The SDLP

Since the signing of the multilateral Belfast Agreement of 1998 there has been a debate around the question of having two rival Irish Nationalist political parties, Sinn Féin and the SDLP, to represent the interests of the Irish communities in the north-east of Ireland. Over the last fifteen years SF has become the dominant Nationalist party and the second largest political grouping in the North, giving it the junior position in the power-sharing regional government between the British Unionist and Irish Nationalist communities (not to mention the supposedly “unaligned” population).

Its Nationalist rivals in the SDLP have been much reduced in elected numbers and influence. Many assume that at some stage in the future the SDLP (or at least part of it) will simply be absorbed by one or more political parties from the southern part of Ireland branching northwards. However so far it trundles on through thick and thin, and though some claim to see positive signs of growth to many others the party is in stasis. It is simply running to stand still. 

Sinn Féin, though far from stellar in its record of regional governance and facing its own internal pressures due to a lack of progress in many key policy areas, attracts increasing support. In part that growth is driven by the party’s relative popularity in the rest of Ireland where it now regularly polls in third place, eclipsing the Irish Labour Party and others. The (overly) optimistic belief or assumption that SF will play some part in forming the next Government of Ireland is widespread amongst sections of the electorate and an increasingly worried right-wing, anti-Republican press, as is the belief that it will become the senior partner in the bilateral regional government in the north-east. 

In such circumstances the SDLP looks irrelevant to many voters, a party which served well in its time but whose time has since passed. Hence the suggestion by some commentators that the Irish communities of the north-east would be better served by a single political power block to further their interests and progress their reintegration with the rest of the country, leading ultimately to national reunification. However the north-east of Ireland is not the only region where such debates between rival intra-communal parties take place. In both the Basque Country and Catalonia traditional “establishment” groupings are being challenged by up and coming rivals from within their communities (as indeed Sinn Féin once did – and which it might face at some stage in the future, though probably not from a resurgent SDLP). 

The North American nation of Québec offers some further interesting parallels. From CBC News: 

“Quebec’s ruling pro-sovereignty party is calling on its rivals to step aside and give the Parti Québécois a better chance of winning the next election. 

On the weekend, Premier Pauline Marois called on Québec Solidaire and the upstart Option Nationale to sacrifice themselves for the greater cause of Quebec sovereignty and potentially open the way for the PQ to win a majority in the next election. 

In 1968, the Rally for National Independence (RIN) stood aside, contributing to the PQ party’s majority win, years later in 1976. 

Marois says Quebec’s other separatist parties should follow the RIN’s example, but this time the competition is refusing to stand on the sidelines. 

Québec Solidaire MNA Françoise David responded to Marois’ pleas, saying that while their parties may agree on Quebec sovereignty, they disagree on a range of other topics. 

The PQ is also being slammed by its newly formed rival, Option Nationale. 

The party criticizes the government for being too apologetic for its pro-separatist stance.” 

It will be interesting to see if the SDLP faces similar calls from Sinn Féin in the next series of Stormont or Westminster elections, or requests for an electoral pack. So far the party has set its face against any such agreements, temporary or otherwise. In contrast political parties from the British Unionist minority are actively seeking co-operation between each other and fielding joint-candidates with the objective of diminishing Irish Nationalist electoral representation in the north-east. 

Despite many years of requests both sides of the border the possibility of a mainstream southern party moving northward to contest elections seems faint. Other national parties, like éirígí, the Workers Party, the Socialist Party and People Before Profit are far too weak to make any impression. Fianna Fáil has been actively organising in Belfast and elsewhere for a decade but hopes of it fielding candidates have been met with repeated disappointed. Fine Gael, current senior partner in Ireland’s coalition government, is highly unlikely to organise in the North given its general hostility towards reunification. The Irish Labour Party, on a downward spiral in all recent polls, though theoretically a “sister party” of the SDLP is under its current (and highly unpopular) ex-WP/DL leadership pretty lukewarm in its sisterhood. Until the putsch-leaders at the top of Labour are replaced (and one hears rumours) no change in policy is likely from that source. 

So where next for the SDLP and the electoral representation of the Nationalist community in the north-east of Ireland? More of the same? Or can agreements be made to increase the overall effect of the Nationalist vote? One fears that an adherence to outworn positions will simply allow the united front of British political separatism in Ireland to gain at the next series of elections – making loosers of us all on this island-nation.

