WHILE "opinion polls record that 93 per cent of the population of Northern Ireland want a return of the ceasefire and peace, most of our politicians are incapable of making the leap of vision that might truly transform the situation", the president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr John Freeman, has said.
He was addressing the all Ireland conference of the ATGWU, in Malahide yesterday. Almost 40,000 of its 55,000 members are in Northern Ireland, where Mr Freeman is based.
In the debate on Northern Ireland and the peace process, Mr Freeman said the British government "has lost both the will and the imagination to oversee a process of negotiation leading to peaceful conditions in Ireland".
And while local political parties preached "the same tired dictums that helped create the situation in the first place" the IRA paraded the notion that the death and injury of British civilians was somehow a contribution to peace.
"Of crucial significance for republicanism is the interpretation of consent. If Northern Ireland was demilitarised, if discrimination and inequalities were addressed, would the people of Northern Ireland have the right to decide their own destiny? Or would the demand still be for some historic right to a united Ireland? Fifteen per cent of the electorate does not seem to be a sufficient basis to make that demand on the rest of the population."
The nature of the conflict "suggests that what is required is a new vision of how the peoples of the island can live together rather than a repackaging of old ideas".
Part of the problem is that we have no set of principles for conflict resolution. The Mitchell principles are about how parties should negotiate the end of the conflict not about what conditions would end it. "We need a new set of principles . . . to point to the ways to build a just and prosperous society."
It was iniquitous that efforts to bring political parties into discussions on ending 25 years of conflict should take place "under the threat of the gun and the bomb. It is certainly difficult to see the logic of pressing the British government to allow Sinn Fein into negotiations by bombing women and children in Manchester".
"Sinn Fein must now accept that constitutional politics involves responsibilities as well as rights. The key responsibility is the acceptance of democratic methods.