Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx 
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions  £20 p.a. [P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50 London SW17 9NL] [Post Office Regd]        
No 1010 September 01 1999                                                                                                                              10p 

Pretend Unionist 'horror' at the obvious reality of Sinn Féin and IRA alternative authority in the anti-imperialist community which rejects the defeated orange colonial tyranny entirely, is just another stunt to delay the New Ireland, exactly the game played over idiotic prior decommissioning demands. Blair too weak to keep colonist recalcitrance in check via the Good Friday Agreement. Imperialist 'no surrender' propaganda games causing chaos. The petty bourgeois chauvinism of the fake-'left' just augments the reactionary imperialist conceit of the BBC and Times in hating the proletarian-dictatorship elements in the areas of anti-imperialist control. Insane Trot proposal for a new Partition of Ireland.

Hysterical mock 'concern' about the IRA's ceasefire is in reality just the same old colonial die-hard reluctance to admit that British imperialism has been forced to seek a deal with the unbeatable Irish national-liberation struggle.

The most Tory-minded sections of the British Establishment have NEVER come to terms with the essence of the Good Friday Agreement, – namely, accepting that guerrilla war and revolutionary political campaigning had effectively liberated the Irish-populated areas of the Occupied Zone (the non-existent 'Northern Ireland') from colonial control.

This argument about Republican authority on the streets of the north where the nationalist Irish live gets right to the heart of this self-deception by British reactionaries.

At last, the majority of official Unionist politicians are seemingly ready to face up to the humiliating situation Paisley & Co are already wallowing in, – accusing the London government of "surrendering completely to the IRA".

Trimble's party was on the rampage against Blair and Mowlam, claiming that the IRA had been handed a "licence to kill" by having its ceasefire authenticated as still valid in spite of rightwing propaganda about "continued IRA violence".

Trimble added: 

"I don't think the Secretary of State realises the tremendous damage she has done in society.... Consequently, the IRA now feel that they can be even bolder in their breach of the ceasefire," 

referring to the latest artificial furore over criminal hooligans being booted out of their local Irish communities, apparently on Republican orders (discussed below).

Trimble threatened to cease all cooperation with the peace process if Sinn Féin was still involved in it at London, Dublin and Washington's invitation. This disgraced colonial bourgeoisie partly feels emboldened to strike this note of defiance as a result of previous New Labour spin-doctor gamesmanship when Sinn Féin was briefly kept out of talks as a silly symbolic gesture to bolster the 'peace credentials' propaganda for participation in the Good Friday Agreement.

But it is precisely Sinn Féin and the IRA's 'war credentials', i.e. their national liberation struggle fought out with revolutionary politics and guerrilla war, – which makes the Republican movement the CRUCIAL one at the negotiating table.

In reality, everyone involved knows this. But the game that Western imperialism has obviously chosen to play in setting up the circumstances for a British imperialist snail's-pace withdrawal from its colony in occupied Ireland is to pretend that purely peaceful compromise and "acceptance of democracy" are the dominating forces influencing the shape of the New Ireland provided for by the Good Friday Agreement. One bourgeois press commentary has admitted exactly this:

Did anyone seriously suppose that the Good Friday agreement would lead to complete disarmament along the back alleys and side roads of Northern Ireland? Did David Trimble suppose that the IRA would turn in every last armalite and stash of grenades?

Of course not. They're talking symbolism, not reality. See how across Europe, the Kosovo Liberation Army claims to have met its own disarmament obligations. Nobody believes that - and the murder of Serbs continues unabated.

Even if the IRA, in some unimaginable circumstance, turned in every last gun tomorrow, it could be up and shooting again in three months. The reality of peace isn't turning revolvers into ploughshares: it is, slowly, painfully, ensuring that fingers slide away from the triggers.

But unreality, alas, is so much easier to play with; the mouthings of unreality glide so much less painfully from political lips. And one unreality feeds on another. Thus the unreality of a symbolic start to disarmament (which wasn't in the agreement to begin with) leads, over stretching time, to a deliberative pause in which our secretary of state is required to deem the ceasefire firm or illusory. Mo Mowlam does what she was always going to do, what she had no option but to do. She deems the process battered but fundamentally intact.

The IRA have not taken up guns again against the army or the police or the leaders of unionism. There has been no return to sectarian killing.  The essential, basic peace remains.

Again: everybody intimately involved knows this. David Trimble, first minister designate of Northern Ireland, knows it. Even the suddenly omnipresent Jeffrey Donaldson, Ulster Unionist MP, knows it.

The roars of outrage and threats of legal action, the prating calls for Mo Mowlam's head, are ritualistic and synthetic. They are either a way for weak men of moderate goodwill to hang on to power in the hope that better times will come — or a thinly disguised attempt to wreck the agreement and shelve every vestige of what process remains by men who never wanted peace on these terms in the first place.

The real news is that divide and that debate: not the flummery of fury. And the real issue behind it needs to be put still more starkly — Can we ever defeat the IRA? Can our army ever bring peace at the point of a gun? Is there a military answer of enforcement and internment and massive policing which is the alternative to accommodation and compromise?

Straight questions: straight answer. No, there isn't an alternative. Good intelligence can abate the violence for a while, but it can't stop it.

There is no law and order solution here (any more than a large army billeted in Kosovo can prevent ethnic cleansings or simple gangsterism).

But time, in the passing, is another enemy here. Men with guns and politicians with restive constituencies forget. They load back the unreality. George Mitchell becomes a strolling player, not a saviour. The words of hope become ever more strained, the deadlines ever more malleable.

