It is difficult to decide how to vote on May 22nd. On the one hand, there are helpful things in the Agreement - the commitment by the British government to better treatment for people economically, culturally and with regard to the respect in which the lives of democrats should be held, and the recognition that democrats must be included in government here for the first time in two centuries.

But all the promises have been made before and broken by British governments and their supporters. It is difficult to see in the Agreement any substantial guarantees that they will not be broken again. Newspaper reports that NIO bureaucrats will be paid (what was that other word I was looking for?) to persuade them to work the Agreement with democratic representatives could well be true. If true, this would mean that the British government is trying to make sure that senior officials like those who helped destroy the Sunningdale arrangement in collaboration with British intelligence and loyalist armed groups would not do the like again.

That is possibly as near as one will get to any guarantee from the British administration. But it would be something. It would have been more honourable if the government in Dublin had arranged a vote on the Agreement one day and a vote on Articles 2 and 3 and 29 on another day entirely. And the vote on the Amsterdam treaty on yet another day. This would have given people an opportunity to say Yes - if they wanted to - to the Agreement in general and No - if they wanted to - to the changes in the Southern Constitution. Because, after all, that is one of the things which troubles democrats here. We are being asked to vote for a whole package including changes to the Constitution down below.

But changes to the Constitution could well mean making it possible for British governments to destroy the rest of the Agreement. That is our problem. Even at this late stage it should be said that three separate votes should be taken on three separate days - one about the Amsterdam treaty, once about the northern Agreement and one about the Constitution articles. What democrats are afraid of is that we in the northeast will be left with the same status as Indian people or Chinese people in Manchester or Birmingham, citizens indeed of our nation but aliens in what would now be recognised as British territory. In our own country. The British government could take away our vote by an act of parliament, overnight.

How then do you vote - if you want to - for the good parts of the Agreement while avoiding the dangers posed by changing these Articles of the Constitution in the south? One possibility is to vote the Agreement in and to make absolutely sure that in no circumstances can the changes in the southern Constitution be brought in unless and until every comma of that Agreement is fulfilled in our interests.

This possibility is there in the Agreement and we should be prepared to take every single infringement of our rights to court in order to build up a file of infringements and our protests against them. In this way we can build up a case which would prevent the Dublin government giving effect to the changes in Articles 2 , 3 and 29.

Another possibility is that people could vote for the Agreement and at the same time take a Constitutional case in the south to force the Dublin government to stop demanding the Constitutional changes. Under this Agreement as it now stands Irish democratic citizens in the north would gain some advantages, but people in the South would be voting for changes in their Constitution which affect us very seriously and over which we have no say. How can Irish citizens be so seriously affected without us having a say in whether we should or not? It is just possible that the holding of the present referendum in the south is against their own Constitution and surely this should be tested. One very important principle which will become more and more important in democratic discussion in the coming weeks is this: Any objections democrats make about this Agreement will not be because they are aggrieved at the negotiators, who worked hard and probably got as good an agreement as could be had in the circumstances - they will be because of the numerous possibilities the Agreement had to leave open which the British government could use to break its promises and for its unionist minority supporters to abuse our people again without adequate penalty.

Doubts about the Agreement result not from doubts about the negotiators but from justified distrust of the British administration and its supporters in Ireland. If we have to be angry, let us be angry at the right people! Experience has taught us who are the honourable people.

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