Members must have say on Rule 21

So unsatisfactory and glutinous was the fudge served up at the GAA's special congress on Rule 21 last May that it's hardly surprising the issue has so soon cropped up again causing embarrassment. Its renewed topicality has been brought about by two events.

Most recently, there was the grim episode of Donegal Celtic's on-off Steel and Sons cup match against the RUC. In the immediate context, the fact that the club's democratically taken decision was subverted amidst claims of intimidation is less important than the strand of opinion which underpinned the opposition to the match.

Isolating the RUC is a prominent part of Sinn Fein strategy and the party was implacably opposed to the cup tie taking place. Any concessions to a potential adjustment of relations with the police have to be vigorously opposed and, given its history, the republican movement could hardly have been expected to be fussy about the methods employed.

There is an obvious double standard in the attitude which expects the current peace process to force-feed unpalatable measures to those on the other side while refusing to let anything it finds distasteful near its own lips.

So the RUC - and those among the population who support them - have no option but to accept the prisoner release programme, through which some people whose patriotism vividly expressed itself in blowing the heads off policemen, re-emerge onto the streets. But Sinn Fein won't allow anyone under its influence play soccer with a police team.

No reasonable person can underestimate the strength of feeling against the RUC in nationalist, working-class areas, but the evidence was that the community divided on the issue of playing the match. Those with the biggest stake in the outcome predictably got their way.

The RUC is currently the subject of a commission to investigate the policing of Northern Ireland, so it can hardly be said that the issue is not receiving serious consideration. Ostracising the RUC is presumably a method of keeping the pressure on during the deliberations of the Patten commission.

That such a method struggles for unanimous acceptance in West Belfast doesn't argue strongly for its more widespread acceptance. To maintain that sporting contact implies acceptance of the RUC is dubious and didn't appear to form any of the thinking behind the arguments for Donegal Celtic's match going ahead.

The police force is a party to the troubled northern situation and, as such, deserves the same treatment as other parties and the same acceptance of its bona fides until they are otherwise disproved.

The second topical event which re-focused attention on Rule 21 was the failure of the GAA to make a submission to the Patten commission. This was a patent embarrassment for an organisation which had expressed itself so interested in reforming the RUC less than six months ago.

Officially the line was that sufficient numbers of GAA members had participated in the consultative process as parties to some of the 2,000 or so submissions made and that there was no need for the association to get directly involved.

For an organisation which attaches such importance to the reform of the RUC, this is a remarkably laissez faire attitude. Take the official statement after the special congress in May decided not to follow GAA president Joe McDonagh's lead and repeal Rule 21.

"The Gaelic Athletic Association is committed to the cause of reconciliation among the people of all Ireland based on mutual trust and tolerance. Recognising that the concept of an exclusion rule has no relevance in a situation where the national and cultural traditions of the people of all Ireland are equally recognised and in response to the British-Irish peace agreement, approved in referenda by the people of all Ireland, Cumann Luthcleas Gael pledges its intent to delete Rule 21 from its official guide when effective steps are taken to implement the amended structures and policing arrangements envisaged in the British-Irish peace agreement."

When the failure to communicate with the Patten commission is excused on the laughable grounds that "it's not really a matter for a sporting body like the GAA to get involved in a political issue" (Ulster Council acting secretary Danny Murphy in the Sunday Times, November 1st last), the above statement looms large.

How much more political can an association get than to set itself up as the arbiter of police reform in the north? The real reason is of course that it would be extremely difficult to frame a consensus on any submission. Who would draft it? Who would be consulted? Would it be restricted to predominantly Ulster input?

All difficult questions, but ones which arise purely from the GAA's decision to appoint itself as a monitor of the RUC. Does anyone think there'll be a magical consensus on the findings of Patten? Who wants their house riding on the GAA being able to say, "the police have been reformed" when the commission reports?

This is not a debate about "sport and politics shouldn't mix" (the mantra of generations of callow rugby players hurrying off to the extra-curricular pleasures of a tour of South Africa) because, of course, they mix. This is about what sort of politics should mix with sport.

The republican agenda was as offended by the prospect of Rule 21 disappearing as it was at the thought of Donegal Celtic playing the RUC. Prior to last May's congress, similar pressures were exerted in Down (the only cross-border county to have at any stage voted for repeal) where allegations of intimidation were also levelled and the tiny two-vote majority in favour of reform in 1995 was turned into a two-to-one margin the other way.

That result copper-fastened the Ulster bloc vote which went 100 per cent against abolition. The three southern counties in Ulster backed the consensus for the sake of collegiality as much as conviction. Faced with the ripple effect of this unanimous guidance from the north, sufficient numbers of southern delegates backed off.

This is the question GAA members around the country should be asking themselves: Are we content that the association become a vehicle for the same republican agenda which may ultimately destroy Donegal Celtic?

If the answer is yes, that's the membership's prerogative, but it would be unusual if an organisation as populist as the GAA was to be found so out of step with the opinions of the country at large. A nationwide plebiscite of members such as the one which fatally undermined the ban on foreign games nearly 30 years ago should be undertaken and the issue decided on the basis of what members believe themselves rather than what a vocal grouping in Northern Ireland has led them to believe are the wishes of the whole of Ulster and by extension, the rest of Ireland.