From Armed Struggle to Political Struggle: Republican tradition and transformation in Northern Ireland 9781441159670, 9781441140647, 9781501302619, 9781623569969

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Imagination
Myth
Martyrdom
Metaphor
2 History
Origins and dynamics
Re-emergence
Militancy
Hunger and transition
3 Catholicism
History and context
Reasoning and morality
The Catholic Church and republicanism
Catholic perspectives on republicanism
Republican perspectives on Catholicism
4 Politics
Dialogues with nationalism
SDLP perspectives
5 Peace
The Good Friday Agreement
British and Irish official perspectives
Endgame: After Good Friday
6 Rebels and Reconciliation
The ‘dissident’ threat
Claiming the past to shape the future
Conclusion
Afterword
List of Interviewees
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

From Armed Struggle to Political Struggle

From Armed Struggle to Political Struggle Republican tradition and transformation in Northern Ireland

GRAHAM SPENCER Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

N E W YOR K • LON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 © Graham Spencer, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spencer, Graham. From armed struggle to political struggle : Republican tradition and transformation in Northern Ireland / Graham Spencer. pages cm Summary: “The first study of its kind to link Irish republican identity through the influences of Catholicism, the paramilitary campaign and political transformation”– Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-5967-0 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4411-4064-7 (paperback)  1.  Northern Ireland–Politics and government. 2.  Republicanism–Northern Ireland. 3.  Political culture–Northern Ireland. 4.  Identity politics–Northern Ireland.  I. Title. DA990.U46S673 2015 941.60824 – dc23 2014049088



ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-5967-0 PB: 978-1-4411-4064-7 ePub: 978-1-6235-6967-9 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6996-9 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

For my mother Pamela Spencer

‘In war the result is never final’ – Carl von Clausewitz

‘The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting’ – Sun Tzu

CONTENTS Acknowledgements  ix

Introduction  1 1 Imagination  7 Myth  7 Martyrdom  20 Metaphor  32

2 History  41 Origins and dynamics  41 Re-emergence  45 Militancy  54 Hunger and transition  59

3 Catholicism  67 History and context  71 Reasoning and morality  78 The Catholic Church and republicanism  84 Catholic perspectives on republicanism  89 Republican perspectives on Catholicism  99

4 Politics  111 Dialogues with nationalism  120 SDLP perspectives  131

5 Peace  139 The Good Friday Agreement  168 British and Irish official perspectives  189 Endgame: After Good Friday  218

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CONTENTS

6 Rebels and Reconciliation  225 The ‘dissident’ threat  225 Claiming the past to shape the future  237

Conclusion  250 Afterword  258 List of Interviewees  263 Bibliography 264 Index  271

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank the many people interviewed for this book who were generous and considerate with their time and energy. A number were interviewed numerous times and deserve particular thanks for putting up with me. It goes without saying that this book would not exist without the interviews conducted for it. It is also important to acknowledge that this project would have been much more difficult without help from colleagues in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at the University of Portsmouth. The funding and encouragement offered until July 2013 was much appreciated. Finally I would like to thank Peter Cassells, Chris Hudson, Jim McAuley and Jon Tonge but in particular Karen Cray, whose support and encouragement has been invaluable.

Introduction

This book sets out to explore some of the key forces and influences that have shaped modern republicanism in Northern Ireland and, in particular, how the shift from armed struggle to political struggle has been managed and achieved. Although republicanism in Northern Ireland arises as an extension of the broader traditions and historical sweeps of Irish republicanism more generally, my concern here is to examine how the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Sinn Fein have moved from being a military force to a political one and so focuses on the period routinely referred to as the Troubles, which emerged in the 1960s and came to an end with the peace process in the early 1990s. To do this requires some historical reflection which highlights modes of thinking and meaning that have sustained the republican imagination from origins into the contemporary period, but with particular focus on the practical experiences and perceptions of those involved with the peace process and the transformation of Sinn Fein into a dominant political party. Today, the peace process has brought about an end to PIRA violence in response to the value of political gains. The main goal of the PIRA and Sinn Fein to try and achieve a united Ireland and so end British jurisdiction in Northern Ireland is now a matter of discourse rather than violence and has evolved through the persuasive use of language and symbolic communication, where, however suspicious or doubtful one may or may not be of this, it is hard to dispute the considerable managerial feat needed to bring this about. And although ‘dissident’ republican groupings exist in opposition to Sinn Fein’s decision to share power with other political parties in Northern Ireland, which adhere to a puritanical faith in armed struggle and see this as consistent with the sacred tenet of militant republican resistance, Sinn Fein continues to shape the landscape by way of promoting political rather than military action. How has this happened and what does such a transformation mean in relation to tradition, history, identity and meaning? In exploring the significance of this shift such questions inform the course and scope of this book, where I aim to link imaginative aspects of republican identity formation through myth, martyrdom and metaphor, to the dynamics of socio-historical development and religious influence, before then charting the trajectory of the political phase, to the emergence

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of rebel groupings and current discourses being articulated by the Sinn Fein leadership about reconciliation and dealing with the past. For this, I draw heavily from interview material with a wide range of republicans, as well as Catholic priests, nationalist politicians and British and Irish ministers and civil servants who worked with Sinn Fein during the talks and negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998 and beyond. Nationalist politicians and ministers and civil servants all acknowledge the negotiating skills of Sinn Fein and talk about the tensions of engagement with them. Senior Sinn Fein figures in turn talk about how they approached the peace process, how they saw British and Irish governments and how they sought to control the internal dynamics of debate within the republican movement to build the argument for ending armed struggle. Interviews with Catholic priests are used to try and examine the influence of Catholicism on republicans, and a number of republicans talk at length about how they perceive the role of Catholicism as a belief system along with how this may or may not have framed attitudes to armed struggle and questions of morality. Ways of understanding and interpreting the world which have been informed by Catholic upbringing and thinking are probed in relation to reasoning and interpretive differences which informed Sinn Fein’s approach to talks and negotiations (working more easily with ambiguity and frameworks than their unionist counterparts), and although one must be cautious not to attribute too much weight to Catholicism as ‘interpretive frame’, it is also apparent that the role of Catholicism in identity-construction is unavoidable (even if rejected by some) and so, for that reason, requires some tentative investigation to consider possible impact on republican morality and reasoning. What is clear today, in 2014, given the metamorphosis of republicanism in Northern Ireland, is that many of the metaphorical narratives which inspired struggle, loss, defeat and determination have become less urgent and pronounced because of political transformation. As David Rieff puts it in his fine essay on the problem of forgetting, the GFA of 1998 signed up to by Sinn Fein effectively put ‘romantic Ireland in its grave’ (2011: 70), with the mythology of struggle and the utopian dream of a united Ireland now diluted by the harsh realities of power-sharing politics and the incremental and marginal gains of vote winning. And, with that change, the communication of memory necessarily involves a jettisoning of puritanical or scriptural tendencies which made armed struggle and violent expulsion of the British presence attractive and the less dramatic and dangerous compromises of political life unattractive. Some of the central narratives used to legitimize and reinforce the militant impulse and the convictions that have emerged inform the first chapter of this book where myth, martyrdom and metaphor are highlighted as important for the emotive and evocative appeal of republican aspiration. Those narratives are then put in historical context where, having briefly explained the origins of modern republicanism, we examine the

INTRODUCTION

3

developments that led to the inception of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and a resurgence of violent republicanism in Chapter 2. Here, the emphasis will be not just on the forces that reignited the conflict from the late 1960s, but also the dynamics and tensions within republicanism itself, and more specifically, between the politically and militarily oriented factions that led to the IRA splitting into the Official (OIRA) and Provisional IRA (PIRA) at the end of the 1960s. Chapter 2 will set out to chart the direction and emphasis taken by the PIRA throughout this phase of the conflict up until the hunger strikes of the 1980s, which, because of the groundswell of support amongst the republican community, created a moment of opportunity that enabled the seeds for the political development of Sinn Fein to be sown, with the inevitable demise of the armed struggle as a result. This chapter also seeks to explain this transformative period through republican perspectives and responses about what perceptions prevailed at that time as the armed campaign became refocused increasingly, and if with some trepidation, through the political rather than military lens. Though there are problems in depicting those involved at this time as acting through a way of thinking which had a religious focus, Chapter 3 is an attempt to interrogate how Catholicism may have shaped overarching narratives about morality and violence and questions whether such a standpoint has potency in terms of offering a general interpretative framework for politics as well as a justification for military action where ‘the Catholic people’ were being defended and where a ‘just war’ legitimized such action. Suggesting or imposing some general religious outlook in relation to a complex and diverse community is self-evidently dangerous in it that it risks crude categorization and homogeneity. Nevertheless, many responses during the initial stages of the Troubles were defined by such homogeneity, finding a locus of meaning through the reference point of ‘the Catholic community’. The religious categorization not only disguised the political and social differences of those opposed to British involvement in Northern Ireland at that time (note how those of political persuasion would often be labelled as being of nationalist or non-nationalist ‘areas’, whereas Catholics were of ‘the community’, and non-Catholics barely featured) but gave the militant response a kind of moral compulsion because of the religious, that is, Catholic ethic. Interviews with priests and republicans in this chapter indicate that discussion about Catholicism is a discussion worth having and that the potential pitfalls of conjecture are worth risking in order to quarry this largely unexplored but potentially significant part of republican identity and narrative processing. Chapter 4 is an investigation of the managerial structures and controls that the Sinn Fein leadership adopted in order to develop political transformation. Again, drawing from interviews with key republican figures, this chapter considers the dialogues and debates within Sinn Fein, and the PIRA as the political trajectory began to take form after the hunger strikes. Of course,

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this transformation was initially secretive, fragile and dangerous and had to be so in order not to demoralize the PIRA, discredit the armed struggle or incite splits and fractures. The political path therefore had to be constructed in terms of slow and incremental transition where the case for change was made in bits, beginning with agreement at the top levels of Sinn Fein and the PIRA Army Council before then being communicated at various layers down to the base of volunteers. This process of persuasion was not without problems, but, as hindsight shows us, was handled with great care through a combination of persuasion, repetition, calculation, strategic planning and risk assessment. The political platform took on more solid form with the advent of the peace process from the late 1980s. Chapter 5 gives particular attention to the shift from the Hume–Adams dialogues of 1988 until the GFA of 1998 and draws from interview comments with a range of senior British and Irish government officials about how they viewed Sinn Fein in dialogue and negotiations up until 1998, as well as republicans themselves who talk about how they saw their aims and intentions in this new phase. Interviews also conducted with Social Labour and Democratic Party (SDLP) figures who met with Sinn Fein before they joined the formal negotiations process in the early 1990s are used in this chapter to highlight the kind of issues that Sinn Fein leaders were concerned about, and how those leaders sought to use exchanges with SDLP to help forge a broad nationalist front to maximize political pressure on the British government, as well as help clarify approaches to potential problems that might be likely to arise when trying to convince the PIRA to end. Such dialogues helped pave the way for Sinn Fein’s entry into exploratory dialogue with British representatives in 1994 which, in turn, enabled access to the formal negotiations that followed. Those negotiations, which had taken place under John Major’s government, collapsed in 1996 when the PIRA ended a ceasefire which it had called in 1994 but resumed in 1997 under Tony Blair’s leadership before culminating in the GFA of 1998; a breakthrough signalling a new appreciation for the value of political exchange, collaboration and co-existence. Clearly, there was more negotiation work to come after Good Friday, and it was not until 2010, when policing and justice was accepted by Sinn Fein, that powersharing was fully devolved to Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein leaders had known for sometime that Rev Dr Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) would have to accept power-sharing before moves to accommodate the new institutional arrangements could be secured, and their view had been that as long as the DUP remained outside of the power-sharing government, they would be likely to seriously hamper and undermine its progress, as well as outflank the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) led by David Trimble who signed the GFA as leader of the UUP. The subsequent demise of the UUP, who lost being the biggest unionist party to the DUP in 2003 (the DUP voted to reject the GFA), led to the DUP agreeing to go into devolved government

INTRODUCTION

5

with Sinn Fein in 2006. For Sinn Fein, DUP participation in government had effectively removed the prospect that republicans would become victim to a more extreme version of unionism hovering outside of otherwise agreed political institutions and structures, which would have seriously undermined effective government and political progress. Chapter 5 is therefore at one level a chronology of events that informed the peace process, but that chronology is very much assessed through the testimony and reflections of those involved in those events. In that sense, it is at once an oral history but offers a picture of experiences and perceptions which should be seen in relation to the traditions, expectations and imaginings that shaped the republican impulse and because of that offers an important contrast to the drama and the physical force tradition that prevailed. Chapter 6 presents a reflection on the recent fracturing of republicanism as a number of ‘dissident’ factions (admittedly small in number) who oppose the Sinn Fein project seek to destabilize power-sharing by killing police and security force personnel. In their bid to expose what ‘dissidents’ would see as the hypocrisy of Sinn Fein’s decision to accept policing and justice measures under continuing British jurisdiction and influence, such groups pose a possible threat to political stability on the one hand but may also (unintentionally), because of a wider social intolerance for any return to conflict, give further credence to the Sinn Fein project on the other. In that instance, the ‘dissident’ strategy, unless significantly escalated, is unlikely to seriously threaten the current political arrangements or derail Sinn Fein’s strategic aims of growing political support both in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, so as to try and ‘harmonise’ or connect political authority from two directions simultaneously. Alongside the ‘dissident’ threat, Sinn Fein continues to articulate the value of a reconciliation process and ‘dealing with the past’ has become a primary focus for movement. It is argued towards the end of this chapter that, for those within Sinn Fein who continue to stress the importance of reconciliation, ‘dealing with the past’ will also be a matter of ‘controlling the past’ and so using any such process to further underscore the trajectory of moving republicans from being victims of British rule to being ‘freed’ from that rule by building a united Ireland from within. That aim is being linked not only to achieving success by making inroads into the presentation of symbolic and cultural identity in Northern Ireland (by getting loyalist flags and symbols removed from sites where they previously endured, for example), but wider adjustments to the image of political respectability and social legitimacy more broadly in Ireland. Whether this achieves the long-term aspiration as envisaged remains to be seen, but a possible problem may arise in how the mythological and metaphorical narratives that have historically sustained republicanism will continue to be presented given the shift from the utopianism of a united Ireland through force to a united Ireland built on the marginal and far less dramatic gains of politics. Indeed, political popularization, if it is to

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grow, will require such myths and metaphors to recede from view, since the evocative dream of ‘release’ that has been cultivated through being the repressed underdog no longer has value or credibility as an explanation of modern Ireland. Sinn Fein is now unable to claim that it is powerless to influence institutions of political and social control because it is a leading player within those institutions, and this means that the mobilizing emotions which have encouraged republicans to act from the historical position of feeling like the disenfranchized outsider are no longer convincing. The possible implications of this shift, how it was made and what it means, frame the final chapter. Overall, the book divides into two areas. Chapters 1 to 3 engage with psychological and social factors to illustrate the role of tradition, imagination, moral horizons and reactions to shared circumstances, and Chapters 3 to 6 highlight how republicanism changed to meet the challenges of democratic politics, conceptualized strategic development in political terms and managed the potential conflictions between militant principles and political populism. The first half of the book therefore concentrates on theoretical considerations which explore historical dimensions of the republican worldview, while the second functions more as an oral account on how conversion was driven, controlled and experienced. In so doing, the role of interview commentary provides a mechanism for narrating such change as well as eliciting the more immediate tensions and nuances of incremental shift within a wider context of transformation. The reflections offered through the interview material provide an ‘internal voice’ to the dynamics of change which is rooted in experience. In that sense, the second half of the book is an attempt to relate the lived moments of transformation alongside the imaginations of what it traditionally means to be a republican and to indicate the dilemmas of maintaining consistency with this imagination whilst simultaneously negotiating distance from it. In a small number of cases, interviewees have requested anonymity and have been given it, but most have not. The reasons for this remain private but also suggest that fears and concerns still remain about interpreting events and moments in ways which depart from, or which might interfere with, established narratives about change. Perhaps this concern about confidentiality also illustrates how there is some way to travel before differences and contestations can be openly shared in the new political landscape of Northern Ireland without fear of negative consequences; itself an indication of continuing sensitivities about the legacy of conflict yet to be confidently addressed. Note: Although I refer to the Provisional IRA as PIRA throughout the book, a number of sources refer to the same organization as the IRA. Unless there is specific reference to another republican grouping such as the OIRA, or one of the newer ‘dissident’ groupings which adopts the IRA name, the PIRA and IRA can be taken to mean the same organization when it refers to any time after which the PIRA were formed.

CHAPTER ONE

Imagination

Myth In his examination of the Irish mind, Kearney points towards a kind of ‘double vision’ which emerges in response to definitions of what Ireland is. The history and culture of that Ireland, Kearney argues, is one of ‘dislocation and incongruity’ (2006: 21), and it is the tension between these two conditions which is seen to shape Irish identity. Kearney’s proposition finds some parallel with James Joyce who, in his observation of how nationalist political thinking worked in Ireland, noted a similar ‘double struggle’ at work between an emphasis on the external colonizer of Britain alongside varying strands of nationalism from constitutional to insurgent forces. (Gibbons 1992: 370). More widely, this double struggle is seen to derive from a heritage ‘mixture of poor realities and grand dreams’ (Toibin 1999) sustained by discourse and language which function as ‘weapon, dissemblance, seduction, apologia – anything, in fact, but representational’ in clarity of form (Eagleton quoted in Toibin 1999: ix). From this perspective, Irish identity is a fusion of contested ideals about what the nation means, framed by a consensus about the British presence and its coercive history. Much of Irish history is shaped by an eschatological appeal and not just in relation to the external colonizer but in terms of the tension between individual freedom and institutional authority (exemplified by the connection between Church and state). In this relationship, as Toibin notes, the individual is seen as a ‘tragic hero’ who ‘is broken by the society he lives in’, where instead of social cohesion around grand themes and narratives, personal sacrifice becomes general sacrifice (1999: x), and where the Irish past is a product of ‘the idea of history as unfinished business, the idea of the disposed locals lying in wait, impelled by the wrongs done to their ancestors, the idea that the crimes committed by the settlers still hang in the air’ (1999: xvi). This identity is one of concern with the myths that shape the Irish

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condition, but one which ultimately finds shared meaning in that which is missing, denied or imposed (Toibin 1999: xvii). Rather than viewing this imagination as inherited (through an innate Irish worldview) or imposed (through the tensions of the Anglo-Irish relationship), Irish identity might be seen more as a work in progress (Kearney 2006: 21), a tension between what Ireland is and what it isn’t in response to the impact of historical and cultural change rather than some definitive account of Irish identity. What Toibin suggests is that the desire for release from the external colonizer is parallel to the desire to be released from institutional control, where denial has been absorbed into everyday lives and incompleteness has become integral to the Irish condition. The struggle to find meaning against this backdrop, as Seamus Deane reminds us, imbues nationalistic ethos with expectations of recovery. This recovery implies a narrative arc (a journey) which is both about what has been denied (invariably by external repression and coercion) and what must be regained (through the variations of Irish and national political emphasis), and it is in this landscape that the Irish mind emerges as a disputed process of political, social and religious meaning where identity is influenced as much by the conflicts within its borders (the self) as the conflicts with those outside of those borders (the other). The potential disconnect of the double vision can be seen as a dilemma with regard to what one believes alongside what one wants to be. Kearney’s dislocation and incongruity analogy has a wider purpose, however, in that the Irish mind appears to be searching for some degree of stability against a cultural and social ground of instability and against a landscape of divisions, contradictions and shifting tensions which frame what it means to be Irish. By using allegory and history to promote varying concepts of nationalist appeal and using constitutional politics or violence to justify differences about history and change, the Irish nationalist vision is a product of division which hinders any agreed articulation about national identity and progress (Gibbons 1992: 359). This internal conflict has also been historically affected by the institutional power of the Catholic Church which sought to undermine revolutionary nationalism from developing into a force that would challenge Catholic authority. This absence of an agreed, organizing centre beyond Catholicism acted as a barrier for the development of later socialist ideals which advocated overthrowing centralized power and the state (Gibbons 1992: 362). What did offer a galvanizing influence for nationalism however was the presence of the British, but it was more specifically the English which enabled the coalescence of nationalist sentiment to take shape (Gibbons 1992: 363). It was this external enemy which gave direction and energy to internal demands for nationalist expression, and it was the presence of colonial domination which underpinned arguments for Irish independence around which different nationalist ideals could congregate. The colonial presence then enabled differences within the Irish imagination

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9

to find some common point of reference which internally was lacking. Identity became increasingly preoccupied with that which was without rather than within and tended to use the external influence as a locus for national meaning and self-definition. The narrative arc which depicts national identity as a transformative struggle takes early influence from the allegorical Ireland, where ‘visionary poetry and ballads’ were used to promise ‘apocalyptic deliverance’ from disaster such as the land confiscations conducted in the early period (Gibbons 1992: 366). Memories of the dead from holy wars promoted the trauma of loss and personified this experience through the defiled woman, seduced and then abandoned; a woman seen to exist as the peasant mother caught up with the undisclosed intentions of a seductive civilizing (colonizing) other (Gibbons 1992: 369). The personalization of invasion, repression and guilt through the metaphor of the female as the pillaged land, as Edna O’Brien argues, has augmented perceptions of defilement and impoverishment: ‘Ireland has always been a woman, a womb, a cave, a cow, a Rosaleen, a sow, a bride, a harlot’ (1976: 11). For O’Brien ‘The children inherit a trinity of guilts: the guilt for Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion, the guilt for the plundered land, and the furtive guilt for the mother frequently defiled by the insatiable father’ (O’Brien 1976: 19). This emphasis on Ireland, where the land (rather than people) is idealized as the female archetype (Hill 1977), infused the rhetoric of republican leaders such as Patrick Pearse who, in his reflections on Irish identity, mused that in understanding Ireland the people had ‘to read the lineaments of her face, to understand the accents of her voice; to re-possess ourselves, disinherited as we were, of her spirit and mind’ (1922: 93). For Pearse, Irish independence meant defending ‘a man’s love for the place where his mother bore him, for the breast that gave him suck, for the voices of children that sounded in a house now silent’ (1922: 81), and his plea to Irish mothers was to bear the sacrifices that would need to be made in the fight for independence (Pearse 1922: 85), a fight where ‘Ireland must be herself; not merely a free selfgoverning state, but authentically the Irish nation bearing all the majestic marks of her nationhood’ (Pearse 1922: 304). As an indication of the historical power and influence of myths, it is interesting to see how images and narratives of the female in Ireland drew from Celtic tradition (where storytelling fused myth, legend and history and where Ireland was a place of heroic battles, intense passion, warrior aspirations and where gods were part of everyday life (Gantz 1981)) where land was conceptualized in the form of a woman whose youthful femininity became ‘the sovereignty of Ireland’ (Mac Cana 1980: 521). The female was associated with natural forces, fertility and (re)birth and Celtic myths perpetuated the symbol of the ‘sovereignty goddess and the symbol of the land of Eire’ (Ni Bhrolchain 1980: 531). (The Poor Old Women is the traditional name for Ireland (Deane 1997: 19).) The image of fertility and

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growth and purification against evil spirits in the Celtic tradition imbued goddesses with supernatural and magical powers and provided metaphors which contributed to dreams and utopian visions. Significantly, fertility was seen as sacred, but it was the figure of Mary in the Catholic faith which also stood as the bridge between sacred and secular worlds, pointing towards the sinless image of womanhood whilst at the same time representing motherhood (Mac Curtain 1980: 541). The mother figure was a powerful symbol for republicans like Pearse who equated ‘the mother of an Irish nationalist with the Mother of Jesus at the foot of the Cross’ (Mac Curtain 1980: 542), linking the suffering of republicans through the symbols of motherhood and the dominant figure of Mary who mourned the death of Jesus and stood as a metaphor of loss, strength and pain. Fellow republican James Connolly in 1908 also used the ‘Ireland as woman’ metaphor to incite rebellion against the repressive British whose ‘jaws are wet with the arm blood of the feast’ and where ‘For over a hundred years the majority of the Irish people begged for justice, and when ever and anon the hot blood of the best of her children would rise in rebellion at this mendicant posture Ireland turned her face from them and asked the enemy to forgive them. When her rebel sons and daughters were dead, hunted, imprisoned, hanged or exiled she would weep for them, pray for them, sigh for them, cry for them …’ (n.d: 74). The religious significance and resonance of sacrificial discourse can be seen in the modern period to make reference to women as pure, in contrast to the early period when a more liberal and less patronizing image of the female prevailed. Kearney relates this shift in tone to colonization where ‘women became as sexually intangible as the ideal of national sovereignty became politically intangible. Both became imaginary, aspirational, elusive’ (1997: 119). Myths of Ireland, according to Kearney, draw from images of sacrifice through a poetic overarching discourse. The role of the sacrifice and its relation to imagined renewal is seen to contribute to the poetical glorification of Ireland’s sacrificial sons and because of this intersects with notions of struggle and suffering in order for the Irish to ‘return to the security of their maternal origins: the mother church of Catholic revival; the motherland of national revival; and the mother tongue of Gaelic revival’ (Kearney 1997: 118). Kearney refers to the opening and closing statements of the Easter Proclamation of 1916 to demonstrate this myth further: ‘In the name of God and the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for freedom’, and identifies how such rhetoric operates to connect ‘(i) the Catholic symbolism of mystical reunion with martyrs through the sacrifice of the Mass, and (ii) the mythological idea of Mother Ireland calling on her sons to shed their blood so that the nation can be restored after centuries of historical persecution’ (1997: 118). The power of myths, as Armstrong points out, comes in particular from meaning that transcends everyday observable experience (2006: 2) and is

IMAGINATION

11

preoccupied with the implications of death, with what lay beyond physical existence. As Armstrong puts it, ‘Many myths make no sense outside a liturgical drama that brings them to life, and are incomprehensible in a profane setting’ where ‘the most powerful myths are about extremity; they force us to go beyond our experience’ (2006: 3). But, the world which myth evokes, though concerned primarily with the unknown and though pointing to a world which remains beyond the everyday, also invites behaviour and moral conviction (as part of a utopian and ritualized vision) which is rooted in the divine, a world ‘which is richer, stronger and more enduring than our own’ (Armstrong 2006: 4–5). The appeal and power of myths connects with the hope and desire for a world that ‘points beyond human history to what is timeless in human existence, helping us to get beyond the chaotic flux of random events, and glimpse the core of reality’ (Armstrong 2006: 7) and so provides us with a glimpse of transcendent possibility. Myth then produces a conceptualization of worlds which expose the limits of the everyday and connects that everyday to a reality neither contained by time or the limits of rational understanding. Myth encourages one to see that death is the door to another higher realm, and that what one does in life is a preparation for reaching this realm; a world which is necessarily utopian and which cannot be proved (because it cannot be actual). It is a place where the individual is connected to meaning that is much bigger than aspirations in the lived world (which is self-evidently non-utopian) encouraging those who partake in myths to see themselves as part of a struggle for progress, as part of a process ‘which gives us hope, and compels us to live more fully’ (Armstrong 2006: 10) and which provides some way of addressing the fears and desires which permeate the human condition. But the Celtic influence which gave foundation to the Irish imagination through myth also had a bigger purpose which was to function as a ‘cauldron’ that symbolised mystical energies and which presented a context and narrative about energy and motivation. For O’Driscoll, the Celtic consciousness derives from a recurring mythology where ‘the vessel is a symbol of the inexhaustible resources of the spirit, forever renewing itself, whether it be the hidden spirit that animates all matter, or, on modern psychological terms, an energy in the depths of the mind that, if developed, can free man from dependence on the body and the tyranny of historical fact’ (1981: xi). Through this consciousness one strives to reconcile the individual with the universal as part of a general tendency not to see opposites as contradictions, but as points of connection and where the soul moves towards transcendence. This state of consciousness is one which cannot be known through intellectual categorization (O’Driscoll 1981: xii) and is distinct from history and society, more a ‘spiritual rebirth’ where knowledge comes from the reconciliation of differences and where opposites are seen in terms of oneness. Here, the individual is not confined by the limitations and expectations of rational thought but invited to see the world as a sequence of variations shaped by metaphysical

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and mystical power. One can see the immediate Catholic implications of this worldview, where impressions are representative of other deeper impressions that are themselves representative of a spiritual order and where death is a higher realm than life, constrained as it is by biological determinants and finite possibilities. The afterlife, from the perspective of Celtic outlook, is part of a ‘communion between the living and the dead’ which is born from a tradition that presaged religious outlooks and is therefore part of a continuum which percolates and informs the Catholic impulse (O’Driscoll 1981: xvi). The influences of the Celtic consciousness were especially influential on political thinking and can be observed in Pearse, who believed in striving for a state of perfection that honed ‘a more piercing vision’ which itself is ‘more humane, inspiration, above all a deeper spirituality’ (quoted in O’Driscoll 1981: xviii). The appeal of such a ‘piercing vision’ was a perception that also inspired the writing of those such as Yeats who similarly sought to draw from Celtic imagery to promulgate a deeper sense of historical belonging that positioned modern sensibility firmly in the imagined past: ‘the Irish nation’s insistence on developing its own culture by itself is not so much the demand of a young nation that wants to make good in the European concert as the demand of a very old nation to renew under new forms the glories of a past civilization’ (quoted in O’Driscoll 1981: xix). Significantly, the influences of Celtic consciousness found expression through artistic reflection and Catholic experience, but it was the nationalist ambition which powerfully drew the artistic and the religious together by way of its emotive and dramatic emphasis on struggle and suffering. This is highlighted in Donoghue’s excellent essay on race, nation and state where the Celtic consciousness is strongly based on the notion of epic struggle (2011: 11). Notions of Celtic aspiration were crafted through narratives which were ‘quick to dream, and powerless to execute’, where ‘in external aspects and in moral history, the same tale is told – great things attempted, nothing done’ (quoted in Donoghue 2011: 14–15). The emergence of national consciousness in this context, as Donoghue reminds us, relied more on ‘a feeling of kinship’ and used the context of the family as a basis for categorizing who was accepted and acceptable and who was not (2011: 17). This idea of the nation as family (dysfunctional of otherwise), Donoghue contends, intensified the feelings of humiliation which derived from British power, and it was the intimacy provided by personalizing the nation which created a powerful focus for galvanising nationalistic belief and ambition (2011). Donoghue particularly highlights how nationalist Ireland was shaped by literary and poetic expression, with Yeats an especially important figure in cultivating nationalistic awareness. Yeats was seen to cultivate an image of national awareness by drawing from historical myths and legendary stories about wandering, killing and fighting (Donoghue 2011: 18), using ‘sagas to appeal to unity of race as a force prior to historical divisions’

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(Donoghue 2011: 19). Yeats thought of the Irish nation as a process, where people strove for self-expression and transformation, and he saw the poet as representative of that voice (Donoghue 2011). It was the poet who could give release to heroic and pagan impulses and who could encourage belief in magical forces that could be channelled into a unified sense of energy and purpose which evoked strong associations of memory through symbols (Donoghue 2011: 22). Yeats sought to collectivize the powerful influences of ‘ancestral memories, magic, the spiritus mundi, the summoning of a race to become a nation, the practice of an antinomian politics as cultural nationalism, the politics of difference, the tragic theatre, the sacred book of the arts’ in order to create an image and narrative of Ireland which stood apart from and superior to the scientific, restrictive and exploitative British presence (Donoghue 2011: 22–23) and used history of a powerful motivating imaginary to inspire nationalist goals. This was a nation (which Pearse notably used for inspiration) that was built less on actual events of history, and more on an idealised vision of Ireland (so more easily denigrated and exploited). But, such a nation was also a construction which invariably homogenised and failed to take account of divisions within Ireland itself. It was a representation, in other words, which was out of kilter with the political and social realities and complexities of what Ireland was. Taking these mythological influences into consideration, Kearney reminds us that to discover the peculiarities of Irish identity and the divergences upon which identity is built, we would be well advised to look at Irish literature, since it is here, where dominant and peripheral narratives about what it means to be Irish, are most persuasively expressed and articulated. It is here, where the myths of hero, rebel and (dis)unity (Kearney 1985) inform the intellectual tradition (amongst other traits), and it is from these characterizations that modern social and political allegiances draw. It is also from the drama and emotion of the images produced that utopian ideas take form, making the journey and experience of suffering integral to identity and the path to a highly mythologized Ireland attractive. Such narratives, of course, illustrate a search for meaning, but in the process reveal a desire to address or question that which is lacking, and it is that which is lacking which highlights much about the search for identity and worth. As part of this search, the family becomes a particular interest for writers as well as how the impact of desire and love (invariably framed by expectations about marriage) exist alongside rigid social and religious convictions of what one should be (rather than what one is). On this, Enright asks, ‘Is choice a particularly Irish problem?’ and intimates that if it is, it probably relates to difficulties with shame and humiliation and ‘the problem of power’ (2010: xv). Enright appears to be on similar ground with Kearney here because what she observes in Irish literature is the dilemma of tensions between society and self, dilemmas which probably feed into political and social visions as much as individual worth and fear.

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The search for Irishness has historically been preoccupied with martyrs (personal sacrifice for change) and metaphors (emotive devices by which to make sacrifice and the possibility of change seductive), both of which have been used as frameworks for dramatizing the struggle for national freedom and sovereignty (Toibin 1991: 45). The adaptation of these martyrs and metaphors points towards a struggle over belonging and place which is conceptualized through emotive association and the power of imagined futures that depend on constructing a past from which possible change offers comforting dislocation rather than feared abandonment. Because of fluidity between past and future, as Toibin notes, ‘there remains no fixed, formed place where one could stand and say: this is Ireland. There are so many versions of reality in this country, so many visions of where the centre of gravity lies’ (1991: 47). This is a society, he argues, ‘which is inexact, chaotic, defensive, nervous, only slowly beginning to form’ (1991: 48), and which historically has relied on mythic constructions to comprehend the realities (and possibilities) of social and political life. The myth of martyrdom has been prominent in Irish identity and the importance of sacrifice is well explored by Kearney, who recognizes how the power of sacrificial myth derives from the expectation ‘that victory can only spring from defeat, and total rejuvenation of the community from the oblation of a chosen hero or heroic elite’ (2006: 36). With this emphasis, death is not seen as loss, but triumph, where for the dead ‘their deed is not buried with their bones but flows eternally from their graves and nourishes all those subsequent generations of martyrs who sacrifice themselves for an “enduring nation”’ (Kearney 1978b: 282). Martyrdom, then, constructs a collective memory of suffering where death is given more significance than life and where the utopia of what may be achieved in life can only come through death. And because of this, it is apparent that the myths which legitimate sacrifice can only be about what does not yet exist, and so, which can only reside in the imagination (since once this imagination becomes reality, the myths of utopia no longer have appeal). Kearney is surely right when he argues that the legitimacy of sacrifice relies on mythic constructions, not political reality, for such a reality exposes the illusion of utopianism and the impossibility of human perfection (1978b: 276). Moreover, political action can only give rise to temporary solutions to problems, whilst mythic aspirations offer idealized notions of the social and political, that constantly reside in the future, always beyond and because of that always out of reach, always aspirational (Kearney 1978b: 277). The myths of the past have potency largely because they too remain out of reach. At most, they point towards possibility but, because of failure (as the rebels of 1916 show), remain incomplete. Yet, it is this incompleteness, this failure, which acts as the impetus to fight on. The importance of defeat exists as a constant in mythic construction and, of course, is essential as the place from

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which escape emerges. The history of sacrifice is therefore a history of the utopian ideal which justifies sacrifice, which indeed necessitates it. And, perhaps this is no better personified than in The Rising of 1916 which provided spiritual as well as ideological support for a war of independence against British rule in Ireland, shaped the legitimacy of armed struggle and framed modern republican thinking (McGarry 2011: 9). The Rising encapsulated the myths of journey, suffering and sacrifice and drew from a strong sense of religious conviction to help ‘ensure an “eternal” victory’ (Kearney 2006: 37). The failure of the Rising to win independence was conceptualized as part of a longer struggle which those such as Patrick Pearse (1879–1916), who led the Rising and was the first to surrender and the first to be executed (Dudley Edwards 2006), believed could be won in death as much as in life (Dudley Edwards 2006). Resistance was a sacred process, with sacrifice taken as integral to motivation and the reward of independence. As Pearse put it when addressing a group of volunteers at the time, ‘I know that you have been preparing your bodies for the great struggle that lies before us, but have you also been preparing your souls?’ (quoted in McGarry 2011: 107). Pearse’s belief that Irish victory would be won in death (Kearney 2006: 37) provided a strong inference for how the religious and the political were interwoven and where political change was infused with spiritual and transcendent power. Such uses of the symbolic and the religious also proved important motivations for the PIRA, who used those such as Pearse to perpetuate the image of the ‘eternal Symbolic Republic – with its mythos of renewal through sacrifice’ and situate the armed struggle in a context of historical continuity and responsibility. The mythological nature of this new vista is a matter of imagined destiny where an intolerable world is recast into a utopian vision through transformative action which, in this case, is violent. The message of The Rising is not transformation through persuasion, but rebellion and violence elevated to divine and redemptive purpose (Kiberd 1996: 210). Pearse exemplified the juxtaposition of faith and politics by equating faith in God with faith in Ireland and used the journey and suffering of Christ as a motivation for revolution and change (Kiberd 1996: 211), and on this, Pearse was consistent, his writings framed by sacrificial discourse and the romance of spiritual separatism. For Pearse, the spiritual tradition ‘is the soul of Ireland, the thing which makes Ireland a living nation’ (1922: 301) which ‘could not die as long as the tradition lived in the heart of one faithful man or woman’ (1922: 303) with violence a necessary feature of change because the shedding of blood ‘is a cleansing and sanctifying thing’ (Pearse 1922: 99). This sanctification grew, in Pearse’s mind, from the purifying effects of regeneration which would result in ‘bringing us fresh life from this place of death, a new resurrection of patriotic grace in our souls!’ (Pearse 1922: 57). Significantly, for Pearse, patriotism is a ‘faith which is of the same nature as religious faith and is one of the eternal witnesses in

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the heart of man to the truth that we are of divine kindred; a faith which, like religious faith, is dead without good works even as the body without the spirit …. it is not sufficient to say “I believe” unless one can say also “I serve”’ (Pearse 1922: 65). Pearse went on to stress how ‘Patriotism is in large part a memory of heroic dead men and a striving to accomplish some task left unfinished by them’ (1922: 66). Commemorating the death of United Irishman and rebel leader Robert Emmet (who was hanged for high treason in 1803 because of his part in a failed attempt to overthrow British rule and made a famous speech which included the legendary statement ‘When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and only then may my epitaph be written’, acquired legendary status in the history of Irish nationalism and inspired a ‘blood and honour’ ethos which influenced future republicanism (Elliott 2003)), Pearse advocated how ‘In every generation we have renewed the struggle, and so it shall be unto the end. When England thinks she has trampled out our battle in blood, some brave man rises and rallies us again … some good man redeems us by a sacrifice’ (1922: 76). And, in the sacrifice of Emmet, we are encouraged by Pearse to see the beauty of an act where ‘We are so dominated by the memory of that splendid death of his, by the memory of that young figure, serene and smiling, climbing to the gallows above that silent sea of men in Thomas Street, that we forget the life of which that death was only the necessary completion; and the life has a nearer meaning for us than the death’ (1922: 82). For Pearse, there was danger in conceiving of nationalism as a material entity, and those who before had done so ‘have not recognised in their people the image and likeness of God. Hence the nation is not to them all holy, a thing inviolate and inviolable, a thing that a man dare not sell or dishonour on pain of eternal perdition’ (quoted in Lyons 1979: 85). Pearse’s articulations of divine and redemptive inspiration not only sought to cultivate a sense of civic and national pride but drew from ‘ancient mythological  cycles of renewal and rebirth’ (Kearney 2006: 44) which signalled a return to the original intent and value of those founding heroes who personified the ritual of sacrifice. Importantly, however, this belief in the transformational possibilities of sacrificial discourse is also a response to powerlessness in the present, making submission to such myths a return to ‘original sacred power that exists before and beyond history’ (Kearney 2006: 45). The message of nationalism shaped by the rhetoric of divine and redemptive purpose and patriotism was conceptualized through the frame of sacralization. But, references to the sacred also necessarily emphasized a Catholic sense of communal responsibility, and for those such as Pearse, nationalist sentiment was ‘thoroughly permeated by Catholic devotional feeling’ (O’Brien 1994: 102). It was also through this Catholic impulse that Pearse sought to define the Irish nation as comparable to the fate of Jesus Christ, where ‘national sacrifice would redeem the Nation as Christ redeemed the world’ (O’Brien 1994: 108). As O’Brien puts it, ‘For

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Pearse, the channel and the echoes, through which the nationalist mystique was conveyed, were mainly Catholic and sacramental, around the concept of the “crucified nation”’ (1994: 114), and the means to achieve this end was often by way of language reminiscent of the early visionaries who had been deified ‘within an exalted poetic imagery fusing religion and nationalism’ (1994: 113). Pearse harnessed the emotive and dramatic appeal of Catholicism to a nationalist vision and in the process glorified bloodshed and suffering as essential costs to bear on the road to national renewal (‘Life springs from death, and from the graves of patriotic men and women spring living nations’ (quoted in Foster 1988: 477)). This vision was firmly located in the Catholic belief that salvation resided more in life after death (O’Farrell 1976: 56), and his inspiration for violent rebellion found justification from a theology of nationalism where ‘the patriot people was equated with Christ, and hate and violence were sanctified’ (O’Farrell 1976: 57). The Catholic disposition towards life after death, unlike Protestant millennialism, meant that death was not constructed through an emphasis on fear and destruction but ‘expressed in the warm conviviality of the traditional wake’ which ‘offered little sustenance for a view of the supernatural shrouded in the doom and terror and hysteria central to the millennial tradition’ (O’Farrell 1976: 58). This view of death, which contributed to the belief that utopia lay beyond life, also meant that failure was conceived as a necessary step towards redemption, a part in a much bigger journey of divine recognition. And, it was this belief which provided the frame within which evocations of sacrifice and suffering could be articulated. As one priest summarized this tendency when writing at the turn of the twentieth century: … as God called Samuel in the temple, or as he called Moses from  the burning bush, so did he call the nation of Israel from Egypt, so has he called the nation of the Celt in Ireland, to do a special work in the fulfilment of a word-wide future, to follow a divine vocation in the reconquest of the world  into the truth and love of Christ … Never has a supernatural vocation so clearly or so splendidly dominated all else within a nation’s life as has the faith of Christ elevated and ennobled the character and the aspirations of Catholic Ireland … True martyr, she sacrificed wealth, prosperity, freedom, education, culture, all natural gifts and graces that make life dear to man, rather than forsake the Truth revealed of God … of all the nations there is not now left one single nation thoroughly, profoundly, and emphatically Catholic except one. That one true Catholic nation is Ireland (quoted in O’Farrell 1976: 61–62). Pearse, as Kiberd acknowledges, ‘took Irish asceticism out of the monasteries and made it active in the political world’ (Kiberd 1996: 210), his concern to entwine religious faith with political ambition and use Catholic imagery and meaning to form a morality and justification for rebel violence (Kiberd

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1996: 211). Pearse therefore used Catholic devotion to theologize nationalist politics and evoked nationalist aspiration through the emotive and historical power of religious conviction. His republicanism was the cultivation of an identity which connected with the spiritual leadership of the Catholic Church and in the process elevated the significance of the political to the religious. To do this, Pearse associated Catholic mysticism through images, signs and metaphors with nationalist conviction, so attempting to stir feelings of attachment through the utopian power of the unseen and harnessing emotions to this imagined future world (Lyons 1979: 88). Other key figures such as James Connolly (1868–1916), in contrast to Pearse, focused less on the assimilation of Catholicism and nationalism and more on the assimilation of nationalism and socialism, but here, Connolly also acknowledged the importance of appealing to martyrdom and sacrifice through the religious sensibility, writing in 1916 ‘but in all humility and awe, we recognise that of us, as of mankind before Calvary, it may truly be said “without the shedding of blood there is no redemption”’ (quoted in Lyons 1979: 90). The utopian project, for Connolly, was a socialist state, but as with all utopias, the search for an imaginary state of perfection (Coverley 2010) was ultimately unrealistic, and more, as Bauman puts it when writing on utopia and socialism, about offering ‘the luxury of unleashing human imagination and leading it to the distant expanses which would never be reached if it were held down by the exactions of the political game’ (Bauman 1976: 13). The power of the utopian vision lay in its ability to envisage a better future which can only be realized by the commitment and actions of those who desire it. Its appeal therefore rests both in focusing on the inequalities and repressive political and social authorities of the present, and advocating the possibility of collective action to confront and change this present. As one would expect, for this message to have resonance, the process of change must offer maximum difference from the system it seeks to replace (Bauman 1976: 17). The emergence of a socialist Ireland, for Connolly, required conviction and emotional attachment with the utopian message, but although it depended on this connection, it also marked a departure from the rhetoric of Pearse in that it sought to loosen and challenge the authoritarian hold of Catholicism on the popular imagination. Connolly saw the socialist ideal as dependent on overturning the power structures which had prevailed over the existing system, and this meant confronting the power of Catholicism. In rejecting private ownership and advocating individual rather than institutional rights over social action (Berresford Ellis 1973: 107), Connolly expressed a desire to challenge state control by overturning the institutions and structures which ensured the preservation of such power: ‘Let us organize to meet our masters and destroy their mastership; organize to drive them from their hold upon public life through their political power; organize to wrench from their robber clutch the land and workshops on and in which they enslave us; organize to cleans our social life from the stain of social cannibalism,

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from the preying of man upon his fellow man’ (Berresford Ellis 1973: 137). His vision for the Irish nation, though emphasizing socialism rather than Catholicism as the path to nationalist self-determination, nevertheless also drew from the symbolism and mythology of sacrifice and suffering as expressed by Pearse, but, unlike Pearse, the justification was underpinned ostensibly by political ambition: ‘The peaceful progress of the future requires the possession by Ireland of all the national rights now denied to her. Only in such possession can the workers of Ireland see stability and security for the fruits of their toil and organization. A destiny not of our fashioning has chosen this generation as the one called upon for the supreme act of selfsacrifice – to die if need be that our race might live in freedom’ (Berresford Ellis 1973: 142). Connolly’s intent was to shape a socialist outlook which used Irish history and its social imaginaries to cultivate a revolutionary socialist movement (Fennell 1985: 200). Compare the message of Connolly with that of today’s Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams who gave this oratory in 1979: ‘We are opposed to big business, to multinationalism, to gombeenism, to sectarianism, and to the maintenance of a privileged class. We stand opposed to all forms and manifestations of imperialism and capitalism. We stand for an Ireland free, united, socialist and Gaelic … Our movement needs constructive and thoughtful self-criticism. We also require links with those oppressed by economic and social pressures. Today’s circumstances and out objectives dictate the need for the building of an agitational struggle in the twenty-six counties, an economic resistance movement, linking up Republicans with other sections of the working class. It needs to be done now because to date out most glaring weakness lies in our failure to develop revolutionary politics and to build an alternative to so-called constitutional politics’ (quoted in Foster 2001: 180). Though Adams refers to Tone (the founder of Irish republican nationalism who we will come to), Connolly and Pearse as influences (the above oratory was made at Bodenstown where Tone’s grave is located and which nationalists visit in pilgrimage every year), it is Connolly from whom Adams most draws in depicting a socialist republican Ireland, and it is Connolly who historically provides the inspiration and template for Sinn Fein politics. This, at least, is what Adams maintained even after the GFA of 1998 when in interview he stressed ‘I would like to think I am in the tradition of Connolly, adapting my politics to the political conditions in which I live to advance the republican goals of independence and sovereignty … You cannot divorce the socialist aspiration from the aspiration of national independence … To use Connolly’s phrase, this requires the reconquest of Ireland by the Irish people, which means the establishment of a real Irish republic. You cannot be a socialist in Ireland without being a republican’ (Costello 2001: 5). Adams’ comments reveal a problem which Kearney believes lurks at the heart of modern republicanism and that arises from on the one hand promoting ‘an enlightened universalism of world citizens’ whilst on the

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other advocating ‘a separatist nationalism which subordinates the universal rights of the citizen to the rights of the nation-state’ (Kearney 1997: 27). Nor is the republicanism which Adams stressed at the beginning of the millennium comparable to the political settlement which Sinn Fein ending up being part of from 1998 onwards. That settlement came from a steady transformation, which Sinn Fein had been going through since the 1980s, towards a republicanism which envisaged Irish independence through universality, and which came to articulate the importance of inclusiveness over territoriality (people over land). Perhaps what Adams and others came to realize is that an adherence to separatist nationalism risked a deep sense of humiliation and required an enemy (the United Kingdom) which was slowly revealing itself not to be the enemy of 1916, and that without this enemy, the separatist tradition had no significant appeal or even rhetorical grip beyond a minority still convinced by the positions of Pearse and Connolly but with little interest in, or recognition of, the outside world. Perhaps then, the transformation of Sinn Fein itself corresponds with the gradual erosion (in perception) of an established enemy (Kristeva 1995: 9), and that what replaces this erosion is a republicanism that emphasizes universal or inclusive rights rather than merely recycles and restates separatist aims or articulates the rhetoric of exclusivity.

Martyrdom The myth of sacrifice and the glorification of loss are aspects of the republican imagination that are strongly present in hunger strike narratives which claimed the lives of twenty-two republicans between 1917 and 1981. Amongst those martyred in this way, the iconic figures of Thomas Ashe who died in 1917, Terence MacSwiney who died in 1920 and Bobby Sands who died in 1981 have come to powerfully exemplify how resistance, dedication and death have been internalized in republican consciousness to epitomize the value and cost of struggle. The strikes, which emerged as responses against criminal status imposed by British occupation, found inspiration in the ‘sacrificial ideology’ of Pearse, and in the case of Ashe and MacSwiney, the sacrificial and endurance are especially pronounced. Writing while incarcerated in Lewis Prison in 1917, Ashe demonstrated unshakeable commitment by defining starvation in sacred and divine terms and, like Pearse, justified politically-motivated action by way of religious and sacrificial inference: Let me Carry your Cross for Ireland, Lord The hour of her trial draws near, And the pangs and pains of the sacrifice May be born by comrades … (quoted in Flynn 2011: 37).

