By Dave Riley
The New York-based Irish Echo spoke for many critics of the peace deal Sinn Féin has decided to endorse when it pointed out that the party had agreed to something it had told its supporters it would never accept — partition. "How did the 'Peace Process' strategy which promised so much, produce so little?", the Echo asked.
The answer offered was blunt: "The flaw lay in the strategy itself, to a degree that the sorry conclusion we have arrived at was pre-ordained from the very beginning. The Sinn Féin alliance with the Irish government and John Hume [leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the major "nationalist" party in Northern Ireland] was supposed to pressure the British into doing a radical re-think on Northern Ireland. This alliance was pursued despite the knowledge that the Irish government and the SDLP had never shown any interest in confronting Unionism or the British government over nationalist rights in Ireland. Their interests were much narrower: ending the Irish Republican Army campaign and patching together an internal settlement."
The 1100 members of Sinn Féin at the party's reconvened conference rejected such an analysis for the sake of what party leader Gerry Adams called "the way for the future". At Sinn Féin's annual conference, held over the April 18-19 weekend, discussion on the agreement was postponed for three weeks.
At the second sitting, the conference backed the leadership's recommendation to support ratification of the agreement. A referendum is to be held on May 22 in both parts of Ireland. Sinn Féin also changed its constitutional bar on participation in an assembly in the six counties.
With Sinn Féin committed to a yes vote in the referendum, the party finds itself in alliance with David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) despite the fact that half the UUP's parliamentary representatives openly oppose the deal.
The no side has similarly drawn together an uncomfortable combination. The Orange Order, with some 30,000 members in the six counties, is opposed to the settlement because it considers that it concedes too much to the nationalist community. Along with right-wing loyalists, traditionalist republicans and independent radicals — such as Bernadette Devlin McAliskey — are also opposed to the agreement.
Despite all major parties, along with the Irish and British governments, urging a yes vote, the case for a no vote is obtaining a hearing south of the border. The referendum question to be put to the people of the 26 counties seeks to change Eamon de Valera's 1937 constitution which describes Ireland as a republic of 32 counties (26 in the south and six in the north).
The constitutional change in the south is running into some organised opposition. How successful this will be depends on what nationalist consciousness remains in the 26 counties after 80 years of empty parliamentary republican rhetoric, the 1937 constitution being an outstanding example.