Irish Political News

The SDLP, having weighed up what was on offer in the budget against its serious shortcomings, voted against it- fair play to them. Margaret Ritchie stood firm in the face of the DUP/ SF axis bullying tactics and managed to squeeze extra money from them for much-needed social housing. However, it remains an essentially right-wing, anti-community budget. There is of course the lack of detail on water reform and education, and by the recent performance of Nigel Dodds with regard to the abolition of relief for the installation of energy efficient measures, the two big parties cannot be trusted to deliver unless they spell out exactly what they are intending to do.

Some people don't seem to be able to get their heads around the concept that the SDLP are in the Executive as a right, not because they have agreed on a way forward with the DUP and Sinn Féin. This isn't like the situation in the Republic where parties coalesce voluntarily because they agree on a way forward. The SDLP has a democratic mandate to oppose anything they wish to oppose in the Executive.

Technically Margaret Ritchie had to vote in favour of the budget, but the wider party is not bound by these rules and has every right to oppose the budget. That does not undermine its right to be in the Executive- they have a mandate and right to use any Executive seat they have in any way they see fit, as the other parties also can do. Likewise with their party vote in the Assembly. There is nothing morally or legally to say they have to dance to the tune of the DUP/ Sinn Féin axis.

There are some, including the perennially self-righteous Alliance Party, who say the SDLP should quit the Executive. Quitting would be contravening the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement which the SDLP framed. This is about powersharing and scrutiny, not leaving the lunatics in charge of the asylum unchecked.

And then there are those who say that the SDLP should back the budget and every other DUP/ SF point-of-view because they share Executive membership with them. This would essentially mean that the SDLP would have to support the budget even if they disagreed with it. That would be anti-democratic.

There are also those who argue that the SDLP should quit the Executive and form an opposition (a position not provided for in the GFA and which is anti-powersharing and has no legal basis). That would be tantamount to the Westminster-style set-up of the old Stormont regime.

No, the SDLP should remain in the Executive as the guardian of the rights and needs of the people. So what if it has to vote against Executive decisions? If it means standing up for what is right, then so be it.

I see that Hugh Orde met an Assembly committee yesterday on the matter of the devolution of policing and justice powers. Orde said he sees no reason not to meet the May 2008 target date while unionists, predictably, insist that it won't happen until certain other conditions are met (including, shockeroonie, another pre-condition for republicans).

Sinn Féin's response is here, and one line is particularly noteworthy:

The devolution of Policing and Justice was a key element in the negotiations that led to the restoration of the political institutions.

What that translates to, of course, is "We secured our membership's approval on the basis of a reassurance that policing and justice would be devolved by May 2008 and we're going to have serious problems if that doesn't actually happen". There is no other way to read it, given that all and sundry on the unionist side were making it perfectly clear when St Andrews was agreed that they were not signing up to a hard-and-fast deadline.

In a way it reminds me of the old decommissioning debate. The GFA, remember, called for all parties to "use their influence" to achieve decommissioning within two years. SF said at the time that this wasn't a deadline. The IRA at the time said flat-out that they would decommission only when they were good and ready to. Nonetheless, unionists insisted it was a time-locked guarantee and sold it to their people as such. We all know the rest.

The only real question now is - when May 2008 comes and goes and there is still no devolution, will the governments do as they did with decommissioning, insist there actually was a deadline and turn against the side refusing to meet it? Or will they take a literal interpretation of St Andrews and accept the unionists' demands for further concessions? Precedent only points to one answer.

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On another matter, the unionists are apparently unhappy at the suggestion that the British Government might admit that there was a war going on in the Six Counties.

Well, Chichester-Clark admitted it 36 years ago, what's the point of denying it now?

I've just been listening to Newstalk 106, where Des Dalton of Republican Sinn Féin was briefly interviewed on the subject of that party's Ard Fheis, to be held this weekend.

In the course of the interview it was put to Dalton that the people of Ireland, north and south, voted in favour of the Good Friday Agreement. Dalton denied that this was true: "The people of the 26 Counties didn't even get a chance to vote on the Stormont Agreement," he said.

This is an allegation the GFA's opponents have been levelling for years, and it baffles me. Did they not bother to read the text of the constitutional amendment they (presumably) voted against in 1998? The very first line of it reads:

The State may consent to be bound by the British-Irish Agreement done at Belfast on the 10th day of April, 1998, hereinafter called the Agreement.

You can't get much clearer than that. Obviously the most emotive part of the referendum, for most people in the 26, was the removal of Articles 2 and 3 but it's pure historical revisionism to claim - as RSF and the others constantly do - that that is all the southern electorate voted on.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of the GFA, but I really don't see any credible argument that its passage wasn't the will of the Irish people as expressed at the time.