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Dying for the cause and accepting the need for certainty in one’s commitment required not just elevating this commitment to levels of the sacred, but being clear and certain about what this would mean in terms of suffering and loss. And, it is the importance of expecting to suffer, facing that suffering and enduring it that sustained the convictions of MacSwiney, who came to personify sacrifice as a necessary and expected step for national redemption in his famous utterance that was to inspire future republicans: ‘This contest of ours is not on our side a rivalry of vengeance, but one of endurance – it is not they who can inflict most but they who can suffer most will conquer … It is not we who take innocent blood but we offer it, sustained by the example of our immortal dead and that divine example which inspires us all for the redemption of our country’ (quoted in Flynn 2011: 42). Note how MacSwiney imagined infliction and absorption in relation to claims about innocence and guilt and used this to reinforce expectations of communal and national loyalty. Note too how MacSwiney emphasizes the value of pain received rather than given through a distorted and emotive appeal of purity (which serves the self-image of innocence), and how this purity is used to present endurance as a conviction of faith and divine assurance. The power of martyrdom has religious roots when seen as an act of sacrifice on behalf of others, with prison the historical place where Christian martyrs tended to prove their power of belief through suffering (Bartlett 2013: 3, 21), and where, as Murphy points out, ‘prisons became the most radical and effective form of revolutionary activity in Ireland’. In his excellent study of political imprisonment in Ireland, Murphy notes how ‘The Sinn Fein revolutionary method was to render unsustainable Britishcontrolled civil government … By testing the durability and legitimacy of the Irish prison system using hunger strike … [this] tested the durability and legitimacy of British authority’ (Murphy 2014: 80). The prison created a situation where ‘the Castle made heroes out of nobodies and provoked savage indignation among countless families’ (quoted in Murphy 2014: 80), making confinement a place of sharpened resistance and performance. Those republican hunger strike martyrs such as Ashe prompted reactions which strongly inferred that suffering and dying as an act of resistance helped to make ‘a better man’, as well as give ‘a fresh emotional charge to the movement’ (Murphy 2014: 88), and did this far more effectively than if martyrdom had not taken place (Murphy 2014: 91). Ashe’s death had shown for many at that time that ‘being a prisoner was the most effective way to be an Irish revolutionary’ (Murphy 2014: 106), and that suffering was effective to gain popular support by (as later with Sands) highlighting the injustices of the British system. MacSwiney in a similar act of revolutionary defiance joined those who had come to form ‘an ahistorical elite or tradition within Irish nationalism’ which, through the martyred dead, became ‘stripped of all other meaning, unmoored from the complexity of context’ (Murphy 2014: 174). MacSwiney’s suffering, for some, had created a ‘doctrine of

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triumph through endurance’ (quoted in Murphy 2014: 190), raising such republicans, who slowly and determinedly took their own lives, to the status of iconic heroes, as individuals who had died for change and powerfully restated the dramatic appeal of progress through suffering in doing so. The religious connotations of such actions draw from a deep history which relates to the ‘unjust suffering of the righteous’ (Cooper 2014: 29), where suffering becomes a form of communication to demonstrate power of conviction and faith (Cooper 2014: 31). The religious impact and influence of enduring such pain and the subsequent response to how one sees it, as Cooper argues’ ‘was magnetic in the Christian imagination’ (2014: 33) where the ‘courage of the martyrs … [served] as an invincible weapon in the battle for hearts and minds’ (2014: 34). ‘The willingness of the witness to die’ … insists Cooper ‘lends moral power to a message, and this narrative power fascinated Christian writers’ (Cooper 2014: 35). And, it was through remembering the martyr and keeping the experience of suffering alive in the mind of others that ‘a compelling message of spiritual power’ was created which, over time, would come to form the impression of a ‘morally correct’ act that was persuasive largely because of the fortitude displayed (Cooper 2014: 38). Within the Irish context, the propaganda effects of martyrdom have proved to be a powerful stimulus for drawing support and admiration (Beiner 2014: 200–201). The imprisonment of revolutionaries popularized their cause and prison brutality captured considerable media interest which further augmented animosity against the British state (Beiner 2014: 203). In turn, public funerals of martyrs (largely forbidden in the late nineteenth century by the British) produced graveside orations that ‘challenged British hegemony by audaciously occupying a public sphere previously dominated by imperial iconography’ (Beiner 2014: 202), whilst affirming Catholic ritual devotion and conjoining revolutionary action with divine meaning and intent (Beiner 2014). Because of this association with Catholicism, many priests were obliged to be part of commemorative vigils, thereby entwining religious conviction with revolutionary zeal (Beiner 2014: 205). In turn, the religious and the revolutionary found particular resonance in the articulations of those best able to communicate myths, martyrdom and the appeal of militancy as a force for change (and so good). But, this desire was grounded in an ethos of faith and religious commitment which was personified by those like Pearse, who galvanized support by way of incitements such as ‘Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations’ (quoted in Beiner 2014: 219). The connotations of such expected suffering are therefore overwhelmingly religious in meaning. In her book The Story of Pain (2014), Joanna Bourke reminds us how historically pain was important to demonstrate faith in relation to communal cohesion and identity: ‘Through communicative acts, people-in-pain and witnesses to their pain reaffirm communion and community’ (2014: 46), and how the history of

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Christianity is one where communities have been ‘forged in the crucible of pain’ (2014: 49). For Bourke, the significance of pain as  a form of communication was seen as demonstrative of and integral to ‘redemptive character’ and, because of this, spiritual intensity (2014: 91). The manifestation of pain was a test to measure the ‘noble character’ both in the person-in-pain and in ‘those around him’ (Bourke 2014: 101), offering a path to regeneration which, in its imitative associations to the death of Christ, gave pain cleansing value and made it important for spiritual (and in this case national) renewal (Bourke 2014: 118). In the contemporary period, the story of Bobby Sands’ death as the first hunger striker to die in 1981 has been constructed primarily as an act of endurance, self-denial and faith (Kearney 2006: 50), and his death resonates within a republican history which promotes ‘a dual standard of endurance as well as infliction’ (Coogan 1997: 27), so finding powerful consistency with the articulations of Ashe and MacSwiney. However, the religious significance of such acts has a greater history and lineage. In his outstanding Biting At The Grave, O’Malley notes how hunger striking ‘fuses elements of the legal code of ancient Ireland, of the self-denial that is the central characteristic of Irish Catholicism, and of the propensity for endurance and sacrifice’ that shapes republican thinking. O’Malley points out how in pre-Christian Ireland hunger striking was an action of the poor ‘in order to redress a perceived injustice or recover a debt’ and was seen as a means of punishing the wrongdoer since it was the wrongdoer who was faced with the moral responsibility of ending the strike (1990: 26). O’Malley further observes how ‘from the earliest times, this tradition of passive-aggressiveness, of taking injurious action against oneself for which another was to be held responsible, was given favour’ and gave rise to a history of fasting which was used to demonstrate one’s commitment to God by showing penance for sin and giving oneself to Christ through suffering (1990). This martyrdom which symbolized a kind of purification and which enabled the martyred to demonstrate bravery and stoicism which allowed for an expiation of ‘their sin, washing it away with blood, just as the water of baptism did’ (Campbell 2011: 73), and which began to appear in the 1580s as a central act of identification within Catholic communities, also supported a religious patriotism that cultivated ‘a movement towards designating a community of the faithful, separate from other confessions and drawing strength from its own venerable traditions’ (Lennon 2003: 78). The historical role of Catholic martyrs in Ireland, who used Protestantism to reinforce Catholic culture, hierarchy and identity, was used to establish a faith community which understood the importance of suffering and sacrifice as an essential part of the worldview, where ‘a version of the Irish Catholic experience was synthesized which combined the oral traditions and cults of the martyred, the literary expression of the Irish Catholic heritage and the practical organizational achievements in terms of educational advances

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and restructuring of clerical administration’ (Lennon 2003: 92–93). Here, Catholic martyrs used sacrifice to incite an ideology of resistance and, in so doing, imbued the Irish Catholic imagination with a mythology of suffering which reinforced communal stability but also reinforced difference and separatism in relation to the Protestant other. The hunger strikes were a moment ‘when the chosen few would redeem their people by their deaths; to the tradition of ennobling failure linking the present to the heroic past; to the sacrificial themes of Irish Catholicism in which the mass was the ritual re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary to redeem the world’ (Lennon 2003: 109) and symbolized the power of victim endurance, a metaphor for what has also been called ‘the allusion of grace’ (Lennon 2003): the culmination of spiritual devotion and dedication. However, elevation of suffering to biblical proportions relies on the victim’s actions being used to highlight the failings of the political system in which that suffering is taking place. The power of sacrifice therefore derives from its ability to expose the political and to draw further support for challenging and changing its failed nature (Kearney 1980: 700). Moreover, to find that support, it is the absorption of suffering rather than its infliction that must dominate if sacrifice is to be construed as legitimate political action (Kearney 1980: 701). In that sense, the myths that surround sacrifice must connect with the idea of liberation, but credibility for this depends on some coherence in the relationship between what Ricoeur (in interview with Richard Kearney) calls ‘critical instance’ on the one hand and ‘mythical foundation’ on the other (Kearney 1978b: 262). Here, the power of the act derives not from its literal impact but from its symbolic impact; therefore, the potency of its effect relates to how symbolic meaning is created. But, there is another crucial element to be considered when thinking about sacrifice and that is its function as a form of purification (Halbertal 2012: 19), where what is being opposed and exposed by sacrifice is the contaminating effects of repression and denial. In this instance, sacrifice is carried out to reveal the brutality and the inhumanity of those who the sacrifice is directed towards and against. The purification function of the sacrifice arises because it contrasts with the insulting or degrading treatment and behaviour of those it opposes. The hunger strikes of 1981 emphasize this tendency since the purity of belief expressed in the intent and the action of starving to death also came though the progressive accumulation of dirt (as the name ‘dirty protest’ suggests) which at once magnified the inhumanity of the regime which allowed this to happen. As such, the violence carried out by republican prisoners was displaced by the sacrifice of the hunger strikers and transferred to those responsible for the regime in which sacrifice takes place (Halbertal 2012). The purification comes not just because ending one’s life for a cause is the ultimate expression of purist conviction, but because it displaces the cruelty of violence on to others who act disproportionately or insensitively in response to the sacrifice. As mentioned, this relies on myths and imaginations

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of community, conviction and identity but is revealed through the extremes that sacrifice creates. No sane person, one might think, would exist in a space covered in shit or deliberately starve to death unless what this action was trying to oppose necessitated such extreme action and so therefore was even more inhumane. It is an act of desperation which at the same time exposes the inhumanity of those it tries to communicate with, those who are deaf or indifferent to human needs and who are ultimately dehumanized because of this deafness and indifference. Sacrifice under these terms denies dignity and as such exposes humiliation, the abdication of decency and the imposition of cruelty. Reference to the hunger strikers as men ‘on the blanket’ further adds to the inhumanity and dehumanization of the environment in which they starved. The blanket has childhood associations with comfort, security and warmth, but in this context, those associations are reversed and the blanket becomes an extension of suffering, its surface covered in defecation and the stains of human waste, reducing the victim to a canvas of filth and in the process making him less than human. This is not an inhumanity expressed through the infliction of cruelty but by the absorption of cruelty (even though it is also a controlled and motivated victimhood). At the same time, the question is posed who could allow this, and what does it say about those who do allow it? The vulnerability of those starving themselves to death immediately heightens the relationship with those letting it happen, and this shifts attention to an ultimate humiliation and accusation which is that in letting one die when one is in a position to help prevent this death one lacks humanity and so becomes animalistic. One becomes, to put it another way, an object of disgust. The actions of those such as Bobby Sands in the hunger strikes can therefore be seen within a context of martyrdom which not only connects past heroes, but also elevates suffering to the level of the spiritual and in that sense creates a picture of struggle which is ‘endowed with transcendent attributes’ (O’Malley 1990: 137). The spiritual dimension in this instance is self-evidently nationalistic and sacrificial, and this is no better demonstrated than by Sands himself who, in his diary, wrote: ‘I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and by the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is what I am incarcerated, naked and tortured …. I am dying not just to attempt an end to the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the “risen people”’ (quoted in O’Hearn 2006: 335). Here, Sands (who died on 5 May 1981) is clear that his starvation is not just a reaction against prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners, but part of a historical struggle which has ‘Godgiven right’ and which is justified because of ‘those wretched oppressed’ who through their wretchedness are ‘risen people’. Sands informs his reflections with a strong spiritual motivation and the funerals of the hunger strikers

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that died followed Catholic rituals, further entwining the political with the symbolic power of ‘historic victimization’ (O’Malley 1990: 157). The funerals themselves made far less reference to the infliction of violence  and suffering concentrating more on the absorption of it and appealing to communal identity through ‘sanctioned martyrdom’ that ‘invoked memories of personal and collective suffering’ (O’Malley 1990: 158). Similarly, the rituals which the hunger strikers came into contact with (‘the fasting, the ministrations of priests, the visit of the popes’ personal emissary and the prominent display of the crucifixes for the hunger strikers the pope sent with him, the benediction of the last rites, the comings and goings of the prison chaplains, the pronouncement of clerics … the political role of the bishops, the elaborate liturgy of Catholic funerals’ (O’Malley 1990: 161)) meant that although Catholic belief was rejected by some, the environment which framed their lives adhered to formalities and rituals of Catholic meaning which served to link political aspiration with religious aspiration, with daily Mass a source of comfort and support for a number of prisoners (Kearney 2006: 50) (as well as providing an opportunity for prisoners to come together and plan strategy). And, the symbolic martyrdom of the hunger strikers not only focussed attention on the suffering and desperation of prisoners, but the cruelty and indifference of the British government who had the power to prevent the deaths of ten men by recognizing the right to their political (rather than criminal) status. The hunger strike deaths had been a clear example of how suffering gained more sympathy for republicanism (starving to death) than PIRA violence had managed to achieve (Kearney 2006: 58), and this is because the strikes were able to invoke meaning and symbolism which moved the republican struggle beyond immediate militarist objectives. The political success of this moment (as the development of Sinn Fein and the political project of republicanism came to show) came about, it can be argued, because the hunger strikes personified religious and political nationalism in ways which went far beyond efforts to change prison conditions. In effect, the oppressive rules and regulations which the British put in place enabled republicans to exploit the religious and political possibilities of that moment with farreaching consequences for change, and this struggle has been idealized as part of the martyrdom mythology in order to glorify sacrifices on the road to the utopia of an independent, united Ireland. Though many of the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration speeches have in recent years been attached to the merits of pursuing the peace process, the importance of memory as past suffering was particularly evident in the 19 June 2011 address by Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan, who used the opportunity of the speech to also remember the thirtieth anniversary of the hunger strikes and the death of Sands by saying ‘The people who gave their lives for Irish freedom in Long Kesh in 1981 are not on the walls or floors of the H Blocks. They are alive and well in the hearts and thoughts of another generation who have been inspired by their sacrifice … . The only shrine worthy of that sacrifice is the

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completion of the struggle for a free, independent, united Ireland’ (http:// www.sinnfein.ie/contents/20958). The martyrdom of Sands, along with others, is used by those such as Sheehan to refute ‘the meaninglessness’ of death by constructing ‘an imagined or longed-for order and a privileged and idealized system of meaning’ (Castelli 2004: 34). This is also a demand for changing the system of order that the martyr’s act is opposing and is designed to expose and ridicule. For this reason, the martyr moves beyond expected and conventional forms of rationalism and behaviour to become feared as a threat to existing structures and norms, committing to ‘another realm of signification, one whose provenance is superior and all-encompassing’; hence the martyr’s depiction as ‘a powerful and irreducible figure, an exemplar and an ideal’ (Castelli 2004: 199). The real threat of the martyr then derives from his demonstrable strength in opposing power; to transcend the limits of pain which may be used to maintain conformity and limit resistance. But, when the martyr is elevated above the limits of pain, he also looses his humanness since he is reduced to an event, an action, and is all too readily used to serve a narrative which has a longer-term goal. If the act supports this goal, it becomes part of folklore and beyond critique (Castelli 2004: 201). His action gives death a purpose, a strategic purpose, and in so doing translates that death into the struggle of life. This perhaps is one key point that we can take from the actions of Sands and the others involved of the 1980/1981 hunger strikes, namely that death in these circumstances complemented the republican tradition of using suffering to motivate struggle and resistance. In that sense, the hunger strikes were used not only to oppose prison conditions but to exacerbate suffering in an attempt to intensify republican resistance and entrench anger against the repressions of the British regime (it also remains an interesting point of contention whether the republican movement would have gained ground or intensified its struggle with the same ferocity if the British had conceded to prisoner demands, which is further suggested in recent accounts of British government attempts with republican leaders to bring the hunger strikes to an end (O’Rawe 2005; Moore 2013: 587–622; Hennessey 2014)). In elevating his sacrifice beyond the limits and finality of death, the martyr’s suffering and actions invariably, as in this case, finds religious and divine potency – magnified by the fact that he is not deterred or stopped in his aims by death but, indeed, needs death in order to fulfil those aims. Martyrdom therefore only has impact if it captures through drama and symbolism that which contributes to the ‘formation of collective memory’ (Ford 2001: 58), and that memory, as in this instance, is concerned with ‘providence and human suffering’ (Ford 2001: 65) to the extent that it presents a claim to truth which legitimates sacrifice (Ford 2001: 66). Clearly, a man willing to starve to death is acting out of absolute conviction and in that sense can be seen as part of some bigger truth which contestation

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and interpretive difference cannot comprehend, cannot grasp. One way of thinking about the broader significance of such action can be found in Durkheim’s work on altruistic suicide, where death may be understood as part of a destiny shared by many others, performed ostensibly as a duty and as a response to the weight of history (2000: 219). For Durkheim, the individual who commits altruistic suicide must be ‘highly integrated’ within the group he represents, a group where most lead the same life and which shares common ‘ideas, feelings, occupations’ (2000: 221), and where the action of suicide acquires ‘social prestige’ precisely because it reflects this commonality; where individual interest is second to social and group interest. As Durkheim argues, altruistic suicide depends largely on the individual striving ‘to strip himself of his personal being in order to be engulfed in something which he regards as his true essence’ (2000: 225), and where his life is conceptualized in terms of a wider and higher cause. This is where individual martyrdom becomes linked to the divine and where death is taken as a mark of hope and striving: associated with extreme conviction and the desire to experience metaphysical reality. Though Durkheim makes distinctions in how altruistic suicide operates, his analysis provides a reference point by which to make sense of the iconic status attributed to the death of Sands in republican circles. For suicide (or martyrdom) in this way elevates the individual way beyond the limits of his possible achievements in the lived world. It is an act, Durkheim continues, ‘which sets human personality on so high a pedestal that it can no longer be subordinated to anything’ (2000: 227) and perhaps that is why the death of Sands is celebrated within republicanism so fervently, namely because his death symbolizes the transcendent state which political authority is unable to confront, control or reach. The death of Sands is admired rather than seen as an individual act of self-destruction because it exposes state authority as weak rather than strong (thereby giving hope) and acts as a galvanizing and motivating force for the community it represents in the process. It is also the kind of action that legitimizes the claim that it is those who can absorb the most suffering rather than inflict the most suffering who will win in the end. It is the kind of action, to put it another way, which conceptualizes the republican cause as an aspiration of the divine, with transcendental potential conveyed through the romanticized ideal of liberation and pursuit of the utopian dream. The significance of this was not lost on director and artist Steve McQueen, whose excellent film Hunger released in 2008 focussed on the hunger strikes through the death of Sands. McQueen’s comment that the film did not set out to demonize the British but was more a reflection on ritual and suffering within a context of British authority and control that used a number of visual metaphors to underline the religious rather than political status of Sands’ suffering. In an important moment in the film, Sands (played by Michael Fassbender) becomes engaged in lengthy dialogue with a priest (played by Liam Cunningham

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and apparently based on a conversation between Sands and Father Denis Faul), setting out the moral parameters and justifications for his decision to starve to death. Noticeably, that decision is explained and contested within a religious rather than political frame, also resembling the confessional in its construction. But particularly revealing in the conversation is Sands using Jesus’ death as inspiration for his decision to suffer, since it was Jesus who ‘had a backbone’ and offered proof that ‘you need a revolutionary’. Important for Sands’ conviction to carry the hunger strike through though was the belief that ‘out of the ashes there will be a new generation of men and women even more resilient and determined’ and that such sacrifice required the need ‘to keep your beliefs pure’. The association of revolution with purity, which is further reinforced by the death of Jesus, is a clear example of fusing religious and political conviction in order to justify starvation. But note also that this starvation is seen as a necessary step for liberation and change and that the physical deterioration of Sands is paralleled by his growing mental and psychological determination. My making himself a scapegoat, Sands exposes the inhumanity of the regime which contains him, at the same time reinforcing his heroic status in standing against that regime. Clearly, his suffering and the repression of the prison in which he exists are extensions of each other, and Sands’ frailty and suffering become the basis of his strength. Interestingly, as with the death of Jesus, Sands withdraws from verbal communication with those who oversee his death. His refusal to talk renders the psychological effects of verbal exchange redundant, and his silence becomes a statement of defiance. In his nakedness, when Sands is manhandled around the prison corridors and rooms, the visual impact is of the carried Jesus broken, weak, near death, but at the same time unbroken, strong and transcending the prospect of death. As Middleton notes, there is a strong tendency in Christian societies to construct martyrdom through the vantage point of the Passion of Jesus (2011: 65), where death brings not failure but success (because as the Passion demonstrates, Jesus transcended death as a victory over evil) (2011: 71). Significantly also, in early Christianity, believers proved their belief by attempting to share in, participate in, the suffering of Christ (Middleton 2011). Those who sought to experience Christ’s suffering would expectedly find similar triumph over death, thus making martyrdom ‘a potent weapon in the eschatological war that inexorably led to ultimate victory’ (Middleton 2011: 74). This approach to suffering invariably meant that the defeat of death could be turned into the success of life, and where possible weakness could be transformed into strength (as with Sands where we can see that his physical weakness augments his mental and psychological determination and so becomes his strength) as part of some much larger schema or narrative. The implications of this view led to a ‘breaking down of temporal and spatial boundaries’, and relate to actions of ‘the early Christians’ who ‘were able to sustain the belief not only that those who died were alive, but

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that those who were currently alive were dead … paradoxically, they believed that death could potentially lead to life for the faithful, or continued death for the unfaithful’ (Middleton 2011: 75). For Sands, starving to death was obviously a form of resistance but also recognition that more can be accomplished by death than by life. In that sense, his actions are driven by a motivation and force beyond himself, a context where suffering contributes to liberation. The death of Sands and the other hunger strikers may be an act of desperation, a last resort, but the conviction involved in ending life in this way is both transformative and transcendental. Such action also indicates that death is the most powerful influence over life, and that confronted in this way and in this context can change life. The absolute nature of this conviction goes beyond possible literal deconstruction in Hunger, when Sands is critical of religious deduction about starving to death which the priest interprets as suicide. In response, Sands criticizes religious interpretation of his predicament as little more than a theological exercise (divorced from the realities of the situation he is facing), but finds a clarity of purpose and persuasion that is self-evidently based on much more than individual intent. Clearly, for Sands, the hunger strikes serve a higher purpose than individual heroism, and his suffering is seen in the context of that higher purpose. Because of this, his actions find biblical parallels, and although Sands tries to expose the inadequacies of the priest’s attempt to dissuade him from starving to death, his own justification is ostensibly religious in orientation and particularly Catholic (indeed what other religious conviction and reference point could he draw from?) in that it is carried out for the advancement of (republican) community aspirations (Spencer 2012: 140–173). Sand’s martyrdom is a metaphor for communal responsibility and indeed can only be seen as such. He dies so that others may benefit, but the only way he can die under such circumstances is from total certainty that he is right and in the belief that his actions are serving a much higher, divinely inspirational cause. One cannot fail to recognize the religious nature of this, and although what came from the hunger strikes was political development for republicanism, it would appear that the route to this politicization was religious in motivation and justification. To take this a little further, the sacrifice that Sands makes in Hunger cannot be literally articulated because the power it signifies lays more in the realms of the symbolic, the metaphorical and the imaginary. The emotive power of the sacrifice made by those like Sands has also been used to contain and perpetuate narratives which mythologize the hunger strikes (and Sands in particular) in ways which make a critique of the strikes a similarly emotive undertaking (since one is critiquing the mythology itself). Revelations that the Sinn Fein leadership sought to extend the hunger strikes in order to elicit more public support and intensify external pressure for change and did not make known a British offer to end the strikes (O’Rawe 2005, 2010), indicating a leadership strategy to politicize the republican

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struggle through maximum exploitation of the martyrdom and sacrificial mythology that the death of Sands embodied, have led to hostile counterreactions by those determined to maintain the dominant narrative of republican heroism. Disputations amongst republicans over the revelations, also, inevitably, lead to further argument about the authenticity and credibility of narratives about the hunger strikes and, in so doing, have called the power of myth into question. The sacrifice of Sands provokes considerable sympathy within republicanism and, like sacrifices more generally, to question its nature is to question the community it has become representative of. Importantly, as Girard points out, ‘The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence’ and does this by maintaining cohesion and harmony about sacrifice in order to maintain social and communal order (2005: 8). The sacrifice provides the community with a common point of meaning and identity and because of this is able to defuse internal tensions and fragmentations, but what is also significant about understanding sacrifice is that it has persuasive power more particularly in religious societies which respect sacrificial rites and rituals (Girard 2005: 14). Religious rites and rituals connect the saintly and the sinner (Sands representing the former in Hunger) and imbue the violence of sacrifice with transcendent appeal (Girard 2005: 24). Those rituals and rites enable the sacrificial to acquire holy meaning, where the act of violence is transformed into an act of giving, connecting human action with divine possibility but also to galvanize the community from which the sacrifice derives. The power of Sands’ sacrifice comes not just from justification in the context of a communal cause, but because it connects most strongly with the belief of what happens after death. Sacrifice only has meaning if it impacts on the community to which it is associated with, or representative of. But, and this is key, sacrifice has meaning and power essentially because it amounts to the surrender of something as a means to gain something more valuable, even when that something amounts to the prevention of some evil. Clearly, sacrifice has no meaning unless it impacts on others and those others are representative of a community which one is both of and not of. The sacrifice of Sands has impact on both those who he is of and those who he is not of, but, as Girard notes, it is an act which also disguises the cruelty of the community the sacrifice comes to represent. As said, the British government in refusing to acknowledge demands for political status (at least initially) and intervening to prevent the death of Sands has a responsibility for it, and not just because they had the power to help prevent it (which ultimately, of course, resided with Sands) but, as said, because in not intervening to try and save a life, they lacked humanity. Importantly, also, the message of not acting to stop the strike was turned almost entirely towards and against the British who faced intensifying pressure in the wake of Sands’ silence, with all the implied suggestions of fragility and vulnerability that that entailed. The image of Sands (his refusal to engage)

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and other hunger strikers, who were similarly emaciated, defenceless, unshaven, long-haired and silent, had immediate significations with the sacrifice of Jesus. The absorption of suffering exacerbates the cruelty of its infliction, turning a perpetrator into a victim and so connecting with powerful martyrdom myths about victory through loss and about what lay beyond death. It is, in this instance, an action of individual (and so social) determination and metaphysical possibility (what comes after death) where sacrifice acquires potency and meaning through the combination of present and future conditions. This was a moment of political importance precisely because it was a moment of religious importance, converging key myths, metaphors and narratives attractive to the republican imagination and fusing the themes of endurance and sacrifice that pervaded the tradition, but in a way, which was further magnified by international media scrutiny and attention to the visual (symbolic) drama unfolding. An evident problem with the notion of a ‘God-given’ right to Irish unity and independence is that it renders any moral contestation about how to reach it as incidental. It implies that any means to reach independence and unity is legitimate because this (conceptualized as the sovereign state) has already been given consent by God, making violence acceptable because of religious sanction. Shanahan’s study of moral justification used by the PIRA highlights this problem, suggesting that by providing the armed struggle with utopian and ‘transcendental moral sanction’, republicans have been able to maintain a moral rather than logical reasoning for their actions (2009). And, in this case, the use of moral rather than logical reasoning relies heavily (as we have seen) on historical continuity and the symbolism of myths to maintain credibility. The 1916 Proclamation that Irish independence was a destiny that is ‘God-given’ (2009: 40) reflects not the negotiation of a common or public good (which of course, must take account of differences and divisions) but, as Shanahan identifies, an ‘absolute good’ (2009) raising resistance and struggle to divine authority. But, this relies on the repetition of myths and metaphors in order to convert failure into success and deterrence into determination.

Metaphor Interestingly, the origins of republicanism in Ireland promoted the importance of dialogue and working towards some commonality, with separatism seen as a result of British-Irish relations rather than because of conflicting relations within Ireland itself. Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) recognized as the founding father of modern Irish republicanism, saw separatism in this way, articulating an image of universality and equality and the need to replace division and conflict with a culture of common citizenship (Kearney 1997: 30). This also extended to addressing religious difference through

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developing common political interests (English 2006: 105), and it was not republican separatism in Ireland that motivated Tone, but the need to overcome religious division, to end sectarianism and forge consensus in relation to a united cause of independence (Elliott 1989: 111). In 1796, Tone attempted to mobilize support against the external oppressor by insisting ‘It is England who debauches and degrades your gentry; it is England who starves your manufacturers to drive them into her fleets and armies; it is England who keeps your wretched peasantry half-fed, half-clothed, miserable and despised, defrauded of their just rights as human beings, and reduced, if the innate spirit of your country did not support them, as it were by miracle, below the level of the beats of the field.’ (Elliott 2006: 378). The deprivation and coercion created from the British presence gave Tone a receptive populace for articulation of republican ideals which drew from the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Union and Fraternity – with Union routinely dropped from the republican narrative because of perceived connotations with unionism and Protestantism), and Tone used these ideals to motivate a culture of resistance and rebellion. His interpretation of equality was necessarily juxtaposed with inequality created by the British presence and so Tone’s commitment to change was inextricably linked to release from Britain and the construction of a new order. As Tone put it in his address to the Roman Catholics of Ireland in 1792 about equality within Ireland – but more in relation to the English – ‘If, my Catholic Countrymen, you are base enough to indulge the wish of extending your own happiness, only to diminish that of Protestant fellow subjects – continue slaves for your minds are not fit for Liberty. But if you only seek equality, if you are animated with the glorious hope of increasing the prosperity of your Country by exalting all her sons, that I conjure you by every tie which can be dear to men to preserve … {God} intended you to be free, and if you have not debased yourselves, you deserve to be free, and it is your duty to become so’ (Moody et al. 1998: 335). Note that although Tone was sceptical and critical of religious influence (which had associations with the Irish condition that Tone wanted to change), his argument for liberty and equality lacked credibility if built on a rejection of Catholicism, so God’s desire for emancipation was absorbed into a republican ethic, supporting motivation to this end. Tone saw the possibility of reform as directly connected to commonality and argued that real liberty could only be measured by how populations rather than privileged elites lived. He also believed that ‘the bane of Irish prosperity is the influence of England’ (quoted in English 2006: 106), and although initially not openly opposed to English influence if conducted in the Irish interest, he came over time to adopt an increasingly separatist position (English 2006) with a militaristic focus. An example of this can be found in Tone’s proclamation to the people of Ireland in 1796 when he stressed: ‘The hour of your emancipation is at length arrived. We bring

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you arms, ammunition, artillery, stores, everything of which your tyrants have industriously deprived you, and the want of which alone has kept your indignant spirit so long in fetters. Strike for the honour of your country, for the destruction of tyranny and the freedom and happiness of mankind. Swear with us eternal war against the ambition and the avarice of England, to which your liberty, your property and your blood have been so long sacrificed’ (Moody et al 2001: 197). Significantly, Tone disliked the romantic impact of Gaelic culture and its influence in shaping the nationalist worldview. As Elliott explains, Tone’s ‘central message was not that Ireland’s abiding evil was England, but rather that her people were disunited. Resolve one and the other would resolve itself naturally’ (Elliott 1989: 1). And, even though Tone came to see independence from England best achieved by arms and his reasoning was taken as ‘the gospel of Irish republican nationalism’, he had been less clear about revolutionary violence as modern republican interpretation would have it (Elliott 1989: 2). Not so disputable was Tone’s preference ‘to conflate sacrifice with rectitude’, and that his reputation (notably consisting of clarity in articulation and conviction in sacrifice) played a central part in shaping the republican mind and the imaginations of its tradition (Elliott 1989: 419). Tone’s republicanism though was more inclined to address the social rather than the territorial (though both were related) and in that sense was concerned more with people than land. His was a republicanism that sought to weaken ties with religious conviction, integrate Enlightenment values and through these values defuse internal divisions which were seen to derive from religious differences (O’Brien 1994: 100). The religious republicanism of Pearse and the socialist republicanism of Connolly (which is seen by O’Brien to have been built on a mystical strand of republicanism but which sought to integrate that mystical tradition with secular values (O’Brien 1994: 114)) both had considerable impact on the republican mind, but it was after Tone that this imagination took on more popular form. Tone’s contention that the Irish condition could only realistically be changed when the divisions internal to Ireland were overcome, or at least able to converge on a point of common political interest, has come to have greater impact on the modern republican worldview, based as it is on a variety of positions from violent resistance to ‘constitutional reformist’ alternatives (English 2006: 463). What is similar about these variations though is that each tends to glorify the past and each tends to mould an image of history and time which utilizes a ‘teleological dimension’ where the ‘assumed future can be as vital as the imagined past’ (English 2006: 445). The variations reflect an emphasis on ‘reform and the redress of specific grievance’, ‘sovereignty and separatism’, ‘measures of political autonomy short of full separation from Britain’, ‘the unity of people’, ‘the survival of national culture’ and ‘properly legitimate arrangements for economic organization, or representative government

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with power and sovereignty resting in the people; defence in times of crisis’ (English 2006: 456–457). The promotion of violent struggle on the one hand or constitutional reform on the other (a shift fully grasped by Sinn Fein and the party’s transformation from supporting the PIRA’s armed struggle to ending that struggle in order to pursue democratic politics) also points to differences in nationalist outlook which express ‘land agitation or literary struggle, or heroic sacrifice … the cultivation of martyrs or of cults around the personalities of political leaders … prison struggle’, and use a range of means such as protest, propaganda and mobilization to support such emphases (English 2006: 464). In relation, modern republicanism has sought to capitalize on the mythic and metaphoric power of this history to portray itself as defender of the nation and the national interest. As stated at the outset, however, the republicanism to which I particularly refer in this book is that which developed with the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s until the peace process of the 1990s. And although that republicanism (more specifically Sinn Fein and the PIRA) developed on the basis of appealing to a nationalist imagination which adopted an inflexibility, a permanence of aims and saw itself as representative of land and people (before a peace process emerged where people were presented as more crucial for the republican project than land), it became increasingly apparent that such attachments bore little relation to the complex make-up and identity differences of modern (Northern) Irish society (O’Brien 2003: 152). Within the imagination of the republican–nationalist, there was a tendency towards the appeal of a fictive Ireland which was totalizing in its identity and purpose (O’Brien 2003: 153), and the moral force given to armed resistance contributed to this certainty by ignoring the potential diversions of argument or debate which risked undermining the legitimacy of violence (O’Brien 2003). One consequence of this adherence to a tradition of force is the inability to accommodate competing viewpoints and where, for republicanism up until the peace process, ‘The choice for any other form of identity existing outside the nationalist imaginary is simple: leave the territory, or else be absorbed into the nationalist mentalite’ (O’Brien 2003: 155), where an emotionally charged attachment to land and its protection was maintained. In comparison to the republicanism of France or the US, the republicanism of Ireland is seen to lack ‘philosophical enquiry’, relying instead on a political conviction and determinism (O’Brien 2003: 161). Because of this, Irish republicanism has tended to lack critical self-reflection or examination but instead adopted an encompassing imagination reliant on specific narratives of historical circumstance tied to romantic notions of land, geography and territory. The rejection of alternative perspectives or opposition to republican armed struggle was demonstrable by the intentions of the PIRA (of course unelected and so without democratic consent), which, up until the peace process, showed ‘a fantasist style of thinking and an utter disregard for popular consent’ (Garvin 2008: 29).

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Legitimization for armed struggle within republicanism has notably relied on perceptions and feelings of alienation, powerlessness, desperation and marginalization (Ivory 2008: 86), and so the justification for violence has been attached to the absence of social and political influence. A driving factor in the republican campaign then has been the metaphor of journey, so movement away from dislocation towards influence and change. The republican position is largely predicated on trying to replace one social and political situation with another and so conceived as process, not as holding on to control (as has been the case in unionism) but in trying to gain control, in trying to replace one situation with another and in moving from one destination or condition to another. This sense of journey imbues the republican message with drama and theatre, its appeal providing an obvious resonance with those denied access to conventional structures and mechanisms of social and political authority. Traditionally, republican attempts to gain support were predicated upon notions of the ‘common good’ (a Catholic emphasis) (Ivory 2008: 91), which concentrated less on the requirement ‘that the political and national unit be congruent with ethnic and political boundaries’ (Ivory 2008: 91) and more on the need for subsuming ethnic and political boundaries into a concept of separatism bound to attachments about independence (rather than interdependence). This also required applying two intersecting convictions: presenting the imagination through dramatic movement, that is ‘nationalism as doctrine or ideology’, and connecting that imagination to feeling, where nationalism exists as ‘a collective emotional force’ (O’Brien 1988: 1). The emergence of the peace process has ended this totalizing vision of the republican project, however, swayed by the gains of political advantage and the need to work with opposing communities by reaching out rather than ignoring. This means that those opposing communities are no longer seen as a threat but as an opportunity. Such opportunity invariably required a fundamental shift in how journey was conceived, away from fundamentalist positions to pluralistic ones and away from the rigidity of armed struggle to the fluidity of political communication and articulation with all the modern techniques of persuasion that this entails (Spencer 2006). Now, the common good is not confined to republican–nationalist tastes but is conceived through the terrain of democratic politics and everyday concerns. Today, the case for republicanism being needed to confront social and political exclusion is a claim that no longer has credibility. Republicans now have considerable political power and ability to affect social matters. This ‘new republicanism’ (Maillot 2005; Bean 2007) has also been motivated by the need to recognize and manage alternative perceptions of Irishness, where the limited and certain past (which depended on disadvantage and powerlessness) is stressed less and the unlimited and opportunistic future (which signifies advantage and acquiring power) more (Ivory 2008: 102). But, this transformation also poses problems for historical narratives built on perceived powerlessness

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and British obstruction to Irish independence. The terrain of dispute and contention is no longer about military and sacrificial conviction. It is no longer about a purity of purpose and the fundamentalist pursuit of that purpose but more the development of political arguments and contestation, about engaging in a context of difference and the new environment that is one of ambiguity, where the metaphor of journey is framed by observable and managed political gains rather than continued attempts to persuade about the merits and effectiveness of armed struggle. The shift in the republican approach to the Irish question (I should mention that the impact of ‘dissidents’ will be addressed later) can perhaps be illustrated by the perceptions of two recent Irish prime ministers towards republicanism in Northern Ireland. Only a few months before the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) in 1985, Charles Haughey commented that republicanism, to which his own political party had given allegiance, stood as ‘the political embodiment of the separatist, national tradition that is central to the freedom and independence of the Irish nation’ (quoted in Ivory 2008: 97), intimating that freedom and independence rested on adherence to the 1916 dream. Garret FitzGerald, who negotiated and signed the AIA with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, had, on the other hand, argued for sometime before that change required consensus throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland simultaneously. Unlike Haughey’s articulation, which appeared to conceive of republicanism in territorial (land-based) terms, FitzGerald’s wider conceptualization placed republicanism within a civic frame ‘about a pluralist state marked by the public engagement of its citizens in the interest of the common good’ (FitzGerald 2008: 164). FitzGerald’s contention emphasized that nationalism had been shaped by a ‘post-Gaelic Catholic ethos and dominated by local and sectional issues rather than by the common good of Irish society as a whole’ (2008) and because simplistic division and sectarian intolerance had insulated Ireland from its own complexity. The need, as FitzGerald saw it, was to embrace the multicultural worldview, for it is this which takes Ireland closer to the pluralist state which most suitably reflects the complexity of its varying identities and allegiances. One needs only to glance at FitzGerald’s book Towards a New Ireland, published in 1972, to see that he was putting together a nationalist programme largely adopted (in practice if not in principle) by the SDLP, used as a vantage point for reaching political agreement in Northern Ireland and largely taken up by Sinn Fein in order to make political gains. FitzGerald noted how Protestant fears about ‘an authoritarian Catholic State’ could not be ignored (1972: 88), as provisional republicanism seemed to believe, but had to be accommodated. This required movement by republicans to see the problem of Irish independence internally rather than entirely a British, and so external, affair. It also required both communities (Protestant and Catholic) to see their interests as inextricably linked and part of a shared heritage.

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With foresight, FitzGerald recognised how multiple relations both within and without Ireland would have to work together, with the EEC facilitating equitable economic and political possibilities and applying a strongly determined rights-based culture (1972: 160). A guarantee of rights across all sections of Irish society along with new constitutional arrangements, for FitzGerald, would underscore a new pluralist Ireland (1972: 176), tying its future to the realization that internal accommodation would be essential for growth and development. In contrast to Haughey, who conceptualized republican struggle in terms of land, FitzGerald argued that independence could only be realistically achieved by a republican–nationalist ethos which was people-based, and it is FitzGerald’s argument which appears to have won in the contemporary struggle for Irish independence, and which offers a more expansive perspective by which to make better sense of the republican shift. For Sinn Fein, who symbolizes the new republicanism, this move away from armed struggle to political engagement has meant messages of sacrifice and socialism gradually being omitted from political discourse, such messages having too strong an association with armed struggle and lacking resonance in a society which finds no broad acceptance of such myths. Unsurprisingly, the rhetorical sentiment of commemorative speeches now appears less apparent in Sinn Fein articulations (confined more to commemorations themselves), and not surprisingly too when such sentiment runs counter to expressions about the need for an the inclusive future. This is a shift, which for one former PIRA volunteer, now staunch critic of the Sinn Fein project, has been built upon a politics which is ‘Neither left or right but increasingly authoritarian populist’ and which ‘will take republicanism wherever the vote is’ (McIntyre 2003: 195). The intimation of McIntyre’s argument, which also makes reference to the crushing of dissent and oppositions within the republican ranks in order to maintain cohesion and an image of respectability, is that in order to gain popularity in the political realm, Sinn Fein has had to quietly distance itself from the fundamental convictions on which it was built, even if maintaining the argument that political development is an extension, a continuation, of core principles and aspirations. The exclusivity of its role has now moved towards a more embracing or inclusive political awareness, a change requiring a considerable transformation in the communication of identity and narrative. The politics of force has thus now given way to the politics of seduction (public relations), along with recognition that obstruction to Irish independence was an internal problem as much (possibly more) as an external one. Now, Sinn Fein and the republican project have adopted the long-standing position of the SDLP with regard to moving forward from an internal accommodation between opposing communities. This is a fundamental shift in the republican journey which reflects not only a more sophisticated appreciation of political realities, but recognition that the Northern Ireland problem has to be resolved more from the inside out

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than the outside in. It has been, as Kevin Bean puts it, a transformation away from ‘the old positions of armed struggle and revolutionary mobilization’ towards ‘the newer discourse of diplomacy and pragmatic accommodation’ (2007: 119). The changing narrative which underpinned this development required not only an alteration of meaning, but a transformation of identity, and of course, central to this transformation is the condition of journey (itself a prominent metaphor of progress and the human condition (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 97–105)) which frames aspirations of movement and change. In relation to republicanism, we might also point towards the significance of journey in the Catholic outlook which considers faith less as moment and more as process. This image of ‘journey’ was particularly important to the adjustment of republican thinking and building support for the peace process, where, as Sinn Fein councillor Tom Hartley explained in interview: If you talk about ‘Being on the road to Cork’ this visualises the idea of a journey and it is an idea which has political impact. Another metaphor for thinking about journey is the idea that ‘You don’t score goals from your own half’. But one also needs to think about this in relation to those one is dealing with. Unionism is very much based on a ‘What we have we hold, no surrender’ mentality which is defensive and about hanging on to something. When I grew up in a Catholic/nationalist community the idea was ‘We will get them in the long grass’ and this is a psychology of the future. In a way nationalists have never lost the idea that they would have a future and could imagine that in the context of a united Ireland. They saw liberation in that context. Even though we have people saying ‘We haven’t got there yet. We have not reached a united Ireland’ this is not a psychology which looks backwards as the ‘we haven’t got there’ argument indicates. Hartley then went on to put this way of thinking in a religious as well as political context: Being born into a Catholic community I belong to a much bigger sense of community and if I go into a Church in Cork it’s like going into a Church in Belfast. But the dynamic in Presbyterianism is very different where one congregation may not be interested in another which is half a mile away, so there is a whole infrastructure of religious thought processes which impact here. But there is more to this too which comes out of an anti-colonial struggle and in the last 800 years at no point in Irish opposition to British government did we lose a sense of the future. The future was children, it was conspiracy, it was rebellion, it was the Land League, there has always been a sense of trying to claim the future and struggle is in every sense about that claim. In political terms you

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need a sense of where things are going, so we question the logic of our position in relation to where things might be in five or ten years time and to do that you need a strong sense of where you want to go. But to do this you also need a strong sense of where you have come from and who you are because that is important in the balance of where you are going. The whole strategy of the building of a peace process has been about movement and about moving a community out of one idea and into another, about moving from a mentality of armed struggle into a mentality of negotiations and conceiving of this in terms of how it supports a forward movement. Hartley indicates a worldview which is not only political (the search for a united Ireland) but also religious (moral and transformative) where change is imagined as a journey that relies on the pursuit of utopian and mythic ideals (indeed without the ideal of something better, what would be the value of wanting to be part of this journey?). And, what underpins this perceived advance, it could be argued, is a range of imagined myths and narratives of martyrdom that find expression through what one might call the ‘metaphorical experience’ where the preoccupation with suffering, endurance and the imagined relief from pain that comes from reaching an imagined future fuse to create a sacred journey. The purpose of the metaphor, as Donoghue reminds us, is to ‘give something a different life, a new life’ (Donoghue 2014: 2) which relies on the appeal of change (Donoghue 2014: 183). In that sense, it is also an escape ‘from the importunity of objects, things, and faces’ through ‘another form of discourse’ (Donoghue 2014: 204) which stresses a trajectory of drama and hope. What such matters imply is a strong linkage with consistency of tradition and puritanical adherence to core principles. And yet, of course, the emergence of the Troubles took place long after the Easter Rising of 1916, the War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. In the late 1960s into the 1970s, the pull of Catholic faith was gradually losing grip as society became subject to the growing rebellious influences of pop music, art, literature, student protest, civil rights and more. And, perhaps it was this period where acquiescence to authority and grand narratives about meaning and truth started to rupture, and where tradition became subject to greater public dissatisfaction with the perceived rigidity of authority (as exemplified by the dominance of Catholicism). For this reason, it seems pertinent to consider the relationship between republicans and the Catholic influence on their lives, but before we do so, some further context about the foundations of the republican tradition and the emergence of the Troubles is called for, so the tensions and controls exerted from origins to the more recent past can be better known, and which provides a sense of sociopolitical shift against which the experiences and perceptions of republicans today can be considered and explored.

CHAPTER TWO

History

Origins and dynamics Modern republicanism in Ireland grew from the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) of 1858, a movement which shaped perceptions about the Irish polity (McGee 2005), sought to express authority on behalf of the Irish Republic and opposed constitutional or ‘compromise settlement’ (Beckett 1979: 140). Republicanism from the early part of the nineteenth century, however, existed more as ‘a sentiment, an attitude of mind than an organized party’ as other varying strands of republican thinking developed outside of the IRB emphasis (Beckett 1979: 150). Those strands reflected political and religious outlooks and differences, with the political strands seeking more to fuse social and political change through class mobilization. Sinn Fein emerged in 1905 from a newspaper called The United Irishmen founded by Arthur Griffith, whose main aim was to try and recreate the Irish constitution of 1782 (which freed the parliament of Ireland from legal restrictions and controls imposed by the British) through non-violent means and a pluralist democracy (Townshend 2010: 49). Griffiths believed strongly that political abstention was important since it amounted to not recognizing the imperial power, and that republicans should show this disregard by forming a national assembly instead (Townshend 2010: 51). But, Griffith’s aspiration for passive resistance and civil disobedience was quickly replaced by a revolutionary ethos that advocated forcefully creating an Irish Republic and, through violence, forged new social relations based on the articulations of those such as Connolly, who presented socialism as the focus for change (Beckett 1979: 150–151). Using a campaign of intimidation and violence to support revolution, Sinn Fein took part in the general election of 1918 and gained the vast majority of seats (unlike the IRB which rejected political participation), so demonstrating widespread popular support for an Irish Republic and the expected means of attaining it. This aspiration of an Irish

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Republic was also influenced by the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, where, drawing from US and French thinking, ‘the “nation” was invoked on the basis of common citizenship: being born in Ireland made people Irish’, and it was this collective view of nationality which, as suggested, informed the thinking of those such as Wolfe Tone who sought to present Irishness through a homogenizing national self-image (Townshend 2010: 20). In the revolutionary ethos that gained force ‘the land itself created the sense of belonging’ (Townshend 2010: 21), but the ethos also had to contend with the evocations of Catholic nationalism which viewed change as best achieved by ‘moral force’, using the cohesion of Catholic consciousness in order to frame and sustain the momentum of nationalist aims (Townshend 2010: 23). These two strands of armed and moral force came to underpin distinctions in the Irish mind which showed a tendency to accept violence to achieve change on the one hand, but a preference for non-violent methods for doing so on the other: between armed struggle to forge a nation at one level and adhering to ‘the Catholic community as the nation’ on the other (Townshend 2010: 32). With regard to the religious appeal, as Townshend notes, an attitude to defence emerged because Catholicism ‘had become a vital binding force’, and because it ‘expressed in some sense the core of what it meant to be Irish’ (2010: 44). Though the Irish civil war (1922–1923) was a confrontation for Irish independence between constitutional nationalism (forming the government which established the Irish Free State and supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922) and violent republicanism (which saw the Treaty as a betrayal) – following a war of independence between republicans and British forces from 1919–1921 – it is clear from the vantage point of today that the proponents of constitutional nationalism knew too well that change in the status of Ireland would be sustainable only with political consent and through constitutional means. Key nationalist figures, who proposed this path from the mid-eighteenth century until the early twentieth century, such as O’Connell (Geoghegan 2012), Parnell (Bew 2012) and Redmond (Meleady 2014) subsequently influenced the course of Irish politics against serious internal tensions and conflicts from republicanism, which saw nationalism and the political road as unable to remove British occupation. Because of this difference, Ireland became embroiled in a series of internal conflicts over the struggle for self-definition and national representation which effectively weakened the drive for independence and forced a kind of double-vision through the identity as mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 1 (there are many fine accounts which chart the trajectory of Irish history and defining events such as the Home Rule Crisis of 1912–1914 and the Easter Rising of 1916 – in the case of the latter where republican factions led by those such as Pearse and Connolly proclaimed an Irish Republic to the British which was crushed with catastrophic consequences for those concerned – such as Foster 1988; Jackson 2003; Bew 2007; Fanning 2013; Townshend 2013). The decision by republicans like Michael Collins (who went from

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being IRA intelligence director to negotiating the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which he saw as providing ‘the freedom to achieve freedom’), and Eamon de Valera (who rejected the Treaty and led the civil war in opposition to it, resulting in Collins’ death in 1922, but then went on to accept it, moving from bring president of Sinn Fein to becoming president of the First Dail, before founding Fianna Fail in 1927 and being elected prime minister on three occasions and becoming president of the Republic until 1973) who viewed revolution in terms of militarism before acknowledging the validity of constitutional arrangements and the political sphere (see Townshend 2010: 87–158), perhaps finds some parallels with Sinn Fein and the PIRA who have also moved from violence to democratic politics. When many IRA members left the organization to join Fianna Fail in the early 1930s, those left still maintained a purist ambition of reaching a Republic by force and pursued the utopian illusion of a republican society on that basis (Patterson 1997: 53). This required, however, dealing with an ‘enemy’ which was not only the external British colonizer, but those in the Irish government, who had capitulated and acquiesced to British interests and authority. The IRA’s main aim now was to ‘achieve an independent revolutionary leadership of the working class and working farmers towards the overthrow in Ireland of British Imperialism and its ally, Irish Capitalism’ (quoted in Patterson 1997: 57). But, in Northern Ireland during the 1930s, riots with Protestants were deemed to be a sectarian provocation from the IRA in the South, and criticisms were voiced about ignoring the need to develop positive relations with Protestants as part of the need to expand working class resistance. According to the republican newspaper An Phoblacht at that time, the actions of republicans in Belfast against Protestants were seen to be ‘on the whole possessed of a bigotry that is dangerous to the cause they have at heart’ (quoted in Patterson 1997: 73). Such actions contradicted the suggestion that the IRA could deliver a united Republic against broad public support for the Fianna Fail government, and at best, the IRA could do little more than exist by ‘emphasising the need for an intransigent point of pressure to ensure that the risks of Fianna Fail vacillation were minimised’ (Patterson 1997: 80). Yet, there remained a sizeable rump of support for the armed struggle as a means for Irish emancipation from British involvement in the South which sought to capitalize on the collapse of the Fianna Fail government in the 1950s, brought down over an economic crisis. The IRA tried to present the economic crisis as further evidence of British colonialism and depict it as an inevitable consequence of imperialist repression, which would happen again unless Ireland was united as one (Patterson 1997: 89). This resulted in a failed border campaign which the IRA embarked on from 1956 until 1962, employing guerrilla attacks by ‘flying columns’ from the South to ‘sabotage communications, destroy police barracks and ultimately create “liberated areas”’ (Patterson 1997: 90). The result of this campaign was internment

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being introduced in the Republic and a collapse in public support for Sinn Fein at the ballot box both North and South (Patterson 1997: 92). The defeat of the 1956 IRA campaign was, for those within it, seen to be the end of armed struggle as an effective means to achieve Irish unity, and debate evolved within the IRA about the need to converge military strategy with political thinking. Defeated in its border campaign, the IRA made a statement to the Irish people about a formal end to its insurrections (also ordering all units to dump arms) (Taylor 1997: 21–22), reducing the armed struggle to commemorative reflection, but using such commemoration to reiterate the importance of ‘heritage and duty’ (Taylor 1997: 25) in order to keep the utopian vision of Irish freedom through violence alive. For former PIRA volunteer Eamon Collins (later killed by the PIRA), the significance of such occasions and the perpetuation of myths about armed republicanism ‘somehow represented the conscience of the dead, the exiled and the enslaved’, and ‘they brought to life that damaged part of the Irish psyche which would neither forgive or forget the suffering inflicted on Ireland by the English and their Scottish planters’ (1997: 209). The civil rights protests that took place in 1966, intensified by the Easter Commemoration that year, exacerbated tensions in Northern Ireland, and recalcitrant unionists and loyalists, encouraged by the volatile rhetoric of Rev Dr Ian Paisley, reacted against what they perceived as an attempt by nationalists and republicans to erode Protestant domination. Unionists and loyalists, who saw Catholics and the IRA as ostensibly the same thing, moved against what they considered to be a plot to diminish Northern Ireland, with the Ulster Volunteer Force seeking out and killing Catholics mistakenly believed to be in the IRA (Taylor 1997: 30). Catholic protests against discrimination in housing, employment and political representation highlighted how they existed as the ‘oppressed minority’ (Collins 1997: 31), and a growing climate of violence, intimidation and alienation combined to create the conditions for resentment and anger that militant republicans seized upon. The environment in Northern Ireland had shifted and the circumstances were now such that the IRA believed it needed to act or loose any support to the nationalists who were leading the civil rights protests. As Eamon Collins described this moment in his book Killing Rage, ‘The civil rights movement jogged them [the IRA] into activity because they realised that they were in danger of being sidelined by a genuine mass movement that had emerged despite traditional Irish republicanism. The civil rights movement of course has had more in common with constitutional nationalism than with the physical-force tradition’ (1997: 209). Explaining how the IRA used the gathering tensions to reinforce its own legitimacy, Collins elaborated ‘Some people still believe naively that the IRA played no part in turning peaceful marches into fullscale riots. Of course, the IRA were assisted by the over-reaction of the police and loyalists, but the violence of the latter merely complemented the violent intentions of the former. Indeed, as the police and loyalists began to

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put greater and greater pressure on the citizens’ defence committees set up by concerned people to protect Catholic areas, so the IRA’s influence grew in leaps and bounds’ (Collins 1997: 209–210).

