The game is over . . . and the unionists have won

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Thursday February 24, 2005 13:25 by Rooster

The peace process was a blame game from the start and unionism has won.

That mightn't have sunk in among all nationalists yet but they have.

Some nationalists do accept the Adams description of the problem: that a conspiracy among political parties which feel threatened by Sinn Fein is disgracefully blackening the party's good name, casting up aspersions about murder and bank robbery.

The weakness in this defence is simply that the Provisionals are murderers and thieves.

There is no possibility at all that the current leadership of Sinn Fein can complete the peace process.

Sinn Fein was branded by Michael McDowell, the Justice Minister of the Irish Republic, as a criminal conspiracy pretending to be political.

For all that Adams sneers at McDowell, his office enables him to make that assessment and gives him authority abroad.

The SDLP still perceives the crisis in terms of the faltering peace process.

There is no faltering peace process; there is only a dead one.

The actual crisis which the SDLP now faces is not the need to rescue John Hume's vision but to restore responsible leadership to Northern nationalists.

The immediate problem for northern nationalists is not the need for a powersharing executive; it is the need for a viable political leadership. Without it they don't have power to share.

The old thinking suggests that it would be progress to persuade Sinn Fein to join the policing board. This idea is being repeated virtually every day in editorials and in comment columns. It is an obsolete idea. It belongs to the fantasy that Sinn Fein are serious political players who might be persuaded to secure a deal and stand down the IRA, who might be gently wooed deeper and deeper into the political process until they wake up one day and find that they have been turned into a political party that is a little like the Liberal Democrats.

Those who cling to such a naive assessment have simply not assimilated the lesson of the last three months. The bank robbery was proof that the Provos weren't serious about the peace process.

A party that specialises in money laundering and espionage has to be kept out of policing.

The only hope of retrieving an executive is through the restoration of responsible leadership to the nationalist community. There are two ways that can happen: either through the electoral annihilation of Sinn Fein or through a coup within Sinn Fein to replace the current cabal in leadership with people who have political consciences.

The unlikelihood of either prospect being fulfilled is an indication of the depth of the crisis nationalists are in.

There are many good people in Sinn Fein who work very hard for the electorate but they have never yet shown any capacity for independent action. They do not criticise their leaders - ever.

The brave Republicans who do protest against the militaristic manipulation, like John Kelly and Anthony McIntyre, find themselves excluded and reviled. This is a party that allows no dissension so it is not a political party at all.

The weakness in the SDLP's argument against Sinn Fein is in its declared determination to fight for its inclusion in an executive that is not coming back. This is a suicidal position for the SDLP to take.

Their job now is not to take us back into the assembly - since that cannot be done - it is to restore responsible leadership to nationalist voters and to work for a political structure here that cannot be vetoed by one party.

An assault on Sinn Fein that is tempered by the urge to coax them back into office will never have the simplicity and relevance of an assault aimed at destroying them.

After all the nationalist community's complaining about discrimination against them it is that same community that has failed to rise to the challenge of partnership government and equality. The only obstacle now to full citizenship rights for nationalists is their own preference for being led by a delinquent party.

Unionist leaders, for all the dissension they had to cope with, proved themselves willing to deal. It was the leadership chosen by the majority of northern nationalists who walked away. I don't hear unionists gloating about this. Perhaps, like most nationalists, they are waiting for this amazing reality and its implications to sink in. Among those implications is the inability of any future nationalist leader to blame unionism for the failure to create a stable and democratic society here.