The devil of the situation, though, is that the truth of our impotence in all its bleakness can never be voiced openly by those who understand. Neither Tony Blair nor Mo Mowlam can admit the inability of the state apparatus they control to impose a solution — and the Conservatives have all too swiftly forgotten what they learned through 18 bitter years.

The ordinary people of Northern Ireland are left darkling among the posturers and the bigots. The ordinary voters of the rest of the UK are given no chance to tell what they think should be done.

Real news? Real news gives you the real options and the real assessments — and confronts you with the real decisions. Real news gags on the surface show and shrugs off facile connections to four frightened lads in Dungannon. Real news deals in the fundamentals of life and death. Harder than hard, truer than truer. But there isn't, it seems, much of it around — at Six or any other spot on the clock.

What should be done is that the discredited Orange colonial tyranny should be told to stop its supremacist posturing, give up its artificial Partitionist privileges, and accept becoming part of a New Ireland which is on its inevitable way towards reunification under a Dublin government, – but even ex-editors of the Guardian are not yet allowed to go that far in spelling things out. Because of London's own involvement in resisting the Irish national-liberation struggle, the 'ritual, synthetic, symbolic unreality' must still prevail, pretending that the Orange dictatorship is not being swept away by armed revolt (just as the colonial tyrannies in Rhodesia and South Africa have been). 

And even in the Guardian's frankest moments, British chauvinistic pride still prevents the full picture from being seen of the New Ireland's essential reunification direction, confirming, that it is only the colonial Partition involvement all along which has outrageously prolonged Ireland's national-liberation torments for 78 years longer than they need have continued since Sinn Féin and the IRA effectively won the independence war first time round (in the modern era) in 1921.

But now all of that cover-up to elaborately hide this new victory for revolutionary guerrilla war is being jeopardised by Ulster-Unionist intransigence running rings around this utterly incompetent New Labour regime which is totally out of its depth in trying to understand how British imperialism's continued decline should be managed within the intimidating environment of unresolved world imperialist crisis.

What should have been a doddle to administer after international imperialist pressure (chiefly Washington and the European Union) had convinced London to accept the reality of its defeat at the hands of the national-liberation struggle, – has been turned into a nightmare of bungled uncertainty by the sheer amateurishness and ignorance of these grotesque New Labour opportunist politicians whose intelligence and competence is so far removed from their own spin-doctor publicity that it is a total catastrophe just waiting to happen in virtually every department of government.

The spoof Queen's Speech, – circulating in Whitehall admitting that the PR lobbyists and big-business investors (who are financing and scriptwriting Blairism) are just mindless short-term opportunists, – is far closer to reality than possibly even its authors imagined. This dithering inability to exert any political authority over Ulster Unionist truculence in this propaganda-dominated peace process could undermine the whole GF Agreement, and UK is farcically totally reliant on Sinn Féin and IRA goodwill, in reality, to keep the GFA from collapsing in ruins immediately. 

The British imperialist establishment is non-stop in its lying provocations against Sinn Féin and the IRA alleging "violence" and "contempt for democracy", etc, when in truth it is the continuing sectarian RUC police-dictatorship, backed by the loyalist' gangs of armed thugs (plus the British imperialist army in reserve with its hundreds of years of colonial 'pacification' experience), which has never ceased its brutal domination of the Irish nationalist minority. Sparing London's embarrassment, Sinn Féin leaders go gently on counter-attacking the more reactionary backwaters of British imperialist establishment mentality in their ludicrous relentless provocations about "terrorist violence" and "the need for IRA arms decommissioning", etc, completely ignoring the real threats to the Good Friday Agreement from Unionist resistance and delay, and from Blairite muddleheadedness which lets the colonial die-hards get away with it.

Is there not a case for taking a more aggressive line against BBC-interview propaganda which bangs the old colonial master-race drum challenging Sinn Féin with "what about this bit of violence, and that bit of violence", etc.

Should BBC interviewers not be told in blunter terms to start grasping what is happening in Occupied Ireland?

The last thing that the ceasefire is aimed to do is to get a perfect ceasefire. What would be the point of that? A ceasefire by definition is just a temporary arrangement to allow other things (e.g. proper peace-settlement negotiations) to take place. Adding the word 'permanent' to 'ceasefire' still cannot hide that the underlying problems obviously have not yet been resolved, merely ceased to be fought over currently. What is the point of calling 'permanent' such a non-solution?

The purpose of the IRA's cessation of military operations in the national-liberation war is to provisionally end open armed conflict in order to allow an entirely different process to tackle the contradiction between national grievances and colonising vested interests which have caused 830 years of such conflict to date.

There are currently no guerrilla war activities against British imperialist interests or economic and military resources in England, Ireland, or elsewhere. In endlessly quibbling artificially about the ceasefire, – playing the Unionist colonial establishment game for delaying implementing the Good Friday Agreement political process for transforming the national-liberation struggle (which made pre-GFA 'Northern Ireland' tyranny, as it was, no longer tenable), – the BBC is effectively saying that the Agreement is a mistake or irrelevant, – or back to the war, in other words.

This is the same futile imperialist conceit of the die-hard Orangemen that 'the war can still be won'.

This British nationalist arrogance at the BBC needs waking up to the reality of Irish resistance to British occupation NEVER having been conquered, thus forcing the Good Friday Agreement compromise now on the table.