Re-emergence The seeds of the Provisional IRA (PIRA) were sown in December 1969 (English 2003: 81) when the organization emerged as both a response to sectarian violence in defence of the Catholic community in Belfast (Bew 2007: 501, Moloney 2002: 66–68) and as the result of a split from the more politically motivated IRA which stressed a socialist path to change, resisting armed conflict as a means to achieve a united Ireland in the process. This split in the IRA therefore created two factions: the Official IRA (OIRA) who emphasized politics and militarism as a means of resistance and the PIRA who stressed armed struggle as the primary means of action. And, although there had been little IRA activity until 1969, with ‘much of the leadership of the movement … committed to pursing a political agenda, relying heavily on street protests and building broad fronts with other groups whenever their interests converged’ (O’Callaghan 1998: 40), the leadership of the new Provisionals became preoccupied with physical force, reflecting a new generation influenced by radical shifts in attitudes towards power by civil rights action in the US, revolutionary movements spreading across Europe, popular counterculture and the anti-authoritarian sentiment of pop music (English 2003: 92). As former director of publicity for Sinn Fein, Danny Morrison put it in an interview when highlighting such influences: Back in the late 1960s we were interested in the student’s movement and the protest movements. We were also seeing images of the Vietnam War, protests against the war and the civil rights movement on our television screens and a number of us would have been influenced by that. But what that period also created was a renewed interest in Irish history and many would have been reading Connolly and to a lesser extent Pearse. We would also have been reading books on the Mexican revolution, the Russian revolutions, the Spanish Civil War and Algerian revolution and so on. And then, of course, there was also an interest in South America and in particular Che Guevara and Castro. Also describing this period, Sinn Fein advisor Jim Gibney went on: Prior to the Official/Provisional split the emphasis was very much on socialism and during the protests everywhere you went there were large numbers of people wearing James Connolly badges. Connolly and Che Guevara were the big emblems of the day. But although there was a strong socialist theme there wasn’t much worked out. The notion of a

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socialist republic did not materialise in publications even inside the IRA, and this was long before Sinn Fein really emerged as a political party, so socialism was debated but the primary issue was independence. Although armed struggle did have a political objective, it was primarily armed struggle every day of the week because the place was a war zone. When people were sworn into the IRA they would give their allegiance to the Irish Republic, apart from offering loyalty to the IRA. The notion of an independent Irish Republic was the real motivation. Division between the politically minded and militant factions of the IRA arose from emerging contentions within republicanism that political activism would be ineffective against a British state engaged in a process of violence and the killing of Catholics (a problem which the Provisionals saw as best confronted by adhering to the physical force tradition of republicanism for inspiration and motivation). The leadership of the IRA (associated with the political tradition of socialism in republicanism) was thus displaced by a growing band of republicans resistant to what they saw as the IRA’s reluctance to defend Catholics who were under attack and created a division essentially driven by differences in relation to ‘legitimacy, ideology and militarism’ (English 2003: 107). The Provisionals found the left-wing intentions of the Officials too preoccupied with political goals, and an unhelpful concern with abstentionism from the Dail (which Provisionals saw as accepting parliamentary politics and de-legitimizing the military campaign) was seen by the Provisionals as a distraction from armed struggle as the means needed to expel the British. The OIRA sought to mend the split by calling for republicans to recognize that a fracture could only serve to help the interests of the British and harm the drive for an independent Ireland (Patterson 1997: 144), but there were notable differences in emphasis between Officials and Provisionals not least of which the perception that Officials were more concerned with performing an educative role amongst republicans, in comparison to Provisionals who appealed to those ‘with a Catholic defender mentality’ (Patterson 1997: 145). Later, this tension led to feuding between Provisionals and Officials as each struggled to portray themselves as the authentic voice and representatives of republicanism (Moloney 2002: 72). The split between Provisionals and Officials was formally ratified at the 1970 IRA conference (also known as Ard Fheis) where a vote of confidence in the IRA (led by Cathal Goulding) was rejected by a rump of dissidents who walked out and promptly formed a Provisional Executive (led by new president Ruairi O Bradaigh). Support for the militant rather than political route was reinforced by pressure for action against British violence which political republicanism, Provisionals argued, could not address (Moloney 2002: 151). Within months of the split, the PIRA were engaged in concerted bombing campaigns, expecting

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pressure to intensify from the British so drawing in further republican support for armed resistance and underscoring a strategy of escalation (Moloney 2002). Initial Provisional numbers were quite small, with the first General Army Council meeting attended by just thirty four people (Patterson 2006: 216), most of whom had little idea about leadership and strategy (MacStiofain 1975: 137). As Moloney observed the Provisionals at this time were represented by those of ‘traditional conservative, republican values’ (Moloney 2002: 74) driven not by socialist ideals but military conviction. Though the Officials were also engaged in violence and continued to pursue military goals as part of a broader resistance strategy (Hanley and Millar 2010: 149–199), the Provisionals very much saw Officials as obsessed with communist ideals and adopted an anticommunist ethos in response (Moloney 2002: 75) The new PIRA chief of staff, Sean MacStiofain, exemplified the intent to adhere to military objectives. In his memoir, MacStiofain talks about how ‘the politicals would have to sanction military action to relieve the appalling pressure on Belfast and Derry’ which precipitated the split (MacStiofain 1975: 121). The formation of the Provisionals and an escalation of the violence led, MacStiofain argued, to recruits ‘flocking into the Republican movement’ as ‘All wanted to join the IRA and fight’ (1975: 123). This impetus, he tells us, also provided the ‘opportunity for the IRA to prove itself, to grab the opening and then expand it to achieve the national aims of the movement’ (MacStiofain 1975: 124). The Provisionals were fearful of the Officials reducing ‘the IRA to a cog in a Marxist political machine’ (MacStiofain 1975: 133) and the development of a ‘National Liberation Front’ that would operate with trade unions and other groupings supportive of the ‘radical left’ (MacStiofain 1975: 134). The idea of drawing from and working with a radical left was linked by the Officials to the question of abstentionism which they wanted to overturn in order to enter the political process and win seats in Dublin (so forging a left project which grew from Dublin out), but which the Provisionals saw as being driven by communist objectives (McGuire 1973: 30). Public rejection of the Officials by Provisionals was justified on the grounds that there was no radical left in Ireland and that to insist otherwise showed the fantasy of the Official political vision which did nothing to deal with urgent matters on the ground (McGuire 1973: 134–135). Indeed, the perception by some that the Officials were moving strategically to a non-militarist position was taken as evidence of an abdication of republican goals (Moloney 2010: 62). Initial steps to organize the Provisionals into a movement were taken through an elected Executive of twelve who chose a Provisional Army Council of seven (Moloney 2010: 138), in the belief that such structures would give temporary credence to the title of ‘Provisional’ from which the movement was named. Unlike the Officials, who were seen to be preoccupied with ‘position papers, resolutions, seminars and study groups’, Provisionals saw

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their role as one which would ‘defend, retaliate, provoke, and pursue the subsequent armed struggle until British will broke and Ireland was a nation once again’ (Bowyer Bell 1994: 156). The Provisional campaign would therefore be oriented not towards revolution, which the Officials were advocating, but war (Bowyer Bell 1994: 173). When interviewed, former OIRA leader Sean Garland described the split between Provisionals and Officials this way: There were those who wished to recreate the 1950s military campaign and there were those who wanted to create a 1930s style republican congress, where there was a very conscious political and social awareness about questions of economics and power. Classes on political education were developing and there was an upsurge of interest in this which was attracting more and more young people. O’Bradaigh and MacStiofain were content to sit on the councils but did not say anything and were not supportive of left-wing policies or actions. Then the issue of abstention from the parliament came along and the split occurred because that was the key issue around which people rallied. There was a growing number of people wanting to contest elections and take seats in parliament but those such as O’Bradaigh and MacStiofain would not listen to this. In the past the argument that you could not take seats in a traditionalist parliament was sacrosanct and seen as a betrayal of those who had died before. The Provisionals had this view that you had to recreate the past without any reference to what was happening today and the military campaign was their sole concern. Even though a number would sit on local councils they would not sit in a national parliament. They had no ideas about social and economic agitation. Garland continued: People came to us because we were more political than military. Accusations against us that come 1969 we did not act to defend areas in Belfast came from those who over previous years had made no effort to develop any kind of structure to defend the population and they made the argument to reject politics and pursue the military approach. These people did not seem to grasp at that time that you would not achieve anything just by being involved in a military campaign and that this had little hope of success. In Belfast the IRA was a very weak organization in the 1960s and had little impact or involvement with the public. We tried to explain to people that there was no way we had the means or capability to defend people but the Provisionals were aided, abetted and funded by Fianna Fail in the South, who had money and weapons. They also told the Provisionals to just ignore the Officials and expose them for being communist puppets and I remember at the IRA Army Convention

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in 1969 there were elements attacking us for being communists. As far as they were concerned politics was a dirty word and for them the desire was to be the perfect republican which they drew from harping back to the 1916 Proclamation. It was ignorance. They also saw Officials as a hindrance to their struggle and sought to get them eliminated. They thought that by killing you could kill ideas too. Official member Sean O’Hare elaborated further on Garland’s analysis, offering this explanation of context in relation to the period: There was little attempt to forge a socialist consensus initially because it was mainly about guns. Approaches were made to the old guard of those who were active in the IRA in the 1940s and socialism was not a priority to them because defence against the British was the primary motivation. Those people believed that if we could get enough weapons that would do it. If you had gone around people’s houses two or three years prior to 1969 asking for guns people would have laughed at you and said it was all over. Then the line came that the IRA should get weapons and that the fifty or so members should become active. Those who became the Provisionals were emotional and more localised, less interested in the all-Ireland context and this was the basis of the split, localised as opposed to thinking about the national context. The leadership of the Provos would have been right-wing nationalists. The majority of local defence groups would have joined the Provos to defend their areas. They were not political and had no interest in socialism or Irish republicanism. They were sympathisers but only in terms of using these things as a conceptual support. Ninety per cent of the people in the IRA in Belfast were from the Official IRA. We wanted a peaceful way forward but this was up against the argument that the only way ahead was to get guns and put the Brits out. O’Hare also spoke about how the Catholic Church gave support to the Provisional argument that the Official position was driven by political ambition which threatened to weaken or unsettle Catholicism and so the real desires of the ‘Catholic people’: The process of the split took about four to five months and the breakaway came at the Ard Fheis when Provisional Sinn Fein and the Provisional Army Council formed. We were saying that we had to win elections and get into the seats of power; that one had to do this in order to influence and change social education. But the Troubles had intensified at this point so when we put it forward at the Ard Fheis that it was crucial to enter into parliament we came up against that problem. There had to be a two thirds majority vote and although we did get a majority vote it was not

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two thirds, and on that basis the Provisionals and militant republicanism developed. There was a real fear of what they saw as communists and ‘reds under the bed’. It was complete nonsense but they took it as a complete anathema to their perception of Irish Catholic Gaelic culture. This resistance to communism also resulted in the money flowing in for them from America and the communist threat was condemned every Sunday from the pulpit. It was made plain to people that we were the enemy and the enemy in particular to nationalism. Many told me that the priest had to be at the centre of this viewpoint because there was the perception that everything the priest said was true and those who dissented from that were roundly condemned. But some of the priests certainly sympathised with the armed struggle or turned a blind eye to it. Indeed, weapons were stored in parochial houses because those houses were never going to be searched. The first weapons that came in came from the South where there would have been members of parliamentary parties who would have handed over their personal weapons. There would have been the perception that this was a legitimate struggle against an attack on the nationalist/Catholic/Irish people and it was raw emotion. Certainly the  sectarian conflict was doing little to help bring about a socialist Ireland and even now how often do you hear Adams or McGuinness talk about a socialist Ireland? This shift towards a growing Provisional populism reflected a more reactionary logic within republicanism generally which failed to see that armed struggle lacked a strategic approach towards change that could not be achieved militarily. Bowyer Bell explains how this also led to a situation where decisions ‘now evolved easily from events, from habit, from the actions of the British Army, from the contingent and unforeseen, from the state of play, but always from a reading of reality that indicated cause, means, and intent. Each decision was taken without thought and was in no real way a part of a master plan. Each decision was taken within the context of historic republican analysis: A grand strategy was simply to seize any means to wage a war of national liberation’ (Bowyer Bell 1994: 191). The appeal of this trajectory contrasted with the Officials’ emphasis to ‘onthe-job training in radical politics which alienated much of the minority, deeply conservative about most social and many economic issues’ (Bowyer Bell 1994: 197). From its inception, where it was oriented more towards ‘area defence’ (MacStiofain 1975: 145), the PIRA then moved towards a strategy of ‘combined defence and retaliation’ (MacStiofain 1975: 146). In his memoir, PIRA leader Sean MacStiofain describes the PIRA as following a threetiered defence structure where: ‘The first tier was the regular units of the IRA itself, reinforced by the increasing number of Republican volunteers giving their allegiance to the new Council. These units would be available for either defensive or offensive action in any area. The second tier was the

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auxiliary units. These were composed of men of all ages, including some former members of the IRA, who for various reasons were not prepared to join a regular unit. The function of the auxiliaries was solely defensive, but they would have a certain amount of mobility to operate in threatened areas other than their own and stiffen resistance when required. The third tier was the units of the local defence committees. These were entirely for community defence of their own districts, parishes or streets. In the event of attack, all three tiers would come under the command of the IRA local area OC’ (MacStiofain 1975: 147). MacStiofain also revealed how early use of weapons and planning were chaotic for the Provisionals (in relation to this, McKearney explains how because of this chaos, the Provisionals were less ‘troubled by internal debates around esoteric ideological points’ even if this also at times led to ‘some directional misjudgement and ambiguity’ (McKearney 2011: 102)), and how money was traded for arms from a variety of sources including Protestants (MacStiofain 1975: 147). Internment, which was suggested by unionist politicians as a necessary response to increasing PIRA violence and was imposed by the British in 1971, immediately led to hundreds being arrested and taken to makeshift camps across Northern Ireland. For the PIRA, this repression justified a considerable escalation and acceleration of the armed campaign and required a shift in operational tactics where ‘All units now went into a widespread bombing campaign against pre-listed economic targets’ (MacStiofain 1975: 207). Military activity became an end in itself but was far less driven by commitment to republican spirit and tradition as perhaps thought. This comes across strongly in Alonso’s analysis of the PIRA where he notes, for example, how individuals joined the PIRA not so much for reasons of historical continuity or because of any commitment to some grand narrative about the republican imperative, but more because of tensions and circumstances which developed across Northern Ireland at that time (Alonso 2003: 18). Providing an account of his own reasons for joining the PIRA, former volunteer Tommy McKearney also described the process of recruitment for volunteers: People were motivated to a certain extent because that was what their friends were doing. Those who were not taking part were seen to be out of step with the consensus of the neighbourhood or locality. But that would not have happened if there had not been an underlying deeply felt discontent that had been manifesting in different ways for many years. I had no political awareness at the age of eighteen. Volunteers were pressed on their commitment to the cause and the organization and some were talent-spotted whilst others turned up and offered their services. Some joined the organization almost by accident by doing pieces of work for some of the locals and bit-by-bit found themselves at the centre of affairs. The recruiting process usually meant that that an older, more

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senior member of the organization would meet with the younger recruit and impress upon that recruit the very real possibility that they would either go to jail for a long time, or would be killed, or seriously injured. So the commitment was based on whether were you willing to do what needed to be done. It would have been impressed that this was no picnic and was not something you would be allowed to pose about. There was also a mistaken idea that once in never out, but that was not the case. The stipulation was that you did not talk about what you had done. It was very much an organization where the discipline came in two forms. To a certain extent discipline comes through orders and a conviction where one understood that if one defied the basic rules there was physical punishment and informers were shot dead. The biggest problem the local PIRA commander had though was in enthusing his men. He had to keep them together with moral persuasion. The physical force approach, because it did not depend on a democratic mandate for legitimacy, prioritized escalation of violence on the basis of believing this to be the best way of maximizing pressure on the British, and distinctions about what constituted such maximization as well as the most effective method to deliver it had bearing on the republican schisms that evolved. Gerry Foster who, in contrast to McKearney, joined another republican faction called the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) (a grouping which formed in 1975 and which shared a Marxist ethos with its political wing the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) – itself a breakaway grouping from the Officials – the INLA carried out 120 murders between 1975 and 1998, including the murder of Conservative MP and Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave with a bomb in 1979 and Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright in the Maze Prison in 1997. The INLA also lost three members on the hunger strikes of the 1980s and decommissioned in 2010) explained how his outlook was shaped essentially by a preoccupation with the merits of armed struggle and the intensification of military activity: When the Troubles started it was a purely defensive approach. It is not correct to suggest that there was some great working class political ideology at work then either. The IRA in the late 1960s was certainly seeking to move left in the political spectrum and this upset those who went on to form the Provisionals. There was also talk at this time about making connections with the English working class and trying to build a united working class movement, but it failed miserably because of the conflict. The Provisionals were purely nationalistic and would not have thought much about a socialist republic. For them it was about defending the community and it was a defensive role that turned into an offensive role. The more you are out on the streets in conflict the less time you have for reflection. Prison is what gives you that space and there would

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have been a number of Officials who were reading left-wing publications. But in some of the cages of Long Kesh left-wing books were actually destroyed within the Provisional cages because such people were more Catholic than republican. They would have had respect and a position of power within the camp and they frowned upon left-wing education, which would have included the ideas of Connolly. Foster went on to point out how the organizational problems later experienced by the INLA were symptomatic of a lack of attention being given to where the armed struggle would lead and what would come after. In Foster’s view, consideration of anything other than outright military victory was lacking, with this absence of thinking about how war would be turned into peace reflecting an inability to contemplate social/national development and change more generally. As he saw it: The Provisionals set out new structures and tried to give this impression that they were a brilliant organization but they were not. However, the INLA were structured even less, and we suffered badly through the ‘supergrass system’ when one person could name thirty or forty people to the security forces. We suffered the worst because most of our leadership and middle management were incarcerated through the supergrass system, leaving the lower ranks to their own devices without any supervision or structure, and because we were a smaller organization, the impact of this was bigger. However, Foster expanded on his decision to join the INLA and saw fragmentations in republican thinking as indicative of disputations about approaches to violence, its purpose and how it might be used: When the Officials called a ceasefire around 1972 there were questions asked about why now, just when things were getting heavy. The line put out was that it was about re-organization, re-arming, training and that we couldn’t have young men running around on the streets with no training and with automatic weapons and they dragged this out until 1974. At this time the Officials were still unofficially involved in gun attacks on the British but allowed the Provisionals to claim responsibility. From here we went on to form the INLA and, as said, we would have seen the Provisionals as nationalistic but with no political agenda for a united Ireland. They did not look much beyond British withdrawal whereas the Officials did. I joined the INLA basically because they were a lot more active than the Provisionals. Everyday they would have been out fighting the British and because I wanted to do as much as I could before I was imprisoned or killed. The INLA, for me, was the organization to join. We would have seen the Provisionals as a much more right-wing organization and still see them as such to this day.

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Unlike the Provisionals, the Officials advocated a revolutionary philosophy which envisaged political consciousness in terms of a unified Irish resistance to British control. Though military action was seen as legitimate in response to British brutality and repression, this militancy was conceptualized as one strand of resistance alongside other economic, cultural and political forms of action. In its 1971 pamphlet The IRA Speaks, the Officials recognized the importance of the military option but within a context of political reasoning. The IRA could no longer, the pamphlet argued, just be ‘an army of militarists, rigid and inflexible, and geared only for a military campaign against British Forces in Ireland’ (The IRA Speaks 1971: 11). This in the past had led to ‘total defeat and at the end of each campaign Ireland was less of a nation than before’ (The IRA Speaks 1971: 11) and was happening again because of ‘sectarian activities of those who wished to turn the Irish Republican Army into a purely Catholic Defence Force’ (The IRA Speaks 1971: 11). Seeking to articulate a mass mobilization across Ireland North and South, the Official’s position was to oppose the separatist outlook favoured by the Provisionals (and which had been central to the motivations of the 1916 Rising) and initiate a process of collective resistance from both Protestant and Catholic people, mobilized into a ‘revolutionary organization’ to confront and ‘defeat the forces of repression and reaction’ (The IRA Speaks 1971: 11: 20).

Militancy The emergence of the PIRA was not married to any clear sense of direction in its early days, as MacStiofain points out, but arose more as an immediate response to events on the ground, and was reactive rather than strategic in planning about how to deal with the deteriorating circumstances that arose (Alonso 2003: 82). But, this emphasis on militarism, which sustained the formative years of the Provisionals, also led to actions which were sectarian and which necessarily stood at odds with the image of Irish unity that itself depended on the agreement of those which the Provisionals viewed as an enemy (i.e. Protestants) (Alonso 2003: 166). And although the Provisionals adhered to the separatist militant tradition, they did not evolve as a movement because of this tradition. As noted, this came more as response to repressive conditions where the myths and historical resonance of religious conviction shaped attitudes and reactions more than political persuasion and reasoning (English 2003: 129). This is not to say, however, that the Provisionals lacked political awareness, even if they were more reactionary than reflective. Rather, it is to suggest that this political awareness existed as a general response to conditions as they emerged rather than because of a specific or strategic attempt to change political structures and forces. A range of factors that converged to shape a wider context for republican thinking, as English

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notes, came from an environment where ‘defence, defiance, retaliation and anti-imperialism were interwoven in their thinking; force would work, they believed, where conventional politics simply would not, and violent revolution was preferred to an impossible peaceful reformism; contemporary conditions validated a lengthy republican tradition and orthodoxy; Catholicism a well as socialism informed the organization’s thinking and identity; Irish cultural politics complemented formal programmes for Irish self-determination; intra-communal competition with nationalist rivals complemented inter-communal, sectarian and Anglophobic instincts; and as with any group, essentially non-political, personal impulses found expression in the alternative army’ (2003: 133). The Provisionals placed authority in the hands of military leaders, and its less prominent political face, Sinn Fein, would be subject to this authority (Moloney 2002: 79). Leaders were focussed in particular on the escalation of conflict, and consensus was driven from a leadership perspective which viewed the British enemy in military rather than political terms (Bowyer Bell 1990: 248). When from 1971 the Provisionals made the decision to move from retaliatory to offensive mode (Bowyer Bell 1990), they did not envisage the long war that would materialize (Bowyer Bell 1990: 250). Instead, they fused myths of the republican tradition with immediate grievances and used a strongly felt sense of humiliation to help underscore and legitimize the armed campaign. As Bowyer Bell notes, this plan revolved around three central aims: ‘(1) the IRA would immediately assume the role of nationalist defender, replacing the British Army and pre-empting any Dublin effort; (2) the IRA would shift the nationalist focus to the British Army-as-enemy, thus benefiting from their own provocations and the nature of the military to begin retaliatory operations; (3) these would engender a cycle of provocation-andresponse that would permit an offensive IRA campaign’ (1990: 244–245). What was clear from the early stages of Provisional activity is that recognition of value in pursuing the political path to achieve change was largely dismissed (Bowyer Bell 1990: 255), and indeed was seen as a dangerous distraction to the imperatives of armed struggle. As mentioned, the process of escalation was the primary strategic objective, designed to draw the British further into conflict and expand Provisional numbers as a result (Moloney 2002: 103). One of the key turning points which led to this growth was Bloody Sunday on 30 January 1972. A protest against internment which led to demonstrators throwing stones at British soldiers was seen by the British as a moment when key Provisional figures would be lured onto the streets to manipulate tensions and become embroiled in a gun battle with the British Army (Moloney 2002: 110). This compares with MacStiofain’s account, which stressed that the Provisionals were ‘instructed to keep away from this march’ (MacStiofain 1975: 226). Thirteen unarmed civilians were killed by the British, with another victim dying from wounds days later. The aftermath of this debacle led to a suspension of Stormont and young men joining

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the Provisionals in numbers. A British government inquiry (The Widgery Report) published just eleven weeks after Bloody Sunday contributed to the anger and disgust, effectively vindicating the actions of the British soldiers by claiming that they acted under fire and in self-defence. The Widgery Report concluded that there would have been no deaths that day if demonstrators had not contributed to a dangerous situation. The Report found the claim that British soldiers had no intention to adopt offensive measures as valid and saw the soldiers’ reaction as ‘sincere’ given the ‘strong suspicion’ that some ‘had been firing weapons or handling bombs’ and that ‘others had been closely supporting them’. The victims of Bloody Sunday would have to wait until 2010 before another inquiry into that day (The Saville Inquiry) reached a very different conclusion, namely that British soldiers had opened fire on and killed unarmed people (see Daly 2011: 241–249 for an account of involvement in Saville). According to MacStiofain, Provisional military activity intensified greatly after Bloody Sunday with some 300 operations carried out in an eight- to nine-day period (MacStiofain 1975: 234). This intensification (McKearney 2011: 105) continued with significant successes for the Provisionals (some 1200 operations in May 1972 (Moloney 2002: 112)) and led to indirect contact being established with the British government that resulted in a thirteen-day PIRA ceasefire (26 June to 9 July 1972), so talks could take place in London between a Provisonal delegation (which consisted of Sean MacStiofain, Daithi O’Connell, Seamus Twomey, Martin McGuinness, Ivor Bell and Gerry Adams (Coogan 1995b: 392)) and secretary of state for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw. The Provisionals had issued a five point plan to the British in September 1971 which included: ‘1. immediate cessation of the British forces’ campaign of violence against Irish people; 2. abolition of Stormont; 3. a guarantee of non-interference with a free election to establish Dail Uladh and a new governmental structure for the entire country; 4. release of all political prisoners, tried or untried in Ireland and Britain; 5. a guarantee of compensation for all those who had suffered as a result of direct or indirect British violence’ (MacStiofain 1975: 209), but now reduced these demands to ‘1. Withdrawal of British troops in the North from the streets to barracks as a prelude to eventual evacuation, coupled with an acknowledgement by the British government of the right of the Irish people to determine their future without interference by that government. 2. Abolition of Stormont. 3. A total amnesty for political prisoners’ (MacStiofain 1975: 234). Although British prime minister Edward Heath suspended the Northern Ireland government at Stormont on 24 March 1972, this suspension also created a moment of opportunity for the development of a moderate nationalism (represented by the SDLP) which favoured political compromise and reform over militarism (Moloney 2002: 112). The Provisional leadership argued that they had been duped by the British into a ceasefire with no real intention of addressing republican

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demands and decided to avert further contacts on that basis (MacStiofain 1975: 260). Once the ceasefire was over, the Provisionals resumed their campaign, but the leadership did not close the door on future negotiations with the British, the difference now being they would do so whilst hostilities continued (MacStiofain 1975: 294). As former propaganda and publicity offer for Sinn Fein, Danny Morrison recalled the period: I remember in June 1972 I went to London with Gerry Adams but it was not until two weeks later that we were all brought together and told there had been contact with the Brits. Sean MacStiofain came up from the South and we met with about three or four hundred PIRA volunteers in Ballymurphy. MacStiofain told the volunteers that there had been contact with the Brits but that it had not worked out, so it was back to war and everyone was pleased to hear that. But nobody believed then that it would last another thirty years. Increased hostilities, social unrest and PIRA activity indicated the failure of British policy towards Northern Ireland, and in December 1973, British and Irish governments along with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the SDLP and Alliance Party signed the Sunningdale Agreement (SA) which set up a Council of Ireland power-sharing Executive in Northern Ireland to commence from 1 January 1974 (without support by the PIRA (McKearney 2011: 88)). However, unionist anger to the Agreement (personified by the stance of Rev Dr Ian Paisley) ended the Executive within weeks (leading also to the resignation of UUP members), and direct rule was restated from London. The scale of resistance to Sunningdale led to the Ulster Workers’ Strike of 1974, which crippled power supplies and the delivery of goods as loyalist paramilitaries opposing republican armed struggle maintained blockades. This response to what was seen as an erosion of unionist influence and political control (civil rights demonstrations, sectarian conflict, a growing sense that Irish and British governments were conspiring to defeat unionism which was further compounded by perceived inconsistencies in British policy, emerging nationalist leaders who had helped to bring Stormont to an end and a growing PIRA military campaign (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 88)) created a backdrop of tensions which required the British to take into account growing nationalist representation and emerging shifts in the Northern Ireland political landscape (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 90) and the PIRA took (mistakenly) as a sign that the British were getting ready to withdraw from Northern Ireland (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 90–92). Prompted by this possibility, the PIRA became involved in further talks with the British which were initiated in December 1974 with a number of Protestant clergy and PIRA leaders at Feakle, Co. Clare (the PIRA delegation included Seamus Twomey, Kevin Mallon, J.B. O’Hagan, Ruairi O’Bradaigh,

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Seamus Loughran, Billy McKee and Daithi O’Connell (Coogan 1995b: 397)). The main aim of the clergy was to ‘try and strengthen the “doves” in the army council’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 95) and get the Provisionals to accept a five-point plan which had been agreed by the British in which: 1. The government stated it had no political or territorial interests in Ireland beyond its obligations to the Northern Ireland citizens. 2. The government’s prime concern was the achievement of peace and the promotion of such understanding between the various sections of Northern Ireland as would guarantee to all its people a full participation in the life of the community, whatever be the relationship of Northern Ireland to the EEC, United Kingdom or the Republic. 3. Contingent on the maintenance of a declared ceasefire and effective policing, the government would relieve the army as quickly as possible of its internal duties. 4. Until agreement about the future government of Northern Ireland had been freely negotiated and guaranteed, armed forces would be retained in Northern Ireland. 5. The government recognized the right of all those who had political aims to pursue them through the democratic process (quoted in Coogan 1995a, 217–218). The PIRA responded to the five points as follows: 1. Until the government clearly stated that it has no claim to sovereignty in any part of Ireland, the statement was meaningless. ‘We accept that economic commitments must be honoured.’ 2. ‘A noble wish with which we concur but we believe can only be realised in the full community of the people of Ireland.’ 3. The IRA had no difficulty in maintaining community peace, if bilateral truce were agreed between the army and the IRA. On this point, it stated that discussions with loyalist groups in maintaining the peace would be welcomed. 4. The IRA said that if a declaration of intention to withdraw were made, the IRA would accept that there should be a limited army presence during the negotiation period pending an agreed settlement. 5. The IRA stated that it ‘is meaningless to talk of democratic processes while … 2,000 political prisoners are in jail’. (Coogan 1995a: 218). In order to facilitate a space for discussion, the PIRA called a ceasefire to last from 20 December 1974 until 2 January 1975 (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 95). This ceasefire was further extended for a fortnight on 1 January, but collapsed on 16 January after (amongst other reasons) the British failed ‘to reply to a demand that the army withdraw to barracks’ and stop military

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action (Coogan 1995b: 398). Talks continued with the British, however, whilst the Provisionals ‘gave point to the discussion by displaying an ability to turn the off-stage bombing on and off like a tap’ (Coogan 1995b: 399). Though sporadic violence and killing continued through this period, the PIRA maintained a ceasefire until January 1976 and (as the length of the ceasefire had demonstrated at one level) made a concerted attempt to engage with the British. At another level, however, serious ruptures had developed within the ranks, with some viewing the ceasefire as being exploited by the British who prevaricated in order to divide the organization (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 109–110). More concerns for the Provisionals came from the increased activities of loyalists, with Dublin insisting there should be no move towards withdrawal by the British and that a senior Provisional Daithi ‘O’ Conaill, who was imprisoned under orders from Dublin in July 1975, should be captured (Coggan 1995a: 219). This period was also a turning point when a new kind of leadership would emerge, personified by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who oversaw the creation of new methods of insurgence, including the transformation of the Provisionals into a cell-based organization and away from the previous (more easily to infiltrate by the British) open-army type of structure. But, the failure of the PIRA ceasefires to make any progress with the British also raised problems and pressures within the organization about leadership and intent. This was one of the main reasons why, after the failure of the 1972 and 1974–1975 ceasefires, and for purposes of internal coherence, the leadership declared an intent to pursue a ‘long war’ strategy (McKearney 2011: 141).

Hunger and transition Although the formation of the PIRA emerged from the chaos of British state repression, its intentions were not driven by any grand plan for revolution but adopted as a method of defence and using retaliation and escalation in the belief that this would result in violently overthrowing the British (McKearney 2011: 107). Until the development of political thinking which materialized more specifically after the hunger strikes in 1981, the Provisionals retained ‘a militaristic and hierarchical mode of organisation that remained suspicious of uncontained mass movements’ (McKearney 2011). And, so strong was this emphasis on control, as McKearney observes, that it not only obstructed the possibility of political movement but critical reflection on military objectives and actions too (McKearney 2011). Even when the leadership realized the power of popular support after the hunger strikes, it was apparent that this popularity was also a danger to leadership aims if not controlled and that because of this the Army Council of the PIRA ‘sought to ensure that the campaign did not take an unexpected turn of create parallel structures to the Republican

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movement’. It was also this concern which shaped the thinking of the emerging and politicized Sinn Fein (McKearney 2011: 152), which, like the PIRA leadership, adopted authoritarian control in an attempt to maintain the ‘strictly hierarchical lines’ that had been used within the PIRA, and which would help keep the republican movement intact through the transition to political representation (McKearney 2011: 159). The hunger strikes of 1981 were a turning point in the politicization of republicanism and provided a transitional moment in the turn towards engagement with the democratic process. The strikes, which led to the death of ten men, as said, were a response to British government criminalization of republican prisoners, and the protests which grew with the strikes provided a momentum of support for special category status of prisoners as part of a wider co-ordinated attempt to elevate republican activity above mere criminality (Beresford 1987: 30–31). Importantly, and it is worth restating the point again, the hunger strikes of 1981 had a Christian as well as political bearing, as well as symbolizing martyrdom and transcendence, and are seen as such in Beresford’s landmark account of the 1981 period: Hunger-striking, when taken to the death, has a sublime quality about it; in conjunction with terrorism it offers a consummation of murder and self-sacrifice which in a sense can legitimize the violence which precedes and follows it. If after killing – or sharing in a conspiracy to kill – for a cause one shows oneself willing to die for the same cause, a value is adduced which is higher than that of life itself. But the obverse is also true: failure to die can discredit the cause. To scream for mercy at the foot of the gallows – or nod at the saline drip as kidneys and eyes collapse and the doctor warns of irreversible damage – it so affirms that there is no higher value than life and none more worthy of condemnation that those who take it (Beresford 1987: 38–39). It is also a battle, a struggle, as Beresford recognized, ‘which pivots on the anticipation of “that moment of truth” – the immediate prospect of death’ (1987: 400). This moment took on a different power in the hunger strikes of 1981 (in contrast to a ‘failed’ strike in 1980 where several men who had simultaneously fasted but without securing the changes sought) which galvanized republican consciousness and drew wider national and international support as the staggered and more co-ordinated strategy of starvation captured media and public attention (Beresford 1987: 42). Drawing from a tradition of ‘tribal allegiances and a reinforcement of the myths of sacrifice and redemption’, the hunger strikes, as O’Malley puts it, ‘were encumbered with the accessories of victimhood, being both a surrender to it and an escape from it’ (1990: 109), and this emphasis on victimhood emerged as a deliberate attempt to expose the repression of British authority by augmenting the cruelty of British indifference to prisoner demands, whilst giving iconic status to prisoners within republicanism

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for their sacrifice to the cause. As O’Malley also goes on to point out, the hunger strikes came to show the religious nature of the conflict by exposing moral differences in relation to its causes, aspirations and costs and, in that sense, enmeshed religious and political narratives (O’Malley 1990: 284), with reaction in republican communities finding solace through Catholic prayer, recitations of the Rosary and mural artworks displaying the hunger striker as Jesus (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 149–150). The experiences of those involved in the hunger strikes (Campbell et al. 1994; Morrison 2006) reveal a determined struggle to end criminalization in a context of considerable brutality and degradation (a context which is central to the emotive power of the hunger strikes accounts). However, the strikes also took place against a backdrop of influences and tensions that shaped the prison experience, with a more politicized consciousness emerging. Former PIRA volunteer Richard O’Rawe, whose book Afterlives (2010) criticized Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for withholding an offer from the Thatcher government to end the strikes earlier, so as to secure the election of Owen Carron after Bobby Sands (who was elected but died a month later), described the emergence of political thinking in the prison and its emphasis on socialism: In many ways the language of socialism which was used was very wispy and airy-fairy. It was as if we were going to take over the whole country, not just the North, and have a thirty-two county socialist republic. We were not concerned about democracy because that was about the dreaded proletariat. We were going to control the country, like Castro. We wanted to change the whole system and not just to kick the Brits out of Ireland. Bobby Sands said that it was not worth one minute in jail if we did not have a socialist republic. The idea of capitalist parties existing in a socialist republic was an anathema because by their nature they were anti-revolutionary. This certainly galvanised conviction and encouraged the PIRA to think with more of a social conscience. It was very much a romanticised vision, but socialism was central to the whole experience. This was also part of an idealised republic which was made more powerful when you were cut off by being in prison. Outside you had the realities of life, but inside prison you had conversations about Jesus being the first socialist and the importance of liberation theology. It was like being in an ideological bubble. O’Rawe elaborated further on the interest in political development and viewed this interest as recognition that military activity alone was unlikely to achieve the social change envisaged: The hunger strikes were the beginning of the end of the armed struggle when Bobby was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Prior to that Adams was always pushing that we should be a movement, build up a

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popular base and get involved in the political process. Prior to that too, the PIRA was a revolutionary army and did not believe it was important to have a political base because everything was built on the basis of getting the British out. No doubt that the genesis of the peace process came from the republican electoral strategy of getting Bobby Sands elected. That success also convinced a cabal of republican leaders that the republican movement should proceed along a political path. If Owen Carron had not been elected after Bobby it would have been difficult to argue for a political strategy. People would have turned round and said well people voted for Bobby Sands because he was a hunger striker and because he was in danger of dying, but Carron was not a hunger striker. He did not have the charisma or dynamism of Bobby but was still elected and this was vital for the momentum of political development. But the real problem with republicanism is that there’s nowhere to go and that traditionally armed struggles fail. It failed in the 1940s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s and part of the madness with republicanism is the thing about lineage and keeping the struggle going. One also has to see that at the time there were H-Block committees springing up everywhere and for the first time since the 1920s there was a potential to have a mass republican movement, which Adams saw. But it would not have come about if there hadn’t been a strategy to harness it and give it energy and force, which is what the politics did. O’Rawe argued that the development of politics invariably challenged the militaristic ethos, but also stressed the need to take account of a growing disillusionment more generally about the value of armed struggle which, even if not openly acknowledged or accepted, was beginning to show by the mid-1980s: One could see that the armed struggle was going nowhere about 1985 and that the PIRA was running out of steam. By the mid-1980s the tide was turning against the PIRA too. They were getting crucified in East Tyrone and volunteers were getting shot left, right and centre. You had guys going out on operations and getting mowed down before they had fired a shot. There was the old sniper doing a bit of damage down in South Armagh but the campaign seemed to be running out of stamina and things appeared to be waning. I don’t think it was a military stalemate either. The British government have not jumped up and down saying the PIRA lost and have not sought to embarrass republicanism because they are too clever for that. The lid has been kept on this by the Sinn Fein leadership, which is very Stalinist in approach. Everything comes from the top down and very little goes the other way. Adams and McGuinness run the movement. Also once someone within the republican family attacks the leadership it seems to allow the rank and file to concede an

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even greater role to that leadership. It’s a cavalier attitude of one for all and all for one. I don’t see how one can claim the PIRA campaign succeeded when Sinn Fein are in Stormont drawing British wages, but they don’t seem to want to open their eyes and see that we’re still a part of Britain. For many of them who have been in the movement for some twenty or thirty years the thought of being outside the movement is just unpalatable. They could not contemplate it because their whole sense of identity is about being in the republican movement. Former PIRA hunger striker Gerard Hodgkin added to the discussion about change that was emerging in prison and saw the twin strategy of violence and politics as shaping a growing receptiveness towards an emerging political alternative, even if the emphasis remained on militancy: There was a strong sense of leftism and we were ravenous to get more information and education about left-wing politics, as well as liberation theology (although that only lasted a while). The motivation within the jail was that we were doing what we were doing for the development of the struggle foremost and the ending of the conditions that we were under. The thinking though was certainly towards the long war at this point and we also realised that you couldn’t go for the long haul just running a war alone, that you had to develop a political party and the need to develop a political base was epitomised by the advance of the men in the hunger strike at that time. There were marches and demonstrations and there was genuine concern but there was no political machine to absorb and use it. There were certainly people who wanted nothing to do with politics because they just wanted to fight a war, but there was also a lot of overlapping here. For example, you could be in the PIRA on an operation tonight and tomorrow meet Sinn Fein people about housing issues on an estate. Commenting on the political value of the hunger strikes and the strategy of linking popular support for the strikers with plans to develop a political platform of resistance, Danny Morrison offered this analysis: There is no doubt that after the hunger strikes when Sinn Fein entered the electoral arena everything changed. It wasn’t until Bobby Sands was elected, followed by Owen Carron’s election after, that we started considering the possibilities of using electoral politics to try and bring about the contradictions in the British position and also to introduce additional pressure on the SDLP. Before, the Brits would refuse to talk to us because they said we had no mandate, but once Bobby was elected we did have a mandate. Then Thatcher amended the Representation of the People Act so that no other prisoner could stand, which forced us to put up Owen Carron, not as a member of Sinn Fein, but as a member

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of the H-Block committee. Of course, Owen was also a member of Sinn Fein but he got elected. Thatcher thought that by changing the law our electoral prospects would be killed, but we got around that by putting up someone who was not a prisoner. At this time there was growing support for us and we knew we could not miss the boat, that there was a lot of emotion from the death of ten men and that there was a dynamic which had come from that. A key part of the process of engagement between republican prisoners and the British during the hunger strike period came from the role played by the Catholic clergy. Though the priests involved in trying to broker an end to British intransigence and the strikes were small in number, it is apparent that such individuals and the Catholic faith gave comfort to a number (although by no means all) of prisoners. As Richard O’Rawe saw it: There were Church people who were trying to move the British where there would be no need for a strike. Cardinal O’Fiaich was important in that process and Father Reid was also working to try and find some common ground, trying to find a way to avoid deaths. But, overall, the Catholic Church was a benign force and did not support the demands. Perhaps looking back, if they had done they might have compromised any sort of mediation role, as pressure points would have been weakened. However, we should also know that the Church had lost a grip in many areas where the PIRA now had a very strong influence. In many cases the Church would have been seen as being controlled by the state and this impacted strongly on the PIRA’s ability to control areas. There is no doubt for me though that the relationship established between Gerry Adams and Father Reid, which was so important for starting the peace process, was developed from the hunger strikes. Reid was a trustee of Adams and a conduit for him. Reid was a Redemptorist who had played a long role in mediating feuds between the Provos and the Officials as well as the Provos and the INLA. There was always an element of religion and the rosary was said every night in the jail. The only book you got was the Bible as well so there was little else to do. There is little doubt that the figure of Jesus Christ figured in the ideas of selflessness and socialism that prevailed. Bobby Sands referred to Calvary in his poetry and the sacrifice to the common good typified his politics. Father Faul was another priest who tried to dissuade Bobby from the strike but his response was ‘greater path hath no man than when he lays down his life for his friends’. Bobby faced the hunger strike in a way which was spiritually justified. His politics and his religion prepared him well for what he was to face. Further illustrating the influence of the part played by priests within the prison environment, former hunger striker Gerard Hodgkin noted how the

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Catholic Church itself tended to draw two responses from republicans: one which was highly critical of the Catholic hierarchy and the other which was broadly complementary of individual priests seeking to support prisoners and their families: The priest would come onto the wing about once a month to hear confessions, but the only reason I and others went to the priest was to see if they had any cigarettes or pens on them [using the Mass as an opportunity to communicate and discuss strategy was also important for prisoners (Moloney 2010: 220–221)]. You would go through the motions of doing a confession and the rosary was said too. But, overall, the Church took on a very strong opposition to our predicament. Individual priests did show sympathy and support but the Catholic Church was anti-republican. We also criticised the Church for opposing the use of armed struggle, opposing the whole physical force tradition and for accepting the institutions of the state. But there were some on the hunger strike who were devout Catholics and who said prayers and the rosary every day without fail. Contributing to this summation of Catholicism in the prison system, former PIRA volunteer Tommy McKearney also spoke about the impact of local priests and the Catholic hierarchy on the republican outlook: Many republicans were not motivated by any great sense of allegiance to Rome or the Vatican, but I would suggest that their psychology was conditioned in a more subtle way than that. Catholicism always searches for uniformity and conformity through the received wisdom of the hierarchy. Almost by definition Catholicism has, if you like, a consensual ethos. Catholics find it easier to exist as a group, and even though there is no shortage of class distinction and difference within the Catholic community, this is less reflected in the Church. Republicanism too was characterised by a desire for uniformity and this was evident with Sinn Fein’s desire for uniformity and conformity. In a sense, the president of Sinn Fein wields authority like a republican pope. I suspect that to some extent this comes from the long years of Irish Catholicism, which abides by a fierce set of rules and a hierarchical theology. But, for the most part the Church was trying to persuade us that this was not the proper course of action. They would have been using an argument that was more common to constitutional nationalism, that you should bring your case to the constitutional politicians, to the Church, to Irish-America. But they never withdrew the right to go to confession, to have communion, to give the last rites and for a lot of men they provided great comfort by praying together. They would also be telling us what was going on outside the jail. Although they emphasised how in their eyes what we were doing

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was a tactical mistake, I don’t remember them using the theological argument against us. What Father Faul also said to Bobby Sands is if your conscience is clear then I can say no more to you. The question of how Catholicism works in relation to broader social and moral perspectives indicates a varied response from republicans here, which is also evident in the republican newspaper An Phoblacht where reaction to the central orthodoxy of Rome has historically tended to elicit a hostile response, compared to local priests because they ‘are so [much] closer to the people than the prelates they tend to stand and flight alongside their flocks in the moment of truth’ (quoted in Berman et al. 1983: 138). This reaction is believed to have reflected a distinction where a ‘concern with the poor and ordinary people of Ireland is contrasted with the self-interest and elitism of the bishops’ (Berman et al. 1983: 138) and seems to have a particular basis which is rooted in the condemnations from the Catholic authority about violence compared to a less condemnatory response and greater active involvement from local priests in the immediate concerns of discrimination and injustice seen to underpin the motivation for such violence. Support for priests therefore seemed to correspond with a view that Catholicism should be seen to be engaged with ordinary people and sympathetic to militancy as a means to confront disadvantage and repression (Berman et al. 1983: 138). However, such a worldview seems more oriented to using Catholicism as a justification for revolution and ‘secularizing’ Catholic faith to serve militant ends as well as using the anti-authoritarian stance of Jesus as the inspiration for resistance and change. Or, as Berman et al put it, ‘The Catholics are the deprived and politically excluded, the threatened, raided, arrested, beaten and assassinated ones. Yet the rhetorical force of Catholic theology informs and gives passionate direction to this vision. Christ is involved as the revolutionary fighter for precisely such an oppressed people’ (Berman et al. 1983: 138, 139). In fusing religious meaning with militant republicanism, Catholicism became absorbed into the rhetoric of armed struggle, supporting a moral imperative for violence which was seen as necessarily retaliatory, just and emotionally powerful for imparting a sense of collective responsibility. As we might imagine, it requires some degree of moral ambiguity to give violence legitimacy through a worldview that seeks to discourage it. The extent to which Catholicism informed republican thinking, how republicans viewed the Catholic people they were defending and how Catholic influences came to shape reasoning, interpretation and decision-making are questions which are examined in the next chapter.

CHAPTER THREE

Catholicism

In its aim to defend the ‘Catholic people’, the PIRA found justification of this role in relation to a community defined by religion. Such a categorization had relevance in that not only did it negate recognition of the value of communist politics and the Marxist thinking that pervaded the more politically minded, left-leaning republicans in the early years of the Troubles, but it provided the concept of defence with a moral frame of reference that was religious in focus. That many members of the Provisional movement were seen to be ‘devout Catholics’ (Kelley 1982: 129) who were representing ‘the People’ suggests an interesting correlation between defence and religion where the concept of ‘the Catholic’ was made synonymous not only with defence but attack, and where the boundary between non-violence and violence became necessarily blurred. From this viewpoint being Catholic offered a referent for the proponents of armed struggle, but given there were also those who wanted no part in such a struggle this exposed a divergence about what was and what was not morally acceptable to that community, so highlighting divisions with regard to how Catholic communal life was to be seen, interpreted and idealized. However, for those in the PIRA, this idealization was primarily about entwining the experience of being Catholic with efforts to advance the aims of armed struggle and so providing violence with a moral framework to reinforce legitimacy. As indicated in the previous chapter, it is likely that a significant number of republicans would reject the influence of the Catholic Church in their aspirations, but this does not also equate (and indeed cannot equate) with a rejection of the processes of understanding, thinking and reasoning that would have been firmly shaped by the formative years of Catholic social education and sustaining relationships through the commonality of being Catholic. As we have seen, using the sacred as a powerful motivating force for armed struggle imbued that struggle with divine purpose, where the appeal of transcendence towards the utopian ideal made political change a religious journey, and the collective pull of such a perception seemed

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to draw from the strong sense of community that tended to pervade the Catholic population. This communal impulse, it could be argued, similarly broadened the dramatic attraction of armed struggle by drawing on a ‘unityacross-difference’ rather than ‘unity-through-identity’ paradigm that has foundation in modern Catholicism (Taylor 2011: 168), and where moral extremes can be ‘held’ within the wider ambiguities of being Catholic. But, if violent Catholics are as Catholic as non-violent Catholics, what does this tell us about what being Catholic means? This chapter seeks to explore such questions and the potential influences of Catholicism on those who previously engaged in or were broadly supportive of the armed struggle. Importantly, it also aims to interrogate the influences of Catholicism on republican thinking less as a faith/secularist distinction and more as process of what Taylor would call the ‘social imaginary’, where we look outside the parameters and limiting appeal of the theoretical to forms of ‘common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy’ (Taylor 2007: 23). The communal emphasis of the PIRA on defending Catholics gave the armed struggle a moral rather than political urgency (being defensive and religious). Moreover, by elevating militancy to moral struggle, republicans were able to dismiss the conventional criticisms of lacking a democratic mandate and maintain the view that competing politically would achieve little given the discrimination that prevailed through the well-entrenched political system that already existed. The disadvantages felt by Catholics to a greater or lesser extent, for those such as Gerry Adams, meant that being Catholic induced ‘an experience of community oneness’ (1986: 52), and it was this perceived ‘oneness’ (which politics does not have) that convinced Adams to take the position: ‘Whether people in the nationalist areas agreed or disagreed with the IRA and all its actions they recognised it was their army’ (1986: 53). Republicanism, for Adams writing in the mid-1980s, represented ‘an ideology of the dispossessed seeking equality’ (Adams 1986: 113), its Catholicism finding association with the liberation theology of Latin America, where the Catholic Church played an active role in serving and supporting the poorer sections of society. However, for others in the Catholic hierarchy, such a theology risked emphasising the political over the theological and so elevating localized concerns over corporate principles (Ratzinger 2004: 16). It was this distinction between local and global Catholic opinion which partly explains differences between the attitudes and motivations of local priests in conflict zones, compared to the corporate and authoritarian voice of Rome which pronounces theological and faith-based (rather than politicized) messages and suggested responses to social disadvantage. The associations with liberation theology in the Irish context were nevertheless the exception rather than the rule (Kenny 2000: 265–268), supported mainly by a small number of individual clergy who held sympathies for Marxism and revolutionary rhetoric (McDonald 2008: 75).

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The moral dilemma (which I will later argue is not disassociated from the political ambiguity that Sinn Fein was so good at handling during the peace process) that arose from interpreting republican violence as a justifiable and necessary activity was discernible in the way some acts of violence appeared to draw from Catholic ritual so as to retain moral credence. This is notable, for example, in Kevin Toolis’ excellent book Rebel Hearts (1995), which highlights the religious implications of republicanism by making reference to martyrdom and its intersections with the rites and rituals of Irish Catholicism: ‘Catholic schoolchildren are daily taught that “Christ died for our sins” and thus saved the human race. Christ’s followers, his apostles and saints, are venerated for upholding and dying for, being martyred for, the true faith. For republicans, dying for Ireland is a sacrificial act akin to those religious acts of Christian witness. Patriotism and self-sacrifice are synonymous and rooted deeply in the very fountainhead of modern republicanism, the “men of Easter Week”, the spiritual fathers of the current Irish Republic’ (1995: 339). Toolis also goes on to argue that merging the political with the religious connects republicans to a historical continuity where failure is embraced as a necessary step on the path to renewal and redemption: ‘For Irish republicans, martyrdom is also a means of psychologically re-ordering the chain of defeat, the never ending stream of rebel failures, the dead volunteers, the blunders, the apathy of the vast Irish majority and the betrayals from within, inflicted upon them’ (Toolis 1995: 341). And, further hinting at the fusion of republican goals with Catholic morality, he refers to a passage drawing from 1916 Easter Proclamation being used at a republican funeral which stressed how ‘… the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called’ (Toolis 1995: 343). This attachment reflects the power of Catholicism in Irish social and political life more widely (English 1995: 197), and republican self-definition has tended not only to extract from this power in order to reinforce group character through historical continuity, but also to give moral potency to its cause (English 2003: 130). A conservative communal outlook stressed by Catholicism places particular importance on the common good, and it is this notion of common good which has been used by republicans to infuse ideological goals with religious meaning and communal conviction. As one Belfast leader of the Provisionals in the early 1970s put it when linking religious and political aspiration, ‘We are republicans and our notions of a free Ireland are based on Christian principles and democracy’ (quoted in English 2003: 131). Nor was this leader alone in his attempt to give credibility for republican aspirations through religious inference. PIRA man Eamon Collins writes in his autobiographical account of life in the Provisionals about how he ‘was prepared to be a martyr, to die for this true Catholic faith’ (Collins 1997: 37), and former PIRA volunteer Shane O’Doherty recalls in his memoir

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how the civil rights protests were influenced by ‘the belief that we were united in an almost mystical, religious unity and cause’ (O’Doherty 1993: 42). Interesting too is how actions of violence were appraised in terms of religious authority. As O’Doherty writes when coming to terms with his role as a volunteer and the likelihood that as such he would be murdered by the British or killed when acting against them, ‘I had secured a visa assuring me of entry to heaven, or, at the very least, purgatory. The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has always taught the Irish that it is more important to gain such visas than national freedom and independence’ (1993: 167). The suggestion of religious purpose and its focus for the republican outlook also emerges in Richard O’Rawe’s account of the H-Block hunger strikes which, as mentioned, led to the death of ten men, beginning with Bobby Sands. O’Rawe recollects how in the prison ‘There was something of the crusader about us, a sense that we were the enlightened ones who knew there was a better, more Christian way. Socialism was akin to Christianity for many of us, with its central tenets of justice and equality. Jesus Christ, we believed, had been the first socialist’ (O’Rawe 2005: 85–86). Sean O’Callaghan in his recollection of life in the Provisionals further confirms a Catholic influence on republicanism when he makes reference to members of the organization who were committed to ‘ethnic Catholic nationalism of the most primitive kind’ (O’Callaghan 1998: 76), pointing as well to instances where parochial houses were used to induct volunteers and where priests were supportive of the PIRA (O’Callaghan 1998: 81). As O’Callaghan described it, ‘Young, largely uneducated country lads were brought to their priest’s house at night to be sworn in (even though there was no oath the term “sworn in” was always used). The local priest was more than likely the priest who heard their confession, whose mass they attended, and all the while they knew that their priest actively supported the IRA. What kind of effect did this have on them? Could they really be expected to believe their Church’s denunciation of the IRA was without ambiguity?’ (1998) (O’Callaghan was inducted into the PIRA in this way too.). But perhaps of particular interest is how torture and interrogation carried out by PIRA members against suspected informers used elements of Catholic ritual in order to imbue cruelty with some form of moral agency. As Kevin Toolis convincingly argues, ‘In the informer war, the powerful sacrament of confession and its sub-elements of recantation, repentance, redemption and absolution, subconsciously guided the IRA’s own interrogation of informers’ (1995: 224). ‘Within the pursuit of the confession’, Toolis goes on, ‘The sinner’s former masters must be denounced and their false ideology rejected. The informer must recant his turning in the same way the Inquisition sought a recantation of false belief from a heretic; the betrayer must show that he has been betrayed’ (1995: 225). Notable in sustaining this conviction is the ‘intensely narrow, parochial vision which stressed Catholic piety,

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absolute ideological intransigence and near-religious veneration of IRA martyrs’ (Toolis 1995: 315). What such influence suggests is a need for closer examination of the relationship between Catholicism and republican thinking, and in particular, how Catholic moral reasoning has been used in relation to armed struggle. If the overwhelming majority of republicans were born in Catholic families, lived in Catholic communities and went to Catholic schools and Catholic churches, then it is hard to dispute that Catholicism would have shaped their understanding of self, community and society. Moreover, even Catholics who claim they reject religion in favour of secularism are unlikely to have distanced themselves entirely from the influences of that understanding (how could they?) or its impact on identity formation and social obligation. Indeed, so omnipresent has the Catholic Church been in Irish social and political life that we perhaps need to begin by looking the history of this authority before we can get a grasp on how it may inform moral and conceptual outlooks.

