It is an event of some significance that Councillor Francis Mackey, chairman of the 32County Sovereignty Movement, is not standing for re-election to Omagh District Council on June 7th. Most people will conclude that the real reason for this is to avoid exposing in a very public way the type of politics which attempts to excuse, if not to justify, the "Real IRA" campaign, which is completely repudiated by the Irish people, both North and South.
It now appears to be acknowledged tacitly that there is not a person in that organisation who could get elected, North or South, or who could even gather a respectable number of votes. It sinks the argument, borrowed by analogy from quite different times and circumstances, and before there was any sovereign Irish State, that at some point in the indeterminate future, the Irish people would retrospectively vindicate at the polls a terror campaign, the centrepiece of which will always be the Omagh bomb, which led to the horrible death of 31 civilians and injuries for life to many others.
This, the worst atrocity of the entire Troubles, took place, less than four months on, in direct defiance of the people, North and South, who had given a decisive endorsement to the Good Friday agreement, exercising jointly their right of self-determination for the first time since 1918.
As a former minister for foreign affairs who negotiated that agreement and, above all, as a life-long republican, I want to make it clear why the 32-County Sovereignty Movement cannot invoke the United Nations and international law or the spirit or traditions of mainstream Irish republicanism, in order to provide even a thin justification for their actions.
The UN is made up, as its name suggests, of nearly 200 nations that are sovereign within legally recognised and determined boundaries. Only in very special and carefully defined circumstances have authorities or movements that are not sovereign governments been admitted to a hearing, as, for example, the PLO, now the Palestinian Authority - deemed to have the overwhelming support of the Palestinian people.
The 32-County Sovereignty Movement claims that its case is with the UN, implying that, while it awaits a ruling, the "Real IRA" is justified in carrying on its campaign. But the Sovereignty Movement has no standing with the UN, and therefore no claim to a hearing or to a decision on its petition. (I do not know if the "Real IRA" claims to be the "real government" and the "real army of the Republic", but, if so, that dated fantasy has no currency outside its own ranks.)
The UN is never going to adjudicate on its case, not just because it does not have one, but also because the committee does not represent Ireland, or any recognised and democratically expressed body of opinion within Ireland. This has not prevented members of the group turning up at the occasional non-governmental organisation (NGO) conference in Geneva, held in the margins of a UN Human Rights Sub-Committee meeting.
Since the decision of the United States government in the last couple of weeks to ban the "Real IRA" in the US, it seems by extension that individual members of the Sovereignty Movement will not be admitted to the United States, where the New York headquarters of the UN is situated. Speaking at an NGO conference in a UN sub-capital, needless to say, does not constitute putting one's case to the UN.
The Sovereignty Movement's case relies heavily on arguments included in an article by the late Sean MacBride in the early 1980s. While he was strongly critical of Britain's role in Ireland, he was, since the enactment of the Constitution in 1937, a constitutional republican and he states in the course of the article: "I do not agree with the violence used by the IRA and have refused to endorse their politics."
A fortiori, he cannot be cited as an authority providing justification for a continuing "Real IRA" campaign, after the Provisional IRA itself has been for several years on ceasefire. It is also relevant that the situation has evolved considerably since Mr McBride wrote in the early 1980s.
In the Downing Street Declaration, the Framework Document, and above all, the Good Friday agreement, the British government has, in agreement with the Irish Government, and for the first time, recognised the people of Ireland's right to self-determination, on the basis that it is exercised jointly and concurrently.
The people, North and South, exercised that right on May 22nd, 1998, and therefore arguments about Britain's denial of our right to self-determination no longer apply to the present or future, only the past.
When the Sovereignty Movement argues that "consent to a minority to opt out within the sovereignty of a nation can only be granted by a sovereign decision of the people", that is precisely what the endorsement of the Good Friday agreement by the people does.
If people do not believe me, they should study what the brave Belfast human rights lawyer, Paddy McGrory - who won a vital part of the case of the Gibraltar Three at the European Court of Human Rights - wrote in 1994 in the wake of the Downing Street Declaration: "There is no room for doubt that the declaration concedes the Irish have a right to self-determination, without external interference. The importance of this simply must not be underestimated. It is a departure from the attitude of the British towards Ireland which has endured for centuries. It is sad to reflect on the human suffering, the grief and misery which would have been avoided had Britain acknowledged the existence of this right even a century ago.
And it must count as the greatest achievement of the modern republican movement that it has wrung this acceptance of Ireland's essential nationhood from the British.
"A pledge to the unionists that they will never be coerced into a united Ireland changes its character depending on whether that pledge comes from a British source, that is external interference with the Irish right to self-determination, and constitutes a veto. When the pledge comes from an Irish source, however, that is merely the Irish exercising their right to self-determination in the way they have freely chosen, and without any external interference."
The Good Friday agreement is also a realistic recognition by the Irish people that a sovereign united Ireland would only be viable with the support of a majority within both Northern Ireland and the Republic, and of course, by extension, the island as a whole.