Does the BBC backward mentality want this Agreement implemented or not? Or does it want the war back, with bomb scares at White City?

And if it is seriously interested in the side-issue of activities not in the spirit of the ceasefire, why is the RUC not hauled in EVERY DAY for its NON-STOP continued racist-colonial brutality against nationalists on the streets of Occupied Ireland? (detailed evidence widely available from many sources).

The bogus 'impartiality' of BBC public broadcasting is a disgrace which should be constantly hammered home. But as the Guardian commentary (above) made clear, this incurable British chauvinist arrogance will continue to provocatively pretend that 'Irish national-liberation is getting all the favours, which will be withdrawn if Sinn Féin's and the IRA's behaviour does not improve'!! 

And this ridiculous conceit, virtually challenging the national-liberation movement to do its worst, will go on dangerously all the time that New Labour dither and confusion holds sway.

Despite majority establishment opinion having basically decided more than 15 years ago that British imperialism could no longer hold onto its Irish colony, the lack of confident political leadership of this snail's-pace withdrawal has enabled the more reactionary bourgeois circles to keep on refusing to acknowledge Irish national-liberation's rights and achievements, and to keep on provocatively misrepresenting the situation in order to put Sinn Féin and the IRA in the dog house – instead of the Orange colonial wreckers who really belong there. 

Thus while one 'respectable' broadsheet can allow a bit of mildly perceptive and revealing commentary, the far vaster circulation and 'authority' of the Times typically carries on mercilessly 'reporting' anti-Irish-nationalist bile, hopelessly maintaining all the 'unreality, ritual, and synthetic symbolism':

DAVID TRIMBLE last night launched his most vitriolic attack on the beleaguered Northern Ireland Secretary as the IRA ordered a fifth teenager out of the Province on pain of death. 

With the Prime Minister due back from holiday today to face a disintegrating peace process, Mr Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, said Mo Mowlam's decision to declare the IRA ceasefire intact had made life worse for everyone in the Province. 

The deepening crisis over the peace process was highlighted when Mr Trimble said he agreed with his deputy that he had grave doubts about holding more talks with Sinn Féin. 

Mr Blair will move swiftly to try to reduce tension in the Province and calm the mounting anger within the Unionist community, who accuse Dr Mowlam of giving the IRA a "licence to kill".

About 200 people have been forced out of Northern Ireland since January by the IRA and loyalists, according to the human rights group Families Against Intimidation and Terrorism.

Security sources are also understood to have given a warning that the IRA has a stockpile of hundreds of weapons that do not appear on inventories held by the authorities.

Mr Trimble said the death threats issued against the boys were the immediate consequence of Dr Mowlam's failure to take action against the IRA. Dr Mowlam ruled on Thursday that the IRA, despite its involvement in murder and gun-running, had not breached its ceasefire.

Unionists are divided over participation in the review of the Good Friday agreement, which begins next Monday under the chairmanship of former US Senator George Mitchell. Jeffrey Donaldson, a hardline member of UUP, said hopes of progress were "negligible unless the republicans make some kind of move and I don't see that coming".

Mr Donaldson and other members of his party are still considering a legal challenge to Dr Mowlam's ruling on the IRA ceasefire.

The Times editorial followed up with an insane analogy, likening British imperialism's ceasefire compromise with the tiny but unbeatable (and historically justified) Irish national-liberation movement with Tory Establishment appeasement of German imperialist Nazi aggression in the 1930s. 

"Just as fascism took the British Government's weakness in the 1930s as a licence to escalate, so Irish republicanism is happy to exploit appeasement today."

Even more insanely, the editorial goes on to defend the rotten informer system (and by association the criminal hooligan lumpen elements who refuse to accept Irish national-liberation discipline in the decisive areas of anti-imperialist resistance).

"By allowing the IRA to pursue police agents with impunity, Dr Mowlam has sent a message to all those in republican areas who are inclined to fight terrorism: you are on your own. Past successes which helped frustrate the IRA's mainland bombing campaign, depended crucially on information from informers and agents. Dr Mowlam's indifference to the fate of those who sought to help now deprives the State of a vital shield against terror".

Inevitably, the Times then fumes on against the leaked report of the Patten Commission's apparent decision to recommend a total transformation of the RUC into a police force "on behalf of the whole community" and shorn of all its British colonial traditions.

The leaked Patten proposals, even though they fall well short of Sinn Féin's utterly justified demand for total disbandment of the RUC, nevertheless seem to be in line with the general Establishment plans to abandon the colony for good and direct it along the path of all-Ireland reunification.

But even the more 'reasonable' elements of British bourgeois reaction (such as the Guardian) still find their age-old imperialist-chauvinist conceit clouding the slowly-emerging rational attempts to explain to the public the proper context for understanding how and why national-liberation authority prevails in the areas of staunchest-Irish resistance to continuing colonial rule.

Even while admitting that Republican control of all community policy made sense where Orange colonial tyranny had become totally repudiated and virtually ineffective, the Guardian could not resist such ludicrous cheap shots as quoting various lumpen, collaborationist, anarchist, and class-traitor remarks including:

"The men doing this are big enough when in masks; without them they are nobodies"; "They just want people to obey their orders without asking questions, and we all know what is likely to happen to people who refuse to obey"; "Punishment attacks have less to do with dealing with crime, and more to do with the underlining of terrorists' authority. They crack down hard on cheeky youngsters because they cannot allow themselves to be seen to lose face when their authority is challenged"; etc.

