"The people have voted Sinn Fein, we must teach them what Sinn Fein is.” Father Michael O’Flanagan, a Republican priest after Sinn Fein’s victory in the 1918 election.

Seventy-one per cent of the Northern Irish electorate in the 22 May referendum voted Yes to the question: “Do you support the Agreement reached in the multi-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland?” Without a doubt the great motive for voting Yes was the desire for peace, the heartfelt wish for the new start the political leaders said the Agreement would be. And it was a very impressive list of politicians, backed by all the propaganda resources at their disposal, who told them to vote Yes: Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, David Trimble, John Hume, Gerry Adams and the leaders of the small Protestant parties linked to para-military groups, like the Progressive Unionist Party. This was probably the greatest popular front coalition of all time!

Every voter had received a glossy pamphlet on the Agreement. In fact this is a lawyers’ document, very heavy reading and hard to decipher. Its circulation was only the mimicry of informing people: not a large number of the electorate will have ploughed through it, pen in hand. Most people voted for what the politicians promised and for what they hoped was in the deal, or would come out of it.

The Government and its political propagandists and dissemblers, the “spin doctors,” present things as now virtually cut and dried. They say that peace is already secured after the Good Friday Agreement and the Yes vote in the referendum. In bald figures they have an impressive case. 71% did vote Yes. But that figure is misleading. The whole idea of there being one Northern Ireland is misleading: there are still two Northern Irelands. There is never one, there are always two Northern Ireland elections, one in each “community”. And there were two referendums.

Things were arranged so that communal distinctions were hidden. There is no public official breakdown of the vote in terms of the two sides. Precise figures are hard to get. Yet the gap in the communities between Yes and No voting was marked, and it was one of the most important aspects of the referendum. Overwhelming support for the Agreement from Catholics was countered on the Protestant side by a very big No. An exit poll by Ulster Marketing for Radio Telefis Eireann found that well over 90% of Catholics, but only 51% of Unionists, voted Yes. 49% voted No. Allow for big error, and still, certainly, not less than 40% of the Protestant-Unionists voted No.

A short time ago no one could have envisaged that 51% or 60% of Protestants would vote Yes to power sharing and a Council of Ireland. Nonetheless the 40-50% that voted No is an enormous base for Ian Paisley and his friends to build on, taking advantage of setbacks, disappointments and the effects on the Protestants of any military campaign the pseudo-Republican splinter groups launch (signs are that they will).

In the 1956-62 IRA campaign, the IRA decided to confine themselves to raids on customs posts and police stations in Catholic territory along the border so as not to risk triggering sectarian conflict in Belfast. Toward the end (1961-62) some of them decided on just that strategy — deliberately to stoke up the Protestant-Catholic antagonism. They did not have the strength to do it then. A decade later, in 1971, they did. The Continuity IRA may now pursue the same strategy, operating in tacit alliance with Ian Paisley and his Democratic Unionist Party.

The Agreement was put together with maximum hype, salesmanship and spin-doctoring. That helped build up an enormous momentum for the Yes campaign. Socialists should not buy into that hype. This deal has more going for it than any before, but it is not yet secure “peace”. The assembly elections (25 June) may produce a crop of representatives embodying a balance different from the referendum vote. Nor is it any sort of break with sectarianism: it is, as we shall see below when we examine it in detail, intricately “institutionalised sectarianism”.

Members of the new Assembly will be required to declare a communal allegiance so that the “checks and balances” in the Agreement can work. Sectarian watchwords will still have the central place in Northern Irish political life. Sectarianism will structure and organise politics from now on. There will be an immense inbuilt self-interest for politicians in making it continue so. For them the key question is: who will win the peace? If it is peace.

The core of the conflict in Ireland is that there are two distinct peoples with distinct national identities — the Protestant Unionists, descendants of seventeenth century settlers, who think of themselves as British, and the Catholic Nationalists who are what used to be called “Irish Irelanders”. Religion is the clear common indicator of identity.

