Interview With Bernadette McAliskey

The text of this interview will be published in the May 1999
edition of the German language "Irland Almanach" (editor Juergen
Schneider). This interview took place on April 6, 1999 in
Coalisland, Co. Tyrone, Ireland. Ralf Sotscheck, Irish and
British Correspondent for the German Daily newspaper 'die
tageszeitung', asked the questions. Bernadette McAliskey, former
Westminster MP and long time human rights activist, gave the
answers.

Ralf Sotscheck: You stated some time ago that the Peace Process
cannot and will not lead towards the achievement of the just and
democratic ideals to which people gave their liberty and their
lives. Do you reject the Peace Process, or what's your position
now?

Bernadette McAliskey: I still have exactly the same analysis of
the Peace Process. I think that over the period of time in which
it has been played out the analysis has proved to be correct. I
do not take any great joy in that.
     We do not have peace, but the absence of war has
dramatically reduced the amount of death in the community. That
is a direct consequence of the absence of war, not the existence
of peace. The present difficulties in which the Republican
Movement now find themselves bear out my analysis. Mr. Ahern's
(Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach [Prime Minister])
participation in the joint prime ministerial statement is a clear
abandonment of any shoulder to shoulder stand alongside the
Republican Movement. There is very little point in Mr. Adams
saying this is the result of the Unionists' "pressurising" - this
is the way it was meant to turn out. It has just been a long time
coming. I said at the beginning that I believed the process was a
pacification process. It was not a resolution of conflict. It had
a British agenda. It was British created. It is the same agenda
the British created in 1972. Its purpose was to demoralise,
demobilise and demilitarise the resistance movement. At this
stage that is almost complete.

Q: You also wrote in 1996 "this Peace Process's aim is to
eradicate republicanism not violence". Could you elaborate?

     Despite the efforts of the Republican Movement, nobody other
than the Republican Movement, even now at the virtual completion
of the process, identifies the war for what it was. The equation
in terms of violence that is now being generally made equates the
republican armed struggle with the counter-revolutionary and
hate-inspired, racist inspired, violence of the loyalists. It is
not viewed as an armed resistance to the armed imposition of the
British government's authority. There is no equation of the
Republican Movement on the one side, and the British Government
on the other, in terms of an anti-imperialist struggle. Rather,
the British and Irish governments are drawn in as the joint
arbiters and referees of what has been seen and what it has been
reduced to. In the populist image, it is seen in terms of some
kind of fairly equally balanced, trenchant, and entrenched,
tribal attitudes. So republicanism has essentially been reduced
to a form of national extremism. This is not what this struggle
was about. Republicanism, and the Republican Movement, having
essentially thrown their lot in with the Hibernian Alliance, are
now in the position they were inevitably going to be in. They do
not have the strength, no matter how they view themselves, to be
the main protagonists in this alliance and the rest of the
alliance has now joined up against them. John Hume, leader of the
SDLP, is very happy with the April Fool's Declaration calling for
"acts of reconciliation", "voluntary obligations" - the thing
becomes farcical. The reality is that Mr. Hume and the social
democrats, Mr. Ahern and the Irish Government, are the main
players here. Mr. Clinton and the Irish Americans who wield their
authority through the Democratic Party, are all now on the same
side as Tony Blair and Mr. Trimble on this issue. Therefore it is
Republicanism which is going to be weakened here. Moreover, to
get here, Republicans have inch by inch, centimetre by
centimetre, conceded principle after principle until now, whether
they get into government or not, is irrelevant in terms of the
settlement. It is irrelevant in terms of the needs of the working
class in this country. Their social, economic and political
agenda is now virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the
Hibernian Alliance. In that sense that is what this was about:
pacifying, constitutionalising, and de-radicalising the
republican leadership in terms of its politics; demobilising it
as a force for social, economic and political resistance. I think
it has been very effective.

Q: Has it been? What about the splits?

     I think it has been extremely effective. The weight of
opposition at the beginning meant that people like myself - a
very small grouping - myself, Eamonn McCann, John Meehan, others,
who were on the left and were making a coherent socialist,
democratic criticism of this Agreement - were accused of being
militarist after 30 years by recently demilitarised militarists!
We were effectively sidelined.
     The loyalty of the rank and file of the Republican Movement,
which had sustained the resistance movement for 30 years, was
called in to unquestioningly trust the leadership, which it did.
That required the brooking of no dissent and no debate. As that
began to fragment the small splits away from it have not, in my
view anyway, managed to coherently analyse the Agreement, or to
mount any serious political opposition to it. That may come in
the fullness of time. At the minute almost all dissidence is
fragmented, incoherent, and very marginalised. That is not simply
because of their own inability to coherently express their
opposition to it. The absolute weight of media, church, and
political parties is stifling of any dissent. It has been, in
varying degrees, a very sad experience. Many people who have come
through 30 years of struggle have found themselves isolated,
disowned even at the most personal level - that is not something
peculiar to hear. If you talk to some of the Palestinian exiles,
it is exactly the same. If you talk to some of the South African
comrades, it is exactly the same. The post-revolutionary period
is no time for enlightened criticism! You get your head in your
hands very quickly.

