Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions  £20p.a.    [P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL] [Post Office Regd.]                      No 1043 May 09 2000                                                                                                                                              10p
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Blairism is such a hollow bankrupt joke that it cannot even avoid electoral humiliation at the hands of obviously reactionary opportunism in all directions. But the New Labourites' biggest new defeat is in Ireland where these stooges for the imperialist system have had to eat humble pie to put right the appalling Mandelson nonsense (of wrecking the Good Friday Agreement) by capitulating even further to the Sinn Féin/IRA peace terms than ever before.

The British establishment's great climbdown from its final wretched attempt to politically blackmail the Irish national-liberation struggle (by unilaterally suspending the GFA) has symbolically coincided with mounting derision for the current sick management regime in Downing Street.

The Blair phenomenon has been one of the more astonishing hoaxes in a period remarkable for outrageous political stunts as the West's free-market 'new world order' uncontrollably sinks ever-deeper into more unmanageable anarchic chaos which the bourgeoisie is desperate to cover up.

The New Labour gimmickry (pretend total 'reform' of the system for a 'radical transformation', but wholesale capitulation to the crudest monopoly market-forces in reality) was thought to be such a splendid wheeze that half the Tory press bought into it, but some huge political price will have to be paid now that it is collapsing.

Government by shallow soundbite and posturing fantasy also entails easy dethronement by such shallowness, and the Blairites are now victim of their own mindless (and verbless) rhetorical diarrhoea.

The self-parodying mountebank Livingstone has trounced them in London, and the play-the-race-card Tories have trounced them everywhere else. Neither opposition to Blairism has the slightest chance of coping any better with the international imperialist economic crisis than New Labour (as witnessed in the contemptuously low turnout), - but hostility to Blair's Sunday school-teacher buffoonery was clearly the winning ticket.

Where this mess leaves bourgeois ideological confusion is analysed below, but it is of the greatest importance to first put on record as fully as possible the reflection of this imperialist debacle in the outstanding new triumph gained by Ireland's national-liberation struggle.

In its attempt to help re-establish the scientific role of Marxist revolutionary theory, the EPSR has followed the anti-imperialist war in Ireland with particular interest, explaining in detail over the course of 20 years the snail's pace withdrawal/retreat/defeat of British imperialism, illustrating equally the epoch-making strength of national-liberation struggle, and the degenerative and competitive weakness of the British imperialist/colonialist bourgeoisie.

This particular war has had special importance for revolutionary agitation in Britain because of Marx's profound observation that the working-class here will never be ready for its own socialist emancipation all the time that the British state can still force the Irish people to accept limits to their own self-determination. For as long as the people of Britain allow the government in London to deny full freedom to the nation and country of Ireland, that same pro-colonial backwardness will always help reaction to deny full freedom (for a socialist revolution, in this case, rather than self-determination) to the majority (the working class) in Britain.

Sadly, but possibly not too surprisingly in view of the dramatically unexpected international circumstances at the end of the 20th century, the anti-imperialist struggle in Britain has done little itself to end the British colonial role, in Ireland. But the national-liberation war's own efforts to undermine Britain's partition/domination as it existed in the previous 'Northern Ireland' (supposedly a 'part of Britain for ever', a 'Protestant land for a Protestant people', etc, etc) will nevertheless achieve the same victorious conclusion, - a defeat for British imperialism, and therefore the further freeing of working-class minds corrupted by British imperialism.

Following through with this analysis in the teeth of relentless disinformation propaganda from the British bourgeois media (both straight capitalist and fake-'left' which has consistently written off the national-liberation struggle as a 'defeated sellout by Sinn Féin and the IRA') helps the attempt to prove the indispensability of the Marxist method. Far from this being a period of 'New World Order' imperialism' supposedly 'imposing' peace-settlements on reluctant anti-imperialist struggles everywhere, as all the fake-'lefts' proclaim; the Irish self-determination war (for one) shows that this is a period of deepening imperialist system crisis in which the weaker rivals (like Britain) will increasingly be forced to limit their global-role aspirations, and the stronger rivals (the USA, the European Union) might opportunistically allow weaker competitors to stew in their own juice, or even encourage certain nationalisms for equally opportunistic reasons. Middle Eastern nationalism, for example, is rife with contradictory rival imperialist interests. The huge 'Irish' vote in the USA has similarly earned some bourgeois sympathy for Ireland's national-liberation struggle. Even some sections of the British bourgeois establishment have, for purely pragmatic reasons, been in favour of a British colonist climb-down, - provided the arms-in-hand revolutionary essence of the Sinn Féin/IRA victory could be played down or disguised via enough media spinning.

