Sinn Fein's giving up of the revolutionary claim that the IRA was the designated inheritor of the second Dail (1920s insurrectionary all Ireland Parliament), and therefore the legitimate government of Ireland, and its acceptance that its only mandate was electoral, led, firstly, to accepting the "principle of consent", which is in effect a Unionist veto on anti-imperialism. That was the only basis on which the southern middle-class and its media would grudgingly allow the existence of a peace process. (The southern working class was always much more militant on the national question, and voted Fianna Fail "The Republican Party" rather than the small traditionally anti-republican Labour Party). It led secondly to the southerners' agreeing in a referendum to give up their claim to the whole island (articles 2 and 3 of their constitution).
The peace process originally rested on the shoulders of: Adams; Mowlam; Molyneaux (who -- and not the egregiously unsuitable streetfighting lawyer Trimble -- must have been the original candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize); Hume; the self-proclaimed unionist Blair; and above all the optimistic and enthusiastic southern Fianna Fail Taoiseach (prime minister) Reynolds. His outlook was the one peculiar to the 26 counties, which led to his Fianna Fail party (which its leader de Valera described as "partly constitutional") never giving up their guns, even when in government in 1932 -- any more than the other ex-IRA groups such as Fine Gael, Clann na Poblachta, or indeed -- even in the North -- the "Stickies" (Marxist "Official" IRA). Of course neither did the northern loyalists who ran guns from the Kaiser in defiance of the London government.
Reynolds was ousted by parliamentary infighting in Dublin. Mowlam was ousted by the jealous Blair, because she got a standing ovation at the New Labour party conference -- which shows the extent of his commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. Molyneaux was ousted by the despicable Trimble, whose first stalking horse for leader of the Ulster Unionist party was a UDA man. Trimble, a complete outsider who came up through the fascist UDA-Vanguard party, not the UU, only became leader because he had joined hands in the air with Paisley, and (to quote his rival John Taylor, a senior UU leadership candidate) "pranced" down the Catholic Garvaghy Road (Drumcree) at the end of a loyalist riot against the "security forces", in which he had participated.
As Danny Morrison protested in the Guardian, from day one Trimble relentlessly attacked the Good Friday Agreement, instead of promoting it -- talking of bringing Sinn Fein to heel. Naturally Paisley did the same job better, and he ousted the whole UU. Of course the same might well have happened if Molyneaux had remained leader -- after being ousted by Trimble, the bitter Molyneaux helped to oust Trimble by attacking the Agreement. The intransigence of unionism cannot be over-estimated.
>From the beginning Blair accommodated the unionists' already well practised
endless shifting of the goalposts. Officially in the House of Commons he
accepted the unionists' un-Irish demand for decommissioning (followed in
that by Clinton). That, as Reynolds afterwards pointed out, was a moving of
the goal posts; it had been no part of the Good Friday agreement, although
Blair, the unionists and the press endlessly repeated that it was. In fact
it was enforcing a military surrender -- not to the British Army but to the
unionist "family", which still keeps all its arms, legal and illegal. The
fact is that Blair, like Trimble, was abandoning the peace process and
treating the whole thing as a normal case of one part of the UK assembling
its regional government. Trimble's Oslo speech philosophised that the
modern state was not based on community identities but on democratic (i.e.
majoritarian, i.e. in the six counties, Unionist) voting.
The facts suggest that Sinn Fein will continue to be pressured to capitulate to an endless stream of new Unionist demands. The demand that they police republican dissidents -- to show that they are genuine democrats -- has already been made.
It's déjà vu all over again, a repeat of the Home Rule and Treaty "negotiations" (see Frank Gallagher, The Indivisible Island, London, Gollancz, 1957). It is a repetition of the British government's treatment of Irish nationalist politicians with contemptuous deceit, and of mutinous unionists with collusion.
J.D.