BY TONY HUNT
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - In face of unflagging resistance by fighters for Irish freedom, British prime minister John Major announced February 28 that London had agreed to all-party talks on the future of Ireland. The talks will include Sinn Fein, the leading party fighting for an end to British domination of Northern Ireland.
Major dropped his previous insistence on total "decommissioning" of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as a prior condition for all-party talks.
On February 18, some 5,000 people, mostly from working- class Catholic areas, marched in west Belfast to demand "All- party Peace Talks Now!"
Many demonstrators expressed their anger at London's stalling on all-inclusive talks. The "biggest single failure" of the cease-fire, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams told the marchers, was the refusal of the British government to talk. This refusal was due to "people within the British establishment who live on the old memory when Britain ruled most of the world and they colonized this island," Adams said. "We represent a section of the people on this island who have never allowed our minds to be colonized."
Earlier Adams told the Andersontown News that "For 18 months we had no war but we had no peace either."
The Major government proved unable to use a February 9 bombing by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in east London to derail the pressure for peace talks. That day the IRA announced it had ended an 18-month cease-fire.
David Heeley, 19, one of the marchers on February 18, said in an interview he had been "shocked" by the bombing. But Heeley, and several other Irish people interviewed by the Militant, blamed the British government.
John Major to blame
"I blame John Major" said one shopper at a local
supermarket - referring to the British prime minister.
"We want peace," Heeley said, "but that will only come about through talks."
Another protester added, "The ordinary people of west Belfast don't want violence. But we also want justice."
Most of the banners on the demonstration carried the demand for all-party talks. One called for the release of Paddy Kelly, an Irish political prisoner dying of cancer whom London refuses to release.
On February 15, London dispatched another 500 soldiers to Northern Ireland, bringing the occupying force up to nearly 17,000 - close to its pre-cease-fire level. The troops were not patrolling the streets in Belfast during the February 18 demonstration but were reported to be on patrol in border areas.
Leaders of loyalist gangs said February 25 they would not restart their murder campaign against Catholics or in the South - unless the IRA staged actions in the North. But a group of teenagers who are Catholic, from a "mixed" area five miles outside Belfast, told the Militant they were now getting more abuse from Protestants in the street.
They were standing a short distance from Sean Graham's betting shop, in a Catholic enclave on the Ormeau Road, they said. A loyalist death-squad murdered five people there in 1992.
Nearby, on August 12 of last year, Royal Ulster Constabulary cops fired plastic bullets on local residents and supporters staging a peaceful sit-down protest against a loyalist parade through their neighborhood.
A third IRA bomb exploded in London February 18. One of those injured was Brendan Woolhead, 27, from Dublin. Because he was Irish he was treated as a suspect by London police and placed under armed guard in the hospital until his family intervened.
`No demonization'
Some 100,000 people participated in "peace rallies"
February 25 in the Irish Republic, including 25,000 in
Dublin. A rally in Belfast drew 15,000. A parallel event in
London drew only 60. Speakers at these events, which called
on the IRA to renew its cease-fire, included Irish prime
minister John Bruton and U.S. ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith.
Trade union leaders also spoke.
Sinn Fein members participated with placards stating "Make Peace Work, Negotiate Now." Responding to British condemnation of republicans, Gerry Adams said at the February 18 Belfast rally that they would refuse to be demonized. "We will tell them that we have been down that road before and there is no going back," he stated. "We are not going to be held as scapegoats for the stupidity of the British and the intransigence of the unionist leadership."
Major government: weak and divided
Divisions inside the ruling Conservative Party regarding
government policy on Ireland were highlighted February 19 on
BBC's Newsnight. Conservative member of Parliament (MP)
Nicholas Budgen called for the government to "crack down on
the IRA" at the same time as winning the "confidence" of
Catholics.
"We tried that for 25 years," retorted fellow Conservative MP Nicholas Scott, "and it didn't work." London, he said, had to "stick with the peace process." The government's weakness was underlined February 26 by a narrow one-vote victory in a no-confidence vote in Parliament.
Nine Ulster Unionists and two Conservatives voted against the government after debating a report on sales of military equipment to Iraq in the late 1980s. The report, by Richard Scott, criticized the government for changing its policy without informing Parliament.
Meanwhile, The Irish News, a Belfast daily read mostly by Catholics, reported 56 percent of opinion poll respondents in the north and 85 percent in the south favored all-party talks without pre-conditions. A Sunday Times poll in Britain found 63 percent supported talks with Sinn Fein "to restore the cease-fire" and 45 percent in favor of a united Ireland.