Whether or not this materialist analysis of a longterm British colonial retreat has been shown to be correct or false is best left to the capitalist press itself to demonstrate. Its relentless bias is to proclaim a 'hopeless defeat' for the IRA's guerrilla-war 'terrorism', and Sinn Féin's 'capitulation' to 'democratic peace-process methods' instead. The final blackmailing attempt to score propaganda points against Sinn Féin's growing influence all over Ireland lay in this monstrous unilateral suspension by Britain of this whole new deal for Ireland, - cross-border government bodies, power-sharing in the Occupied Zone, release of all prisoners-of-war, dismantling of the RUC and the Orange-dictatorship judicial system in the north, disarmament timetable for the British occupation forces, etc, etc, - just as it had begun working well and proving Sinn Féin's contention that only the dismantling of Partition could ever bring an end to the national-liberation war.

By robbing Irish national self-determination just as victory was within its grasp, and by making 'decommissioning' once again the utterly artificial supposed 'reason' for suspending the Good Friday Agreement, the Irish national-liberation struggle would be wrong-footed into damaging splits or into yielding ground, - providing London with some juicy exaggerated 'capitulation' propaganda material in return for getting the political institutions, ending Partition, back on track.

If it had worked, the fake-'lefts' would have exulted in more 'IRA surrenders; Sinn Féin climbs down' headlines (regardless of the fact that the GFA would remain an essentially anti-colonialist triumph, with or without some last-minute propaganda points-salving for the humiliated Ulster Orangemen-British imperialist axis), - such is the hatred of these middle-class bogus 'communists' (CPGB, SWP, etc) for genuine revolutionary-struggle achievements.

But inevitably, the last-minute Mandelson-Trimble stunt failed, just as all earlier reactionary imperialist treachery has failed, to derail the determined and clear-thinking anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle.

As usual, the best interpretation of this further triumph for Sinn Féin and the IRA, and this further humiliation for the British colonial tradition and interests, is to carefully read between the lines of the British capitalist press's own admissions about this latest crisis-settlement. 

Despite a huge spin-doctoring media attempt to pretend that the essence of the new agreement is 'an IRA admission that the war is now over for good and can never be restarted', etc, the only actual facts tell the exact opposite. The IRA remains in full and sole control of its own guerrilla-war potential; the British agree to immediately resume the political-institutions-dismantling of the old Partition 'Northern Ireland', (including the RUC, the judiciary, the prisoners-of-war impositions (including the Maze concentration camp itself); the political gerrymandering, and the employment apartheid, etc); and London accepts that it can never again unilaterally suspend the all-Ireland institutions and the Good Friday Agreement.

The 'war is now over' only in the sense that Sinn Féin and the IRA have always promised would be the case since the national-liberation struggle first offered British imperialism a 'peace-settlement' way out of its defeated situation through the first unilateral ceasefires and backdoor negotiations: — Sign, and stick-to, something like the Good Friday Agreement and the snail's-pace reunification of Ireland (via the dismantling of the old Partition 'Northern Ireland') & it would mean there would never be any more need for war, and the British would finally cease all interference in Ireland's affairs. The war's cause would be over. It is now.

But the IRA's revolutionary-war potential remains fully intact just to make sure that London does not think about any more reneging on the GFA New Ireland agreement, and that the beaten Orange colonist die-hards do not think about any last-ditch attempt at an Ian-Smith-style UDI (unilateral declaration of independence) armed revolt. In other words, Blair's British imperialist bluff has been called, and the snail's-pace reunification of Ireland is back on course. The insane fake-'left' plans for further Partition to give reactionary Orangeism a new four-county enclave of armed, gerrymandered, bigoted backwardness - thus cementing their hopes to see the revolutionary national-liberation war end in defeat, - will remain only to demonstrate the treacherous 'left' inadequacies of anti-communism and anti-Marxism.

The cynical and lying British capitalist press, between the lines, reluctantly admits most of all the above:

Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, late last night dramatically announced plans to restore devolution to Northern Ireland in 16 days' time after a second night of intensive negotiations at Hillsborough Castle in Co Down.

They unveiled the surprise proposal to re-form the power-sharing executive at Stormont on May 22.

In a joint statement, the British and Irish governments revealed vital changes to the Good Friday agreement, now two years old, which appear to have been the price to be paid to pull the IRA on board. The switches echo republican demands. The deadline for decommissioning is to be extended to June next year. It was meant to be May 22 this year.

The definition of decommissioning is set to be widened. No longer will destruction of weapons be required. Putting them beyond use, an inexplicit definition less offensive to the IRA, will be sufficient.
 
The government also made it clear it would never again act unilaterally in suspending the institutions, as Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland secretary, did on February 11. That can now happen only after a review of the agreement, involving both governments.