History and context The nationalist identity, though expressive of differences in perception about how the nationalist project should be pursued, can nevertheless be read as a manifestation of ‘the structural position of Catholics in Northern Ireland’ (Todd 1990: 32), where imaginations of the nation and community have been conditioned within ‘Catholic socialisation processes’ (Todd 1990). It is also this socialization which framed both reaction against the political discrimination of the Catholic community as well as enabled the Catholic Church to become a focus for security by allowing priests to control ‘the central intellectual and political cadre of the community’ (Todd 1990: 34). ‘The very concept of community’, Todd contends, ‘is central to Catholic social thinking’ (1990: 35), and political ideals are traditionally seen as an expression of this communal experience, with variations in nationalist outlook essentially contained by allowing different ‘individuals and groups to change their political priorities, without moving outside the basic ideological framework’ (1990: 42). For this framework to exert control as a social imaginary (to use Taylor’s term), it becomes necessary for Catholicism to shape political and social meaning through what Durkheim calls the ‘“collective representation” of the structure of social life, so that what members of a society worship is an ensemble of their own social relationships in a disguised form’ (MacIntyre 1995: 3). Clearly, since Catholicism has defined the trajectory of social life and relations, which is the foundation of the political, so it too has determined the parameters and possibilities of what might be politically acceptable and permissible. From this perspective, the political is also constitutive of foundations which are Catholic in basis if not in substance.

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Republicans who refute the significance of Catholicism in their own life and who see themselves as motivated more by the principles of left-wing political ideologies such as Marxism might be wise to pause and reflect on the possibility that the political is not so distinct or in opposition with the religious as one might think. Marxism, for example, ‘is in consequence a doctrine with the same metaphysical and moral scope as Christianity’, providing judgements and standards ‘each of these integrated into an overall worldview’ that ‘can only be made intelligible by understanding it as a transformation of Christianity’ (MacIntyre 1995: vi–vii). In its totalizing construction of society and human relations, ‘Marxism shares in good measure both the content and functions of Christianity as an interpretation of human existence, and it does so because it is the historical successor of Christianity’ (MacIntyre 1995: 6) (or as Eagleton succinctly described it, the move from Catholicism to Marxism largely reflects a desire ‘to go from one dogmatic, authoritarian system to another’ (Bakewell 2006: 39)). Marxism, like Catholicism, emphasizes the collective as a reference point for interpretation, its homogenizing worldview stressing the common good and using this concept to inform judgements about human relations and moral worlds. And in such moral worlds the communal invariably transcends the individual, so positioning that individual in a realm of collective responsibilities and actions (see Spencer 2012 for greater elaboration on this point). Historically, the Catholic Church has played a pivotal role in shaping Irish identity, exercising almost total power until the 1960s. In his definitive book Moral Monopoly (1998), Tom Inglis notes how ‘Irish Catholics rarely adhered to the Church for purely religious reasons. Being spiritual and moral and following the teachings and practices of the Church were not simply ends in themselves; they were also means of attaining and maintaining power’ (1998: 68). Catholic faith operated as an authority over conscience as much as desire, and it was ostensibly through the Church that the individual came to acquire positions of social importance. This in turn made it ‘easier for people with religious capital to accumulate political capital’ and for religion through moral conditioning to inform ‘public matters in Ireland’ (Inglis 1998: 74). Nationalistic and republican ambitions are therefore underpinned not just by political or social aspiration, but inclinations of faith, devotion and moral conviction which have religious foundation. The relationship between religion and nationalism is well expounded in Anthony D. Smith’s Chosen Peoples (2003), which explores the linkage between sacred and national identity. Here, the possible convergence of nationalism and religion can be witnessed in nationalism’s tendency to stress purity, faith in conviction, elect representation and absolutism in its worldview (Smith 2003: 12). Nationalism requires meaning which draws from the idea of the sacred and its concomitant rites of salvation (Smith 2003: 15), and even if nationalism is conceived as secular, this sacredness

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and salvation endures, since in binding its members ‘through ritual and symbolic practices’ the nation operates as a sacred communion (Smith 2003: 18). Traditionally, powerful myths about the nation have contributed to legitimization about the slaughter and death of those not of the nation because whatever destruction and misery is exercised on the nation’s behalf, it remains ‘essentially and ultimately good’ (Smith 2003: 20). The religious tendency in nationalism comes from ‘collective will and devotion’, each of which is vital to the ‘definition and persistence of the nation’ (Smith 2003: 23) and dependent on ‘ideological movement for the attainment and maintenance of autonomy, unity and identity’ (Smith 2003: 24). Just as in religion, where distinction between the sacred and the profane brings followers into a unified moral community, so nationalism also strives to create a moral community which draws from devotions (and patriotism) of the faithful (Smith 2003: 28). The credibility of this position, its merit, comes from ‘heroic virtues of past patriots and national geniuses and in the example of and prophecy of messiah-saviours’ which operate as ‘guides in the task of national regeneration’ (Smith 2003: 40). Such patriots exist as ‘pure, true, pristine, originary’, and their actions become ‘worthy of emulation in each generation’, where through the myths of popular memory, heroes and figures reveal ‘the inner goodness of the nation’, epitomizing its ‘virtues and its hopes’ (Smith 2003: 41). But, as Smith goes on to explain, the reason such figures elicit appeal and following in the popular imagination comes essentially from their readiness ‘to sacrifice themselves for the community – not in a spirit of disinterested love, but with a passionate and all-embracing commitment’ (2003). Nationalism then, like religion, uses the ‘sacrificial virtue of heroes and prophets’ to reinforce a ‘religion of the people’ (Smith 2003: 42). In Ireland it is Catholicism which has historically constructed the sacred, social and political dimensions of the national outlook. Although since the 1970s there has been a growing separation between Catholic Church and civil and political institutions (Inglis 1998) which has further deepened and accelerated with recent revelations of child abuse perpetuated by Catholic priests, it is important to realise that traditionally the Catholic Church exerted almost complete authority and control in Ireland. Indeed, the moral rules of the Church were enshrined in the law of the state from partition up to the 1970s, with Ireland subject to the ‘single hierarchy’ of the Church and its power over decision-making in national issues (Whyte 1971: 1). From 1898 to 1921, relations with the Irish nation were developed primarily to provide Catholicism with a dominant role in the political order (Miller 1973: 76), supporting the state in its social and political activity only if this complemented the Church’s religious and educational priorities (Miller 1973: 292). In turn, national leadership existed as an extension and reinforcement of Catholic leadership (Miller 1973: 450).

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The strength of the Church depended on acquiring and holding the loyalty of its followers as a matter of social obligation (Whyte 1971: 7). Reflecting the monopoly of the Church in concerns of social and moral life, Irish public opinion was seen as ‘monolithic’ in its reiteration of Catholic regulation, giving the Church freedom to exercise control over all social and political affairs (although some degree of aloofness between the Church and state persisted this was essentially because of the state’s general unwillingness to challenge Catholic moral order and authority). Whyte asserts that an element of separation between Church and state helped to sustain positive relations, but in terms of moral terrain, and especially in relation to education and the family, the Church’s power was near total, with the institutions of the state anxious about addressing educational issues in ways which could be construed as inconsistent with this emphasis (1971: 21). The Catholic tendency therefore represented an authoritarian strain in Irish culture (Whyte’s phrase (1971: 21)) which until the 1970s was pervasive, and where the powers of the state were used ostensibly to secure, reinforce and ‘protect Catholic moral values’ (1971: 36). The ability to exert control depended on the Church positioning itself as independent from and above the state, with its domination ensuring ‘authority over men’s consciences’, and the reason why politicians acquiesced to the Church’s right to articulate on all matters was precisely because all matters were ultimately seen as a product of faith and moral conviction (Whyte 1971: 368). Ironically, and usefully for our purposes here, the Church was at its weakest in terms of influence when strong emotional evocations of the nation and nationalism were expressed. Then, because of a tendency to avoid engagement with the subject of national devotion and political patriotism, the Church found itself unable to convince and control public opinion with the same rigidity (Whyte 1971: 375). In social and economic affairs, the Church controlled expectations of responsibility, with laity absorbing such expectations through a process of Catholic social education (Fanning 2008: 117). This education stressed the inseparability of material and spiritual worlds which were seen as inextricably linked (Fanning 2008: 118), thereby locating all social life in the context of the Church’s moral order (Fanning 2008: 124). In this world, the parish operated as ‘the economic as well as spiritual unit of social organisation’ (Fanning 2008: 125), and the main intention of Catholic education was ‘to provide an intellectual platform for Catholic social thought whilst keeping at bay rival theories of social order’ (Fanning 2008: 129). Such was the power of the Church that from the 1920s until the 1960s even republican politics preferred ‘continuity rather than radical changes in its handling of church-state relations’. As an example of political submissiveness to the Catholic ethos, Fianna Fail leader Eamon de Valera ‘allowed no displays of residual anti-clericalism from any of his party colleagues’ (Keogh 1993: 80), considering himself ‘both a catholic republican and a catholic nationalist’

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(Keogh 1993: 81). Interestingly, also, de Valera was only too happy to try and build political consensus by attaching constitutional policy ‘to Family, Marriage, Private Property, Educations and Religion with papal thinking and teaching’ (Keogh 1993: 82). Social control was most effectively imposed by way of a forceful and unremitting attitude towards sexual activity where discourse about sex was framed and delivered through a ‘thematic of sin’ (Ferriter 2012: 3). However, fears about its potential depravities gradually subsided as culture became more individualized and therefore sexualized (Ferriter 2012: 10). This change eventually weakened the Catholic hold over the Irish psyche and emerged in relation to a ‘context of European nationalism and the quest for “respectable” sexuality; part of an international struggle to cope with the perceived evils of modernity, increased industrialisation, political upheaval and the construction of middle-class norms of the body and of sexual behaviour’ (Ferriter 2012: 2). These pressures, which emerged as a response to ‘a society of guilt, shame and embarrassment’ (quoted in Ferriter 2012: 3), notably fractured the Catholicism of the 1950s ‘where individual difference and initiative were strangled’ (Ferriter 2012: 3). Ireland then was a place of suspicion, silence and intimidation, but even here private worlds of ‘clandestine and illicit sexual behaviour’ existed alongside a public Ireland that adhered to ‘an avowedly Catholic ethos, oppression and watchfulness’ (Ferriter 2012: 546). This illicit sexual behaviour, as a number of Church scandals in recent years reveal, meant that Irish society carried with it a moral shame and internalized contradiction about what it professed to be and what it was. This tension between the public and the private might also be seen as a tension between the social and the individual, which created a dilemma in comparisons between external and internal worlds (contentiously perhaps also transferring into strains between the oppressor and the oppressed, or the colonizer and the colonized). In the home, the Catholic Church provided strict guidelines on how children should be raised, placing much of the burden for this on the mother, and by extending the control of education from school to home, the Church was able to augment its hold over the domestic/private setting (Ferriter 2012: 57). This was seen as a process which, in its invasive and totalizing reach cultivated a homogenized approach to ethical and spiritual matters that was forcefully articulated in the public sphere. There, universality contributed to a communal cohesion where even class difference was submissive to the overarching strength of the Catholic ethos. To be excommunicated from the Church was a matter of considerable social disgrace, such was the importance of being seen to be of the faith, and excommunication was exercised as a key mechanism of control in order ‘to moralise and civilise the Irish body’ (Ferriter 2012: 140). But, the power of the priest to monitor the behaviour and conduct of the laity also gave the Church a surveillance role in the community. This insight into the values and

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behaviour of the laity was effected powerfully by the confessional, where individuals would come to the priest to be absolved of sins and where the priest would extend influence further into the private lives of individuals by offering absolution. Significantly, the decline of the confessional weakened the Church’s control over moral and social affairs since it diminished the priest’s knowledge about individual lives and communal behaviour (Inglis 1998: 49). Today, Catholics refer far less to the Church for moral sanction, but this does not mean that Catholic morality has disappeared. And, even if the Church’s growing inability to appeal to an increasingly individualized and culturally diverse society is obvious enough, leading to dwindling public support for the rituals of the faith (Inglis 1998: 222–223), this does not mean that Catholic values and conceptualizations have been jettisoned, or that reasoning about social and moral order is without Catholic influence. But the pressures against Catholic moral control are clear enough. Since the 1960s the rise of popular culture, with its preoccupations with selfaggrandizement and promotion, expectations of individual expression driven by a pervasive media-consumerist society and the demands of global economies, have all contributed to an erosion in the Church’s position as arbiter of moral authority (Inglis 1998: 246). As the journalist Donald S. Connery observed, by the late 1960s, a distancing between Church and public had occurred because the public had grown ‘frustrated by the conservatism of the Church or resentful of the high-handedness of individual priests and of their own sheep-like status’ (Connery 1969: 134), even if this annoyance had not led to wholesale rejection of Catholicism or hostility towards papal authority. Rather, it was more a reflection of cultural shifts within Ireland that the Church was increasingly powerless to prevent. The feeling of dislocation which shaped nationalist consciousness found strong resonance with Catholicism since this offered a refuge and collective opposition against dispossession (Elliott 2000: 83). The confiscation of land in Ireland in the seventeenth century created a culture of injustice which captured nationalist resentment and found communal expression through the Catholic Church (Elliott 2000: 84). Moreover, the linkage of Church with nationalism was so powerful by the close of the nineteenth century that nationalist movements were forced not just to communicate with the Church on political matters, but to adapt responses to those matters through the moral boundaries of the Church (Elliott 2000: 292). But, there is another factor which needs to be taken into account in order to understand the erosion of Church influence, and that is the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) which was initiated to provide a sense of renewal in the Church, loosen the strict puritanical and judgemental emphasis and allow for a re-conceptualization of moral affairs in relation to the particularity of each social and political moment. The impact of this change, as Fuller points out, was that ‘People’s sense of sin was, to say the least of it, blunted’

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(2004: 227). The impact of Vatican Two also brought about a major shift in Catholic theology, where ‘the emphasis was on man as the subject rather than the object of his own history. He could influence the course of his and others’ history and indeed, had a responsibility to do so, in an effort to bring about a more just social order’ (Fuller 2004: 233).Vatican Two was thereby a moment of change that called into question the Church as moral voice of authority, moving consideration of moral issues increasingly into the realms of personal conscience and politico-social worlds. Along with the change in social expectations and attitudes that came from Vatican Two, growing individualization further weakened the institutional conscience that had previously endured (Fuller 2004: 235) and prompted a movement in the Church from ‘being dogmatic to being more dialogical’ (Fuller 2004: 229), leading to greater tolerance of interpretive difference: a change that not only enabled individuals to apply their own preferences and distinctions more but also undermined the traditional certainties on which Catholicism had been built (Fuller 2004: 229). Alongside an environment of extensive social, economic and political transformation outside the Church, the now changed relationship with its followers corresponded with growing and greater interrogation of the Church’s role in moral questions (Fuller 2004). A laity less inclined to accept the Church at face value forced the Church to adapt to a society where people were making decisions about their own lives in ways which suited their own needs and desires. This transformation reduced the Church’s ability to impose conformity or enforce universal acceptance of Catholic principles, leading to a situation where the Church ‘now had to interact with a far more critically aware and educated laity: people who were changing fundamentally in all sorts of ways – economically and in terms of the life experiences, opportunities and perceptions of themselves. In the new cultural context, the bishops could no longer issue directives. Their position in society had changed radically’ (Fuller 2004: 230). Discrimination against the Catholic minority of Northern Ireland became the central point of concern and resistance within nationalism, contributing to a victim psychology that galvanized communal identity (Elliott 2000: 384), and it was this experience that motivated the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It was also this moment which led to the re-emergence of the IRA and a further weakening of Catholic Church influence. This rupture, which undermined the dominant force of Catholic representation, resulted in a crisis of communal leadership as the newly formed PIRA led the call to defend Catholics against British security force brutality and highlighted the powerlessness of the Church to directly or convincingly oppose the escalation of tensions and unrest, demonstrating a weakness that the PIRA seized upon, using confrontation and violence as a means to confront discrimination and repression. Continued denouncements by the Catholic Church of the IRA

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did little to discourage people from joining the organization either. The emergence of the Troubles offered a very different opportunity for the IRA which had failed to secure the necessary public support in its 1956–1962 campaign against the condemnations by a still dominant Catholic Church and a largely oppositional nationalist press (Elliott 2000: 406). And, even though the Church was broadly critical of republican violence at the start of the Troubles (Elliott 2000: 471), it tended to be less emphatic in this criticism because of fears about alienating those from the Catholic community who were sympathetic or supportive of republican activity (Elliott 2000: 473). This moment of some uncertainty by the Church in how to respond was seized upon by militant republicans to demonstrate tangible and purposeful communal leadership. However, for republicans, some care was needed in criticizing the Catholic Church in its inability to prevent hostility and discrimination against Catholics, for such criticism, as Elliott argues, had to take into account the inextricable linkage of religious identity with political identity and importance of Church life and faith more generally: ‘For Catholics their religion was their political identity, and the Church provided all the necessary institutional infrastructure’ (Elliott 2000: 450). For republicans to attack the Church directly was therefore to attack the identity of those they were trying to protect and recruit, and republicans realized that as long as Catholics were ostracized from state institutions, they would tend to look to the most authoritative institution to protect them, which was the Church. This distancing from Church authority should not be confused with dismissal of what the Church stood for, however. The Catholic communal emphasis was and had been a basis for supporting the republican cause in its connections to myths of suffering endurance, as well as in its promotions of hope and renewal (Elliott 2000).

Reasoning and morality As suggested, rejection of the Church does not necessarily translate into a corresponding rejection of the value system and moral reasoning that comes from that Church or the community it represents. Neither does the decline of churchgoing mean an end to making sense of the world through a Catholic lens, nor what David Tracey calls the ‘analogical imagination’. This is an imagination which stresses the presence rather than absence of God in the world (more a Protestant predilection) and in so doing puts the believer in a position of thinking he is closer to God instead of distanced from Him (more the case in Protestantism) (Greeley 2001: 5). From this vantage point, there is a tendency to view faith as nearer to truth and so superior. Underpinning this perception is a particular attentiveness towards ‘the metaphorical nature of creation’ where ordinary ‘objects, events and persons’ are seen to ‘hint at

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the nature of God’ (Greeley 2001: 6). And perhaps (if contentiously) it is this propensity to embrace the influence of difference rather then exclude it which has enabled some republicans to embark on murder and violence whilst maintaining a commitment to the Mass and the moral guidance of the Church. For O’Malley, this tension can be explained thus: ‘Catholic public moral values are not the result of conviction arrived at through a process of consensus or the secular ethic of individual responsibility… . They are immutable, fixed; they make no concessions to current orthodoxies. They are handed down from one generation to the next, their eternal truths promulgated by a hierarchy that is a compulsive guardian of Catholic values in the face of every threat, in constant fear of losing its power and position’ (O’Malley 1990: 226), and it is this historical authority and continuity which encourages those of Catholic persuasion to see Protestant conviction as simply wrong or misinformed (O’Malley 1990: 227). Such a preference for inductive logic, where notions of right and wrong are absorbed into a wider framework of interrogation and thinking, makes hard and fast positions of right and wrong problematic and fluid understanding of these areas more acceptable, enabling those who have acted immorally to still be seen as of the Catholic community rather than outside of it. What further contributes to this acceptance is a respect for giving ‘allegiance to something greater or more abstract than itself’ (Rafferty 1994: 283) and viewing suffering as a central characteristic of Catholic identity (Elliott 2009: 154); an identity where ‘The people’s suffering had been subsumed into that of the Church’ (Elliott 2009: 158), and where ‘Through suffering and endurance Irish Catholicism was portrayed as having a special purity’ or superiority (Elliott 2009: 162). Though there has been widespread condemnation from the Catholic Church throughout the Troubles about violence, there has also, as said, existed some sympathy for the republican cause too (Macdonagh 1983: 98–99). Nevertheless, although this must be seen against a general pattern of objecting to violent republicanism, it was in relation to such objections where the Church proved itself to be somewhat disconnected from those sections of the community who saw violence as a legitimate response to the conditions being faced (Macdonagh 1983: 102). This defiance created a dilemma for the Church which came from trying to appeal to a community of anti-militant nationalism, on the one hand, and pro-militant republicanism on the other (Macdonagh 1983: 103). Not surprisingly, this dilemma also hindered the Church’s ability to articulate a clear or consistent message (O’Connor 1993: 277) since condemning violent republicanism risked being seen as sympathetic to the state, while not speaking out against the violence of the state undermined the argument for peace and non-violence (O’Connor 1993: 45). The tension was made worse by republican efforts to try and legitimize violence by converging nationalism and republicanism through the common suffering experienced by Catholics (O’Connor 1993: 87–89), and mobilization against

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this suffering offered communal and social coherence which both the Church and political authority could not provide (O’Connor 1993: 274). Arguably, in contrast to the inclusive ethos of Catholicism, adopting firm and unyielding positions in relation to morality, regardless of social circumstances, is more a Protestant tendency, where ‘right and wrong are not only morally distinguishable, but absolutes’, encouraging ‘the same inflexible, no-compromise stance’, whilst also mistaking ‘rigidity for virtue’ and viewing ambiguity as a potential deception which obscures moral principle and clarity (O’Malley 1995: 26). O’Malley saw how Catholic prevarications about individual responsibility have tended to be taken by Protestants to demonstrate that Catholicism is ‘a religion of equivocation, where right and wrong are gradations on a theological curve – weights variously described as venial and mortal on some scatological scale’, and where questions of truth are couched in a texture of obfuscation and lies managed through curious and fuzzy distinctions between venial and mortal concern (1995: 24–25). In relation to this and in reference to how this works in relation to political reasoning, O’Malley draws our attention to the AIA of 1985 which, as a document, favoured Catholics rather than Protestants (somewhat neglecting that many Protestants saw the AIA as a road to the diminution of Northern Ireland) precisely because of its aim to embrace dual positions (but let us not forget that the possibility of change would be favourable to Catholics). The priority of the Agreement, O’Malley argues, was to ‘reflect this duality of intent. Hence its ambiguity and malleability, its emphasis on intent rather than fact, its adherence to process rather than specifics, its design as a framework rather than a set of provisions. This accounted for its appeal to Catholics and to much of the opposition among Protestants: they could not understand it’ (1995: 27). What enables difference to be accommodated within the Catholic imagination is the overarching emphasis on the collective (or the common), and it is this context which allows for moral disputations to be contained. As Dillon notes, a dialogical relation between the community and the Church means that tensions draw on a ‘common symbolic and institutional framework’ which facilitates a negotiated more than imposed outcome, and where change is not seen so much as a sell-out, but part of a transformation process that reflects Catholic meaning (1999). This interpretative framework is representative of what Tracey calls a ‘“similarity-in-difference” paradigm’ where several different notions of reality can be held within one determinant structure (1981: 408), or where competing individual preferences can be accommodated under the one institutional ethos of the Church. What further influences this worldview is the perception that subjective (non-visible) and objective (visible) decisions are in linkage, shaping and influencing each other, and that this is sustained by the actions of the individual being known in the context of the Church which connects him/her to a higher (or divine) reality. This association between the individual and the Church is taken as a reference point for the accommodation (and inevitability) of

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dual positions and is indeed dependent on embracing ‘both/and’ positions even when those positions seem in opposition with each other. ‘Either/or’ positions are a rejection of this duality and so resisted by Catholics (whilst Protestants would see faith as being about Jesus not Mary, Catholics would tend to see faith as being about both Jesus and Mary). Moral positions are a reflection of this tension where even a bad Catholic is still considered to be a Catholic and not excluded from the community because of immoral actions. Indeed, such actions offer the potential for conversion, which in Catholicism is seen as a life-long process. The emphasis on journey supports commitment to conversion with its inherent expectations of movement, change and transformation. Thus, the Catholic logic is one which seeks to absorb more than reject, and where exclusion is a failure to recognize the possibility of the immoral alongside the moral, as well as the potential for all to be redeemed (Spencer 2012: 170–171). It is this approach to the moral which, for many Protestants, not only lacks clarity, but makes the bad more rather than less acceptable. The ‘both/and’ interpretative viewpoint is one which perhaps those of Protestant conviction might see as reducing truth to moral relativism, allowing interpretive versions of truth to suit individual and organizational needs rather than adhering to some prevailing, overarching and omnipotent conceptualisation of truth. And, for those who measure actions and responsibilities against such a truth, it is likely that those who do not, and who seek to use truth reflexively to meet the demands of new circumstances and situations (Eco 2013: 32), will raise suspicions about being trustworthy, reliable and responsible (unionist obsessions about getting Gerry Adams to admit he was in the PIRA – when admission of membership might be used to invoke criminal proceedings and where deniability was a condition of membership – highlights this preference for clear and irrefutable truth and a disregard for prevarication) precisely because expected efforts to live according to some higher or absolute truth is lacking. Here, where flexible and contextual rather than scriptural and factual notions of truth are preferred, it becomes more a matter of what informs particular interests and assertions at particular moments (Eco 2013: 29), while for others this risks moral relativism (and so moral ambiguity), confusing right and wrong and making the indefensible defensible. A flexible use of truth, for many Protestants, might raise concerns essentially because with the possibility of moral ambiguity comes the possibility for concealment, deviation and lying, whereas, in comparison, a rigid scriptural adherence to truth can be taken as proof of conviction in faith and so moral clarity. Arguably, this may partly explain why unionists in the peace process talks and negotiations were less able to use or work with ambiguity as effectively as their republican opponents, who were more able to traverse ambiguous positions and expectations. Perhaps, too, Sinn Fein has been generally better at managing the peace process than unionists because, consistent with effective leadership,

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they have been able to maximize the potential for ambiguity, knowing that it would suit their interpretive skills better. And, in striving to reduce ambiguity, unionists have arguably been less able to demonstrate effective leadership because they were drawn into positions that diminished opportunities for success (Wilkinson 2006). An ability to accommodate competing claims about moral and social responsibility (but within a hierarchical structure of conservative authority) can also be seen to derive from a form of reasoning known as casuistry. This form tends to reduce actions to case studies, where in order to understand the motives of violence, one would be inclined to look to the social context for explanation and view the individual and his actions as secondary considerations. Casuistry, according to Bedau (1997: 104), includes within it the possibility that acting against moral expectations may be tolerable if the case can be made that it was impossible to meet those expectations given the conditions faced at any one time (and one can see how this might complement the idea of just war theory where under certain circumstances violence is seen as necessary). Justification for violence therefore becomes more plausible if it finds comparable situations for explanation elsewhere (republicans have historically shown support for the experiences of other marginalized and violated communities such as blacks in the US and South Africa, Latin Americans, the Vietnamese, Basque separatists and the Palestinians and have sought by association to give their own actions greater legitimacy). As Bedau puts it, from the perspective of casuistry, ‘the solution to a morally problematic case is obtained by comparing and contrasting its features with various paradigm cases whose moral status is settled’ (1997: 101). Using other cases and examples as a means to reach moral judgements and conclusions means individual responsibility is minimized in relation to the actions carried out (‘Casuistry depersonalises; it makes every situation a “case”’ (Gustafson 1978:48)). Thus, truth becomes more a matter of understanding from the perspective of the social rather than the personal, where in order to understand how a situation developed the question of ‘why’ rather than ‘what’ tends to become the reference point for judgement. Conscience, from this perspective, relies more upon a response to circumstances (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988: 135), but one danger of interpreting actions through the context of circumstances is when rhetoric is used with the aim ‘of showing the favoured position in a good light’ and where individual responsibility is seen as little more than social determinism (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988: 256). Problematically, other contexts and analogies used to make sense of actions means that differences are compressed and moral reasoning becomes ‘framed in terms of rules or maxims that are general but not universal or invariable’ (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988: 257). Casuistry then resorts to rhetorical analyses ‘whose powers of persuasion depended not merely on their intrinsic content but also on the circumstances in which

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they were put forward’ (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988). It depends, to put it slightly differently, on viewing moral legitimacy through the prism of social conditionality, where the potential for latitude this creates in relation to acts of violence and cruelty means that one can interpret what might appear to be morally contentious actions as understandable in response to particular conditions and circumstances. Although this outlook risks a generalization in moral reasoning which ignores interpretive differences, this does not in itself violate the premise of a similar or comparative logic being used by republicans in relation to moral dilemmas, such as, for example, balancing the argument for armed struggle with the argument for political aspiration. Sinn Fein’s articulation of the need to accept both the Armalite and the ballot box (a well-known phrase uttered by Sinn Fein representative Danny Morrison in 1981 (Taylor 1997: 281)) as a valid path forward is representative of holding contradictory positions, and although it would be dangerous and indeed wrong to make a direct association with Catholic faith when highlighting this goal, as a contradiction it does at least raise interesting questions about how morality might be conceptualized to tolerate and make acceptable this disparity. What can be argued perhaps is that accepting the need to move from violence to non-violence can be sustained only if moral distinction between the two is presented as connected, or where one is an extension rather than a destruction of the other. And, that this can only be possible because both are linked to a higher aspiration which is able to counterbalance the contradictory nature of the two positions. Thus, politics is seen not as a rejection of violence but a logical progression from it which complements the ideal of constant conversion and transformation as well as vindicating violence itself. This also allows proponents of the ‘violence-to-politics’ thesis to argue that both are needed, and that the morality they each represent is consistent with the idealization of possibility and common purpose (I will elaborate on this later). That common purpose (which again has a basis in the value of the common good), one might suggest, has been used to bridge violence and politics which itself is exemplified in the term ‘republican movement’, a term that has interchangeably been used to articulate the case for both the PIRA and Sinn Fein pursuing militant and political fronts for a common purpose simultaneously (Taylor 1997: 7). Perhaps here we might also contemplate Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe’s summary of Catholic reasoning with regard to the moral when he says ‘I sometimes think when I’m talking with somebody, I might want to say ‘You’re wrong’. But that doesn’t mean you’re totally wrong and it’s almost never the case that I’m totally right. The challenge is to discover the sense in which the other person is right. St Thomas Aquinas – perhaps the greatest theologian in the Christian tradition – always starts every discussion by looking at the objections. He always asks, “Is there any sense in which they are true?”’ (Bakewell 2006: 101).

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The Catholic Church and republicanism Martin Dillon’s book God and the Gun (1990) makes some interesting observations about Catholic associations with republican violence. What comes across strongly from his study is that the Provisionals saw themselves, from the beginning, as defenders of the Catholic Church as well as the people (Dillon 1990: 89), even though this position shifted away from the Church towards the people as the Troubles developed, and as it became more evident that the Church was unable to defend Catholics against British state and loyalist violence. In the process, this shift meant not only usurping the role of the clergy in an attempt to exert leadership and authority in the community (especially the case in Derry), but also reinforcing the sense of community and through it Catholic identity (Rafferty 1994: 277). Though the Catholic Church hierarchy, as noted, overwhelmingly condemned PIRA  violence, it is also apparent that for some priests (admittedly a minority (McElroy 1991: 144)) killing was justifiable because of a perceived need for Catholics to act defensively (Dillon 1990: 138), and that indeed there were local priests who were grateful to the PIRA for protecting Catholic Church premises against loyalist attacks (Dillon 1990: 138). However, condemnation of PIRA activity was not always consistent in tone (McElroy 1991: 139), and it was this lack of consistency that led to ‘serious criticism of hierarchical statements’ from republicans who sought to exploit ambiguities and inconsistencies in the commentaries of the Catholic leadership (McElroy 1991: 140). The growing tension this caused between the Church and republicans was tentative during the 1970–1971 period and then intensified from the late 1970s as left-wing attitudes pushed a secularized ideological shift into the republican worldview (McElroy 1991: 159). This secularization did not amount to a total dismissal of the Catholic viewpoint, but more a transformation and transplantation of religious conviction into politically violent action. As Archbishop Cahal Daly described this transference (Daly was also seen as a threat by many republicans because of his condemnations of Provisional violence): ‘One characteristic way in which Irish Catholicism secularises is the way of revolutionary nationalist ideology. The Irish struggle for national independence was often presented in quasireligious terms – terms of redemptive sacrifice and national resurrection. The Cause is presented still as something sacred, almost holy, whose “patriot dead” have something of the halo of martyrdom and sainthood. Catholic religious images and symbols have been subtly used to give a quasi-religious aura to heroes of “armed struggle”. This was particularly true in the case of the graffiti that accompanied the tragic hunger strike of 1981 when the Gospel beatitudes were calculatedly misrepresented and the Christ figure and the Passion were deliberately misappropriated for political and paramilitary ends’ (1991: 192). It was Daly, who stressed in 1991 that ‘there is ground for suspicion that at times IRA murders of Protestants have been intended

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to provoke loyalist retaliation in order to create among Catholics a felt need for IRA “protection”, in order thereby to keep the water suitable for the IRA fish to swim in’ (1991: 191). It was also Daly who believed that PIRA efforts to scupper attempts by the Catholic hierarchy to improve social conditions were self-serving since republicans did not want to accept that social improvement could occur through non-violent means (Spencer 2012: 147). But, for republicans, Daly’s routine and long-standing criticisms of PIRA violence amounted to support for the British state and were designed largely to obstruct and discredit republican goals: his comments about the dehumanizing and immoral impact of violence taken as an indication of political rather than religious intent (1975: 591). Daly’s efforts to depict PIRA killing as sinful was a view clearly not shared by republicans who tended to think of sin as an individual rather than organizational trait (Dillon 1990: 120). Yet, even given this rupture between the Church and republicans about moral justification for violence, it is nevertheless apparent that Catholicism acted as a binding mechanism within the PIRA, and this was because there ‘was no perceived conflict between membership of an organisation committed to the violent overthrow of British rule in Northern Ireland and Roman Catholicism’ (Dillon 1990: 131). One should also recall that many senior republican figures had historically been active and prominent churchgoers (Dillon 1990: 139), and that there was a continuity of respect and support for the Catholic tradition within republicanism which remained throughout the Troubles and beyond (the role of Clonard Monastery in West Belfast exemplifies a Catholic institution being active in debate about ending violence and developing peace (Coogan 1995a: 325–333; Brewer et al. 2011: 101–114)). More widely, however, although undesirable, militant republicanism was less of a concern for the Church than a politicized republicanism which threatened to destabilize the Church’s social and moral dominance (Dillon 1990: 141). That Provisionals would see themselves primarily in terms of a Catholic rather than political identity (at least during the early years of the Troubles) is confirmed by Maria McGuire in her book My Year with the IRA Provisionals (1973), where she comments, ‘I did realize the importance of their religion to the beleaguered inhabitants of the Catholic ghettos in Belfast and Derry; it may have been all they had to cling to.’ McGuire goes on to explain how certain Provisional leaders at that time even believed they had God’s permission for armed struggle: ‘a position many Provisionals had to adopt because of their constant feuding with the Catholic Church’ (McGuire 1973: 75). For the Catholic hierarchy, the suffering and marginalization of Catholics reinforced a need for the authoritative presence of the Church, but this relationship also had to be seen in terms of two positions since just as open hostility to republicans by the Church threatened to further insult and isolate Catholics facing discrimination and coercion, so open hostility by republicans towards the Church threatened to insult the identity of those who faced

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discrimination and coercion within Catholic communities (O’Corrain 2006: 116). Bishops therefore had to face a problem where on the one hand they benefited from the welfare of the state, but, on the other, where they were expected to speak out against the effects that state was having on Catholic communities (O’Corrain 2006: 140). But, whilst there was  considerable support from the Church for the civil rights movement, it was criticism rather than sanction which emerged in relation to militant action against the state (O’Corrain 2006: 143). Hierarchical statements warned of the dangers of emotionally identifying with violence (O’Corrain 2006: 145), and in trying to defuse this, the Church challenged the authorities to reduce communal tensions which in turn augmented the potential for violence and so republican response (O’Corrain 2006: 151). This attempt to reconcile also created further problems for the Church in that it illustrated an inability to change the very institutions and structures which were responsible for Catholic discrimination to begin with. The difficulty was additionally compounded by taking a stand against republic violence without offering an alternative programme or strategy for change, and since this undermined the moral authority of Catholicism, with its emphasis on unity, the Church, as a result, ‘came under strain as bishops were compelled to address the conflicting concerns of their respective flocks’ (O’Corrain 2006: 156) (see also Bishop and Mallie 1987: 149; Daly 2011: 40–56). Key players within the republican movement have sought to conceptualize armed struggle within a context of Catholic moral justification. Gerry Adams, for example, symbolized a brand of thinking which sought to reconcile republican violence with Catholic moralism by claiming, ‘If I believed that the struggle I am engaged in was wrong from the point of view of being a Catholic, I would not be part of it … I believe that God will understand the pressure under which we live and be a fairer judge than the bishops and the cardinals’ (Bishop and Mallie 1987: 319). Although a potential conflict of interest between adhering to Catholic faith whilst seeking to justify armed struggle hints at the possibility of contestations within the PIRA on the morality of violence (Moloney 2010: 196), the attempt to reconcile violence with Catholicism, as said, was ostensibly shaped by an overall conviction that armed struggle was being conducted on behalf of ‘the people’, who were Catholic and so stood more as a validation than violation of what it meant to be Catholic. However, this impression also depended on separation and distinction, where republicans would need to criticize the Church’s inadequacy to confront social and political inequalities and by so doing contribute to the perception that the Church, rather than the faith, could be ‘condemned as unCatholic, un-Christian or even irreligious’ because of it (Berman et al. 1983: 139). What supported such an inference was the belief that under certain circumstances violence can be justified (or at least that violence can be more effective for confronting a problem than non-violence and so legitimized because of this), and for militant republicans such an argument could be

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especially convincing when military objectives were seen in the light of ‘just war’ theology. Rooted specifically in the writings of the thirteenth-century Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas, the ‘just war’ argument rests essentially on fulfilment of three factors. First, war must be sanctioned by what is referred to as a ‘proper authority’, second, it must be conducted for a just cause and third, its intention should be to reduce not augment violence (clearly not the case for the PIRA who sought to escalate violence but would probably argue that this was done in order to try and being violence and repression to an end). Aquinas knew too well that war conducted on the basis of authority and cause could lead to consequences which may be both unintended and evil, but was nevertheless clear that the ‘common good’ should ultimately frame all consideration of just war motivations (Juergensmeyer and Kitts 2011: 41–44). Republican attempts to interpret violence through the just war context can be glimpsed in the third of a three part series about theology by Deasun Breatnach, which was published in An Phoblacht in 1970. Breatnach argued in his essay how ‘there is a clear theology of violence in the teaching of the Church. The obligation is to seek for peace at all times and to take the line of non-violence, as dictated by the precept of charity (the greatest of the Commandments being to love one’s neighbour). But one may defend oneself; one may take part in a just war or revolution.’ Breatnach considers all this a matter of conscience but frames the decision to take up violence as largely a response to corruption and the desire to inhibit freedom since ‘if there is no alternative, violence may be used to regain the lost freedom’. He concludes that if violence is pursued, ‘There must be a reasonable chance of success, and killing and destruction must be kept to a minimum. Revenge and hate must be kept out of the campaign. The motive must be of love – of God, of the people, of freedom as a God-given right and necessity’ (Breatnach 1970a). Breatnach also sought to conceptualize resistance from a theological viewpoint insisting that ‘The questioning of authority, in fact, may be a sacred duty, the giving witness to Jesus Christ … . The refusal to participate against the call of logic and conscience, and the violent opposition to peaceful protest, may very well be the equivalent of denying Christ as the cock crowed once, twice … for we all are our brothers’ keepers’ (Breatnach 1970b). This attempt to use the emotion and passion of Catholic just war theology usefully indicates how militant republicanism sought to build a case for violence as an extension of Catholic thinking in relation to social repression and discrimination. Such a position depended on a frame of thinking which tended to interpret the inconvenience of flawed activity and internal contradiction – where for example, the community being defended derived from a relationship which was also necessarily ‘exploitative, intimidatory and underlaid with contempt’ (Bishop and Mallie 1987: 287), where, over time, a third of the overall death toll for republicans came from ‘own goals’ (McDonald

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2008: 11), along with the dilemma of maintaining traditional positions of resistance in a peace process which would require those positions to be jettisoned (Bishop and Mallie 1987: 127, 131) – as incidental. And, this was achieved not just through the micromanagement of internal debate about change, but because of a tendency to see contradictions as linked to a bigger whole, as parts of a wider process, and it is this process which enabled those leading republicanism to see contradictions as facets of human diversity and difference that are interdependent and constitutive of the greater (common) good. Moreover, since process is dependent on movement so contradiction provides not so much an inconvenience but a motivational driver for the development of process (one needs to have and use the disagreeable in order to refine and make stronger the case for the agreeable). From such a vantage point, and in this case, murder and politics are seen as inseparable because the achievement of the latter is inextricably linked to the actions of the former and indeed is seen as legitimate precisely because of the process which enables the two to be seen as inseparable rather than oppositional (otherwise murder and violence merely remain actions of the pathological or criminal). And, there is another more fundamental point to be made here which is that if one constantly talks in terms of process, of the unfinished project (which must always remain unfinished because it strives for the utopian), then one need not admit defeat or that one has sold out (acknowledging too that the image of defeat has provided a strong impetus to republican motivation as emphasis on the sacrificial shows). Such problems can be absorbed into the inevitable shifts and re-evaluations of process where, because process is not static (although we could go further here and talk about the illusion of process), it is easier to dismiss criticism of the sell-out in the context of longerterm goals and movement. In other words, the sell-out accusation cannot be made because the process has not ended; it is ongoing. An observation similarly provided by Bowyer Bell in his study of Provisional republicanism when looking at how idealism shapes republican thinking: ‘Ideology for Irish Republicanism is most apt to be found in process, in acts rather than declarations, in demonstrations not proofs … . This reality is skewed only in that the dream overpowers any obstacles, even when the dreamers are reduced to penury. The dream itself is little different from that of most nationalist movement except that Irish history can be read and need not be created whole. The organization may invest considerable time in detailing the history of the dream, the litany of grievances and failures, but not much in probing the nature of that dream’ (Bowyer Bell 2000: 71). Idealizing the republican project in utopian terms inevitably means being part of a narrative which is future-oriented and where contradictions are only momentary expressions of inconvenience on the road to enlightenment (this notion of the progressive is a construct which is notably Catholic in orientation). However, as Bowyer Bell concludes, when violence has run its course, the shift to politics requires a major tactical adjustment to

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neutralize the argument that principles have been betrayed, and this is easier to overcome when one is drawing from a strong historical trajectory of provincial and parochial relations. Those who reject this, Bowyer Bell argues, ‘miss the reality of living history, ideas as process, ritual as concept’ (Bowyer Bell 2000: 72). They miss, in other words, the lack of an end point, where the suggestion of defeat has less resonance precisely because continued impetus for change means work ‘still in progress’. Clearly, there are those within republicanism who consider its modernization to be a vacation of tradition (‘dissidents’ being the most obvious example), but the dominant rump of republicans continue to view change not as a rejection of tradition and more as a navigation of renewal and meeting new challenges which are conceived as variations or reinterpretations of tradition (process). This propensity to conceptualize aspiration as movement is also nicely articulated by Maurice Hayes, who argued that in contrast to the republican emphasis on trajectory, we must also acknowledge the Protestant/unionist tendency to prefer stasis and defence: ‘For evangelical Protestants, salvation of a single salvific event, for Catholics it is a pilgrimage with stopping-off points on the way. One requires stasis, finality: the other movement and potential’ (Hayes 2013: 178). It was this difference, Hayes contends, which contributed to why republicans saw the 1998 GFA as a ‘stepping-stone’ while for unionists the Agreement symbolized a ‘copperfastening’ of the Union. From the Catholic vantage point, then, differences are conceptualized as an expression of common interest and conviction rather than the inception of new ideological (or faith) principles. What frames the response to difference is the overarching theology (Irish unity) which contains the contestation of the dream (a dream that remains the same). But, there is another point worth mentioning here too, and that is the problem of thinking in absolute terms. Historically, this has meant adhering to the purity of armed struggle (politics risks compromise and dilution) where ‘victory in pieces is an enormous obstacle to those who are inclined to analyse in absolutes’ (Hayes 2013: 52), but in the newer climate of politicized republicanism such purity would inevitably be replaced by managed compromise and a pragmatic approach. In this environment, republicans would need to express the inclusive over the exclusive (or at least couch the exclusive in more inclusive terms) and use the blurring of boundaries that can be better contained within the Catholic imagination in comparison to those who stress rigid convictions and absolute principles.

Catholic perspectives on republicanism Having tried to outline some of the defining characteristics of Irish Catholicism in terms of history, community, moral reasoning and dealing

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with the dilemmas created by violence as a means to bring about social and political change, let us now move on to consider how some Catholic clergy themselves viewed and experienced the actions of Provisional republicanism before we then, in turn, look how republicans see the influences of Catholicism in their own lives and outlook. As suggested, the role of the Catholic Church throughout the Troubles has been both antagonistic and sympathetic to republicanism (for examples of public announcements made by the Catholic hierarchy against proponents of violence, see O’Clery 1986), and this tension seems to reflect problems in relation to dealing with the circumstances that gave rise to violence as well as individual responsibility within that context. Father Raymond Murray (Armagh), who himself recorded and authored accounts of state-sponsored violence against Catholics and republicans (Murray 1998, 2004), offered this summary of the social circumstances which led to the emergence of armed resistance against the British: It is very difficult to disassociate Catholics and violent resistance from the violence of the state and the oppression perpetrated by the state. Catholics were very much second class citizens and reaction to this came through the civil rights movement. The constant reference to such people as ‘the minority’ had a real impact. But there was also an attitude amongst those that favoured violent resistance to believe that England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity. As people were shot, so others joined the PIRA, provoked by state killings of family and friends and by homes being searched and wrecked. Although the Church made known its position about being opposed to violence, there was also an anti-Church attitude amongst many republicans who were not going to listen. Further there would have been a fair bit of resentment about the Church’s continual condemnation about the violence. This was taken as a position which helped the state and caused considerable grievance amongst some republicans. Clearly if republicans had listened to the condemnations of the Church towards violence they would not have pursued the armed campaign. But in order to do this many would not have been able to reconcile their actions with the condemnations coming from the Church and so would have separated religion from the armed struggle. But having said that the Mass meant a lot to a lot of people and many congregated every Sunday to experience that. Those people saw the community of this and they were often taking part in sports and social events. There was a very close relationship with the community and a very strong emphasis of love of your neighbour. People were always in and out of one another’s houses and communities were pushed further together by the way they were being housed in ghetto-like areas. Faith took on a particular significance given this background. There was a strong emphasis on being at union with one another.

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Bishop Edward Daly (Derry) substantiated this observation further, commenting: The housing that people inhabited was appalling, with gross overcrowding and high levels of unemployment. But strangely I think that there were people living like that who were not even aware that this was a result of political discrimination. Very few people read newspapers but most watched television and because of that began to realise that this was not a tolerable way to live. People could see others living in better conditions and started asking questions about why. In the 1960s you had a culture of protest developing, with the student uprising in Paris and the American civil rights movement, but also a kind of antipathy towards institutionalised religion and challenging any institutional authority. Television was a major voice in the corner saying things which were not being said by the Church and this was challenging perceptions. Increasingly, the Church was seen as somewhat irrelevant and out of touch. Alongside this, there was the music of the Stones and the Beatles which cultivated a need for change. The civil rights movement that emerged in the North in the mid 1960s and which came from the universities and then the disparate communities suddenly provided a channel for people to vent their anger and frustration. But gradually it became polarized, with counter-reactions and frustrations spilling into violence. Rioting would sometimes go on day-after-day and could continue for weeks. There were also a number of a more militant frame of mind and remnants of the old IRA around Derry who saw where this might go and decided they should take the process from there, whereupon it descended into violence. Daly went on to highlight the problem of trying to develop Church relations with the community on the one hand, whilst trying to dissuade members of that community from following militancy on the other: I tried to advocate a more peaceful way but it soon became evident that I did not have a convincing alternative either. There is a myth about the Catholic Church, that it is a big power broker in this situation but that is not the case. There are many divisions within the Catholic community and you can find these divisions represented in the different Church authorities. This shifts from those who are totally conservative to those who would be quite radical and sympathetic. Overall though, most would be in the middle and just bewildered by the violence, the pace at which things descended, and because of that would have been unable to get a handle on it. People look at the Church as a power structure but it has never been politically united. The only authority a Church would have would be a kind of moral authority to say it is wrong to kill people. But even though you can say that and argue why for many young kids

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there was no interest in sitting down for a long moral argument. You have to live in the real world. Some republicans would be churchgoers, with sound moral principles, dedicated to their families, would not drink and would be humble or moderate. But they would have no problem killing those seen as the enemy. They were able, to put it another way, to compartmentalise their lives in that way and the Church was always stuck with that dilemma. Daly proceeded to expound further on the moral dilemma of trying to discourage violence whilst also seeking to avoid being categorized as sympathetic to state discrimination against Catholics: The Catholic Church did not want to identify with any political viewpoint. Simply their view was that people are entitled to their own political viewpoint as long as they don’t try to impose it on others or try and force it through violence. And I think some people criticised us for that and saw it as a rejection of the republican armed strategy. There was certainly criticism of the Church because it did not identify with republican violence but there was also a fear by the Church that by not criticising the violence the unionists would see the Church as backing the PIRA. And this was an impression that it was important to avoid. One also had to be careful how one criticised state security forces because if the PIRA went out and killed a soldier the next day this could be taken that you had somehow legitimised this action or incited it. So it was a very difficult situation to be involved in. They would promote their ideals strongly and argue that our position was wrong and unjustified. They tried to use the ‘just war’ argument but really the kind of conditions outlined by Catholicism about just war were designed to make any kind of war unjust. It was also used in relation to liberation theology which had emerged largely from Latin America where people who were oppressed found a way to express their anger through the identity of the Church. The problem was that many could not distinguish between the political objectives and the means to achieve those objectives. I was in agreement with many political objectives but not the means used to achieve them and this was a dilemma for the republicans I knew. I think those who were actively involved in the PIRA and those who supported them did not make any distinction between the means and the ideals. Because I was not able to agree with the means used there was a tendency to ‘park’ that moral problem and the reason was because to continue discussing it would not get anywhere. So we had to look at alternatives without asking people to lose face. You had to search out the issues that you could agree on and that were for the good of the community. The social intervention of Catholic teaching is something people are very conscious of and was important here. People

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grow up in communities where there are all sorts of voluntary bodies working with the poor and deprived. Generally there is a conscience, a responsibility towards one’s neighbours who are less fortunate, and that is a central part of the Catholic culture and the basis of social teaching. The republican movement, although drawing on this to some extent, are not particularly strong on philosophy and I would say that traditionally they are concerned more with action than thinking. Many Provos would pride themselves on their Catholicism and would have been more influenced by Catholic theology than the PIRA. Father Oliver Crilly (Port Glenone) spoke at length about the moral focus for violence and how the priest would often provide the context for that focus as well as be torn between expected condemnation and expected understanding: If you want to understand Catholic attitudes to the violence then you might have to begin by initially putting aside the moral question for a moment and ask what is it that is motivating people to join the PIRA? If one knows little of the actual situation then providing a simple moral answer is straightforward. The problem is it makes no contribution to the debate. Many who joined the PIRA were working class men and were not a product of the grammar schools. Unemployment was also a central issue and many young men who were unemployed provided a group who the PIRA was able to link into. Most who became actively involved in the PIRA and Sinn Fein were working class or unemployed. For the majority of the community the priest was seen as somebody there to accompany people through their pain and maintain a significant leadership role. In the North I would say that the priest has a greater degree of presence in the community and the Troubles did tend to reinforce that. But in terms of this influencing the decisions of those who joined the armed struggle the priests had little influence. It would have been difficult for the priest to try and exert influence on those in the PIRA and impositions of any kind would not have worked. This was not a black and white situation for most in the PIRA and many would not have seen their actions as being a stepping away from faith just because their actions were counter to the Catholic Church. Crilly went on: I would argue there is a Catholic sensibility at work here, a Catholic self-awareness, a resonance, but, for many, the political agenda was more important than obeying the line of bishops. For the priest it is hard to separate the threads of family and faith and you would be offering comfort and support to many families who had loved ones in the PIRA.

