Modern history from republican perspective

DR GARRET FitzGerald, in his address to the MacGill summer school, contends essentially that if the situation in the six counties had been left to the SDLP in the early 1970s, a civil rights-type solution could have been achieved.

The actions of the British army and the RUC especially the British army at Ballymurphy in April 1970, and during the Falls curfew of July that year when they killed four uninvolved civilians took the situation out of the hands of those who later formed the SDLP.

That a civil rights-type resolution could have been reached by the SDLP can be argued. Complete British government disengagement from Ireland and Irish national independence certainly could not.

From the outset, the party led by Gerry Fitt accepted the unionist veto on the future of Ireland. A civil rights-type arrangement was reached at Sunningdale in December 1973 to which both the SDLP and Dr FitzGerald's government in Dublin were parties. It was brought down not by republicans but by the action of unionists on the streets during the loyalist political strike five months later. The British government and army stood by and allowed this to happen.

The lessons were quickly learned by nationalists. Six years after its signing in 1998, another civil rights-type agreement still has not worked.

A four-province, federal Ireland is the surest basis for the settlement of the national question.

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh

President, Republican Sinn Féin

Teach Dáithí Ó Conaill

223 Parnell Street

Dublin 1