The Peace Deal must not fail

Brian Campbell, editor of Sinn Fein's An Phoblacht/Republican News, urges Tony Blair not to repeat the mistakes of previous British governments.

Many activists across the world have said that the best political lesson they ever got was when a policeman's baton cracked across their skull. This painful truth can be affirmed by the civil rights activists in the north of Ireland whose campaign hit the headlines thirty years ago. Their peaceful demonstrations demanded equality and fair play in employment, housing allocation and voting rights - they were straightforward demands which attracted support across a wide spectrum from liberal unionists to communists and republicans.

But when the RUC beat the marchers off the streets in Derry in October 1968 it was clear that these demands struck at the very heart of the state (and that the alliance of forces in the Civil Rights Association was a clear threat to unionist supremacy). It was a sudden, shocking political lesson flashed across the world's television screens. Although it proved to be the end of a peaceful path to change, there was nothing inevitable about what followed.

The Labour Government of the time was faced with a range of policy options but when it refused to acknowledge that conflict was rooted in the very nature of the state, its decisions only added to the crisis. Harold Wilson's Government dithered. It put pressure on the unionist government at Stormont but the type of changes demanded were always going to be too little, too late. Wilson refused to confront the sectarian nature of the state. It was a missed opportunity of tragic proportions.

Much has changed in the last thirty years but some of the fundamental political realities have survived. Indeed, those forces which sought to uphold the corrupt Stormont regime are now doing their best to undermine the Good Friday Agreement and are threatening once again to prevent a peaceful path to change. Once again a Labour Government has tough decisions to make.

The Good Friday Agreement was an attempt to deal with the causes of conflict. It is no wonder it took so long to negotiate and it is not surprising that the main threat to the Agreement's implementation comes from unionists. For nationalists, the Agreement represents a number of advances. It is a chance to tackle the inequalities and sectarian discrimination in the institutions of the state, notably in the RUC, the justice system and in the civil service.

These three bodies have the unionist ethos embedded in their core - they are the survivors of the old Stormont regime and any changes to them will have to be fought every inch of the way. Within each of these institutions are people who have fought all along to sabotage the peace process. They are enemies of change who will not countenance anything but a full-blown unionist state. The Agreement is also a chance for nationalists to create all-Ireland political institutions. Those all-Ireland institutions depend on the formation of a ministerial executive from the Assembly.

The Agreement explicitly states that that must be done before the end of October but the demand for decommissioning is once more a stumbling block in the process. It has been raised at regular intervals since the process began. It was first mentioned as a precondition to progress by John Major's Government in a clear attempt to prevent negotiations. Now it is being used to scupper the Agreement and it may succeed unless Tony Blair's Government sees it for what it is - the last chance for supremacist unionism to defy change.

Both Blair and Trimble know that the demand for decommissioning before the formation of an Executive is not part of the Agreement. They have a stark choice. They must either keep their word and implement what they signed up to or they will see the process founder. For Trimble, that means facing down those within Unionism who are against change. It is a difficult choice for him but one he must take. The future does not lie with those who want to turn back the clock to the days before 1968. For Blair, the choice is more straightforward. He cannot allow the Agreement to fail. That means he must do what Harold Wilson failed to do. He must push full steam ahead for real, fundamental change. He cannot afford to dither.

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