If the words of any British prime minister haunt
the troubled thoughts of Sinn Fein president Gerry
Adams, they will have been voiced by none of the
six he waged an armed struggle against. 'Events
dear boy, events', uttered by Harold Macmillan,
must cut even deeper into the mind of the Provisional
boss than the 'crime is crime is crime' mantra of
Margaret Thatcher.
But
for events, Adams could have been contemplating
a very rosy political future. Now his burning ambition
for power is being confronted with a firewall that
no amount of guile or deception can breach.
Adams
puts on a brave face. On the first day of a resumed
Stormont parliament in Belfast he called for the
return of the power-sharing executive, insisting
that local people should manage their own affairs
and that British ministers be sent back to where
they belong. It was a feeble attempt at playing
the nationalist card, a futile effort to depict
himself as the powerful player of old on the local
political scene, someone who struts around as cock
of the walk dictating terms to British ministers.
Truth
is, as Frank Miller put it to Adams in a recent
Irish Times interview, he is pretty much
a busted flush.
Up
until the close of 2004 when the much heralded deal
of deals between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist
Party capsized, upended by one of the many trip
wires that strew the Northern Irish political landscape,
Sinn Fein looked to be coasting. Its opponents throughout
Ireland fell for the party's spin that it was on
an unstoppable march to power north and south, its
electoral machine unassailable. Then the bubble
burst.
Sinn
Fein strategy was premised on presenting itself
as champion of the peace process valiantly working
against all those seeking to destroy it. Through
careful strategic management of the IRA it subverted
the peace as a means to maintain the process. This
resulted in institutions that were either not up
and running or always about to topple when they
were up. Having unionism and recalcitrant elements
within the British security services take the blame
for this was a dynamic that fuelled Sinn Fein expansionism
throughout the country as a whole; the island's
electorate ready to reward the party with plenty
of votes for its ostensible goodwill.
Looking
back over the past 18 months there are grounds for
thinking that events in December 2004 and January
2005 brought the expansionist strategy completely
off the rails. The Northern Bank robbery in December
2004 alone would not have thwarted Sinn Fein other
than to temporarily incapacitate it at a time when
political inertia would prevail anyway due to the
upcoming British general election in May. Having
no capacity to move at what was a motionless political
juncture would hardly prove too damaging. The five-month
hiatus would have suited the party fine.
However,
the murder of Robert McCartney in January 2005 by
Sinn Fein and IRA members was the Macmillan-event
that sealed Sinn Fein's fate and would ensure it
remained mired once fluidity returned to the political
process. From that point on the party's popularity
growth spurt in the Republic has spluttered. The
anticipated electoral advancement there suddenly
appeared to be incremental rather than exponential
- even if that will be masked by the party doubling
its seats as a result of judicious vote management
in those marginal constituencies where it just missed
out in the Irish general election 2002.
In
the north Sinn Fein needed to achieve in the 2005
British general election what the DUP managed -comprehensively
trounce its own community rival for votes. It failed
and instead has managed to keep nationalism divided
while ensuring that the DUP is the undisputed hegemon
within unionism. To boot, the US is holding Sinn
Fein's neck in a garrotte on the policing issue.
The
upshot is that Sinn Fein has nowhere else to go
but into a power-sharing executive. In circumstances
where the wind has gone out of the party's sails
the only deal on offer is one that places the Sinn
Fein fly in the parlour of the DUP spider.
It
is the one position in which they never wanted to
find themselves. While the DUP does not need to
join Sinn Fein in government in order to maintain
its electoral strength, forces other than voters
have to be placated. Given its own political strength
vis-a-vis Sinn Fein, the thought of dictating terms
for entry to government that tighten the thumbscrews
on Gerry Adams like never before must be deliriously
tantalising to the DUP.
Throughout
its artificially prolonged life the god of the peace
process smiled kindly on Sinn Fein. Unionism at
times displayed the signs of lost souls, not quite
damned but in Purgatory nonetheless.
But
Macmillan's events have seen a reversal of fortunes.
Sinn Fein, rather than taking those who voted for
it remotely near a united Ireland, is now so desperate
to be part of a British government in the north
that is has called for Ian Paisley to be the replacement
for the deposed former incumbent, David Trimble.
At one time it could be safely said that Paisleyites
were to be found in loyalist Ballymena. Now it seems
that droves of them are about to be discovered in
republican Ballymurphy.
