This year marks the 40th anniversary of the formation of
the IIP whose Protestant leader, the ex-British Army officer John Turnley, was
shot dead by the UDA near Larne in 1980.
Turnley had previously been a leading SDLP politician, but split with
the then Gerry Fitt-led party because it wasn’t a republican party first.
The success of the IIP was that it was the first real effort by
republicans to follow a purely constitutional and democratic route to achieving
a united Ireland.
Unlike SF, it did not have the baggage of being the political apologist
for a republican terror group.
Unfortunately for the IIP, it was the murder of Turnley, followed by the
republican hunger strikes of ’80 and ’81 which effectively killed off the
party.
Within two years of its formation, the IIP was starting to eat into the SDLP
vote. Had Turnley lived, the IIP – like SF today – would have overtaken the
more socialist-leaning SDLP as the leading voice for Northern nationalism.
Turnley may have been a religious Protestant, but he was also a
committed constitutional republican and followed a long line of politicians
from the Protestant community who believed in an all-island solution.
His Protestant background gave him a unique insight into the Unionist
mentality – and what needed to be done to coax Unionists into a power-sharing
Executive with republicans.
Maybe that was the primary reason why the UDA murdered the Larne
councillor as he sat in his car with his wife in the picturesque east Antrim
coastal village of Carnlough.
SF can honour Turnley’s memory by making the IIP the political model for
the modern republican movement. The IIP would have become a movement even the
most vehement of the DUP’s anti-Belfast Agreement faction could have done
business with at Stormont. It poses the question – if the IIP had survived,
would the peace process have been implemented a lot sooner than 1998?
The huge mistake which Unionism made in 1974 following the success of
the Ulster Workers’ Council strike, which collapsed the power-sharing
Sunningdale Executive, was to have no alternative to put in the Executive’s
place. Later, the London Establishment simply went back to the political
drawing board having learned the lesson of how to outwit Unionism when the
latter takes to the streets.
If what is left of the SDLP is to survive for another generation, it can
only combat the dominance of SF by formally merging with Fianna Fail in the
weeks – not months – after any deal between Sinn Fein and the DUP is reached
over Stormont. Direct Rule will also condemn the SDLP to the political dustbin
of history.
The last thing the SDLP needs is another Assembly poll as that would
probably reduce the party to complete fringe status, with the potential
embarrassment of coming back to Stormont with less seats than the Alliance
Party.
Turnley’s long-term strategy was once he had eclipsed the SDLP, he too,
would formally merge the IIP with FF to establish an all-island political
movement.
But the real fundamental reason SF should re-design itself as a 2017 IIP
is to encourage even more constitutional nationalist SDLP supporters to defect
to the republican movement.
With the dissident republican movement constantly threatening to oppose
SF candidates in many of the North’s constituencies, there is the real danger a
split republican vote will allow Unionist candidates to win additional seats in
traditionally republican strongholds.
The next poll, whether Assembly, Westminster or local government, will
be unique in the history of the North. It will not be about power-sharing or
policing, but will decide for the next decade at least who firmly speaks for
Unionism and republicanism. If the last Commons poll is taken as a benchmark,
it’s the DUP and Sinn Fein.
Both communities will have their backs to each other if there’s no deal
between Sinn Fein and the DUP and the Assembly is suspended.
If middle class Northern Catholicism is to have a decisive voice in any
future Stormont, it must send back a single nationalist party with a clear
mandate.
A
split republican vote will not mean the moderate SDLP will grab the seats. If
dissident republican candidates standing on, for example an anti-PSNI platform,
even pick up as many as 800 to 1,000 votes in each of the constituencies, it could
potentially rob Sinn Fein of up to a dozen seats even at local government
level.
The SDLP might pick up one or two at most, but the majority could swing
to the DUP.
This will leave Unionism with a massive mandate, creating a future
Stormont chamber more akin to the original Unionist Party majority rule
government which ran the North from the 1920s to 1972.
Republicans have a lot of heavy thinking to do in the coming weeks.
Their former war cry of ‘one man, one vote’ may have to become ‘one party, one
vote.’
As for Sinn Fein, the real trouble could come if dissident republicans
decide to take their electoral campaign south of the border for the next Dail
elections.
If that’s the case, its ‘bye, bye’ to any Sinn Fein coalition with
Fianna Fail in the next Leinster House government.
John Coulter is a unionist political writer.
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John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
"the real trouble could come if dissident republicans decide to take their electoral campaign south of the border for the next Dail elections"
ReplyDeleteJohn, I doubt if the dissidents could elect a representative to even a local authority. Your proposition that they could deprive SF of a seat in the national parliament is risible. Your commentary, or so it appears to me, is seriously ill-informed. Furthermore I doubt if Fianna Fáil will involve themselves in Northern elections. Micheál Martin won't risk allowing himself and his party to be seen as playing second fiddle to SF in Ulster.