Interview with Bernadette Devlin
McAliskey
The "peace process"
• Why did the cease-fire break down?
strategy of the Repub-
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey: There are licans was based on an two main causes. First, you have an external alliance of all Irish natone. The cease-fire was called with the ionalist parties, includbelief that within some definable period of time it would bring about some form of ing bourgeois forces dialogue that would involve Sinn Fein in such as the Social direct negotiations with the British
Democratic and Labor government. And 18 months later that had
Party, and the Dublin not happened.
Second, there was an internal reason for the government.
breakdown of the cease-fire. I don't see it so
It was aimed at forcing much as a breakdown as a calculated the British to make decision by the leadership of the IRA. If you go back to the announcement of the ceaseconcessions in the dirfire, it was received with great enthusiasm ection of equal rights by the Republican rank and file. It was for the nationalist presented as a victory. Basically, people went along with minority in Northern
Ireland and of
..CONTINUED STRATEGIC developing cross-
'PEOPLE
WHAT
INTERVENTION HAS border links
ARE
DOES
EFFECTED OPERATIONAL between the two
BEING
IT
PARTICIPANT TEPMINAIIONS...
KILLED!
parts of Ireland.
MEAN?
The initiation of the IRA bombing campaign reflects the crisis that this strategy has entered.
Gerry Foley spoke to Bernadette Devlin this out of loyalty to the
McAliskey, a leading leadership This was despite the fact that at no stage had the rank and file, indeed spokesperson for the anybody in the organization below the last quarter century of leadership, had any knowledge of the longthe various mass term negotiations that led to the cease-fire.
There was a belief in the initial stages that a movements that have breakthrough had been made through a developed against the secret agreement. But that was not true.
system of British
In fairness to the Republican leadership, domination in
Gerry Adams [president of Sinn Fein] and
Northern Ireland.
others said at the time that there was no secret deal. Yet the thing did not make sense to the people unless there had been a secret deal. And so you went from one theory and expectation to another, with people hanging in and hanging in, and then disillusion starting to set in. So, I think finally the leadership took a calculated risk in the Canary Wharf bombing in order to reassert its own authority within its military ranks. In my opinion, they made the assessment that if they did not move at that time they were heading toward a real possibility that some element of their own organization or people who had drifted away from it would, out of frustration, make some military move on their own.
The bomb was a spectacular warning shot over the bow of the British. Canary Wharf is a prestigious area. It had a lot of glass. And on a Friday evening, with due care and attention, they would have hoped not to have killed anybody. But you end up with a major bomb and two people dead. And, of course, politically it is impossible to tell where breaking the cease-fire will lead. • In the United States, nobody in the movement really knows what the Republicans are doing. BDM: That's not any different here. The Canary Wharf bombing might have resolved an immediate tension within their own military organization. But the Republicans remain caught up in the logic of the process they started. As far as the public is concerned, they shifted the aim of the
Republican movement from a 32-county
Ireland (socialist or otherwise) to all-party peace talks for an agreed Ireland. And the IRA cease-fire was called on that basis. So, people are confused about what the Republicans are doing, since they must have known that a return to military actions would not get them back to the table easily without their being confronted again with the whole issue that was brought up at the beginningthat is, nonviolence and decommissioning [disarming of the IRA]. Now, of course, the Republicans have got their date for their allparty peace talks [on condition that the IRA renew the cease-fire]. But they haven't come up with a new cease-fire, so people are
International Viewpoint #277 17
* Ireland confused as to what their goal at this point is, as to what their strategy is.
• An editorial in the
Andersonstown News [the main community newspaper in
Republican West Belfast] a few months ago said that it didn't do any good to get people out to demonstrate for vague demands such as peace talks; that it would make a lot more sense to get them out to campaign for concrete demands.
BDM: It reflected a very real discontent within the broad
Republican Movement. Following the H-Block hunger strikes of 1980-81, you had the
IRA as the military representation of the struggle, and
Sinn Fein as its electoral representation. But at the community level, you had all kinds of people working on an economic agenda, a social agenda, a political agenda, and a human rights agenda. The lines weren't clearly drawn between who was in what section of that movement, and so some Sinn Feiners were involved in the mass organization work; some people in the mass organizations may have been in the IRA.
