Northern Ireland "rejectionism"

Submitted by Matthew on 20 July, 2011 - 9:59

Serious street fighting in Northern Ireland between police, Catholic youths, and dissident Republicans, on one side, and Protestants, Catholics and police on the other, is becoming all too reminiscent of the clashes that led to the breakdown of the old Six Counties Protestant-ruled state in mid-1969, and the beginning of British army intervention on the streets.

There are people on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant sectarian divide who work deliberately to push things as far as they can, in order to smash up the present mandatory power-sharing system set up under the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).

There have always been bitter “rejectionists” on the Protestant side. The worst single slaughter in the “Troubles” occurred after the GFA was signed, the work of dissident Republicans.

Does the recent fighting indicate a level of intensifying conflict that threatens to break the power-sharing system?

In 1998 and afterwards there was very widespread rejection of the Good Friday Agreement, and barely enough Protestant support to keep the experiment of power-sharing afloat. Many Protestant-Unionists felt they were losers in that Agreement, being forced to abandon the hope of majority (Protestant-Unionist) rule and accept the mandatory right of the minority to be in government with them.

By contrast, Catholic-nationalist support for the GFA was massive. The two main Catholic-nationalist parties, the SDLP and Sinn Fein (representing the IRA), backed the agreement. The dissident Republicans were a mere splinter group, nowhere near Adams and McGuinness in the support they had.

The Catholics felt that they gained a great deal. That was true, though in fact a looser variant of the 1998 power-sharing agreement had been on offer since late 1973 and the Sunningdale Agreement. The subsequent 25-year war won nothing in addition to that, except that mandatory involvement in government for the different shades of political opinion able to win enough votes ensured that the Provisionals and the Paisleyites were guaranteed a place in government.

A number of things, however, are new.

The economic crisis blights all hopes of things improving steadily. Cuts are likely to have a far worse effect in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the UK.

The system set up by the GFA is itself a system of intricate bureaucratically-organised sectarianism. It tried to freeze, and over time detoxify, sectarian animosities, translating them into political jockeying by Protestant-Unionist and Catholic-nationalist parties. Far from sectarianism getting less in the years since the GFA, it has got much worse. Over 40 internal walls between Catholic and Protestant areas now segment Belfast, where at the time of the GFA there were only half that many. Economic crisis is unfreezing some of the frozen sectarian animosities, and they are still toxic.

The years of Provo-Protestant-British warfare which persuaded many to back the GFA are ancient history to the present generation of young people, many of whom in certain areas are alienated from the society.

There is probably a slow erosion of the authority of the Sinn Fein leaders, now in government. They cannot but be seen as in part responsible for the way things are for many working-class Catholics. In the Catholic ghettoes, the dismantling and disarming of the IRA removes much of the power of intimidation and coercion on which Sinn Fein’s authority rested.

In the form of songs and stories, a powerful current of Republican intransigence and revolt runs through the Catholic community, onto which current grievances can easily be attached. The political culture that looks to communalist, nationalist, blame-the-Brits explanations for what is wrong is immensely strong in Northern Ireland.

The dissident Republicans are becoming more effective in organisation and military capacity.

The Protestant paramilitaries of the UVF, who strongly supported the GFA, are undergoing political changes, perhaps in connection with internal factionalism and external gangsterism.

Can the “rejectionists” topple the power-sharing system? In contrast to the days of Protestant majority rule, under the GFA system dissatisfaction is much more a Protestant than a mainstream Catholic thing. That limits, and certainly slows down, mass Catholic identification with the rioting Catholic youth.

The tragedy in all communal conflicts is that at a certain point the “extremists” set the pace, and set community to confrontation with community. By targeting the whole “other community”, they force the members of that community to identify with their own “extremists”, if only in self-protection.

That seems a long way off yet, even if recent events make it less distant than it was.

The flashpoint in 1969 was not the July marches of the Orange Order, but in Derry in mid-August when the Orange Apprentice Boys organisation held its annual march. Dissident Republicans have some support in Derry now. Watch what happens on 13 August when the Apprentice Boys march.

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