Negotiation Now Is Crucial

Daily Star political columnist Dr John Coulter contemplates British state options for dealing with armed republicanism. The article featured in Tribune Magazine.

Will the real republicans please stand up?

That may sound flippant in the aftermath of the recent commemorations to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. But given the splits which have occurred in republicanism since that failed rebellion, the question needs to be seriously addressed as to which group really can claim to be the genuine political successor of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army.

More significantly, just as the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty did not bring peace to the island, so, too, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement did not bring an end to sectarian conflict in modern Ireland.

A violent dissident republican movement bitterly opposed to the peace process – and especially to the Sinn Fein political agenda – has emerged since that Belfast Agreement was signed.

Just as the British decided in late 1919 that the time was right to talk peace with the IRA during the War of Independence, so the Rising centenary has sparked arguments that the time has come to talk to republican dissidents.

The problem is: with what faction of the heavily fragmented dissident republican movement does the British and Irish governments negotiate?

Ironically, the fragmentation was a deliberate policy to combat infiltration by security force agents. At one time, there were up to five different terror groups representing dissident republicanism – Real IRA, New IRA, Continuity IRA, Oglaigh na Eireann and Republican Action Against Drugs.

Each group had its own command structure with a simple, brutal agenda: kill Brits. But the huge difficulty for British and Irish government negotiators now is how to bring the dissident republicans into the democratic process when there is no significant political party to represent such dissidents.

By 1998, Sinn Fein had established itself as a major political voice for republicans in Northern Ireland. In 2016, there is no such voice for dissidents.

Perhaps the first step is for Sinn Fein, now that it has significant representation in both the Dail in Dublin and Stormont in Belfast, to act as a political conduit for the dissidents.

There is a variety of fringe dissident political groups, but all of them lack the influence to bring about a terrorist ceasefire by all the violent factions.

Likewise, many of the dissident factions believe that Sinn Fein has sold out on the principles of the 1916 Rising and that the party is merely administering British rule in Northern Ireland.

Republican dreams of having a united Ireland by 2016 to coincide with the Rising centenary have vanished in pretty much the same political smoke as in 1916 when the rebellion leaders realised they could not defeat the British forces in Dublin and that further fighting was pointless.

Many in the pro-Union community in the UK still believe the British intelligence analysis that the IRA’s ruling Army Council still calls the shots in Sinn Fein. For years, Sinn Fein was dismissed as the political apologist for the IRA’s terror campaign. But since 1998, the party has brought more politicians who have no links to the republican movement’s terror wing into its ranks of elected representatives.

This has enabled Sinn Fein to sell itself to the crucial Catholic middle class voters – a tactic which has seen the party steadily eclipse the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party at the polls. Indeed, the May 5 Northern Ireland Assembly election could well see Sinn Fein hammer the final nail into the SDLP’s coffin.

If this that happens, Sinn Fein will have transformed itself from an ultra Marxist mouthpiece for the IRA into a modern 21st century version of the now defunct constitutional republican outfit the Irish Independence Party.

A word of warning. There is also the chance that a more sinister agenda could emerge from the British thought process.

Just as in 1919 when the British used the notorious Black and Tans militia to hammer republicans to the negotiating table, the British and Irish governments could bypass Sinn Fein as a conduit and use solid military muscle to hammer dissident republicans into surrendering, as the leaders of the Rising were forced to do in 1916.

The challenge facing dissident republican factions is simple: do they have a realistic political agenda they can place before British and Irish negotiators?

6 comments:

  1. "If this that happens, Sinn Fein will have transformed itself from an ultra Marxist mouthpiece for the IRA into a modern 21st century version of the now defunct constitutional republican outfit the Irish Independence Party."

    More utter shite from Unionists Dr Buffoon. Since when were the shinners Marxist?

    "A word of warning. There is also the chance that a more sinister agenda could emerge from the British thought process.

    Just as in 1919 when the British used the notorious Black and Tans militia to hammer republicans to the negotiating table, the British and Irish governments could bypass Sinn Fein as a conduit and use solid military muscle to hammer dissident republicans into surrendering, as the leaders of the Rising were forced to do in 1916."

    This reprehensible appeal to military superiority is disgusting. Have the events of the passed 100 years not taught him anything? When does physical force work in Ireland?

    What is he a Doctor of? Did he get it from some diploma mill in the US run by dodgy hypocritical evangelical ministers a la Paisley?

    Twat.

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  2. Steve,

    some of this is simply gratuitous abuse. It has no place in the type of discussion TPQ exists to host

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  3. AM

    Sorry, but he winds me up. I grew up with many like him. He is slyly threatening violence against other people again with his 'Might is right' mantra.

    The Shinners were never Marxist either, they had a crack at the stickies for that very reason.

    I may have stepped over the mark with the Doctor snipe but this crap gets right up my nose.

    Free speech cuts both ways, if he says something asinine I should be allowed to critique and vice versa.

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  4. Calling him a twat because you disagree with him is hardly the best defence of free speech we have heard

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  5. LOL

    But you are right, I rescind my ire fueled vulgarity, and will try to restrain myself in future.

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  6. If “Doctor” Coulter really believes that Sinn Fein is an ultra-Marxist mouthpiece for the IRA then he is saying this for one of two reasons. Firstly he is just saying this to get a rise out of people by pressing the right buttons.

    If he truly believes that Sinn Fein is ultra-Marxist organisation when we should ask him where is the proof of this as he has provided none in his statement, just mere words, which can harm no one.

    On reflection Coulter’s statement says more about his the mind-set then it does about the statement itself.

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