Beyond the Good Friday Agreement - BY SEÁN McCANN (ÓGRA SHINN FÉIN)

Lenin said in 1917: "The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution."

When republicans first signed the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, many found the compromises demanded of us extremely difficult to bear. Even today, many activists still find it difficult to understand where institutions such as Stormont or Leinster House fit into a revolutionary struggle, or indeed any strategy that is designed to unify our country. These are, after all, reactionary, partitionist institutions.

Indeed, it is an unusual feature of the times that, while most nationalists and republicans have been energised by the IRA cessation and the Sinn Féin peace strategy, many activists, particularly in the Six Counties, remain paralysed by self-doubt and confusion. It would be worth returning to Lenin to see what he had to say about the question of revolutionaries participating in reactionary institutions:

"To agree, for instance, to participate in the third and the fourth Dumas (representative forums convened by the Russian Tsar, that had no real power) was a compromise, a temporary renunciation of revolutionary demands. But this was a compromise absolutely forced upon us for the balance of forces made it impossible for us for the time being to conduct a mass revolutionary struggle, and in order to prepare this struggle over a long period we had to be able to work even from inside such a 'pigsty'. History has proved that this approach to the question by the Bolsheviks as a party was perfectly correct."

History will similarly prove Sinn Féin to be correct. Republican activists should not be distracted by the criticisms that emanate either from the right, telling us at every opportunity that our project is about to become unstuck, or the micro-left (Lenin mischievously referred to them as 'an infantile disorder'), telling us that we are selling out.

The Good Friday Agreement was indeed a compromise, but it was as Lenin describes, "a temporary renunciation of revolutionary demands". Our task in the time ahead must be to continue our political strength on both parts of the island. But as we gather strength we must of course constantly review our strategies and policies, seeking to ensure that the process of radical change is accelerated.

Left wing critics of the Good Friday Agreement fail to recognise that it is merely a bridge to the future. But neither should we allow it to stifle our ambition or imagination. Our task in the immediate period is, of course, to realise its considerable potential but then to move beyond its limitations.

In the time ahead, it is absolutely essential that republicans — TDs, MPs, MLAs, councillors, policy researchers, party activists, all of us — find the time to become more actively involved in a process of critical reflection upon and debate about our strategies and policies — not simply about how we increase our popular appeal but about how we advance a revolutionary agenda in all of the forums and institutions in which we are participating.