BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- The British and Irish governments cite plenty of security reasons for cracking down furiously on Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, as they are doing. But strong political considerations in Britain, Ireland and the troublesome province of Ulster that preoccupies them also play a significant role.
The British government of Prime Minister Tony Blair only moved to punish Sinn Fein highly reluctantly. For almost eight years since taking office, Blair has devoted more time and energy to a lasting settlement of the Northern Ireland conflict between its 900,000-strong Protestant loyalist and 600,000-strong Catholic nationalist communities than any other British government in modern times. And bringing Sinn Fein into the political process has been an integral part of that effort.
Penalizing Sinn Fein and running the risk that it and the IRA will now turn their back on the peace process is therefore an especially bitter pill for Blair to swallow. That is especially the case when he has yet to restore his old credibility following the continuing deterioration of conditions in Iraq
, where 8,000 British troops are still deployed in the southern region of the country.
But with a general election coming up in May
, Blair and his dominant Labor Party need to avoid giving the opposition Conservatives, or Tories, under Michael Howard an emotional issue like turning a blind eye to terror in Northern Ireland. The Conservatives have historically been more uncritically pro-American than Labor and have also supported a tough line alongside the United States on Iraq. Therefore Howard has not been able to outflank Blair on these issues, and even Tory opposition to bringing Britain into the euro-zone that includes the other major Western nations in the European Union now lacks traction as Blair has back-pedaled from his former enthusiasm for that policy.
Taking a tough line against Sinn Fein, therefore, defuses potentially significant opposition from the Tories and robs them of yet another substantive issue with which to challenge the prime minister in the election campaign.
Blair and his secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, may also hope that by penalizing Sinn Fein, they will reverse the inexorable dynamic of Ulster politics over the past seven years whereby ever since Sinn Fein was brought into the power-sharing, mainstream political process, it has remorselessly gained ground within the Catholic community at the expense of the more moderate, middle-class Social and Democratic Labor Party. This process has also produced the symmetrical and ominous development that the moderate Ulster Unionist Party led by David Trimble that negotiated the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 has been eclipsed by the more hard-line Democratic Unionist Party of the Rev. Ian Paisley within the majority Protestant community.
Freezing Sinn Fein out of the British political process in the Palace of Westminster, therefore, offers - at least in theory - the possibility that rather than waste their votes for a party which no longer can effectively represent them at Westminster, Catholic nationalist voters in the province will turn back to the old SDLP.
Before the British government turned against Sinn Fein to penalize it for what British intelligence and an Independent Monitoring Commission say was the complicity of its leaders in a huge $50 million bank robbery in Belfast late last year, the SDLP appeared threatened with near extinction in the next British general election. It currently holds only three seats in the House of Commons, the main chamber of the British Parliament, compared with four for Sinn Fein. It looks certain to lose another one of them in the May election and may even lose a second, held by Seamus Mallon, leaving it with only one against possibly six for Sinn Fein in the next British Parliament.
It is, of course, far from certain that any punitive action the British government takes against Sinn Fein will reverse this dynamic and give the SDLP a chance to restore their failing fortunes. The opposite could happen. Historically
, the more British governments over the past 90 or so years have acted to try and freeze out Irish nationalist parties, the more successful those parties have become in their home base constituencies.
Still, the choice facing Blair and Murphy was either not to act at all against Sinn Fein and admit the certainty that it would eclipse the SDLP, or to take action against it in the hope that there was at least a possibility this would reverse the political flow.
However, Irish Prime Minister -- or Taoiseach -- Bertie Ahern appears to be on firmer ground in his drive against IRA on money laundering activities in the Republic of Ireland. Ahern is already Ireland's longest-serving prime minister in the past 40 years since Sean Lemass in the early 1960s, and on current form he looks likely to win a third general election in a row -- a record no modern Irish prime minister has equaled, and then go on to become the longest-serving PM since Ireland's founding hero Eamonn de Valera himself.
Ahern's ruling Fianna Fail Party has lost very significant ground in recent elections to the superbly funded Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein has done well at eroding Fianna Fail support among its traditional poor rural base. But now Ahern has replaced his finance minister with Charles McCreevy and has turned to more generous and inclusive social policies. In effect, he is trying to return Fianna Fail to the traditional populist roots it enjoyed under de Valera, Lynch and Charles Haughey in the 1970s and 80s.
Ahern also appears to be hoping that revelations about Sinn Fein's close ties with the IRA and allegations of IRA criminality and money laundering will alienate Ireland's large and politically crucial middle class against Sinn Fein and stop the Sinn Fein from breaking out of its rural poor base and establishing a significant following among the middle class as well.
Ireland does not have to hold a general election for some time yet, unlike Northern Ireland and Britain. So it will take some time for the domestic fruits of Ahern's political strategy to become clear. But historically, voters in the Republic of Ireland have usually gone with their pocketbooks, and Ahern's outstanding success as an economic steward looks likely to stand him in good stead for some time to come. Usually, Southern Irish voters, while sympathetic to the nationalist movement in the North, do not want to run the risk of getting sucked into Northern violence and fanaticism. Therefore, a revival of sectarian conflict in the North may even work against Sinn Fein in the South, while strengthening it in its northern base.Related Topics Articles：
