Sinn Fein Endorses N. Ireland Peace Deal

Another key building block for peace in Northern Ireland slid into place Sunday as Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, reversed decades of policy and voted overwhelmingly for a peace deal that would allow it to sit in a provincial assembly alongside its pro-British, Protestant enemies.

At an emotion-fraught party conference, convicted IRA bombers and gunmen, some temporarily released from British and Irish prisons specially for the occasion, appeared to a joyous, tearful welcome, countenancing by their words and presence a momentous switch in party strategy.

“Our struggle is not over,” vowed the pallid, crew-cut Padraig Wilson, so-called wing commander of the IRA inmates inside Northern Ireland’s Maze prison, where he is serving a 25-year sentence for possession of explosives.

“I believe those who sacrificed their lives would think, as I do today, that this is the best opportunity we’ve ever had to bring about the Ireland they died for,” said Joe Cahill, 78, a longtime IRA member convicted of killing a police officer in 1942 and of running guns.

Assured repeatedly by the militants and their own leaders that changing tactics is not the same as betraying principles, 331 of the 350 Sinn Fein delegates gathered at Royal Dublin Society Hall raised their yellow-and-white identity cards and voted to allow party members, if elected, to join the new assembly and government of a British-ruled province that Sinn Fein is sworn to eradicate.

The peace package, negotiated under the patient aegis of former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell, is to be put before voters in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic in simultaneous May 22 referendums.

“Today we cleared the way to the future,” an exultant Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein’s president, said Sunday. “Tomorrow we start to build the future. The future is freedom.”

Adams told reporters later that he felt as though a “time warp” had been removed from Sinn Fein’s internal rules, which have barred party members from taking part in the provincial government in Northern Ireland. But he and other officials of the party gave numerous assurances to delegates that their long-term objective had not been compromised. That goal is to drive the British out of the six counties in northeastern Ireland and join the territory with the 26 counties of the predominantly Roman Catholic Irish Republic.

“Our aim is freedom and unity, to remove British rule in Ireland, and an end to partition and conflict,” Rita O’Hare, a member of the Sinn Fein executive committee, said. “We know that the balance of political forces on this island do not allow, at this time, for the immediate securing of our primary objective of Irish unity and independence.”

Strategy Disclosed

As linchpin of its new strategy, Sinn Fein joined seven other political parties in Northern Ireland, plus the governments of Britain and Ireland, to negotiate the peace settlement signed April 10--Good Friday--that provides for Protestant-Catholic power-sharing in the province and formal island-wide government cooperation.

The pact is meant to staunch the sectarian bloodshed that has led to more than 3,200 deaths in the past 30 years.

“Comrades, this isn’t about republicans managing British rule in Ireland. This is about republicans managing, peacefully, British disengagement from Ireland,” Jim Gibney, another member of the Sinn Fein executive committee, told the congress.

But on the republican side, where “breaking the link with England” has been a cherished dream since the lifetime of 18th century Irish patriot Wolfe Tone, there is widespread unease at having any truck with the British “occupiers” in the North.

Of acute concern is a clause in the proposed deal that asks voters in the Irish Republic to amend the 1937 Constitution, which currently lays claim to the island of Ireland in its entirety, and stipulate that the North could be annexed only if a clear majority of its people give explicit consent at the polls.

“What we are doing by calling for a yes is saying that a minority that has a majority in two of the 32 counties will decide the future of this island,” objected a delegate from the southern city of Cork.

Violence Flares

On the eve of the Sinn Fein congress, a new breakaway group of IRA fighters rejected the settlement as “a complete betrayal of the claim of Irish self-determination,” and “declared war” on the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On Sunday, the splinter faction claimed responsibility for firing two mortar shells overnight at a police barracks in the Northern Ireland border town of Belleek. No one was injured.

Sources in the Garda Siochana, Ireland’s national police, have estimated the hard-liners at between 50 and 70 but have said they probably will pick up more members as the referendum date approaches. Also problematic is the future attitude of the mainstream, or Provisional, IRA itself, which under the peace settlement is required to hand over its weaponry. Like Protestant paramilitary groups, it has done nothing so far.

One Irish estimate, published in this weekend’s Sunday Independent, a Dublin newspaper, put the size of IRA arms dumps, the biggest possessed by any of Northern Ireland’s guerrilla groups, at about 700 AK-47 assault rifles, assorted handguns and as much as 2 tons of Semtex plastic explosive obtained from Libya.

“More and more people are being sucked into the democratic process, but they can’t eliminate pockets of armed resistance,” said John Horgan, a Dublin-based author and journalist who attended the Sinn Fein conference.

“Sinn Fein is not an armed group. We are not the IRA,” was all Adams would say to party delegates about the link between the two organizations.

The largest pro-British party in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionists, endorsed the Northern Ireland peace settlement April 18, but leader David Trimble now faces a mutiny in his ranks. Sinn Fein’s blessing, and a green light from the IRA, were also clearly indispensable to a deal, so the British and Irish governments gave Adams and the rest of his party’s leadership a boost by temporarily freeing some prisoners so they could attend the congress.

Saturday night, the British freed Wilson and three other well-known IRA inmates. But the greatest surprise Sunday was the Irish government’s decision to release temporarily the four longest-serving IRA prisoners.

The hall erupted in a rapturous, thunderous standing ovation as the bald and white-bearded Hugh Doherty and the other members of the so-called Balcombe Street gang, in jail for the past 23 years, entered the central aisle and began marching to the dais. In the mid-1970s, the four conducted a lethal bombing campaign against London pubs frequented by soldiers and against clubs and other institutions frequented by members of the British establishment.

After their arrest, police found documents indicating that the quartet had been targeting 58 members of Parliament, 30 judges and other officials. In 1977, each was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison. Recently, they were transferred to Irish jails.

“Welcome home, comrades!” shouted one delighted Sinn Fein official as they made their entrance. In the hall, delegates shed tears, and on the dais, Adams and Martin McGuinness, another leading Sinn Fein official, exchanged bearhugs with Doherty and the others.

Voter Support in Mind

Another reason for the switch in Sinn Fein strategy was the worry voiced by some that if they boycotted the new legislature in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital, they would be frittering away voter support to the benefit of a more moderate nationalist group, the Social Democratic and Labor Party.

“Do we stand outside an elected assembly and allow our votes to be stolen by others?” delegate Sean Brady asked. Though Sinn Fein members do not take up their seats in the British Parliament because they would be required to swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, in May 1997 they won 17% of the popular vote--but the SDLP got nearly 21%.

In the North, Trimble has been endeavoring to sell the peace package to his electorate as a guarantee of continued British rule.

“During the last week, David Trimble has been saying the union [with Britain] has been saved. He couldn’t be more wrong,” Pat Doherty, Sinn Fein vice president, said.

The Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, is waging a campaign to persuade Northern Ireland voters to cast their ballots against a “sellout agreement.” But Gibney, the Sinn Fein executive committee member, said he hopes to prove to the “hearts and minds” of the 54% of the North’s population that is Protestant that “their best interests lie in a new, agreed and independent Ireland.”

“I approach these proposals and the Good Friday document, and I ask myself, ‘As tus nua e seo?’--’Is this a new beginning?’ ” said Gibney, breaking into Gaelic, Ireland’s ancient native tongue. “And I answer, ‘Sea’--’It is.’ ”