ALEX KANE: Sinn Fein woe sealed with a handshake - Columnists on Astini News
IN politics, as in real life, the process of closure begins with negotiation and ends in a handshake.
In Martin McGuinness's case his personal process of closure began almost 40 years ago, when he met representatives of Her Majesty's Government (on July 7, 1972) to discuss the implementation of his 'Brits out' policy. On Wednesday he will meet Her Majesty in person, thus confirming the primacy of his new 'Sinn Fein in' policy.
So you can forget the guff about any 'difficult decisions' at the ard comhairle and whether or not he would be given permission to meet the Queen. That decision was taken weeks – maybe even months – ago. Interviewed by UTV at the beginning of June, Brian Feeney and I both agreed that the so-called 'historic' meeting would take place: all that had to be decided was the location.
Sinn Fein isn't the UUP: it doesn't leave its decisions in the precarious, uncertain hands of 600 people. Instead, a few key figures make the decision in advance, then another few push the case for it in various internal and external platforms; and by the time the delegates are called together it has, in effect, become a rubber-stamping exercise.
The greatest tactical skill Sinn Fein possesses is the propaganda ability to sell utter, utter defeat as victory. In 1969 Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams (along with others) established the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein as a response to what they regarded as the defeatist policy of the 'official' IRA. They wanted to push the 'Brits out' strategy with greater urgency and bloodier terror. Yet within three years they, too, had begun to acknowledge the futility of their tactics.
The back-channel communications opened. The organisation was heavily infiltrated by British security. Terror alone was replaced with terror and politics. Sinn Fein is now in Stormont, Westminster and the Dail. It has accepted an internal settlement and the border separating the UK from the rest of Ireland. It co-governs with the DUP. It has stood down the IRA and the Army Council. It has decommissioned the arsenals. It has accepted a local police force. It has accepted the criminal justice system.
Each and every one of those decisions was approved by an ard comhairle which had been sold the notion that what may have looked like reversals and setbacks were, in reality, necessary steps on the road towards inevitable unification. Enoch Powell once described Edward Heath as the 'virtuoso of the U-turn': Martin McGuinness would have given him a run for his money!
When I say that 'Brits out' has been replaced with 'Sinn Fein in,' I really do mean it: for other than moving into Buckingham Palace and curling up like an old green corgi at the foot of the Queen's bed, I'm not sure how much more Sinn Fein could do to indicate that their war has been lost and the surrender terms penned by the British.
Those at the heart of the Sinn Fein machine know all of this to be true. That's why they go through the hoopla and rigmarole of the 'uniting Ireland' project, the 'unionist outreach' exercise and the new, massively hyped 'reconciliation' process. They have to convince themselves and their core vote that all is well. They have to convince themselves that Martin McGuinness touring the world as Peter Robinson's sidekick is part of a cunning plan to dupe unionists out of the United Kingdom.
Indeed, that's why we have had all this orchestrated 'hard ask' nonsense about meeting the Queen. They had no choice in the matter – so they had to provide suitable cover for themselves.
Don't kid yourselves that this is some sort of historic breakthrough for Sinn Fein. It isn't. The begrudging, strung-out way in which the decision was made tells you all you need to know. Martin McGuinness doesn't want to shake the Queen's hand. Not one single Sinn Fein MLA, councillor, TD or ordinary member wants to shake her hand. They don't want her in Northern Ireland. They don't want thousands of people in the grounds of Stormont (outside the very building they have to share with unionists) celebrating the Diamond Jubilee.
Let's be blunt about this: Martin McGuinness didn't join the IRA and become the de facto commander-in-chief of the army council just to end up at a function in which he will be 'presented' to Her Majesty during a tour of her United Kingdom!
But the meeting between McGuinness and the Queen still represents a form of closure for both of them. Last year she was welcomed in Dublin as a visiting head of State. In a couple of days time she will be in Northern Ireland, recognising the fact that the Province is as much a part of the UK today as it was when she became Queen in 1952. And when McGuinness meets her, he will be – however reluctantly – acknowledging exactly the same thing.
For this generation of 'armed struggle' republicanism the meeting represents the closure of their campaign. Yet in embedding Sinn Fein so deeply into the British system and into an internal settlement he has also closed the door for many more generations.
Sinn Fein has been trapped, stuffed and mounted and unionism is stronger today than it has ever been. It never needed majority rule to secure its base. What it needed most was a political arrangement – inside the United Kingdom – endorsed by a majority of people across Ireland and underwritten by the British, Irish and American governments. That's what it now has and Sinn Fein (with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams in particular) has been instrumental in securing that arrangement.
So it seems somehow fitting that McGuinness should trot along to a nicely choreographed event – one of those lovely occasions in which all of the political and PR boxes have been carefully ticked – and do whatever it is he has to do. I suspect it will be a very difficult personal and psychological moment for the Queen: but maybe she can take some unspoken comfort from the fact that she comes here as Head of State and that Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom for a very, very long time to come.
And Martin, bless him, is still one of her citizens and subjects. Three cheers, say I!
