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mons. Some Conservatives share a growing conviction that the bipartisan policy of support for the government's actions can no longer be borne. These doubts have substance. The Good Friday Agreement, hailed as an end to 70 years of both IRA terror and unionist political monopoly, and immediately proposed as a template for settlements everywhere, is crawling through a moral swamp. It may emerge to hard ground with its principles intact; or it may be sucked down on the journey.
Its chief hazard is that it gives a central role to those paramilitary groups which, by declaring a renunciation of the armed struggle, have been brought into the chambers of power. One of the loyalist factions, the UVF, has a representation in the new assembly through the deputies of the Progressive Unionist party, led by David Ervine; the other major faction, the UDA, has none since the political grouping close to it, the Ulster Democratic Party, failed to win enough votes. The real problem, however, is the IRA, whose front organisation, Sinn Fein, increased its share of the vote to 16 per cent, thereby meriting, under the Assembly's rules two cabinet ministers. While officials of its armed wing rule whole areas through fear, Sinn Fein has deputies in the assembly and two members of the cabinet. The IRA has so far refused to disarm; refused to endorse exclusively peaceful and democratic measures laid out in the Mitchell Principles which govern the peace process; and has certainly not renounced its aim of securing a united Ireland well within the lifetime of its now generally middle-aged leaders.
This makes the murders and beatings in Belfast and elsewhere in the province fundamentally different in nature from the violence which accompanies crime in other UK cities. On the mainland, it is beyond the pale; in Northern Ireland, it is claiming seats in government. As the number of incidents and their brutality rise, both unionist and nationalist communities grow increasingly cynical about the efficacy of the Good Friday Agreement.
Both loyalist and republican groups live through terror, extortion and drug dealing, though the republican groups tend to levy a fee on dealers rather than deal themselves. The loyalist gangs are fiercely competitive and have no high command structure; in the republican areas, however, the IRA dominates to the point where it can usually enforce a monopoly over the control of weapons and, in most places, of terror. It also has a sophisticated command structure with political intelligence capabilities and international links. Throughout the campaign of the past 30 years, it has negotiated directly with the British government; and it now has a substantial democratic mandate. 'For most of this century,' says David Ervine of the progressive Unionists, "the IRA has regarded itself as a government-in-waiting, the legitimate
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