But this is all the classless mentality of paid collaborators, born stooges, or class-traitor lumpen elements who criminally prey on their own equally-hard-pressed community. In a revolutionary situation where the state authority is the entire CAUSE of working-class misery, it is fascist-individualist nonsense to flout personal 'human' rights' against the community's requirements of class solidarity, against the imperialist occupying enemy. 

There is a war on, a national-liberation war; quoting poor-spirited loners with a huge chip on their shoulders who are simply inadequate for rising to an even average level of revolutionary community spirit is simply a philistine joke in these circumstances.

The capitalist press itself can do better in admitting that the majority popular view of national-liberation authority is to not only respect it but to demand that it be imposed on everyone:

AS THE four teenagers banished from Ireland by the IRA began a life in London last night residents on their estate in Northern Ireland, appeared delighted at their exile.

Joe Quinn, the local Roman Catholic curate who informed the four boys of the IRA death threat, said that the community was relieved that action had been taken at last and the teenagers had departed.

Father Quinn said: "When the news broke in Dungannon, there was a sense of relief, a sense that it was long overdue — not necessarily the severity of the threat but that something should be done because there has been a lot of trouble."

The priest's view contrasted sharply with the outrage of Ulster's human rights workers and Unionist politicians who branded the IRA action barbaric. But on the Fairmount estate in Dungannon there was strong support for the IRA action where the paramilitaries are preferred as enforcers of law and order to the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Ardoyne takes a dim view of outside criticism in these narrow streets of redbrick houses, and has a similarly uncompromising approach to law breakers. One 46-year old man pushing his three-year-old grandson said: "What else do you do if a youngster is persistently causing trouble? No one would ever dream of calling the RUC round about here.

"Punishment beatings are a way of life around here. Most people's reaction when they hear about someone being beaten or shot is that whoever was hit must have been up to no good." A mother of three teenagers, who also would not be named, said: The critics don't have to live here. We do. It would be a different story if they lived here."

Liam Maskey, a cross-community worker in Ardoyne, said yesterday: "In the working class areas, most people support punishment beatings. Paramilitaries do not pull the names out of the air. The names are passed to them by members of the community.

Vincent McKenna, director of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, said that even his organisation refused to help drugs dealers. He appreciated that many parents were prepared to see them face paramilitary justice.

Mr McKenna added: "It is often only when people find their own children being shot or assaulted that they are forced to think about the rights and wrongs of IRA summary justice."

The Sinn Féin Assembly member for the area, Michelle Gildernew, added: "I am aware of these people. I get complaints on a weekly basis about how they are terrorising people in the community.

"You name it, they've done it. The terror ranges from burglaries to car thefts to abusing people in their own homes. They have no respect for the community they live in. They're oblivious to anyone but themselves."

The 'human rights' challenge to the nationalist self-policing policy is nothing but an unmistakable piece of stooging in favour of accepting the present 'law and order' status quo, – i.e. accepting lying down in front of the hated and dishonoured British colonial tyranny of gerrymandered Partitionist infamy and sectarian Orange dictatorship. Some 'human rights' concern.

This stance represents an anarchic moral cowardice which is driven by one thing only in reality, – a self-regarding personal self-righteousness which would never cease to be an imperialist-plaything liability to any community involved in a disciplined anti-imperialist revolt.

What the lumpen anarchist mentality would hate about national-liberation revolutionary authority is exactly what all petty-bourgeois opportunist weakness would always hate the dictatorship of the proletariat for, – for requiring the masses to live outside of their own private world of grudges and self-serving envy, and to take responsibility instead for helping the massive joint sacrifice that revolutionary community solidarity obviously demands (and equally obviously makes heroes of everyone, – creating the absolute essence of what British imperialism finally realised it could never defeat in this Irish national-liberation struggle, – the near-total dedication to the cause by the overwhelming majority of the working-class Irish masses).

It is hatred of this which really brings out the bile of the petty-bourgeois 'human rights' stooges for British imperialist 'law and order', – or fascist illegality and mayhem as its class-biased sectarian tyranny is in reality.

The entire misleading bourgeois-press coverage of Ireland is basically dominated by this concern to never let the working class in Britain gain an understanding of the colossal revolutionary achievements by the ordinary people in the Occupied Zone of Ireland in establishing their own community discipline completely independent of and in defiance of the hated colonial-Partitionist regime.

Although Sinn Féin and IRA's is a national revolution and not yet a social revolution (abolishing capitalist-imperialist rule completely), some basic elements of proletarian dictatorship (the only form of the democratic state that can possibly replace capitalist dictatorship (bourgeois democracy)) are the backbone of this revolutionary development.

It is this, of course, which makes the fake-'left' bourgeois press (all the Trots and Revisionists 57 varieties, SLP included) so unenthusiastic (to put it mildly) about hailing the Sinn Féin and IRA revolutionary anti-imperialist achievements as one of the great progressive developments of the 20th century.

These petty-bourgeois 'socialist' opportunists never defended the workers states of East Europe very loudly whenever the sharpest points of anti-communist propaganda were being made about "stopping personal liberty", etc, – the endless stunts manufactured by the CIA (via control of the media) to pit the individual against the need for severe nationwide community discipline in the face of non-stop Western subversion and sabotage.