The modern version of that conflict began with the refusal of the Protestant-Unionist minority on the island to let themselves be incorporated into an all-Ireland state ruled from Dublin by representatives of the Catholic majority on the island. They revolted: it was the Protestant-Unionists not the Catholic-Nationalists or Republicans who, in the two years before World War One, brought the gun into twentieth century Irish politics. Partition was won for them by that revolt, which was openly backed by the Tory Party (there was a Liberal government).

One-third of the Six Counties population was Catholic from the beginning, the majority in large parts of the territory, and in two of the Six Counties.

Demographic changes within the six counties will, perhaps within a decade, make the Protestant-Unionists a minority within “their own” substate. The Paisleyite rallying cry, “Majority Rule” — restored Protestant supremacy — will take on an opposite meaning to the one it has had since partition: a Northern Ireland majority for a united Ireland. The Protestants will thus pay the heavy price for having failed to secure a democratic settlement with the Catholic majority on the island early this century, and for the brutally imperialist character of the partition imposed on the people of Ireland by their British allies.

In the 112 years since Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill (to set up an all-Ireland Parliament, with very limited powers), history has shown all-island unity and all-Ireland separation from Britain to be incompatible. In response to this fact, Workers’ Liberty argues for “consistent democracy” (the expression is Lenin’s) — autonomy for the Protestant-Unionist heartlands within some all-Irish frame, and within a broader frame of closer British-Irish links, perhaps even confederation. For us to have gone beyond these general ideas to discussing precise details — for example, about the Catholics in Belfast — would have been futile: the details can only be worked out in discussion.

Our “democratic programme” is not put out as advice to governments or to bourgeois politicians, but as a basis on which the Northern Irish working class, Protestant and Catholic workers alike, could unite, and with which they could create a broad united working class party agreed on proposals to solve the constitutional (national-communal) question that divides and paralyses our class. In terms of Marxism, our proposals are rooted in the ideas of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party.

“In so far as national peace is in anyway possible in a capitalist society based on exploitation, profit-making and strife it is attainable only under a consistently and thoroughly democratic republican system of government… the constitution of which contains a fundamental law that prohibits any privileges whatsoever upon the rights of a national minority.

“This particularly calls for wide regional autonomy and fully democratic local government, with the boundaries of the self-government and autonomous regions determined by the local inhabitants themselves on the basis of their economic and social conditions, national make-up of the population, etc.” (1913 Resolution of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee.)

How does the Good Friday Agreement measure up against Irish facts and against the corresponding democratic programme of socialists?
Though the Agreement commits the British state to legislate for a united Ireland if a bare majority of the Northern Irish electorate should vote for it in a referendum, it tries for now to bury the basic question of two conflicting identities under a structure of balanced and weighted bureaucratic sectarianism.

While maintaining the existing partition, the Agreement concentrates on setting up institutionalised power sharing, backed by an impressive series of interlocking guarantees for minority rights.

The agreed institutions are to be erected above the 1920-21 partition structures. Thus it solves neither the legitimate “Irish National” question — the right of the Catholics where they are the majority, as they are in large areas adjoining the Republic, not to be severed from their own — nor the all-island Protestant minority question, the right of the Protestants where they are a majority (mainly in the North East of the 6 Counties) to autonomy and self-rule. The Agreement models itself on the European Union experience of slowly knitting Europe together economically and politically, thus draining off old national antagonisms, while leaving the walls dividing the national states standing, until they shall crumble and fall of themselves from disuse.

One of two things then. Either: the nationalist-unionist identity conflict will end or fade into political insubstantiality in the comparatively short time between now and when, on present trends, there will be a Six County Catholic-Nationalist pro-united Ireland majority (10 years? 15 years?).

Or: this will not happen soon and the original conflict of identity that led to the division of the island will then reappear inside the Six County state, with the Protestants again in the minority.
The checks and balances and guarantees in the Agreement are plainly designed also for an eventual united Ireland. Everything will hang on whether in 10, 15 or 20 years the Protestant then-minority in Northern Ireland will be ready to accept this — on whether present divisions and identities will have sufficiently faded. It would be rash to interpret the 51% (or 60%) Protestant Yes vote as acquiesence in that now.

