Ireland: Republicanism's Surrender By Installment Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Republicanism's Surrender By Instalment [Anthony McIntyre, co-editor of republican magazine Fourthwrite, analyses the impact of the arms inspection report on the future of republicanism in Northern Ireland.] The report to the International Independent Decommissioning Body, from Cyril Ramaphosa and Martti Ahtisaari which states that IRA "weapons are secure and cannot be used without their becoming aware that this has happened" was significant but not surprising. In a sense it marks a further down payment in the process of 'surrender by instalment' which the leadership of the Republican Movement have been pursuing for a number of years now. The major question that historians will ask is not why the republicans surrendered but why they fought such a futile long war only to get brought back to accepting less than was on offer in 1974 and which they then rejected outright. It has not been unconditional surrender. And it has been infinitely better than continuing to fight a futile war for the sake of honouring Ireland's dead yet producing only more of them. But let us not labour under any illusions that the conditions were good. The strategic logic of engaging with republicans from the British point of view was to establish a process that would be inclusive of republicans but would exclude republicanism. The extent of British success can be gauged by the ground conceded by republicanism. The consent principle and by logical extension, partition, has been accepted; the RUC has been modernised; the Northern parliament has been re-established. Sinn Fein stands poised to prove republicanism wrong - and demonstrate that the Northern State can be reformed. In this sense republicanism is effectively decommissioned. Discursively, it lives on but this is little more than lip service. In substantive terms republicanism has been reduced to vampirising the ideas of the SDLP and the latest move on decomissioning now opens the way to colonise the SDLP constituency. Some might yet conclude that John Hume was prepared to sacrifice the SDLP as a party to ensure the triumph of SDLP ideology. What does the future hold? Sinn Fein as the expression of state republicanism and a party of votes as distinct from a party of ideas will move to straddle the middle ground. Those marginalised that sustained it during the hard times will not experience the good times. That is the trophy of the nationalist middle class. The marginalised will remain and will be either serviced or exploited in some form or other by non-state republicanism. If republicanism re-emerges let it be democratic rather than elitist. Army councils only ever lead us to despair or disaster. Source: Guardian (UK) - June 26, 2000 via Arm The Spirit ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-07.14.00-10:29:20-31619