Q: Let's move on to the rewriting of the Belfast Agreement.
Trimble is insisting on it - what do you think will be the
outcome? Is the Republican Movement going to decommission or not?

     At this point, I keep saying to people, it does not matter.
These issues were raised to prolong things. It was always part of
the game plan. I could explain it in a very practical way. It is
as if somebody was trying to bake a cake with the ingredients for
making sauerkraut. The debate was reduced to whether there was
too much sugar or salt, and at which point it should be added to
the recipe. The thing is fundamentally wrong. Therefore the issue
of decommission/don't decommission; whether it was moving fast
enough; "voluntary obligation" or "beyond use" - we have been
through all the clarifications. It suited Sinn Fein to play the
game, to allow ambiguities, to be interpreted in several
different ways - that was part of the plan. Now that noose is
being gathered around them and just when they most need that
width of interpretation the British are closing ranks on them and
saying "Oh no, read the writing, stop reading between the spaces,
stop looking for coded messages, read the words". As they say in
British Law, "read the words on their face". Sinn Fein should
have always "read the words on their face".

Q: John Major earlier this year made proposals for reform of the
RUC, and mentioned human rights issues. Can the RUC be reformed?
What do you think of that?

     Again, Ralf, if you go back to the very beginning, you can
do anything within reason if you are in authority. But this is
not a reconstructed state. Even within the terms of the South
African experiment, we are not even within that scale - we are
not even within that category. This was not a situation of open
negotiations between equals from the beginning to put new
structures together. The British Government called the shots here
from the beginning. They still run this state. The state is
intact. The nature of authority is intact. The institutions of
authority are intact. Therefore they will be reformed as little
or as far as it is in the interests of the intact state to reform
them. Therefore the RUC will be reformed, inasmuch as, and to the
extent that it is in the interest of the British Government, to
reform them. That will be the minimal amount necessary to placate
the Catholic middle classes without upsetting the bulk of
Unionism. Therefore, they will be cosmetic. The rawer edges of
blatant racism will be refined. So the area of reform is that the
police will be required to show the same sensitivity, while being
a racist police force, as most European forces. But that won't
solve the problem. And they will find that very difficult to do.

Q: And the same would apply to the human rights issues?

     The same would apply to the human rights issues. Reforms
will be allowed to the extent that they do not threaten the
state. We are back to square one when we live through those
things to the point where they come to explosion again, because
the core problem is the nature of the state. So after a period of
time that will be pushed to its limit again and we will be back
to where we started again.

Q: Will they go as far as letting former IRA volunteers join the
police force?

     No, they don't have to. In South Africa they may have to.
Here, they don't have to. All they have to do is go far enough to
make it safe enough for those Catholics who are Unionist to join
the police. The police have always heavily resisted Catholics
being allowed to join. Catholics will now be encouraged to join
the police, but not Catholics who are nationalists. Some
nationalists may, in the present confused period, think they will
join the police. But there will be no republicans joining the
police. The two things are mutually exclusive. You can not be
both things, not in the state as it is presently constituted.
     The republican purist argument has a validity: how can you
be a republican and a Minister of the Crown? That question has to
be asked of the two Members of Sinn Fein, who will be Ministers
of the Crown albeit several steps down the ladder, and very small
and insignificant ministries. But they will be ministries under
the crown, which is fine if that is what they want to be. But
they do have to say that this is a significant alteration of the
position that they held five years ago. This is what republicans
fought the civil war over, never mind the civil rights movement.
De Valera would not hold office in a "Free State", which it was,
under the commonwealth, under the Crown. That is what we have
come to in the North. I would not even be surprised if some years
down the line, we re-enact the Act of Union and we see the South
going back into the commonwealth, and they will all be Ministers
under the Crown.

Q: Francie Molloy (a Sinn Fein Assembly Member from Tyrone) is
reported to have said: "Republicans are prepared to work in an
executive. We are really prepared to administer British rule in
Ireland for the foreseeable future. The very principle of
partition is accepted, and if the Unionists had that in the
1920's they would have been laughing." (Sunday Times [Irish
Edition] March 28) 1999. Did Francie Molloy really say that?
Eamonn McCann highlighted this statement.

     If he did say that, he said it where he did not think
anybody was listening. I could not imagine Francie Molloy saying
that they had accepted partition. But in essence they have.