Will the divisions fade? Many European nations, including England and Scotland — and their seventeenth century Northern Irish offshoot — had their national identity stimulated, shaped by and fused with Protestantism and the Reformation. If you exclude medieval Spain, as you must, in no country other than “Irish-Ireland” were Catholicism and national identity so fused. On the island of Ireland therefore we have two peoples in which intense national identity and religion are fused. And still very much alive. That will not disappear easily or quickly. The sectarian structures now being set up, will, like the IRA war, act to perpetuate it.

If the democratic programme Workers’ Liberty proposes is based on Leninism — in essence, majority self-rule based on territory, no matter how small the “cantons”, and working-class unity across the borders — the Good Friday Agreement belongs in Marxist terms to the Austro-Marxist school. Not self-determination on a territorial basis, but equality in an intricate system of designated national identities, within the existing territorial-state structures. Lenin criticised the Austro-Marxist approach as likely to perpetuate division and stimulate, irritate and preserve national antagonisms. It could not but work to preserve vertical divisions and work against the development of cross-nation, or cross-community, horizontal — class — divisions.

Let us examine the details of the Agreement and the institutions that will be created as a result of it.

Constitutional Issues
As between “a union with Great Britain or a sovereign united Ireland,” all participants — London, Dublin and Northern Ireland parties — “recognise the legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.”

Britain disavows a point of view and an interest in the matter: (The Republic declares a wish for a united Ireland.)

“It is for the people of the island of Ireland alone” [my emphasis] to “exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given”, “without external impediment”, to “bring about a United Ireland” should they want to. How might self-determination be exercised by the people of an island divided into two states? “By agreement between the two parts.” Under what conditions? “Agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.”

They “declare that Northern Ireland in its entirety” [my emphasis] shall not cease to be part of the United Kingdom, “without the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a poll held for [this purpose].” If “a majority in such a poll” express the wish to leave the United Kingdom, the British government will put to Parliament proposals agreed “between the London and Dublin governments” to give effect to that wish.

They “affirm” that should “the people of the island of Ireland exercise their right of self-determination” — as defined above — “to bring about a United Ireland, it will be a binding obligation on both governments to introduce and support in their respective parliaments legislation to give effect to that wish.”

They affirm that “whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland,” Britain, the sovereign power “with jurisdiction there,” shall exercise “rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions.”
The Secretary of State may order a poll to determine the will of the Northern Irish majority as between union with Britain or with the rest of Ireland. There must be a gap of 7 years between one such poll and the next.

The signatories note that while, “a substantial section of the people of Northern Ireland share the legitimate wish of a majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland, the present wish of a majority [my emphasis] of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the union with Great Britain.”

Sinn Fein put its name to the following proposition, which is a flat denial of the fundamental premise of their 27 year war, namely that the Six Counties is “British Occupied Ireland”: “Northern Ireland’s status as part of the UK reflects and relies upon that wish; and that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people.” (The meaning unmistakably — the point is repeated frequently — is, in principle, a bare majority).

Plainly in anticipation of a future majority to vote for Irish unity, “both governments… recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British or both… and … confirm their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship.” This “would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland.”

The Irish government agreed to repeal Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 constitution, in which Dublin claimed jurisdiction over the whole island, and to substitute for Articles 2 and 3, declarations of desire, intent and future possibility. An enormous majority in the 22 May referendum in the 26 Counties accepted this, substituting for Article 2: “It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland… to be part of the Irish nation…”; and for Article 3: “It is the firm will of the Irish nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland, in all the diversity of their identities and traditions, recognising that a united Ireland shall be brought about only be peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, [my emphasis] democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island” — that is in the 6 and 26 Counties.

(There will, they expect, be a majority for this. John Hume has written articles arguing with Sinn Fein that there is already a Catholic majority in the young generation. The Agreement is written to accommodate this expectation.)

