And then in East Belfast you have a small Catholic enclave called Short Strand where Catholics really did feel that they were under siege. Because they were cut off from the Catholics in the rest of the city by a river and they had nowhere else to go but their own community, and therefore the need for bigger and bigger barricades, more sophisticated weaponry. So it was a siege mentality which was beginning to dominate.
The game changes completely. Civil rights are forgotten about, we have moved from civil rights, we are now in a war. And a war needs an army, and the only army which Catholics believe that they could call on was the IRA.
The Protestant Perspective
When we look at how Protestants use violence against Catholics, we have to remember we're talking about a minority of Protestants. One commentator has divided Protestants into the fearful and the confident. The confident are those who believe that they can do some business with Catholics, the fearful are those who believe that it is they who are under siege, and they must take all means necessary, and that is the very expression that they use, "all means necessary," to defend themselves. What they saw in August of 1969 they believed was the beginnings of a very careful IRA plot which had been worked over for a number of years which was to try to undermine the state, firstly through passive resistance, and then through armed conflict.
And they believed that they had to nip this in the bud by destroying any resistance from the Catholic community. So it was for the most part working class Protestants who suffered many of the same problems as their Catholic neighbors, who were the people who felt most under siege and under threat who decided that they had to take the bottle to their Catholic neighbors. And they were being urged on by some political demagogues who told them that armageddon was around the corner, that this was the last line of defense.
And because they were the majority, and because there was some complicity with the security forces they were easily able to inflict more damage on the Catholic community than vice versa.
Bloody Sunday (Jan 30, 1972)
The Watershed
Bloody Sunday was, if you like, the end of the old, because it was the last time there had been a major march where thousands and thousands of ordinary people came out onto the streets in protest. The march had been declared illegal by the authorities, but it went ahead. The authorities decided it was too large to try and control. When the march was coming to its end, to its destination, at what was known as Free Day Corner, a section of the crowd broke away and started to storm British army troops.
The army, in the guise of the paratroopers, who had been engaged the previous weekend in a fray with the Catholic community in Derry, overreacted. They chased the stone throwers and, in a couple of minutes, they shot 13 dead--a 14th was to die later. That was the first huge assault on the Catholic community, which united the Catholic community.
The second assault was when the propaganda machine of the British government tried to argue that the army was simply fulfilling its duties, because it was chasing people whom they identified as petrol bombers or people with weapons. In the end, they had to admit that they couldn't prove that any of those shot dead were responsible for any actions.
The result was that British authority--not the authority of Unionists, but British authority in Northern Ireland--collapsed completely. World opinion was very condemnatory of what had happened that day. And major political decisions had to be taken. It meant that you no longer had a civil rights aspect to the conflict; it moved from the politics of the street to straightforward warfare between the IRA and the army and the police; it meant that the British government removed all authority from the Northern Ireland government. And, two months after Bloody Sunday, the British government took over direct responsibility for anything it had done in Northern Ireland.
The suspension of the Northern Ireland Parliament was obviously significant in an historic way. It was the first time that Britain had taken away power from the Protestant population and from their political leaders. It was a huge shock to those very same people. But it was more than that. It was a reaction, first, to international opinion after Bloody Sunday. But, secondly, it was a reaction to the fact that the British find that, because they did not control security--that was in the hands of the Northern Ireland government--they could not control the war.
Bloody Sunday was a watershed. There's absolutely no question about it. It was an even greater recruiting agent for the IRA than anything that had happened heretofore. It was an embarrassment to the likes of Adams and company, having to turn away so many people, so many people wanted to join.
It was a huge learning curve for the British authorities. It isolated the Unionist community in a way that it had never been isolated before, because direct rule was introduced two months later. And the psychological shock [to the political system of Northern Ireland] was enormous.
The Aftermath of Bloody Sunday: Direct Rule, Negotiations
After Bloody Sunday, you have the introduction of direct rule, which some people saw as a victory for the campaign, and, therefore, the campaign should stop and accept what had been gained up until then. ... The moderate Catholic opinion was that the IRA campaign had to stop.
The IRA believed that they were being tackled by a conspiracy made up of the Catholic hierarchy, of Constitutionalist politicians north and south, of the people who'd accepted partition in the first place, and of people who would be prepared to compromise so that British rule in Ireland would be maintained. And, therefore, their enemy had now widened to include part of their own community.
... You were dealing with a movement which had an historic mission, rich in religious symbolism, convinced of its own morality and the certitude of its cause, which believed, "We go to the end of the road, and we don't stop anywhere before the end of the road."
The [Republican movement] did see the introduction of direct rule as a kind of victory. And, you know, it's a bit like a greedy man: "We've got this much, we can get more." They believed they had, to use their own words, "The Brits on the run." And they were afraid that if they stopped at this stage, what would happen would be that they would be hoodwinked by the British somewhere further down the line.
So, the Republican movement was fighting on two fronts. They were fighting on the front of their own historic sense of destiny, which they saw as going in the right direction. They were also fighting on the front of trying to take control of the whole anti-partitionist movement in Ireland, that is, that they wanted to take control, not only from the SDLP, that is the Constitutionalist Party, but from the Irish government itself. And they believed that history was on their side to achieve this.
They were arguing very strongly that it is a long war, that we do have to continue, that there are people who are careerist politicians in the Catholic community, who are simply looking after their own interests. They're not looking after the destiny of the Irish people for which several thousand, down the centuries, had given their lives. They were part of an historic movement, the IRA was, and they had to continue it.
They were emboldened by the imposition of direct rule. They could see what damage it did to their Unionist opponents. They believed that Unionists would then begin to start asking questions about the nature of the British guarantee, and that that might persuade some Unionists to move in the direction of some form of Irish unity. Sinn Fein at that stage was producing a document which talked about a federal Ireland rather than a united Ireland, talked about an agreement ... whereby it was possible for Protestants to have control over their own identity, have their own sense of autonomy, but inside a British-free Ireland.
[The Negotiations following Bloody Sunday]
... The memoirs of [British] politicians at the time tell us that they considered it a mistake to have gone into negotiations, because this was a movement working on moral certitude, not on political pragmatism.
We can work on the assumption that when the IRA had their meetings with British politicians in 1972 they were not skilled negotiators. They had no experience at all of political dialogue. They had never had to argue with anyone. They were essentially a sect. They talked to each other. They reinforced each other's prejudice. There was no one there to challenge them. And so, when they got into dialogue with the enemy, they have no resources to challenge the enemy intellectually. And for that reason, the talks were a waste of time.
From the point of view of the British government, one of the ways that it believed that it might win the war was the division inside the Catholic community. The Catholic community, as the '70s went on, was very badly split over how the campaign should continue. A majority, the vast majority, disapproved fundamentally of the IRA campaign. They saw the violence as being immoral, as being counterproductive, as harming their own community economically and in other ways, and as, in fact, not only driving a wedge between the Irish and the British, but also driving a wedge between the people of Southern Ireland and the people of Northern Ireland
The IRA/ Provos
I think it's fair to say that the Irish Republican Army did not exist as a proper organization before about 1970. It had fought the border campaign between 1956 and 1962, it had lost the support of the Nationalist population in the north, the Irish government had interred many of its members during that campaign, and at the end of 1962 it decided that it would have to rethink its objectives.
And from 1962 onwards, it was controlled by a small Marxist leadership who believed that the way forward was not violence but was through a radical program of reform, whereby the working class in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland would be radicalized. Both would come, at some future historic date, to see that they had more in common than what kept them apart, and that, therefore, they would join hands and Irish unity would come about in that way.
The one thing that they had was their communal sense of history, a history in which they were the victims, in which, yet again, the Protestant majority was trampling on their rights and taking away the rights of their community. And therefore, the IRA had to be resurrected.
So the Republican movement, literally, had to begin from scratch in 1969. And what is very interesting about the Republican movement after 1969--it is the militants from the Belfast and Derry ghettos rather than the people from the south of the island, from Dublin, or Kerry, or whatever, who are the people that take control. And because they are the brunt of the campaign, they are the people who lead the Republican movement in a much more militant manner.
