Peace or War?: Understanding the Peace Process in Northern Ireland by Chris Gilligan

Author:Chris Gilligan [Gilligan, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781859725191
Google: CziDDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 3813755
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
Published: 1997-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

It can be seen that the experience of failure in broadening its appeal to the rest of Ireland, primarily through the electoral strategy, left the republican movement politically exhausted and only too willing to pursue a strategy which played to the one strength it knew it could rely on - its local and community support. Whereas republicans were shunned and vilified for as long as they tried to drive the British out of Ireland, they were treated quite differently when acting simply as the representatives of one community within the existing framework.

The turn to community politics may preserve both Sinn Fein and the IRA as viable organisations. Given the fractiousness and resentment which exist between the communities in Northern Ireland, community politics can only thrive. Policing the nationalist community itself appears to be the main concern of the IRA in areas such as West Belfast. IRA involvement in the Direct Action Against Drugs organisation is accepted as a fact of life. Ensuring that the Catholic community is accorded respect has also taken Sinn Fein and the IRA into more explicit sectarian confrontation with Protestants. The three main residents’ associations involved in confrontations with Protestant parades over the summers of 1995 and 1996 - Garvaghy Road, Lower Ormeau and the Bogside - all are chaired by former IRA Volunteers and are little more than republican front organisations. Meanwhile the promotion of community culture through events such as the West Belfast Festival has brought republicans into very direct contact with the labyrinthine funding mechanisms of a state whose destruction the movement was once foresworn to achieve.

The organisational continuity of republicanism has helped disguise the political break from the past. To date, there has been no surrender of arms, no murderous feuds and no acknowledgement that historic aspirations are being quietly shelved. However if we concentrate more on the substance of republicanism and a little bit less on the form, then it might be more obvious that we have come to the end of a very long era in Irish politics. An Ireland without traditional republicanism is difficult to imagine. Yet that is what we will have to get used to in the years to come.

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