On 7 March, Irish Republicans shot dead two British soldiers at the Massereene barracks in County Antrim. They were the first British soldiers to be killed in Ireland since the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Both soldiers, members of the 25 Field Squadron of 38 Engineer Regiment, were set to fly out the next morning to Helmand province in Afghanistan and were dressed in desert fatigues. Four others were wounded in the incident, including two pizza delivery men. Less than 48 hours later, an armed officer of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was shot dead in Craigavon in north Armagh. The attacks, which were carried out by the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA respectively, both organisations opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, represent a blow to the British strategy of normalisation in the north of Ireland.
For over ten years, the north of Ireland has been presented as a normal part of the United Kingdom, basking in the glory of peace after a 25-year campaign against British rule led by the Provisional IRA. The 1994 ceasefires and subsequent Good Friday Agreement were said to be the culmination of a political process. The national question, the continued British involvement in Irish affairs, was said to be resolved. The overwhelming majority of the Irish people supported the moves towards peace. However, the end result has not been British withdrawal from Ireland but the return to devolved rule at the Stormont Assembly outside Belfast. Many of the social problems which gave rise to the national struggle today remain. By taking part in the negotiations which led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the Republican movement accepted the British precondition that the Unionist veto would stay, ensuring that the constitutional status of the Six Counties would remain unchanged. The IRA were forced to disarm and it was later reported to have disbanded in response to Unionist demands. More recently Sinn Fein has been forced to support the PSNI. The final phase of the political process is the transfer of policing powers from London to the north and their direction by local politicians. This is the political context in which these latest attacks took place.
The peace process changed the economic and social situation in Ireland – north and south. In the north, a new middle class emerged within the nationalist community which drew material benefits from increased capital investment and peace subsidies from Britain, the United States and the European Union. Sinn Fein emerged in this period as the dominant nationalist party in the north of Ireland clearly representing the interests of this middle class. At the same time, a significant number of working class nationalists received little or no material gains. They view Sinn Fein, once leaders of the national liberation struggle, as divorced from the reality of their lives.
Changing economic circumstances in Ireland now pose a serious threat to the political process. In
the south, the once buoyant economy, the ‘Celtic Tiger’, is in recession. In the north, the housing bubble, the source of much of the affluence of the new nationalist middle class, has finally burst. Nationalist resentment at the peace process has grown and many have become increasingly frustrated at the failure of Sinn Fein to have any strategy towards a united Ireland.
The Republican attacks on British military personnel in Ireland provoked vicious condemnation from the political establishment – including Sinn Fein. Before jetting off to the United States for the annual St Patrick’s Day jamboree in the White House with the US President, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuiness denounced the attacks as the acts of ‘traitors’ and called on nationalists to help the British security services. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams evoked the language of former foe British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in calling for the ‘oxygen of publicity’ to be denied to the Republican militants. Sinn Fein has crossed another Rubicon as it continues to strive for political respectability from imperialism. Labour’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Shaun Woodward, echoed the language of his predecessors in the 1970s when he labelled those Republicans opposed to British rule as ‘criminals and gangsters’. Nationalist youth have responded on the streets, rioting against police incursions into nationalist areas following the arrests of eleven suspects for the shootings. As FRFI went to press, four people had been charged in connection with the attacks. Bourgeois commentators have been forced to acknowledge that although support for the Republican militants is not widespread, it nevertheless exists in some northern areas and is, in the words of PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde, concentrated among ‘disenfranchised youth’.
As we argued in FRFI at the time of the beginning of the peace process, the struggle to free Ireland from British rule is not over. The economic, political and social problems which keep forcing the national struggle on to the political agenda remain. Discrimination and social deprivation remain for a large proportion of the nationalist working class. Today, more than ten years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Fein is now part of the political class which helps sustain British rule in Ireland. As economic and social changes force the national question once again to the fore, new forces will have to emerge from within the nationalist working class, prepared to build a new campaign which learns from and does not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Paul Mallon
FRFI 208 April / May 2009
