Labour to compromise on Ireland

LABOUR's National Executive Committee will today reposition party policy on Northern Ireland, and aims to allay fears of an internal rift ahead of the visit by John Hume, leader of the Social, Democratic and Labour Party, to the Blackpool conference this week.

The committee is expected to echo a shift made by Tony Blair, the Labour leader, when he argued that the party should not act as persuader of the Northern majority into a united Ireland. The statement will back the principle of unity by consent. But it will also include strong support for the Downing Street declaration, coupled with insistence that any change in the situation in Northern Ireland would need majority consent.

That compromise position falls well short of calls from pro-Unionist MPs for a re-examination of the party's traditional support for the achievement of a united Ireland by consent.

Democracy Now, a group supported by more than 40 MPs, also wants the party to allow membership to be opened up in Northern Ireland, where Labour has not competed with the leftish, predominantly Catholic, SDLP. Pro-Unionist MPs also support calls for the removal of Kevin McNamara, Labour's spokesman on Northern Ireland, whom they regard with suspicion because of his association with nationalism.

The Ulster Unionist MP Ken Maginnis was due to fly to the United States tomorrow to take part in a face-to-face television debate with the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams.