Opinion:Déja vu

I've been here before, of course. In the early 1980's, Sinn Féin the Workers' Party made a breakthrough to mainstream politics when Joe Sherlock (now a Labour Party TD) won a seat in Cork East in 1981. By 1989 the Workers' Party (as it was named from 1982 onwards) had pushed that up to seven, including Pat Rabbitte, Proinsias de Rossa and Éamon Gilmore, now household names in the Labour Party.

In that early period the Workers' Party held out the promise of a radical revolutionary alternative to established politics, with the evolution from the Official Sinn Féin of 1969 with its connections to the Official IRA posing a real threat to the mainstream political system.

However, while breaking the link to militant republicanism in the shape of the Official IRA had been postulated in policy documents as far back as 1974, this link was resurrected to haunt, and ultimately, split the party.

In the late eighties, barely a week went by without some accusation of criminal activity, without the respectable party TDs being asked to account for some murky activity about which they knew very little. The big one came in 1983 when the party offices were raided and a block for printing forged fivers was found in the party's print-shop.

The campaign against "criminality" got underway big time in the media. And it's quite ironic then that loudest of all in the present-day denouncers of Sinn Féin on the criminality issue should be Labour's Pat Rabbitte, because of course Pat Rabbitte, by then a member of the party's ard-chomhairle, did not resign in 1983 to dissociate himself from this activity as he now calls on Sinn Féin's Aonghus Ó Snodaigh to do.

In 1986, RTÉ's Today Tonight broadcast a special exposé of Workers' Party "criminality", but still Pat Rabbitte didn't resign. He soldiered on (if you'll pardon the pun) trying to stress the political character of the Workers' Party and its programme. But there was no let up in the campaign against the party, and by this time Rabbitte and Gilmore had had enough. They planned to break with the apparently unreformable Workers' Party and join Labour, but Proinsias de Rossa persuaded them to try a third way – the formation of Democratic Left.

Democratic Left is now no more, its members being subsumed into the Labour Party, while the Workers' Party is once again outside the mainstream, on the margins with its revolutionary challenge soundly beaten.

Today' it's Sinn Féin's turn. The political activists are undermined at every turn by their paramilitary links, and accusations of criminality abound. The question is will Sinn Féin today break under the pressure, as the Workers' Party did; or will they be able to throw off the millstone of paramilitarism while holding true to their own revolutionary perspective.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin's major statement to the Dáil this week is a serious effort to begin that process. Of course, Republicans cannot accept the idea that armed resistance to the British occupation of part of our country is criminal, but Ó Caoláin went a considerable distance in saying that "there is no room in Sinn Féin for other than a clear and unambiguous commitment to democratic politics and the pursuit of our goals by legal and peaceful means".

He went further and affirmed Sinn Féin's "determination to see all guns taken out of Irish politics and to be part of the collective effort that will create the conditions where the IRA ceases to exist."

While this has been hinted at in statements from others leaders, this is the most far-reaching such statement from a Sinn Féin leader. December's offer of a deal concerning the IRA is still on the agenda. The problem is that the existence of the IRA, and the illegal fund-raising associated with it, cannot just be wished away. It will take time for that to work itself out, and as the Workers' Party found out in the eighties that is not something that the other parties will allow.

Tánaiste Mary Harney was, as expected, dismissive; but the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, did respond in a positive way. Is this just a case of "bad cop, good cop", or does Bertie realise that a failure of the peace process would create a vacuum that could potentially be disastrous for the Irish people?

There are, indeed, hard decisions to be made by Sinn Féin, and by the IRA. But there are hard decisions to be taken by the other parties as well. If they are genuine about wanting the end of paramilitarism, then they should begin to play a positive role with Sinn Féin instead of seeking every opportunity to undermine the party with generally baseless charges of "criminality".

And has anyone considered what would be the consequence if Sinn Féin and the IRA were to split, or, more accurately, if those who favour a political way forward were to break with those who are not yet convinced? The creating of a new IRA dedicated to another thirty years of war seems a high price to pay for the electoral advantage of Sinn Féin's rivals.