Nigel Farage, a British Nationalist – of the Right-wing variety

One of the reasons why I despise so many on the British “Left” is their utter and complete hypocrisy when it comes to British Nationalism – or as they prefer to call it: “Unionism”. For you see there are many good and true socialists and social-democrats in Britain who are as every bit as rabid in their allegiance to the concept of “Greater England” as any on the British Right. Forget the BNP or EDL. There are some people in Britain’s Labour Party who would make the average DUP or UUP militant separatist in the north-east of Ireland pale in comparison. Britannia über alles! 

Take this article from the New Statesman, Britain’s independent but Labour-supporting magazine of the Left, where many of the great and the good of the socialist and liberal intelligentsia have appeared at one time or another down through the decades. The focus of the article? Why non-other than the SNP, the popular left-of-centre government party of Scotland. So you’d expect something supportive or if critical at least friendly? All comrades together marching towards a brave new dawn? Think again. 

“Today politicians are fearful of the potential “breakthrough” of a nationalist separatist party with a charismatic leader. No, not Alex Salmond and the SNP, but Nigel Farage and UKIP. Nevertheless, the similarities between the two parties are striking. When you consider that both are obsessed with constitutional politics and plebiscites; both are derided for their collection of “fruit cakes”; both admire the right-wing economic policies of Margaret Thatcher; both stand on a none-of-the-above party platform, challenging the political establishment; and, ultimately, both believe that the blame for all life’s woes lie with membership of a certain union.” 

Oh god… I can feel one of my headaches coming on. Anyway, talking of fruitloops, er, -cakes: 

“The SNP’s breakthrough in Scotland did not happen in 2011, nor in 2007 as some would have us believe, but rather over time, and can be traced back to the void created by the 1960s decline of the Tories in Scotland, which the SNP helped to fill, as well as the start of distrust of the three main parties among the Scottish electorate. This was first noticed when the SNP started to win local elections, and come strong runners up in by-elections like the one in West Lothian in 1962, where it scooped most of the Conservative votes. Since then, many of its strongholds are in what were once Conservative areas. Hence the old SNP nickname north of the border: “the Tartan Tories”. 

They manoeuvred to collect these initial votes through their embrace of previously Tory values around tradition and, most obviously nationalism, as well as an ownership of rural issues; depicting Westminster as distant and unrepresentative; oh and the argument that membership of the union was not only expensive, but somehow that Scotland was subsidising England. Sound familiar?” 

No it doesn’t sound familiar because the Tory Party in Scotland never embraced Scottish nationalism, never campaigned on rural ownership issues, never argued that Westminster was illegitimate and never argued that Scotland was subsidising England. Sometimes when making a clever point a writer’s own cleverness can trip them up. Then again if you are a Labour party activist being given a free platform in a partisan national magazine and website to attack your opponents I don’t suppose you need worry too much about burdensome things like facts.

A mural in Belfast highlights the collusion between the British military and paramilitary forces and British terrorist groups in the north-east of Ireland as part of Britain’s counter-insurgency war in the country

We are told repeatedly by the political establishments in Ireland and Britain that there is no hierarchy of victims in relation to the war which erupted in the north-east of Ireland during the late 1960s and which lasted (formally) until 2007. So why are Irish men, women and children murdered north and south of the British-imposed partition line by British state-backed terrorists clearly held to be of lesser value or import by many of Dublin’s media elite?

Is it because the British terrorists were fighting as part of Britain’s counter-insurgency war in Ireland and the majority of the Irish journalistic establishment were sympathetic to the objectives of that war? Is it because the Dublin press regarded the Irish Republican Army as “terrorists” while the British Unionist militants were classed as “paramilitaries” alongside the British “security forces”?

Perhaps it’s because our major sources of news and current affairs during the height of the conflict, RTÉ, the Irish Times and Irish Independent, were riddled with active or former members of the Workers Party, which was dominated in the 1970s and ‘80s by avowedly Neo-Unionist sympathisers?

While the Workers Party has moved on many of those ex-WP infiltrators have become the doyens of Ireland’s Dublin-based media, still wielding power and influence behind the closed doors (and shuttered windows) of Ireland’s elites through an incestuous web of journalism and politics. Their poisonous legacy is as virulent as ever, still corrupting the news agendas of our national press and our radio and television broadcasters. In years past former British terrorist leaders like David Ervine were eulogised and fawned upon in the Irish press while their Republican counterparts were demonized and set up for character assassination (or actual assassination). And that is still the agenda.