Sinn Féin welcomed the development Gerry Adams, its president, said: "This is a decisive moment. The two governments have agreed to re-establish the institutions and have set out the mechanisms and steps necessary for achieving the full implementation of the many outstanding aspects of the Good Friday agreement."

But David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist party, refused to speak to the media, issuing a holding statement.

Mr Trimble, who two months ago survived a challenge to his leadership, will face difficulties in selling to his sceptical Ulster Unionist Council proposals that fall short of a start to IRA decommissioning before he is asked to rejoin government with Sinn Féin. His assembly party is understood to be divided on the plan.

The main elements encompass a positive IRA statement, committing to an arms gesture within two months; government plans to cut troop numbers; and perhaps a respite for the RUC's name.

Text of the IRA statement: The leadership of the IRA is committed to a just and lasting peace. We have sustained that commitment despite the abuse of the peace process by those who persist with the aim of defeating the IRA and Irish republicans.

Republicans believe that the British government claim to a part of Ireland, its denial of national self-determination to the people of the island of Ireland, the partition of our country and the maintenance of social and economic inequality in the Six Counties are the root causes of conflict.

The maintenance of our cessation is our contribution to the peace process and to the creation of a future in which the causes of conflict are resolved by peaceful means. For our part, the IRA leadership is committed to resolving the issue of arms. The political responsibility for advancing the current situation rests with the two governments, especially the British government, and the leadership of the political parties. The full implementation, on a progressive and irreversible basis by the two governments, especially the British government, of what they have agreed will provide a political context, in an enduring political process, with the potential to remove the causes of conflict, and in which Irish republicans and unionists can, as equals, pursue our respective political objectives peacefully.

In that context the IRA leadership will initiate a process that will completely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use. We will do it in such a way as to avoid risk to the public and misappropriation by others and ensure maximum public confidence.

We will resume contact with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning and enter into further discussions with the commission on the basis of the IRA leadership's commitment to resolving the issue of arms.

We look to the two governments and especially the British government to fulfil their commitments under the Good Friday agreement and the joint statement. To facilitate the speedy and full implementation of the Good Friday agreement and the government's measures, our arms are silent and secure. There is no threat to the peace process from the IRA.

In this context, the IRA leadership has agreed to put in place within weeks a confidence-building measure confirm that our weapons main secure. The contents of a number of our arms dumps will be inspected by agreed third parties who will report that they have done so to the IICD. The dumps will be reinspected regularly to ensure that the weapons have remained silent. (signed) P O'Neill

The governments quickly announced that the former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, a veteran UN diplomat and EU envoy during the Kosovo crisis last year, would team up with Cyril Ramaphosa, one-time secretary general of the African National Congress, to inspect the dumps. Both are popular choices with republicans.

The IRA move falls short of the kind of decommissioning unionists had hoped for; there will be no destruction of weapons. The IRA has also foisted off the agreement's May 22 deadline for the completion of decommissioning, with the governments agreeing to an extension because of the delays in setting up the executive and cross-border institutions last November. The new deadline will be in June next year.

One sceptical member of the Ulster Unionist assembly team said yesterday: "It is a vague statement. There is some hope in it. But the IRA keeps control of its weapons. There is complete spin going on as to what they are prepared to do."

Mr Trimble, who met his assembly team on Saturday, will speak again with them tomorrow. He has so far lost two of his team, originally 20-strong, and at least one other is likely to follow. He is said to be taking the win-or-bust approach. His lieutenants know the council meeting, the fourth in six months, will be close. 

Mr Trimble defeated south Belfast MP Martin Smyth's leadership challenge two months ago with a slim margin, similar to the support he had six months ago for entering government with Sinn Féin before a start to IRA decommissioning. He is braced for an even tighter battle this time.

One of Mr Trimble's advisers said yesterday: "There are caveats. It is going to be a really slippery two weeks. Chastelain, head of the decommissioning body, will arrive shortly to discuss modalities. Mr Trimble wants an early meeting.

They will be allowed access to three substantial dumps, which will then be sealed in an as yet unspecified way, and it is believed that others will be opened to them over the next 12 months. But there will be no arms destruction at the end of that time.

The IRA can claim it has successfully foisted off decommissioning, at least on unionist terms, and paint the move as voluntary. It has wrested the moral high ground, leaving unionists the focus of worldwide opprobrium if they scorn the unprecedented offer.

Ulster Unionists, though, now know they will be voting for the return as education minister of Mr McGuinness, the former IRA chief of staff, if they back the move. That appointment came as a surprise last time.

