Speaking in the White House at the 14 March St Patrick’s celebrations Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern trumpeted progress with the Irish peace process: ‘The IRA campaign has ended, the weapons have been decommissioned, inclusive support for policing has been agreed and the programme of normalisation of security in Northern Ireland will be completed shortly. The door is now open to shared government’. Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness has declared his ‘wholehearted support for the PSNI’ (Police Service of Northern Ireland).
Elections to the Stormont Assembly on 7 March have confirmed the ascendancy of the loyalist bigot Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). With a 30.1% share of the vote, it won 36 seats in the 108-seat Assembly, a gain of six seats over its 2003 result, while the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) lost nine seats, ending up with 18 (14.9% of the vote). Sinn Fein won 28 seats, a gain of four (26.2%) and the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) lost two, ending up with 16 (15.2%). This leaves Paisley as both the First Minister and the undisputed leader of Unionism. The ten-member Executive will now consist of four DUP ministers, three Sinn Fein, two UUP and one SDLP. Paisley has been the real winner of the peace process: in 1997, his DUP got only 13.6% of the vote compared to the UUP’s 32.7%.
Those candidates standing on a Republican platform opposed to Sinn Fein’s support for British policing polled around 1%. On the day before the election the recently formed ‘Ex-PoWs and Concerned Republicans Against RUC/PSNI’ took out a full page advert in the Irish News signed by over 400 former political prisoners, stating: ‘The people’s desire for peace has been cynically exploited …We reject the logic of the proposition that the interests of peace can be in any way served by our young people signing up to join the British Crown forces such as the RUC/PSNI…We view this as a betrayal of everything Republicans fought for… We support open and free debate among Republicans…to bring about, by peaceful means, a thirty-two country democratic Republic…’ However, Sinn Fein and its supporters were happy to ignore the prisoners’ standpoint.
As part of his budget on 22 March, Chancellor Gordon Brown revealed a billion pound package as part of a ‘peace dividend’ to force the parties to agree to power sharing by 26 March. Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams had earlier written to the Chancellor stressing the importance of a ‘sustainable and substantial economic package’. This provides £600 million over four years for infrastructure development, including a major new roads programme. £400 million of this will come from the Dublin government. A further £400 million will enable the Stormont Assembly to delay the introduction of new water charges. The DUP described the package as ‘modest progress’, and whilst Paisley expressed continuing doubts about Sinn Fein’s commitment to policing, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said that 26 March ‘is the date by which there is either devolution or dissolution’.
Stop press: As we go to press, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley have agreed to enter a power-sharing agreement starting 8 May. Paisley’s brinksmanship in the days before the deadline meant that Hain had to back down from his ultimatum. It shows that the DUP have an outright veto on all major political decisions, and this sectarian reality will be visited upon the nationalist people again and again in the future. The carnival of reaction will continue.
Paul Mallon
FRFI 196 April / May 2007