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A number of republicans were quite cold towards the priest who they would have seen as being intent on changing their minds, but at the same time those people would have taken some comfort that the priest was offering pastoral care to their family. There was also a view, I think, that even though a number of men chose to reject the advice of the priest this did not mean they were excluded. A bad Catholic still belongs to the Catholic community. The significance of belonging is important. Even though I might not be flavour of the month, or have stepped outside the moral boundaries, I am still linked to the Catholic reality. There are strong historical roots which shape the overwhelming sense of community. That belonging to your community and to your clan is one of the great absolutes. The Catholic Church’s role in this is central and certainly that fed into the notion of community that the republican movement would have had. There is perhaps also a Catholic tendency to note that although one would have preferred not to have gone down the route of violence that is the reality we had, and any outcomes cannot be separated from that. This is not to say that violence is not wrong, because that is the priority moral judgement, but that one has to deal with the situation in order to try and stop it. So it’s not an either or judgement because one exists beside the other. Alongside the priority moral judgement there is a further moral judgement which must address the context, what the motivations were and how things interacted to come to a point of violence. Father Denis Bradley (Derry) also highlighted the Church’s difficulty in engaging with the moral problem of violence and argued that the Church did little to participate in political discussion about the legitimacy of armed struggle. For Bradley, this lack of articulation about a different strategy for republicanism did little to influence republicans of a possible alternative: Catholicism has never been very consistent around violence and does not have a strong theological bent when it comes to violence, and particularly political violence. When the civil rights movement came along and the situation descended into violence this weakness in the Catholic Church became apparent, where just saying violence is wrong was not going to stop it. Many republicans were trying to apply a just war approach as justification saying the British give us no alternative, they won’t talk and they won’t do this or that. So in that sense too republicanism was not really given an alternative to work with, certainly not from the Church. Everybody knows violence is wrong and it’s easy to say it, but providing an alternative is more difficult. Moreover the institutions were selfsatisfied, under no threat and attending to their internal needs. There was no strong ideological component to the republicanism which emerged in Derry in 1971. It was to do with nationalism buying into the argument that there was a moral right and indeed duty to fight this army and police

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force which was on the streets battering people. That was the impetus and the militancy was built around the position of self-defence. But although people would say I am a nationalist and prepared to fight they were less certain on how Catholicism fitted into that. Perhaps religion was adding to the problem by creating language and theological divisions which enabled the political situation to become even more entrenched and divided. Some priests were also doing work beneath the radar of their own bishops, who would have seen it as none of their business to get involved. Partly this is down to a problem within Catholicism of a dichotomy between the expression of moral theology within the sanctity of the Church and then taking that out onto the streets. So there was the view that the Church should not get involved but just preach the Gospel right, that there should be no political engagement with what was happening on the streets. Another problem though is that Irishness is not terribly worked out in republicanism. Ireland never really wanted this military side and did not want rebels. It might want to sing about them, but it doesn’t really want them. This is perhaps also a reflection of Ireland being an incomplete person; that it will never be complete as long as it stays apart. Father Patrick Doherty (Derry) contributed to discussion about Catholic– republican relations by talking more specifically about the importance of the communal before then going on to talk about why condemnation tends to be avoided within Catholicism and why arguments for change are more often couched in narratives of journey and the search for truth: In essence the Catholic education in its formation was a journey and that journey is concerned with belonging. Belonging in the Catholic Church is giving something back. We are also baptised in communion not as individuals. The teaching of Jesus is about responsibility to my neighbour, to my family, so my life is about relationship between family, Church and community. It is also about belonging together as family and community, but also following the central theme which is the more we know Jesus Christ the more we can see the worldview. Judgement is emphasised because there is always redemption and healing and one is always welcomed home. The human falls short but the journey of life is the road to redemption when we are allowed to begin again. We see our life as preparation and journey to the goal of what Jesus has promised and so efforts to improve or get better are part of the journey, which takes us beyond. Judgement is difficult and we would rather tease out the search for truth than just claim what people say or believe in is wrong. The problem with condemning the action is that you are also condemning the person and it’s not the mind of the Church to judge in that way. People may have done bad things but they can change. Also

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the moral position is not something that can be argued because people can argue their way out of moral responsibility or misconstrue what that means. If it’s a ‘for and against’ argument it’s going to go nowhere. Sometimes, of course, doing the right thing might mean feeling that one is losing and that is where faith comes in because although the decision might have costs there is also the power of belief that God is there as well. The Church provides a space for that reflection. Searching for the truth together is important but we also know that as much as we might search for Jesus and know Him better we can never really get there. There is a sense of pilgrimage and that we are in it together. The pilgrimage means to make a special effort to do something with the mindset of journeying and being aware of the presence of God. Arguments made by the Church against violence would now be made by some as being justified on the basis of where things are today and the improvements for Catholics that have emerged. But this tended to obscure that the main thrust had been violence itself. In contrast to this theological emphasis, Brian Lennon SJ (Armagh) spoke more directly about separating politics from religion in republicanism, referring to the dream of being a ‘risen people’ as a basis for motivation and commitment: The Catholic Church would always have been against violence but remember that in the 1916 Rising Catholic parish bases were used for organizing operations and the clergy were very much tied in with the people of those bases, even though most of the bishops and clergy were opposed to violence. Even though republicans were always seen as illegal, unjustified and against moral law, they would always have had sympathetic priests. Republican nationalism is able to sit very easily with the Catholic world simply because they are seen in different compartments. Republicanism is political and Catholicism is religious and that is a mechanism which people tend to use. There is also the view that I take my religion from Rome and my politics from home. The phrase of ‘just war’ which emerged from Catholicism was routinely used by republicans to excuse almost everything and provided a moral dimension for the violence rather then ending it. Much republican justification revolved around the Brits being the bad guys and although republicans were doing terrible things the Brits were worse, that was the perception of the rebel fighting the powerful. Also this argument was used to show how republicans were on the side of the working class, working against British imperialism and colonial domination. The answer to this, it seemed, was the fight for freedom and to fight for your country. There was similarly an emphasis on having to suffer as moral duty, as proof of one’s conviction.

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Commenting on the role of the Catholic Church in this struggle, Lennon continued: I think one of the failings of the Catholic Church is that it did not convince people of the merits of non-violence as resistance in the way that say was the case with the black community in America. The power of the nationalism argument is in its public literacy and its ritual appeal, providing a sense of place, identity and community. Nationalism is a more powerful argument for change than socialism, it seems, which relies more on wanting to see all get a fair deal and which is less likely to incite people to go to war. A lot of the republican stuff was coming from working class ghettos and from the lower economic status groups in rural areas. Now although the clergy would have had power, because they would have been the dominant people amongst these groups, the republican struggle empowered people to actually rebel against clerical power as well as take action against the Brits. Further, there would have been a reaction along the lines of well the bishops can condemn violence because that is what they do, but actually they are wrong. The attitude would have been very much that we are soldiers fighting for our country against the oppressors and we expect the Church to be opposed because that is their job, but one does not need religion to come into this decision. To be fair, it’s a difficult task to take a group of working class people and turn them into an effective killing machine with discipline, silence, courage and initiative and with little resources. But underpinning this was the perception and belief that we are on our way and are the ‘risen people’. The notion of the risen people was a big thing because it confirmed for many that they were not going back to being second class people again. This had a considerably energising and galvanising impact and became linked to being on our way to a united Ireland and a socialist republic, even though none of that is ever specified. Father Michael Canny (Derry), on the other hand, stressed how the common problem was indeed the moral dilemma that came from condemning violence while being part of a community where this action was seen as credible by those (and others) who carried it out: People who practised very regularly could also become very militant nationalists and would see no contradiction in that. For them, nationalism and Catholicism were entwined. They seemed to be able to say we live our lives this way during the week and this way on Sunday. But some attended daily Mass, were communicants, received the Sacraments and faithfully prayed but would adhere to the physical force tradition of nationalism too. Some in the Church would also see themselves as nationalists and did

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not get involved in the violence but did have a kind of sympathy for what was going on, so they were involved in this contradiction. Overall though the Church has continued to condemn murder and violence, sometimes to the extent of people walking out of churches, but there was the problem too of the Church trying to walk a tightrope, trying to get the message of pro-life across, condemning those who carried out murder whilst still being part of popular society. Yet a number of republicans, because they could compartmentalise their faith and politics, running each on parallel tracks, expected the Church to do the same. Some people could go out and commit the most horrendous crimes, discard their clothes and then go home and be the perfect parent, bring his children to Church and be very friendly. Such people have been able to lead parallel lives. I have never met anyone though who regrets joining the republican movement. They feel that they had a very genuine battle with the enemy and used this idea of the just war. Some had doubts about the mercy of God and some would appear sorry and would come into confession and ask for God’s forgiveness. But most did not seem to experience such difficulty and I have never in my thirty years had someone come into the confession box and say they were in the PIRA. I have never experienced anyone telling me that they or anyone else was involved in the PIRA. A number would have seen the clergy as disingenuous in that they would see our faith built on Christ and so within a context of martyrdom. And some would say your leader did it so what is wrong with our leaders doing it? Canny also spoke about the concept of redemption within Catholicism and its associations with notions of the dynamic, of improvement and how poor social conditions were envisaged within the context of change, movement and transition to a better place: Catholicism differs fundamentally from other Christian churches in its teachings and emphasis on purgatory. Here we believe that even the best person should be prayed for when they die because they too are on a journey from the birth process through to old age, through death, then through a period of purification, then eventually to see the face of God forever. So we believe that it does not matter who you are or how you live, there is always the possibility of redemption prior to this place called purgatory. There is a strong notion that none of us are perfect and all of us are in need of prayer as well as in need of God’s mercy. And I think that is often seen as a fallback place where people might say I am not damned because when I die I will have the prayers of the Church and my neighbours and then eventually purification. This is also a biblical process. The Old Testament is a story of the Jewish people on a journey that took Abraham to Egypt and into the wilderness for forty years and this was always taken as people on a journey. This is

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also very much a part of Catholic thinking and is so engrained in the consciousness that there should be no surprise that Sinn Fein sees its project as a journey. Catholic thinking is very much about us being on this continuous journey and struggle to a new and different and better place and uses ritual to convey the importance of this. It is about telling the story over and over again until it becomes part-and-parcel of your life. One can also see connections between Catholicism and socialism or Marxism in the sense that even though socialism and Marxism have no concept of God they are grounded in the teachings of social justice and equality. If a person took that position with God as the focus he might well be a model Catholic.

Republican perspectives on Catholicism The above selection of comments by clergy indicates a tension in criticizing the actions of those from a community which Catholicism seeks to appeal to and influence. It also highlights that although the Church attempted to discourage support for violence, this discouragement was communicated more as a reinforcement of the Catholic ethic rather than providing a clear and credible alternative to armed actions in the wake of state discrimination and brutality. But to what extent was this tension a dilemma for republicans too? And, given that most republicans depicted themselves as protecting Catholics in a way which the Church could not, what did such action do to the credibility of the Church’s position and its ability to address community fears and concerns? To tentatively explore such questions, it is necessary to look at how republicans viewed Catholicism, what they took from it and what they discounted in their efforts to confront the British state and force change. Talking about how Catholicism shaped experience and perception, Sinn Fein representative Gerry O’Reilly commented on how his own morality still draws from Catholic influence and education, even though his decision to be a republican represents a challenge to that ethos: We didn’t depend on the state for our education because the Catholic Church did that. There was no equal basis with regards to being a citizen either and you felt different through the Church. You became involved in sport, with the Irish language and you were taught Irish history which made sure you were aware of the British presence. It was not encouraging rebel action or armed struggle, but the emphasis was on the British as a problem and on the preference for Ireland being as one. It was made clear also how important education was in the 1960s as your ticket out and the Church promoted that. The idea of bettering yourself was connected to what that might mean for helping your family and others. But the priest was not to be challenged and if he came into the house he was not to be

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questioned. In that sense the Church was clearly an important influence in shaping people’s perceptions of needs and the Bible was used to keep people in line. There was a moral code in the religion and I would still have that. Faith, hope and charity with those around you created the prominent emphasis. This was expressed often by contributing to the coffers and for any chapel to be built you had to buy a brick. There also existed something called the ‘box of envelopes’ which had a registered number on it and was delivered into the basket on Sunday. If your envelope was not in there they knew you had not paid and so would come round to the house to find out why. You were also asked to give a penny to the ‘black babies’ and the purpose of this was to say that no matter how little you have, there are always others worse off. Every Catholic mother’s dream when I was a kid was to have their son become a priest. It was about both giving something back whilst improving one’s social standing at the same time. If the priest commented that somebody was a good person that was a major vote for one’s standing. O’Reilly went on to talk about how the Troubles changed attitudes towards Church power and authority, how the conditions of conflict led to shifts in this relationship and the strong sense of community that prevailed in an environment changing because of new social tensions and hostilities: Although there were individual priests who were in touch with local problems the cardinals and bishops, by and large, were out of touch, and not only with the politics and the armed struggle, but the needs of the people. They were more interested in the socialisation of Catholics and were very much involved with the government. Most were very condemning of those who took up arms. The problem was the lack of criticism towards state killing and in endorsing the state they criticised those who took up arms against it. But there were other issues here too, to do with the whole catalogue of questions that, in their eyes, contributed to a rejection of the Church’s position and legitimacy. Once people started coming out onto the streets as regards the prisons the Church was brought into question and then the hunger strikes created problems for them in relation to their arguments against suicide. Claiming that it was wrong to take life meant that republicans were being depicted as failures and this created further problems. The sense that we were being betrayed by the state unified people and this caused tensions with the Church. Remember this shift took place against a tradition where you did not question the Catholic Church. The priest was the automatic chair in the schools and he controlled the decisions of the Board and this meant that the interests of the Church were constantly reinforced. My generation watched the French riots and the American civil rights

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movements on television and this led to a shift in our attitudes that no group was an absolute in the balance of power. This led to a questioning of the Church in how it impacted on lives and it made it awkward for them because they had never been questioned. People began to believe in themselves and their own motivations and actions and this changed things. As a Catholic there is certainly a greater emphasis on unity and couple that with the unjust way that people were being treated by the state and you had the basis for greater unity. That sense of community was also built on the power of shared stories, sharing with and borrowing from your neighbours and the idea that there are always others worse off, who require help and support. People’s quality of life was poor and television intensified our associations with other people in the world who also faced discrimination and injustice. When Catholics took up arms it was about defending areas from onslaught and trying to prevent people being burned out of their houses or murdered. It was a reactionary issue. Sinn Fein advisor and community worker Jim Gibney summarized at length the influences of Catholicism in his own life and in particular the communal values that it evoked: We lived in a state which treated us as second class citizens and we had no rights. So faith was very important and it made us different. In times of trouble it was a refuge, as if one lived behind a fortification of Catholicism, because outside of that the world did not treat you with respect, whereas inside the Church you were treated with respect. In the North pretty much from the 1920s on you were regarded as a fifth columnist and with suspicion. Those who ran the state made little differentiation between Catholics and the PIRA. Indeed they were seen as the same thing. Our lives were ritualised weekly around the Church and our lives growing up revolved around that ritual. The instinct was to be part of a religious mission where the Church would look after their flock and provide guidance. There were mixed feelings towards the Church with some figures stating that regardless of the injustice being experienced the PIRA had no justification for killing people. Those people did not want to accept any responsibility for their part in the conflict. Many knew about the repression of their flock and did nothing, so they were culpable by their silence. That silence, in my view, amounted to collusion with what was going on. Other figures however were highly regarded by republicans because they could see what was going on, saw the conflict of identities and spoke to try and address them. Also, it is important to remember how most republicans tend to filter everything through a secular view of the world. We begin as Catholics and some of us practice Catholicism, but because we also filter our Catholicism

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through the Catholic outlook it does not interfere with our secular view. One is able to hold both but most republicans are about independence, a secular society and a socialist political system. There would be variations in the nationalist mix and I think there would be a less ideological view of the world, but republicans would in general be the fighters, the rebels. In my household we were encouraged to think about those less well off and my mother would give us a penny for the black babies. That came directly from Catholic teaching in relation to social responsibility and the priests reinforced this moral responsibility on children, which was embedding in us a social conscience that would emerge more clearly as we got older. We had to donate and this was typical of a Catholic home, where money once or twice a fortnight went into a poor box. Gibney then went on to talk about how the strong communalism that existed morphed into support for the emergence of the PIRA and the armed struggle: Irish Catholicism was a cornerstone of our life in every way but the practice and influence of the Church has waned. The Catholic tradition can be seen more in terms of private belief now. When it comes to policymaking Sinn Fein has to reflect the secularisation of society but I am still a Catholic and in the party, because the two are not incompatible, and my Catholicism may impact on what I think is acceptable or not when it comes to discussing questions of policy, even if there is no apparent Catholic bearing. I would also say that we were more open on the moral question of using armed force than perhaps those who came from an atheistic or agnostic background. Some of the leadership would have certainly contemplated the arguments against the use of violence and the moral disintegration of society, how killing impacts on the moral fabric of society. A lot of republicans separate their politics from their religion and would see the Church as an institution like other institutions, but theirs was a strong sense of community which came from the Catholic experience. One thing that made the PIRA so difficult to beat was its deep roots in the community and the British found it very hard to try and deal with that. They were not able to separate people from that sense of community or raise doubts about the quality of individuals in the PIRA. This relationship with the community was reinforced by the special relationship that developed with the hunger strikes. The strikes showed to the community how they were doing something on behalf of that community and that created a considerable bond. It was a real mistake which the British made with their criminalisation policy when they failed to grasp how the PIRA was supported by the community. That was a real misunderstanding of republicanism, but also Irish history too.

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Gerry Foster, a former combatant for the INLA, also recalled his own background in terms of Catholic education, and how this cultivated a sense of common purpose that was absorbed into the armed struggle: Catholic education taught us a great deal about Irish history. It taught us about the 1916 riots and Patrick Pearse was elevated to near sainthood by the Christian Brothers. At times we were told this is who we should emulate. They might have said what this meant in terms of Irishness, language and how you carried yourself, but we also read into that that violence was not morally wrong, because if it was okay for the likes of Pearse then it must be okay for us. The priests would have been seen out in the communities trying to administer help in whatever way they could and Church halls were open to the community. But the Church did not give its blessing to republican violence at all. I saw people on a number of occasions get up and walk out of the Mass because of condemnation of republican violence. But within republicanism there was a strong ethos that it is not morally wrong to fight for your freedom. So in their heads, republicans were able to segregate their religion from their politics. They had the idea that if it’s political then it’s okay, but that it should not be for your own individual desires because that was criminality. The Provisionals also realised that to keep people on board they had to have control. So, for example, every Easter Sunday they would have a parade and a number of commemorations for all republicans that died locally and they would put on a good show for this. Importantly, the feeling was created that you were part of something, even if you did not have a say. It was about control, but also about realising that if you don’t give people something to feed into, to feel part of, then they will leave. Sinn Fein councillor and advisor Tom Hartley similarly contributed to discussion about the Catholic communal influence, elaborating at length about the tensions that came to exist between religious and political conviction and how Catholic values shape moral and interpretative positions: In the republican tradition in Ireland there’s always a competition between the politician and the priest. Do you wait for bread now or do you wait for bread tomorrow? There is a very old tension there with politics which is about changing the way people think about themselves, about what they want from society and what they want to give society. But the tension between the priest and the politician has long been an element of Irish politics. It’s about authority, a conservative view of the world against a radical view of the world. Also, to be a northern Catholic is to be a member of a very loose political grouping, where the Catholic Church was almost a state within a state. You were born a Catholic, you were baptised, went to a Catholic school, got married

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in a Catholic Church and were buried in a Catholic Church. In a sense, to be a Catholic here meant that you never really touched the state and because of the systematic oppression felt by Catholics in the North, there was a strong sense of group thinking. Also, within Catholicism there is a strong hierarchy, a value system where when someone speaks they speak for all and that is a very strong element in group thinking. This compares with the Presbyterian communities which tend to stand alone, where this is your maker and the individual and where conscience is supreme. When Gerry Adams speaks he speaks for us all, but within Presbyterianism there is no-one who speaks for anyone. In some senses we are very futuristic and there is a perception of hope that we may have to endure shit but some day we will ‘get them in the long grass’. It creates the ability to look to the future and think of a better time. Within Protestantism the emphasis is on no surrender, so it is about holding on to what you have got. I think it is the infrastructure of religious thought that works itself out in our politics. If you ask the Catholic what equality is he or she will talk about an all-embracing equality. But for Protestants this is seen as equality before the law and about the distinction between those who live their lives according to the word and those who don’t. The infrastructure of religious thought is about group thinking as opposed to individual thinking. Struggles never move at just one level but move in layers. There would always have been a link with the Redemptorists, who would have had a strong link with the community. In the early attempts to communicate between the Church and politicians the Catholic Church was used by the British government as a surrogate instrument. However, the number of Catholic clergy involved in the peace process was pretty small and overwhelmingly the Church did not want to get engaged with it. Former PIRA volunteer Sean O’Callaghan, who turned informant and wrote a book about the experience, spoke about Catholic Church associations with republicanism, and how Catholicism was used in relation to PIRA judgements and decision-making: Most of the Provos that I have known have tended to be atheist or agnostic. There is a kind of argument that despises Catholicism and that usually comes from those who see themselves as on the left. On the other hand there would be others, such as Adams and McGuinness, who would regularly attend Mass. I would say that with Adams, his innate caution would bring him back to the Catholic faith. It offered a sense of social control of values and in all kinds of areas. Clearly Father Alec Reid was used as a reference and contact point in a number of ways, but I often think that the role of Father Gerry Reynolds from Clonard

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is also underplayed. He, I think, provided a particular intelligence in the analysis. One cannot escape the fact that if you were brought up in certain areas there was always the perception that the priest would sort problems out. The priest was the authority figure and would have been seen as having the most gravitas. People would have thought the priest is coming from a different place and would rate him because of that. Also that he could be relied upon to keep his mouth shut. Just war theory did play a part in the reasoning of republicans and was connected to the idea of the ‘just strike’, which was about listing the reasons why you might go to war. Firstly, the emphasis was on having tried to exhaust every possibility and secondly, that the war would have a reasonable chance of success, that it was viable as a course of action. The Catholic Church would not give backing on this however. Adams was particularly mindful of the fact that you could not go on killing people and that this could only take you so far and that was where Reynolds was so valuable to him in finding a way through that discussion. The space for interpretation and difference in Catholic thinking is what perhaps allowed some to exploit the faith for personal reasons. There was this perception that even though you have the Pope, there is fallibility all around. A further problem in Ireland comes from looking at Catholicism as solely a religion because it was bound up in Irish nationalism for years and years. Also, lying became acceptable in some senses because of the idea of the white lie, or in Catholic terms, venial sin, which was used as a justification when one could claim, as was often the case, that one was saving life, even by ending others. Many would have convinced themselves that sin was a part of daily life and so it would have been legitimised by certain distinctions. Also, if you are inside a secret organization and are used to lying nearly every day, it comes easy. The Protestant will pride himself on telling it straight, but that pride can sometimes also be a form of ignorance; that I am a man of my word and I don’t have to explain it further. But the Catholic Church in Ireland is more about I’m not telling you what to do, but I’m not really telling you what not to do either. There is no doubt though that the Irish Catholic mentality had a big effect on being a member of a community and that the Church had a moral weight. I remember when I joined the IRA in Kerry the IRA took me to a Church to swear my pledge. They saw themselves and those who joined as men of honour and the Church was used as a context for this. In his response to the role of Catholicism, Sinn Fein community worker Sean ‘Spike’ Murray reaffirmed how the Catholic Church was seen negatively by some at the start of the Troubles, but how there were individual priests

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who worked to try and bring about an end to violence through dialogue rather than condemning the armed struggle without offering a constructive alternative: My departure from organised religion happened with the onset of conflict. The Catholic religion is very hierarchical but the general perception was that hierarchy was also tied to the state hierarchy because the Church wanted to protect its interests in terms of education and communal influence. Even going back to partition there was a perception that the Church had done a deal with unionism in exchange for control of education and the Catholic community more generally. That perception is still strong today and this has been reinforced by the Church hierarchy basically standing by and doing nothing when conflict started. Having said that, the individual priest would often command widespread respect and exert a very strong influence within the Catholic community. Individual priests came to the fore during the conflict, with some such as Father Reid playing a prominent role. In the prisons the priests would have had plenty of discussions with the inmates and did bring to light the plight of the prisoners and the conditions they faced. So there was respect for the efforts of some individual priests who was willing to do something or act on the prisoners’ behalf. Reid was one of the key people who facilitated discussions and used his Church premises to shape initial dialogues which led to the peace process. However, this was different from the Church itself, which took the side of the British Army and the state in its condemnations of republicans. In contrast to most of the other respondents, however, former PIRA combatant Patrick Magee presented a much more critical picture of Catholic influence and saw theological arguments against violence as out of step with the realities of events and conditions as they emerged and developed: It would be a widely held view amongst republicans that the Church itself was a contributor to the problems rather than part of the solution. It was seen as standing with the state and we were all used to the condemnations of the Church. Admitted there were some individual priests who would not have tapped into that and who stood by the community to highlight problems and grievances, but they were few in number. The idea of the Catholic community seems to me to be more of a transcendental phenomenon. What bound republicans together was more the aggrieved sense they felt at being discriminated against. It was this that united us in common cause more than Catholicism. Most republicans would have kept their religious beliefs separate from their political views and did that because the Church was very much anti-republican. Although one might argue that communities were bound by their religious convictions

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there was also a strong sense of Irish identity, which, along with feeling aggrieved, because of their systematic exclusion in all sorts of social spheres, would have been more powerful in shaping them than religion. Although senior figures would have used religious figures as a way in to discuss change, it was also apparent that they were not doing this to represent the Church. It was about the political problems. But in terms of any discussions about religion I cannot remember one. Moral questions about the conflict would have been discussed but not in terms of religious faith. Our platform was the aggrieved community and how we were going to protect the community against this abusive power. It didn’t go any further than that. There was no brow-beating or any deep questioning about right and wrong because it seemed so obvious what we had to do. You certainly could not have walked away from that and lived with yourself. Once you had settled the argument about whether you were taking part in an armed struggle then it seemed a totally justified course of action to take. We would have brought into questioning matters of tactics and operations, with incidents like Enniskillen seen as major setbacks which we set out to avoid happening again, but overall most would have thought there is no choice but to proceed with this. Sinn Fein community worker Joe O’Donnell, though not as critical as Magee, indicated the rupture between religion and politics, which became more pronounced as the conflict developed, but also recognized how Catholic values continue to underpin moral vantage points: I’m sure that somewhere the Catholic Church has influenced me in who I am as a person, but I don’t think it has influenced me in terms of my political views and my republicanism. Maybe the Church has influenced me in the way I act and how I behave, but I would say that my thinking and ideology has been influenced by republicanism. There would certainly be people in the republican movement who would be very strong Catholics and who would hold Church beliefs very dearly. Then there would be others who would have a different view. One might make a general point that some of the Church would have seen the situation we were in as one of persecution but it was the republican movement that became the vehicle to express and react against that. In Long Kesh some of the prisoners would have used the priests because they thought they could trust them and no doubt that came out of their background and their feelings towards the Church. So at that point the priests were the closest people they could trust beyond other prisoners. One must also remember that the Catholic/ nationalist/republican community is fairly tight knit and I think that comes to a large extent from the one religion of Catholicism. Although there are differences in the aims and objectives between nationalism and republicanism both remain largely supportive of a united Ireland. Also

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from the very inception of the state in the North, Catholics, nationalists and republicans were excluded, so they formed a state within a state that provided for their own communities and this required creating networks within those communities. So there is a history of community but this was brought about as much by need and necessity as religion. And that cohesion certainly lent itself to republicanism generally. Sinn Fein worker Gerry McConville spoke about how Catholicism shaped republican attitudes with regard to social and communal coherence but, consistent with many others, went on to talk about how relations between republicans and the Church deteriorated as conflict intensified: With Catholicism it’s always the greater goal. That there is hardship and there will be sacrifices which one must make to reach a greater goal, which is obviously a place in heaven. Republicans think a bit like that and continue to think in terms of the goal ahead, which is a socialist republic. It’s what is ahead that drives you and one must do what is necessary to get there. Before 1969 the Catholic Church helped to keep republicanism alive because you had priests in educational institutions teaching you republican songs and instilling that emotion. Then the priest was the authority of an area, particularly in the eyes of the older generation and people looked to the priests for guidance. When militant republicanism emerged some of the priests went against it and there were a few who thought you should not upset the priest. But as this grew a new generation came through and just swept that old authority aside. But the Church was the focal point for the community and that was where people met each other. People gravitated towards the Church because it was communityforming as much as anything. Although you had elements of the Church who were radical in their thinking quite a lot of them left the priesthood. As the war went on, the Church started to distance itself more and more from republicans. Priests were moved in who were considered to be a safe pair of hands, who would not rock the boat and who could be relied upon to keep a distance. But, even though some priests played a positive role in the prisons they were never in charge of the PIRA. Sinn Fein MLA Mitchel McLaughlin preferred to talk about how the Catholic Church reacted to efforts by Sinn Fein to develop politically, as well as how senior Church figures (representing the authoritative voice of the Church) challenged the legitimacy of the republican case. Alongside this general picture of distancing between the Church and republicanism, McLaughlin also highlighted the invaluable involvement of individual clergy in developing peace: For republicans the notion of just and unjust tended to be linked to a denial of normal democratic opportunities and it was this which seemed

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to guide action. This also brought them into conflict with the moral teachings of the Church because there was a perspective that the Catholic Church was not prepared to directly address the injustice of the state. This was the context most republicans were born into and while you could argue in a normal set of circumstances it is not a good idea to become involved in violence, this was the reality republicans were faced with, because to accept the Church’s position would have been to accept the injustices we were facing. The Catholic Church as a body was the last Church to meet with us. We met every other but they were the last. There had been a dialogue between Gerry Adams and Cahal Daly who was using fairly pejorative language about the republican struggle. We were challenging the value judgements being made by the Church and at times their response would have indicated narrowness because of the emphasis on passivity by their fairly supine position with regard to the many excesses of the British military. When we did met Catholic clergy we made it clear that the meetings had to be confidential and they respected that. We then started a dialogue privately but also publicly through the letters pages in the local press. These comments point towards a general recognition amongst the republicans interviewed that morality and communalism has been strongly informed by Catholic influence and education. The responses also indicate a critical attitude towards the Church’s tendency to misunderstand, or ignore, motivation and intent as a result of British state repression. Yet, many continue to acknowledge the role of Catholicism in their worldview and the moral values it has taught them. Though the comments suggest a separation in the minds of the respondents between the morality of Catholicism and the morality of republicanism, it is notable that the communal linkage between the two makes it difficult to sever republican intentions from Catholic reasoning. Catholic clergy have mentioned how those engaged in the armed  struggle would often ‘compartmentalise’ or separate their republican convictions from their Catholicism, and contend that many republicans would not see a contradiction in being both republican and Catholic and considering their identity to be a blend of (as well as distinction between) both. There is also a recognition that Catholicism acts as a force of influence on group thinking and communal cohesion, providing an interpretive space for living with and tolerating difference (since sin is conditional for redemption and renewal), and where wrongness can be held within a framework of moral responsibility that conceptualizes extremes, from the venial to the mortal, as illustrative of the human condition. Knowledge and acceptance that such extremes exist allows for including rather than excluding the extent and range of human experiences and actions that exist, and it seems to be this knowledge and acceptance that helps to sustain understanding and appreciation

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for collective experience and the common good. But, this containment (or absorption if preferable) relies on embracing mystery and ambiguity, where seeing the world in terms of hard and fast rules and trying to apply them  to all situations denies human difference and inhibits the fluidity needed to maintain commonality and cohesion. Just as republicans were able to compartmentalize the armed struggle away from expectations and convictions of faith, they were still able to maintain the expectations and convictions of being of from the Catholic community. This propensity to compartmentalize and to conjoin actions, which oscillate from extreme to moderate, provides greater potential not only for accepting change but also  for seeing inconsistent positions as variations rather than contradictions. Perhaps, too, one of the reasons that Sinn Fein leaders were able to manage the militant to the political phase so expertly came not only from careful planning and strategic management, but because within the Catholic imagination there is a propensity towards containment and accommodation. Having said that, it should also be remembered that the above interviews were conducted between 2011 and 2013, many years after the end of armed struggle and in a time when criticisms from the Church are now notable by absence since the ‘republican movement’ has shifted to a path of nonviolence. Given this transformation, the question which now arises is to what extent this shift was a matter of political thinking and action? How was the impression of consistency in objectives maintained in terms of both violence and non-violence, and how was movement from one to the other conceived and promoted within a context of continuity and tradition? Further, how were communal affiliations and historical imaginations not discredited given that the pursuit of politics brings with it an implicit admission that violence is counterproductive or futile for achieving goals? Such questions form the basis of the next chapter, where we look at the development of republican politics and the emergence of the peace process.

CHAPTER FOUR

Politics

The 1980s proved to be an important period for the politicization of republicanism and the emergence of Sinn Fein as a political force, but a number of elements converged to bring this about. Signals coming from the Irish government in 1981 about wanting to build a ‘genuine republic’ with Protestants were a response to concerns about possible drift in political support away from moderate nationalism towards Sinn Fein. To try and prevent such an eventuality, the New Ireland Forum was set up in 1983 with the purpose of ‘unifying and revivifying the non-violent nationalist tradition’, leading to the AIA of 1985 which sought to nullify any emergent threat from political republicanism and bolster support for the SDLP (Patterson 2006: 296). These developments, which took place at the same time as debates within republicanism on considering the advantages of a political front, were notably led by those such as Gerry Adams (under the name of ‘Brownie’) whose piece ‘Scenario for Establishing A Socialist Ireland’ published on 19 April 1980 in An Phoblacht points towards a need to think politically about delivering a united Ireland. In that article (which, no doubt, would have influenced Irish attempts to try and frustrate republican plans for politicization), Adams argued how it was unlikely that the PIRA would be able to capitalize on its efforts without a political trajectory to take the struggle forward. Adams’ assessment that ‘because of the real lack of a comparable political movement, it is most likely that the British will succeed in withdrawing in circumstances and conditions most suitable to their own long-term interest’ leaving republicans ‘in a minority position … within the federal non-Socialist Ireland which they fought so hard to free’ was an attempt to draw republicans into thinking about the benefits of political rather than military struggle and in the process suggested that physical force alone would be disadvantageous in the long term. Adams stressed the ‘need for a strong political movement and the need to secure a withdrawal in circumstances and conditions favourable to such a movement’ where ‘we can go nowhere, or

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achieve anything meaningful, without building a strong, radical Republican Movement’. British withdrawal, he went on, could be achieved ‘not only because of the IRA’s military thrust but also because resistance to British rule has been channelled and built into an alternative political movement capable not only of articulating the republican position but also being representative of all those with a commitment to a socialist Republican’. Then, Adams concluded, ‘the influence of Free State government factions and of SDLPtypes becomes diminished’. For former PIRA combatant, now Sinn Fein legacy officer and community worker, Seanna Walsh, Adams’ article was central to developing debate within the prisons about the role of political republicanism: Discussion about building a political base started on ‘the blanket’ before the hunger strike and the article by Adams was key to that. When the article appeared we used it as a sort of blueprint for discussion where, in the cages during the struggle for political status, we were very involved in the formulation of ideas about an alternative administration for tackling some of the neglect that was ongoing within republican areas. There were ideas about community schools, tenants’ associations and how people would be mobilised to take responsibility for their own areas. From the mid to late 1970s until the end of the 1980s the British strategy was about the defeat of the PIRA. When we were on the blanket we realised from that moment what was at stake and were very focussed on being seen as political prisoners, thereby making the problem political and so requiring a political solution. It was becoming clear to us that if we did not look for a political path then it would be about building bigger jails and doing away with law and order in the pursuit of shoot-to-kill policies etc. Whereas if you had a political problem with political prisoners then it was a duty to come up with some sort of political resolution of that problem and that is what slowly emerged during the course of the 1980s. Even though there had been tentative moves in the 1970s through a more centralized control structure of the PIRA to develop a political course (Bean 2007: 60), the dual strategy of armed struggle and politics at that time was seen as creating possible confusion, as well as an unhelpful diversion to energy and focus (English 2003: 207). This perspective shifted however in the aftermath of the hunger strikes in 1981 which provided a real opportunity to build support and resulted in the conjoining of armed struggle to electoral ambitions, as encapsulated by Danny Morrison’s now famous 1981 speech about using ‘the ballot box and the Armalite’ as a means for progress. Though the hunger strikes took some inspiration from the republican tradition of using starvation to try and highlight the broader aims of the armed struggle (in his writings Adams links the sacrifice by Thomas Ashe in 1917 to that of Sands in 1981 (Adams 1997: 216) (also see O’Donnell 2012: 130–176, 350–

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400 for a detailed analysis of other examples of hunger striking undertaken by republicans from 1968 to 1978)), it was also apparent that there needed to be a parallel process of political thinking which harnessed popular emotional attachment to an electoral republicanism (Adams 1997: 224). The value of the hunger strikes then was not just to address the political status of prisoners, but to complement a wider strategy which would assist Sinn Fein in its political aims and so move the republican struggle incrementally onto political terrain (Adams 1997: 225). The election for Fermanagh and South Tyrone of Owen Carron, who replaced Bobby Sands when he died, came from growing popular support – coinciding with the growth of PIRA volunteers – which intensified with the death of more hunger strikers after Sands and led to what Adams described as a new process of ‘republicanisation’. This process would initiate an incremental shift in republican perceptions of the British problem and, in response, encouraged a movement in British-Irish relations that set in motion steps towards the AIA of 1985. For former senior PIRA combatant Brendan Hughes, the move towards a politicization of republicanism had been discussed since 1977, when it emerged that there was a motivation from those such as Adams for ‘Sinn Fein and the Army [the IRA] to run in tandem’. ‘That was the intention, that was the strategy, that was the policy, [creating] a politically educated rank and file, that politicisation had to take place …’, said Hughes (Moloney 2010: 206). A more public demonstration of this desire to adopt a political direction came at the Wolfe Tone commemoration lecture in 1977 when Jimmy Drumm (husband of former Sinn Fein vice-president Marie Drumm) advocated a need for working class mobilization, since ‘a successful war of liberation cannot be fought exclusively on the backs of the oppressed in the Six Counties’ (Bishop and Mallie 1987: 332). The speech had intended to send the message that Sinn Fein was a political organization and should not just exist to support the PIRA campaign. It was also recognition of the need to build a foundation of popular support which had political as well as paramilitary motivation (Bishop and Mallie 1987: 333) and so agitate for political activity (Moloney 2010: 208–210). The shift from armed struggle to political struggle required a transitional phase which would depict the two as inextricably linked rather than in opposition with one another. Danny Morrison’s 1981 comment on the need for republicans to use both Armalite and ballot box reflected this transitional approach, which would co-ordinate both violence and electoral politics simultaneously (even if it was not fully worked out then), and it is worth considering in his words the motivation for using that expression: I made that comment instantaneously and it was not planned. I have also heard two versions of that statement one which has me talking about a ballot paper in one hand and the Armalite in the other and another which has me talking about an Armalite and a ballot box. The fact is

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that at that point campaigns in the south of Ireland had galvanised a lot of recruitment and support for Sinn Fein and we wanted to build on that. In 1980 myself and Jimmy Drumm opposed taking part in the local government elections of May 1981 and yet within twelve months we wanted to overturn that because the circumstances had changed. We started to see the propaganda advantages of participating in elections and were confident that there was a vote to be won on that. Everyone was ushered to get up and make the case and I was conscious that I was playing to a galley of PIRA people who were afraid of going into electoral politics because they saw that as leading to a diminution in resources, both in terms of finance and personnel, that would impact on the conduct of the armed struggle. But my argument was the conduct of armed struggle, regardless of whether you had a political strategy, was circumscribed by common sense things. The emphasis depended on militarising the campaign as a David versus Goliath struggle, a national liberation struggle or guerrilla warfare. But there was also a rump of people who thought that in the context of the hunger strike, which had massively increased support for republicans, these intentions needed another outlet which had political ambitions. The media also loved the slogan however, which both sums something up but is also complex. The slogan allowed me to say something without major elaboration and it summed up the republican movement having an armed struggle and fighting elections at the same time. I was not saying it in conscious preparation for what might happen ten or fifteen years later. There was absolutely no way I was saying it for that reason. I was saying it because I saw it as a revolutionary act. I saw it as presenting more difficulties for the British and our critics and opposition rather than causing internal problems. I was of the belief that Britain would not listen to politics and unfortunately armed struggle was necessary to get the British to look at that. They were not prepared to do that politically alone at that time. Morrison’s intimation that others were asked to make the case for electoral politics brings into question the actual spontaneity of the comment, pointing towards the careful consideration of context and tradition as a frame for what was articulated. As he went on: It is important to have the PIRA’s support for major changes, but we should also bear in mind that there is a political awareness in the PIRA even if it this does not show as being involved in the thick of electioneering. A lot would have been sympathetic and many would have family or friends who were in Sinn Fein. There are occasions when one might be in the PIRA but not in Sinn Fein and the other way round and also occasions when one might be in both at the same time so you have a

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degree of dual membership and, depending on the personalities involved and how influential they are, Sinn Fein and PIRA interests coincide. Both would also come under the same umbrella, known as the ‘republican movement’. It was evident that the PIRA were realising that it is no use having an armed struggle which would bring about political gains if you did not have an articulate and recognisable public leadership to cash in on that. So recognising Sinn Fein was a prerequisite supplementary to any talks down the line and it was important to have a public face to deal with that. This message reflected a significant shift from the emphasis that prevailed in 1970, where the strategy had been determined defence, retaliation and sustained offensive engagement (English 2003: 125), and it needed a lengthy gestation period to enter republican consciousness in a way which allowed leaders to control the pace and extent of change without serious internal destabilization. Gerry Adams (himself the symbol of change and leadership) was stating even in 1983 that the electoral process was not necessary to legitimize PIRA activity, indicating a perceived need for caution in the handling of the debate and a concern about isolating and so splitting sections of the movement (Bean 2007: 69). However, as Adams realized, the hunger strikes were a moment of considerable opportunity, allowing the argument to be made that militarism should only be seen as ‘one aspect of the struggle’, and that there were now grounds to work on the ‘numerous other forms of protest’ opening up (Adams 1986: 86). Somewhat in contrast to this position, however, is Adams’ decision in 1986 to express his regret for the hunger strikes, not only because of lives lost, but because ‘we were just beginning our attempts to remedy the political underdevelopment of the movement’, and the strikes ‘conflicted with our sense of the political priorities of the moment’ (Adams 1986: 80). The decision to go on hunger strike to bring attention to five demands (right to wear own clothing, exemption from penal labour, free association with other prisoners, right to recreational and educational opportunities and restoration of remission (Adams 1986)) and as we now know has become a contested version of events about whether these conditions were indeed met by the British government but kept back from those in the prisons because extending the hunger strikes created more international outrage, sympathy and support for the republican cause (O’Rawe 2005, 2010; Moore 2013: 587–622). On this point, Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher argues that the political possibilities which the hunger strikes created meant that the risk of bringing the strikes to an end was too great for republican leaders ‘unless they could claim an unambiguous victory’. Moore also contends that the demands of the prisoners were essentially met by the British government but were rejected not because of a problem with substance but because of a problem with ‘tone’ (Moore 2013: 612). And, although Thatcher’s public position was one of categorical

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non-engagement with those she saw as terrorists, her government had been involved in dialogue with senior clergy figures and others in order to try and bring the hunger strikes to an end, influenced by the negative repercussions of media coverage, potential strains in relations with international partners and the possibility of serious security implications for Ireland as anger over the strikes escalated (Moore 2013: 598). Emergence of the peace process can also be traced to the turning point which came from Sinn Fein’s political success on the back of the hunger strikes in 1982 (Moloney 2002: 245). Then, Gerry Adams had talks with Catholic priest Father Alec Reid in an attempt to communicate to Irish Fiana Fail leader Charles Haughey (who had been involved in indirect contact with Adams in an attempt to end the prison protests in 1981 (Moloney 2002: 261)), SDLP leader John Hume and the British government about the possibility of a PIRA ceasefire. (Moloney 2010: 261). In 1982, Adams also tried to engage publicly with Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor Dr Cahal Daly, who had condemned Provisional violence and whom Adams tried to draw into offering alternatives to armed struggle, thereby helping to cultivate a debate about non-violent transition (Adams 1995: 193). Such early contacts established a desire to open republicanism to a broad front of political engagement which would legitimize and augment Sinn Fein’s political credibility as well as lay the ground for planting the early seeds of the peace process. As the 1980s progressed, signals that the PIRA should move to recognize the value of the political front were being consistently articulated by Adams who drew attention to the developing ‘realisation in republican circles that armed struggle on its own is inadequate and that non-armed forms of political struggle are at least as important’ (Adams 1986: 64), and it was this move towards the political that influenced attempts to facilitate a meeting with SDLP leader John Hume in February 1985. The meeting did not take place as planned because Hume objected to the meeting being filmed as republicans requested (Sharrock and Devenport 1997: 237), and further contacts were put on hold when the AIA was announced later the same year. It would not be until 1988 that Adams and Hume would meet directly and their dialogues would lead to initial soundings for a peace process. Capitalizing on political support from the hunger strikes was therefore a key aim of the Sinn Fein leadership (O’Rawe 2010: 6), but this led to concerns for the British and Irish governments about the rise of republicanism and how this might correspond with the demise of constitutional nationalism. The AIA was an attempt to confront this problem (Moloney 2002: 245). Signed on 15 November 1985, the AIA was a negotiated settlement between the British and Irish which offered the possibility of change in Northern Ireland if the majority there consented to it. The Agreement also established an Inter-Governmental Conference designed to facilitate crossborder cooperation particularly in relation to security-based matters (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 189). Though the consultative role of the Irish did not

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amount to legislative powers and the rights to consultation were potentially wide-ranging if lacking in focus (Tonge 2005: 27), it was denounced as treachery by unionists such as Rev Dr Ian Paisley and seen by the unionist community more widely as the door to Irish unification. Unionist anger drew from the perception that the Agreement had ‘ushered in direct rule with a green tinge’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 191), providing an ‘explicit acceptance of a role for the Irish Government in the affairs of the North as a defender of the interests of the nationalist community’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 191). Though the Agreement did little to threaten direct rule in Northern Ireland, it nevertheless also opened a space for Irish engagement and in the process created a moment which ‘implied the eventual evolution of a formalised system of joint authority’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 191). The initial aim of the Agreement from the British perspective was to create a ‘security band’ along the border in order to try and strangle resources and support for the PIRA (FitzGerald 1992: 494). In an attempt to halt rising electoral support for Sinn Fein by closing off the fluidity of movements between republicans North and South in Ireland, the Irish saw the importance of reaching a settlement which would inhibit the growing popularity of Sinn Fein and consolidate support for the SDLP as the legitimate voice of democratic nationalism (FitzGerald 1992: 496). In his memoirs, Garret FitzGerald highlights the British obsession with security rather than political affairs in negotiations (FitzGerald 1992: 519) and intimates that the political implications of the Agreement were driven ostensibly by the Irish as a price which the British had to pay for trying to contain the growth of Sinn Fein after the hunger strikes (a growth which the Irish were similarly concerned about but more for reasons of political (in)stability (Dixon 2001: 192)). From the Irish perspective, the Agreement was seen as enabling a possible dynamic to develop which would confront the problems of nationalist isolation, giving the SDLP space to argue for the possibility of political advancement which would simultaneously erode or deny Sinn Fein the space to assert that the armed struggle was providing momentum, and offered the best route to achieve nationalist goals (Dixon 2001: 192). For the Irish, the Agreement was therefore seen to serve the imperative of reinforcing the SDLP position in an attempt to thwart the Sinn Fein advance, whilst for the British, its relevance lay more in containing and defeating the PIRA threat and so making it of appeal to unionists (Dixon 2001: 197) (an interpretation which turned out to be misinformed as many unionists read the Agreement more in terms of nationalist political advancement). However, in that the Agreement allowed the British to demonstrate some desire to confront the problem of nationalist alienation, it also (even if not intended) helped to create a change which the republican campaign saw benefit in (Dixon 2001: 198). This shift effectively ‘produced the last gasp of civil war politics in the Irish Republic’ (Tonge 2005: 26) and ended the possibility of Northern Ireland problems being seen solely in terms of internal jurisdiction and

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control (Tonge 2005: 27). Significantly also, the Agreement would provide space and possibilities for engagement (again, not for the reasons as intended) which would turn out to be more formally pursued through the peace process that evolved in the early 1990s. The Agreement had created a new context where republicans had to acknowledge that the obstruction to Irish unity was not merely a matter of British intransigence, but it angered unionists precisely because it allowed the issue of nationalist alienation (thus changing the status quo) to be addressed. However, because the Agreement risked assisting the nationalist case, so it had the potential for undermining republican plans for political growth and support and was approached with some trepidation because of this (Dixon and O’Kane 2011: 64). Interestingly, for those in the republican movement who advocated the Armalite and ballot box, the production of the Agreement was seen as a vindication of this approach, forcing the British and Irish governments into trying to halt republican progress which had been won through this twopronged strategy (Sharrock and Devenport 1997: 240). But, the emerging dynamic required clearing obstructions to the political path and so overturning long-held resistance to abstentionism, before then opening up the means to allow more direct engagement with constitutional nationalism (Bean 2007: 72). The shift towards the political needed a change of emphasis away from the PIRA towards Sinn Fein and so a move from armed resistance to political resistance (Bishop and Mallie 1987: 381). This would lead eventually, as Bean points out, to ‘bridging armed struggle and revolutionary mobilization discourse with diplomacy and pragmatic accommodation’ (2007: 119), but in a way which was conceived more in terms of a ‘long game’ strategy that would provide incremental but deliberate political shift coinciding with a gradual diminution of the physical force emphasis (Bean 2007: 120). This correspondingly meant any socialist tendencies being replaced by an emphasis on middle-ground politics which stressed issues like equality and reconciliation (Bean 2007: 241). Not surprisingly, it was a move that raised suspicions and unease and risked splitting the Provisionals into two: those who maintained commitment to the armed struggle and those who wanted to advance a political project (Bean 2007: 334). Armed struggle provided instant, irrefutable evidence of victory and resistance against the British, whereas politics was ambiguous, lacking in the same irrefutable impact and likely to become absorbed into a process of institutionalization which would gradually squeeze energy and motivation from the militant ethos. This perhaps partly also explains why initial suggestions about the political road were interpreted within a context of how this would bolster the aims of the armed campaign, and why early discourse about a revolutionary politics was voiced as compatible with the revolutionary tendencies of the movement by adopting socialist rhetoric and advocating agitation to confront evident social inequalities (Bean 2007: 335). The tension was brought to light in a dispute about a

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long-held commitment to abstentionism (a refusal to engage in the national political process through taking seats in the Dublin government) by a republican contingent spearheaded by Sinn Fein leader Ruairi O Bradaigh which found itself in opposition with another section led by Gerry Adams who sought (successfully) to remove O Bradaigh and assume the Sinn Fein presidency (White 2006: 287; see also White 1993: 151–167 for an account of this time). O Bradaigh saw any foray into electoral politics as dangerous and believed that this would result in the inevitable collapse of the armed campaign (White 2006: 294). For him and others, the political process would therefore discredit republican armed struggle, and it was this dispute between the military-minded and politically-minded which dominated the internal politics of Sinn Fein until O Bradaigh was deposed and Adams took the presidency in 1986. Adams presented the abstentionism argument as a tactic rather than a principle and laid the ground for a long-term vision of taking seats in Dublin in an attempt to broaden the republican struggle (White 2006: 303). From the moment he became president, Adams spoke about the need for flexibility and stressed that Sinn Fein would garner support from the PIRA and the armed struggle (rather than the other way round) as part of its politicization strategy (White 2006: 303). By 1987, Adams had met with Catholic clergy and taoiseach Charles Haughey to try and address the polarization of republicanism and nationalism and to sketch out parameters for working towards an end to violence. This reflected a desire to engage more directly with opponents but was also part of a plan to try and gain control over the word ‘peace’ and so re-conceptualize the republican struggle in terms of non-violent methods (Adams 1995: 196). As a starting point for a more formal commitment to this approach, Sinn Fein published the document A Scenario for Peace in May 1987 which was used as a basis for meeting SDLP leader John Hume in an attempt to open up the space for pursuing a ‘pan-nationalist’ political front (which for Adams relied particularly on the Dublin government launching a ‘diplomatic offensive’). An initial meeting then led to a series of further meetings between Sinn Fein and the SDLP from January to September 1988 (Adams 1995: 197). A Scenario for Peace contained little critical selfreflection and largely conceived of the Irish problem as a product of British colonialism. It was the British, the document insisted, who prevented the Irish people’s ‘right to exercise control over their political, social, economic and cultural identity’, and the British who should recognize ‘the right of the Irish people, as a whole, to self-determination and their freedom to exercise that right’. The document set out the case for the Irish problem as being resolved when the British leave and was emphatic in its conviction about British responsibility: ‘The ending of partition, a British disengagement from Ireland the restoration to the Irish people of the right to exercise self-sovereignty remain the only solution to the British colonial conflict in Ireland’ (http://www.sinnfein.ie/files/2009/AScenarioforPeace.pdf).

