as a fig leaf that would allow IRA demilitarisation to be packaged differently for a republican audience. This smoke and mirrors approach was acceptable to the UUP leadership but clearly it couldn't be sold to the party rank and file, let alone the wider unionist electorate.
This is what lay behind the breakdown of the Adams/Trimble understanding October last year and a number of previous halts to the process. There is now no chance of any such decommissioning stunt underpinning a future powersharing agreement.
The question is whether it is any longer necessary. Now that Sinn Fein is the second biggest party, is it sufficiently self-confidentabout its majority within nationalism and the absence of any serious militant nationalist rival - for a final public severance from the IRA to be possible?
This is Blair's remaining hope of a political restabilisation and why he is now looking for yet more republican concessions. This is despite the fact that unionist intransigence has caused the breakdown and in October he stated he was "absolutely confident" republicans had broken with all paramilitary activity.
The stumbling block - a built-in contradiction - is that the ascendancy of the hard-line unionists that has inevitably accompanied the GFA, is bound to be accompanied by an escalation of sectaran violence and discrimination, precisely the material cause of nationalist militancy in the first place.
These developments - the successive postponement of elections, the rise of the Paisleyites, the eclipsing of Trimble and the end of the FA administration - were all predictable. Why then, has the government pursued this strategy?
Firstly, the logic underpinning British rule in Ireland is being played out. Based on partition, the bottom line for decades has been a capitulation to unionism and sectarianism Secondly, the FA has run its course precisely because it was only ever a holding operation to provide a period of relative stability during the demilitarisation of republicanism.
Finally the British state has embraced the global imposition of a US-led neo-liberal new order through brute force. In Iraq, Palestine, Columbia and Spain. It's a different set of priorities and a different way of doing things.
New Labour no longer promises the shiny new settlement in Ireland that helped win its second term. It now wants the issue out of the way as the third term beckons. Blair finally called the much-postponed election even though the result was "wrong", because this at least helps promote the timelessly racist excuse that it is all the fault of the Irish people.
One final coda on the election results: the fate of those forces that saw the GFA as a potential vehicle for the "return" to "normal" "bread and butter' politics that avoided the national question. The Women's Coalition vote collapsed and the Workers Party and the Socialist Party votes were negligible.
This has confirmed that the ending of republican militarism - dead-end strategy though it may have been - has not changed the fundamental character of the class politics, which is still inextricably linked to the framework of the national question.
Ten years of the peace process ought to have been enough to allow the shoots of such bread and butter politics to germinate and flower, if this was ever possible. But it was not. Working class people in both communities have understood that how much of the bread you get depends on who runs the bakery and it is the latter that they remain focused on.
However the SWP's Eammon McCann, whatever the limitations of his candidacy (for instance, failing to take on the GA), got a respectable 2,257. No doubt in large part this is an "individual" vote. But, given his profile as both a socialist and civil rights activist, it must reflect a glimmer of the potential for a class appeal that has anti-imperialism at its centre
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UNISON
for Sellincourt Primary School socia st resistance January 2004 9