They move out of Marxist vaporizing, which had nothing to do with pieistic Catholic practice in any case, and they take them along the traditional road of resistance against the hated British. It was so natural that it was so easy to do.
I think that what happens in 1969 is unprecedented. Gerry Adams, in a book he wrote in 1986, referred to the connection between the Republican movement in the beginning of the century and the Republican movement and what it called the Barricade Days of 1969 to 1972.
The Republican movement at the beginning of the century was a military and political elite, they spoke on behalf of the Irish people. The point that Adams was making about the Barricade Days was those who now were militant were in fact the community itself, it wasn't an elite saying, "This is what you must do," it was the community saying, "This is what we must do to defend ourselves." And for the first time in the twentieth century, the Republican movement became a genuine mass organization. And that was the crucial weapon that it had at the very beginning.
The IRA were very conscious that in the past they hadn't brought the community with them. Now they knew they spoke on behalf of the community. And because they knew it, they were able to take more daring action, they were able to go to the Irish elsewhere and say, "We are the risen people, we are the defenders of the whole of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland. We believe that the only solution now is Irish unity, and you must help us. We speak with the moral authority of everyone inside that Catholic community."
I think that the moral imperative which arose out of what became the battle of the Bogside, which spread to the rest of Northern Ireland was what give the Republican movement its new impetus. In the past, it simply being conducting a military campaign. Now they believe that they are conducting something much more significant than a military campaign.
It was a campaign for the hearts and minds, not only of their own community, which they believed they got, but of world opinion, because they were the people who were the victims. And world opinion could see that through their television screens night after night. And it was this which shifted, forever, the nature of the conflict. It was this which made the British authorities realize that they could not contain it simply within Northern Ireland.
That they would have to look at how international opinion was beginning to react to what was going on. And in terms of propaganda, the Republican movement were very quick to realize the huge advantages which could be got of painting themselves as the representatives of the down trodden people who where now the risen people.
The Provos
In Belfast in August of 1969 there was a serious split at a political level between those who were known as the official Republicans - that is those that had taken control after 1962, and believed in a different strategy, which was a non-violent strategy - and those who became known as the Provisionals, which was formed after 1969, who believed it was the abandonment of the original strategy which had left the Belfast Catholic community so undefended.
The slogan, "I ran away," was a turning point for contemporary Republicanism. What it said to the people on the ground was that they had failed their community in the ghettos in Belfast and Derry. That they needed to go back to traditional methods, that there is no sense in debating whether we're Marxist or not.
Our business is defense, resistance, and then trying to achieve a united Ireland. So the Republican movement split, not for the first time in its history. It split between those who believed in the traditional methods of resistance and military campaign and those who believed in a much slower political strategy based on fashionable Marxist tendencies at the time in the rest of the world.
The Catholic community was too impatient, too uninterested in these tendencies. It wanted protection, the traditionalists, that is the Provisional movement, took control automatically.
The Provisionals, and the title itself is interesting, because the title is taken from the when the Irish rose against the British in Dublin when the British were fighting a war. And they proclaimed a provisional government. So the Provisionals deliberately used the title "Provisional" to make the link with 1916, to claim that they were the historic heirs of 1916. They where the true Republicans, whereas the Officials represented something which belonged to a world out there, but had nothing to do with everyday life in the streets of Belfast or Derry.
The Republican movement has always identified itself as being working class because those are the people it has had to defend. They've even used the word Socialist. It was only the officials who used the word Marxist. And when they used the word Socialist, it was a particular Irish variant of Socialism because it was defending the working class. In fact, it was so much verbiage, the Provisionals, just as much as the Officials, where part of this trend which was there in the late '60s where every radical identified with what was going on in the Third World. But, in fact, the Provisionals were traditional. They were following a policy which goes back, not to 1916, not to the middle of the 19th century, not to the rebellion of 1798, it goes back to the midst of Irish time where phrases such as Socialism are meaningless.
The official reason given for the break between the two wings of Republicanism was a debate at the Republican's annual conference as to whether they would take their seats in the Irish parliament. From partition, the Republican movement had always followed a policy of abstentionism, they abstained, they refused to recognize the parliament in Dublin, just as they refuse to recognize the parliament in Belfast, or in London. They had made the decision that if they were elected they could take their seats at the Parliament in Dublin. The Traditionalists said, "This goes against our complete history, our very essence. Dublin is as illegitimate as is Belfast, because it was Dublin that has accepted partition in the first place."
And that was the excuse used to make the break. But what I think it did was it masked other differences. And other differences were that those who had been in control of the Republican movement during the 1960s were working towards a reformist, rather than a revolutionary program, were not militant enough, were antagonizing Catholics through the use of Marxist jargon, and therefore were not going to succeed.
Hence, they literally walked out of the annual conference, went to another hall, set up their own organization, and in their very first statement said, "We are the heirs of the men of 1916, we are the true Republicans.And we call ourselves Provisional Sinn Fein and Provisional IRA. And we will have an army counsel made up of seven men, just as it was seven man who signed the 1916 proclamation. We will differentiate ourselves from the other Republicans simply through a campaign of resistance. We will be on the streets defending our people, we will not be wasting our time with internal debates, we will be there to defend our people, we will be using the language that Republicanism always been using which is the language at the end of the barrel of a gun."
"We are now into what we believe is the long war. We believe in a war of attrition, we know we are not powerful enough as we stand now to defeat the might of the British army, but we will wear them down just as our ancestors wore them down in the past, and we will lead them to a stage where they will want to withdraw from Northern Ireland. And we will persuade our Protestant neighbors that they have been suffering from a form of false consciousness."
"We will not run away. Never again will it be said IRA equals, 'I run away.' We will show by our very actions that we are the essence of Irish manhood. That was the type of language which has been used."
It is very important to remember that the leadership, which arose after 1969, were the children of the ghetto. They didn't come from various corners of Ireland, they didn't come from a rural background. They were the people who had suffered. They were the people who put up the resistance to begin with. They were the people who believed that they had a sense of how dangerous and how nasty the British were. That was their self-understanding.
They were the people who were saying, "Never again." They were the people who knew that they represented their community in a way that Republicans never could in the past. And they were the people who used the right symbols and attracted to the ranks some of the older Republicans, who could trace theirlineage back into earlier periods of struggle.
Gerry Adams himself, for example, through his maternal and paternal family, could trace a line which goes back to at least 1918. He could speak of members of his family who had been interned or imprisoned in early ages. And so, when he gets involved in the conflict it was as if nothing could be more natural, because he was taking up where his forefathers left off, and he personified a complete community.
So what the Provisionals represented was this sense of history, a history of resistance. But it was something based in the reality of the ghetto.
They believed that now, as never before, they had to get rid of the British presence in Ireland. What's more: There had been built into Irish Republicans in the past a sense of martyrdom. They had believed that they couldn't succeed, that it wasn't about succeeding; it was about dying for a cause, so that a new generation wold come along and take up that cause. It was the Adams and the Martin McGuiness generation who believed that they could deliver the final agenda, which would be Irish unity, because they could bring with them their communities as never before, and they could bring into it, as well, the whole web of the Irish diaspora, whether it's the United States, Australia, or wherever. And they had the moral imperative of international public opinion on their side.
So, they believed that everything was in place to fight the last long war. And out of that war of attrition, you would see British withdrawal, you would see the Protestant community in the north come to their senses and realize that the best answer for them, as well, is Irish unity.
The people who formed the Provisional started with a moral certainty, a self-righteousness, that because they had suffered so much, because they had been at the brunt of it, because they'd seen their families suffer, that they could deliver in a way that their forefathers never could deliver, that they were going to be the generation which would succeed for something which the Irish had been trying for from at least the 17th century, that at last you would have one indivisible and sovereign Ireland, totally controlling itself.
Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein
Sinn Fein
Sinn Fein had been formed at the beginning of the 20th century. The words are Gaelic and they literally mean, 'ourselves alone.' They mean that we can go and achieve our own freedom, we don't need the help of anyone else do it, but that we have to be a free-standing nation among the nations of the world, and therefore the only answer is Irish unity.
