Issue 145, Saoirse: Irish Freedom (May, 1999)

              uimh 145 bealtaine wolfe tone commemoration bodenstown sunday june 13 1999 assemble 2.30pm sallins co kildare speaker marian price belt 6 the meeting of tony blair and bertie ahern at downing street on may 6 with the ulster unionists the provisionals and sdlp was billed beforehand as a crucial meeting for the stormont process the reality however was noted by the rte correspondent who said the two administrations were seeking a formula to see the agreement through the summer rather than to resolve the decommissioning log jam in a cry for help to their new sponsors the provisionals martin mcguinness on his way in to the white house the previous day said that the agreement was on a political life-support machine and needed drastic action to save it seamus mallon of the sdlp was almost equally downbeat about the prospects for the stormont agreement meanwhile ian paisley chose the same day to launch his eu election campaign in hyperbolic fashion by parading his supporters to drumcree church and reminding them that cromwell had wiped out the catholic population of drogheda 3s0 years ago after they had refused to surrender their arms he clearly intends to make drumcree mark s a key issue of his campaign in the coming weeks and the television pictures of orangemen camping out at drumcree is further evidence of this escalation at the same time british pressure on david trimble saw him meet his own upper bann constituents from the garvaghy road for the first time over the five years of drumcree for those five years trimble wouldn't speak to an elected representative of the garvaghy road because he had served time in jail for republican activities yet he could during that time meet the lvf leader and ex-prisoner billy wright in a secret meeting in drumcree parish hall which was happened upon by a bbc journalist it is now one year and a month since the stormont agreement was signed it is worth reminding ourselves that the stormont executive was to have been formed by july 1998 nationalists and their homes are being attacked on a nightly basis by loyalist death squads particularly in north belfast north from belfast along the antrim coast north-west from belfast to randalstown crumlin and antrim and in the so-called bible belt of portadown lurgan and craigavon this ethnic cleansing over the past year has resulted in several hundred nationalist families fleeing their homes as we went to press on may 5 a loyalist death squad had attempted to kill many nationalists in a bookies shop in north belfast and two 1 1 year-old boys only survived because the attacker's gun jammed this attempt to duplicate the killing of five men at sean graham's on the ormeau road several years ago could easily have succeeded in this context it is not surprising that commentators have remarked on the level of resistance to the surrender of arms among nationalists in places like west belfast where the graffiti pictured on this page has appeared the proposal for a shadow executive at stormont over the summer is closely linked to the need to give the provisional leadership time to condition their followers into the acceptance of some surrender of arms during the period the idea is that the six-month respite would give time to those who once fought british rule to flaunt the trappings of power under mat same british imperial rule without the reality of such limited power in the hope that it will overawe their supporters the provisionals and their masters hope it will be a case of softly softly catchy monkey over the past year the provisionals claimed the stormont agreement would bring peace and accused those opposed to it of seeking war they also said there was no alternative to it one alternative is for them to leave the situation as it is and not make a bad situation i aqreemen worse the reality is that it is the provisionals who have no plan b if the stormont agreement fails they have admitted that if it fails their strategy would be in tatters and their leaders totally discredited without any plan b they are in the position of having to accept compromise after compromise hence their rejection of the surrender of arms is now only as a precondition and not an outright rejection meanwhile bertie ahern s administration is tottering in the 26 counties he will now have to suspend for another 1 2 months the coming into operation of the deletion of articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 constitution otherwise that constitutional amendment falls the current situation of the stormont agreement demonstrates clearly republican sinn f6in's rejection of reformism as a political cul de-sac the organisation will continue to give leadership in the campaign against the stormont agreement which accepts british rule and the unionist veto that leadership will continue to be based on slt-s tdplcs f rcjcctlt of • graffiti in west belfast opposing any surrender of arms in august 1969 the whole of toftmtost.tamg.v.^gi^tothe bombays^eetinthenati^listlowerfauswasburnedandusoccup 32-county republic of 1916 and of the first refugee\hymohsledhy a ruc and bspecials republican sinn fein 26-county local election candidates and manifesto pages 8-9 inside full reports of easter commemorations on pages 10-12