Today, democracy is understood as a lot more than majority rule. It is not compatible with the coercion of a large minority either within Northern Ireland or within Ireland as a whole. The founder of Irish republicanism, Wolfe Tone, spoke of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, and the United Irishmen made an honest and honourable effort to do that with some success in the 1790s in the face of a vastly superior force, and unfortunately it was the missing factor, though not for want of trying, in the struggle for all-Ireland independence.
The Good Friday agreement is the first major occasion in 200 years, when, despite continuing deep constitutional differences, the different traditions, not just Protestant and Catholic, but unionist and nationalist, are uniting to work constructively together against a background which recognises the totality of relationships.
The alternative strategy, of trying to drive the British by force out of Northern Ireland, has not worked over 30 years and certainly will not work now. It shows a complete contempt for fellow Irishmen and Irishwomen that has little sanction earlier history. Resisting British rule in Northern Ireland takes on a different resonance, when that is what the majority seek to maintain. De Valera recognised as far back as August 1921: "We do not contemplate coercion."
Of course, on the same principle, Northern nationalists should never have been subjected to coercion either. But we now have a new political dispensation, based on democracy, justice and equality, which has been freely agreed to by majorities in both parts of the island and that has cross-community support in Northern Ireland. This, for most people, is a huge advantage.
It may be unpalatable to have to argue it, but the reality is that Britain was never in serious difficulty with international law - whatever about international opinion - in regard to Northern Ireland. Regrettably, neither the international community, in the sense of other governments, nor international law had a difficulty in principle, either with the partition of Ireland, despite its inherent undesirability, or with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Republicans - of whom my father Todd was one, and whose two volumes of memoirs have been republished this week - struggled to win recognition at the Versailles peace conference in 1919, following the first World War, and from the United States, whose President, Woodrow Wilson, had endorsed the doctrine of national self-determination, but made no headway.
Following the treaty, an internationally recognised Irish Free State came into being on December 6th, 1922. The December 1925 Boundary Agreement, following the Boundary Commission fiasco, arguably copperfastened the Border in terms of international law. Republicans were deeply unhappy at that development, and denied the political and moral legitimacy of partition, a denial incorporated in Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution.
The State did not accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, as the view - on the basis of legal advice available to successive governments - was that Ireland might lose, and that the issue must be resolved politically (see Article 29 of the Constitution). Under international law, it is the British government and those who support the Union who are the beneficiaries of the principle of inviolability of territory in international law, which does not exclude the peaceful change of borders by agreement.
If the 32-County Sovereignty Movement, a group that has no democratic support, wishes to challenge on legal grounds the authority of the Dail or the people in endorsing the Good Friday agreement, there is nothing to prevent it taking a case in the first instance before the Irish courts.
It is indefensible to be killing people (or trying to) on the basis of a fundamentally flawed legal argument. Sean MacBride's arguments are almost entirely based on arguments of history and political legitimacy and internal or domestic law. He did not argue the case in terms of international law, as he would have known well that it was likely to fail (and this was even before the Anglo-Irish Agreement or the Good Friday agreement, which formally recognised the principle of consent).
The 32-County Sovereignty Movement seems to labour under the misapprehension that declaring the Irish nation sovereign back in 1916 and 1919 was enough to make it so in the eyes of international law, and that it has now been left the sole remaining guardian of the sovereign nation. That is not the case.
The Irish nation was able to establish its sovereignty only in 26 counties. The arguments and divisions that led to a tragic Civil War largely centred round the status of the 26 counties, Free State or Republic, and the issue of the oath. The sovereignty of the Irish nation was never established in the six counties, so it is misleading to suggest that it has been given up or abandoned by anyone, be it the Irish Government, be it the SDLP, or Sinn Fein.
A sovereign Irish nation in the whole island of Ireland remains the shared ideal of all Irish nationalists and republicans, but it is only obtainable, embracing the people of all 32 counties, in accordance with the constitutional provisions of the Good Friday agreement.
A continued campaign of violence only inflicts needless hardship and suffering, delays demilitarisation, and holds up political progress. Violence completely alienates any potential for the gradual growth of support within either the unionist or Northern Protestant community for the establishment of closer links between the two parts of this island.
I am sure lawyers and historians would willingly clarify points of international law or political history, if the Sovereignty Movement wishes to put them forward, so that thoroughly confused arguments do not mislead the "Real IRA" and the Sovereignty Movement any further in the opposite direction to the rest of the people of Ireland.
I would like to see the paramilitary campaign, which has no moral or political justification, stop for good right now, before anyone else dies, so that any doubts about these matters can be thoroughly clarified and discussed.
That can best be done here in Ireland, because no one in the UN is likely to pay much attention to a case from an organisation that has no support from the Irish Government or people, and that is grounded not in international law but in historical perceptions and attitudes, attitudes from which most people have long since moved on in tandem with political progress.