Now, some of them believed in some sort of relationship with Britain, but Irish unity was the be-all and end-all of their policy. Sinn Fein was a constitutional party, and in fact, at the British general elections in 1918, Sinn Fein won the majority of seats throughout the island of Ireland, and it was that which gives them the animus to conduct a violent campaign against the British in the War of Liberation. And it was that war which persuaded the British to withdraw from Ireland, but to withdraw through a partition settlement.
And it was they who were engaged in the civil war against the majority of the community, it was they who argued that you do not lay down your weapons, it was they who refused to take any oath of allegiance to the monarchy in Britain.
By its use of this Gaelic name, Sinn Fein was demanding its own autonomy, and Irish unity was its ultimate end. In that respect, the slogan was very simplistic. It believed that the only way to get rid of the British was through the barrel of a gun, rather than through any rational argument.
The relationship between Sinn Fein and the IRA, historically, has been symbiotic. It is impossible to separate them. In more recent years, Sinn Fein has said, "We are not the IRA, they are a totally separate organization." In the minds of the vast majority of people in Ireland, whether they are Unionist or Nationalist, Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA, and it has played that role quite hotly down the years.
Sinn Fein's political role was never important until the beginning of The Troubles, because it had been the militants, the military types, who were in command inside the Republican movement. They believed that the only answer to the Irish question was what they called "one last heave." One last long push to get the British out of Ireland, and the only thing [that] will get that done is the use of weapons.
And in that respect, Sinn Fein was very much an auxiliary of the Irish Republican Army. They were there for propaganda purposes, they were there to raise the funds, they were there to speak on behalf of the IRA, but they were very much second-cousins. They didn't command. It was the IRA who commanded. But Sinn Fein had refused to organize politcally so it was never a serious political force within the Catholic community, as evident in its refusal to stand in Parliamentary elections, whether in Westminster, Stormont or Dublin.
So it wasn't in the business of electioneering, it was in the business of propagandizing. It's only in the 1980s that it begins to take itself seriously as a political organization.
Adams clearly was, and is, a highly intelligent politician. Adams, in some sense, is easier to read than Martin McGuinness, simply because Adams has published memoirs, his political manifesto, et cetera, and Adams shows some form of long-term political vision. He speaks in his memoirs of his time as a youth, growing up ... of a sense of discrimination. He was clearly an intelligent school boy who could have gone far, but, in fact, he left school early and became a bar man, but joined the Republican movement as soon as it was formed, because he had the family background.
And became deeply involved in the armed struggle from the earliest days, and was interned early in the 1970s, and was sprung from internment in 1972, because the authorities realized that he was one of the key members of the new generation who had to be listened to.
So, again, here we have someone who is incredibly single-minded, incredibly ruthless, but also has a sense of vision, and sees violence in its communicative framework rather than simply by destruction.
Gerry Adams comes from a very strong Republican family, on both his mother and father's side. He can trace it back to at least his grandfather, if not his great-grandfather. One of the earliest radicals in the 20th century, a man called Jim Larkin, who was concerned with trade unionism and with the national struggle, had as one of his assistants one of Adams' ancestors. And you could find ... in the Republican struggles in the '30s and '40s, either the Hannaway family, which was his mother's side, or the Adams family, were involved in all of those struggles.
One of the most important factors in explaining the resilience of the Republican movement is what I call generational continuity. It's handed down from father to son and mother to daughter, from generation to generation. For example, in the late '60s, when you had sort of youth protests, you had less of that in Northern Ireland, because the children were following the same values as the parents, whether they were Loyalist or Republican.
So, generational continuity, this strong sense of communal history and the sense of the Republican movement as a large family. Family involvement, not necessarily at the forefront of the struggle, but as backup troops, is very, very powerful in explaining the success of the Republican movement. That is, I think, probably the supreme reason why the IRA has had to endure as much as it has had. You know, we're talking about, for the most part, working-class youth, with no great sophistication, fighting against one of the supreme military operations in the Western world, against overwhelming odds, against huge... and yet they're able to endure. And endurance was its middle name.
[With regard to Sinn Fein] ... the contemporary view inside the Republican movement is that there are two separate operations. There is an Irish Republican Army and there is a political, but discreet, wing called Sinn Fein. It wasn't always thus. At one stage, Sinn Fein had no difficulty in standing alongside the IRA and saying, "We are one and the same."
What is different now is that Sinn Fein is engaged very heavily in a political process. But, given their sense of history, it is a process in which they are afraid of being betrayed yet again. And the only weapon they believe they have is the IRA. So, if they are seen to be totally separate from the IRA, then people will say, "Why should we talk to you? Who do you represent? OK, you've got 16 percent of the vote in the last election, but there are three other parties with larger votes. We don't have to take you seriously."
So, it is in their interest to be separate from the IRA, but not to disown the IRA. And they would argue that in doing this they are taking the IRA away from the armed struggle and leading them into the political process.
There is a view, not only in the British political establishment, but certainly even in the administration of this country, probably more strong in the State Department than the NSC that what the Republican movement is engaged in is a very cynical exercise, that the peace process is simply the struggle by other means. ...
But if they don't get what they want, or to the political dialogue or the political negotiations, they will simply revert to violence. That's the cynic's viewpoint. There is another viewpoint which argues that the Republican movement has come a long way in educating itself, and realizing that the armed struggle did more damage to the community it was supposed to be protecting. In recognizing that the war has reached a stage of stalemate,they cannot defeat the British; but, equally, the British cannot defeat them.
So, the only to move forward is through a political strategy. And once they abandon the armalite, they realize that it may take another generation before they could begin the armed struggle again. So, they see it as taking a huge political risk in the hope that they can persuade, in particular, the Unionist community in Northern Ireland to throw in their lot with Ireland rather than with Britain.
It's perfectly understandable why particularly people in the political establishment, and Unionists, would say that the IRA, because of the armed struggle, that Adams has bombed his way to the table and, therefore, they should have nothing to do with him. Adams would retort by saying, "Well, tell me about George Washington. Tell me about Kenyatta. Tell me about Nelson Mandela. Tell me about Yasser Arafat." Adams would say that he belongs to a proud political tradition where the politically oppressed have no other means than the means of their own violence to get to that negotiating table, to make it a level playing field. And in that respect, he belongs to a long and honorable tradition.
[But] if and when Gerry Adams uses the analogies of historic figures such as George Washington or Nelson Mandela, the short answer is that he's being premature. Time will tell whether he can become a person of that stature. What we do know is that he failed to demonstrate he was a Nelson Mandela when he got his visa to visit the United States for the first time. And the reason why we know he failed was because he had to satisfy two audiences simultaneously. He had to satisfy the external audience, personified by the President, who'd gone out on a limb to give him that visa, that he was a man of peace. But he had to satisfy the internal audience, Sinn Fein and the IRA, that the struggle would continue until there was ultimate victory. And he has not come to terms with how you satisfy both audiences simultaneously, which means that we cannot cast any judgement on whether he is truly an historic figure or not.
History will decide whether, in fact, the IRA and the Republican movement are engaged in a cynical exercise of using the political process as another wing of their armed struggle, or whether Adams can become a Nelson Mandela. It is too early to say. My own belief is that Adams is genuine in trying to move away from the violence. I think it's a strategy that he and Martin McGuinness have been developing for a very long time. I think it's partially a strategy based on the fact that they know that their own community doesn't want any more violence, that their own community has removed the sense of fatalism, that we cannot control our political destinies, that their own community has enough self-confidence to say, "We are prepared to use simply the force of argument as against the force of weaponry, and we do not want to see any more people killed."
I think that we sometimes forget that those who engage in armed struggle are also human beings. It's too easy to characterize them as psychopaths. It's too easy to demonize them. And so, therefore, we have to be careful in how we weigh the balance between their military actions or their support for military actions and their political agenda.
