The key to understanding the St. Andrews agreement announced in October lies in the name. The Unionists, having long ago successfully insisted that the British demolish the Good Friday agreement, nave now succeedea in losing te name.
Paisley said that he would never sign up to the Good Friday agreement. Now he does not have to.
Sinn Fein accept the defeats of earlier meetings, signs up for one final deal and finds that the unionists have moved the goalposts. The unionist programme is now the programme of the British. Dublin stands firmly with their London allies and closes the door on any Sinn Fein retreat.
The starting point was the demand that Sinn Fein do more. Having decommissioned their arms and being in the process of standing down the IRA, they must now formally pledge unconditional support for the police and the British judicial system. Adams and co had clearly signalled their willingness to do so, but wanted the assurance that Paisley would do them the honour of becoming first minister and allowing them back into the colonial administration.
The policing issue was presented as the substantive question that prevented agreement. It was no longer enough for Sinn Fein to support the policing boards. They have to directly support the police at every level, all the laws, courts and the state structures and sum all this up in an oath of allegiance.
The policing demand is just one of a shopping list of changes. The DUP have been given the power to expel Sinn Fein if they make a wrong move, and a new legal instrument restores a limited form of unionist majority rule.
A whole set of regressive social and economic policies appear to have been granted to loyalist reaction - the retention of the 11 plus exam, a cap on rates to help the rich, deferral of business rates and a reduction of corporation tax to 12.5 per cent.
The calculation here is that the DUP are rational and that, given almost all they asked for, would agree a settlement. If
right. Humiliation: Adams for jobs in the North.
Paisley, needing to demonstrate again that he had cowed and humiliated the Provos, responded by boycotting the first organising meeting and demanding that Sinn Fein take an oath of allegiance immediately and unconditionally.
There can be no stable agreement with Paisley because he would need to demonstrate Loyalist supremacy on a day-to-day basis. A new assembly would be a cockpit where the one aim of the DUP would be to expel the Provos.
Sinn Fein present their defeat as a process of community reconciliation, but their chief opponent is not the DUP but their British sponsors supported by their Dublin allies. The pacification process is now a rout, kept in existence by the headlong political retreat of the Provos.
Even that process will offer less, as public humiliation is piled on humiliation and Sinn Fein's northern base decays.
Paisley Paisley could be persuaded to endorse the deal his authority would be so great that no-one would be able to challenge it.
In reality the rule is that the biggest bigot rules, and Paisley is all too aware of the danger of being attacked from the
Paisley's supporters were quick to tell 'the big man' he had sold out. A leading DUP figure, Jim Allister, said that the IRA must be completely disbanded and that Irish civil servants should not be eligible
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The next issue of Socialist Resistance will be produced on January 2-3, and distributed iat the end of that week. The deadline for feature articles and for letters (which are welcome on any topic, up to 400 words) will be Monday December 18. Diary items, reviews and local news are also welcome.