Exactly the same now. When the anti-communist press howl loudest against the national-liberation community discipline against anti-class anarchy in the strongest areas of organised resistance to colonial rule, – such as now over the disciplining of a handful of hooligan-criminal elements, – the fake 'communist' press will be nowhere to be seen, letting the national-liberation struggle bear the full brunt of whipped-up 'human rights' hysteria unopposed, or else even joining in with some subjective-idealist individualist confusion of their own, utterly hating the dictatorship of the proletariat as much as any petty-bourgeois can, and scoring cheap points of self-righteous indignation on its own behalf against "IRA terror", etc.

The latest Trot cover-up to hide their petty-bourgeois loathing of proletarian-dictatorship elements (in the national-liberation authority which rules in most Irish communities in the Occupied Zone) is to extend their insane academic moralising about "self-determination rights" (which has helped NATO imperialism create a fascist-gangster nightmare in Occupied Serbia (Kosovo)) to Occupied Ireland.

The Weekly Worker has now published full 'draft theses' advocating renewed Partition of Ireland!!!

Four counties (Tyrone, Armagh, Derry, and Down) should be split roughly in half, plus the whole of Antrim to allow 

"a clear British-Irish majority the right to self-determination up to and including secession....There would, of course, still be a catholic-nationalist minority in the British-Irish part of the country. We do not advocate a movement of population or ethnically 'pure' counties or half-counties. Whatever the religio-ethnic community, there must be full democratic rights for all citizens."

This entire 1,200-word lunacy starts from purely abstractly attempting to define 'British-Irish' history, and its problems mount steadily from that ridiculous point onwards.

The problem doesn't start with academic definitions. It starts with the real 20th century crisis of the imperialist system, – in this case principally the decline of British imperialism as it affects its age-old attempt to colonially-dominate Ireland. Partition is the absolute essence of the disastrous FAILURE to correctly resolve the frustrated but irresistible national-liberation aspirations of the Irish.

The revolutionary self-determination struggle of 1916 to 1921 was denied its full triumph precisely by humiliated British imperialism viciously ripping out six part-counties from Ulster's nine counties to allow the defeated Orange colonial tyranny to linger on there in all its obscene fading imperialist triumphalism, dominating half-a-million 'croppies' cut off behind the gerrymandered Partition boundary who would still be forced to 'lie down'.

Endless new torment and troubles for the whole of Ireland, – and for the whole of Britain, – have inevitably ensued ever since this degenerate Partition sop to past tyranny was established at bayonet-point.

Now these Trot lunatics are advocating going through this whole farce again but this time with only a three-county 'Ulster'. Such barminess from such a dwindling tiny group of fake 'revolutionary' petty bourgeois is of no account itself but its interest lies in how it reveals the essential ingredients of the rottenness of such bogus 'communists' as the CPGB.

The 'self-determination' fetish is a sign of a purely academic interpretation of the world, a sure indication of a middle-class mentality. The failure to start with the actual warring crisis for British imperialism over Ireland, which has damagingly dominated the politics of the two islands for the past 30 years (in this current phase of the troubles) confirms the same thing. 

Refusing to see, acknowledge, start with, and make central the astonishing revolutionary achievements of Sinn Féin and the IRA in this matter is sheer British-nationalist blindness and big-nation chauvinist conceit. Justifying a continued area of traditional colonial triumphalism for outdated Orange bigotry (plus some imperialist-corrupted colonial working class) on the ground that "there are no irredeemably reactionary peoples" is typical anti-Marxist subjective-idealism, – closer to religious moralising than realistic class-war politics.

A defeat for imperialism is first and foremost what Ireland is all about; British imperialist reaction and its moth-eaten Orange-bigot colonial tyranny deserve as much humiliating crushing as international working-class and anti-imperialist interests can possibly squeeze out of the Sinn Féin and IRA triumph in forcing this colonial anachronism to finally surrender via the Good Friday Agreement.

These posturing middle-class dilettantes of the entire 57-variety Trot and Revisionist fake-'left' just play into imperialist reaction's hands by helping bourgeois media brainwashing to keep spreading confusion about Ireland.

Typical of the rest, the Weekly Worker has been insisting for 18 months that the Good Friday Agreement meant that Sinn Féin and the IRA were giving up, – capitulating to an imperialist-imposed settlement which would leave the Partition sectarian tyranny essentially intact.

This patronising imbecility has been heard less of recently as Ulster Unionist bigotry and privilege has increasingly panicked as the real changes required by GFA implementation have drawn closer, leading to them now trying to openly wreck the Agreement.

But even then, these miserable petty-bourgeois fake-'left' subjective-idealists can only think of their own wretched personal reputations, passing off the IRA's now-clear determination to give up nothing until the New Ireland starts to replace the old failed 'Northern Ireland' colony as "but that does not mean that this weaponry will be brought back into use". 

Having totally erroneously described the IRA as "abandoning their armed struggle" at the start of this attempt to find a negotiated end to colonial tyranny, these pathetic Trot jerks are now only concerned to see if they can 'report' subsequent developments without showing up their own foolishness too badly.

The British workers movement is sick with such Trot and Revisionist subjective degeneracy. Build Leninism.  Royston Bull

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Orange treachery and London imperialist weakness continue to delay Irish progress.

FROM the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 until the UUP prevented the transfer of power and the establishment of the institutions weeks ago — a period of almost 16 months — the peace process has limped from one unionist-induced crisis to another.

This period of time could have been used to fulfil the huge expectations generated by the all-Ireland referenda in May of last year. Instead the last 16 months will be remembered as a time of recrimination, of bitterness, of the sharp word.

What we are dealing with here is not a blip but the possible melt-down of the political conditions that led to the Good Friday Agreement.