But once the Republican movement got into secret negotiations and was putting that forward as the Sinn Fein party position, there didn't seem to be a strategy for continuing that broad grass-roots movement. Everything revolved around decommissioning or not decommissioning, a date for all-party peace talks, the shape of the table, and so on. So, people started to worry that the issue of basic human rights, the issue of discrimination in employment, and all sorts of broader issues, such as minimum wage legislation, the extension of the European 48-hour workweek, women's issues, all the issues that had been a vibrant part of the life of the community, were being sidelined.
Sinn Fein were taking people out onto the streets to demand all-party peace talks now, when in fact prisoners were still being denied their basic rights, and at same time, the grass roots, not knowing what the strategy was, were paralyzed, prevented from acting independently of Sinn Fein because they didn't want to be rocking the boat. There
18 International Viewpoint #277 were a number of demonstrations that characteristically, in Northern Irish conditions, led to confrontations with the police, because the police arrived and beat people up. Then, Sinn Fein's allies in the SDLP and the Irish government would call on them to stop this form of irresponsible protest." Their argument was that we were now into negotiations, and people had to understand that such matters were the business of political parties and political leaders. • A recent opinion poll suggests that a majority of the Catholics would accept internment [mass roundup and imprisonment] of all known and• suspected Republican activists "for the sake of peace. BDM: Sinn Fein was an integral part of creating a dynamic that they cannot control. They created the slogan "give peace a chance." They created the initial demand for peace talks. But they had no basis for determining or even having an influence on which issues those peace talks would take place, because they were allowing the Irish government to play their hand for them. So they have actually, unintentionally, disempowered the Republican community, who are confused about what's happening.
On the opposite side, they empowered a whole layer of people who are now very active against them. They have empowered a very broad spectrum of Irish America [that is, the Irish American politicians and bourgeois institutions] whose interest is in peace at any price, and they certainly have opened up the way for a lot of propaganda by the southern state. So, in this context, the rulers can justify internment on the basis of terms of "what else can you do?" when the Republicans have a date for peace talks, when everybody in the country is wearing white ribbons, when they're even talking about holding a referendum here for peace. • What can be done?
BDM: It's very difficult position. My difficulty, quite honestly, is that I have a hard time comprehending how the Republicans could fail to see how deep the water was that they were getting into. The first step in was failing to reject decisively the parameters of the Downing St. Declaration [the British document that prepared the way for the cease-fire; it talked about self-determination for the Irish but limited this right to the framework of Northern Ireland, where there is a built-in pro-British maj-ority]. Finally, the Republicans said they were opposed to it, but by that time they had already been working within its framework for six months. I think that the Republicans have gotten themselves in an irreversible position. I don't believe that a return to military operations is an effective option. I think that if they go back to military operations within the climate that they themselves were a party to creating, then military defeat, for the first time in 15 years, becomes a very real possibility. • But what about a return to mass campaigns?
BDM: The real question, of course, is how do you build the mass campaigns within current context, because the fundamental context that we're looking at is that there is still an expectation on the part of the broad base of the nationalist community that the present negotiations, when they get started, will somehow lead to a peaceful and fair settlement. Now, that is not the case. What is very clear from all of those talks is that we are looking at the solution which the British put forward in 1972, some kind of power sharing between the two power blocs [nationalist and Unionist], a referendum to determine the balance between the populations every 10 or 15 years, and such economic and commercial cross-border trade links as are required by the end of the century economic necessities of the European Union. No more and no less.
