There is a substantial unionist/loyalist majority only in the small area in the north-east of Ireland – east Derry, most of Antrim, north Down and north Armagh. Even within this area, in Belfast for instance, the anti-union vote is more than 30 per cent. The pro-Union population amounts to just 18 per cent of the island’s total population.

Yet from this area the unionist minority has exercised for over 70 years a sweeping veto over the political will of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people, backed up by the guarantees of the British government.

This anti-democratic faction has also been underpinned in its power by the Dublin government and the constitutional nationalist parties’ guarantee of their minority veto contained in:

• the 1985 Hillsborough agreement
• the Downing Street Declaration of 1993; and
• the Framework document of 1995.

Even the Provisionals under the terms of the Hume/Adams agreement of two years ago agree that the unionist veto, in the guise of ‘unionist consent’, should be maintained.

The message the establishment parties are therefore sending to Six-County nationalists is that they are not part of this country. That they are not in fact part of the majority on this island and that the wish of the establishment parties is to push Six-County nationalists out of Ireland into another state.

This distortion clearly violates Ireland’s 32-County sovereignty and should be rejected. It is nevertheless the foundation-stone of the current London/Dublin/Washington process. Any agreement will be subject to the wishes of the unionist 18 per cent of the population regardless of what the rest of the people of Ireland want.

Republican Sinn Féin President, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, pointed out in his speech at Bundoran on August 31 that the British will abandon the unionists in time just as they are abandoning their allies in Hong Kong in July 1997, without any referendum or election.

Meanwhile, August saw the extradition from the US to the British of Irish political prisoner, Jimmy Smyth. This was authorised by President Clinton, who fought the 1992 election on the slogan ‘No more Joe Dohertys’. He also promised to make available visas for all Irish spokespersons.

Yet Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and other members of Republican Sinn Féin are still denied US visas as the November 1996 US presidential election looms. Clinton also vetoed legislation containing the MacBride Principles earlier this year despite his pledges of support for them in 1992.
Archive 96 Index

Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie marked "attention web-editor".