The IRA have made their final offer. There will be no IRA surrender, no handover of weapons, and no television cameras recording IRA armalites being sawn in half. There will be no "decommissioning" as the word was understood both by Ulster's unionists and the media.

Instead there will be this convoluted, partial, remote-control process where Ahtisaari and Ramaphosa, hidden in the back seat, will be bundled around the bogs and lakes of County Donegal at night to be shown selected IRA dumps filled with selected IRA weaponry. The arms inspectors, men of impeccable credentials, will in turn, no doubt, report back that there is no threat to the peace process from the IRA.

It may not seem like a lot. But it is a big concession for the IRA. Knowledge of the location of major IRA arms dumps was and is the republicans' most closely guarded secret. The standard IRA sentence for the betrayal and loss of even one rifle was a bullet in the head. Men, like the Derry IRA informer Frank Hegarty, have been ruthlessly killed for betraying their locations. For the IRA to allow any outsider to glean any knowledge of the whereabouts of even part of its arsenal is an unprecedented departure.

In essence, it is a political gesture by the IRA to enable the unionist leader David Trimble to claim some kind of victory, an IRA concession, and so squeeze his party back into the assembly.

And if all goes well, if the assembly is restored, if power flows from the crown to nationalist Ireland and the unionists play ball, then there is the promise of more. "In that new context the IRA leadership will initiate a process that will completely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use."

It remains to be seen when the IRA will declare "this new context" — an irreversible move towards nationalist Ireland — to have come into being.

A better question would be: is there any more compromise to be wrung on the whole decommissioning issue in Ulster?

The true answer is no. Decommissioning was always a chimera. The IRA were never going to decommission/surrender/hand over product. And it did not matter anyway. Physically it will always be just as easy to kill your political enemy in Ulster today, and tomorrow, with a handgun or a bomb as it was 10 years ago.

"Decommissioning" has always been a bogus concept. It was introduced into the Ulster peace process in 1995 by John Major's government as a political brake to essentially exert British Control. It is now being used by anti-agreement unionists like Donaldson and David Burnside to sabotage further political progress.

As a concept "decommisioning" remains useful to these critics because it masks their true intentions; not to share power, to bring down the assembly, to beat the Orange drum, and hopefully provoke a bit of war to shore up the union. The only republicans they want to meet are dead republicans.

So of course the latest IRA gesture on arms dumps will not satisfy these critics either. They will want more "concessions". Many of their supporters in Britain will echo their demands. But their case is founded on the politics of destruction.

The real debate will be among those who do genuinely hope for peace. Does anyone seriously believe there is more to be gained, less blood to be lost, by hammering away at the futility of IRA decommissioning? It is David Trimble job, with the discreet support of the British government, to win that argument and save Ulster unionism from its worst self-destructive urges.

As Ahtisaari and Ramaphosa have seen on the far more violent stages of Kosovo and South Africa, there comes a point in peace negotiations where there are no more concessions to be squeezed. And where there is a stark choice of warily going forward or returning to the nightmare ground.

The IRA have made a gesture, and it is a gesture, however imperfect that can be used to dissolve the decommissioning impasse. We can take that gesture and use it to carry us further down the peace road. Or, of course, we can reject it and turn in the other direction towards war and a renewal of the Troubles.

Unionist fears are centred on having to trust the IRA to disclose the true extent of its arsenal and of arms dumps to international observers.

The IRA is the most heavily armed terrorist organisation in Europe, with a vast arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in underground bunkers and remote farmhouses throughout Ireland. But the exact extent of its armoury is hard to pinpoint, as are the location of its munitions dumps on both sides of the Irish border.

That is likely to remain the position, in spite of the IRA's statement promising to allow dumps to be regularly inspected by two independent observers. The carefully worded statement did not pledge that all dumps would be inspected. It merely said that the contents of a "number of arms dumps" would be inspected.

As the extent of its overall arsenal is difficult to assess, the security forces and politicians will have to take the IRA at its word. Even if the terrorists sealed all dumps or destroyed all weapons, there is nothing to stop an organisation as wealthy as the IRA from going on a spending spree for more guns and explosives.

Estimates suggest that the IRA has enough weaponry to continue its terror campaign for at least a decade. Guns, rifles, machineguns, surface-to-air missiles, explosives and detonators have come from Libya, the United States, the Middle East, the former Czechoslovakia and even from a Norwegian Army Reserve depot near Oslo, which was robbed in 1984.

In one of the most spectacular failures of intelligence during the whole of the present Troubles, Libya sent four shipments of arms aboard two trawlers to the Republic. The potential scale of the Libyan arms shipments became known only when French customs seized the Eksund off Brittany in November 1987, with 150 tonnes of arms on board, including two tonnes of Semtex explosive. Three earlier shipments had successfully been brought ashore and moved to carefully prepared dumps around the Irish Republic. Many of the these dumps are in rural areas of counties Cork, Kerry and Limerick. Some bunkers are the size of small houses, with sophisticated heating and ventilation to prevent weapons being ruined by moisture.