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Dialogues with nationalism Though unsuccessful efforts had been made to try and bring about dialogue between Sinn Fein and the SDLP in early 1986 (Adams 2003: 76), Sinn Fein had for some time tried to initiate contact through both the churches and the media. From 1982, Gerry Adams had been asking the Catholic hierarchy to outline a different path which could bring an end to armed struggle, and Adams met Cardinal O Fiaich in seeking to build an alternative that would absorb and re-orientate condemnations which Cahal Daly had made of the PIRA previously (1995: 193). Adams also used Father Des Wilson (unsuccessfully) to try and gain access to Charles Haughey in order to try and build a wider political platform for the slowly emerging peace initiative (Adams 1995: 194), but Haughey was removed from office and replaced by Garret FitzGerald at this time, and the Irish quickly moved with the British, after Adams had successfully secured election as MP for Belfast West, to sign the AIA. Against this backdrop, conversation continued in the higher echelons of Sinn Fein about advancing a peace strategy which was now being strongly conceived as working only in tandem with a broad nationalist consensus between Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Dublin government. Adams continued in his private contacts with Catholic bishops, and journalist Tim Pat Coogan was also used as a contact to try and reach senior players in the Irish government (1995: 197). In December 1987, Adams used an interview in the magazine Hot Press to publicly articulate the intent to develop a process which would bring an end to armed struggle, which was being increasingly seen as disadvantageous to ultimate aims. In the interview, Adams went on: Certainly if there could be a total demilitarisation of the situation and an end to offensive action by all military or armed organisations … I would be prepared to consider an alternative, unarmed struggle, to attain Irish independence. If someone would outline such a course I would not only be prepared to listen, but I would be prepared to work in that direction … . There’s no military solution, none whatsoever … . There can only be a political solution (quoted in Hennessey 2000: 39). These comments attracted interest from John Hume who responded to Adams’ suggestion in a radio interview by arguing that progress could be made if separate political negotiations between unionists and Sinn Fein were to take place (Hennessey 2000: 40). The dialogues, which followed between Sinn Fein and the SDLP in 1988, came about largely through the efforts of Father Alec Reid who approached SDLP politician Mark Durkan during the election campaign of 1987 to try and gauge whether Hume

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would be receptive to such a possibility (Sharrock and Devenport 1997: 255). Deemed to be unacceptable at that time, especially given the timing of elections, Hume and Adams did however meet privately towards the end of 1987 to determine a talks framework which addressed the central contention of British neutrality towards the Irish problem (Sharrock and Devenport 1997: 256). From January to September 1988, SDLP representatives John Hume, Seamus Mallon, Sean Farren and Austin Currie met Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley and Mitchel McLaughlin both in the form of one-to-one meetings between Adams and Hume, or as teams at St Gerards, a Redemptorist Church in North Belfast – after a preliminary introduction at Clonard Monastory in west Belfast in January (Moloney 2002: 278) – once Hume and Adams had established that the dialogues would not be used to support any military intentions. Hume and Adams met to formulate an agenda for the dialogues on 3 March, and on 17 March, Sinn Fein presented the SDLP with a summary of their ‘overall strategy for peace and justice’ (Adams 2003: 75). (Hume also states that a formal approach for meeting came from a letter he sent to Adams on 17 March (Hume 1996: 93).) The first formal meeting between SDLP and Sinn Fein teams took place on 23 March at St Gerards. For the SDLP, the meeting was used to try and press home arguments against violence but also for using the AIA to try and show that the British were neutral on the Irish question (Hume 1996: 92–93; Currie 2004: 364– 365). Hume believed that the AIA had effectively created a ‘framework within which a solution could be found’ (Hume 1996: 43), and that the Agreement was an admission by both British and Irish that a resolution of the Irish question could only come about from within Ireland, North and South (Hume 1996: 67). Initially, Sinn Fein sought to use the opportunity for dialogue to find ‘practical and local objectives on which the two parties could co-operate’ (Currie 2004: 364–365). Those objectives focussed at one level on local social and economic matters, but more important at another, on the ‘creation of a broad agreement, across the nationalist family, the nationalist parties in Ireland’ (Currie 2004: 365; see also Farren 2010: 233–234). The SDLP particularly concentrated attention on the document A Scenario for Peace which they saw as a point of potential common interest as well as revealing Sinn Fein’s plans for moving towards constitutional politics (Currie 2004: 366). On 15 March, Sinn Fein responded more specifically to the SDLP contention of British neutrality through the document Towards a Strategy for Peace which was leaning towards support for the concept of self-determination and developing a pan-nationalist approach, but which also insisted that the British had no right to be in Ireland, and that the British military campaign could not be equated with the suggestion of being neutral (Currie 2004: 368). The document insisted that ‘For as long as Britain remains in Ireland, its presence distorts the political landscape. British interference has been

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and continues to be malign because its presence has been and continues to be based on its own self interests.’ It also stipulated that ‘The only solution to the present political conflict in Ireland is the ending of partition, a British disengagement from Ireland and the restoration to the Irish people of their right to sovereignty, independence and national self-determination’, calling for ‘an end to the unionist veto and for a declaration of a date for withdrawal’. On the point of the PIRA’s decision to wage war, the document emphatically placed responsibility for this on the British who ‘have made armed struggle inevitable. The deaths and injuries caused by the war are all tragedies, which have been forced upon the people by the British presence’. Importantly, too, Sinn Fein saw that British presence as ‘a reflection of her continuing strategic, economic and political interests in Ireland’ (http:// www.sinnfein.ie/contents/15215). The SDLP response, which took the form of a letter from John Hume a few days later, made the point that armed struggle was counterproductive and stressed that the British would not accede to violence. Hume also highlighted that self-determination would be a contested concept given the divided nature of the island and that the problem was therefore one of internal tension within Ireland itself (Currie 2004). Hume posed five questions to the Sinn Fein representatives: 1. Did they accept the right of the Irish people to national self-determination? 2. Did they accept that the Irish people were divided on what self-determination meant? 3. Did they accept that this involved both nationalists and unionists? 4. If these points were accepted, then did Sinn Fein also support talks involving all those with an electoral mandate, and that for this to happen, the PIRA would have to stop violence? 5. If the unionists objected to this, would Sinn Fein work on an approach for nationalists and seek to involve the Irish government in such a process? For Sinn Fein, the idea of applying the concept of self-determination in the context of partition needed to be challenged (Farren 2010: 231). Discussion between the SDLP and Sinn Fein on these questions led to further meetings in March, May, June, July and September as a combination of team meetings and one-to-one exchanges between Adams and Hume (Adams 2003: 76), and for Adams, it was through the personal meetings with Hume where progress was seen as best achieved (indeed, in his memoirs Adams points out how the Sinn Fein team decided that their efforts would be better focused on Hume individually (Adams 2003: 79)). During this time, Sinn Fein spoke of ending military activity in the context of an overall political solution more than a PIRA ceasefire (Currie 2004: 369) and sought to explore this context more through two further meetings between Sinn Fein and Irish officials Dermot Ahern and Martin Mansergh in May and June at a Redemptorist monastery in Dundalk (Adams 2003: 81). The meetings at Dundalk were attempts to encourage Irish involvement in the dialogues and to try and engage Charles Haughey on the issue of self-determination. This was part

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of a wider attempt by Sinn Fein to try and facilitate the pan-nationalist dimension and internationalize the problem, so moving the dialogues into a wider arena where they could exert greater influence on the British (as Adams put it in his recollections of this period, ‘Irish government involvement was crucial to any efforts to develop the basis for a peace strategy’ (Adams 2003: 82)). A reading of the dialogues published by Sinn Fein (http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/15215) reveals a series of exchanges which move closer on the issue of national self-determination (which the SDLP saw as ultimately a matter of striving to accommodate Catholic and Protestant difference), but which Sinn Fein saw as hindered by the British presence. The exchanges further highlight a different emphasis on the selfdetermination issue essentially because the SDLP saw this problem as one of internal difference whilst Sinn Fein saw it as a problem of external control. Having said that, talks were obstructed less by points of contention and more by ongoing violence which contradicted Sinn Fein’s intimations that moves were afoot to end such violence, and on September 3, the SDLP issued a statement that the talks had led nowhere and could not be sustained in the wake of continuing PIRA violence (Currie 2004: 370). However, against this background, confidential talks and contacts between Hume and Adams continued for the next five years until they were exposed by the media when Adams was seen with Father Alec Reid leaving Hume’s house in Derry in April 1993 (Moloney 2002: 279). The need to bring about a cessation of violence and Sinn Fein’s recognition of this through the SDLP dialogues had laid the foundation for moves towards an end to armed struggle and had created a space for the British to respond in ways which would open a path to talks and involvement in the political process (Farren 2010: 254). Putting this period in context, Sinn Fein’s former director of publicity Danny Morrison elaborated: From 1981 it was obvious to anyone involved in electoral politics that there was a ceiling and the ceiling was that with the PIRA campaign you had a choice which was to settle for Sinn Fein being in a junior role to the SDLP, which always allowed the SDLP to claim the moral high ground. Clearly, for moral reasons, a section of nationalists could not support the PIRA’s armed struggle, and this remained the case for some years. The transition from armed struggle to party politics could only be done the more consensus there was that the armed struggle had run its course. This occurred in stages and had to be done carefully because if the republican movement had split Sinn Fein would not have been able to negotiate with the British and anger would have been internalised creating a disastrous situation. Remember also that the leadership often socialised together, met at party meetings, a social function, an Army Council meeting, a meeting at GHQ, or perhaps knew a family member who was connected with others. There were always discussions and

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debates floating about even if things were not formally articulated about what is going to happen next, or how to deal with what is happening, or how to get out of a situation. By and large, early answers to these problems from the PIRA would have been to improve the armed struggle, streamline the armed struggle and militarise the armed struggle, and that had to be weighed against the merits of developing the political road. Continuing, Morrison explained: It was becoming clear that although the PIRA was unlikely to be defeated it could not defeat the British presence either. There were people in the movement who were calling for the conflict to go on but who had been influenced by the older tradition that you need to fight as long as you can and that even if you are defeated it doesn’t matter because you just ‘put the pike away in the thatch’ until conditions improve and then you start again. But people who fought in fundamentalist terms for the armed struggle had to be prepared to think in terms of compromise and pragmatism, which came more easily to some rather than others. A large number were satisfied however that they had exhausted the armed struggle and so they didn’t look upon change as failure. But they also knew it wasn’t victory either so the question was what did we do next? We knew that we needed to get something out of the situation and that became the benchmark for the next part of the struggle. That is, when leadership becomes important and where dictating the pace of change requires analysis and insight. Morrison then went on to summarize attempts by Father Alec Reid to bring Sinn Fein further into talks and initiate a wider dialogue process at this time: Father Alec Reid was nominated by the Catholic Church with a brief to meet the different organizations and to see if he could help peace. Around 1986–7 when Charles Haughey was in power in Dublin, Reid tried to set up a meeting between the Sinn Fein leadership and Haughey. He wanted to get Sinn Fein, the SDLP and Dublin all together with the support of Irish America in order to try and put pressure on the British government, thereby also creating an alternative to the intransigence that prevailed. Reid was instrumental in setting up talks between us and the SDLP and although those meetings achieved little, John Hume and Gerry Adams developed a good relationship and were able to contact each other privately. Reid was dealing with a few people at the top of the Church but the republicans he was talking to were small in number with little more than Gerry Adams and one other and that was then transmitted to the leadership. That then led to a larger group contributing to the document A Scenario for Peace, which was published in 1987. The document was an

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attempt to put down in black and white what we thought was required to bring a process about. Reid would have had the ear of Gerry Adams who would have pointed out exactly what republicans thought was wrong with the position being put forward. It was a process of clarification and that led to A Scenario for Peace being produced maybe two or three years later. Morrison was asked to elaborate on the meetings with the SDLP and the dynamic that was emerging through the exchanges: My earliest recollections of a possible engagement with the SDLP came somewhere around 1985 when John Hume was on the radio with Gerry Adams being interviewed. The interviewer asked Hume if he would talk to the PIRA leadership, who at that time and for security reasons would only meet sparingly, and he said he would. The unionists went crazy, the Brits went crazy and Dublin went crazy too. But now Hume couldn’t really back out having said he would be prepared to meet. The consensus at that time was that nobody should talk to the PIRA until they stopped what they were doing. However, the leadership agreed to meet Hume and Hume made the move of breaking a ban to meet Sinn Fein. Hume was picked up and taken to meet senior PIRA people and when he arrived those people insisted on filming the meeting. They said that would give Hume a copy of the tape and would keep one themselves, such was the fear of distortion or misrepresentation. But that was the excuse Hume wanted to leave, which is what he did and that was it until we met him in 1988, again through the offices of Father Alec Reid. We met the SDLP with about four or five of their people present but nobody was talking about pannationalism at that point. One of my chief concerns was to prevent the SDLP from compromising too much because we suspected that under the right circumstances they would join in repressing us and we had evidence of that. Hume had announced at an SDLP conference around the time of the hunger strikes that if we got into power-sharing with them they would intern us. We did not know then when the war was going to end, but we knew that if favourable circumstances emerged we would need a political party in place to negotiate. I saw the need for a cadre of politicians for us who would know how to talk about the economy, social services, housing etc. so it was important to take part in elections and get people into the councils as a way to develop the political platform of Sinn Fein. Morrison then added: We used the document A Scenario for Peace as a basis for meeting the SDLP who brought their documents to the meetings too. Our aim was to try to get them to support the right of the Irish people as a unit to national self-determination but we also wanted to try and re-claim the

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idea of peace. This had a propaganda value because we were conscious in 1986/7 that we shouldn’t be allowing the Brits to corrupt the word ‘peace’. We knew that this word had many meanings and so it could have a meaning for us. With such documents a team of us were involved and one can recognise from the phraseology the part written by Gerry Adams, Mitchel McLaughlin myself etc. I would have an overall say about the grammar, paragraphing and quotations but the substance came from the team which consisted of about six people. A Scenario for Peace took shape over about six months and it was driven by Adams. My role was to think about the publicity advantages of the document. We also needed to modernise that document and produce something else but running throughout was our belief that the problem was the British support for a unionist veto and that stopped all developments. That was the thread running through our documents; that we had to end the veto and to convince the unionists about what would be the eventual outcome of the Ireland we envisaged. We tried to move the SDLP towards that position but they refused, as did the Dublin government who we were in contact with through Father Reid. A Scenario for Peace was a quite cautious document making sure there were no weaknesses in the armour. It had the advantage of putting down on paper for the first time in a long time a possible path which offered a way out of the quagmire, and in that sense there was also publicity value to it. We wanted to show that we were for peace and not warmongers. It was also a lure to the Brits, to suck them in to talk about this and once that happens you can get them to talk about other things. It was getting the Brits on the slippery slope and we wanted to be seen as bringing about that scenario. Get the Brits talking and try to open them up, that was part of this process. My position was that you should always talk to your enemy. Even in the midst of conflict you remove the argument of legitimacy from them because you say we’re just exploring but it doesn’t mean you are right. You also gain intelligence by talking because you can work out their weaknesses and their strengths, as well as who the personalities are you can work on, and who you should avoid. It’s madness not to talk to your enemy, even strategically. We were pointing out that it was the British who did not want to talk, not us. The documents clearly had a propaganda value, but you could not put something in that you would have to resign from later. This made the documents foggy, nebulous and ambiguous, but they always erred on the side of struggle which is why our critics in opposition expressed so much hostility. The documents had to emphasize the republican position and not make any concessions. You cannot give away concessions for free, that would be a silly position. But, it was also important to not make the language too fundamentalist either. I remember one colleague asking why make it difficult for the Brits? If it is too fundamentalist, it will not be able to lure them in. So, you had to allow them to think, or allow

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them to claim to others, that there was possibility in this language. Also, it was important that momentum in this way served the interests of Sinn Fein policy and helped to develop new positions too. The hope was that the Irish government, the SDLP and Sinn Fein would all be singing from the same hymn sheet, and that this would prove to be more powerful than armed struggle. Sections of the PIRA never believed that this would happen and saw it as little more than an exercise of willingness to engage with the SDLP and the Irish. This willingness was important though, because it was an indication of our intent to compromise down the line. At the same time, the PIRA was importing weapons from Libya in preparation for an offensive, so the mentality of the PIRA in 1987/8 was to keep fighting and with better weapons. That this would create more opportunity to militarize the war and help minimize civilian casualties. On the broader question of how documents were constructed and how their purpose was envisaged, Morrison commented: We could be hyper about putting a comma in the wrong place and it having a meaning that was not anticipated. One might see republican documents as being too cautionary, but you are conscious of not signalling good intentions to the point where, if easily dismissed or written off, that can lead to frustrations. When the PIRA issued its Easter statements and Christmas messages they would often be dismissed by others as rants, but a lot of thought would go into them and they would often be hoping to signal a message to the British, the Irish, the SDLP and the republican base at the same time. The media would only really spot the hard-hitting part of the message and would never read between the lines. They could not spot the potential for an opening, or that there were grounds to further explore what was being said. Morrison’s summary of the period indicates both a deliberate intent to explore the political options and seeking to invite nationalist support, while retaining an acute awareness of the ever present dangers of a potential fracturing or splintering of the republican movement. Expanding on background moves within this context, Sinn Fein councillor and participant to the talks, Tom Hartley explained the shifts underway at that time: I wrote a paper in the mid-1980s on the need for republicans to take ownership of the word ‘peace’ because it is a powerful concept and it reflected republican desire not to wage war but create peace. Gerry Adams had written a pamphlet in the late 1970s about peace in Ireland and other ideas came into play to shape this development. We began to realise that we needed to look at our relationship with the SDLP and that if we didn’t engage then nothing would change. Out of this challenge to take

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responsibility to try and end the conflict came an idea for dialogue with John Hume and when this happened there came a need to formulate our thoughts more clearly on this, on how we would create peace dialogue and what we should be doing to try and resolve the conflict. Someone would be asked to write the first draft of a document and then we would go away and read it and change it and re-read it and change it until it was released. Once we had a document the next stage was to think about what we are going to do with it, so then we had a number of meetings and at the same time we are talking to Protestant clergy. The document then became a discussion point for others too. We travelled the length and breadth of Ireland talking to trade unions and churches to try and create interest and so help us formulate an agenda. But we should also remember the context that generated this was the Anglo-Irish Agreement which pursued the objective of giving more power or at least influence to the SDLP and so undermine the rise of Sinn Fein. Dealing with that was not one simple trajectory which goes from a to b to c and so on. We did try to follow a path, but this was in the knowledge of many influences at work. We saw it more as a strategy of inclusiveness, where the strategy of one dictates the strategy of another. We had key individuals of influence too at key levels of structure within the republican movement and much thinking was absorbed at these varying levels. Overall, this ignited a process of ideas from different individuals and structures that began to seep into a common point or centre of gravity. However, the process of leadership which would drive such a process was considered more controlled and less pluralistic by some republicans such as former PIRA combatant Richard O’Rawe who said: The process of change and making specific moves would have been decided years before because that is how Adams thinks and he exerts control. He thinks in terms of we need to change this policy but we can’t do it immediately so we need to be looking at this in about four years time. He would normally then send out someone to prepare the ground, to float the idea. This then sets in motion a process where the political conditions begin to change and the move is made when the time is right. In the case of the more significant steps in the peace process, these were made when the militants had been effectively neutralised and people were more of the view that the armed struggle did not work. The exit plan with this type of leadership is that if it does not work this year then you come back next year until the vote can be managed. Adams was always good at bartering and weaving, making sure that some guy from Tyrone was not at a meeting to get the vote or an Army Convention to influence things. Debates on big issues are well hammered out and the leadership knows where the debate is going and it rarely goes wrong. Adams has been president for nearly thirty years and I can’t recall a debate he has led

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going wrong. The whole thing is staged managed and when the leadership want to see something through they stand up, and the Ard Chomhairle stands up, and they make a recommendation. You might get some token comment of opposition which gives a sense of democracy but eighty-five per cent of the delegates will tend to agree and that’s the way it is. The emphasis would have been very much that if you don’t vote for us the bad boys will come back and start this war all over again, so the only safeguard you have that this won’t happen is to vote for us who will show you the political way forward. The term ‘peace process’ itself becomes a threat when you are saying that the alternative is armed struggle. The process of leadership control which O’Rawe described contrasted with Tom Hartley’s emphasis which focused on the structural nature of the republican movement: The structures of the organization are well established and the managerial emphasis in Sinn Fein comes through the Ard Chomhairle but policy direction comes from the Ard Fheis. The Ard Fheis sets policy and that policy is interpreted by the Ard Chomhairle in terms of campaigning and strategic direction. Then there is the weekly management of the party, below which exists a provincial structure and then local or community committees. The Ard Fheis is an open and democratic forum where every level of the party has a right to contribute. Obviously, leadership give direction to that by putting forward its own proposals, so you have a mix at every level. The Ard Fheis sets the broad policy and within that the politics start to emerge. You might say that the Ard Fheis lays down the strategic view of where the party is going. Outside of that, as can be seen with our published documents, we would be seen as having dialogue and engaging with other political parties. All this is factored into planning, how initiatives are drawn up and the strategy needed to deliver on that. Outside of the structures which Hartley highlighted, there are also informal means for communicating change which impact on what is decided within the formal the mechanisms of party control: By the time people get into a formal structure there has been a lot of debate even in homes and pubs and other places where people meet. Those comments get picked up and feed into the atmosphere. The politics of struggle works like that, where you get someone running with an idea and then that would be seen in the context of a statement by some political representative. Once the party puts out a political position there is always a mix of introspection and vision at work and one thing you learn is that negotiations have an external and internal dimension and you have to manage that balance. The leadership has to manage the

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balance so that there is movement but that movement cannot jump back. You do not want to leave people. Sinn Fein MLA Mitchel McLaughlin, who played a central role in the construction of documents, saw the management of transition as a reflection of the careful means used to bring this about and emphasized text as an important means to provide focus and suggest intent: In relation to the drafting of documents such as Scenario for Peace, it was useful to turn to the South Africans, who stressed the importance of documents as a basis around which to frame discussion. What you would find very quickly is that there was a significant pile of papers that reflected our disagreements. But with a small grouping you could fit those disagreements on one page and that was the value of working in small groups. After some seven or eight months with the SDLP we had a big list of things on which we disagreed and they were quite fundamental disagreements too, such as the issue of self-determination without outside interference. But when we got to self-determination as a matter of agreement between the people of Ireland we could agree to that. The early engagements with the SDLP were quite hostile but led to two important outcomes. The first was the relationship between Gerry Adams and John Hume that resulted and the second was that the document was shared with both the British and Irish because they were neither sponsoring or endorsing the engagement, whilst at the same time the PIRA was continuing its conflict. The two governments then began to look with the same perspective and could endorse progress and this led to the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993. So with significant but limited and small parties you could find dialogue and a path to some agreement. If you take a look at the first document and then take a look at Towards a Lasting Peace, you will see how we were evolving. In Towards a Lasting Peace we were setting out steps towards outcomes that did not humiliate anyone or make victims of anyone else, did not require unilateral actions, just required issues that were identified to be resolved, whether that be prisoners, interface violence, repressive laws or other issues. It was only in the late stages towards the Good Friday Agreement that we decided we had got as much out of it as we could and we knew that the unionists were losing their nerve by the minute. We decided then to draw a line under it and knew that we would just have to get stronger and that this was what the next stage required. The plan was obviously to break down the discussion into manageable chunks and to conduct thorough analysis. To exchange papers so we could get insights into the thinking of others and establish what we saw as acceptable benchmarks of progress until the eventual sign-off. You might agree to something and it can take months to sign-off because people would go away and fret about it, worrying what they’ll have to do next.

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SDLP perspectives For the SDLP, the process of talks with Sinn Fein was sustained by a tension of trying to draw Sinn Fein away from its obsession about British control and to use the opportunity as a basis for negating any perceived legitimacy for armed struggle. As SDLP participant in the dialogues Sean Farren stressed that, for the SDLP, the dialogues were designed to get Sinn Fein to look at the bigger picture of international relations, developing economic benefits from Europe and the US and to recognize how globalization was rendering national boundaries more porous. Within the context of Ireland, Farren noted how a need to rethink traditional republican positions: Came about as a result of the Anglo-Irish Agreement which was a major watershed because it created a new outer framework in which things could happen. Sinn Fein began to grudgingly acknowledge that this could not be ignored. The Agreement had demonstrated that the British could be brought to the negotiating table with the Irish. Also, it was supported by the EU, endorsed in the US congress and money was beginning to flow on the back of this, so there was very clear international endorsement for the joint Irish-British approach. Internationally, the weight of opinion was behind the Hume initiative so you had this coalescence of national and international opinion which ultimately created this space for dialogue in the 1990s to begin. You also began to see that the long war was not going to go anywhere. In that context feelers were put out to John Hume, particularly by Father Alec Reid, that it might not be a bad idea if Hume met Adams. Around 1986 the Anglo-Irish Agreement began to have some effect and this was an opportunity, which was when feelers were put out. Hume had always said what’s wrong with talking? Through meeting Hume and Adams arrangements were made by me and Mitchel McLaughlin to bring the two sides together in 1988. The talks took place at St Gerards on the Antrim Road which is a Redemptorist location. There were three meetings of the expanded groups but more meetings between Hume and Adams too. Farren continued to provide more detail of the meetings between the SDLP and Sinn Fein and highlighted the role of individual priests who worked to facilitate the interaction process: Sinn Fein wanted to engage the SDLP in a kind of pan-nationalist alliance almost reminiscent of the late 1940s when the Anti-Partition League brought all the parties together, nationalists North and South, to try and build a campaign to force the partition issue onto the British agenda. It went nowhere. They wanted us to use our influence to persuade the Irish

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to participate in a kind of international campaign that would force the Irish issue onto the international agenda and force the British to espouse what Sinn Fein called ‘the right to self-determination’ of the Irish people. We rejected the proposal first of all because Sinn Fein would not withdraw its support for the PIRA campaign and secondly, because we didn’t think it was going to go anywhere if it went over the head of the unionists. We countered the classical outlook, which is this country is territorially not divided but is one island; it’s the people who live here who are divided. They also rehearsed the classical argument that the British had no right to be here, and had this phrase which was ‘the right of the Irish people to resist’. There was also an obsession with the British establishment, the securocrats and conspiracy theory, which they applied in relation to both history and the present. They lived in a cocoon where the very traditional nationalist interpretation of Irish history from the 1920s predominated and where everything that was wrong was Britain’s fault. They adopted the analysis that British partition was the entire problem as if there was no division in Ireland. We had a different view, that the people of Ireland were divided, and that you had to have some kind of coming together, an accommodation, because the 1920s, whatever else they did, did not create an accommodation between nationalism and unionism. Our arguments with them attempted to penetrate the 1920s mindset and if you read the statements in the early 1990s there is a beginning of an acknowledgement from Adams that you had to reach an agreement with the unionists. But right up to the Good Friday Agreement they still clung almost rhetorically to the old interpretation, as if they don’t want to be seen as having abandoned it. Adams’ technique was to lecture us about Irish history, and he did that fairly frequently. He loved to lecture unionists about how they were not like the united Irishmen of the 1790s and told them they were living in a sense of false consciousness. Their logic was to start from a certain premise and that premise was that the British had no right to impose partition. So, the first premise was that partition was imposed, and the British should withdraw and allow the Irish people in the whole of Ireland to self-determination. They were very inwardlooking. Interestingly, they had trawled through the UN statements and conventions on the right to self-determination and that was what they latched on to. But, for creating this process, Father Alec Reid was the linchpin. His congregation, the Redemptorists, committed themselves soon after the hunger strikes, almost as a sacred enterprise, to try and promote some form of mediation, and they realized that the Provos and Sinn Fein were just talking to themselves. They were navel-gazing and they needed to break out from that. The Redemptorists did not intervene, and although Father Reid was broadly sympathetic to their approach, he did not seek to influence the discussions. He brought us together at

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the beginning of the day, said a prayer invoking God’s benevolence on the work we were doing and then withdrew. The talks were based on papers that were exchanged, and it was very clear that Sinn Fein was pushing for an agreed position. We were not pushing for an agreed position. I do not think we were in danger of being dragged onto their side because we had completely rejected that approach. But, the papers they exchanged were comprehensive in dealing with the arguments, and they put a lot of work into preparing them. Mark Durkan, who played a part for the SDLP in the dialogues, also spoke about the wider context of the talks, as well as emphasizing the potential problem of the SDLP being pulled towards Sinn Fein priorities and the risks of being seen as being sympathetic to them because of that: Soundings and approaches were being made in 1987. John Hume was making a point of reading between the lines of what Sinn Fein were saying publicly and considered the possibilities of where this was coming from. Father Reid contacted John through his office and he was briefed on the Redemptorist peace initiative. Alec Reid indicated that he had been in conversation with Sinn Fein people and that he believed there was potential to open up an alternative course of republicanism and he wanted to see if John would get involved. Father Reid explained how this relationship had developed and that the Catholic hierarchy were aware of what was going in. He mentioned that there were a couple of bishops who had been cited on it and was suggesting that engagement between the SDLP and Sinn Fein might lead to something. My advice to John at that time was that he shouldn’t do it and that any meeting should not take place before the General Election which was expected in 1987. The danger was that if it emerged that John was having talks with Gerry Adams and it leaked, either accidentally or deliberately, then this would create a whole story in and around election preparations and pacts and this would ricochet within the party which was challenging in West Belfast. It seemed to me it was more a matter of confirming yes in principle and seeing what was emerging from Sinn Fein’s language and that this would give greater confidence as to purpose. So the election took place in 1987 and then John had his first meeting with Adams. This was followed by a second meeting after both agreed there was more to talk about. John Hume’s agenda was very much that he wanted to put the case to republicans that, whatever their traditional justification for armed conflict was, in the context of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, there had arisen an opportunity to revisit or revise that position and one of the reasons John got involved was because he wanted to put this directly to Sinn Fein and not just leave it to rhetorical speeches and articles. He wanted to be able to state this case and test their position. Sinn Fein also wanted to challenge John by saying well if you are saying that the

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Anglo-Irish Agreement means that the British are now essentially neutral on the question of Irish self-determination and unity where is the proof and how can you convince people who believe otherwise? For Alec Reid and the Redemptorists I suppose the agenda was to essentially create a context and a mode that would mean that people who were engaged in violence could be persuaded that there was a non-violent alternative. Durkan then offered further reflection on the context and substance of the dialogues: Once the election of 1987 was out of the way the engagement began. At the second meeting Reid, Adams and John agreed that a meeting would take place, with myself as a second to John and someone as a second for Gerry Adams, and I went to Clonard for that meeting in August 1987. Alec Reid would often come to Derry and I would see him in John’s office after hours. He was pushing and was sharing a bit more about the hierarchy’s awareness of the initiative, as well as spelling out that he was in contact with Charles Haughey, and he briefed John on where they were at. He made it apparent that people in the republican movement would need to see the need for party political engagement, but we were not sure how far he was pushing them. We did not know if they were being pushed in a Redemptorist peace initiative that they didn’t have ownership of. We did not know where they were coming from or how cautious they were about this and I suppose this was shared on both sides. We knew that if there was going to be a dialogue it had to have a structure and rationale and was going to have some visibility of its own. That we could not sustain it on a secret basis otherwise it would soon become vulnerable and that was the reasoning behind movement to a more formal structured dialogue which was agreed in the latter months of 1987, with the dialogue essentially taking place over 1988. For Durkan, the dialogues relied heavily on text as the focal point for exchange and momentum, both of which had been devised to encourage and facilitate detailed consideration of political development: Hume asked them that if they were serious about peace, whether they would only accept British withdrawal as the basis for that and united Irish sovereignty? Up until that point they had said that British withdrawal was a precondition for any cessation of armed struggle. So it was about testing Sinn Fein on this, but it was also about them testing us on that too. Obviously there were papers exchanged and so John gave me their papers to read and it would have been the same with what he was drafting. That would then go through our own internal discussions and eventually went into final papers that would have been exchanged with

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Sinn Fein. We were not totally convinced that they wanted to bring about a complete cessation and we were not sure how far they were using this to indicate good faith towards a non-violent alternative. There was also a tension that developed as to whether they were using the talks to say we can use talks to move towards a cessation of violence if you basically agree to all our terms, and if you agree that, our position will become your position; that is, whether they wanted us to agree to their analysis and demands so they might then be able to convince the PIRA to cease and whether that was one of the credibility tensions with the dialogue. I can’t recall at any meeting whether anyone said they absolutely believed these people were dead serious about ending armed struggle. There was some serious violence going on at that time and they were saying we are not sponsoring, managing or controlling these campaigns, but they upheld the right of republicans to use armed resistance as a response to British rule. They would also point out the ills of state practices of the security forces and loyalists as quasi-agents of the British state. On the potential hazards that the dialogues created for the SDLP, and how they might be seen as aligning with Sinn Fein, so giving republicanism more credibility, Durkan remarked: John’s accounts to me indicated that it was Danny Morrison and Gerry Adams who were driving the Sinn Fein approach. Morrison would often get into an argument and say ‘Well if we accept this, what about that?’ So, the sense that we got was that they were testing all the time. When these dialogues became public people were asking who is persuading who here? Does this mean we are moving to their position or are they moving to our position? Mention of the dialogues also added fuel to language of a pan-nationalist front. Sinn Fein would have been more comfortable with that kind of language and Alec Reid would be asking what’s wrong with it? But there were sensitivities about this with our activist base and the electorate about what was happening here and where this was going. One had the impression at times that Alec Reid was canvassing for more of a common platform being articulated than they were. One dialogue I had with Tom Hartley of Sinn Fein was when they were pushing for more of an agreed position and obviously we wanted to make it clear that there was no doubts about our nationalism, or the fact that we want to see a united Ireland and believe in self-determination. But we were not going to say that this now also means we no longer have a position different from you on what that means or how we engage with others to try and bring that about. There was the view that because of the dialogues we were automatically conceding something and that we had lost principles. The fact that you remained in dialogue was sometimes taken as evidence that you agreed with their analysis and had been colonised by their agenda.

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On the points of contention that Sinn Fein raised, as well as the notable shifts that appeared to be arising from the talks, Durkan recalled: What changed from them essentially boiled down to clarifying what they believed was the justification and rationale for the continuing PIRA campaign and what they said in response to our arguments about how counter-productive it was. Even though they had killed unionists they insisted the violence was not being used against unionists, that the violence was not directed at any section of the Irish people. And we were responding by saying well that is not how this is seen and it’s certainly not how it’s felt. In particular we were saying you are doing this against the British state but that state has said in the Anglo-Irish Agreement that if the majority of people in Northern Ireland want unity they will facilitate it. So they are not preventing unity for their own purposes. These were probably the most pertinent exchanges where they said that armed struggle against Britain was valid because it was there for its own economic and strategic purposes. When John said that one could no longer claim this and at that time you had Reagan and Gorbechov dealing with the Cold War, which itself no longer held the same strategic sensitivity for Britain, one could see there was no real desire for the British to hang onto the North. John was also arguing how the European context had changed relationships and the idea that Britain occupying Northern Ireland was a priority to deal with threats from Europe, was clearly nonsense. Once Sinn Fein could see that the strategic interest argument was losing ground they emphasised the economic interest argument. But we responded by saying if a population of 1.5m people amounts to a subvention of billions where is the economic rationale and they insisted it gave the British a hold on the market of Ireland as a whole. We responded that this did not add up since the countdown was now under way to a European market emerging for 1992, so even if Britain’s involvement was an economic enterprise, and they were subsidising the market in Ireland for their own economic interest, after the single market it will be other European companies who are going to be able to flood that market. We also went through other arguments to ask what they thought Ireland’s natural resources were which would justify British involvement when they were closing down their own coal industry and selling water to the French. But what stuck in John’s head was that if we can get the British to say they had no selfish, strategic or economic interest then that would be John’s biggest takeaway from the 1988 dialogues. Obviously, that happened with British secretary of state Peter Brooke’s speech later, when the British made this explicit. Overall, Durkan saw the dialogues as being used by Sinn Fein to clarify their next move and position but for the SDLP representatives they were more about clarifying the possibilities of change in a post AIA world. The

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dialogues also enabled Sinn Fein to examine at close range the contentions and objections they would be likely to face in a more expansive series of political discussions with governments and unionists: It was very easy for them always to put the onus on everyone else to rationalise for them. So you might say something but then they would say well prove it. So they wouldn’t say that is okay we accept that argument for now. The analysis was always a test, with the onus on you to get this put up in lights for them. We always had questions about what their real purpose and motivation was and whether this was going to be cover to continue the armed struggle, because constitutional nationalism had not been able to articulate a modern republican case, or whether it was a matter of allowing them to join the mainstream, but more on the basis of making sure that everyone within the mainstream had to be carriers of their position for them. John would have said this is not a case of us subscribing to their position, but is about a bigger reality than just something within nationalism. There was also this sense that Sinn Fein could put anything to us but we could not put everything to them. It was like the sign at the shop which says ‘Don’t ask for credit as refusal often offends’. And they liked to create this position. SDLP politician John Tierney, who enjoyed close relations and trust with John Hume, concurred with the observations of Farren and Durkan, highlighting key points of dispute faced by Hume, as well as the central aim of developing a nationalist front in order put pressure on the British and Irish to engage in substantive negotiations: There had been a number of meetings before they broke publicly and they were quite advanced in terms of understanding. John’s theme, from back to Sunningdale, was a power-sharing arrangement with unionism and the Irish dimension and that was the basis of the talks. But when the dialogue broke John was lambasted by the Irish and British press and he came under a lot of pressure. John went to the party privately and said that he could understand the anger, because most within the SDLP did not know about the early contacts, but that the SDLP position was not changed and that our policy position would remain the same. John also believed that the longer these contacts went on the more chance that lives could be saved. I think he thought that if we could get a ceasefire, get the bombing and shooting stopped, then negotiations and the rest would follow. Within the talks Sinn Fein wanted a date for withdrawal and John kept saying that the unionists would never accept this. John was making the point that this is not just a nationalist agenda, but that you had to bring the unionists and the British onboard and if the demand was too high it would inevitably collapse. The international status of

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John meant that he was well connected all over Europe. He worked internationally explaining the position and Sinn Fein knew that he had all these contacts, hoping that they could help apply pressure on the British. They also knew, because of John’s contacts, that they were not going to get very far without them. We want a united Ireland too, but we wanted a negotiated and agreed united Ireland. I don’t think at that time Sinn Fein had followed the whole thing through and they did not have a clear plan. Our position was that you had to have consent to reach a united Ireland from all the people of Northern Ireland. But for Sinn Fein it was united Ireland, Brits out, full stop. We said that the unionists would have to be involved and that if the British were away today there would be civil war. So our position was agreed negotiations, institutions up and running, then we can negotiate and discuss and try to persuade the unionists that they would be better off in a united Ireland. The SDLP–Sinn Fein dialogues not only enabled Sinn Fein to seek out the core counter-arguments to their position within nationalism, but were designed to use Hume to open up contacts and possible awareness of a republican readiness to political engagement with the Irish and British governments. The dialogues, at one level, had offered necessary consideration and reflection on the problems that Sinn Fein would be expected to face if substantive negotiations with the two governments were to follow, and at another allowed for clarification and planning on such problems. But, more widely and importantly, the dialogues demonstrated a desire to become seriously involved in a political process. From the dialogues, Sinn Fein was no doubt able to absorb the more convincing SDLP arguments that would be likely to find appeal with the broader nationalist constituency and think about how they would, at some future point, articulate republicanism in a way which could connect with that appeal. But this was for later. At the time, the SDLP-Sinn Fein dialogues had been about mapping the terrain of political concerns that would need to be addressed as republicanism moved from war to peace, and that would be a much more complex, convoluted and precarious road to travel.

CHAPTER FIVE

Peace

The Sinn Fein–SDLP dialogues were not lost on Northern Ireland secretary Peter Brooke, who came to office on 24 July 1989 and sent a number of signals to republicans during his tenure which ended in 1992. Brooke wanted to draw unionists back into dialogue mood after their widespread resentment at the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA), as well as facilitate a climate for talks which republicans would be receptive to. As Brooke explained his intentions in interview: The central job around which everything else rotated was to honourably restore peace to the province so that we were not living in a terrorist environment. This required two principal considerations. First, there had to be a constitutional shift in order to get unionists back into the mainstream which they had been out of between 1985 and 1989 because the Anglo-Irish Agreement had sent them into self-imposed exile, which they had to be brought out of. If they could be brought out into the open and start serious constitutional talks with the Dublin government as well as the British, then this would put pressure on Sinn Fein to engage. And the second was to act on the information we were receiving about Adams and McGuinness, who seemed to have an interest in developing an endgame. This created two separate policy strands which had to be pursued and without necessarily knowing where each would end. If we got bogged down on one front then that would give us time to advance on the other. Brooke went on to emphasise the importance of sending signals to republicans so as to challenge the perception that the British were interested in Northern Ireland for colonial reasons, and in March 1991 sought to encourage Sinn Fein to see talks with the political parties in Northern Ireland on internal matters (Strand One) as a moment of opportunity to be part of a new process (the framework of negotiations that was to develop in

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Northern Ireland consisted of three strands based on: relations in Northern Ireland, relations between Northern Ireland and Dublin and relations between Dublin and London): I did not want there to be any misunderstanding from the unionist side about the firmness of the British government towards terrorism itself. It was also evident that the British were seen as a monolith and in Northern Ireland for selfish reasons. But it was obvious that this was not the case. We were there on a specific policy and not trying to milk the people of Northern Ireland. All that stuff was political garbage. I made a speech at a sixth-form college in December 1989, followed shortly after by one at a Rotary Club luncheon in Northern Ireland. The second one really kick-started the process because I pointed out that we were going to have exploratory talks about whether we could have constitutional talks. But, I suppose the speech which had the biggest impact, certainly with the unionists, was one I made after one hundred days in office, when I made myself available to the press and talked with journalists on a one-to-one basis. A journalist from the Press Association stressed that there was a Mexican stand-off, where the PIRA couldn’t beat the British and the British couldn’t beat the PIRA and he asked me if I would contemplate meeting Gerry Adams. I said that I would not meet Adams as long as the PIRA was involved in terrorist activity, but that I didn’t rule it out. That created a great furore amongst unionists than the other, most widely quoted, speech made in November 1990 to the British Association of Canned Food Importers and Distributors at the Whitbread restaurant in London, which became known as the Whitbread speech. I made the speech there because I wanted to deliver a speech in my own constituency which quickly followed the Rotary Club speech where we had ‘rolled the wicket’, and quite deliberately made a very strong statement against the PIRA to assure unionists that my heart was in the right place towards terrorism. Brooke’s speech after one hundred days in office was reproduced in the Irish Times on 4 November 1989 and included the following telling comments: There has to be a possibility that at some stage that debate might start within the terrorist community and that movement might come. From the government’s point of view, clearly the improvement in the conditions of life for everybody within Northern Ireland – and that included obviously economic developments, bringing jobs in, including to west Belfast and other areas of high unemployment within the province, would not, of itself, cause terrorism to falter. But it would be a contribution towards conditions in which that debate might occur within the terrorist community. And likewise a transfer of political power to local politicians,

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under a principle of consensus, would also, without again being decisive, be a contribution towards a solution. Now, if all that were to occur, then you would move towards a point, if in fact the terrorists were to decide that the movement had come when they wished to withdraw from their activities, then I think the government would need to be imaginative in those circumstances as to how that process should be managed … I hope that the government at that stage would be imaginative in how it responded. (quoted in Bloomfield 1998: 16) Gerry Adams welcomed Brooke’s comments and over the months following the interview made it known that Brooke had triggered further debate within the republican movement, leading to ‘the start of an intermittent but important and consistent dialogue between the two by means of coded public statements which lasted through Brooke’s term of office and beyond’ (Bloomfield 1998: 17). Unionist anger at the remarks (Bloomfield 1998: 18–19) clearly suited republicans further and stimulated their interest as to where Brooke might be potentially heading, but perhaps the most significant comment made by Brooke came on 9 November 1990, when after elaborating on what the British presence might mean he went on to say that ‘The British Government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland: our role is to help, enable and encourage’ (Bloomfield 1998: 52). The speech, which was made known to Sinn Fein leaders a week before it was announced (Bloomfield 1998: 54), proved vital in terms of marking a change towards Northern Ireland and challenged republican obsessions about the British presence. Elaborating on the background to this crucial moment and how it was prompted as a response to what Brooke saw as a republican fixation and misunderstanding of the British role, Brooke went on: I had been reading Republican News with care and it was obvious from the articles which Adams wrote that we were seen as a colonial power, which just seemed insane to me and bore no relation to political reality. That one sentence was reinforcing what I had said before, which was that if the PIRA were to lay down their arms and there was a ceasefire, then there was a possibility of negotiations. The speech I made about terrorism at the Rotary Club was in preparation for this sentence. The speech was not made in London to disguise or conceal it from unionists because we put out press releases, but we were keen that it should be made in London because that makes it a statement about a London government and not just a comment by a secretary of state out on a limb by himself. Although, in due course, the unionists asked for copies of the speech so that they could study it in detail, it did not prejudice the rest of the conversations we were having about getting into constitutional talks and indeed, the following spring that is what happened.

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But, commenting on the context and background which shaped Brooke’s approach, senior British civil servant ‘Mark’, who was involved during this period, saw Brooke’s intervention as designed to attract political interest from unionists as much as republicans: The Brooke statement of 1990 was important but it wasn’t specifically aimed at Adams or McGuinness (although there was that conversation going on). It was all part of setting a context for our proposition, which we kind of launched in January 1990, that there was a basis for all-party negotiations, including the Irish government, to work out an agreed way forward to replace, in effect, the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The Irish and the SDLP were saying it would be helpful to have a clear statement that the British were neutral facilitators in this and didn’t have an agenda of their own and that essentially was the message of that speech. It was very carefully crafted and there were drafts of it going around for about a month or six weeks beforehand. We discussed with the Irish as to whether it hit the right note and were taking soundings from the SDLP and others as to what the message needed to achieve, and to create a context which would make it possible to continue with a talks process. The breakthrough comment from Brooke was not a completely new way of thinking since the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) had been trying to use it since the end of the Cold War. This was resisted by the Thatcher government however because of unease in using neutral language when British nuclear submarines passed so close to Ireland in patrolling the Atlantic (‘Thatcher gave approval to talks with the IRA’, The Guardian, 16 October 1999). In this instance, Brooke’s comments had been encouraged by John Hume, drawing from his earlier dialogues with Gerry Adams, but there were additional points of interest when an advance copy of the speech was made available to Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness through MI6 officer Michael Oatley, who had passed the speech to Father Denis Bradley to give to McGuinness (Adams 2003: 97), and in particular the statement that ‘an Irish republicanism seen to have finally renounced violence would be able, like other parties, to seek a role in the peaceful political life of the community. It is not the aspiration to a sovereign united Ireland against which we set our face, it is its violent expression’ (quoted in Clarke and Johnston 2001: 208). Yet, it was the expression about the British having ‘no selfish strategic or economic interest’ which was particularly emphasized in communications between republicans, Dublin and London over the next four years and which gave impetus to building a peace process (Feeney 2002: 373). Brooke attempted to communicate British neutrality in Northern Ireland but also framed the potential for movement in relation to a ‘unity by consent’ principle, where change could only come about through majority approval (O’Brien 1999: 211). Gerry Adams responded to Brooke by stating that armed force

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would continue until conditional and discernible change was apparent, but tempered this position with another focus that placed onus on the British: ‘The IRA says that armed struggle is a method of political struggle adopted reluctantly and as a last resort in the absence of any viable alternative’ (a message similarly directed towards Dublin and nationalists in Northern Ireland) (quoted in O’Brien 1999: 212). Though more obstructive noises were emitted from the Conservative Party in Britain, republicans sought to capitalize on Brooke’s comments by seeking clarification and so draw the British closer to a process of tentative dialogue (O’Brien 1999: 213), and re-issued the document A Scenario for Peace as a basis for interaction. In particular, republicans were interested in what Brooke meant by the British responding with imagination in the event of an end to armed struggle, to which Brooke intimated economic investment, Sinn Fein’s involvement in the political process and removal of the army presence (Bloomfield 1998: 52). As a gesture to provide space for consolidation on the impact of Brooke’s speech, the PIRA called a three-day ceasefire on 23 December 1990. Behind-the-scenes contact between republicans and the British had been taking place through a process of ‘back-channel communications’ which had been used on and off since the early 1970s (O’Dochartaigh 2011a; 2011b), came largely into prominence again during the hunger strikes and then remained largely dormant until Brooke came into office, whereupon the back-channel was reactivated. This process consisted of an MI6 officer, Michael Oatley, a contact based in Derry (Brendan Duddy), Father Denis Bradley, a further local Derry businessman and Martin McGuinness. The value of the back-channel came from allowing the British to deny direct contact, whilst providing a means to assess the pulse of republican thinking. McGuinness met Oatley in January 1991 (just a few weeks after Brooke had provided an opening with his speech) to discuss Anglo-Irish matters and consider positions. Though from the republican perspective the meeting was exploratory, McGuinness also saw the opportunity as an important one, believing at the time that if the British were intent on moving forward on the back-channel process, republicans would be ‘morally and tactically obliged not to reject their offer’ (Taylor 1997: 321). Clearance for the reactivation of the back-channel to explore possibilities with the British and Oatley was provided by the PIRA Army Council (Adams 2003: 95), but this was not a unanimous vote of confidence given concerns about ‘the nature of the line of communication and what it would all lead to’ (Adams 2003: 96). Oatley was later replaced in the chain by another British representative (this time an M15 officer) who was given the codename ‘Fred’ by republicans but who was named as Colin Ferguson (later his name was revealed to be Robert McLaren) (Adams 2003: 98) and Gerry Kelly joined McGuinness in the back-channel process. Against this backdrop, however, PIRA violence continued largely unabated, eliciting widespread condemnation. A few weeks after a meeting

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between the back-channel participants on 7 February 1991, the PIRA bombed Downing Street, narrowly missing John Major and his Iraq War Cabinet which was meeting at the time and forced to scurry under tables as protection against the blast. This tactic was designed to intensify pressure on the British to engage, but also corresponded with pressure on republicans in return to reciprocate with more than a three-day ceasefire. Throughout this period, the PIRA carried out a spate of atrocities and saw the escalation of violence as important leverage for getting the British to acknowledge the political track as the most viable option to bring the armed struggle to an end. Tactics used by the PIRA during early 1991 included using a ‘human bomb’ to maim and kill inside a Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) barracks, bombing Victoria Station in London, numerous bombings and killings carried out in Northern Ireland, attacks on ‘soft targets’ which included killing and maiming people in Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast, bombing the Grand Opera House and Ulster Unionist Party Office in Belfast and planting incendiary devices at the National Gallery and a shopping centre in London (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 244–254). This intensification was paralleled by signals from republican leaders about wanting to meet the British, with the violence a clear sign that any talks which did not involve Sinn Fein would be doomed to fail. Thinking inside the republican leadership about the emerging debate on engagement with the British became evident in a letter sent from Danny Morrison to Gerry Adams when Morrison was in jail on 17 October 1991. In that letter Morrison argued that Sinn Fein had misread the Brooke talks with other parties in March and that ‘our public statements showed we were on the edge and unsure of our position’. Morrison impressed in the letter how important it was for Sinn Fein not to confuse hostility with analysis and to say nothing if uncertain of how to respond: ‘Unless we say something new about how to unravel the political stalemate we would be as well battening down the hatches and saying nothing. Otherwise, we only confuse our base, give the impression that we are indecisive and weaker than we are and give the opposition an opportunity to hammer us’ (Morrison 1999: 240). Yet the thrust of Morrison’s letter was also to encourage republicans to make the leap towards negotiations and to indicate a precedent for this risk Morrison quoted from a book The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter by Albie Sachs an ANC member: ‘We might find ourselves confronted with hard decisions, whether to hold out for generations if necessary, until we are finally able to overthrow and completely destroy the system of apartheid, or to accept major but incomplete breakthroughs now, transforming the terrain of struggle in a way which is advantageous to the achievement of our ultimate goals’ (Morrison 1999: 241). Some six months later, in a more considered and extended analysis Morrison went further with the suggestion that political engagement had to be seen as a viable strategy and pushed for a greater recognition of the political option: ‘if the IRA does not

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raise the quality of its campaign the struggle could go on forever, and if it cannot raise the quality of its campaign it should consider the alternative’. Morrison elaborated further on the Armalite and ballot box strategy where armed struggle was seen in a context of political goals, noting ‘the whole purpose of opening up a political front in the first place was because of the acknowledgement that the purely military struggle was being isolated and marginalised and could not on its own win. We needed to muster the full potential of the community and bring everyone into the struggle. We had to join other struggles’ (Morrison 1999: 289). The intersection of armed struggle and political development had become important because: ‘The fortunes of Sinn Fein and the IRA are inextricably linked: they have the same cause and ultimate objectives and their memberships are drawn from the same pool of support’ (Morrison 1999: 291). Decisions about moving further in the direction of politics, Morrison acknowledged, were difficult given that ‘A republican consensus on which of our objectives and demands are realisable is difficult to arrive at because such discussion by its very nature tends to undermine morale and resolve. Yet silence can create group deception’ (Morrison 1999: 291). However, uncertainty about this was worse and it was for this reason that Morrison firmly stated the need to realize that ‘We should never allow the situation to decline to the extent that we face such a decision from the depths of an unpopular, unseemly, impossible-to-end armed struggle or from the point of brave exhaustion – another one of the “glorious defeats” with which our past is littered’ (Morrison 1999: 292). This position was not lost on the British government who observed closely the messages emanating from Sinn Fein and the PIRA. Summarizing the British assessment at this time, civil servant ‘Mark’ said: I think the PIRA was effectively defeated by the activity of the security forces by the late 1980s and after. They realised that they could not win so that was the fundamental driver. The other thing was the realisation by 1991–2 that there was a very real prospect of a political deal being done between the constitutional parties and the two governments that excluded them. Even if you look back to the 1970s it’s quite clear in the sociological analyses of nationalism and Irish opinion that they were much more ambivalent about what the eventual endgame was. Within the SDLP there were debates and tensions about what their priority was, whether it was Irish unity or a place within Northern Ireland and the UK. Republicans would also say they had the absolute authority to assert a united Ireland because that was the wish of the majority of the people expressed in the last Northern Ireland election of 1918. It was really the significant prospects of reaching a deal in the 1992 talks that led the republican movement to finally commit to a strategy of engaging and moving away from the armed struggle.

