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Regardless of the outcome of the May 1 Westminster election to a British parliament it has marked a significant shift in the Provisionals’ strategy of recognising British rule in Ireland
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Their promise if elected to attend at the Palace of Westminster “frequently” and “every fortnight” was described by the Belfast
Irish News (April 2) as “an important shift in strategy” and “another small step along the road to full participation” in the British parliament.
This announcement came two days after a display of weapons by the Provisionals in north Belfast, designed to act as a smokescreen to cover the Provisionals’ move to become what the Sunday Tribune on April 6 called a “slightly abstentionist party”.
It bears repeating, as Republican Sinn Féin did at its press conference and in a leaflet distributed in the Six Counties before May 1, that Sinn Féin was established in 1905 to take the centre of political gravity in Ireland away from Westminster, out of London and move it back to Ireland.
The Republican Movement was established, equally, to draw power from the British parliament and to establish Irish democracy and independence for the whole island, free from British rule. What a far cry from this to the Provisionals’ promise to open an office in London after the election to “raise its political profile at Westminster”.
In fact, what we are witnessing with the Provisionals is a counter-revolution, an attempt to stop the revolutionary tide in Ireland and drive it back into constitutional reformism.
Those who point to the gun display in Ardoyne and the recent disruption in England need to ask firstly where is all this leading and secondly what terms are being sought by the Provisionals to stop this activity?
Equally they need to examine under what conditions will the Provisionals turn on everybody else who refuses to take the counter-revolutionary path?
A third feature of the Provisionals’ election stance was their childlike faith in the British Labour Party and its return to power. This total reliance on British Labour flies in the face of all reason and experience in Ireland during this century. It will raise people's hopes only to have them dashed again and begs the question: are the Provisionals grasping at straws?
The British Labour Party has come a long way since 1921 when its policy was self-determination for the people of Ireland as a whole, provided (1) there was protection for minorities and (2) Ireland would not be used as a basis for an attack on England.
By 1949 it was the British Labour Party which enacted the Ireland Act, giving an entrenched veto to the unionist regime at Stormont over any change in the constitutional status of the Six Counties.
They were responsible, in 1974, for the infamous Prevention of Terrorism Act. And, when Harold Wilson and Merlyn Rees were replaced by James Callaghan and Roy Mason in 1976, a litany of repression was inflicted on occupied Ireland.
The policy of ‘criminalisation’ involving the building of the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and the withdrawal of political status there, ‘normalisation’ and ‘Ulsterisation’ was introduced and the SAS were sent into South Armagh.
The road to Irish freedom does not lead into the blind alley of Westminster. While Westminster is a cul-de-sac to Irish freedom, its creations, Leinster House and Stormont, are obstacles to Irish freedom.
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