A raid on a farm in Co Laois in 1996 revealed a bunker built under a farmhouse, with an electricity supply and air vent. Terrorists reached the bunker by clambering down a manhole. There are believed to be at least ten similar bunkers in different parts of the Irish Republic. Inside the bunker was an "arms factory" producing mortar components.

But hardline unionists were deeply suspicious of the IRA offer.

Robert McCartney, an assembly member and the leader of the UK Unionist party, claimed that Blair's position represented the "ultimate surrender" to the IRA.

Gary McMichael, the leader of the Ulster Democratic party, which represents the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Freedom Fighters, was concerned that his party had not been involved in the consultations. 

"No proposals have been presented to us for our views during any discussions with the prime minister or the secretary of state, and therefore I have concerns about the viability of the prime minister's intentions," he said.

Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, which is strongly opposed to the Good Friday agreement, said bluntly: "I don't trust the IRA."

Hardline Protestant leaders accused Blair of "surrender to the IRA" in order to keep bombs out of London. But the IRA statement put pressure on David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, to get his party to accept the compromise. Previously he had said he would resume working alongside Sinn Féin only if the IRA gave a "cast-iron commitment" to disarm.

Trimble met party leaders at Stormont yesterday. There was no vote on the new initiative.

The choice of the ANC as one of those to be involved in, checking the IRA's guns reflects a long relationship between the two organisations. Adams's negotiating strategy has been modelled in part on the ANC's rise to power in South Africa.

 Adams has visited South Africa and Ramaphosa was part of an ANC delegation to Northern Ireland two years ago to help negotiate the release of prisoners.

The IRA welcomed other commitments given by the British and Irish governments as part of the negotiations last week at Hillsborough Castle in Co Down.

These include a promise to parole all remaining IRA prisoners in British and Irish jails by July 28.

Peter Mandelson's role in the talks as Northern Ireland secretary were hindered by a growing rift with Brian Cowen, the Irish minister for foreign affairs.

IF THE television cameras had captured Gerry Adams being driven into Chequers last weekend, those pictures would now be a vital part of history. It was at an extraordinary meeting at the prime minister's official country home in Buckinghamshire that the real groundwork for yesterday's IRA statement on arms was laid.

In an unprecedented invitation, Blair asked Adams to join him at the mansion.

Downing Street refused last night to reveal details of the meeting, but the presence of Adams, the former IRA commander, at the luxury house as a welcome guest was remarkable.

Adams and Blair know that in a network of underground bunkers from Co Kerry to Donegal there are enough IRA bullets to kill every man, woman and child in the province.

On Wednesday Blair met David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, and senior figures of his party for dinner at Downing Street. He gave them a full account of the seven hours of talks held with Sinn Féin the previous day at No 10.

The Ulster Unionists had also been in for talks that day, but for just 1 1/4 hours. Officials, Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland secretary, and Blair himself are understood to have conducted the talks with Adams and his colleagues.

However, the deal brokered by the British and Irish governments on Friday depends on a positive response from all sides. IRA consent to the deal puts the onus on the Ulster Unionists to give their approval.

The question remains whether Trimble can sell the deal to his party. It is expected that a meeting of the Ulster Unionist council will be called for a week on Saturday, two days before the assembly is due to reconvene, at which Trimble will have to win the permission of his party to re-enter the devolved government with Sinn Féin.

Unionists will be suspicious of a number of apparent concessions to the republicans: there is to be no future suspension of the assembly without the agreement of Dublin, the Maze prison is to be emptied of all paramilitary prisoners by July, and Westminster is to pass legislation to allow sweeping reforms of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, with Sinn Féin holding two seats on a new 12-strong police authority.

The government admitted yesterday that it had extended the deadline for the IRA to give up these guns by more than a year, but it is the one important concession by the IRA that has sent hopes soaring. While not giving up its guns completely, the organisation has agreed to open its arms dumps to regular inspection by neutral observers to ensure that the weapons have not been used or explosives removed for "active service".

In return, the Northern Ireland assembly executive is to be restored on May 22, two years to the day after the referendum that secured support for the Good Friday agreement on power sharing.

Blair also suggested that Britain would start withdrawing its 15,000 troops if the IRA began scrapping its arms.

The government is also ready to begin a programme of demilitarisation, pulling down watchtowers and withdrawing troops even from hardline areas, including south Armagh. Security chiefs are unhappy, but there is a sense within the Northern Ireland Office now risks must be taken. 

