UNIONIST VETO SUPREME

All the participants: Unionists, SDLP, Provisionals, Dublin and the Leinster House opposition parties, the British Government have accepted the Unionist Veto which is one of the two pillars on which the process is built. They are totally involved in the process which has shelved, for the present, the question of the surrender of arms, or “decommissioning”, which is the other pillar.

All the participants have signed up for the Mitchell principles which con-solidates the unionist veto. Those adhering to the principles “agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations.”

The basis of these principles is the Downing Street Declaration which enshrines the unionist veto, so that 18% of the population of this island can decide the future of the other 82%.

With this remarkable consensus we can take it as read that any settlement coming out of the talks, if in fact it does achieve a result, could only be a New Stormont under British rule.

All that is at issue at these Stormont talks therefore is how much the Unionists succeed in minimising the so-called ‘Irish dimension’, or cross-Border boards.

The Unionists have been posturing from the beginning of these talks, secure in their bottom line of maintaining the union and seeking the minimum amount of change.

In this regard the position of Ken Maginnis is crucial: he represents what is going to come out of the process rather than the puffing and blowing of David Trimble.

All the participants, once they sit around the table, have a hand in shaping the settlement, if such emerges at all, and will be involved in operating the settlement. This means securing and defending the settlement against those who would want to upset it.

From an Irish Republican viewpoint those who continue the struggle will be faced with this new arrangement.

In an interview on RTÉ Radio’s This Week programme (September 28) Republican Sinn Féin President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh referred to John Kenneth Galbraith’s maxim that “revolution is like kicking in a rotten door”.

ROTTEN

The new Stormont will be that reinforced door and it will represent an obstacle on the road to Irish freedom rather than a stepping-stone to it, as the apologists for this process would have us believe.

As we went to press the 26-County police, themselves established 75 years ago as a “stepping-stone” to Irish freedom, were raiding the home of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh in Roscommon.

The Establishments in Britain and Leinster House realise that it is Republican Sinn Féin and its message of a free and independent Ireland — the ÉIRE NUA proposal of a federation of the four provinces — that would end the partition of Ulster as well as the partition of Ireland that constitutes the real threat to British rule in this country.

In this issue

Feis na Poblachta

Eve-of-All-Ireland Rally

Nationalist nightmare continues

At the same time the 12-month scandal of the Catholic church picket by loyalists in Harryville resumed as the British government fails to protect the right to freedom to worship without intimidation and abuse.

Harryville protests to be extended

Families flee loyalist attacks in north Belfast

Nationalist home petrol-bombed

Last straw after nine years

Family forced to leave home of 33 years

‘Britz’krieg as Orange gangs attack north Belfast

School-bus attacked in Lisburn

Portadown schoolchildren attacked by loyalists

Letters to the editor