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At the time of Morrison’s exchange, the PIRA continued to bomb London and violence in Northern Ireland carried on unabated. But even in this environment, where the armed campaign appeared to be increasing rather than decreasing, messages about negotiations continued to circulate. In June 1992, days before a meeting between the Northern Ireland parties and the British and Irish in London, at an annual Wolfe Tone commemoration speech, Sinn Fein’s Jim Gibney gave further credence to the probability of talks and negotiations when he commented: ‘We know and accept that the British government’s departure [from Ireland] must be preceded by a sustained period of peace and will arise out of negotiations’ which would involve ‘the different shades of Irish nationalism and Irish unionism’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 266). This message, though, came in a context of involvement between the Northern Ireland parties and the British and Irish goverments which became known as the Brooke Initiative, where, under Brooke, there was an attempt to address and negotiate a way out of the Northern Ireland conflict and generate some impetus by using the limitations of the earlier AIA of 1985 as a basis for movement. Brooke was particularly attentive to the position of unionists and their view that discussion could be seen as weakness, and sought to turn unionist intransigence over the AIA into preparedness for re-engagement on the basis of a negotiated alternative (Bloomfield 1998: 7). The potential attraction to unionism was that this alternative could lead to a situation which preserved identity and so would remove the possible threat of dilution that the Agreement of 1985 was seen to bring (Bloomfield 1998: 13). Perhaps it was also for this reason that the unionists were seen as more decisive in what they wanted from the talks in comparison to the SDLP who also took part but were less specific about what they desired (Bloomfield 1998: 20). Nevertheless, the involvement of nationalists was an indication that they had something to gain and it was very much due to the skills of Brooke that these early talks led, in principle, to an acceptance of change through consent (Bloomfield 1998: 22). The overarching aim of the Brooke talks was to develop the basis for ‘a new and broadly based agreement’ built on the understanding that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 245), but the talks ending in July 1991 was as much down to unionist unease about where they might lead in terms of Irish participation, as it was down to an unwillingness to negotiate the Inter Governmental Conference, which was established under the Anglo Irish Agreement to give the Irish a consultative role in cross-border cooperation, legal affairs, politics and security (see also FitzGerald 1992: 559–560). Though the negotiations of this period were ultimately unsuccessful, it is also apparent, as Bloomfield points out, that under Brooke this moment ‘was effectively a vital preparatory stage in the development of the peace process’, providing ‘the chemistry which preceded the later physics of solution-building’ (Bloomfield 1998: 197). For Bloomfield, there were essentially four reasons for this: first, it offered a

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structure and formula for negotiations; second, it provided a framework of substance for those negotiations to take place; third, it gave a useful introduction to the kind of negotiations that the parties would later become part of; and fourth, it created a process which helped to redefine a policy in Northern Ireland that supported a shift in the British approach to republicanism (Bloomfield 1998: 197). The negotiations had proved British intent to work on the question of devolution and opened the possibility for movement through the emergence of a new consensus (if contested) about the principle of consent. Brooke’s dealings with the parties and a parallel process of megaphone diplomacy and back-channel messages also kept republican attention engaged, and so performed a delicate balancing act which appeared to manage the disparate positions that constituted negotiations and would frame the emerging process. In response to these movements, Sinn Fein published the paper Towards a Lasting Peace in February 1992 (www/sinnfein.ie/contents/15212). Against a climate of continuing violence, which strongly inferred how unsuccessful talks would be without Sinn Fein being involved, they sought to use the paper not just to reinforce the blame for conflict on the British, but also to try and elicit further responses from the British on their intent to facilitate peace. The orientation of the paper, as with previous efforts, was to present the British presence as the obstacle to peace and to reiterate how ‘Britain’s policy is the root cause of the conflict’, maintained as it was ‘through military and political coercion’. The Brooke talks were seen as ‘simply a programme for political stability and to perpetuate partition’ and unionists were conceived as a minority in an all-Ireland context; little more than a product of British political interests and the British, who were a hindrance to democracy, should acknowledge this by leaving. But although the emphasis of the document was strongly weighted towards condemnation and criticism of the British, it also hinted at republicanism wanting a role in any developing peace process. Perhaps one of the key statements in the document is: ‘Irish republicans are committed to playing a constructive role in building national democracy when the British government finally adopts a policy of withdrawal from Ireland’, for although this statement appeared to be categorical on the British position, it also appeared categorical on Sinn Fein being ‘committed to playing a constructive role …’ in bringing this about. The thrust of the document was clear: it would stand as an indisputable condemnation of Britain’s involvement in Northern Ireland which the republican base would read as a restatement of the traditional position (we won’t change) but couched within this was a desire to engage (we will change). The insistence that the British should withdraw is not, of course, the same as thinking they would withdraw and the likelihood of the British even entertaining such a prospect was remote to say the least, but Towards a Lasting Peace showed that Sinn Fein wanted to be involved in a political process designed to achieve peace. Their starting point for

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negotiating this eventuality was notably unreasonable (as most start points for negotiation are), but this should not disguise that the document held within it a desire to be part of the process to bring that change about. For Gerry Adams, the onus being put on ‘sovereign power and authority’ in the document was also a reflection of republican political ambition to ‘effect the scale of change’ desired (Adams 2003: 108). And, behind the scenes, Sinn Fein were making appeals to move quickly to face-to-face meetings with the British in the knowledge that communications between Irish taoiseach Albert Reynolds and British prime minister John Major were taking place to make this possible. Peter Brooke’s replacement by Patrick Mayhew as Northern Ireland secretary in 1992 led to a renewal of the talks that Brooke had initiated but were concerned ostensibly with North-South relations (Strand Two) and without the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) who refused to participate. Mayhew was also intent on keeping back-channel communications with republicans alive (Adams 2003: 112) and so a fairly regular process of confidential exchanges between republicans and the British continued. Denial of these contacts later by Mayhew was to expose the closely guarded secret of talking with republicans and for a while soured relations with the Irish when the contacts were publicly revealed in November 1993 (Setting the record straight, Sinn Fein, 1994 http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/15216). This period was, in particular, a time when Sinn Fein were considering and working on the conditions necessary for their entry into the political process, but relations with the British were further undermined by reluctance to respond to a PIRA ceasefire offered in May 1993. This raised serious concerns about British intentions towards negotiations, as well as whether the British were trying to use contacts to gauge the thinking of republican leaders without wanting the formal engagement that Sinn Fein was after (Fenney 2002: 392). Republican resistance to the idea that a ceasefire should be called as a necessary pre-condition for talks contributed to suspicions about moving into a formal political process (Adams 2003: 120). Whilst the republican expectation was on having the ‘correct’ political conditions for entry into talks, the British expectation was that republicans had to create those conditions by ending violence. Both positions reflected fears about concessions, appearing weak and losing the moral high ground. The role of the Irish was especially important to help shift the logjam. Drafts and redrafts of the Hume-Adams exchanges circulated amongst a small group of key players in the Dublin government and it was the HumeAdams document which was used in discussions between the British and the Irish that culminated in the Downing Street Declaration (DSD) on 15 December 1993. Republican response to the DSD focussed on which aspects could be used to underscore its political aspirations, also assessing it for signs of British latitude and nationalist resonance. Republicans similarly paid close attention to press briefings given by the British in the immediate

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aftermath of the DSD’s release, so assessing connection between detail and context, but also between what might happen and what probably would happen (Adams 2003: 146–150). Providing an indication of thinking in the Dublin government at this time, former Head of the Anglo-Irish Division and Foreign Affairs, Sean O hUiginn explained: It was very significant, of course, that republicans had come to the view that the long war was unproductive and that both the PIRA and the British had reached the same conclusion, that it was unwinnable and completely destructive on both sides. It is important here to also go back to the Hume-Adams dialogues, firstly because that revealed the willingness of republicans to embark on the political road and, secondly, because one of the absolutely crucial documents, the Downing Street Declaration, owed its genesis to that dialogue. Hume inherited a situation where Northern Ireland was rejected out of hand as a legitimate entity by its nationalist population, who saw it as a contrivance against them. Nationalists might engage in a limited way politically, but without any ownership or endorsement of the system. Hume had with great skill worked to create a middle-ground essentially based on ‘and/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ situation, which in its essence was aimed at making it honourable for nationalists to serve wholeheartedly in the system. The dialogues also indicated that under certain circumstances republicans were contemplating a political agenda which was not about the British out now. This was a fraught exercise for them because historically their tradition saw it as a betrayal to engage in politics, because compromise was treachery, and it was preservation of the faith that mattered. Their realisation that the armed struggle was a murderous cul-de-sac was manifestly true, but their tradition meant that extreme caution was needed in developing a new strategy to reflect that insight. In the beginning that meant they went for minimal gestures and it took time for them to grasp that the outside world had a different perspective on such matters. The republican movement is a complicated mix and it was hard to say which particular element was dominant at any one time. This, it seemed to me, depended on the circumstances. Just as there were some sectarian currents so there were also ‘enlightenment’ currents which inhibited any collective descent into avowed sectarianism, and those working within the peace process had to be conscious of that and seek to mobilise these better angels. Another important consideration was that republicans were actually putting on the table something that, in their eyes, was very important and that was their ‘myth’. Republicans cultivated the myth that they never compromised, and were unshakeable in their adamantine principles and doctrines. Yet while the myth enhanced their mystique and to that extent their power, it only really achieved negative objectives. Nothing good came out of a political posture that was regarded as

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absurd by ninety per cent of the population. If the real world was not amenable to your imagined policy you just retreated into this pure and compensatory fantasy world which had no wider legitimacy. Getting into negotiations put that myth on the table and that was dangerous and fraught for them, because the credibility of the myth would not survive its being put on the table. Even if they went back into the tunnel they would be different for having once left it. The people who worried that the Irish government was one-sidedly risking its democratic principles by engaging in the process, did not always understand that the republicans saw a comparable burden of risk on their side. Continuing, O hUiginn expanded on the Irish government’s initial reservations about entering into a peace process with Sinn Fein: There was a deep scepticism initially about whether republicans would do the business on the peace process. To some extent they were at once victims and beneficiaries of their own myth, that of people who never compromised. On the one hand, that gave them a certain leverage because people didn’t take them for granted, or feel they could be manipulated. But, on the other, people regarded them as a non-negotiable quantity, and the hope they would espouse the political process and leave the physical force tradition behind seemed a pipe-dream, not worth too much political effort or risk. It was a very slow process with people almost feeling their way before thinking there might be something in this. There were different personalities in government and they would range from hostility and scepticism to a willingness to suspend disbelief, shall we say. I was very conscious of one central fact, which was that the traditional and intuitive strategy of rallying the so-called moderates to defeat the extremes had been tried with great persistence and energy but had never produced success. The reason was that moderates on each side feared their own extremes infinitely more than they trusted the moderates on the other side. For republicans, politics was seen as a dirty business and the armed struggle was the noble thing. Republicans who got elected prided themselves on their lack of conventional political engagement, so for much of the time it was difficult to do business with the republican leadership. Then you got these very able figures coming to the fore during the Troubles who were political and skilful, and able to build a much stronger intersecting mesh between paramilitarism and republican politics. The changes taking place in the republican movement were essentially the reflection of a tentative, but growing, consensus about moving away from the military path to a political one and the slow but planned commentary which came from key republican figures from 1984–1994 suggested a

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deliberate, if delicate, distance being struck between Sinn Fein and the PIRA (Moloney 2002: 344–346). The emerging distinction between military and non-military republicanism was also an indication of agreement amongst the seven-man PIRA Army Council (seven meant the avoidance of a split vote). According to Moloney, Gerry Adams played a driving role in the Army Council and having three other members of the Council offer routine support for Adams meant that the top tier of control in the PIRA was effectively dominated by those who wanted political development. The Army Council ostensibly decided PIRA policy, but operational decisions were carried out by the PIRA’s chief of staff and GHQ, which consisted of nine departments dealing with engineering, finance, intelligence, training, political education, internal security, publicity and a quartermaster’s department that oversaw ‘acquiring and smuggling weapons’ and then storing them (Moloney 2002: 376–377). Below the GHQ, the PIRA operated through two area structures: the Northern Command which consisted of the six counties in Northern Ireland as well as five border counties in the Irish republic and the Southern Command consisting of the remaining twenty-one counties of Ireland. Under the command structures were brigades and active-service units. Since the Army Council effectively existed to ‘conclude peace or declare war’ (Moloney 2002: 378), there was little doubt that the Army Council and its members would be crucial for supporting talks and negotiations about the peace process. In also selecting the chief of staff to the GHQ, the Army Council made sure that control of the PIRA was exerted powerfully and collectively down through organizational structures. However, as Moloney goes on to point out, at this time, overall control and decision-making rested with the General Army Convention ‘a delegate gathering of the IRA rank and file that was supposed to meet every two years’ (Moloney 2002: 378). It was the GAC which decided changes to the PIRA constitution (the 1986 gathering to drop absentionism was an example of this) with a two-thirds majority vote necessary to make changes (Moloney 2002: 378). Through a twelve-member executive the GAC elected the seven-member Army Council thereby ensuring structural cohesion between the PIRA body and its leadership (although the last three splits are seen to have emerged because of tensions and frictions between these two levels (Moloney 2002: 379)). Meetings of the Army Council consisted of up to eleven people: the seven-member council, the GHQ chief of staff, the quartermaster general and an adjutant general, and a secretary to minute meetings. Those meetings would deal with military affairs, led by the chief of staff, but evaluations of political development and approaches to the peace process were invariably driven by Adams (Moloney 2002: 380). The trajectory of political thinking and winning the argument to support that direction had been assisted strongly by the SDLP, the Irish government and America, lending credibility to the formation of a pan-nationalist influence and underpinning a joint strategy of increasing pressure on the

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British whilst bringing about the conditions which would allow Sinn Fein’s entry into the political process (Moloney 2002: 394). For this, as Adams has confirmed, the importance of America was central in the construction of a new Irish agenda, enabling senior republicans to make the case to the Irish support base in the US as well as gaining access to top level American officials and President Clinton himself (Adams 2003: 151– 161). Adams also saw (mistakenly or otherwise) the American-nationalist-Irish-republican axis as instrumental in shaping a new consensus which drew international attention and helped exert pressure on the British to move as a result (Adams 2003: 164–165). Such factors were key aspects of the jigsaw that was being intricately put together to bolster the transition of politics and drain support for those advocating the military path (Adams 2003: 166). The continuation of armed struggle at the time of the DSD (1993) and after, for Irish taoiseach Albert Reynolds, confirmed a need for republican leaders to appeal strongly to their base so that any entry into negotiations would come from a position of strength not weakness and would indicate ‘they weren’t being rolled over by the British’ (Reynolds 2009: 249). But, communications with the Irish showed a hesitant approach to dialogue at this time too, with Sinn Fein initially rejecting official suggestions for ending violence and using ambiguity in order to avoid being caught in positions that could be counter-productive later on (Reynolds 2009: 255– 258). At other times, Sinn Fein sought to advance progress far quicker than the two governments could allow, believing that an intensification of pressure would move the process towards negotiations more speedily. Invariably this only served to expose the fragility of the process and made progress harder (Reynolds 2009: 259), while Sinn Fein tried to slow the process down, viewing expectations of engagement with the Irish and British as a possible trap (a fear the British similarly had (Major 1999: 432)). During such moments, as in the months after the DSD, one tactic used was to use slowness and the space it created to reassess direction and possible motivation by asking for clarification (Major 1999: 318). Indeed, within days of the DSD, Gerry Adams had written to the British seeking further elucidation on the document, which the British initially saw as an attempt to try and renegotiate the DSD (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 287), but later responded to in a ‘commentary’ on 19 May 1994 (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 289). That response ostensibly reiterated the consent principle. For republicans, the interlocking three strands of negotiation where ‘Nothing could be agreed until everything was agreed’ (Major 1999: 437) meant that progress was largely dependent on the process moving ahead as a whole (Major 1999: 440), but this relied on intense British involvement and a clearer signal from republicans on renouncing violence in order to advance politically. As John Major recalled in his memoirs ‘All parties coming to the table had to commit themselves exclusively to

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democratic and constitutional behaviour. Those who continued to use, or threaten violence could not be admitted to substantive negotiations; we were not prepared to discuss Northern Ireland’s future under duress, nor to ask others to do so. A clear renunciation of terrorism has to be part of the entry ticket to talks’ (Major 1999: 441). The British refused to be ‘persuaders’ who would convince the unionists of the merits of negotiation, but continued to press home the ‘principle of consent’ as a basis for engagement, arguing strongly that ‘The democratic right of selfdetermination had to remain within Northern Ireland’, so building consent from inside the province (Major 1999). This focus served to internalize the Northern Ireland problem and stressed that only those living in Northern Ireland could decide whether the province would remain part of the UK or not. For Sinn Fein leaders this position required careful handling. Since the stipulation of British withdrawal had been central to the transition from violence to politics and seemed an unambiguous precondition, and since the British had in no obvious way acquiesced to this demand, it became increasingly apparent that such an expectation would have to take on some ambiguity if republicans were going to agree to involvement in the political process. This tension reflected the need for two different approaches, one which handled getting the republican base to accept the political route and the other which required jettisoning the key conditional demand of British withdrawal in order to gain Sinn Fein access to the political process. And this would create two differing sets of expectations that would need delicate management if support from the Provisional base was not going to haemorrhage (Moloney 2002: 394). Moloney views this disparity as evidence of two peace processes going on simultaneously, one which saw British withdrawal as a pre-condition for negotiations (and which the bulk of the PIRA thought was being pursued) and the other which moved immediate British withdrawal to long-term possibility within the terrain of ‘consent’. This also meant that over time the withdrawal demand would become increasingly peripheral to political entry and subsequent negotiations (Moloney 2002: 395). Initial reactions amongst republicans to the DSD were hostile, but leadership figures in Sinn Fein made the argument that thinking should be focused on how to ‘bridge the gap’ between what the document was saying and what republicans believed it should be saying (Mallie and McKittrick 2001: 146). At that moment, the problem of leadership was in convincing others that a negotiated settlement which would not achieve Irish unity was consistent with republican objectives which demanded that end. Perhaps it was at this moment that the Sinn Fein leadership realized there would need to be a shift in perception from product (Irish unity) to process, where moves could be sold as achievements which political violence was unable to attain. This shift, to put it simply, would require an emphasis on how republicans, by involvement in the political process, could demonstrate

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tangible and irrefutable influence in ways that were unattainable outside of that process (Mallie and McKittrick 2001: 147). The DSD creatively negotiated between unionist and nationalist concerns, but also demonstrated how the governments had conjoined those concerns through the principle of consent. The document highlighted the structure of relationships between the British and Irish, who together would work to ‘foster agreement and reconciliation, leading to a new political framework founded on consent’ within Northern Ireland, for Ireland as a whole and between Ireland and Britain’. As with Peter Brooke’s speech of 1990, the document reiterated that the British ‘have no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland’ and that the priority would be to ‘embrace the totality of relationships’. The document stressed a commitment ‘to encourage, facilitate and enable’ through ‘a process of dialogue and cooperation based on full respect for the rights and identities of both traditions in Ireland’ and made it clear that ‘it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish’. The conclusion of the document impressed the consensual position, with both governments echoing the need for an end to violence and restating that ‘any change in the status of Northern Ireland, would only come about with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland’. Significantly, and as a clear enticement to republicans (as well as loyalists), the two governments reinforced how ‘the achievement of peace must involve a permanent end to the use of, or support for, paramilitary violence’, stipulating that participation in political talks was dependent on all parties involved showing ‘a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods’. For those in the Sinn Fein leadership such as Adams, the DSD was an indication that the British relationship with Northern Ireland was moving, but not in the form of disengagement as hoped (Adams 2003: 165). In response to the document, the PIRA continued activities, including a mortar attack on Heathrow Airport on 13 March 1994 (explosive primed not to go off was to show more the potential to wreck havoc than intent). During this early and fragile period of the peace process the PIRA’s objective was to continue the armed struggle, while those such as Adams would work to try and create a mood where a cessation of violence would become possible. As Adams put it at this time: ‘The IRA’s position was to continue the war. The Army Council had no other position. There was no doubt that the army leadership was open to the idea of supporting a genuine peace process, but it also remained committed to pursuing the armed struggle, and units generally operated at will within ordained guidelines’. Debate about a ceasefire, Adams noted, was ‘informal and was not leadership led’ (Adams 2003: 166), since to talk about a ceasefire formally at this stage would have risked sapping the morale and motivation of the volunteers

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and would send a message of uncertainty about the credibility of the armed campaign. Also evident, however, was that two voices were emerging in the republican movement at this time. One which remained firmly committed to the armed force tradition and saw a cessation as conceding to enemies, and another more pragmatic wing which saw armed violence as a tactical imperative that had to be switched on and off ‘when no alternative existed’. Though the pragmatic wing of republicanism was to win the argument in the longer term there were considerable fears at this time which centred on how change could, if not handled carefully, fracture ‘the internal cohesion of the army’ (Adams 2003). As Adams wrote in his memoirs, ‘it was clear that there were IRA leaders who felt the Downing Street Declaration was no advance but rather a trap. Some felt that there were no circumstances at this time which would justify the army having a cessation … . What was certain was that there was no possibility of an IRA ceasefire on the back of the Downing Street Declaration’ (Adams 2003: 167). In January 1994, the PIRA Army Council voted to reject the DSD which made no mention of British withdrawal and where reference to the principle of consent inferred continued unionist domination yes’ (Moloney 2002: 417). But, according to Moloney, Adams managed to convince the Army Council to not make this rejection known outside republican circles so that discussion about the content of the DSD could be maintained. This tactic, Moloney argued, was one of the most crucial moves in the peace process, since by ‘Having refused to say no, openly and publicly, the IRA was really saying yes’ (Moloney 2002: 417). To gain space and time, Adams sought to build further on republican relations with the SDLP and Dublin, and a Peace Commission was set up for Sinn Fein in Ireland to consult and debate on what the DSD had said. Moloney believes that delays in the consultation period (the Commission was supposed to conclude by the end of January 1994 but did not do so until June) strengthened the case for a ceasefire rather than weakened it, and was helped by calls for the British to clarify certain parts of the DSD, which indicated a willingness to engage and respond to Sinn Fein’s concerns. The call for clarification could also be seen as an attempt to try and find alternative interpretations or expose hidden meanings or messages within the text with the aim of further buttressing the case for ending violence (Moloney 2002). Hard-line public statements from the Sinn Fein leadership that the DSD was unacceptable, given that the British had made no inference of withdrawal, were clearly designed to show the PIRA it was not going to be accepted, but more in terms of as it stood rather than the principles within it and the conditionality it implied. Sinn Fein’s clarification requirements gave space for the pragmatists to draw out further possible implications which would require consideration and so open rather than close down dialogue possibilities. For Adams, this was a logical extension of Sinn Fein’s peace strategy and it created the support necessary for a three-day ceasefire to be called in April to allow the British

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the space to respond to questions over clarification. The British were given notice of the ceasefire six days before it happened and both Adams and McGuinness saw ‘the IRA move as the first brick in the process’ (Adams 2003: 167). The British clarification, which took the form of response to twenty questions from Sinn Fein, was given on 19 May 1994 and was largely a restatement of what the DSD said. As such, the responses given were designed to avoid any indication of negotiation by proxy, as well as further impress that the British were not seeking to be duplicitous but were as committed as the Irish in pursuing ‘consent, agreement, and parity of esteem and equity of treatment for both parts of the community in Northern Ireland’. The British went on to use the Sinn Fein questions to emphasise the need for an end to violence, arguing that although no party need accept the premise or goals of the DSD as it stood, all parties must renounce violence in order to be involved in any emergent process: ‘Acceptance of the Joint Declaration is not a precondition for entering the talks process. What is required is a permanent end to the use of, or support for, paramilitary violence … . For Sinn Fein and the IRA this would involve a public and permanent renunciation of violence as a means of achieving political ends, and commitment to peaceful and democratic means alone.’ The enticement offered to republicans came from the offer that the British would enter into ‘exploratory dialogue’ within three months of a cessation. This dialogue would be ‘to explore the basis upon which Sinn Fein could come to be admitted to an inclusive political talks process’, as well as ‘exchange views on how Sinn Fein [might come] to play the same part as the current constitutional parties’ and ‘to examine the practical consequences of the ending of violence’. Along with further reinforcement of the need to end violence, the British clarification reaffirmed the commitment to ‘upholding the principle of consent’ and because of that it ‘would be wrong to attempt to anticipate the outcome of the discussions or to set an artificial time limit on the achievement of agreement on issues of fundamental importance to the people of these islands’. That, the ‘clarification’ document went on, would be a matter for the ‘participants in the process of political dialogue’. Overall, the response was a firm restatement of the position that only peaceful and democratic means would allow republicans the opportunity to participate in the political process. For British prime minister John Major, the significance of the DSD was largely symbolic in that it demonstrated a joint commitment by the two governments to key principles (Major 1999: 455). As Major also noted, the language ‘was convoluted and dense, because of the painfully negotiated balance’ designed to allow all parties a say and role in any future settlement (Adams 2003). Major saw Sinn Fein’s clarification questions as ‘attempts to reopen the Joint Declaration negotiations’ (Major 1999: 457) and so British responses were crafted to counter this possibility, whilst at the same time indicating a willingness not to ignore or discount republican concerns.

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However, the responses offered by the British did not go far enough to support an initiative for immediate engagement, which was evidenced by a rejection of the DSD by the republican body at an annual conference in Letterkenny in July 1994 (Hennessey 2000: 84; although Adams preferred to call the outcome of that conference ‘uneventful’ (Adams 2003: 172)). Interestingly, although Letterkenny could be seen as a general dissatisfaction with what the DSD offered, it was nevertheless clear for republican leaders like Adams that it marked a ‘significant development’ (Adams 2003: 171) and that the conference was seen as more an opportunity for the leadership to inform the base of a trajectory which, although unsettling, was in place (Adams 2003: 174). The general direction of events, which pointed towards a serious desire to develop politically, also meant that a complete rejection of the DSD would amount to a dead end on that front whilst also bringing to an end serious efforts to develop relations with nationalists, Dublin and Irish-America (Moloney 2002: 419). Discernible progress on the pan-nationalism front also enabled Adams to visit the US to appear on high profile shows such as CNN’s Larry King Live and in press outlets like the New York Times, as well as enabling a visa to be granted to PIRA veteran Joe Cahill, who went on to inform republican voters in the US about the merits of the peace process and how republicanism was now gaining international attention and recognition which had been unreachable through the confined nature of armed struggle. Such steps were clearly designed, as Adams observed in his memoirs, to ‘provide a new context into which the IRA could enter’ (Adams 2003: 178). An indication of this new context was further confirmed when the PIRA called a ceasefire on 31 August 1994. The ceasefire announcement stated: Recognising the potential of the current situation and in order to enhance the democratic process and underline our definitive commitment to its success, the leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann have decided that as of midnight, Wednesday, 31 August, there will be a complete cessation of military operations. All our units have been instructed accordingly … . Our struggle has seen many gains and advances made by nationalists and for the democratic position. We believe that an opportunity to create a just and lasting settlement has been created. We are therefore entering into a new situation in a spirit of determination and confidence: determined that the injustices which created the conflict will be removed and confident in the strength and justice of our struggle to achieve this … . We note that the Downing Street Declaration is not a solution, nor was it presented as such by its authors. A solution will only be found as a result of inclusive negotiations. Others, not least the British government have a duty to face up to their responsibilities. It is our desire to significantly contribute to the creation of a climate which will encourage this. We urge everyone to approach this new situation with energy, determination and patience.

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The ceasefire had been made with a series of safeguards which were not disclosed publicly. A key influence in this process was the use of a document which appeared to have two different purposes and intentions. Called the TUAS document and produced over the summer of 1994 prior to the PIRA ceasefire being called, the document had been given the title of the Totally Unarmed Strategy (although some speculation existed as to whether the name of the document referred more to a ‘Tactical Use of Armed Struggle’).The TUAS document had been designed to encourage the republican base to see the transition to politics as an extension of struggle and not an abdication of it. It sought to outline the conditions for a political process which would assuage fears that politics would inevitably lead to a weakening of republican objectives, and press home how a realignment of political forces had provided an opportunity for widening the struggle in ways which armed violence alone could not do. As the document put it ‘It is vital that activists realise the struggle is not over. Another front has opened up and we should have the confidence and put in the effort to succeed on that front.’ The document stressed the importance of building consensus between Dublin, nationalists and republicans, finding common positions to underscore that consensus and using the US to lend further credibility to the consensus by supporting it. This wider legitimacy would then be used to  create political momentum which would demonstrate Sinn Fein as a driver of the new peace initiative, but would also be used to ‘drive a wedge between Britain and the unionists’ (Moloney 2002: 423). The consensus (referred to by others as the ‘pan-nationalist front’) would be constructed in relation to nine principles: 1. Partition has failed. 2. Structures must be changed. 3. No internal settlement within six counties. 4. British rule breaches the principle of N.S.D. [national self-determination]. 5. The Irish as a whole have the right to N.S.D. – without external impediment. 6. It is up to the Dublin/London governments with all parties to bring about N.S.D. in the shortest time possible. 7. The unionists have no veto over discussions involved or their outcome. 8. A solution requires political and constitutional change. 9. An agreed united and independent Ireland is what republicans desire. However, an agreed Ireland needs the varied traditions to be viable. (Moloney 2002: 498–501). The TUAS document was supported by a series of initiatives which would contribute to ending conditions that had served to marginalize republicans politically. A  timetable drawn up by the Irish indicated meetings at the highest level would begin within two weeks of a PIRA ceasefire, that a

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consultative process between Sinn Fein and the Irish would be set up, that Sinn Fein would be part of a Forum on Peace and Reconciliation and that obstructions to America would be removed, giving Sinn Fein access to the White House and the international stage (Moloney 2002: 424–425). On top of this, as mentioned, Joe Cahill, a republican veteran, was granted access to America in order to address the republican audience there about Sinn Fein’s commitment to the peace process (Moloney 2002: 427). Explaining the background to this development and in particular the work behind the scenes between the Irish and the Americans that led to Cahill being allowed entry to the US, Irish ambassador to Washington from 1991–1997 Dermot Gallagher explained: My sense was that the PIRA were not prepared to formally announce a ceasefire until one of their iconic figures, Joe Cahill, had the opportunity to brief and reassure their people in the United States. Cahill was seen very much as a father figure within the organization and one who carried great personal authority and credibility, having at one stage been sentenced to death for his activities. His message to key players in the States would probably have been that the ceasefire was a hugely significant move forward in the overall peace process and one that the leadership was very comfortable with. I believe his presence and message were crucial in delivering the support of their American constituency and, critically also in this carefully managed process, in helping prevent any kind of significant split, a constant and ever present fear of the leadership. Albert Reynolds made this very point to President Clinton in convincing him to grant a visa to Cahill against the strong advice of the administration’s security advisors. The president had asked the taoiseach if he had seen this guy’s file, to which Reynolds made the tactically astute and compelling response that there would be no point in sending him if he didn’t possess a CV of this nature! Cahill would, I suspect, have also placed very significant emphasis on the important support of President Clinton and key weighty figures in congress for the peace process, as most critically and emphatically reflected in the president’s earlier decision to grant Gerry Adams a visa to visit the US. This was perhaps the only occasion when the British and Irish Embassies in Washington, though always at the time in competition to some degree, were in direct opposition in conveying advice to the White House. The British were joined in their opposition to allowing the visa by key personnel in the system, especially on the security side and in the State Department. As against that, the White House team, and senior figures in congress, shared the view of the Irish government and Embassy, and important players in Irish America, that the issuing of a visa for Adams would enable the peace process, and in particular the progressive movement of the republican movement from the cold into

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democratic politics, to take a qualitative leap forward. It would also, in our view, significantly enhance the Sinn Fein leader’s status in his own community and within his own complex movement. It was in many ways a psychological victory for Adams, made all the more so by the British so openly and robustly opposing it. Gallagher expanded on the interactions between the Irish and the US and spoke about the symbolic significance of moves which, for republicans, would demonstrate a collective nationalist collective response to politicization: The president bought into this logic, taking the view that if it delivered, the risk would have been well worth taking and, on the other hand if it failed there was no damage done. Moreover, the visit was only for forty-eight hours and Adams was not allowed to fund raise during it. An important context for this, in my view, was that the president took the view from the beginning of his contacts with the Irish government that Dublin had a clear strategy which they believed could deliver peace and secondly that, in pursuit of this, London and Dublin would work closely together, with all issues, no matter how sensitive for any side, being on the table. The Adams visit was, I would argue, a significant turning point in the peace process and gave the move towards a lasting ceasefire a new momentum and energy. Adams was now able to point out with authority that real political progress was under way and that republicans were no longer on their own with Dublin actively trying to move the process forward, with an influential diaspora in the US working closely with the Irish government and key players in the US congress and administration in this process, and with a US president who was well informed and strongly supportive. Some republicans even saw this as what they called a ‘pan-nationalist front’, and took great encouragement from it. Moreover, and even though John Major had robustly opposed a visa for Adams, republican strategists knew he was committed to continuing to advance the peace process, as would any likely successor. Against all this background, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were in a better position to convince their movement to facilitate them in taking the process further. But if they were to do so successfully, they understandably felt they had to advance in carefully choreographed stages, with successive moves facilitated by and following confidencebuilding measures by Dublin, London and Washington. Making progress in one area made it easier, of course, to achieve progress in another. In turn, movement forward by the republican movement encouraged the two governments to take risks in moving the process on to progressively more substantive stages. Such movement forward also helped to encourage the unionist parties to think in terms of all-party negotiations, as John Hume and his colleagues in the SDLP had been courageously advocating for some considerable time.

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The Gallagher insight from working in Washington indicates how such moves helped to make it possible for Adams and McGuinness to win the argument for a ceasefire which was carried by a five-to-one majority vote in support by the PIRA Army Council (Moloney 2002: 426). Choreographed with a public celebration on the streets of Belfast to present the ceasefire as a mark of strength and success rather than weakness and capitulation, the ceasefire statement marked the beginning of the end for the PIRA. It was a clear recognition that the armed struggle could go no further and that another climate was being entered into that would require new thinking, new tactics and new strategies in order to support the Sinn Fein project. The ceasefire statement reinforced a number of points in its message: recognition of the human costs of conviction to the military campaign; depicting that campaign as bringing about the conditions for political transition; creating an image of inseparability between armed and political struggle; conveying that the energy of armed resistance must be transformed into political activism by viewing politics as part of the same trajectory as the armed struggle and as a continuation of it; highlighting how expectations about political development have to be conducted with ‘patience’; and making reference to the complex range of circumstances and groups which had not been factored into the moral absolutism and unilateral actions of armed struggle. Sinn Fein advisor and community worker Jim Gibney highlighted the importance of depicting armed struggle as co-terminus with political struggle and spoke about being involved in this transition: Regarding the ceasefire, you cannot have a long argument about a ceasefire in an armed organization because it would be self-defeating since it would undermine the morale of volunteers. But the notion of a ceasefire arose at a leadership level much earlier than it did for the bulk of the PIRA. Most knew this was going to end in negotiations, but you cannot fight a war on the basis that you might win. You fight a war on the basis that you will win and you continue to do that right up to the point arrives when you are in a new situation. You also have to remember that the PIRA was an army and armies by and large don’t go in for a lot of discussion. It’s about discipline and the next military operation being planned. You can’t say to someone would you like to do this operation? There may be a debate about tactics to employ and the best way to approach it, but if you are a fighting force then people are ordered to do things and that is the culture. But when that war is over you require a different system of debate and developing ideas. So people must be given more information and this is where the leadership have to be involved. Then you had a greater chance of winning support because volunteers would say if it’s good enough for them then it’s good enough for me. People were being told at the time that this is a messy business and does not run in a straight line, that it doesn’t lend itself to coherency

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until much later on. This was the case in 1994, when it was seen as a bit of a leap into the dark. But the whole approach was to ensure that the PIRA and Sinn Fein remained united. Adams and McGuinness were mindful of past splits and it goes to say that without the backing of the whole army in negotiations you are seriously weakened. That last thing the leadership wanted was a disunited PIRA behind them. Expanding on the broader political context of exchanges which influenced the ceasefire decision, the fears and concerns this raised and the potential problems it might create later, Gibney went on: At this time we would have been inclined to use the private channels that had been built up to try and put pressure on the need to move. When you get involved in these kinds of negotiations, with your enemy, it is important to convey to them the difficulties as much as possible because it’s in their interest too if the difficulties you are facing are minimised. You have to share difficulties so they don’t become a crisis down the line. With such people it was easier in terms of how you could convey information and it was more open because you could bring people together in rooms and meet them in different places. With the Army [PIRA] it was different because it had to be clandestine, private and secret and it was always more difficult to bring them together to convey what the latest developments were. The Sinn Fein leadership was always vigilant to the potential problems of people finding out information from the news before it had been explained to them. The most important constituency to be negotiated with though was the activist base. Both the PIRA volunteers and Sinn Fein activists had to be given the maximum amount of information possible. If not, you could find yourself having to deal with greater difficulties that you would live to regret. What we learned early on is that you give people information but you did not explain what the outcome was going to be because negotiations were moving and it was difficult to judge. It’s only at the end of negotiations when one can come back and say this is what we are going to do. British reaction to the ceasefire statement then proceeded to get caught up with what the message did not say rather than what it did. Significantly, for the British, the statement had not said that the ceasefire would be permanent and this raised suspicions that it was little more than a tactical move. This perception, further supported by intelligence assessments that the possibility for violence remained in place, meant that it was some weeks after the ceasefire was announced before the British would make a ‘working assumption’ about the ceasefire’s credibility (Major 1999: 459). However, as Moloney points out, for the PIRA, any attempt to deem the ceasefire permanent ‘simply would not have been tolerated … and the Army Council

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would have resisted it. If the cessation was to become enduring, it would have to evolve and develop naturally as political circumstances allowed’ (Moloney 2002: 429). The possibility of a ceasefire acquiring lasting stability was thus a matter of transition and evolution (indeed internally the leadership of the PIRA had agreed to review the ceasefire after four months indicating that its longevity was linked very much to political progress (Moloney 2002)). On the emerging dialogues and acceptance of Sinn Fein into a political process, it is clear that republicans had given considerable time and effort in preparing their base for this entry. But the political transition had to be seen in a context of tradition and linked to the powerful imaginations of struggle as well. Sinn Fein’s Jim Gibney highlighted this tension: The move towards an entirely political process was seismic in that unthinkable ideas were being introduced into the republican mindset. We had a black and white presentation from the PIRA, no ceasefires under any circumstances, and that was repeated more or less every year at Easter and that was very much the public message. The private side of this however was about volunteers in a war effort, taking risks with their lives every day of the week. They operated on a very clear-cut basis that they were involved in a struggle to get the British out of Ireland and so anything short of that was not countenanced or considered. Wars cannot be fought on the basis of half-measures or half-expectations. The objective has to be there in front of the volunteers because people’s lives are sacrificed on the basis of fighting for freedom, independence and against injustice. That was the underlying rationale and motivation for the existence of the PIRA. Introducing other ideas into that against a backdrop of twenty-five years of intense armed struggle could quite easily have scattered the movement in all sorts of factionalism and division and had to be managed carefully and persuasively. But coming from a background of militarism and having this ethos as a way of life meant that coming up against ideas of change were especially difficult. Commenting on the background signals and emerging shifts which the Sinn Fein leadership sought to use for persuasive purposes, Gibney commented on the importance of the atmosphere created by positive responses from Dublin and the US and the choreography of events which gave further credence to the validity of argument for the political path: We should also note that in the late 1980s a British General gave an interview where he said the PIRA could not be defeated but that they could be contained. After that a PIRA Army Council spokesperson also said that the PIRA could not win. Once the leadership had said it was a stalemate then there was an obligation on Sinn Fein to try and find an alternative and

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that is when you begin to see the talks take shape. The shift was in working back from independence to try and bring about change. Instead of starting with that objective start with moves which take us in that direction. Then you had the Father Reid, John Hume and Gerry Adams exchanges and the development of Irish and American involvement, as well as back-channel communications. So there was this melting-pot going on, with some of it emerging periodically in the public domain. At all levels in the PIRA there would have been awareness of this and internal debates about where things might be going. This was not about the end, but beginnings and a process from which the ceasefire emerges and dialogue builds. To allow the politics to come through there had to be a ceasefire. In war you often adopt positions to defend the indefensible, so there is a psychosis which comes with a war psychology and it doesn’t matter what circumstances you are in. In times of peace that psychological outlook changes and is influenced by the peace environment. The internal debates were quite heated though. One had to go into a room and say this is where we are at at this point in time, the leadership have a view of it and they think it’s time for a ceasefire and they are the people who fought the war so are you going to second guess them? Sinn Fein are doing their best so are you going to try and guess the leadership of Gerry Adams? That the Irish government is involved, the US president is involved and you cannot ignore the significance of that reality. That the time has come for a third way or we are going to lose. Gibney particularly emphasized the importance of leadership to bring this change about and how important it was to demonstrate as quickly as possible results that could be sold to the base as indisputable gains: This was a leadership-led process and respect for individuals like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness was a crucial part of that. The question of whether initiatives being proposed were good for the overall objective of independence would have informed judgements right through the movement. Assessment of what was being put forward would have been filtered through that way of thinking. A problem with the shift from war to peace comes from one having immediate and obvious impact and the other not. That the political process is not a straight road but has many twists and turns is problematic and we are dealing with a very emotional process here because many lost friends, family and comrades, so there was a lot invested in this shift. Understandably, too, given this emotion, people were constantly assessing it in terms of impact and value and weighing the potential risks so gains made had to be reached as quickly as possible and as close to immediate as possible. Bringing a sceptical constituency from a war arena into a political arena means that you have to show obvious signs of change which have demonstrable impact on the ground. Adams and McGuinness and the Army Council had to take great care with this

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because the graveyard of Irish republicans is littered with the corpses of previous political figures and initiatives, and the leadership were well aware of the history of failure and so therefore would countenance moving at a snail’s space if needed. It was important for them to bring everyone with them and it didn’t matter how long it took. They knew the frame of mind they were dealing with and where the boundaries were and worked well within those boundaries to ensure there were no shocks to the army system. North Belfast Sinn Fein community worker Gerry O’Reilly similarly indicated the difficulty of carrying the PIRA towards accepting the case for political engagement: We, of course, pursued the armed struggle and a political purpose grew out of that. But once you knew there were going to be no winners or losers out of this, or any outright victory, then we had to apply as much emphasis and resources as we could to find an alternative. Around 1993–4 one could see the moves coming and the debates were being intensified about the value of an armed struggle which was not going to bring outright victory. It was important to move the focus from outright victory or nothing and this meant tapping into political strength. It was discussed on many levels and people had to be convinced. People never openly said that the armed struggle was over, but that was the growing realisation. This was also dependent on strong and trusted leadership and there had to be faith in the leadership. We went into areas and made this case again and again, but we also had to show a changing of conditions. We had to show then and since that this change is about working on relationships and we invited people to be part of that change. It was important to involve as many as possible in this process. Sinn Fein community worker Sean ‘Spike’ Murray reiterated the argument that the armed struggle alone was unlikely to deliver republican goals and that transition was needed, but in ways that envisaged change through carefully judged and weighed differences about tradition and obligation: There was a massive debate about creating a political machine. People began to realise that, regardless of whether there was a military victory or not, there needed to be a political path to pursue objectives. That realisation became more acute the more we realised that there was a military stalemate, where we could not defeat the British and they could not defeat us, so we had to chart a different way of trying to reach our objectives. We also knew that once you lose the military capacity it is very difficult to rebuild that again. So in order to bring about this change people had to be convinced in their own minds that the political path was a viable

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way of achieving our objectives. Bear in mind that we were brought up in a culture where the only way to achieve real change was through military acts and armed struggle. To overturn that outlook was a very difficult thing to do. But we learnt sometime ago that it is also necessary to vary tactics and that it was unwise to believe everything was written in stone. Sinn Fein councillor Tom Hartley added to the conversation about how important it was to consider this new phase by the moving debates about winning and losing onto a more imaginative and strategic vision about change in terms of nuance, subtlety, interpretive possibility and thorough preparation: From my experience within republicanism we could fight like cats and dogs internally but once you decide on the line, that is it. You know that some you win and some you lose. It needs maturity to know that you are not going to win every argument but that you are in a group and that individual strength depends on the group. The cohesion comes out of a commitment to agree a line and to stick to it. That comes out of the repression faced by our community and our party through the seventies and eighties, where we had to become highly centralised to defend ourselves against what we were facing. You also have to remember that negativity is the driving force of history and that it’s in the darker side of greyness, rather than the black and white, where one is able to find scope for movement and that movement is crucial. On the battlefield a static position means you are killed. There is always a see-saw of political thought where one needs to think about how the past can help shape the future. One needs to constantly question whether movement is advancing the struggle or is acting as a setback. Sinn Fein MLA Mitchel McLaughlin contributed to an overview of the internal dialogue process by commenting on how the Sinn Fein leadership contained debate by working through the republican movement in small groups and by returning to key issues and concerns where approaches could be reworked. This was to show not just respect for those who took less flexible positions, but to encourage those proponents to see that their positions were accommodated within a strategic vision and indeed necessary for the success of that vision: We took strategic lessons from the split between the Officials and the Provisionals and were aware of the Brendan Behan line that ‘Now we’re all together let’s have a split’. Any process of change from that period was rooted firmly in democratic dialogue that went down to the lower levels of our organization, which could be as few as five people, to establish a common and minimum threshold. Some groups might have been up to

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twenty or thirty people but that was not encouraged. One tends to find the more coherent the organization the less involved. So we would tend to deal with groups of about ten or twelve for debate. Issues for debate are generally introduced as a recommendation or as a consultation. If it’s an issue of constitutional change then that cannot happen until we have our Ard Feish, but if that is going to happen there would have been considerable consultation first because if people are not informed then the end result might not be favourable. I don’t think that we lost a single consultation from that period because there was careful preparation. If an issue arose that had not been properly considered, we would do the whole consultation process again. McLaughlin then spoke about how republicans used others, such as the SDLP, the Irish and the Americans, to help clarify their own political position and vision as well as help to increase leverage through international influence: The organization has its own culture and view of itself as catalyst for change, but armed struggle only had legitimacy in the absence of democratic alternatives. We had constantly questioned others about alternative ways to deal with oppression other than armed struggle and through that process were able to provide evidence that we had changed the paradigm. This also forced others to come up with answers and we developed a public position in this way. Once a credible alternative became available the PIRA responded quickly. We have advised other struggles about this and the need to put down on paper the determination to achieve democracy and how it can best be achieved. The language and concept for this emerged in the papers and conversations with the SDLP where we became clearer about the need for the people of Ireland to determine their own constitutional, social and government structures on the basis of democratic persuasion. We moved from a huge pile of papers to a rather slender and modest paper that represented areas of agreement. And once we got into doing that there was a basis for starting to engage with other forces on these kinds of very modest agreements. The PIRA were being kept completely informed on the process, so that when we produced Towards Lasting Peace in Ireland, in which is a much more developed position, we had created a set of circumstances which were used to challenge opinions. It was also important that one recognised that the war would only stop if change was justified in terms of the republican philosophy. Once we got the Irish government convinced that the PIRA was serious about responding to changed circumstances then we were at first base in terms of convincing the British. The Irish government was critical in providing us access to other governments in Europe and the United States. There had to be proof that the British were prepared

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to amend their position. If we had attempted to act prematurely and taken the people for granted then we increased the risk of people walking away from us. We did not just talk to the PIRA, but the communities that supported them and this was known as the ‘town hall meetings’. Sometimes there was a thousand people in a hall and we gave the microphone to those who had opinions, some of whom thought we were making a mistake given the early examples of PIRA truces which had broken down. So it was important for people to talk about that and then from there dealing with the potential for change. We certainly put more of our resources into negotiation with our base at that stage than we did with our opponents. McLaughlin went on to underline how the PIRA was seen as a central consideration in the process of change and how Sinn Fein recognized this through tentative and incremental steps based on regular conversation and dialogue with and through the organization: The arguments that Sinn Fein was making, tactical and otherwise, were necessarily moored in the structures of the PIRA. Sinn Fein’s job was to develop a political dialogue and negotiations, whereas the PIRA was the catalyst for change. If it had broken down most of the PIRA leaders would have been finished and the organization would have ended up in confusion, so there were considerable risks for change and the leaders had to take responsibility for that. But they had also convinced the British that the PIRA could not be defeated too. They did not have to convince others of military victory, but they did have to convince others about how the British would act. There were no restrictions on what we would and could say, but there would have been no point at all agreeing to things the PIRA would not sign up to and we developed that mantra internally. In other words, we did not ask questions unless we had a good idea what the answer was going to be. We had to make sure that, if there was an engagement, people would not walk away on the basis of us being paralysed. We had to ensure that the PIRA and our community knew where the process was at a given time and we attached as much significance to that as we did reaching agreement. So, reporting back to our base was important for us, the community and the PIRA.

The Good Friday Agreement In response to the ‘working assumption’ which the British government made on the credibility of the PIRA 1994 ceasefire, British officials commenced a process of exploratory dialogue with republicans on 9 December 1994.

