Commenting on the crisis in the Irish peace process in February 2002, we argued that: ‘The reality…is that the Ulster Unionist Party and the British government have manoeuvred the IRA into a position where nothing short of a significant statement from the IRA on disbandment will restore the devolved institutions. The Republican movement is once again being compelled to save the peace process.’
Since then Sinn Fein has grown, electorally surpassing the SDLP as the main nationalist party in the north, second only in size to the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, now the main voice of unionism. Unionism and British imperialism, with Irish government complicity, have engineered the present crisis in the peace process. The focus of recent talks has been IRA decommissioning weapons and disbandment. Sinn Fein’s key concerns are dilution of the Good Friday Agreement and the position surrounding ministerial authority in any future assembly and the north-south institutions.
The Republican movement has attempted to convince its supporters of the need for further IRA arms decommissioning and eventual disbandment. Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams stated ‘Republicans need to be prepared to remove the issue of the IRA and of IRA arms as an excuse for Unionists to block political progress in the Six Counties’, (An Phoblacht/Republican News, 12 August 2004).
This Republican position is compromised as nationalists continue to come under attack from loyalists. In 2003 there were 160 separate incidents carried out by loyalists, including 54 pipe and petrol bomb attacks, a number of shooting incidents, 43 serious physical attacks on people as well as attacks on Catholic homes, schools and churches. The intimidation campaign against Catholics living near the loyalist Sandy Row continues with numerous attacks on residents of a Catholic and ethnic origin. In Derry the UDA and UVF issued a joint threat against nationalists and later carried out a series of attacks on Catholic homes and a Catholic taxi driver. Homes in the Republican Bogside were attacked on 9 October 2004. Security forces made no arrests or intervention in an area saturated with British intelligence and military posts.
To intimidate the nationalist community the UDA issued a statement on 14 October declaring that they had drawn an ‘Orange line’ around all protestant areas throughout the Six Counties.
In this context the Labour government formally recognised the phoney ceasefire of the leading loyalist terror group the UDA and its front the UFF. On the very morning of Paul Murphy’s 15 November House of Commons speech outlining the new government position, the UDA carried out an attack on an SDLP councillor in Larne.
Paul Mallon
FRFI 182 December 2004 / January 2005