The agreement endorsed in the May referendums sets up a number of “interlocking and interdependent” institutions:
1. A Northern Ireland Assembly.
2. A North/South ministerial council.
3. A Britain-Ireland Council and a British-Irish inter-governmental conference.

The Northern Ireland Assembly
The Northern Ireland Assembly will have 108 members elected from existing Westminster constituencies by Proportional Representation (STV). To it will gradually be devolved legislative and executive authority for matters now dealt with by Northern Irish governmental departments.

Northern Irish “Home Rule” will consist of a network of inter-communal power sharing institutions regulated by checks and balances.
The safeguards will ensure that “all sections of the community can participate and work together” and “are protected” in operating these institutions. It will be not party government but institutionalised communal coalition government. The executive will reflect the strength of the parties in the Assembly on a proportionally representative basis.

Ministerial positions, departmental committee membership and committee chairs will be allocated “in proportion to party strength.” Chairs and deputy chairs of the Assembly will be allocated proportionately. Membership will be “in broad proportion to party strengths in the Assembly.” So will Ministerial positions.
The document does not indicate how the more important committee chairs, etc will be allocated.

Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and “any Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland supplementing it” will be beyond the power of the Assembly or public bodies to infringe. There will be a Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and arrangements to ensure that “key decisions are proofed to ensure that they do not infringe the ECHR and any Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.” The courts, interpreting the ECHR and “any Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland” can render any Assembly legislation null and void.

Inter-sectarian institutions
From now on in politics will be structured around communal identity. Members of the Assembly will be required to designate themselves either Unionist or Nationalist or other (“at their first meeting members of the Assembly will register a designation of identity — Nationalist, Unionist or other.”) This is essential and organic to the workings of the system because key decisions will be taken on a cross-community basis, in one of two ways.

1. By a majority of members present and voting — but only if there is a separate majority in each of the “Nationalist and Unionist designations” present and voting — that is, a dual majority. This is called “parallel consent.” Duality is central and all pervasive in the new system, as it is in everything in Northern Ireland.
2. By a “weighted majority” of 60% of those present and voting, which includes 40% of the two “designations” present and voting. Legislation will be by simple majority of members voting “except when decision on a cross-community basis is required.”
What are the “key decisions” to which these cross community arrangements will apply? “They will be designated in advance.” They include electing the Chair of the Assembly, the First Minister (Prime Minister), and Deputy First Minister, and Assembly standing orders and budget allocations. A “petition of concern” by “a significant minority” (30 out of 108) can determine that an issue is designated “key”.

Ministers will have to take a pledge of office, to “serve all the people of Northern Ireland equally” and “in accordance with the general obligation of government to promote equality and prevent discrimination.” The Code of Conduct obliges ministers to “operate in a way conducive to promoting good community relations and equality of treatment.”
Ministers “shall use only democratic, non-violent means, and those who do not should be excluded or removed from office under these provisions.”

A minister may be removed from office by the Assembly voting on a cross-community basis.

In this transitional period before the Northern Ireland Assembly can begin to function “shadow Ministers shall affirm their commitment to non-violence and exclusively peaceful and democratic means and their opposition to any use or threat of force by others for any political purpose.” [My emphasis]. This may exclude Sinn Fein, unless a fudge is found. That the IRA will decommission its weapons and thus remove the “threat” they are seen to pose can, for now, be ruled out.

North-South Ministerial Council
To encompass “the totality of relationships” between and in the two islands, a North-South Ministerial Council will be established to “bring together those with Executive responsibilities in Northern Ireland and the Irish Government to develop consultation, co-operation and action within the island of Ireland.” It will implement “on an all-island and cross border basis… matters of mutual interest within the competence of the administrations, north and south.” Each side in the Council will remain responsible to their respective Parliaments. The Council will “use best endeavours” to adopt “common policies in areas where there is a mutual cross border and all-Ireland benefit… making determined efforts to overcome any disagreements.”

Inaugural meetings of the British-Irish Council and the North-South Ministerial Council will take place “as soon as practicably possible” after the Northern Ireland Assembly elections. In the transitional period between the Assembly election and the transfer of powers to the Assembly, all three bodies will meet “regularly and frequently… in order to establish their modus operandi.”

