Shunning Sinn Fein?

The taoiseach and British prime minister met at Hillsborough, Co. Down, yesterday to hold discussions with all the Northern Ireland parties. The ongoing review of the Good Friday agreement, however, shows little sign of resolving the current impasse.
None of the parties are expected to make any moves toward a compromise that might restore power sharing in the months running up to June’s European elections. And the Irish government will be preoccupied with its presidency of the European Union in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Madrid. It will also be busy with preparations for June’s local elections.
Last week’s St Patrick’s gatherings in New York and Washington saw the U.S. government add to the pressure being exerted on republicans. Its criticism of Sinn Fein’s refusal to endorse the North’s new policing arrangements fed into a concerted strategy by the two governments to force Sinn Fein to part with the IRA.
There is a growing awareness in Dublin and London that the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists and David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists are unlikely to accept Sinn Fein in government without complete disbandment of the IRA.
In the expectation that the IRA will not cede to unionist demands, DUP proposals for a “voluntary coalition,” that would see the SDLP joining with unionists in excluding Sinn Fein from government, are being given more serious consideration by the two governments.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has already raised the option privately with SDLP leader Mark Durkan. SDLP sources said Durkan made clear to Blair that the DUP’s plans were not workable.
Despite Durkan’s refusal to countenance such a move, it is still likely that the party will come under pressure to consider voluntary coalition. The issue will become a potentially critical one for the SDLP.
Having suffered electorally at the hands of Sinn Fein, it knows that to join with the establishment in pushing Sinn Fein to the periphery of the Northern political process may lead to a further, and possibly fatal, erosion of its support among nationalists.
Speculation surrounds the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, increasingly dismayed by the lack of movement toward IRA disbandment. If republicans are perceived by all sides to be at fault for current political inertia, the department may be tempted to ease the SDLP into coalition with Paisley’s anti-agreement party by lending it political support.
It would be a dangerous tactic. The Southern government made overt calls for nationalists to vote for the SDLP last November and was sorely disappointed to see the party slump to an all-time low in the polls.
Unlike with the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, where the Fine Gael-led government of Garret FitzGerald successfully placed the SDLP center-stage to the detriment of Sinn Fein, republicans are on ceasefire, strongly wedded to the political process and represent the majority of nationalists in the six counties. The SDLP knows this and will urge the governments to seek other ways forward.
The DUP has already made its bottom line well known. Deputy leader Peter Robinson has said his party will only share power with republicans when
the “durability” of IRA decommissioning can be “verified.”
This would allow the party, preoccupied with maintaining its own hard-line support, much needed wiggle room were the IRA to carryout a further act of
setting aside arms. The quandary of David Trimble, who felt unable to endorse a reportedly substantial act of IRA decommissioning in October of last year, plays heavily of the minds of the DUP leadership.
Little less than a wholesale surrender by the IRA, at least in the short term, is unlikely to meet the criteria set down by the DUP grassroots for power sharing. With little or no chance of progress over the summer months the earliest at which movement can be expected is September.