Sinn Fein will have to actively encourage support for the police in A Sinn Fein special conference has voted overwhelmingly to give the party's backing to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
In response to this, and indications from the Democratic Unionist Party that it would in principle be willing to form a power sharing executive, Tony Blair has announced that there will be fresh the Northern Ireland Assembly in March.
Within weeks we could see republican ministers working alongside Ian Paisley as First Minister of the North of
Theoretically further obstacles could yet arise. Both the British government and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) have stated that the process is conditional on the practical implementation of this new policing policy. This will not only involve Sinn Fein participating in the PSNI board.
The party will have to actively encourage support for the police in communities that for generations have had to routinely defend themselves from them in physical confrontations.
On its past record the republicans may well use the implementation of minutiae as a negotiating chip to gain minor concessions (particularly over who gets which government post). Yet they have already given almost everything away in return for a role running the partitionist statelet they previously existed to abolish. So this is unlikely to cause any serious delay.
The other potential stumbling block is the historic refusal of hardline unionists to engage in any kind powersharing with nationalists, let alone republicans. But in 1974, when a power sharing executive was brietly established, only to be pulled down by a general strike by loyalist workers, the nationalist community was in a period of mass resistance. Today there is no resistance and the quiescence of Sinn Fein makes the nationalist Social and Democratic Labour Party of the early 1970s look somewhat militant by comparison.
In short, the peace process of the past decade and a half, with the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements, has produced the disarming and disbandment of the IRA. And now the republicans unconditional backing for the state's repressive structures, may have delivered the capitulation the unionists were looking for.
The Northern Assembly was suspended by the British government over four years ago, ostensibly because of allegations that Sinn Fein was operating a spy ring in government offices. It then turned out that the leading "spy" was in fact a longterm British agent.
The plug had been pulled by a British government that was getting cold feet at the idea of bringing militant nationalists into the mainstream without a final eradication of their militancy. themselves from them
Socialist Resistance predicted then that the suspension would last not simply months, but years; and that it would lead to a strengthening of the DUP. The paper said that the assembly would only be re-established if there was a "renegotiation" of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement under the auspices of which it was established. All this has happened.
The Good Friday Agreement involved the communities that for generations have had to routinely defend recognition of, and participation in, partitionist government. But it did so through an algebraic formula whereby the political blocs would be represented in formally equal terms on the basis of a sectarian head count.
By requiring the dismantling of the IRA, republican backing for the police and other concessions over the distribution of power, Ian Paisley has come much closer to a return to his old-style beloved "majority rule".
Sinn Fein will claim that it's participation in policing will be critical. Gerry Adams has sold it to party members by saying that control over these murderers shouldn't be left to the unionists.
But the party would do well to learn lessons from formerly left wing London Mayor Ken Livingstone's move into policing. His initial claims of "critical engagement" have led to unconditional backing for the Metropolitan Police at a time of great controversy over the execution of young Brazilian De Menezes and the Forest Gate 'anti-terror' raid.
Sinn Fein's strategic thinking is underpinned by a push for growth in the south. The party is presenting the stance as "unity by stealth". Added to it's roster of northern MP's it hopes to accumulate more TD's in the Dublin Dail and possibly enter into a coalition government with Fianna Fail.
The trouble it all depends on what you do with
page 21 of the scan
The
Catholic Church is
not in a
strong
position
on the treatment of children
given its own poor
track record on
covering
up child
abuse