From Fitzjames Horse:

“I am not holding any brief for the IRA and their actions such as the mass bombing of Belfast in July 1972, Bloody Friday, or any other attack by bomb or bullet. Nor am I going to play the Loyalist politician game of talking about a hierarchy of victim.

What I am going to do is say that there was a hierarchy of “combatant”. The IRA and the Brits were opposite sides of the same coin. Of course Unionists would not like me saying that. They have issued their respective apologies for Bloody Friday and Bloody Sunday – but should they? Even in a pro-forma way? They fought their wars and for the most part played within their rules.

Unionists would see the IRA and UVF-UDA as two sides of the same coin. They are wrong, deliberately so. It elevates Loyalists to a status that they don’t deserve. If Loyalist thugs wanted to serve their community the option to join the legal RUC and legal UDR was open to them. Nationalists had no such legal option.

I am not saying that IRA were rebels with a cause. But I am clearly stating that Loyalist paramilitaries were a rabble without a cause, except sectarian murder. The British Bullet is one thing. The IRA Bomb is one thing. The Loyalist Meat Cleaver which EVENTUALLY ended your life is very different.

Republicans have apologised for their excesses. The British have apologised for their excesses. The Loyalists – their entire campaign was about Excess. Republicans do themselves no favours by seeing the Loyalists as people somehow caught up in something beyond their control.

So why does Miriam O’Callaghan tackle Gerry Adams on his alleged involvement with the IRA? Why does Gerry’s insistence that he was never involved with the IRA irritate so many journalists?

Well, let’s start with the premise that journalists are hypocrites. Twenty years ago as the Peace Process was gaining momentum, journalists played the Northern Iron Office game of differentiating between Sinn Féin and the IRA. Fair enough. I went along with it as well. All for the Common Good. Let’s be adult about this, the whole point of the Peace Process was to get the IRA to stop shooting and bombing and get them into Government. Creative Ambiguity dictated the distinction was made. And it worked well – too well. Sinn Féin was only supposed to be the minority Nationalist party but, oops, Sinn Féin ended up the majority Nationalist party.

So what do journalists do? Having helped in making a distinction twenty years ago they now seek to blur it.

Questions are asked of Gerry Adams. He denies his own involvement and apologises for the IRA excesses. But nobody asks these questions of Loyalist paramilitaries. And they have much more to answer for. They are still involved in criminal activity. And nobody can quite get their heads around the sheer sectarian nastiness of the 1970s.

So why aren’t questions asked? Well, Loyalists were always a marginalised part of the Troubles. A sideshow? Except of course for the people bereaved through their butchery. They were never meant to be part of the solution.

Was that butchery part of the Conflict? Or was it something different? Just serial killing using the Conflict as a cover?

And yet for me that butchery defines the Troubles. The wife who was phoned by her husband’s killers so she could hear the torture. Or Rosemary McCartney who was abducted with Patrick O’ Neill and taken to a UDA Romper Room where Rosie was forced to SING for her killers. While watching Patrick being tortured by Davy Payne.”

No one is denying the right or even the correctness of Irish journalists quizzing Gerry Adams TD about his past as an active Irish Republican and opponent of the continued British Occupation in the north-east of Ireland. As a member of Dail Éireann and perhaps one day of Rialtas na hÉireann that questioning is entirely appropriate.

However perhaps the next time Miriam O’Callaghan or anyone else in RTÉ feels like flexing their investigative muscles they might also ask Peter Robinson, Joint First Minister of the North of Ireland and leader of the DUP, what exactly was his involvement with Ulster Resistance, the British terrorist organisation that received one of several large arms shipments from Apartheid-era South Africa under the auspices of the British Security Service, MI5. Perhaps RTÉ, or heaven forefend the Sunday Independent, might also investigate the number of convicted terrorists that are members of the DUP or who have stood as DUP candidates in the North of Ireland?

Or will the anti-Republican media establishment in Dublin continue to believe that when it comes to the British terror gangs in Ireland, my enemy’s enemy is my friend?

Deaths caused by British Forces:

51.5% Civilians

44.8% Paramilitaries/Insurgents

03.5% British Forces

Deaths caused by British Terrorists:

85.4% Civilians

9% British Terrorists

4% Republican Forces

1.3% British Forces

Deaths caused by Republican Forces:

52% British Forces

35% Civilians

11.7% Paramilitaries/Insurgents

00.4% the Irish security forces