But the essential question is: what does Mr Trimble get?

The IRA statement alone would make life difficult before the 860-delegates of the Ulster Unionist council.

The formula on offer might have been framed "on the IRA's terms" but it could still satisfy Unionists' concerns.

The questions to be asked are essentially practical. They involve the scale of the weaponry to be deposited and the means by which the two intermediaries, Cyril Ramaphosa and Martti Ahtisaari, will conduct their inspections. The Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) should not attempt to set itself up as a shadow International Commission on Decommissioning. It is the task of General John de Chastelain to liaise with terrorist organisations and report back on his findings.

He will doubtless be heartened by the fact that the IRA's language, while not as precise yet as many would like, is less contorted now than in its previous pronouncements.

The obsession with words and their underlying meaning has been a constant feature of the peace process. At many moments an optimistic interpretation has been placed on ambiguous sentences, merely deferring bitter disappointment to a later date. The methods by which republicanism would embrace mainstream politics have been the chief source both of double-talk and subsequent disputes. The term "disarmament" was discarded long ago in favour of the more neutral notion of "decommissioning". It now appears that we are moving from "decommissioning" to "deactivation".

In a rational and logical world, republicans have good cause to accept that alternative. If they are committed to a political strategy which means building coalitions of interest North and South, then republicanism has every incentive to move away from the ideology of violence. Securing the Agreement, and sustaining it, is therefore a rational objective. It provides an important political platform. And the logic of that Agreement means sharing not only power with the Ulster Unionists but also the risks involved in managing change in Northern Ireland.

It knew, on the basis of its contacts with the two governments, that the IRA would not be asked to deliver 'product'. It knew that the 22 May deadline had been abandoned.

Equally, Sinn Féin knows that the Irish government now assumes that republicans represent the future in Northern Ireland. That is what is implied by the Northern Ireland Office memo leaked last week to the Unionist councillor, Chris McGimpsey. It was once thought that in the course of the peace process, republicanism would become constitutionalised. It now seems more likely that constitutional nationalism is becoming republicanised. If this is so, then the British Government has a tremendous incentive to channel republicanism towards a constructive purpose. That means reestablishing the political institutions of the Belfast Agreement. It also means implementing as quickly as possible those aspects of the Agreement which republicans favour. Sinn Féin knows this too.

On the one hand, this knowledge might encourage republicans to maximise the advantages of the political option. On the other, the sense that history is on its side might make the IRA even more intransigent. What do the events of the weekend tell us?

The plan set out by Blair and Ahern appears to confirm what Sinn Féin and the IRA already know. No wonder Sinn Féin spokespersons sound so happy. It is the Assembly which is to be restored by 22 May. The decommissioning deadline has now been put back to June 2001. Those aspects of the Agreement which nationalists favour, in particular changes to policing and the judicial process, are to be implemented according to timetable. The requirement demanded of the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries by the two Prime Ministers is only that they 'state clearly that they will put their arms completely and verifiably beyond use'. Those very words - 'completely and verifiably beyond use' - appear in the IRA's statement. By that, the IRA means securing their arms dumps and providing for inspection 'by agreed third parties' who will report to General de Chastelain. There is no statement by the IRA that its war is over. It is not there because, for it, 'the root causes of conflict' have not been resolved. The IRA's contribution to the peace process remains its ceasefire. And that ceasefire will hold so long as it is thought that the 'root causes' can be resolved by peaceful means. That sounds very like: 'We may not be able to win the war but we are still determined to win the argument.' 

Unionists believe that, in the peace process, Sinn Féin has equated statesmanship and leadership with cheating at a horse fair. They feel that they were cheated in February. Will they buy now what many think is the same horse twice? It is a very delicate decision. No doubt the response of many in the Ulster Unionist Party will think that, once again, they are sacrificing their principles in return for appeasement of the IRA. The consequence will be electoral disaster. Others have been coming to another conclusion. It is that the party's position on decommissioning has allowed the IRA to dictate the agenda.

The IRA's weekend statement ingeniously sidesteps the entire problem. The provos will not hand over their guns to the British enemy — the gesture of humiliation the organisation could not wear — but will instead "put them beyond use". The method is to dump them in places where they can be inspected by trusted outsiders.

The IRA imagines the process running in tandem with a downscaling of the British presence in the province, with troop numbers in south Armagh beginning to fall. 

This is not the explicit moral equivalence which so repelled the British military brass, but a kind of implicit equivalence which will have done much to placate republicanism's hardliners. Finally, the choice of international inspectors is inspired. By asking the former African National Congress secretary-general, Cyril Ramaphosa, to act as a verifier, London and Dublin have found a man who not only enjoys worldwide respect but also specific credibility with the IRA: they regard him much as they regard themselves — as a veteran of an armed, liberation struggle.