That is what we are going to get. And we are in no position to prevent it happening. • What about the discussion in the Republican movement? BDM: Over the 18 months, the problem has been the stifling of discussion. Within the broad movement, not just Sinn Fein as a party, that has led to a lot of hostility. This logic is not unfamiliar to yourself and the socialist movement in America. When people are unable or unwilling to defend their political position politically they defend it by making attacks on the personality of the individual who is challenging their political position. There's been a lot of that kind of thing, which we not have seen since the thing. which we not have seen since the 1970s. And that has been quite painful for people who have struggled over 25 years together. The net effect has been that people simply do not discuss their differences. What is basically happening is that people who become disillusioned, or begin to see that the thing's not working, just walk away. In order to ensure that they can put on a good show for the British-American media, Sinn Féin has to mobilize their troops. And so, all the people who are totally loyal to the leadership, regardless of the debate, will be brought to the ard-fheis. But that in turn denies the leadership any real feedback as to what's happening in its grass roots. • So, it's a show conference you're expecting. BDM: Yeah. And the difficulty of that is that while it may be tactically necessary, it denies the leadership the collective wisdom that comes out of debate. In my opinion, the Republicans are making a serious misjudgement of their importance to the "peace process." The whole momentum has reached a point where if the IRA does not produce a cease-fire, Sinn Féin will not be allowed into the all-party talks. But if Sinn Féin is left out of the all-party talks, that will not be a big obstacle because the Irish government and the SDLP will go on ahead and negotiate without them. Alternatively, if there is a cease-fire, Sinn Féin will go into the talks, but at some point they have to walk out of them or buy into the agenda [i.e., a revamped version of the status quo] and take responsibility for it. • Is there no alternative? BDM: I think that the way forward is first of all to make an honest assessment of where
Ireland we are. I think we should hang onto the cease-fire. The special repressive legislation is still on the books, but we can initiate mass action and continue campaigning against that. If we don't go back to war, there's less chance of everybody being slaughtered. And therefore, there will be people to take the campaign forward. I think Sinn Fein should get out of the "peace process." Our presence in this process can do nothing to affect it. Our campaign should be based upon insuring that whatever mechanics they put on this country, Radical unions call for we will demand equality of citizenship, as long as we are citizens here, we will demand equal opportunity, we will demand our national identity, we will demand our fundamental human rights, and begin to build a political campaign around that. I think we can begin to build a political movement raising fundamental social, class, and national issues, and one that is free to do that because it not tied to the apron strings of the Irish government and the Hibernian [bourgeois nationalist] alliance. * Euro counter-initiative
There are 20 million officially-registered unemployed in the European Union and 50 million people living below the poverty line. Each of us could become a victim of this situation. Social cleavages are deepening, unemployment and poverty put each individual in a precarious situation, worsen working conditions of those still in a job and push wages and social benefits down. This situation is intolerable. In Turin, the European Union started a discussion on its future, which will be completed at the inter-governmental conference in Amsterdam next year. Our greatest fear is that either the discussions will be limited to the institutional questions or that, behind the rhetoric about employment as a priority, measures will be taken which make jobs still more insecure. Everything leads us to think that the social questions which are major concern of the people in our countries will not be dealt with. A radical and resolute policy of a fight against unemployment is necessary. This policy must, as an urgent measure, make it possible for all the unemployed and those living in poverty to live decently, which means the right to housing, the right to an adequate income... We cannot accept a society in which unemployment continues. We reaffirm the need for full employment and thus the creation of new jobs, in particular in sectors like health, education and environmental protection, which answer social needs. The reduction of mass unemployment means, in a period in which there are big gains productivity, a massive reduction in working time, without loss of wages. For these political proposals to be heard, there has to be a mobilisation of all, women and men, those with jobs and without, farmers, students and the retired, living in Europe. We propose that a broad-based action against unemployment be organised at a European level at the time of the Intergovernmental Conference. Possibilities include; a European conference; joint initiatives in all the major European cities; marches by unemployed and workers across Europe for two months coming together in Amsterdam in June 1997. We propose that we discuss these proposals in each country and that we meet again during the next Inter-governmental Conference in mid-June 1996 in Florence, Italy, to decide together on an action against unemployment. Marizio Poletto GIL/Unemployed Information Centre, Piedmont and national leadership (Italy), Giorgio Sasso CGIL/Unemployed Information Centre, Turin (Italy), José Maria Olaizola Albeniz ,General Secretary of the CGT (Spain), Uwe Wolf, Express/socialistisches Buro (Germany) Christophe Aguiton, Frederique Pasquier, Thierry Temime, Agir Ensemble Contre le Chomage (France)
International Viewpoint #277 19
* Ireland/Britain