The evolution of Sein Fein's new strategy: electoralism
When internment was introduced in 1971, it was seen as being disastrous, because the wrong people were being picked up. But then they started to pick up the right people and they put them in. Long Kesh became known as the terrorist university. It was actually a very good education training ground for them, because they were grouped together in their own prison blocks, they were able to educate themselves together, they were highly disciplined, they were seen from the outside as a way that the British during the Second World War who were locked up in concentration camps. They were seen as national heroes.
So, to be someone behind the wire was to have graduated through the ranks of ... Republicanism, and was to give you particular status and stature in your community. There is a whole tradition in every guerrilla movement of using the prisons, of the symbolism of the prisons, to show how people can be reflective, how people can rethink their strategy. Whether you think of Mao and his long march or whatever, it is part of the mythology.
Adams used it beautifully in his writings about Cage 11. But he also used it very seriously. He and others ... because they were in the prisons for so long, and had the time to reflect--because, remember, men of action don't have time to reflect; they're engaged in activity--they had the time to reflect and he began to think of, "Where is this struggle taking us?" "How long is a long war?" "Is it going to succeed?" "The longer it goes on, does it, in fact, alienate even more of our people?"
And all of these things were beginning to address themselves to him, and he was beginning to put his thoughts together, which he brought together in a book, which he published in 1986.
I think that we have to be careful in mythologizing Gerry Adams. There is a Republican movement. He is the person who personifies that, if you like, gradualist and progressive wing of the Republican movement, but there are a number of others whose names I could give you, who wouldn't mean anything-- not only to people in the United States, but to people in Ireland--who were doing the thinking, who were the strategists, who were the politicals as opposed to the revolutionaries.
Adams had around him a team of people of around the same time ago, had gone through the same struggle--people like Tom Hartley, Jim Gibney, Martin McGuinness, McLoughlin--a whole series of them, Richard McCauley. They all formed this sort of group which began to think their way politically out of the impasse.
It occurred, at some stage in the mid-to-late '70s, to IRA and Sinn Fein, that they might actually win a military war, but lose the political piece; that they might set up the conditions for others to compromise. And they began to realize that they had to change things.
Now, it changed them by accident. It changed them as a result of the hunger strikes. And what happened there was, what the Republican movement realized, there was a huge untapped source out there in the community which didn't approve of IRA violence, but emotionally were attached to what the IRA was trying to achieve, Irish freedom.
So ... 1980 and '81 they seriously begin to put together a political strategy based on electoralism. And they were very anxious and concerned that electoralism could destroy them. They did not go into it lightly. They thought of it very, very carefully.
But they realized that they needed a dual strategy, what became known as the armalite and the ballot box. The armalite was one of their favorite weapons which could cause enormous damage. They were following, if you like, classic tactical issues by Lenin at the time of the Russian Revolution. In one of their newspapers, The Republican News, they put it this way, "Not everyone can plant a bomb, but everyone can plant a vote."
So, how do you maximize the support you've got there? There are those who are there for the military, there are those who are there for the political.
As soon as the British took control with direct rule in 1972, they began to work with the Irish government, because they didn't want to hang on in Northern Ireland. And they accepted the opinion of the constitutionalists that you could have a reform in the Northern political system with power sharing--in other words, you could bring Catholics into government for the first time, and you would give them a share of power. You also could have much closer north-south relations within the island of Ireland.
The 1986 Decision by Sinn Fein to Take Their Seats in Parliament
The decision by the Sinn Fein conference in 1986, that they would take their seats if elected in the south of Ireland, in the Irish Republic, was one of the most historic decisions ever taken by the Republican movement.
It ran contrary to their history of the previous 60 years. And it was an indication of just how successful Adams and McGuinness had been in taking over the Republican leadership, because it was something that they'd been working for for at least three or four years. Remember, that the provisional IRA was created because of a split about electoralism in 1969. So, here people were very conscious that this was very dangerous, because it went to the heart of Republican mythology, yet they pulled it off.
And the reason they did it was because they believed that their electoral star was in the ascent. And that if they wanted to speak for the people of Ireland, they'd have to show that they'd had support in the Republic of Ireland, as well as the north of Ireland. And that's what it was about.
John Hume, the SDLP and Sinn Fein
One of the seminal documents which will come out of the Troubles is the dialogue between the SDLP and Sinn Fein which began in March of 1988, and went on until September of 1988. And it is fascinating to read, because what it demonstrates is Sinn Fein have ceased to be a sect. They've now become a political movement.
Because they're engaging with a group who say "We want the same end of you, Irish unity, but we disapprove fundamentally of your methods. Not only do we disapprove of it, but we're telling you that it's counterproductive." And by challenging Sinn Fein on his own ground, we're challenging the very heart of Republican mythology, and they're making these people think politically for the first time. Very, very significant.
The person who has to take all the credit for this is John Hume. He chose the right psychological moment in the aftermath of the Enniskillen bombing. He chose the right target in Gerry Adams, whom he recognized as someone who wanted to move into another phase. He knew that Republicanism was weak as a result of the outrage of Enniskillen. And, therefore, would have to engage.
He knew that the IRA could go nowhere else but to the SDLP and engage in this.
If I had to single [out] one person who's done more than anyone else to get to this stage it would have to be John Hume, the leader of the constitutionalist party, the SDLP. His policy from the day he entered politics has been one based on non-violence. And it's also one in which he says you cannot demonize singlehandedly by building up relations in this country, from about 1972 onwards. Firstly, through striking up a very good relationship with Senator Kennedy and educating Senator Kennedy with the nuances of the Irish conflict, and then meeting with every successive president from President Carter onwards, he has done more than any single individual.
Because Irish Prime Ministers have come and gone. British Prime Ministers have come and gone. [Hume] has been the one constant factor. And he has always known what he's wanted, which was an end to the violence. And what he's always said is not about the uniting of territory, it is about the uniting of peoples.
And that very simple philosophy is something which he has pursued ruthlessly and single mindedly. And I think he has got us to this state. He, it was, who persuaded Adams into dialogue. He it is whose established now a good rapport with the former Loyalist paramilitaries. He it was who persuaded John Major to take risks when it wasn't in Major's interest. He has made all the important moves at the right time. And he's been through it all; no one else
The Hunger Strikes 1980-81
It was something which is part of an Irish political tradition, which goes back to pre-Christian times, something which is not part of the Western tradition, but was there. Hunger strike and hunger strike to death, if necessary, because you are challenging your detractor either to withdraw his charge or to hunger strike with you or to see through the consequences of the hunger strike, whereby the striker would die.
In that situation, the authorities couldn't win. So, an incredible use of religious symbolism and mythology. It changed the whole nature of the campaign.
The fact that they were living in conditions like animals, that their own excrement was being smeared on the walls, actually goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. The symbols and slogans that they were using at the time--"No greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his friend." The iconography that they were using, of a dying Christ in the bosom of the blessed Virgin Mary. People going out in demonstrations wearing the prison shroud, putting on their heads the crown of thorns, which Christ had worn to Calvary. All of it was going to the very heart of Christian symbolism. So, you don't need to have any elaborate text; you simply need the visual evidence. And so, therefore, they were claiming that they were part of something which was old as Christianity itself, and as self-sacrificial as the death of Christ himself.
They were extremely aware of the power of imagery and symbolism, because precisely the same images, precisely the same images, have been used after 1916, when the rebel leaders were rounded up and put into the jails and then shot in 1916. Sixty years later, the new generation comes along and uses exactly the same imagery, the same symbols.
When you look at the reaction of the greater Catholic community to what was happening inside the Maze with the blanket men and then the hunger strikes, you have to divide the Catholic community ... those relatives who actually have people inside the prisons and most others, who were non-Republicans. And most others were not moved, for the most part, by what was going on.
For example, the first hunger striker who went to his death, Bobby Sands, on the day he went on hunger strike, 4,000 people watched in protest. We can take it that they all were hard-line Republicans. On the day he was buried, 70,000 marched in protest. So this, again, was a huge propaganda victory, where the Catholic community were used as sort of an emotional rollercoaster. And now it was rollercoasting towards the ... Republican movement again. They believed that the British authorities had mishandled [the situation] very badly.