Who deserves credit for this piece of smart thinking? Close to the top of the list is a man who is hardly a household name: the Irish foreign minister, Brian Cowen. According to a document leaked last week, Northern Ireland officials regarded Mr Cowen as a mouthpiece for Sinn Féin. They were wrong. Instead he did what none of the other players in this process had done before: he asked what the IRA might say yes to. Everyone else had pushed the provos on what they refused to do — urging them to crack under the pressure — while Mr Cowen asked the IRA how they saw decommissioning and how they might one day do it.

Help clearly came from Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin. They kept on making the case for politics, rather than violence, within republicanism even when events conspired to undermine them and strengthen their internal critics. Tony Blair always believed they were serious. So did this newspaper. But others did not and they duly excoriated those who dared be more hopeful. Today those critics should reflect on whether their actions helped or hindered the search for peace.

That final remark (from a Guardian editorial) of hideous hypocrisy sums up the whole dilemma facing the British imperialist-system bourgeoisie under terrible pressure to keep 'confidence in Britain's ability' going, but equally anxious to avoid blame via any amount of nauseous humbug as soon as there is a hint of retreat in the air and for the nation to 'cut its losses' and 'avoid pouring good money after bad', etc, etc. Editorially, the Guardian has played as vicious a chauvinist hate-making role against reporting the IRA's national-liberation war honestly and honourably as any of the gutter-colonist tabloids screaming against 'terrorism', etc. For the Guardian to now try accusing other sections of the British capitalist press of responsibility for failing to depict the Irish national-liberation war in a rational-enough light to have made this new peace agreement with the IRA possible at least 7 years earlier when its ceasefire initiatives began, is a classic case of rats deserting the sinking ship.

The significance of this shame-filled attempted cover-up cannot be overestimated. The EPSR has consistently explained that the violent propaganda stunt of unilaterally suspending the entire New-Ireland developments on a whim of shallow sound-bite gimmickry was a catastrophic mistake by Blair-Mandelsonism which a humiliated Labour Government would have cause to regret when forced to climb down, as now.

But the pain is just as great and damaging for British Imperialism Ltd as a whole. Its cause and reputation has been colossally damaged by having its bluff called in this spectacular way by the ferociously heroic but relatively tiny and vulnerable Irish national-liberation struggle, launched and maintained largely by just handfuls of minority republicans in the Occupied Zone when the war started, and for years dismissed contemptuously even by other republicans and nationalists in the north, as well as by all 57 varieties of fake-'leftism' throughout the ex-'British Isles' territory. 

If the above embarrassed capitalist-press admissions are what even the British media are prepared to reveal about the Blair Government's humiliation, imagine what much of the foreign press must be reporting where an active wish to belittle British imperialism is likely to rule, (notwithstanding a general 'free world', desire to condemn or disown 'revolutionary violence' wherever and whenever possible.) The vision of the mighty British imperialist state having rings run round it by a relatively small number of Sinn Féin activists and IRA volunteers, long dismissed as hopeless bog-trotters by the ridicule-making black-propaganda department of Whitehall ideological control, - will be being enthusiastically digested internationally by the vast majority of countries, 'friends' of Britain included.

But while the satirists will have a field day, and all bourgeois ideology which has been hopelessly caught out will try, like the Guardian, to now dismiss it all as someone else's mistake, or now imply that it was not a very significant struggle after all, involving a smaller total population than that of Kent, and really about not much more than how local government should be organised, etc, etc, — in reality it has been a battle of colossal world significance.

More than just the once-mighty but now ageing and fading British imperialist bourgeoisie being in trouble, London's difficulties with control over a little bit of little Ireland truly reflect how it is the whole imperialist system which is failing to impress and dominate people any longer. The whole world's masses are outgrowing their willingness or suitability to be dominated any longer by 'superior' imperialist power. The earth's entire population is beginning to find the damaging defects of monopoly-capitalist exploitation intolerable. The quantity and quality of revolts against the system, internationally, both local disputes and inter-state conflicts, is dramatically escalating. People are up in arms (literally) everywhere. And increasingly, the imperialist powers' wish to control everything becomes impossible. However mighty, the notion of the US superpower playing the part of world gendarme is seen as increasingly unrealistic, not to say ludicrous. Many 'small' interventions by the USA over the last 40 years have been a hair-raising nightmare for the American bourgeoisie, and already there is no longer any thought of intervening in many of the world's 'hot spots', - to quote from the fake-'left' mantra which defeatistly tries to convince workers everywhere that they are all now under the hopeless domination by the 'New World Order'. Some 'Order'! Already, large parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are in anti-system turmoil which the West has not the slightest hope of being able to contain or control.

