Sinn Fein strategy at the talks
• Martin McGuinness
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Greece: the Olympic struggle
4
Denmark: Half million private sector workers on strike • Anders
Lang and Katrine Toft Mikkelsen
Ireland: the "peace" agreement
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• Socialist Democracy statement
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Australia: The power of mass action • John Tully
Senegal: PADS-Time for change
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10 Chile: Senator-for-life Pinochet
• Pedro Brieger
12 Bangladesh-CHT: Peace, but in what shape? • Joyoti Grech and
Mrinal Chakma cover story
14 Asia's economic crisis
• Eric Toussaint
Sinn Fein strategy at the talks
Martin McGuinness*
Sinn Fein peace strategy is the dynamic which led to the Irish peace initiative and led to the total cessation of military operations by Oglaigh na hEireann were fully aware that the blocking tactics of the unionist leaders would have to be thwarted. These included, preventing a talks process from getting off the ground at all. In this, they were ably abetted by John Major. Preventing Sinn Fein from participating when talks eventually began and trying to drive us out once
20 The international conjuncture
• Maxime Durand
24 Global financial speculation
• Jesús Albarracín and Pedro Montes discussion
28 1968 in the United States
• Alan Wald
30 The "difference" debate in in August 1994
The Downing Street Declaration and the Joint Framework Documents were approach to the situation. formulated as a counter offensive to this; to buy time, to constrain and delimit the possibilities which had been opened up.
In parallel, the wreckers went to work: the securocrats and the political recidivists who would countenance no change; for whom the new situation simply meant the pursuit of war objectives by other means. And while they were successful in pulling the new situation apart they failed to extinguish the hope that had been inspired in popular opinion on this island and in Britain. [...]
Sinn Fein has not been naive in any of this. We were fully aware of the many flaws built into the talks process. Not least of these was the permanent government of securocrats and civil this had failed. A purely tactical
In all of this a united Ireland was not on the British agenda. Everyone knew that, especially republican activists. But it is and was on our agenda. Our remit was to negotiate an agenda for change -political and constitutional and in the matters which effect people most in their everyday lives, equality, rights, justice and demilitarisation. Our agenda for change in this limited but important short-term agenda were outlined in our Bridge into the Future document in March and our Future as Equals document submitted to the talks.
A united Ireland was not attainable in this phase. Because of Unionist opposition, and because, of all the participants, only Sinn Fein was advocating and feminism • Lidia Cirillo
32 Young women and feminism in
France • Laurence Ruimy regular features
33 books (student occupations in
Canada)
34 conference reports and listing
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Radical press review
36 Networking • Internet action servants who have ruled the north for a promoting that objective. To the extent quarter of a century. A bureaucracy that our political strength permitted us to which sought to impose a classical paci- promote all of our positions we did so.
fication programme when what is required is a conflict resolution process.
Nor were we naive about the possible outcomes to the talks process itself.
These were ring-fenced by the positions of the two governments.
And, of course, as was evident to all observers of the unfolding situation, we
A stronger electoral mandate would conceivably have effected the outcome of the talks in any number of ways. We need to learn the lesson of that. We need to build on our electoral mandate to shape the many negotiations which challenge us in the future. * *Martin McGuinness led Sinn Fein's delegation to the talks.
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