Q: McCann referred to this statement on a BBC Radio discussion
programme, saying it a remarkable statement to come from a
leading republican.

     I think that they know in their hearts they have accepted
partition. At some point they will own up to that. They will put
up a coherent argument as to why they should. We should go back
to the argument: if they are saying that is a good strategy then
the strategy was on offer in 1972. I don't think that people can
say "Don't keep saying that Bernadette. It's irrelevant." It is
not irrelevant. 30 years of war for the same players it is not
that time moved by and wiser heads did different things. John
Hume was a player in 1972 and 1994. So was Gerry Adams. So was
Martin McGuinness. So was John Taylor. So was almost every single
main player. We had 30 years of war in between. If people say
which is also a very valid human position after 30 years of war
we made no progress, and we had to go back to where we started.
That at least is an honest statement. To pretend that you had
arrived at some bright new future after 30 years of struggle when
a blind person can see, and the deaf can hear, that this is
exactly the same Agreement that was rejected in 1972. And the
other question you have to ask yourself is that if the Sinn Fein
leadership around the Belfast leadership had always wanted to
accept it from 1972 then the morality of their military struggle
does not bear thinking about.

Q: What would happen if you had something like a Truth Commission
along the lines of South Africa?

     I have no great favour in Truth Commissions, in the land
that Conor Cruise O'Brien said had the highest proportion of
conmen and conwomen per square acre. I do not necessarily agree
with him. There are as many truths as there are heartaches in
this country. Again, you know, there is a lot delusion, even in
South Africa, on the Truth Commission. To the victor the spoils,
and that includes the truth. In South Africa, the victor -
however you determine the victor - did determine the truth. The
victor here, and the controlling factor here, is the British, and
it will be the British truth. I do not think the setting up of a
Truth Commission in this country will allow us to move any closer
to the truth than we currently are, which is very far from it.

Q: In an interview with International Viewpoint you said that the
aim of the Republican Movement was shifted from a 32 County
Ireland socialist or whatever to All Party Talks for an Agreed
Ireland. What would such an "Agreed Ireland" look like?

     I haven't a clue. But I think that by their own admission
that is what they moved to: a negotiation for an "Agreed
Ireland". I don't know what they mean by it. I personally believe
that by looking at the balance of forces an "Agreed Ireland"
negotiated from a position of republican weakness has to be an
Ireland that meets with the definition and desire of its main
protagonists. Therefore an "Agreed Ireland" has to be the kind of
Ireland that Bertie Ahern and the Kennedys want.
     Need you say more, from a socialist perspective?
     Some months ago I cut out a piece from The Irish Times -
just because it struck me and I thought it should be saved. The
headline was "Gardai Protect Mass Goers From Beggars". I have an
awful suspicion that in the concept of an "Agreed Ireland" the
Gardai will continue to "Protect Mass Goers From Beggars". That
is not where I particularly want to be.

Q: Is it possible that the republican position can be reversed?
In the interview with International Viewpoint you said that the
real question is "how will they build the mass campaigns in the
current context?".

     I don't know. I have had a very clear perspective on what
the Agreement is about. I have always believed that Sinn Fein
were mistaken to get caught into it the way they did. I don't
believe that they had no alternative. I think they were picking
their positions in a number of ways. Each time it was a very
clever strategy on the part of the Irish and British Governments
because at each turn when they had to make a choice, it narrowed
their option to make an alternative choice the next time. I
described it at the time as a funnel. Their options were getting
narrower until at the very end they would only have one choice.
They have come to that point. They now only have one choice to
see it through or lose everything. It has been so effective, so
carefully strategised, that I don't believe it can in the short
term be reversed. There were serious problems at any time taking
on the Republican Leadership. You had this confusion amongst the
republican people that was played out by a sleight of hand. They
said these were very clever sophisticated negotiations so the
leadership cannot tell us exactly what they are doing. It is an
issue of trust. Therefore we trust the leadership. It is very
difficult in opposition to argue against trust as a principle,
against comrades you have always trusted yourself. The issue is
not that they are not to be trusted, but that trust is no basis
on which to negotiate with the enemy. The ability to force debate
where debate was being stifled was very minimal. In the absence
of that it is very difficult now to argue any major strategic
plan that will make a difference to the way things will proceed.
     At this point the Assembly will happen; pacification and
general reconstruction, reform of the RUC as such will happen;
reform of the legislation will happen. Decentralisation of the
administration will go ahead whether Sinn Fein pulls out of it or
not. Even if you could effectively persuade the leadership, and
reunite the whole republican movement against this Agreement, it
will now go through. It will go through because all the steps
have been taken. The mandates, referendums and elections have all
been used for that purpose. If Sinn Fein walk away from it, and
even if they were able to put the whole republican family back
together again as strong or stronger than when they went into
this Agreement they still could not stop it.
     I think to return to a military strategy at this time is to
cut your throat. Any return to militarism would be very rapidly
crushed, with public support. In the short term it is very
difficult to offer an oppositionalist strategy when the damage is
done. We are now into a position of recognising that Stormont
will be recreated with the acquiescence and support of a
significant section of the nationalist population. That will
carry through to the police.
     The issues in that situation then become very clear in terms
of the social and economic bent of any government in the
framework that emerges. It is going to be right-wing social-
democratic in order to hold it together. One third of the working
population in the North of Ireland currently works for less than
the minimum wage, if the minimum wage had been set for 4 pounds.
Therefore it was argued coherently by the major parties here it
should not be 4 pounds - their argument was that there were far
too many people who were below it. It is incredible one of three
in the workforce and remember we have no immigrant population
here, we have nothing like the rest of Western Europe, an
exploited immigrant population. That is before we take in the
Kosovans. That is before we allow the odd Romanian to stay.
Therefore the minimum wage here is never going to be 4 pounds.
The economy here, without massive radicalisation would not
support it. You look at social legislation. You look at the major
forces which will make up the new Assembly. With Sinn Fein in or
out of it, in terms of social legislation we will be going to the
right. There will be no age of consent at 90, never mind 18 for
gay relationships. It does not bear thinking about where we are
going. In the context of nationalism the whole ethos is that if
we had a stable political situation here we might outbreed them.
You say where is your head, where is your thinking?