The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher ... did herself tremendous damage in saying, "We will not talk to terrorists under any circumstances." It has to be remembered that, at the time, she refused to speak to the ANC and to Nelson Mandela. This was part of a wider policy that she had.
I'm not certain we can use the word "strategy" when we look at the whole hunger strike. Some of it was accident, but then a strategy began to put itself together. It was actually insofar as it was the relatives who moved the Republicans to take seriously voices other than their own. That was the first point. Secondly, the momentum was coming from within the prison and not from outside. Adams and company were against the hunger strike to begin with. They thought it was counter-productive. They didn't think it was going to work. And what it indicates is how central prisoners are to the whole campaign. If you look at the cease-fires, it's only after the prisoners agreed to it that they were able to carry it through.
So, the prisoners played the role. But the strategy was something which, again, was embedded in the Republican psyche. It was simply reaching into the recesses of their communal memory, and remembering what happened after 1916. The symbolism, the imagery, was something which came to them as second nature. They would have given, had some thought, but it would've been the most natural thing in the world to do.
[ The IRA leadership] was opposed to the hunger strike because they were afraid it would fail simply because of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. They would have to call off the hunger strikes, and the result of that would be huge demoralization inside the organization. They didn't want it to happen. And, secondly, it was happening inside the prisons. They didn't have control. They were an organization which was used to control, liked to be firmly in control.
When Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament, only then did it strike Republicans what a gold load had struck. Because here they were saying "Bobby Sands MP", Member of the British Parliament, RIP, may he rest in peace; killed by the British establishment," was the way they were able to put it. And that's when the democratic mandate really begins to go into play. That's when they realize that they have to play the electoral role as well.
So, what you find is with the election of Bobby Sands, and following his death and the bi-election, the election of another Republican, is the sovereignty changes to electoral ... to show that they had the democratic mandate. And they took off in spectacular fashion.
Remember, they started from a base of zero. But, within a few years they were taking 13.4% of the whole vote inside Northern Ireland. They were taking up to 40% of the Catholic vote. They were challenging for the first time seriously the SDLP. They were embarrassing the Irish government. They were upsetting the apple cart again.
When the second hunger strike was called, it actually had more support than the first hunger strike. Because the first hunger strike was called off after two Catholic bishops had gone into the prisons and believed that they'd won concessions from the government.
They then believed that the government went back on its word. So, it wasn't a question of simply believing what Republicans said, Catholic bishops had been lied to was the perception.
So, when a second hunger strike began, it began with that advantage. Its timing also was crucial. The first hunger strike had been timed so that if anyone was going to die, they were going to die around Christmas, the time of a huge Christian celebration, the birth of Christ. The second hunger strike was timed to end at Easter. And that had two potent symbols. One was the risen Christ of Easter, and second was the remembrance of Easter Rebellion of 1916. So, the thinking, the symbolism, the imagery that had gone into it was very powerful.
Margaret Thatcher compounded British difficulties by appearing to be too ... (inaudible)--"a crime is a crime is a crime," in that horrible strident verse of hers. And while it may well have gone down well with her own supporters, it showed no understanding of the Irish political psyche. It did tremendous damage to the constitutional politicians in Ireland who are now being challenged by these revolutions. And all of that had to be undone.
The impact of Sands' death was overwhelming. Even the peace people, the people who had formed a peace movement in 1976 as a result of IRA atrocities, said that they could identify with people, they identified with Sands. That here was another Irish life taken needlessly.
Bobby Sands' death led to yet another huge emotional ground swell inside the Catholic community. A ground swell which didn't necessarily go towards Republicans, but certainly it went against the British. That had the impact that the Protestant community and the Catholic community were more polarized than they'd been for at least a decade. And, neither side understood how the others felt.
The culmination of the hunger strikes was one which brought Sinn Fein out of being a militant armed sect into a wider political and democratic process. Now, this is very, very important.
I don't think they would have embraced that had it not been for the emotional ground swell of the hunger strikes, the realization that there are votes out there to be taken. So, it was very important for that reason. It also raised the profile of people like Adams, who in any case had been thinking and moving in the direction of a democratic process rather than the military process.
The IRA Campaign of Violence
There is a perception that the IRA and other paramilitaries have used mindless violence. That is very far from the truth. The violence has always been used for a purpose.
And, simply put, violence is used as a communicative dimension. It is saying to the state or to government, "We are here. You have to talk to us. If we have to bomb our way to a negotiating table, we will." So, very rarely do you get examples of mindless violence in the Northern Ireland context.
And when you look at the type of violence, over time it has changed. Because the violence was a classic example of armed propaganda. Sometimes car bombs would be used, which would be simply about causing as much economic destruction as possible, as making Northern Ireland so expensive for the British exchequer that there would be a demand for the British to withdraw. Or they would target British soldiers. There always was the belief that the death of one British soldier was worth at least, in propaganda terms, ten policemen from Northern Ireland, because in Britain itself, the British mainland, the demand to get out would grow.
So, targets were very carefully specified. What the IRA tried to do for the most part and what they believed they were doing was that they were not trying to harm the local community. Now, that was part of their mythology. If they killed a Protestant, they would argue that it wasn't a Protestant they were killing, but it was a member of the security forces who happened to be a Protestant.
And in their role as purported defenders of the Catholic community, they've actually succeeded in killing more Catholics than have their opponents. And so, when they carry out campaigns of violence against property or against people, in many, many instances what they were doing was they were damaging their own people more than they were furthering their cause. Now, that is very important, because the IRA, unlike other terrorist groups around the world, realized, to use the Maoist dictum, that "it needed water for the fish to swim in." The water it needed was the support of the local community.
If it lost that support, its campaign is going to run into the sands. So, it was always very, very conscious that it had to be careful how it used its violence.
It is worth pointing out that Belfast, for example, never became Beirut. There was a control to most of the violence. Before the violence occurred, there were usually plenty of warnings. Very rarely could you put your finger and say that innocent people were targeted deliberately.
They were very conscious in their propaganda of how they sold their violence. They were always conscious they had to bring their people with them.
When we speak of soft targets we're talking about people or property which are very easy to target, very easy to pick off. And, obviously, the easier they are, the more successful you're going to be. So, they could pick, for example, an isolated Protestant farmer on the border of Northern Ireland, who was a member of the local security force on a part-time basis. Or, in one instance, the IRA killed a woman who was taking a census collection. She was simply finding out, for the government, how people felt in Northern Ireland. She was shot dead because she worked for the government.
There were literally hundreds of examples of soft targets. But they all added grist to the mill. They all were to demonstrate that Northern Ireland was ungovernable.
Bloody Friday (July 21 1972)
Bloody Friday was important in demonizing the IRA. Bloody Friday happens within four months of the imposition of direct rule, when Unionists had lost out, when there were people saying, "Let's call it a day. We've had enough violence." The IRA response to Bloody Friday was that it wasn't they who got it wrong, that they gave the warnings. It was the authorities who got it wrong, that they did not mean to kill those innocent civilians. Whatever way you look at it, it was a very important event, because what it did was that it distanced those in the Unionist community who might have been prepared to give some thought to doing deals with people in the Catholic community ... they said, "All bets are off."
It reinforced the position of the Protestant paramilitaries, and made them a real force in the political game in Northern Ireland. It reinforced the fanatical voice of Protestant militism, some of those who claim that they were not, or didn't approve of violence, but used violent language. What it did was that it polarized the situation very, very badly.
It persuaded the British government that you cannot do business with the Republican movement. So, for all of those reasons, Bloody Friday had very serious consequences.
The Murder of Lord Mountbatten August, 1979
In August of 1979 the IRA pulled off two of their huge spectaculars with the murder of Mountbatten, part of the British royal family. But they also killed two young boys in the same boat that he was in. So, there were mixed feelings about it. There was great glee in the Republican movement. The British authorities were able to make much propaganda out of the death of the two young boys. On the same day, the IRA pulled off probably their most spectacular military operation when they blew to pieces 18 British soldiers--[at Warrenpoint] and they happened to be British paratroopers, the people who were responsible for Bloody Sunday. So, among their followers, this was a huge, huge victory.