Unionism has not moved beyond the politics of intransigence and obstruction because, up to this point, it has not needed to. The politics of intransigence and obstruction have worked. The British government have pandered to negative unionism, have not defended the Agreement which the British government and the UUP signed up to and have allowed the UUP to set the pace.

As so often in the past, and with such disastrous consequences, the UUP and the securocrats are effectively dictating the British government's tactical approach on Ireland.

THE PEACE PROCESS

Sinn Féin's commitment to this process goes back more than a decade and was signalled publicly with the publishing of Towards a Lasting Peace in 1991.

It sets out the basis of a strategy which Sinn Féin believed could resolve the causes of conflict and deliver a lasting peace settlement. The publication of this discussion document was followed by many initiatives which republicans have taken both unilaterally and along with others in nationalist Ireland and abroad in pursuit of this strategy.

Most critical among these were the talks between John Hume and Gerry Adams in 1993/94, which kick-started the peace, process, and the IRA cessations of 1994 and 1997, and which created the best opportunity for peace in Ireland this century.

Even in the wake of the IRA cessations, and despite their dramatic impact on the political climate, the British government adhered to the old agenda with increased demands on republicans and the offensive demand for a so-called decontamination period.

Furthermore despite the risk of a destabilising effect on our own constituency we sought and secured our party's support for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This required that we amend our party's constitution and removed a 75-year ban on members taking seats in any Six-County Assembly.

Most recently, in the Castle Building discussions in late June, we took a further initiative in an attempt to overcome the impasse. This initiative, which was described by the two governments as a seismic shift, was rejected repeatedly by the UUP.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT STEWARDSHIP

Despite the negative approach of unionism towards the Good Friday Agreement, the primary responsibility for the failure to implement it in key areas lies ultimately with the British government.

By indulging David Trimble in his delaying strategy and by pandering to unionist rejectionism the British government has encouraged that intransigence.

Sixteen months later, none of the institutions have been put in place. Even the Assembly, which has been in a limbo existence since 25 June last year, is not that envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement. It has no powers, no Executive, no statutory committees.

On the ground there has been no progress on the equality agenda in terms of its effect on the day to day lives of people. There has been no progress on demilitarisation with the British government yet to fulfil even the minimal requirement to publish a 'normalisation' paper.

The people of the Garvaghy Road and other isolated nationalist communities have yet to see evidence of their right to live free from sectarian harassment. Repressive legislation has not been repealed but strengthened.

The RUC remains unchanged, unable and unwilling to root out the culture of collusion between its members and loyalist paramilitaries and unwilling to challenge wrong-doing within the force. This was seen most starkly in the murder of solicitor Rosemary Nelson and the most recent revelations about the murder of Pat Finucane. Rosemary Nelson's murder was part of a catalogue of sectarian loyalist attacks, including several murders, since the Good Friday Agreement.

We have seen a succession of missed deadlines and broken agreements.

On 1 July 1998, David Trimble was elected First Minister and Seamus Mallon Deputy First Minister. On 20 July in the House of Commons, David Trimble made his intentions clear when he said he would seek to have Sinn Féin excluded from office in any Executive. The summer passed with no Executive formed.

It was not until 10 September, over two months after his election as First Minister, that David Trimble agreed to meet Gerry Adams.

The all-Ireland bodies were due to be established through the shadow Ministerial Council by 31 October. Because of unionist refusal to enter an Executive, this deadline was missed.

On 13 January, a new deadline was set by the British government for 10 March 1999. Once again this deadline was allowed to pass. Five days later Rosemary Nelson was murdered.

A new deadline of the week beginning 29 March was set to ensure that the institutions were established before the first anniversary of the Agreement on 10 April. Once more the deadline passed.

Yet another deadline, an absolute deadline the British government told us was set for 30 June. That ended with the collapse of the Executive at Stormont on 15 July.

THE UUP

David Trimble's approach to the peace process should have come as no surprise. It had been well signalled. When, in September 1997, he walked into the negotiations at Castle Buildings flanked by representatives of the UDA and the UVF, he declared that he was not going in to negotiate with Sinn Féin, that he was going in to put Sinn Féin out. Since then his strategy has been to assert unionist domination and control of the political process by imposing the unionist veto.

Having reluctantly signed up to the Good Friday Agreement, he has sought at every available opportunity to reduce its impact.

He casually made and then reneged on one agreement after another, in terms of the all-Ireland institutions on 2 and 18 December, and on the setting up of the Executive in Downing Street on 14 May. He walked through one deadline after another, 31 October, 10 March, 29 March, 22 May, 30 June, 2 July 2 until he collapsed the institutions two weeks ago.

He ran behind the 'NO' camp instead of standing by the Good Friday Agreement and giving leadership to those inside unionism who want to look forward, not backwards.

David Trimble has succeeded in blocking progress and collapsing the institutions. But the responsibility is not his alone.

The British government needs to rectify the situation by changing its tactical approach. Tony Blair must ensure that the unionist writ is confined to Glengall Street and doesn't run in Downing Street.

The reality is that the peace process cannot be successful if it is subject to a unionist veto. The Good Friday Agreement will never deliver on its undoubted potential if its implementation is filtered through unionism.

REVIEW

On Saturday 24 July, against this difficult backdrop, the Sinn Féin negotiating team reported to the Sinn Féin Ard Chombairie on the preliminary discussions with Senator Mitchell arid last week's meeting with the British government.

