Madam, - Your Editorial of September 19th describes Bertie Ahern's plan to consider organising Fianna Fáil in Northern Ireland as "premature and ill-advised". You support UUP leader Sir Reg Empey's criticism of the move. However, the component parts of the British Conservative Party and the Irish Labour Party in Northern Ireland have both welcomed Fianna Fáil's initiative.
The stability and endurance of the Good Friday Agreement does not depend on the continuance of the parties that were a product of - and participants in - the Northern conflict. If anything, politics there needs to move beyond tribalism and sectarianism to the normal governmental politics of both the Republic and Britain.
Merging the SDLP with Fianna Fáil (or Labour) and merging the UUP with the Tories would pit Sinn Féin and the DUP against far more powerful moderate national forces than they have perviously had to face. At present the two moderate parties of nationalism and unionism are organisationally weak and are sidelined within a six-county party system that rewards tribalism. The only way for Northern moderates to recapture lost ground is to be part of parties that contest power in the Republic and the UK - parties of wider, more moderate Irish and British society rather than the tribal pressure-cooker that is Northern Ireland.
Bertie Ahern's initiative is a cautious but welcome one. - Yours, etc,
JOHN DOYLE,
Kingswood Heights,
Tallaght,
Dublin 24.
Madam, - In all the excitement about the Taoiseach's (curiously timed) announcement that Fianna Fáil may extend itself to Northern Ireland, has anyone in that party actually thought through the consequences of such a move? I thought the logic of the Good Friday Agreement - which we are, at last, witnessing in action - was to build relationships between the people of Northern Ireland. I did not realise that, now that the "problem has been solved" (as I heard the Minister for Foreign Affairs say on Monday), the way is being paved for Fianna Fáil or anyone else to march into the North.
Ultimately the big winners from any Fianna Fáil move North may well be Sinn Féin. With more parties competing for the "nationalist" vote, opposition to Sinn Féin will fracture and its dominant position will be strengthened. Moreover, with unionism already reacting negatively to the Fianna Fáil idea, the prospect of the DUP and Ulster Unionists moving towards a rapprochement becomes greater. Therefore what we might end up with is a stronger Sinn Féin and a more hostile unionism.
Rather than this scenario, parties in the South should be encouraging more engagement between the moderate parties of unionism and nationalism in Northern Ireland. These parties, by working together, could create a middle ground based on real reconciliation and understanding. Such a bloc could become the antidote to the crude, sectarian politics of Sinn Féin and the DUP.
This development smacks of nothing more than partisan political manoeuvring, rather than a long-term initiative to create a better society in the North. - Yours, etc,
RONAN FARREN,
Dartmouth Square,
Dublin 6.
Madam, - I was not surprised to learn that Fianna Fáil - or to give it its full title, Fianna Fáil The Republican Party - is planning to enter politics in Northern Ireland. Since its foundation, Fianna Fáil The Republican Party has always argued that the re-unification of this island was one of its principal tenets. One of its stalwarts, Padraig Flynn, put this very well when he said: "There's one thing we have which Fine Gael can never have and that's a deep love for the four green fields of this land". This "deep love" led him and his colleagues to utter nationalist rhetoric at their ard-fheiseanna and to play the green card each election time. It even led them vehemently to oppose the Anglo-Irish Agreement while in opposition, only to work the same agreement comfortably when in government a few years later. In fact, so true and consistent was Fianna Fáil The Republican Party's republican and nationalist credentials that it had no qualms about introducing coercive legislation directed at those who might possibly be considered more republican than they were. The fact that it complained about such legislation while in opposition was of no concern.
Another "core" belief of the party was its recognition of the central role of the family in Irish life. This, along with the intimate relationship between Church and State, formed an important part of de Valera's 1937 Constitution. Over the past 15 years, when both of these beliefs became politically unpopular, it had no qualms about dropping them and hastily replacing them with a "vision" of secularism that had been quickly cobbled together. Overnight, the party whose leaders loved being photographed kneeling to kiss bishops' rings transformed itself into one whose leader was happy to be photographed visiting gay community centres where he promised to introduce civil partnerships "at the earliest possible date".
Some may call all of this realpolitik, but I call it cynical opportunism. I know of no party in the rest of Europe which so quickly and so completely renounced its previous beliefs and changed its "principles" in the pursuit of power.
Finally, in the same week that the Taoiseach, yet again, changed his story to the Mahon tribunal, I am sure that people north of the Border are awaiting with great hope and impatience the entry of such a principled, honest and responsible party into their political life. - Yours, etc,
DAVID DOYLE,
Gilford Park,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.