Northern Ireland: The authors of this thoughtful book about Sinn Féin and the SDLP ask three vital questions: to what extent did either party shape the Belfast Agreement?
Did the agreement reflect the political outlook of either party? How accurate is it to describe the SDLP as the political winner, but the electoral loser, in the intra-nationalist competition in Northern Ireland? In answer, Gerard Murray and Jonathan Tonge argue that the 1998 deal was indeed moulded by and reflective of the thinking of the SDLP; but they also suggest that while the SDLP has won the political argument in Northern Ireland, it has irreversibly lost its electoral battle with Sinn Féin.
This is rightly presented as ironic. For years the SDLP claimed that argument rather than armed struggle represented the best way forward for nationalists. For years they stressed that the solution to the North's problems lay in a compromise built around power-sharing with an Irish dimension. For decades they pointed out that the main obstacle to achieving a united Ireland was not political opinion in London, but rather the desire of the Northern Irish majority to remain in the UK. In the 1998 Belfast Agreement all of these arguments won the day: "the initial analysis of the Northern Ireland conflict by the SDLP has survived the passage of time and formed the basis of the current agreement".
And yet it has not been the vindicated party which has reaped subsequent electoral rewards. Instead, the IRA's maturing alter ego, Sinn Féin, has emerged as the more confident, vibrant, dynamic and popular agent of nationalist politics in the North. And this has occurred despite the fact that republicans' main arguments during the Troubles have been shown to have been misguided. Violence did not achieve Irish unity, or the defence of Catholic areas, or the ending of sectarian division; the primary reason for continued partition turned out not to be British colonialism; the southern state could not merely be dismissed as illegitimate.
Yet here they are, the party which expounded many such dubious arguments, cannily dominating nationalist politics in the North and growing solidly in the Republic as well. In the transformed world of the new Northern Ireland sectarian bitterness remains profound, and republicans have apparently won the day among nationalists as the muscular defenders of Catholic interest in an ongoing ethnic struggle.
For one difficulty which the SDLP and Sinn Féin have shared since their formation in the early years of the Troubles is that neither has attracted any significant Protestant support at all. In a Northern Ireland dominated by Sinn Féin and the DUP (the kind of Northern Ireland reflected in the recent elections) this is clearly not likely to change.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP is the first book systematically to trace and compare the evolving politics of these two important Irish nationalist parties. It does so through a careful, chronologically organized analysis, and the authors' interview material offers many valuable insights into the rival species of nationalism under scrutiny. The competition between these two parties in the North epitomizes some of the major tensions within Irish nationalism throughout history: the battle between violence and constitutionalism, between coercion and compromise, and between a focus on London and attention to the resolution of Irish divisions. In this book, Murray and Tonge lucidly chronicle the manner in which the modern version of this battle was simultaneously won and lost.
Richard English's book Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA is published in paperback by Pan Books
Sinn Féin and the SDLP: From Alienation to Participation By Gerard Murray and Jonathan Tonge O'Brien Press, 300pp. €21.95