Q: What do you think will happen in five or ten years' time? What
could have been done to stop us getting where we are now?

     If you go back to the beginning of the process there was a
civil rights process, and the actual demands were actually not
republican or to overthrow the state. The national movement and
the armed resistance grew as a direct consequence of the state
being demonstrably unable, not merely unwilling, to survive the
introduction of those demands. We are right back to where we were
then. Stormont has been put back together again. The question
will remain, for a short period of time, as post-1922: there will
be room to appease a certain section of the Catholic population.
After a period of time there will not be more room to appease the
rest of them. Therefore the state has to go through the same
machinery again. It has to ensure that those who cannot be
appeased can either be subdued, dissipated by emigration,
demoralised or whatever. That goes on for a period of time. Then
you run out of that road. You are back to where you started. The
inherent nature of Northern Ireland is anathema to democracy and
progress - all of that is going to be played out in a different
scenario. If people had applied their minds to the Northern
Ireland situation and the lessons to be drawn from it there may
never have been a Kosovo. There may never have been a
Bosnia-Herzegovina because you were looking, on the fringes of
Western Europe, on the wheel coming full circle of imperialism
and nation statism. Western Europe itself was beginning to feel
the effects of all those anti-imperialist and self-determination
movements. By the time we have Western Europe sorted out it will
be our turn again. Nobody is resolving these conflicts, we are
just pushing them around in circles.

Q: Where is it all going?

     I think we will just have to wait and see. The working class
movements control none of it. None if it is within the control of
the Republican Movement. We are hostages to fortune. When the
dust settles it is important that we steady ourselves and
regroup. I'm now in my 50s. People have asked me about the
fragmenting among the dissidents in the Republican Movement but
something very deep in me is saying "No, I have been there". When
I steady myself and regroup this time I am regrouping with the
socialist left. I have had it with you armed social democrats and
would-be radical nationalists. I don't know what the room for
organisation will be. I think it will be very little. I think the
repression of dissidents will grow, and I think that will happen
on a world stage. We are probably heading inexorably - without
being alarmist - to a World War III scenario.
     The Americans and their allies are going to bomb one nation
too many. Then we are into wider conflagration. Maybe the
Serbians will turn again. They did it the last time. All that is
going to be caught out. The imposition will meet serious
opposition somewhere down the line. Or else we are all destroyed.

Q: The last question concerns the loyalists: they do not seem as
willing as they were before to do Paisley's dirty work?

     I believe, that the UDA is much more a homegrown phenomenon.
There are smaller dissident groups. I have never believed, and
remain to be convinced, that the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) is
anything other than the last link in the chain of command of
British Intelligence. The British switched them on and off. They
are the military wing of British intelligence here. They are the
military wing of the Unionist middle class here. Regardless of
what way they are organised, they are under the direct influence
of British Intelligence. That is why they can be switched on and
off as needed.

Q: They can be switched on during the summer for the Garvaghy
Road?

     Yes.

Q: What do you reckon will happen there?

     They are putting 100,000 Orangemen into it. I do not see
within Republicanism or Nationalism the will or capacity to
withstand it. The people of the Garvaghy Road will be hostages to
fortune.

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