GANG RULE: ULSTER'S NEXT CRISIS
by John O'Sullivan
New York Post
September 28, 2005

September 28, 2005 -- 'WE are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA's arsenal," the Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain said Monday when, as head of the independent monitoring body, he confirmed that the IRA had finally destroyed its arms cache.

His conclusion was accompanied by British and Irish government leaks to the effect that following this "historic development," the Northern Ireland power-sharing Executive, including Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness as ministers of the Crown, would soon be up and running again — probably by the New Year.

If the power-sharing executive is resuscitated, however, it will usher in the next stage in Ulster's crisis.

The bones of this were already becoming evident Monday, as de Chastelain qualified his conclusion by saying "We can never be completely certain": They had to rely to some extent on the word of the IRA. And his Finnish colleague seemed to confirm that none of the weapons destroyed dated from after 1996 — when the IRA is known to have acquired weapons in 1999 (one of which was used to murder a dissident).

The smart money in Anglo-Irish journalism suggests that what the IRA has destroyed is the heavy stuff that it no longer needs against the British Army. But it is quietly keeping the smaller arms it needs to enforce its authority against dissenters in the Catholic ghettoes.

In Henry MacDonald's mordant words in the Guardian (the British newspaper most sympathetic to Irish republicanism): "These handguns . . . remind those inside the nationalist community who are not 'on message' with Sinn Fιin that to challenge the hegemony of the republican movement can still have fatal consequences."

Still, the threat of bombing London has been apparently removed. And that is enough for London, Dublin and Washington to declare that the IRA has purged its sins and that therefore its Siamese twin, Sinn Fein, is eligible to return to ministerial office.

Under the rules of power-sharing, however, such an outcome requires the consent of the unionist majority — and the union parties are still resisting this on the grounds that Sinn Fein-IRA should undergo a long penance of nonviolence before being trusted with power again.

Until two weeks ago, such resistance would probably have prevailed. But the moral authority of the Protestant and unionist community has been seriously undermined by the "loyalist" riots that erupted across Northern Ireland a fortnight ago.

These began in Belfast but spread quickly to Newtonabbey, Carrickfergus, Lisburn, Larne, north Down and Ards. More than 140 bombs were thrown at police and 115 shots fired at them. Eighty-one police were injured in the course of the riots — which were apparently organized by Protestant organizations like the Orange Order, rather than being spontaneous outbursts of anger.

So unionist parties may find themselves dragged into sharing power with Sinn Fein because the "loyalist" paramilitaries have undermined their principled stand that only nonviolent democratic parties should be allowed to share power.

But once the power-sharing deal is firmly in place as a permanent structure of political power, its viciously divisive effects on society will render it unworkable.

The Good Friday Agreement is essentially an exercise in multiculturalism: Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly have to register a communal identity before they can participate in government; any government must include representatives of both communities; any political outcome must enjoy the support of majorities of both communities.

The first effect of this is an extraordinary divisiveness. This sectarian structure of power is intended to produce — and does produce — policies that assign benefits on a strictly sectarian basis. It creates two entirely separate communities with separate "cultural identities." As Brendan O'Neill writes on the Web site spiked-online.com, this sectarianism has "nurtured the potential for angst, disgruntlement or even violence if one side feels it is left out of the loop."

The second effect is to abolish any kind of normal democracy. The rules insist that parties from both communities must always be in office. So voters cannot either choose or throw out a government: The parties get to enjoy power on a permanent basis; they share power over the communities that they theoretically represent. Within each community, party bosses rule.

The third effect follows from this — namely, the entrenchment of criminal mafias in cultural or political disguise in working-class areas. Those small arms for the IRA's self-defense will be used to enforce its brutal will in Catholic ghettoes. Similarly the "loyalist" mafias behind the riots have been engaged in both lucrative racketeering and in murderous battles reminiscent of the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

But since the power-sharing deal was fine-tuned to ensure that political parties linked to these criminals get a freehold on political office, how likely is it that Northern Irish ministers would crack down seriously on them? The Independent Monitoring Commission recently reported that five murders (and 15 attempted murders) had been committed by the Ulster Volunteer Force in its turf-fight with another loyalist terror group.

There are some temporary safeguards against this mafia rule. An independent monitoring body on political criminality will soon report to London. The independent-minded Irish Justice Minister, Michael MacDowell, is threatening to use the full force of the law against political racketeering. And so on.

Yet even if the two governments risk obstructing the restoration of the Belfast Assembly and Executive by cracking down on IRA and loyalist criminal gangs — which is unlikely — the sectarian structure of power-sharing would soon revive them.

So the next stage of Northern Ireland's troubles is likely to unmask the power-sharing deal as a transitional arrangement — perhaps a transitional step to normal democracy, more likely one to a multicultural gangster state.

John O'Sullivan, a former Post editorial-page editor, is a member of Benador Associates.

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