The British fought a 30-year war which cost billions and have now spent another decade of intense political activity trying to get their ramshackle deal to work. There was plenty of overblown bombast from London, Washington and Dublin to reward the provisional republican leadership for their 28th July announcement effectively disbanding the IRA.
The Provisional leadership did their bit to add to the bombast, with statements which subliminally suggested that the three decades of death and pain could be justified by the political gains of their political current.
On the streets however the mood among nationalist workers was one of indifference. The road to republican surrender involved the demobilisation and depoliticisation of the mass of their members. No political rewards
However there are no real political rewards for their surrender. The Provos surrender because they must, because Tony Blair, following the May elections and the Paisleyite victory, had torn up the Good Friday Agreement and announced
the Westminster Parliament that he was considering a new strategy that would exclude Sinn Fein from power.
London, Washington and Dublin now insisted on surrender and had started to apply the whip to force a response.
The political reward for surrender, to use the word reward loosely, is that Sinn Fein can rejoin the capitalist alliance that designed the Good Friday agreement -London, Dublin and Washington, and work with them on plan B-persuading Unionism and Loyalism to install Ian Paisley as Prime Minister and agree to include Sinn Fein in the coalition government. The fact that this crazy project is taken seriously, despite being denounced by Paisley at every turn, is a sign of imperialism's desperation to cobble together a settlement and of the collapse of political understanding in Ireland.
The project contains a number of implicit assumptions that, once stated, stretch the bounds of credulity. A rational Unionism
The first assumption is that the aim of Unionism is to reach a stable political accommodation with nationalism and that it is a rational organisation able to agree and operate such an accommodation.
This is false. Unionism does not operate as a political philosophy but as a conspiracy to enforce sectarian division and political and economic power.
The British built the Good Friday agreement around the concept of a moderate unionism willing to do a deal with Irish capitalism and thus ensure the indefinite survival of their sectarian statelet.
They got the unlikely figure of Trimble and then his slow fall under pressure from forces to the right of him and now they have the full-blown bigotry of lan Paisley.
Now the British have built the present plan around the ghost of moderate unionism. There may not be any moderates about, but there is a widespread recognition that the sheer size of the nationalist minority requires a modification of sectarian rule and some accommodation with Irish capital.
However the last 30 years carries eloquent evidence of the inability of unionism to advance any compromise, no matter how clearly this would defend their long term interests. The present leadership of both the DUP and UP are the outcome of generations of selection where the road to power lay in toppling the leader who showed the slightest ambiguity in their defence of sectarianism. 'No selfish, strategic or economic interest'
Behind the false assumption of unionist accommodation is another false assumption - the statement by Britain that it has no selfish, strategic or economic interest in Ireland. It follows that its intention in the present process is to withdraw from Ireland, that it will not tolerate Unionist obstruction and that, if Unionists refuse an accommodation, the British will punish them.
This again is false.
The British fought a 30year war which cost billions and have now spent another decade of intense political activity trying to get their ramshackle deal to work.
It is worth this amount of effort because the northern economy is essentially part of the British economy and, however much it costs the state, levels of profit at the level of individual firms are very healthy, because the British retain a very significant stake in the core elements of the Southern Even Gerry Adams can only surrender once economy, because a stable capitalist Ireland is a central concern of the British state and because Britain, as the former colonial power, is looked to by the other powers to guarantee order in this part of the world.
The mechanism by which Britain meets its political objectives is the occupation of part of the Island and that in turn depends the active support on a mass unionist base that legitimises the occupation.
This in turn means that, in every situation where unionist leader suggests any level of accommodation with nationalism, the British conciliate the right wing. They tried to save Trimble by bending the Good Friday agreement to the right. Each concession merely emboldened the ultra-bigots and left Paisley and Empey as the leadership of the DUP and OUP respectively. Provo duplicity
This British strategy is based around a further assumption, one that they don't believe themselves. That is that it is duplicity and intransigence by the Provos that have caused the difficulty in the implementation of the Good Friday agreement.
This again is false.
For example, the British routinely talk of the 26 million Northern bank heist as having brought down the last attempt to form a local government. In fact the heist occurred after Tan Paisley had exploded the agreement. The same mechanism has occurred at each of the numerous crises that finally demolished the Good Friday agreement.
Political negotiations will be held to construct a local assembly in the North of Ireland with the aim of placing Paisley, or his nominee, in the post of first minister.
The foundation of these talks will be the surrender of the IRA. The future of the negotiations will depend on the actions of the IRA in disarming, winding up military structures and ceasing money-laundering activities.
The final word on these issues will lie with the British. The importance of the surrender statement is its unconditional recognition of the democratic credentials of the British colony. The next step is active support of the state forces, membership of the police and of the policing boards. Police chief Hugh Orde issued this call immediately after the IRA statement. Sinn Fein's willingness to conciliate unionism in the interests of the bigger picture and the embryonic police structures they have set up in nationalist areas indicates that they will increasingly find themselves in conflict with their own working class base. Reform?
The fourth assumption within the normalisation process is that it is a process of reform. Republicans understand that they have agreed to support the sectarian colony in the North but believe that it is to be a reformed colony, where a share of sectarian rights for nationalists will, over time, translate into a united
You only surrender once. Only for one day do your former enemies clap you on the back and congratulate you on your statesmanship and far-sightedness. Within a few days it is business as usual.
The future looks grim for the provisional leadership. The British have them by the throat in the negotiations, able, through the IMC, to indicate at any time the status of the IRA ceasefire and to reward or punish Sinn Fein accordingly.
Most significantly of all, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern issued a statement reiterating his view that their would be no united Ireland in his lifetime.
Ahern is not making a prediction or stating an opinion. He is enunciating the policy of southern capital, now determined to remove a united Ireland from the agenda and to underline for Sinn Fein exactly what they are signing up for in their subservient relationship to Dublin, London and Washington.