The Ard Chomhairle took the view that the refusal of the UUP to share power with nationalists and republicans, and the consequent collapse of the Executive, requires urgent and immediate action by the two governments. It is in our view essential that the two governments proceed with the other elements of the Agreement.

Given the faltering approach of the British government to date, there is a particular onus on the Irish government to continue to energetically pursue the implementation of these aspects of the Agreement, to defend and advance the rights of all Irish citizens and of the people of Ireland as a whole.

In addition, the two governments must seek to ensure that the UUP fulfil its obligations under the terms of the agreement or, failing this, ensure the establishment, under their auspices, of meaningful institutions, including a range of all-Ireland policy, and implementation bodies.

But there is only one area of the Agreement which has totally broken down and this is in regards to the political institutions. This is the area that the review should address and this is the difficulty which it must overcome.

The Ard Chomhairle agreed that any review should examine the areas of non-implementation and ensure that these are effectively dealt with.

However, deep concern was repeatedly expressed that the review would become, at the insistence of the UUP, the cover for yet another renegotiation on the establishment of the political institutions — an issue which was discussed in detail, resolved and agreed on Good Friday 1998.

The shadow institutions should have been in place last July, immediately following the election of the First and Deputy First Ministers.

In the past year this issue has been renegotiated four times — at Hillsborough, twice in Downing Street and most recently In Castle Buildings. Each time, Sinn Féin has moved to create space for the UUP, each time our initiatives have been rejected and abused. The UUP have held to their position of "no guns, no government" which is outside the terms of the Agreement.

The reality, both in terms of democratic principles and under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, is that the only requirement for Executive office is sufficient electoral support.

A further renegotiation of this issue to meet UUP demands is totally unacceptable. Given the uncertainty surrounding the conduct of the review, the Ard Chomhairle declined, at this time, to make a firm decision on whether or not Sinn Féin would participate in the review being conducted by Senator Mitchell.

ENGAGING THE UUP

While Sinn Féin's approach to the review has yet to be decided, the Ard Chomhairle did decide to engage in a substantive round of discussions with the UUP over the coming weeks. We are seeking a range of meetings with the UUP, at various levels, both formal and informal, in a concerted attempt to find a way forward. It is, in our view, critical that there is a greater understanding of each other's positions so that every possibility of salvaging the Good Friday Agreement is fully explored. The UUP are blocking the implementation of the Agreement and it is obviously essential that the motivation for this position is fully explored.

In order to facilitate these discussions we are prepared to conduct these meetings in private and away from the glare of publicity which, at times, adversely affects the conduct of the discussion themselves.

We have been in contact with the UUP and intend to commence this engagement in the immediate period ahead.

DECOMMISSIONING

Decommissioning was addressed comprehensively in the negotiations leading up to Good Friday and is addressed directly in the Agreement itself. The section on
decommissioning makes clear that addressing this issue is dependant on two key elements: 

• A collective responsibility on all participants to work in good faith with the International Commission.

• The implementation of the overall Agreement.

There is no singular responsibility on Sinn Féin or any one party to bring about decommissioning. It is collective responsibility on all participants and one which Sinn Féin fully accepts and has acted on. We acknowledge the obligation to work in good faith to bring decommissioning about.

Unfortunately the UUP do not.

The reality is that for almost 16 months we have been attempting to address this issue in the context of the non-implementation of the Agreement and with the UUP refusing to work in good faith to create more favourable political conditions. On the contrary, the UUP have been mis-using this issue both to block the establishment of the inclusive political institutions agreed on Good Friday and also in pursuit of their objective of excluding republicans from government.

The decommissioning section of the Good Friday Agreement is free standing. Entitlement to Executive office is dependant only on electoral support and taking and honouring the pledge of office.

Any attempt to exclude Sinn Féin on the basis of a failure to achieve decommissioning is beyond the terms of the Agreement and would be totally unacceptable.

CONCLUSION

The harsh and unpalatable reality that we are facing almost 16 months after the Good Friday Agreement was concluded, is that it has not been implemented, its potential has not been realised and the change which it promised has not materialised.

No-one should underestimate the depth or seriousness of the crisis we are facing. If the Good Friday Agreement is to be salvaged, if the peace process is to make progress, the British tactical approach has to change. The instinctive unionism within the British military and political system has to be confronted.

The Good Friday Agreement was signed up to by the British government. It is British government policy. The British government have a responsibility to implement the Agreement as negotiated, not in a manner demanded by the UUP, which is outside the terms of the Agreement.

• There has been no movement on demilitarisation;
•  There is no acceptable policing service;
•  There is no human rights agenda;
• We do not have equality

All of these are issues of basic rights. They are also key elements of the Agreement. 

The UUP need to understand that they cannot prevent necessary and long overdue change in these areas.

If it is to be objective, genuine and within the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the review which will take place in September, under the chairmanship of Senator George Mitchell must address the failure to establish the political institutions as agreed on Good Friday last year.

This is the area of fundamental breakdown. It must examine the causes of the breakdown, including a close examination of the role played by the British government, and it must ultimately identify the source of the breakdown and how, within the terms of the Good Friday Agreement it should be overcome.

While Sinn Féin is justifiably critical of the British government, we have acknowledged and commended the positive way that Mr Blair approached the peace process. At the first meeting between this government and the Sinn Féin leadership I said to Mr Blair that the question of Ireland would be the single biggest challenge facing him throughout his term or terms in office.

Republicans understand the historic nature and the monumental shifts which are required if the peace process is to succeed. It cannot succeed without Tony Blair He holds the key. 