The gigantic achievements of the Sinn Féin and IRA national-liberation struggle, defying with tiny numbers the very worst that the whole might of British imperialism could do to it for more than 30 years, - are a worthy symbol of this growing international ability to take on and defeat the prevailing system of monopoly-capitalist domination.

Equally symbolically, the whole Trot and Revisionist fake-'left', - posturing still loudly about how 'communist' they are, etc, but in reality still cringing defeatistly in their minds in face of a non-existent 'New World Order' imperialist domination as far as understanding world history is concerned, - has always sneeringly written off the Sinn Féin/IRA anti-imperialist war as 'mere nationalism', or 'not revolutionary-socialist enough', etc. Such posturing humbug, - with its roots of course in anti-communist hatred for the honourable record against imperialism of the proletarian-dictatorship workers states, - finds no difficulty in signing-up for the reactionary 'Ken for mayor' stunt, which is not just an anti-socialist gimmick but a vital part of Blair-ism's whole counter-revolutionary stunt to continue bamboozling the working class, diverting its attention from the collapsing imperialist crisis, - via the quite empty and meaningless hoax of 'extending democracy and the people's say in things' through the London Assembly elections (and following on from the equally bankrupt 'regional democracy extensions' in Scotland and Wales which can and will change nothing about the onset of capitalist-system crisis).

It was crucial to attack the Assembly stunt itself as the main plank in any communist intervention in last week's elections, and the fake-'left' predictably came nowhere near to such an understanding. All the main strands of the 57 varieties of Trot and Revisionist anti-communism chose to pursue their own 'left' careerism instead, either separately, or collectively in the appalling fraud called the 'London Socialist Alliance' which is allied only in its gross opportunism, and deliberately has to avoid trying to sort out any part of the currently badly tangled and distorted history of contemporary anti-imperialist struggle because even a scrap of agreement about where the world is now, and how it got there, would be impossible.

But it is this theoretical sorting-out, to re-establish the proletarian-dictatorship revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism, which is now the most desperate need of the whole international working class. These anti-theory, anti-Leninist opportunists are exclusively just part of the problem, and their doctrinaire, petty-bourgeois self-righteousness in pursuit of single-issue subjective-idealist posturing (behind women's lib, black nationalism, gay rights, etc, and every other politically-correct pose) can never possibly be part of the solution to the collapse of communist revolutionary philosophy from which the whole world is suffering.

But despite the fake-'left's' shabby part in helping Blairism breathe life into distrusted bourgeois democracy by joining in the farce of doorstep leaflet promises about this, that, and the other 'reforms' which would all supposedly be 'nice' (and supposedly achievable!), — the London Assembly stunt did little better than the rest of the farce of 'local democracy' elections, with more than two-thirds of the electorate again refusing to turn out to vote.

This 'plague on all your houses' attitude was not surprisingly also the only discernible outcome of what votes that were cast, with the Tories gaining just over a third of them to 'win big', - i.e. with just 10% of the country therefore saying 'good for Hague and the Tories', but 90% of the country saying nothing of the sort, and wisely so.

The real result is just another well-deserved slap in the face for this disgusting phenomenon called Blairism, but with the electorate still mindful enough of similar past Tory wretchedness (and of parliamentary cretinism in general) to say to Hague and the Lib Dems 'but you're not much better either'.

The LSA will boast of its 3% in the constituency beauty contests (less than 1% of the total electorate) and will make a fuss that if all the 'lefts' could have combined in the PR section instead of being split four ways, then nearly 4% of votes would have been gained (or just over 1% of the electorate). All of which deliberately misses the main point that the 'lefts' are not united, and the votes are indisputably small, for the same reason, - that these same 'lefts' have helped kill all philosophy of socialist revolution by their anti-Sovietism and anti-communism, and that just playing the bourgeois electoral game of meaningless 'reform' promises is the way to further alienate the working class, if anything. And that even if 'winning' like Livingstone, it is likely only to open the door to even more reactionary populism next time. It is the whole bourgeois society and bourgeois government system which is rotten, and not just its private economic ownership and its individualist philosophical and cultural degeneration.

Capitalism is a sick lottery, and the 'salvation' of Rover by BMW paying the Phoenix chancers to take the ailing giant off their hands and run it on a shoestring in a cutthroat world car-market-anarchy which already has too much 'capacity', sums up the unplanned nonsense of it all. Piecemeal 'reform' just prolongs it, and can't work. Historical forces lead to revolution only. The movement needs consciousness. Build Leninism.       EPSR