All this will be in place before power devolves from Westminster to the Belfast Assembly. “It is understood that the North South Ministerial Council and the Northern Ireland Assembly are mutually inter-dependant, and that one cannot successfully function without the other.” [My emphasis].

The Council will have a standing Joint Secretariat.

Most significantly the North-South Ministerial Council will deal with EU matters “including the implementation of EU policies and programmes and proposals under consideration in the EU framework.” This is of massive importance given the EU’s weight for both parts of Ireland. They will “ensure that the views of the council are taken into account and represented appropriately at relevant EU meetings.” This means that from now on Ireland as a whole begins to relate to the EU.

The British-Irish Council
There will be a British-Irish Council (BIC) to “promote the harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of relationships among the peoples of these islands.” On it will be representatives of the British and Irish governments and of the new devolved institutions in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and representatives of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This is what has unofficially been called the “Council of the Isles”. It will function in the same ways as the intra-Irish Council of Ministers. It will “normally” operate by consensus.

British-Irish Intergovernmental
Conference
To “deal with the totality of relationships” they establish “a standing British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference”. This will subsume the pioneering British-Irish institutions set up by the 1985 Hillsborough Agreement. It will “promote bilateral co-operation on all matters of mutual interest”. Decisions will be by agreement; without derogating from either government’s sovereignty, they will “make determined efforts to resolve disagreements between them”. They will together oversee Northern Irish affairs, Britain retaining executive and ultimate juridical responsibility.

“In recognition of the Irish government’s special interest in Northern Ireland,” and of the extent of mutual British-Irish concern in Northern Ireland, there “will be regular and frequent meetings of the conference” on non-devolved — British government administered — Northern Ireland matters, “on which the Irish government will put forward views and proposals.” The meetings “will also deal with all-island and cross-border co-operation on non-devolved issues.”
This is a two-tier “Council of Ireland” with the British and Irish governments retaining the right to act in loco parentis for the two Northern Irish communities. That was the core of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave Dublin a political share in running Northern Ireland. The new Agreement builds on and develops that. The essential new development is that now, in contrast to 1985, there are people willing to set up a corresponding Belfast local administration. This was provided for in the 1985 Agreement but intense Protestant opposition made it null and void.

The right to freedom from sectarian harassment
The British government will legislate into Northern Ireland law the European Convention on Human Rights — including power for the courts to overrule legislation.
A statutory obligation will be imposed on public authorities to function so as to promote equality of opportunity. The European Convention on Human Rights will be supplemented by Westminster legislation “to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland”.
A Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, independent of government and reflecting the community balance, will be set up. It will have the power to bring court proceedings or assist individuals to do so. There will be a statutory Equality Commission. The assembly may set up a Department of Equality.

The 26 counties Government will strengthen “the protection of human rights in its jurisdiction” — to “ensure at least an equivalent level of protection of human rights as will pertain in Northern Ireland”. A Human Rights Commission will be established “with a mandate and remit equivalent to that within Northern Ireland.” Plainly this looks to a future united Ireland and Protestant Protection within it. A joint committee of the two, (North and South), Human Rights Commissions, will be set up “as a forum for consideration of human rights issues in the island of Ireland.”

Decommissioning
“All participants... affirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations... and to use any influence they may have to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years following endorsement in referendums North and South of the agreement and in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement”. This puts Sinn Fein on the spot.

Policing and Justice
There will be, they say, a new beginning in policing in Northern Ireland with “a police force capable of attracting and sustaining support for the community as a whole” under “a new political dispensation which will recognise the full and equal legitimacy and worth of the identities, senses of allegiance and ethos of all sections of the community in Northern Ireland. The police service will be representative of the make up of the community as a whole.” In “a peaceful environment” the police will be disarmed. An independent Commission will make recommendations for means of encouraging widespread community support.”
Four years after the agreement is in effect the two governments will convene a conference to review and report on its operations.