But the downside of that was that the soldiers had been killed on the Irish border. So, the British were able to mount a propaganda campaign, arguing very strongly that the border between Northern Ireland and the Republican of Ireland needed to be sealed, that the Irish government wasn't doing enough, that the American administration was too soft on the Irish government, and it needed to take a much [non active] ... (inaudible) role, that you can't go around killing young boys simply because you wanted to kill an old man of 79.
It was both a win and a loss, but it became a win later on ... at that time, immediately after the tenth hunger striker had gone to his death, the Sunday Times did a poll of the world's newspapers, and what they discovered was a huge switch in opinion from sympathy with the British government, which had lost Lord Mountbatten, which had seen an attempt to blow up its whole Cabinet at Brighton, and what they saw was an insensitive, unthinking government.
So, the death of Mountbatten and all the rest of it actually turned out to be a propaganda coup for the IRA rather than a loss for them.
The 1987 Enniskillen Bombing
When the IRA exploded the bomb in Enniskillen in November of 1987, they did their cause irreparable harm from the military perspective. Because they blew up 11 innocent Protestant civilians in probably the most sacred day of their year commemorating their war dead. So, what it demonstrated to begin with was a total insensitivity of Protestant peoples.
Secondly, they tried to claim that this was something which actually had been created by the British. That backfired very badly and they lost out very badly in that respect. Thirdly, they lost out electorally insofar as four of their eight elected representatives were not selected again the next election in that area. Fourthly, it led them in the direction of going into dialogue with the SDLP. And that was one of the big turning points.
The Brighton Bombings
The Brighton bombings were very simple and very complex. Simple, they wanted to destroy Margaret Thatcher. They hated her with a passion. And, if they could destroy the British government with her, even more so. Nowhere else could it happen that a complete government was being wiped out with one bomb. It demonstrated the vulnerability of the British security system. It was a huge propaganda victory for the Republican movement, which they played up very strongly.
The London Bombing Campaign
The London bombing campaign was simply to bring the war to the British mainland. It was surprising because previous campaigns in Britain had failed because they didn't have the logistics, they didn't have the local support. And in going to London, they were saying to the British political establishment, "We are moving into the heart of your country." But it wasn't successful, it wasn't effective. It's only much later on in the campaign, when they return to Britain, that it does become effective, with some spectacular failures.
In particular, there was a bomb in a British town called Warrenpoint in March of 1992, when two young boys were blown to pieces. That was one which went very badly wrong. The images of those two boys shows how an organization which operates through symbolic capital can have that turned on its head, so that the propaganda that came out of Warrenpoint was, "This is an organization that takes the lives of innocent young children." And that impacted very strongly among their own supporters. I think that was one of the telling points in actually going for a cease-fire.
The second attempt to blow up the British Cabinet occurred in 1991 when the Cabinet was meeting, dealing with the affair in Kuwait. It was a war cabinet. The IRA launched a bomb, a mortar bomb, in the heart of London on Downing Street. One security expert said it was five to ten degrees off. If they got it right, it would have been their greatest spectacular.
What they demonstrated was just how vulnerable London was. And brought home to politicians in London that at some stage you're going to have to deal with us. That's all we're telling you; deal with us.
The bombing in London and in Britain throughout the '90s, I think demonstrates that the IRA were showing that they had the skill to continue. But, in some ways, it was the last throw of the dice, they had to go for the spectaculars.
But, they also realized that if they were going into negotiation, they went into negotiation from a position of military strength. And these bombs were occurring ... when there were secret negotiations going on between Martin McGuinness and the British ... and this was a classic example of the IRA saying look, if you think you're going to hoodwink us, just you realize how military powerful we are.
British Actions
Internment
We use the term "internment" to mean imprisoning people without trial. So, it's a short cut. It goes by the judicial process. And the government decided in August of 1971 that the IRA campaign was getting out of control, the best way to deal with it was simply to intern the key people--over 350 people were lifted in one swoop, on one morning in August. But it was a disaster.
And the word "disaster" is not mine. That is the word used by the chief of police in Northern Ireland about a policy which his men had to carry out. It was a disaster because they lifted only Republicans when Loyalist violence was going on at the same time. So, it was seen as being against the Catholic community solely. Their intelligence was so out of date that very few of those they lifted had actually been engaged in the present campaign of violence. It was therefore seen as an assault, yet again, on the whole Catholic community. It was followed by allegations of torture, many of which allegations were upheld. And, again, it undermined British rule in Northern Ireland. So, as a result of it, the IRA were able to recruit young men in scores, if not in hundreds.
A number of studies have been done on IRA prisoners and IRA people who have gone to their deaths--whether it's been done by psychologists or others--and one of the things that comes out very clearly is that these people do not, as a class, belong to the criminal class. Their self-perception is that they joined for idealistic motives. It is the only way to defend their community.
If you look at the rate of recidivism among former IRA inmates, you find that very few of them are involved in criminal activity. If you look at their level of education, you find that, for the most part, they have a reasonable level of education. Very few have third level, but most of them have a reasonable level of secondary education.
So, they did not represent an underclass of ill-educated, disenchanted youth. They represented some people, men and women, boys and girls, who believed they had to be part of the struggle because they had to act on behalf of their community.
I would believe that most of the people who joined the Republican movement were idealists. I have had a little experience of going into the prisons and teaching. And when you go into the prisons, you have to teach the separate para-military block, so, therefore, you would teach one group of Loyalists and then another group of Loyalists, and then the two official and provisional Republicans. And I came away overwhelmingly with the sense that if there were psychopaths in there, they were very, very difficult to discover; that they were people who really believed that they, in fact, belonged to a higher moral plane than the rest of us, because they were prepared to lay down their lives and prepare to give up their years of freedom for a cause they thought could not be challenged. That is on both the Catholic and Protestant side.
The Introduction of the Policy of Criminalization
British authorities, I think, realized by the mid-'70s that they were in for a long campaign, and they realized the cost to them on the British mainland. So, they wanted to change the nature of the campaign. And they introduced two concepts. One was Ulsterization, whereby the battle would be fought by people from Northern Ireland; the security forces and the front line would be the police of Northern Ireland rather than the British army. And criminalization was an attempt to try and withdraw the IRA and the Republican movement from the greater Catholic community by saying, "These people are not engaged in political struggle. They are simply criminals."
The result of those two policies were disastrous for the British. In the short term, things seemed to be going their way. The IRA campaign had slowed down considerably. The British believed that they were defeating them. The Protestant community, particularly militant Protestants, were becoming more self-confident, and they believed that it was only a question of time before they went back to the status quo.
But in the longer term, the decision to use criminalization meant that a whole community were being branded. And the IRA turned said, "They are saying that your sons and daughters, who are prepared to lay down their lives, are being treated like ordinary criminals. We cannot have that."
Another aspect of the whole criminalization policy was the authorities' attempt to try and [get many Rupublican leaders into] the judicial system very quickly, either by forcing confessions out of people or by using what were called "super grasses," defectors from the movement who would identify sometimes between 30 and 40 people and say that they were part of the movement. And both of those backfired. There is no doubt that the authorities got very valuable information, with which they were able to lock dangerous men up.
But the means whereby they had got it run against the Western tradition of the rule of law, and, therefore, damaged that particular cause. And, again, in criminalizing people, the British authorities were doing damage to their own system. One of the most serious defects in the whole last 25 years is what the IRA campaign has done to the British sense of justice. So, what they have done, the IRA have done by forcing the British to use these excessive means, is that they have highlighted the extent to which a so-called modern democracy is, itself, flawed.
The whole movement revolted against the notion of criminalization. And the way they did so was through the powerful symbol of just how powerless they were. They refused to wear the prison clothes, and so, therefore, they wrapped themselves in a blanket. Their imagery was the imagery of Christ at Calvary. And it was a very powerful, very emotive, inside the Catholic community.
