Sinn Fein manifestly failed in its talks objective

Robert McCartney enjoys the advantage of being candid. Usually. Not for him the contention of David Trimble that the Belfast Agreement requires the decommissioning of IRA arms before the participation of Sinn Fein in the new Northern Ireland executive. He has a different and, at first glance anyway, more impressive argument in favour of Sinn Fein's exclusion.

He advanced that argument in yesterday's Irish Times. His key point was captured in a single sentence: "No democratic institution worthy of the name can exist if it contains representatives of a party backed by a private army which declares: if the objectives of those who speak for us politically are not met, we reserve the right to achieve those aims by violent means and to retain the weaponry we currently possess to enable us to do so".

If Sinn Fein's position is that it will go along with the Belfast Agreement only for as long as its objectives are advanced and will then support a resort to violence to achieve the balance of its objectives, then Sinn Fein should be excluded from the democratic process.

This means not just that it should be excluded from the executive, but from the Assembly, and should have been excluded from the talks that led to the agreement.

Of course, Mr McCartney refused to take part in the talks that led to the agreement precisely on this point. But wasn't he proved wrong then? Certainly, the contention of himself and his then political ally, Conor Cruise O'Brien, that Sinn Fein would resort to the use of IRA violence in the course of the talks to "divvy" things along proved wrong.

Manifestly, Sinn Fein failed to achieve its objectives in the talks. Indeed, it was cornered into a position of advocating support for the proposition that ran counter to its founding philosophy. This was that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, would be altered only with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.

And since the agreement was ratified, Sinn Fein has given repeated indications of its unequivocal and unqualified support for it and for a renunciation of the option of violence. Gerry Adams, in his vivid assertion, did this at the beginning of September when he said: "Sinn Fein believe the violence we have seen in the past must be for all of us now a thing of the past, over, done with and gone".

In this newspaper just over two weeks ago Martin McGuinness repeatedly expressed unqualified support for the agreement, which he said represented the democratic will of the Irish people.

Now, it may be that this is just a ruse on the part of the republican leadership to extract the maximum of concessions from the British authorities, in terms of demilitarisation, the "emasculation" of the RUC (as Robert McCartney would see it) and the release of prisoners, without having to decommission a bullet. But if it were just a ruse would not a limited and militarily insignificant decommissioning of IRA arms further that ruse and encourage more concessions?

Aside from that, and even allowing for the counter-indication represented by the failure to decommission, surely there is now enough evidence available to suggest that Sinn Fein is serious about the agreement and about peace. It has secured a massive reduction in IRA violence over the past four years and two months (even allowing from the resumption of the campaign from February 1996 to July 1997 and the continuation of "punishment" beatings).

It has signed up to an agreement that is far short of its objectives; indeed, in a fundamental sense, a negation of its objectives. It has abandoned traditional positions to participate in the new democratic institutions. It has actively discouraged other organisations from involvement in violence. It has recently promised an end of violence once and for all. And, as for decommissioning, is it not likely (or at least possible) that the intransigence on this point is born more of pride than of calculation, since a minor compromise on the issue would secure further concessions?

I deliberately use the word "suggest" rather than "prove", for only time will "prove" and, in the meantime, it is true that there are grounds for some reserve about Sinn Fein's intentions. But there are grounds for reserve about the intentions of others in this affair as well.

Just four months ago there was good reason for being reserved about the democratic credentials of a large swathe of the unionist community.

A body, democratically established by an Act of the British parliament, the Parades Commission, decided to ban an Orange march from Drumcree Church through Portadown's Garvaghy Road on July 5th. The leaders of all the main unionist parties (i.e. the UUP and the DUP) opposed the decision.

On July 9th a leading member of the Orange Order, David McNarry, said that if the British government did not concede to the members of the Orange Order who were encamped at the church of Drumcree, "then I've got to say that we can, if we wish, put our minds to paralyse this country in a matter of hours".

Mr McNarry was threatening no more than what had actually been done two years previously when members of the Orange Order brought Northern Ireland to a standstill and forced the British government to do a volte face on Drumcree.

And what did the upholders of "fundamental tenets of democracy" say in response to this threat? David Trimble, the First Minister, said Mr McNarry had assured him that the words were not a threat. The Rev Ian Paisley said Mr McNarry's statement was "a factual statement". Mr Trimble and Mr Paisley, of course, had flirted with loyalist paramilitaries at Drumcree two years previously.

The doubts these episodes raise about some unionist politicians may be (indeed are) less worrisome than those that arise about Sinn Fein, but it shows that the application of fundamentalist criteria to democratic acceptability is problematic.

The whole point of this peace process (19931998) was to co-opt the republican movement into democracy, without compromising on what was seen as a basic condition (i.e. that the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland would be determined in the first instance by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland).

We are entitled to have confidence in that process, given what it has delivered already in terms of a huge reduction in violence.

Of course, it can still go wrong, but we know that the alternative to this process (the "security" response to IRA violence) failed to work for 26 years.