The fears in Both Communities in N.Ireland about the Present Peace Process.

( 1 )There are fears amongst the people in both of the two main communities in N.Ireland about the present peace process :-

- there is the fear in the Unionist community the IRA will not accept anything less than a 32-county Republic ;

-there is the fear in the Nationalist community that the Unionist community and the British Government will not accept anything less a purely internal (British) solution.


( 2 ) Both these fears are inter-connected and in fact reinforce one another.
[The more the IRA continues its campaign of violence the more Unionist fears about the IRA's attitudes and intentions are reinforced and the more hard-line their own position becomes;

-The more hard-line the Unionist position becomes the more the fears of the Nationalist community about Unionist intentions are confirmed and the more the IRA in particular believe that violence is the only option.]


Both these fears need to be tackled simultaneously to build confidence in both communities in the peace-process .
( 3 ) Asking that Loyalist and Nationalist Violence should end un-conditionally , regardless of what oppression might be imposed on either of the two communities is unrealistic. The people in both communities have a right to be free and to quote Martin Luther King :-

"Oppression does not destroy a people, accepting oppression destroys a people".


However ,what paramilitaries on both sides should accept , and publically state, is that they would accept the outcome of negotiations if this outcome were acceptable to the majority in BOTH communities ( and thus in particular if acceptable to the majority in the community from which a particular paramilitary group comes ) .

In particular this should greatly help to remove the fears of the Unionist community and the British Government that the IRA would return to violence arbitrarily if it did not get what it wanted.
(In fact the only fear it should have left is that the IRA would not accept a one-sided purely internal settlement acceptable only to the Unionist community and imposed on the Nationalist Community.)


( 4 )Next there is the question of how to lessen Nationalist fears about the peace process and to build up Nationalist confidence that the peace process will have a just outcome.

Irrespective of whether there should be any pre-condition to entry into the talks there should be one condition on the outcome:- - that any proposed settlement must have the backing of both communities.

The two governments should make it crystal clear that any solution must have the backing of both communities and that any solution which did not have the support of the majority in both communities would not be acceptable and would not be allowed to come into existence.

Back to "Cothrom Home Page"
Back to "Other Cothrom Documents"

Note: All pf these Cothrom pages that relate to Northern Ireland were originally created at the end of the '90's/early 00's.