Ironically, [criminalization] elevates the IRA, but it does so paradoxically, because the people who take up the Republican struggle are the families of IRA prisoners, who are not necessarily part of the Republican movement. And they form an organization, relatives trying to free their sons and daughters. And the IRA realized that they were losing that section of the community. And the IRA also began to realize that the struggle they were involved in was political and military. So, it was the relatives that got them to think politics.
The Failed 1974-75 Cease Fire
During 1974-75, after the failure of power-sharing in 1974, the IRA went into another cease-fire in which they believed that some sort of understanding with the British government that there was going to be disengagement. In retrospect, they believed that what happened was that the British government was trying to divide them, was trying to demoralize them, because the longer there was an absence of violence, the more difficult it was to resurrect a campaign.
As a result of that cease-fire, the old Republican leadership stood aside. And it is then, late 1975, that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuiness, come into their own, and they come into their own as people who have been against the cease-fire.
I think the real significance of that '74-'75 cease-fire was not that it had failed, but that a generation ... realized that Republicanism failed, and that new generation was represented by Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams. And after '75, they were the people who took over, and they were the people who took over with a very strong belief that you can never trust the Brits.
That new leadership, I think, took at least two lessons ... from the failure of that '74-'75 cease-fire. One was they must always be militarily prepared. They must demonstrate that if they go into negotiations again, they do so from a position of strength and not from weakness. And, secondly, they had to decide on a political strategy whereby they could not be shortchanged by the British. They had to demonstrate that if they went into negotiations, they could bring the whole Republican movement along with them, that Republicanism could not be split.
Unfortunately, I think that the British authorities learned nothing from the failure of that cease-fire. They believed that they had the IRA on the ropes. The politician in charge at the time said the he was squeezing the IRA like he would squeeze a tube of toothpaste, that they were on their last legs. And the more he said it, the more dangerous it became, because the IRA were not prepared to give in to that. And the British government believed it was now simply a question of time before the campaign would come to an end. And they began to treat virtually all Irish-Catholics with great disdain. So, they learned no lessons whatsoever.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement (Nov 15, 1985)
The Anglo-Irish agreement is one of the most significant agreements between the two governments in this century, because it was a recognition by the British government that the Northern Ireland problem was something which it couldn't handle in its own right. It was also recognition that it was paying some attention to international opinion, which had argued for quite awhile, particularly the U.S. administration, that there had to be Irish involvement in it.
But, thirdly, from a British perspective it was about closer security, cooperation. And interestingly, the IRA in its Christmas message in 1985 described the agreement as the most sophisticated, counter-revolutionary strategy ever devised for the British. They saw it as an attempt to destroy them.
The Protestant reaction to the Agreement was one of overwhelming detestation, from all strata in Protestant society. They believed that they'd been sold out in a way that had never happened before partition. They went back to 1912 to find something somewhere.
And, so they united to a man and woman against it, but they couldn't prevent the implementation of the agreement. It was an attempt to say to the Protestant population, "You in fact, are a minority inside the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland makes up less than three percent of the population of the United Kingdom; you make up about two percent of that population. It is what the majority of people in the United Kingdom want, which will be the deciding factor, not what you want."
The 1988 Gibraltar Killings of Three IRA
The killing of three IRA volunteers at Gibraltar in 1988 was something which appeared to be a wonderful coup for the British security services. They had got them as they were about to plant a bomb, or so they said, and they had executed them. Classic example of why the military can operate.
But, again, it was something which went badly awry as far as the authorities were concerned, because evidence started to build up that these people could quite easily have been arrested. And what, in fact, the authorities had done was they made martyrs out of three people.
One of them was a young female graduate who represented the romantic side of Republicanism. And as the British authorities tried to destroy the evidence of some of the witnesses, mutual witnesses from Gibraltar, they compounded their own problem. And then as they tried to destroy attempts made by some of the British media to get to the bottom of it, again they compounded the sense in which democracy was not at work here. So, it became a Republican coup. And they were very good at the propaganda level. They were very good when the authorities had done something wrong.
Gibraltar was a classic example. Mariad Farrell who was quite a striking beauty, they used that very, very successfully. They used it on other occasions. Even during the hunger strikes, the hunger strikers appeared to look like Christ with the long black hair and the dark beards ... all of it was part of war by other means, war by propaganda.
The Birmingham Six
The Birmingham Six is one of the classic cases as to why Britain might want to get out of Ireland, because it showed British justice at its worst. The authorities picked up six innocent men returning to Ireland to a funeral. But they were soft targets, they were obvious people to pick up. They were, for the most part, inarticulate, unemployed, working-class Catholics.
They were nailed for Birmingham. None of them had anything to do with it. For two decades, the British political establishment could not accept that they could have made a mistake. The Lord Chief Justice said it was inconceivable that a mistake could have been made. And the longer they went on denying it, the longer the British political establishment did serious damage to their old case. And at the end, it was Irish Republicanism which was exonerated, even though Irish Republicans had planted the bomb
The U.S. Role
I think the most important point of what the Irish-American diaspora in this century has been that it's suffered from a huge myth. It's suffered from the myth that America was a second front. It suffered from the myth that it had huge influence with the administration, whatever that administration was.
But if you look at the record, in fact, it had little or no influence. And that became painfully clear when the troubles broke out in 1969. It became particularly clear in the first couple of years of the troubles, when they find that the administration, the Nixon administration, relied totally on what they were told by the British authorities.
Secondly, in the United States there was a split between, if you like, the treetops and the grass roots--the treetops who believed that there may be a constitutional way forward, believed that they could bring moral pressure on the administration to bring pressure on the British to do something about it. One commentator had described it thus: "The Micks telling the Yanks to tell the Brits to tell the Prots that the only answer is a united Ireland."
But it was organized at two levels. There was the treetops, the Four Horsemen, as they were known--Speaker Tip O'Neill, Senators Edward Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Governor Hugh Carey. They were heavily influenced by John Hume, who was the leader of the Nationalists in the north, and by the Irish government, that there had to be a constitutional way forward, and that Irish-Americans should not be giving their money to the IRA for weapons.
So, you have the treetops, which were trying to work through the administration, and you have the grass roots, the guys who were giving their dollars - from the Bronx, South Boston, or whatever, to help the struggle in Northern Ireland. And you have for example, 1973, an FBI report which says that it is embarrassed by the Irish conflict, because the Irish conflict has been paid for by U.S. dollars. There is a realization that something had to be done.
So, Irish America had to come to terms with the fact that insofar as the administration was concerned about the Irish question, it was only concerned because it was part of a larger network of international terrorism, and something had to be done to break that link. It is there that the Horsemen begin to play a very strong role. The Horsemen come out with statements very opposed to the IRA campaign, as it becomes much more vicious during the 1970s. It is the Horsemen who argue very strongly that you should not be helping these people.
Irish America generally, until very recent years, was seen as being a hindrance rather than a help. So, there was a feeling, still remains a feeling, among the British political establishment that this has nothing to do with the United States, and there is a huge irritation among the more establishment newspapers, for example, about the role that the United States has played. That indicates the United States' influence is growing, and is important.
Part of the problem with the Irish-American community is one of ignorance. They have a romantic view of what Ireland was, they have a very simplistic view of the struggle. Now, as the troubles have gone on, that has become more sophisticated. But they did idealize. Secondly, Irish-American propagandists were very clever in using the language of liberty, which rings with the American community, which goes all the way back to the revolution and which Northern Ireland Protestants could never understand. But it was that use of propaganda, which kept it on the burner all the time.
Clinton's Granting a Visa to Gerry Adams in 1994
One thing I think we should remember about President Clinton--he's the first post-Cold War president. His predecessors, Bush, Reagan, all the way back to Kennedy, etc., were part of that Cold War which believed very strongly in the special Anglo-American relationship.