This process still remains the best chance for peace. If it is to succeed all participants must refocus so that the Agreement is implemented. Only the British government can create the conditions which will bring this about.

The Good Friday Agreement provides the only way forward. It cannot be renegotiated at the behest of unionism. For Sinn Féin that is the absolute bottom line. •

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

The real "men of violence" problem halting progress to a New Ireland comes from the discredited British colonial state still refusing to change.

"The police were brutal. It was the worst I've seen. I'm relieved no one in my community is dead." - Gerard Rice, spokesperson for the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community

TEN THOUSAND Apprentice Boys marched unrestricted through Derry city centre on Saturday, 14 August, while nationalists in the city and on Belfast's Ormeau Road were hemmed in behind police lines. 

The Derry march, which was approved by the Parades Commission and facilitated by the RUC, proves that yet again the Orange Order are being given the upper hand on the parades issue. The Parades Commission, after being initially sympathetic to residents' groups on the parades issue, has now resorted to rewarding the Orange Order for any dialogue, no matter how shallow or superficial. As the situation stands, the commission is exposing its lack of understanding over the whole question of the right to live free from sectarian harassment. Instead it seems now to merely be searching for the path of least unionist resistance.

Derry had been saturated with a huge RUC presence since early on Saturday morning and most of the city centre was sealed off. A makeshift army camp was set up in Foyle Street to house a number of military vehicles and water cannons. Nationalists were hemmed into the Bogside from mid morning when the British army placed barricades over the gates leading through the city walls into the Bogside.

On Saturday morning, 700 people left Free Derry Comer and made their way to Waterloo Place, where they were blocked by RUC members dressed in full riot gear. The Parades Commission had on Friday, 13 August banned the Bogside Residents Group (BRG) protest from going past Waterloo Place in the city centre.

BRG spokesperson Donncha MacNiallais, addressing the rally, slammed the Parades Commission for undermining the work done in recent years in order to resolve the parades issue and said that once again the message from the Parades Commission was "croppies lie down".

Tensions, — caused by the Parades Commission ruling and exasperated by the massive combined RUC and British Army presence,—escalated as it became clear from news reports that nationalists on the Lower Ormeau in Belfast had been beaten off the road by the RUC to facilitate the Apprentice Boys.

Appealing for calm, MacNiallais asked the marchers to return to Free Derry corner, but several hundred people, clearly frustrated and angry, remained at RUC lines in protest. Violence flared a short time later when missiles were thrown at the RUC, who made repeated charges on the crowd, and later a small number petrol bombs were thrown by protesters and a number of arrests were made.

RUC claims that 130 petrol bombs were thrown have been challenged by journalists who witnessed the violence. They reported the real figure at nearer to 30. Vehicles were also hijacked but were removed before they could be set alight.

The rioting eventually died down in the early evening when the RUC withdrew from the area.

Donncha MacNiallais has laid the blame for the violence firmly at the door of the Parades Commission and the RUC. He said: The ultimate responsibility for any trouble rests solely and squarely on the shoulders of the RUC and behind that decision to force parades through here and through the Ormeau Road".

RUC brutality was again in force during the rioting, when an officer in riot gear headbutted a man as he tried to leave Treacey's bar to return home. As the man attempted to leave the bar he was ordered to get back inside. When he protested that he wanted to go home, he was headbutted in the face by an RUC officer who was wearing a crash helmet The man was then arrested and dragged to a nearby RUC Land Rover.

Further violence flared and continued late on Saturday night with several shops and buildings petrol bombed and set on fire. The cost of rioting is set to run into millions as does the loss of earnings as the city was forced to close to facilitate the march.

SINN Féin Assembly member Martin McGuinness has hit back at claims made by RUC assistant chief constable Alan McQuillan that Saturday's violence in Derry was orchestrated by republicans.

On Friday, 13 August, McQuillan claimed that he been told by community leaders that there was going to be widespread violence and that petrol bombs were being stockpiled. 

McGuinness said: "Alan McQuillan's remarks were more to do with justifying the actions of the RUC on the Lower Ormeau and the very heavy military presence which the RUC and British army engaged in here in this town to facilitate 10,000 Apprentice Boys on their march."

Searching past mere recriminations and condemnations, McGuinness added that the violence was a direct response by young people in the city to the Apprentice Boys' march and RUC brutality.

"Claims that republicans were attempting to orchestrate violence here have clearly been shown to be rubbish...no one has to orchestrate the young people of this city, who have the ability to organise themselves in response to political events in the North."

ANY CREDIBILITY retained by the Parades Commission was shattered when a large force of body-armoured RUC officers beat peaceful nationalist protesters off the Ormeau Road to facilitate a parade of 19 members of the Apprentice Boys.

Protesters opposing the parade, which they see as a supremacist coat-trailing exercise, were forcibly removed from the street in a sustained and brutal attack by the RUC.

At 5.30am, the RUC, in full riot gear, saturated the Lower Ormeau Road area to forcibly remove 300 protesters engaged in a peaceful sit-down protest against the Parades Commission's ruling that the parade should proceed. A savage three-hour police operation ensued, during which protesters were kicked, punched, and batoned by RUC officers determined to clear a path for the Apprentice Boys.

RUC officers surrounded the protesters on both sides. They batoned them and then dragged them off the road, one by one, in an attempt to break the human chain. Protesters were systematically struck on the head and then dragged off to a side street, where the beatings continued. •