President Clinton owes nothing to that heritage. He owes nothing to those who were proud of the Second World War. He was the person taking over in the post-Cold War. You had a new world order where everything became possible. Also, he owed no favors to John Major, because the conservative party had acted on behalf of George Bush in the presidential campaign. He was his own man. The Irish American vote was very important. All of these were factors in persuading the President to get involved.
What President Clinton had to gain, I think, was one, domestic. He could solidify his hold into the Democratic party through Irish America, which had begun to drift towards the Republican party in the previous decade. But, secondly, for the man who says "the economy, stupid," he actually was concerned with foreign policy issues.
And the Irish conflict was one which was winnable. It wasn't too complex; it wasn't too regional. It was coming to some sort of successful completion. So, he could paint himself as an international man of peace. And he'd do a great degree of good. The United States generally could be a prestigious third party.
When the president invited Gerry Adams to United States, or at least give him a visa to come, he was moving away ... Gerry Adams, over the past 20 years, had been refused seven visas to come to the United States. He was now being recognized at the very center of democracy. He realized that. So, Adams gained that. But, you know, it was a two-way ticket. What he lost was that he couldn't deliver, that he couldn't demonstrate that he was a Nelson Mandela.
The granting of the visa to Gerry Adams had an important impact with the IRA. It gave the IRA a certain degree of self confidence. That if Sinn Fein did go into negotiation, it was going into negotiation with the goodwill of the most powerful state in the world. Not necessarily the acquiescence, but at least with the United States wanting to play the role .... wanting to push the process forward. And, you know for a people who believed themselves to be demonized, marginalized, isolated completely, psychologically this was very powerful indeed.
There would not have been an IRA cease fire in August of 1994 if the Republican movement had not been convinced that the Clinton administration was wholly on board, wholly committed to trying to move the process forward. Leaning at least on the British authorities, because they knew that the Irish authorities wanted to move in that direction in any case.
And, equally, the IRA cease fire would not have been restored where the IRA again [was] not convinced that the administration was important. What I'm saying is the role that the Clinton administration has played has been central to the peace process. It has not been marginal; it has been central. It has pursuaded Irish Republicans that their views are being taken seriously on a wider stage.
Equally, it persuaded their political leadership that they may have to go for something less than what they actually want to implement in one go. That they might have to accept something less than Irish unity. It has persuaded them that politics is about process and compromise and concession.
And, all of that has come about because the President and staff inside the NSC listen to people like John Hume and went for it. They ignored the advice coming from the State Department and from the Justice Department, and they said we're going for this. They have kept in weekly, if not daily contact with the actors to make sure that the peace process would stay in place.
They have, in the present Blair government, the Labor government, a very close ally indeed. So, the parts are there for the peace process to actually take off, and the American administration has been central to all of that.
The role of the Clinton administration has been central to the whole peace process. They took the risk in standing alongside Gerry Adams, in giving Adams the moral fiber and the political fiber to convince his own people that they'd never reach the stage where politics is a game on time. "It's the right process, it's the right compromise, it's the right concession and conciliation. You may not get all you want, but you won't get anything better by any other means. Go for it."
What is essentially different is that the last peace talks failed. People got into the present peace talks in a much less euphoric frame of mind. But, they've also gone into it with a much lesser degree of fatalism. The advantage of the 17 months was that the greater community in Northern Ireland said we can make this one.
So, the pieces are there for everything to come together. And as long as the administration stays with it, and as long as the Blair government with its huge majority stays with it, then it is possible to realize peace, if not in a matter of months, certainly a matter of years.
The Future
In the coming months the worst case scenario is that all the historic mistrust will get on top of the talks. That those parties outside the talks in Northern Ireland, and there are two, will be able to whip up fears in the larger community so that the Ulster Unionist party won't have the confidence to continue. So, either it's going to be as a result of historic mistrust or short-term political gain. That's the worst case scenario.
The best case scenario is that the Irish peace process will follow what happened in South Africa. It will use the vocabulary of South Africa where they seek a sufficient consensus to make sure you can build up a strong center. And, those who are outside the process realize the futility of being outside the process, and they will come in over time. And, with the support of civil society in norther Ireland, the business community, the churches, you will have for the first time ever in the history of Northern Ireland a proper, inclusive political dialogue.
Again, another facet which is helping the peace process with the last British elections, which occurred in May of 1997, when Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were elected. These are the two people at the heart of the Republican peace process. The symbolism, the propaganda value of all of this is huge. The self esteem which their community has got is huge. The fact that these are the two people who are leading the peace faction, have been elected, cannot be underestimated.
The fact that they've gone into a parliament symbolically - because they haven't gone in in person - the fact that they've gone in there, which is led by Labor government, who chose no favors to any Ulster Unionists or any Irish nationalist ... (inaudible) But, a Labor government which is a huge majority, and has got a very close working relationship with the Clinton administration. All of that plays in favor of a peace process.
The Blair team, long before they come into office, were watching very closely what John Major did. The one thing that they had hoped was that Major would push things along so far that they could pick it up and go further with it. They didn't foresee that they were going to get such a magnificent, spectacular victory. So, they don't have to look over their shoulders at the conservatives who are so disorganized and so demoralized. They also have, at a person level, a very good relationship between the president and the prime minister. They have people in the Labor administration who have studied very closely how the democratic presidential campaigns worked, and how the American political system works. So that there is a meeting of minds and a meeting of attitudes which was never there before.
I think we have to suspend judgement on the long war. As they sit at the talks at the moment, the best that can be given is an interim judgement. And interim judgement is that the IRA and the Republican movement have led through their own mistakes, also through their own heroism, and also through their own ruthlessness. That if they had gone for this earlier, it is conceivable that we could have avoided some of the deaths.
Equally, it is conceivable that others had to go through the same learning curve. And so you cannot look at the Republican movement in isolation. You have to look at the wider picture. And in the wider picture, you arrive at an interim judgement that most of the parties, including the Republican movement, are now prepared to accept less than .... when they set out. And that I see as huge progress. And that I see as learning from other peace processes.
People like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have gone through their own very painful form of political odyssey. They have gone down a very long road where they believe in simplistically that you could win this militarily. They have suffered with their people, they have suffered themselves. They have realized the damage which violence has done.
They have had the moral courage to admit that there is another way forward. They have shown the political leadership to bring their people along ... and if they can continue in that vein, then perhaps they will be judged to be Mandelas ... Washingtons ... whomever.
Sinn Fein have to convince the Irish people as a whole that this is not part of a cynical ploy, that they're not going to return to violence. So, they have a very tall order in speaking to constituencies.
It's not the governments in Dublin or London, it's not the administration here; it is the people of Ireland. And that is a monumental task.
In the end, there is never any end in politics; politics is a process. What they will see in the medium term is less than Irish unity. Not simply because of their campaign of violence, but simply because the way that politics is evolving globally.
So, in the end, what they might see is the notion of strong regionalism in the island of Ireland, which will be part of a regional European union. And, in that sense, people will be able to claim multiple identities. They can be British, they can be Irish, they can be European. And in that sort of fudge you have an answer to the Irish conflict.
Americans, and particularly Irish Americans, have also gone through their own learning curve over this past 25 to 27 years. There was a cross-simplicity to begin with. There was identification with the underdog, while turning a blind eye to many of the things that that underdog was doing. To simplifying some horrible violence on the part of the IRA and others.
But, now that they have gone through that, I think that Americans have a much stronger realization of the complexity of the problem, and also of a much stronger sense of the ownership to the outcome of the problem. And it's holding onto that ownership which I think is very important in the medium term.
We could say that, in fact, peace process is the hard bit; killing is easy. Killing can give certain people in the community their sense of self esteem. It's the only thing they know.
Knowing that that has to stop, they simply become ordinary members of their community. And so as part of the peace process, it is essential that what has built into it is an attempt to civilianize these people. It has been tried in other peace processes with very limited success, it should be said. El Salvador is a classic example.
But, I think, it is more likely to be achievable in the Irish conflict for very simple reasons. And that is the continuing part of the family, the continuing traditional Catholic beliefs. The fact that it is the communities which sanctions violence, and the community can turn it off.