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These dialogues were to establish parameters for a more focussed debate at ministerial level and thereby test the republican commitment to engagement, as well as provide a period of acclimatization for staged and demonstrable progress. For one official involved in the dialogues, Sinn Fein ‘were always seeing examples as symptomatic of a bigger issue … [they] probed for strategic defects … [and] moved from strategic to tactical issues … . They had a detailed vision attached to their strategy’ (Spencer 2008: 123). Sir Quentin Thomas (political director of the NIO 1991–1998) who chaired the exploratory dialogue, added: ‘Sinn Fein has a clear script for everything. They had detailed positions for anything under the sun and they had thoroughly worked them through their movement. When there was a shift, they would have endless meetings because they are terrified of a split’ (Spencer 2008: 133), and it was this possibility of a split that made republicans especially resistant to British requests for relinquishing weapons (eliciting a response from Sinn Fein, that became a routine soundbite of the peace process, about the need to ‘remove all the guns from Irish politics’). The issue of decommissioning, which had been raised as a condition for entry into formal negotiations, was vigorously resisted by Sinn Fein and came to be one of the main blockages of the peace process. By attaching such importance to it, the British had also provided Sinn Fein with a significant negotiating tool which was used again and again as a means for squeezing further concessions. Elaborating on how exploratory dialogue was conceived and acted upon by the British, Sir Quentin Thomas went on: Shortly after we produced the Downing Street Declaration we were told by our Irish colleagues that it would fairly instantly produce peace in our time. What it produced was a lot of questions which we answered after a certain amount of hesitation. It seemed to me that at that time they [Sinn Fein] were not in negotiating mode but wanted to engage with British ministers, so hesitation over responses to the Downing Street Declaration were seen by them as being about delay and obfuscation. We were hoping to have serious discussion with them but they weren’t interested and after a while they brought those discussions to an end by claiming, or pretending, that we had bugged their delegation room and that became a little bit of a public event. We had further discussions a little later, led by Michael Ancram, but these did not amount to real negotiation. At that time they saw that we were having talks about the future of Northern Ireland and they wanted to join those talks and thought that by having a ceasefire they would be able to join. We wanted to find a basis for resuming the talks that ran into the ground in 1991/2 and thought that by Sinn Fein playing a part in creating some mutual confidence they would be able to resume. Their view was that we should let them in. We told them that no talks were taking place but that we wanted them to be in, and this created a mismatch of expectations. When they did

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join the process they didn’t really negotiate much with us even then. The big question put to them was on the decommissioning of arms, which they didn’t want to engage with. If you look at this process you can see there are two halves to negotiating, one with the other parties and the other with your own supporters. From what I could judge they put a tremendous effort into negotiating with their own supporters. They had to say ‘We’re not going to be able to drive the Brits out of Ireland and we are going to have to participate in what they had described as a ‘failed state’, which required an awful lot of preparation of the ground amongst their own people. In February 1995, the British and Irish governments produced the Framework Document designed to set out the parameters for talks. The two-part document emphasized key principles of self-determination, consent, parity of esteem, commitment to democratic and peaceful means and respect for both traditions (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 303–304). The FD also stressed an elected Assembly based on proportional representation to represent the divergence of political affiliation and communal identities in Northern Ireland, as well as North-South relations envisaged in the context of the mutually reinforcing functions of the key principles. The North-South dimension was seen by unionists as part of a blurring of the constitutional question designed to allow the Irish a bigger role in the affairs of Northern Ireland and the most alarming part of the FD, for them, was the concept of ‘harmonization’ developed through the North-South linkage. For unionists, allowing the Irish an influence in policy decisionmaking opened the door to a united Ireland by stealth. The North-South dimension would seek, the FD stated, ‘to promote agreement among the people of the island of Ireland; to carry out on a democratically accountable basis delegated executive, harmonising and consultative functions over a range of designated matters to be agreed; and to serve to acknowledge and reconcile the rights, identities and aspirations of the two major traditions’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 304). It was this emphasis which led to a complete rejection of the FD by the UUP but which also encouraged Sinn Fein to further investigate the document as a basis for engagement (Adams 2003: 202). For the unionists, the FD would provide all-Ireland institutional power that would seek to ‘have unionist politicians caged so that they may only function within tightly drawn parameters’ (Major 1999: 467), but for the British, it was a development on the three strands of negotiation which had been initiated by Peter Brooke. On 23 April 1995, The Sunday Tribune published the TUAS document but this was not enough to deter the NIO announcing the following day that exploratory ministerial dialogue would begin with Martin McGuinness leading a Sinn Fein delegation to meet minister Michael Ancram at Stormont on 10 May (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 307). This meeting had

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been preceded by announcements and movements by the British in March when Northern Ireland secretary Patrick Mayhew stated in Washington that Sinn Fein would have to meet three conditions in order to gain entry to talks. These conditions, which became known as the Washington Three, demanded that the PIRA progressively disarm, that it make it clear what this disarmament amounted to and that it decommission some arms to start the process (Adams 2003: 203; Major 1999: 474). Mayhew’s conditions had effectively made decommissioning central to progress (a problem which was to dog negotiations for another decade) but created a useful negotiating tool for Sinn Fein by doing so. It was the potential for decommissioning to be used as a form of leverage which also encouraged Adams to take the issue ‘seriously’, thereby enabling access to talks at ministerial level (Major 1999: 474). Adams set out the Sinn Fein goal when in his meeting with Mayhew in May 1995, he recollected: ‘We accepted that there were differences in our positions, but we had to see beyond these. The peace process, I told him, was a personal priority for me and the political priority for Sinn Fein. The great achievement had been the silencing of the guns, and we needed to build on that. There couldn’t be a two-speed process, inequality was wrong, the open-door policy of President Clinton and the Irish government were the way to move forward. We needed to secure an agreement. That meant taking risks. We were taking risks with our lives. The British government needed to seize the moment’ (Adams 2003: 211). While the British spoke of decommissioning, Sinn Fein spoke of ‘demilitarization’ (which referred to removing the British Army from Northern Ireland) and the stock phrase of wanting to see ‘all the guns removed from Irish politics’, was designed to conjoin questions about PIRA weaponry with the British military presence. Once made integral to the process, Sinn Fein were able to use the decommissioning issue as a means to raise the ante and intensify pressure on the British, but while Adams suggested engagement with the possibility of decommissioning, public statements to that effect were invariably contradicted by a total refusal by the PIRA to entertain the idea (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 311). America encouraged momentum and Sinn Fein’s entry into ministerial dialogue within weeks of Mayhew’s conditions highlighted that there would be fluidity in how decommissioning might be applied and interpreted. As said, the Clinton administration had shown support for the peace process by allowing Joe Cahill entry to the US in the summer of 1994 to convince American supporters about the merits of the peace process and allowing Adams to meet senior US government figures in 1995 to further convince about Sinn Fein’s commitment to talks and negotiations (Cochrane 2013: 162–165). Such moves showed the importance of the international stage for republicans and the public/media interest given to Adams created symbolic resonance back in Ireland that Sinn Fein were being taken seriously

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as political players. Certainly, media images of Adams with leading Irish and American politicians signalled that he was being accepted within the peace process as an important figure and that republicans were now participants in the political arena. All of which made it increasingly difficult for opponents, or sceptics of the peace process in the republican movement, to advocate the benefits of violence or any alternative which was likely to be of comparable potency to the republican audience. As part of this shifting terrain, a further document published by the NIO in November 1995 called ‘Building Blocks’ once more affirmed the importance of talks, but also stipulated an independent international body to deal with the decommissioning issue, whose remit would be ‘to advise on how illegal arms could be removed from the political equation’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 314). Weeks later, American senator George Mitchell was announced as the chair of all-party talks, releasing The Mitchell Report on 22 January 1996 and effectively loosening the decommissioning issue from having a hold over political progress by stressing that if arms were not to be handed in before talks, then this would have to happen while talks were taking place (Hennessey 2000: 100). Framing the talks process in terms of democratic intent and non-violence, the Report also made it clear that although decommissioning would not be conducted in advance of talks, there remained an onus on armed groups to reassure others that only exclusively peaceful means would be used to influence progress. Noting that a PIRA ceasefire had been in place since August 1994, and that this had been long enough to demonstrate a commitment to the political process, the Report set out six key principles (1) democratic and peaceful means must prevail for dealing with all political issues; (2) all paramilitary organizations should disarm; (3) such disarmament must satisfy the independent monitoring commission tasked with overseeing the disposal of arms; (4) that all parties should oppose the use of force to try and influence political outcomes; (5) parties should abide by any agreement reached through multi-party talks and should only use peaceful and democratic means to influence change; and (6) punishment killings and beatings had to stop (Hennessey 2000: 100–101). Only a few days before, on 10 January, Sinn Fein submitted the document Building a Permanent Peace which made it clear that decommissioning would only come after a political settlement was reached and only then within a wider context of ‘demilitarization’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 318). Sinn Fein advisor and community worker Jim Gibney elaborated on how decommissioning was seen at this time by republicans as something which would only be countenanced when political accommodation was reached and not before: The big issue was decommissioning and we made a submission to George Mitchell about the disposal of weapons and commitments to

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peace and democracy quite a short time after the PIRA ceasefire. You can only deal with guns in the circumstances when people are confident and satisfied that enough change has taken place for there to be little fear about what would happen to communities who once relied on guns to protect themselves. It took a long time before we arrived at that point and it was difficult to deal with the symbolism of guns too. I think in some ways the symbolism outweighed the fears because of what this meant to the PIRA constituency. It was not easy for them to make all these gestures along the way, but it had to happen for political progress. The ceasefire was the beginning of the end of armed conflict and getting rid of weapons was the end of that process. We also knew long before it happened that at some point we would have to sit down and deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) but it was managing the shift towards making that gesture easier. We always knew there would be failures along the way, but that they must also be seen in the context of successes and the overall direction of progress and that is where the experience to manage comes in. Behind the scenes at this time, the PIRA was planning a huge bomb in Canary Wharf, London, which would bring the ceasefire to an end. That bomb exploded on 9 February killing two people, injuring more than a hundred and caused an estimated one hundred million pounds worth of damage (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 321). According to security sources, the bomb was being planned in South Armagh six weeks before it exploded (Harden 1999: 11) and had resulted from pressures building within the PIRA to do something about the stalling of the peace process, which was diluting the possibility of armed struggle being reactivated. The bomb was a sign within the PIRA leadership that without clear tangible political progress the real intent of the peace process was to break republican commitment to the armed struggle and that there was disagreement about the value of the ‘peace strategy’ being pursued (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 321). However, for Sinn Fein community worker Seanna Walsh (who delivered the statement in 2005 that the war was over and the PIRA had been stood down), Canary Wharf demonstrated the strategic aim of keeping pressure on the British to keep talks moving: ‘When Canary Wharf happened in 1996 as far as I was concerned it was part of the negotiations and not designed to take us back to the situation that existed prior to 1994. I know it sounds very callous now but Canary Wharf looked like negotiations by other means. It was very risky, but that was the way it was seen by some as having to go and that was how those people felt about it.’ The PIRA statement released at the time of the bombing emphasized that foot-dragging on the peace process had eroded support and confidence and that Canary Wharf was used to try and end this drift, as well as lay down a marker that republicans would not

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stand for the process being drawn out (and so risk further weakening the commitment and morale of volunteers): It is with great reluctance that the leadership of the IRA announces the complete cessation of military operations will end at 6 p.m. on February 9. As we stated on August 31, 1994, the basis for the cessation was to enhance the democratic peace process and to underline our definitive commitment to its success. We also made it clear that we believed that an opportunity to create a just and lasting settlement had been created. The cessation presented an historic challenge for everyone and the IRA commends the leaderships of nationalist Ireland at home and abroad. They rose to the challenge. The British Prime Minister did not. Instead of embracing the peace process, the British government acted in bad faith, with Mr Major and the Unionist leaders squandering this unprecedented opportunity to resolve the conflict. Time and again, over the last 18 months, selfish party political and sectional interests in the London parliament have been placed before the rights of the people of Ireland. We take this opportunity to re-iterate our total commitment to our republican objectives. The resolution of the conflict in our country demands justice. It demands an inclusive negotiated settlement. That is not possible unless and until the British government faces up to its responsibilities. The blame for the failure thus far of the Irish peace process lies squarely with John Major and his government. The fears about political engagement and how republicans might be sucked into a ‘trap’ by the British, along with the need to maintain cohesion within the PIRA and Sinn Fein, was a concern which, as Sinn Fein community worker Gerry McConville pointed out, led to some volunteers leaving and required constant examination in order to work out how both problems and opportunities could be absorbed into core objectives: There were people who left the movement and who were purely militaryminded. They thought we had stopped the war too soon and that we could have defeated the British. If I thought that was the case I would not have supported the ceasefire. But there was also a clear realisation that even if this had been the case there would not have been enough to get us where we wanted to go because we were too out of touch with our people. We needed to develop the political project to be where we are now. Progress here is important because if we don’t deliver then younger people who are disillusioned with our strategy will seek an alternative, so we need to measure progress against our long-term goal. I think republicans are good at re-evaluating where they are at, whether formally or informally, and that emerged from the prisons. That was the place where the military strategy was fundamentally re-evaluated and the political process was

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born out of that. Republicans are also pragmatic and would use principles in a tactical way, in that the principle should not prevent us from where we want to go. Although we were clear about where we wanted to go, we were flexible and adaptable on how we might get there. We were especially aware of how the British might plan to try and trap us with words, such as with 1994 ceasefire being called ‘permanent’, and were careful in dealing with that. We had to find a way in ‘republican-speak’ which said that the war was over, but we could not speak for future generations of republicans. We could not speak for republicans in twenty or thirty years time and that was what we needed to be thinking about for purposes of our own audience. We are aware that the road to a united Ireland will not be straight and that we may have to turn left and right and that this might take time. We also know that we cannot move from a to b to c and that if we try to do that we might well break the process, so we try to think in terms of going round problems as much as through them. That is where it is important to look at things in terms of the greys and this would often call for seeing the struggle in terms of ‘spheres’, where we might have to accommodate some uncertainty for the greater good. We also use the notion of spheres to debate which areas we don’t want to be in. Certainly we have disagreements, but we keep any fighting in-house and once we agree a decision we stick to it. Some may disagree but they also accept that is our decision. We have known from our upbringing that you don’t show your enemy that you are in any way disjointed. We keep that in house and that is our business. The British response to Canary Wharf was to announce 10 June as the start date for multi-party talks. Proximity talks would first seek to determine the design and agenda of formal talks along with a referendum to gauge public support for a negotiated settlement North and South in Ireland. Condemnation of the PIRA’s action in Canary Wharf was partly tempered by the realization that there was a serious desire to find a peace settlement inside republicanism and within three weeks of the bomb Quentin Thomas met Martin McGuinness and two other colleagues to assess Sinn Fein’s commitment to the political track, seeking assurance that Sinn Fein was still determined to reach a settlement (Clarke and Johnston 2001: 238). The Irish government also made it known within a few days of the Canary Wharf bomb that they had ‘not shut any door on Sinn Fein’ and that taoiseach John Bruton would be prepared ‘to authorise direct contact between Sinn Fein leaders and government officials’ (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 325). But, the immediate response to this two days later on 15 February was a PIRA bomb in Charing Cross London (Bew and Gillespie 1999). Canary Wharf had shocked the two governments, but it soon emerged that both Dublin and London wanted to try and re-engage with republicans

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as soon as was practically possible. The position of the Irish at this time was articulated by Sean O hUiginn: Even when Canary Wharf happened it seemed likely that the leaders had invested too much in the process to lead the troops up the hill and then down again. They knew there would be infamy in republican circles if their initiative failed. The breakdown of the ceasefire was an example of the brinkmanship they could be prone to and one had to consider always what would tip over and what wouldn’t with them. We could also see there were not too many exits for them from where we then were. There was obviously the possible return to prolonged violence and that could never be excluded, but, equally, those leaders didn’t go into an enterprise of this magnitude merely to play the Grand Old Duke of York and end up totally discredited. I and others assumed on rational grounds that they wanted this project to succeed and that there was a potential partnership which had to be established in terms sustainable on both sides, which was no easy matter. British senior civil servant ‘Mark’, who was involved in the talks process, similarly emphasized how the British saw Canary Wharf not as the end of contacts but a reason to imbue them with greater urgency; at the same time acknowledging a need to be less rigid on the decommissioning demand if further progress was to be realized: Just after Canary Wharf we managed to get John Major to shift from requiring decommissioning as a basis for Sinn Fein entering talks to requiring a restoration of the ceasefire and a commitment to exclusively peaceful means. That moved us away from the requirement as a precondition. During that phase of multi-party negotiations we constructed a mechanism to enable decommissioning that did not make it a requirement, where it was in a sense a kind of facility, a hope and expectation that there would be decommissioning at some point, and that was the basis on which we travelled through the whole of the talks process to Good Friday and the Agreement. That led to a situation which we did have to try and work our way out of and caused a total knot for the next four or five years. What it did on the other side was to enormously complicate life for Sinn Fein. Take the model. You have a complex organization with a tradition of functional violence going back to the 1920s and a romantic idealised view of the rights and wrongs of republicanism and the kind of principles it should follow. Decommissioning would have been seen as a symbol of defeat, whereas an honourable ‘burying the pike in the thatch’ route was much more acceptable. You also had divided views within the republican movement amongst those who acknowledged that they are not going to win the war and so have to negotiate their future, along

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with those who were quite happy to go on fighting the war and had the guns. By insisting on decommissioning you were putting control over the pace of the process in the hands of the most extreme and difficult section of the republican movement, so it was not a smart move. The signals we were getting were that they would find that extremely difficult and the dialogue in the movement didn’t hold much hope. The real problem with decommissioning was that it was one of those things where both sides would have been happy if the talks had broken down on that basis, because unionists would have said it was a matter of principle and that they cannot be held hostage to the barrel of a gun. So decommissioning was a very toxic issue. Further highlighting the problems that decommissioning was beginning to create for the peace process, Sir Quentin Thomas added: I think Sinn Fein overestimated the cleverness of the British and thought that we would outsmart them with words and they were probably more nervous about that. The condition that we would only meet them if they renounced violence must be seen in light of the fact that we met them after Canary Wharf without that condition being fulfilled. I think the British had a tendency to erect issues of principle which when pressed turned out not to be principles. The Irish, on the other never pronounced issues as matters of principle. Within a couple of weeks [after Canary Wharf] I was authorised to meet Sinn Fein and they were quite pleased that we still met. But when we re-engaged they disengaged until Blair came into power, when we did engage them with a letter and we did meet them and tried to link together concerns about joining the talks. Against this background of renewed PIRA activity, the British and Irish governments released the document Ground Rules for Substantive All-Party Negotiations on 15 March (although publicly the document did not emerge for another month). The proposals in that document emphasized that the Irish government would take a joint coordination role in negotiations and even though this elicited some anger from the unionists, who saw it as a concession to nationalists, it set out the basis for negotiations in advance of elections to all-party talks on 30 May (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 329). In those elections, Sinn Fein gained 116,377 votes, 15.5 per cent of the electorate supported its peace strategy and the party won seventeen seats. Two possible (if contradictory) reasons seemed to explain the voting pattern. First, that voters saw the peace strategy as the best way forward and used the election to show that the armed struggle was not a preferred option to achieve aims and/or second, given that the election took place after the PIRA had ended its ceasefire and was again active, it was an endorsement of such a move (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 329). Either way, the election results paved

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the road for multi-party talks which began at Parliament Buildings in Belfast on 10 June but which Sinn Fein were excluded from because of continuing PIRA activity, which went on unabated with bombings and violence in Manchester, London and Northern Ireland until 19 July 1997. Even though Sinn Fein made further gains in the May 1997 general election taking 16.1 per cent of the vote and gaining two seats (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 342) the PIRA persisted with militarism until a ceasefire was restated on 19 July. The installation of Tony Blair as British prime minister had created a chance of momentum in the peace process and presented the opportunity for a new dynamic unrestrained by the internal politics that John Major had had to contend with. The new ceasefire statement said: We want a permanent peace and therefore are prepared to enhance the search for a democratic peace settlement through real and inclusive negotiations. So having assessed the current political situation, the leadership of the IRA are announcing a complete cessation of military operations from 12 midday on Sunday 20 July, 1997. We have ordered the unequivocal restoration of the ceasefire of August 1994. All IRA units have been instructed accordingly. Sinn Fein signed up to the Mitchell principles and joined all-party talks on September 1997, just a few weeks after the British and Irish governments agreed on the formation of an International Commission on Decommissioning on 26 August (Bew and Gillespie 1999: 347). The restatement of the ceasefire meant that the peace strategy needed to show successes if a strong enough consensus was to emerge for the PIRA to accept it. However, calling off the armed campaign for a second time also raised serious concerns amongst some PIRA volunteers about this being taken as a sign of uncertainty over where authority ultimately lay, a problem which Adams was to later acknowledge in his memoirs: ‘The Sinn Fein peace strategy had no chance of success if the IRA leadership was not prepared to tolerate it. If the broad leadership was going to be sucked into an internal row over who had authority, any chance of progress would be dissipated. If our negotiations were successful, there was a better chance of winning IRA support if those internal IRA difficulties were sorted out’ (Adams 2003: 299). For the British, the strategic approach was based on ‘the progressive adjustment of expectations’ (Powell 2009: 84) and under Blair, this meant not only giving impetus to the trajectory of change, but also succeeding where others had failed. Blair’s approach to peace, insisted his biographer Anthony Seldon, was shaped by a ‘moral vision’ (Seldon 204: 363) and it was in conceptualizing the peace process as a moral, as well as political, test which perhaps hints at why Blair and his team invested so much time and energy in trying to broker an agreement. Official accounts of just how much time and energy were invested reveal a complex process of informal

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as well as formal relations, textual bartering, tactical and strategic planning and reflexive thinking (Mitchell 1999; Blair 2010; Spencer 2010). But perhaps the most comprehensive of these accounts is Jonathan Powell’s Great Hatred, Little Room (2009) which details the twists and turns of the negotiations process and the many unofficial and official meetings that went into preparing the ground for the GFA announced on 10 April 1998. In his book, Powell highlights a variety of skills and tactics that Sinn Fein used in the negotiating process, many of which were personified by the Adams-McGuinness leadership. On these two figures, Powell talks about Adams as ‘cerebral’ (signifying the ideological emphasis of republicanism) while McGuinness had credibility because of his military standing amongst the PIRA Volunteers (signifying more the emotional emphasis of republicanism) and it is the duality of the two styles that seems to personify the tactical and intellectual shifts used by Sinn Fein within talks and negotiations (Powell 2009: 99) (an observation similarly made by Tony Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy, Alistair Campbell (Campbell 2007: 289)). What also emerges strongly from Powell’s narrative about the peace process  is how overwhelmingly each of the two communities in Northern Ireland tended to define themselves against each other (or at least the representatives of those communities) and how a reaction by one community tends to stand in immediate contrast with the other. This observation is further supported by Tony Blair’s recollections of the peace process when in talking about this mirror image of division in socio-political relations, he goes on ‘it was a zero-sum game to all of them, and not only in terms of negotiating detail – “You suggest this. We oppose. You like this. We don’t”, etc. Walking round the building they would spot the other’s expression. If one looked happy, the other looked for a reason to be sad. If one was down, the other immediately went up’ (Blair 2010: 171–2). The symbolism of reaction clearly has an important part to play in politics which is increasingly performative, but in the peace process Sinn Fein appeared to have a far better grasp of its significance and how the perception of outcome, rather than the outcome itself, is vital to connote success (the choreographed public celebration of the 1994 PIRA ceasefire on the streets of Belfast being an example of this). Sinn Fein’s reaction to the GFA and how its representatives dealt with the media attention is particularly illustrative of this awareness. In the final hours before the GFA was announced and the parties were conducting last stage negotiations at Castle Buildings in Belfast, Sinn Fein representatives would often walk around the car park outside the building, looking relatively relaxed and smiling to convey the impression that they were in control and the negotiations were going to plan even though they had negligible input into discussions on the three-strands (Spencer 2006) (preferring instead to focus on prisoners and decommissioning and avoid being seen to accept or support political institutions in Northern Ireland or North-South recommendations).

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Yet, and as Powell confirms, the reaction which Sinn Fein conveyed to the media and so Northern Irish society more broadly, which was one of the GFA being a success, in the process reinforced the perception that for unionism it had been a failure: ‘the fact that nationalists and republicans came out smiling meant that unionists took more convincing that they had won. They thought there must be something wrong in the Agreement, and they had plenty of doubters on their side to play to those fears’ (Powell 2009: 109). Sinn Fein’s lack of official support for the GFA not only reflected a general tendency to avoid being seen to be swept along by the agenda of others, but remained in keeping with previous tactics of influencing the pace and maximizing attention by holding back. The Sinn Fein conference on 10 May, a month later, which would formally ratify support for the Agreement, once more indicated how public relations were seen as necessary to communicate the impression of being in control of events and situations, rather than merely being seen to react to them and so under the control of other agendas. The success of reaching agreement had largely been down to the two governments and the highly skilled civil servant teams who had shaped the process and drafted key texts and speeches (Spencer 2015). But central to this process was the use of ‘constructive ambiguity’ in the texts which created the space for the parties to move and find ground which reflected specific interests. Though one should be careful in caricaturing differences, what comes through from Powell’s analysis is that, in general, this ambiguity tended to suit republicans more than unionists and that indeed this extended outside the political arena into communal approaches to dialogue and negotiations. To illustrate this point, Powell refers to a moment when the British were debating with the Orange Order and the Garvaghy Road residents over a contentious march and observed: ‘The Orange Order’s idea of a negotiation was to turn up with an opening position and stick to it. When you asked them if they could compromise, they would be adamant they couldn’t. The Garvaghy Road Residents were the opposite : they came from the school of tricky negotiators, who would start by negotiating about parking places before they got into the building and work up from there’ (Powell 2009: 130). For Powell, the Orange Order ‘saw the notion of compromise as somehow immoral. The sacrifice of principle to a pragmatic end was anathema to them’ (Powell 2009: 131), whereas, for the Garvaghy residents, the idea of ‘no’ did not equate with ‘never’, for the Orange Order it did (Powell 2009: 134). The distinction between literally taking a position and metaphorically adopting one is a feature of difference between unionists and republicans which comes through quite consistently in interviews conducted with British and Irish officials. Blair confirmed such a contrast in his own recollection of the negotiations when he wrote ‘Ulstermen were men of few words, literal, strongly spoken but polite, with a humour of their own and a tendency, not always unfounded, to distrust the world. The Irish were gregarious, flamboyant, of many colourful words, preferring to talk in generalities rather

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than particulars, with a keen sense not only of their status as victims but also of the wider world being more in time with them than their victimisers’ (Blair 2010: 154). Blair goes on to say that ‘When you saw the Republicans, you saw unity in motion. They had a line; they took it; they held it. If it appeared to modify in the course of a meeting, it was an illusion – the modification has been pre-built into the line, and the line was sustained’ (Blair 2010: 168). Such discipline inevitably signified the fears and trepidations that republicans were vigilant towards and highlights, as Blair notes, why republicans tended to operate in ‘a series of half-steps, all clothed in fairly obscure Republican-speak, with which they were trying to convince Unionists, without destabilising their own internal politics’ (Blair 2010: 189). The need to appeal to the republican base and to maintain the impression that the GFA was consistent with moving towards a united Ireland at a pace which suited republicans, meant Sinn Fein working to reinforce the perception that the GFA had provided an opportunity which would bear results. The need to capitalize on this moment and so to subsequently minimize just how far Sinn Fein had departed from armed struggle ideals, as well as deal with internal tensions about the Agreement being seen by some as nothing less than an internal settlement, was spoken about by Sinn Fein community worker Gerry McConville: I can remember that when the Good Friday Agreement was first rolled out to us, people hit the ground running. There were meetings called and a lot of discussion about it. My first reaction was against it, but once it was spelled out to us what the small print meant and the reasons were given about why it was signed up to we could see that this was essential as a step to build our political strength. Many, including me, were saying we did not fight a war to sign up to this, but once we got our head round it tactically, we could see how it was fair and necessary in order for us to move on. Part of this was being told that before the discussion begins it was important to see the big picture. So leaders would paint this big picture and then explain how things fitted into it. Others were saying, however, we can see the big picture but don’t forget the here and now and how it’s impacting on us. We can’t keep sacrificing for the long term and undermining ourselves in the short term. A balance had to be struck on that. The need for momentum, which would provide evidence of positive change that again was unattainable through armed struggle, relied particularly on choreography, and as Sinn Fein advisor and community worker Jim Gibney pointed out: Because this was a period of rapid change we could show results which proved clearly that the peace process was working. There were always fringe problems, however, even though the bulk of the movement stayed

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intact and followed the leadership. There is always a need for joint or multilateral moves, but unilateral moves in a process don’t work and can undermine the integrity of the leadership. Choreography is very important here as part of the process, where everyone is taking steps to bring their constituents along a difficult path that begins to open up in front of people. Also important is ambiguity, particularly when you are dealing with the fraught set of political circumstances, because then you can’t be giving people black and white answers to complex questions that arise. Ambiguity was particularly necessary during the early days when you needed a degree of tolerance and leaps of faith from your supporters and organizations. Gibney then went on to talk about he saw theological reasoning coming into play in the different negotiating styles adopted by unionists and republicans, as well as how republicans sought to use the momentum of the process to build a picture of change which would put pressure on unionists to the extent that republicans could claim advantage and so progress: It has been said that whilst Protestants interpret the Bible for the word, Catholics look for generalities and ambiguities and don’t generally tie people down. Catholicism implies universality, so it provides an eclectic view of the world which is not fundamental on the sense of the word. In the talks the unionists would often ask is it down on paper? What does it mean? How many paragraphs are there attached to it? Whereas, we were quite happy to move things along. Catholics do not spend time agonizing over what every word means, it’s just not in their psyche; they are more likely to accept what they are told. Ambiguity was an important part of the talks. It was the oil in the wheels and helped to move the process forward. We never took up a position on anything and we tried to be fluid. The danger of taking hard positions is that you are forced to defend them and when that position is lost people are demoralised, which is what we saw with the unionists. Our people called this a ‘cycle of humiliation’ which was created by taking a fixed stance. The unionists saw the Good Friday Agreement as a deal, but as far as we were concerned it was an agreement and that was the difference. The primary motivation for us is the reunification of Ireland and what we are about now is putting in place the mechanisms that can peacefully reunite the country. Clearly, we are using a different way to achieve that, but it should also be seen as continuity in terms of the objectives that people died for. To do this we had to demonstrate what was happening and the changes we were making, which were being reciprocated by the British. It was important to accept that both republicans and the British had the capacity to change and were doing so, and this was matched by a choreography which was essential if we were going to bring the PIRA constituency along. Demilitarisation, the withdrawal of troops, the replacement of the Royal

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Ulster Constabulary (RUC) by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the dismantling of military bases and the hardware of war going all had to be seen and there had to be no doubt about that. Contributing to the discussion about the way in which Sinn Fein approached negotiations, councillor Tom Hartley offered this summary of how republican leaders were trying to frame negotiations in contrast to unionists: I got a sense that Protestants didn’t really grasp the fluidity of the political process or that there was a dynamic for change. I saw the Good Friday Agreement as something of a fudge. It couldn’t solve all the problems but provided some agreement about what the problems were. It was a recognition that we were coming out of a period of conflict into a period where at least we could actually engage on certain issues. For us this process can be seen as a journey, which is about struggle. At one level on this journey there is the fancy day-to-day footwork of politics, dealing with the propaganda, information, positions and ducking and weaving, but there is another strand which is comparable to a river; a river that is flowing to the sea and which goes underground for a while and then comes back up again. So there is the tactical short-term view and there is the long-term aims and directions and you need both. But, for former PIRA Volunteer Sean O’Callaghan, the preference for ambiguity came more from inexperience in negotiating practice rather than because of some strategic intention to use it to contain parameters and positions: There was no expertise or experience of negotiation when Sinn Fein got involved in the talks. The only experience of negotiation that these guys had was with their own organization. Basically the Irish negotiated on behalf of Sinn Fein because they couldn’t do the detail. All they could do was the broad brush stuff, the Irish language and so on. Sinn Fein were tough negotiators, but not good negotiators. They were more the barbarians at the gate who didn’t really want to know about the detail. They could grandstand but had no grasp of say, constitutional law. Others had to deal with that. Yet, taking this contention into account, there is no denying the significant challenges that the Sinn Fein leadership faced at this time when dealing with fears and expectations in relation to the emerging pragmatism, as Sinn Fein community worker Joe O’Donnell confirmed: In terms of the peace process republicans have always consulted very broadly with the electoral base and beyond. In republican communities there were meetings every week and people were coming out weighing

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up and explaining what was going on and this happened the length and breadth of the country. The points were made that this is what we are talking about, negotiating on, where we are planning to go, this is what we think might happen and this is why we recommend that you support us. This is how people were brought into the negotiating process and how they had the limit of what could be done and how things would be delivered. At the meetings senior members of the republican movement would describe and explain this process. If it was, for example, on policing, the explanation would be about what was on the table, what the process of discussion would be and then people would be asked for their views on this process and whether they thought it was the right way ahead. And this was across all areas. Although there would have been differences, these were absorbed into the process, which would subsequently feed back responses. The importance of widespread, but leadership driven, consultation was particularly important when it came to dealing with the problems of policing and decommissioning, which, as Sinn Fein community worker Sean ‘Spike’ Murray explained, proved to be the most contentious areas to overcome: We had major meetings around the country about policing. Leadership figures went to these meetings and articulated why they felt it was necessary to go into the new policing structures, and we were at that debate for over three months. We have learned that the way ahead is through bringing your constituency with you and that it is no use having leadership which is unconnected to the grassroots. Everyone must move together and even though you might lose individuals, you have to take the main bulk of people with you. Part of this was historical too because over the years to fight against a very tight, resourceful, state machine you have to have cohesion. To maintain that cohesion in the process of change it is important to draw debate and discussion towards a conclusion that most can fall behind. You set out your stall and must have a strong rationale for why you are advocating a certain direction. Now, you may fall short, but as long as you know why, you can work to address that. We were clear that we were for change and not for maintaining the status quo. It is vital that you constantly articulate where you want to go and how because that is what motivates and carries people with you. The issue of removing weapons was very difficult because this had been the means for protection and security. To move towards this end the debate has to be framed within the constitution of the PIRA because there they refer to weapons, which were never referred to as ‘decommissioning’ but ‘putting weapons beyond use’. The argument for this was worked in relation to how it would support political objectives, that armed struggle was not sacrosanct, but a means towards this end and that we felt the best way to protect ourselves was through the political process. In a sense, then,

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we were using the issue of weapons to buttress and reinforce the political case and framed the weapons issue in that context. We advocated the need to investigate the peaceful alternative from well before the ceasefires, so the debate was developing over a long period of time. We argued that the longer it went on and became evident that there would be no military victory, the more likely we would lose personnel and support, so we needed to make the transition. Murray then went on to provide an account of how British approaches to negotiations were factored into republican thinking and informed how leaders planned the way ahead: In terms of negotiations we knew that the British would try and defeat us at the negotiating table, but our view was they had not been able to do this militarily so they would not be able to do it at the negotiating table. That is the perspective we came at it from. But we also knew that just as we had taken risks in war, so we needed to task risks for peace. We were careful not to lay out our approach in an a, b, c type of way, which was fixed to a time frame, because if that does not come off you are forced to explain why and this does not help your cause. The essence of the process was engagement and discussion and that was a constant. We would outline short-term, medium-term and long-term goals and then final objectives, but we were very reluctant to put dates on this because you could always expect unforeseeable events. At the start it was just a united Ireland and we did not think in terms of how important short and medium term goals were to reach that end. Realization of the importance of the political project did not exist, because the military strategy was all that existed. In a way, it was easier to put your finger on the problem when a military operation went wrong, but things became more complex and less easy to discern in relation to politics. But, in a way too, our strength was our collectiveness. Even when there were shocks we were always confident that the central core had not been penetrated. We knew there were problems on the periphery and we did over time have a grasp of what was getting out too. There were those who had their satellites, who would pick up second-hand information and use it to try and undermine what the core were doing, but this was not successful. It also would not have been possible if the core had not remained strong to the belief system they looked to. Contributing to this picture, Joe O’Donnell’s summarization of negotiating style adopted by Sinn Fein, and how change was conceptualized strategically and tactically, was consistent with Murray’s analysis: In one sense republicans wanted clarity from the negotiations and because of a distrust of the British wanted all the i’s and t’s crossed so

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that things would not change. But the most important part for us was to be hard on process, which lent itself to the next stage. Our strategy was to negotiate ground, hold that ground and then move forward in terms of what we could get next. So we saw negotiations as steps forward, with each building on the last. To move to this next stage, things needed to be a bit open so that they could be interpreted in the context of future stages, but moving in these areas is also a matter of negotiating skill and ability. It would have been explained to people that each stage was a part of the process. That there was a start, middle and an end to where republicans were going. At various stages this needed to happen and this required a confidence in the process so we could move forward. Don’t think for one minute that consultations were easy. There was a lot of argument and a lot of frank talking. We could only move to the next stage with confidence if people were largely satisfied with what was being proposed. And that is still the case because things continue to emerge that people are unhappy about. Progress is essential here to keep confidence and maintain the forward movement necessary to win arguments. There has always been a tendency for internal discussion about where we are going, what we need to do, what it will achieve, what we will do with it if we do achieve it and how it serves the political end. So there always has to be a political motivation and objective to discussion. Within the talks process we always knew that we would not get everything we wanted, that we would need to go back to the table, that there would be bits and pieces that needed to be tweaked and compromised on. And certainly republicans did not get everything they wanted in the Good Friday Agreement. But we saw it as a work in progress and understood that negotiations would be ongoing. Our leaders felt it was very important to lead from the front and have taken some difficult decisions and gone to the doorstep time after time in order to sell it to the electorate. They have articulated what they think the way forward is, but at all stages it has been a partnership between the leadership and the community. When faced with criticisms one of the ways to meet that was to always ask what the alternative is and to ask to be given a viable alternative. If someone had come along and offered a better way of doing it, a quicker and more successful way of achieving objectives, then I’m sure they would have been listened to. Also, we never viewed things as problems, but as stepping-stones. That comes from breaking problems down into various parts and addressing them in that way. We see the bits of the problem we can work with and we go round the bits we can’t work with. This confidence also comes, I think, from the tendency to think that we have got nothing to lose and that moving forward can therefore only help us. The process of envisaging change and trying to use that change to complement and underscore republican objectives particularly preoccupied

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the attention of Sinn Fein MLA Mitchel McLaughlin, who gave a comprehensive explanation of how Sinn Fein approached negotiations: The obsession with detail that the unionists had was, in a way, an attempt to find reassurance because the process was taking them to a space they did not want to go to and that framed their approach. But, from our point of view, we had little to lose because we had never really had any power in this state. We would consult constantly with each other and tick off the issues that we had dealt with. We did not achieve all that we wanted, but were aware that it was a process of change and that this would require some change from us. Things that we could not agree on at one point, we could often find agreement on a year later, and we would never put a line through something unless it had been achieved. We would sometimes agree to postpone something until a situation was created when it became more sensible and productive to address it. Remember, we had to provide the PIRA leadership with sufficient space for them to bring in all the volunteers and at certain points it was absolutely vital that the PIRA be able to step forward and give their own contribution to the process, such as, for example, arms inspections and destroying weapons. We kept saying again and again that our objective was to take the gun out of Irish politics and that included loyalist and British Army guns. The mistake would have been to push ahead regardless, because you have less ability to move if the militarist or more hard-line elements object. That could scupper the whole project, so change had to happen incrementally. There was no point in us losing the leadership position that we had by moving faster than our constituencies could cope with. Time and again though we have shown that the constituency was ahead of the political process and that saved us asking the big question of how the PIRA rank and file would respond. It showed they were handing over the decision-making very much to Sinn Fein. Also, I spent a long time in America, England and Scotland, as well as going to Australia, keeping people up to speed. I also spent a lot of time going back and forth to the jails in England. The authorities relaxed their processes because they could see that we were delivering and that unspoken accords were emerging. We got it clear from a very early stage that we needed to keep to the maxim that if you are going to engage with your opponents, be prepared for the fact that you are not going to win everything. It is not a fight to the finish where winner takes all, so we had to be prepared to compromise and not be afraid of steps, of incremental change. But you had to be fairly sure that any question you posed was likely to bring the answer you wanted, that it was not going to turn into a problem or a negative. So you don’t put down absolutes or restrictive demands that required anyone to surrender because it wouldn’t work.

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McLaughlin then expanded further still on how Sinn Fein’s negotiating approach was informed not only by the need to reinforce republican objectives, but by listening intently for signs of advance, entrenchment, capitulation and concession from opponents: Generally speaking, for the unionists any issue in the first instance was made into a constitutional issue and so a do-or-die issue. That was not easy to try and break down. Our view was to try and take issues as they appear and even if they were put on the table by the DUP. Sometimes the engagement was not directly face-to-face, but with a proxy clergy or business person who had access and influence and who would have teased out the issues before we had got to them. We knew what the sticking points were for the DUP before they came about. Unless we were satisfied that we had the potential to develop a situation, if we couldn’t get the outcome we wanted, then we would not have signed off on it. It would result in us taking it off the table and making clear we were not going to discuss it any further. One of the techniques that we developed in the very early stages was that we took one person, one member of our delegation, whose job it was to judge the process. That person did not participate, did not offer comment, and, in the end, this freaked the unionists out a bit. Gerry Kelly was that person for a long time. His job was to give us judgement on where the process was going, where the discussion was heading and whether we had taken the right approach, whether we were too confrontational etc. The purpose of this was to try and make sure that we were getting the right kind of internal assessment. That was then fed back into the wider group. We would have a strategy group that was part of the leadership and they would have to consider this in the round, working, for example, with a diary which reflected the engagements over the next month and so how we would work to a strategy over that time. We also produced a report of the previous month’s meetings which was presented at review hearings so that people could get the full picture and you could look at what had happened. So, on a monthly basis people would get a full report of every single engagement, the outcomes of that engagement and where it left us. We would think and look at the engagements ahead and see how our direction was progressing and make strategic adjustments to underpin the aims. This sometimes involved trips abroad with the unionists as well as with support groups, such as talking to the South Africans about whatever issues we were dealing with at the time. My experience of the peace process is that detail can sometimes obscure the reality and can actually affect people’s judgement, as well as actions and the timing of those actions. What we found time and again when we went back to the community is that they were ahead of the game. They didn’t want details and were not blinded by the science of it all. They could see the big picture and knew what the potential of that was. They

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wanted people to be strong and careful in the negotiations, but they did not want to dictate what people would say. There was an understanding that mechanisms were needed to deliver the kind of change wanted and that there had to be no hidden agendas. No reneging on the chosen path. The problems that Sinn Fein faced in managing the transition from armed struggle to politics, as explained, required strategic direction, close critical assessment of core principles and dealing with the sensitive issue of showing a commitment to exclusively peaceful politics, which had been conjoined to the symbolic message of decommissioning arms. These areas also warranted considerable scrutiny and critical evaluation by the two governments, who needed to try and get Sinn Fein to fully accept the responsibilities of power-sharing. In particular, this meant working with Sinn Fein’s strategic abilities and tactical aims, trying to find a way through the ambiguities and prevarications used to control the peace and space of negotiations, and striving to overcome the logjam created by decommissioning, whilst insisting on evidence of exclusively peaceful intent. Such problems, in turn, merit closer examination of how the British and Irish governments tried to do this and especially how they responded to the concerns and contentions that Sinn Fein raised and applied in order to try and exert influence over the direction, substance and development of negotiations.

British and Irish official perspectives What is apparent from interviews conducted here with senior British and Irish officials is that many of the core concerns in dealing with Sinn Fein related to: the decommissioning of weapons; understanding the strategic and tactical positions being pursued; evaluating how Sinn Fein leaders interpreted the pressures and questions put to them; and considering this in the context of broader political concerns and contestations about what it would take to achieve a peace settlement. What is also evident with regard to how Sinn Fein operated within the talks and negotiations that led to the GFA of 1998 is that the republican leadership were tactically astute and strategically coherent. That astuteness and coherence was, no doubt, also influenced by uncertainty and unease about dealing with the two governments (the British in particular) and negotiations being used to draw out, demoralize and weaken the republican movement. But, for Sinn Fein, the significant danger was decommissioning being used by opponents to claim that the armed struggle had been defeated, where the handing over of weapons could be taken as an admission of loss (along with all the possible dangers this had for those within republicanism trying to entrench the validity of the political path and bring the military phase to a close). Outlining the British approach to Sinn Fein, the emergent problem of decommissioning, its place within the

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negotiations and how Sinn Fein reacted to it, Sir Quentin Thomas (political director of the NIO 1991–1998) commented: We gave them papers and we gave them lots of work. I think they were nervous about being trapped into a dialogue and getting into a script. They definitely wanted movement and thought they were being delayed. They were wary of being dragged back to the 1970s, having a ceasefire and the British dragging things out in the hope of weakening them. That was not remotely in our thoughts, but that was their suspicion. The longer that we went on talking to them the more it worried them and the bomb in Canary Wharf was to show us that reality. We wanted to secure a firm basis for engagement that would persuade the other parties to meet them because the real engagement wasn’t with us. We couldn’t give them a united Ireland because we believed in the consensus, so there was not much for us to give, but they could either win the confidence of the other parties to engage or not. That was our main interest. Although they were not creative in the meetings I would say that, in the process, they moved more than any other party. They wouldn’t advertise that but that is the truth. Remarkably, there are always tensions in parties but with Adams and McGuinness, who had worked together for years, you could not get a cigarette paper between them. It was a remarkable achievement. We said that if you end violence we will meet you and engage politically and this was 1993–4. When they called their ceasefire in 1994 it wasn’t a completely unambiguous statement as you would expect. But we had ministers who had been saying ‘If only they stopped violence we would respond with great imagination’ but who, in the event, hesitated to do so because the ceasefire statement did not unambiguously state that it was permanent. Because of the absence of a clear commitment to permanence decommissioning was put on the table as a proxy. You can’t say it’s the wrong issue because if you have given up violence you don’t need weapons, but it was a daft issue to raise at that time because it confused the static with the dynamic and the static analysis was that these guys had renounced violence so no need for guns, end of story. But the realistic analysis was that there was a process, so change was going on which we could either encourage or discourage and that process of change was a move from a violent, terrorist campaign to an accommodation and a political settlement. One imagines the leadership saying to its people ‘We still have our military capability so if they don’t play ball we give them another dose of medicine’ and that is how they kept the hard men quiet. But then this issue of decommissioning is emphasised and everyone had to join in. I don’t think it was a clever scheme to frustrate the process. I think it was clumsy. They should have said we are managing a difficult process of change and we can either help it along, or we can screw it up. We came very close to screwing it up. I think trust developed in the

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sense of knowing that these guys were business-like and that they wanted to carry things forward and that if they were asked to go away and write an agenda they would do it, it was that kind of trust. I think there developed a mutual confidence that everyone was seriously playing the game, but that was proved more through business being done. But, for Tony Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell, the resistance and unease Sinn Fein had about decommissioning, derived from its strongly perceived associations for the PIRA of surrender: What they would often do is test me on stuff such as how to get round decommissioning and claiming that this would go nowhere. I talked to some army generals who served in Kosovo and Bosnia and they had this idea of sealed weapons dumps, where inspectors would go and check that the seal was untouched and the weapons were still there. So instead of getting rid of weapons you had this sort of inspection system. When I put it to them they said ‘No way’ and that the Army Council would not accept it. Really they were testing me on how it would work and some three weeks later, in a more formal session of negotiations with the Northern Ireland officials, they did indeed propose this idea to us. It was an opportunity for them to think and gather ideas, but in an informal setting where they didn’t have to protect that position. They could think about it, go away and come back. Quite a lot of the conversations were in those terms. Former senior British civil servant ‘William’ further expanded on how Sinn Fein sought to resist decommissioning as much as possible given the implications it had for embarrassing the PIRA and de-legitimizing the value of armed struggle: When asked about decommissioning they would say that is a good question but this is not something that we can sign up for straight away, it’s simply not possible for us to do that. The question was always are they signing up to exclusively peaceful methods or are they fudging it? And actually they were fudging it constantly, explicitly or implicitly, because they had to bring the hard men with them and they could not sign up to some things because they simply wouldn’t be allowed to. To some extent it was very much the playing of a game. But they were always cautious about what they could and could not deliver. On the point of violence itself, they would say it was as much a tragedy for them as for us, that was the kind of approach. It wasn’t an explicit threat, more that we needed to be aware that it was there. Even after the ceasefire, on punishment beatings, they would say we understand this is a problem and it’s something we

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are trying to control but you will have to give us time, that kind of line, and they were very clever at that kind of stuff. They understood the limits of what we could give but were always trying to persuade us to stop believing what we were being told by the securocrats; that we had to take a more sophisticated view of this in historical perspective. They had a caricatured view that we had a bunch of people who said ‘Let’s shoot the bastards’ and that we had to control them because they had a very different idea about bringing violence to an end. They thought we did not have enough dissension about these so-called securocrats telling us to take a much harder line. The decommissioning problem notably required considerable negotiating skill from both governments to resolve, but it was also met with prevarication and managerial skills by Sinn Fein too, as Tim Dalton, who was secretary general of Department of Justice in the Irish government (1993–2004) highlighted: Even the very word ‘decommissioning’ was something they had a real mental reservation about and that was why we came up with the concept of ‘putting arms beyond use’. Some politicians, at times, slipped into using the words ‘out of use’ which was not the same concept clearly, because putting arms ‘out of use’ is a very different thing to putting them ‘beyond use’. I think the Sinn Fein negotiators saw certain flexibility in the notion of ‘arms beyond use’. The word ‘decommissioning’ meant destroying arms forever, whereas ‘beyond use’ could, theoretically at least, mean putting them at the bottom of a lake. In other words, it was less about the arms of the PIRA being crushed and more about the PIRA themselves putting their arms where they could no longer reach them. I believed that decommissioning was the last thing they would be likely to do because it was the most powerful instrument they had. One of the downsides of elevating the whole decommissioning issue in the first place was that it confirmed – if indeed conformation was ever required – how important the weapons were. It tended to place the gun at the centre of negotiations and while the redirection of the issue to the de Chastelain Commission [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) established August 1997] was enormously important, the topic nevertheless continued to resurface and to block progress on other fronts. We employed a variety of linguistic devices to try and find a way of taking arms out of the equation. Apart from words, we also considered all sorts of approaches that might work within the law but, at the same time, meet PIRA agreement. For example, the idea of encasing arms in concrete very deep underground where nobody could get to them – or even want to do so – was considered. Many of these ideas may well have been impractical and would require flexible

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interpretations of the law, but at least they served to keep the conversation about arms disposal alive whenever progress with the decommissioning body either slowed or temporarily stalled. From a unionist perspective, at least, decommissioning had become an essential requirement from the day the issue was first publicly raised so we couldn’t, from that point onwards, leave the impression that the topic had died. However, for Sean O hUiginn, decommissioning was an unnecessary logjam in the process, being introduced initially as a precondition for progress and then subsequently undermining that progress: One of the episodes of the peace process that I still have never found an explanation for was the handling of decommissioning. When Paddy Mayhew advanced decommissioning as an upfront pre-condition he may not have fully understood all the ramifications, but everyone who knew the situation in Ireland could see immediately it was a spoiler. Decommissioning was always going to be an effect and the truth was simple - decommissioning would come only after political agreement and therefore at the end of the process. At any other point it would be seen as symbolic surrender by the entire republican movement. Decommissioning was an important objective, but an objective taken out of sequence is thereby changed. Decommissioning at the end of the process was rational and necessary, but insisted upon at some undefined point in the process it subverted that process by creating a condition that was impossible for republicans to fulfil. It was a goal whose timing mattered dramatically since, as said, coming anywhere other than at the end could be interpreted as an unconditional Provo surrender. On that basis it was obviously impossible for them. Decommissioning was also insidious because how do you argue against any demand for it, or convince people that to use it for propaganda purposes is to undermine the prospect of achieving it? If we were asked the day after Mayhew’s intervention in Washington in 1995 would we be happy if it was delivered tomorrow, of course, we would say yes, but that is a different thing from saying this goal overrides all the rest of the process. The exaggerated importance given to early decommissioning also indicated a concentration on the instrument of violence to the neglect of the mindset which caused it when, in fact, it made much more sense to concentrate on eliminating the motivation and then deal with the instruments. The peace process could not be based on a cynical tactic, but on a prudent awareness that only by changing mindsets can the situation be truly transformed. That takes time and there is always a degree of vulnerability. Certainly, for former Irish ambassador in Washington Dermot Gallagher, the issue of decommissioning was a considerable problem for republicans,

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who faced increasing pressure from America after the attacks of 9–11 and growing expectation to demonstrate an unequivocal commitment to exclusively peaceful and democratic means of political representation because of it: On decommissioning, there was growing pressure from the US on republicans to deliver, both in the interests of the Agreement but also because of a dislike of violence in general. This increased after 9–11, including for many members of the Irish community who, up to then, might have taken a position on the issue. That said, my own long-held view was that the key to decommissioning lay, firstly, in policing reform, because if republicans could be brought to support and indeed join the police in the North it would be difficult in such circumstances for them to argue for and justify the retention of their weaponry. Secondly – and this was an equally challenging obstacle – they were acutely conscious of the historical resonance where republicans had never surrendered arms in the past. Any aura or taint of surrender therefore, carrying with it in republican eyes a clear dimension of defeat, had to be removed from the equation. In this regard, the formula of ‘putting arms beyond use’ in a verifiable way was invented and, with the PSNI replacing the RUC, finally delivered the crucial decommissioning dimension of the Good Friday Agreement. The issue of decommissioning being used as a condition of commitment to the peace process incited resistance amongst Sinn Fein leaders not just because it risked the embarrassment of surrender and an admission of guilt for the conflict, but because it positioned militant republicanism as the cause of violence in Northern Ireland rather than a result of British coercion and repression. For that reason, and unsurprisingly, Sinn Fein leaders tended to emphasize the victimhood status of those who pursued the armed struggle and represented militancy as an inevitable result of historical British irresponsibility and injustice. For Jonathan Powell, who was chief of staff in the Blair government, the historical dimension featured strongly in republican thinking and often framed their approach to negotiations. The tendency, for Powell, was to connect republican actions to perceived British oppression, and the time-line Sinn Fein leaders drew from served to depict republicans as part of a longer history which stressed the scale of suffering to increase the sense of British irresponsibility: There was often a sense of victimhood which was very much a part of their identity and there would be a need for them to get that off their chest when talking to you. They spent a lot of time doing that. I used to joke that when there was a break after half an hour they would have only got

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to 1689 and that there would be another 200 years of grievances to get off their chest before they started to talk about what was happening now. They would particularly emphasise the unfairness and being done down and they used that approach when something happened in negotiations they did not like. They would also refer to Bloody Sunday, Castlereagh, internment, unemployment, lack of housing, the civil rights movement and those kinds of things too. The emphasis was that Northern Ireland had been created by the British who had forced the conflict on them. It was very much to do with the British plot of wanting to hang on to territory, so it was a combination of myth and actual realities about contemporary life and the quite recent past. When we met for the first time in Downing Street, in the cabinet room, Martin McGuinness wanted to break the ice and said ‘So this was where all the damage was done?’ I thought he was referring to when the PIRA bombed Downing Street in 1991 that nearly wiped out the Cabinet who were meeting to discuss the Iraq war. But McGuinness was referring to where the treaty was signed by Michael Collins and Lloyd George, so they were thinking about a completely different timescale. For them history was very important and it was a salutory lesson to us about how important history and myth was to them. Once you hear this a few times you begin to understand more where they are coming from and what they are trying to say and it becomes less of a problem in negotiation. I think they were stuck in history because they were constantly looking back instead of looking forward. They wanted to focus on past unfairness, deaths, murders and mistreatment. In a sense, the only way we got to an agreement was because they managed to start looking forward, about how they were going to share power, reform the police force etc. and this required more and more looking at the future rather than the past. Former British civil servant ‘William’ also commented on the long timeline that Sinn Fein would tend to draw from to inform their negotiating approach, as well as how they gave considerable attention to presenting positions and outcomes: The role of Adams and McGuinness was key here since they always struck me and others as being amongst the most intelligent people in the game. They seemed to be thinking ahead probably more than we were early on and they did have a long, historical perspective to draw from too. They seemed to be looking beyond any possible peace agreement and shaping a different platform to pursue politics and their ideological convictions. When you spoke to them it might also come out they did not want their children living the same life and this did seem to have plausibility about it. But the question we were constantly asking ourselves was would

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they go back to violence, because that option was always there. It was very hard to work out what their tactics were because they might say ‘We agree, but he have to persuade others in the republican movement’, and, although there was truth in that, it also offered a very convenient negotiating tactic. Sinn Fein were always telling the Irish that the British were asking for something they could not give, that the ceasefire would break down and that the Irish had to make this known to us or we’ll be back where we started. I’ve no doubt there was some truth in that, but it was a convenient tactic for them too. They were always fairly focussed on what the next stage was in the peace process, or what lurked beyond a piece of text. They were always arguing about words and meanings but, although they were very focussed on the point you were negotiating, they also had a wider historical and philosophical view of it. There was always talk of inclusion, of course, which was the code for discrimination inside Northern Ireland, and not going back to the past, because of new institutions, was important. Their sense of history was very much about fitting it into what they were doing. They were thinking about how a peace agreement would function as another stage in the struggle and they didn’t really conceal that. Nor were we under any illusion about what they were trying to achieve by doing it. They interpreted things in a much broader context. The use of victimhood as a negotiating context and position served to place particular onus on the two governments to bring about peace but also could be seen as a tactical device used to reinforce expectations of getting rather than giving, and although this tactic was productive in terms of controlling pace and hindering the prospect of perceived capitulation to governmental pressures, for Jonathan Powell, it also fed into a general propensity for overnegotiation and not appreciating or fully comprehending the benefits of compromise: I think they had made the decision in the late 1980s that they wanted peace and they knew approximately the terms they would have to settle on in the end and that would include the Union going on. If they had said that to the movement in the 1980s they would have been rejected, so they had to lead the movement crablike to a peace process. They had a broad notion of the terms without telling others what they were doing. That was done step-by-step. They never would say, ‘We are having severe problems with the Army Council’, or sort of implicate themselves being members of the PIRA, which Adams always denied, because you could bang them up for that. But they would say ‘We have got a real problem here can you help us’, that ‘you need to do this or we are not going to be able to sell this’. The reason they used for over-negotiating was that they had to carry the movement with them. Adams was very explicit

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at the first meeting that we had in Downing Street when he took Tony and me to a part of the room where the pillars separated people off and said he could deliver the PIRA, but that it would be better to do it with the whole movement rather than just reaching agreement with some of them. He argued it was important to win the movement over and we accepted that and we kept to that because we thought it better to try and do this all at once rather than try to make peace lots of times, in lots of different rooms, with different factions. That would complicate things and make the whole thing much harder to deal with. The peace process was about getting to a fundamental fairness that they felt had been denied. Eventually they came to the conclusion that they did not just want to have their grievances heard, but to change things and get a practical approach for going forward. Occasionally you would get a bit of pseudo-Marxism but not actually with the key figures, more from others and especially when you were negotiating on social issues. A number of times they had to go off, disappear for twenty-four hours, then come back looking like they had been dragged through a hedge backwards. They would have gone and consulted with the Army Council and we were fairly certain about that. Sometimes they would be turned over, when they had agreed to things in the room, but then would come back and say ‘Sorry we can’t do that’. It was pretty clear to me by the end that the Army Council were a bunch of barrack room lawyers and liked to get into textual negotiations, always inserting conditionality and other things into a text that had been agreed. Some of it would have been Adams and McGuinness just playing us off by pretending that ‘her indoors’ was making it very difficult for negotiations. For Powell, Sinn Fein’s intensive approach to negotiation, although effective in terms of being constantly tough, did little to help build trust with opponents and had counter-productive ramifications because of this too: I think the republicans were too tactical in their approach to negotiations because they over-negotiated. If they had settled five years earlier they would have got a better deal than they did in the end. They actually determined their position by negotiating and although they knew when to hold they didn’t know when to fold. They would say that they couldn’t carry the movement at that moment and that the unionists were not helping by being difficult etc. A lot of this was their own making and they would have been better if they had been more strategic. They did have a big strategic view of wanting peace and that was the decision they made in the 1980s, but they didn’t have a detailed strategy and a lot of what they did was very tactical. It was only when Adams came to understand at the end that he needed to think about the constituency on the other

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side, as well as selling an agreement, that we got a lasting peace. Sinn Fein had a long-term game plan and that didn’t involve walking out of the negotiations, but they would prefer the unionists to walk out. Notably, Powell described how Sinn Fein kept the governments as uncertain as possible about where they stood in the early phases of negotiations, sensitive to any connotations of selling out and the need to facilitate movement by a series of steps which would enable the message to be sold to other republicans that they were being taken seriously and so exerting control in the peace process: They could be very aggressive but that tended to be a tactical thing, more of a good cop/bad cop scenario. They could shout and threaten at times but the only way to deal with that was to ignore it and carry on. It was not a cultural thing, more a tactical device they used. I don’t think it was any different from a German or Soviet negotiator. One should also remember that they were very defensive and had been hemmed in by their ghetto for a long time. Gradually, as they got a bit of international respectability by going to Washington etc. they became more statesmanlike and this was reflected in their language. They also had to be careful that in the eyes of their community they were not being seen as too big for their boots. Adams was negotiating with me sometimes as he was driving his car to a meeting with the Army Council, trying to squeeze more points before he got to the meeting and deliberately using obfuscation. Because you didn’t really know what people in the movement actually thought it was hard to get an assessment of where they stood. That is different to dealing with a political party where you can take people out to lunch and get a clearer idea of where they stand. In comparison to this perception about Sinn Fein’s strategy and tactics, Irish official Sean O hUiginn, who worked closely with Sir Quentin Thomas on the formulation of text, offered an extensive and detailed overview of how he saw the Sinn Fein approach: The Sinn Fein leadership was very formal in the negotiations but were arguably stronger on the tactical than the strategic. They had great coherence for obvious reasons. I think the process could be summarised as taking all the protagonists out of denial and as regards Sinn Fein that also meant taking them out of ambiguity. In the run up to the peace process there were times when Sinn Fein tested the waters with, if not ambiguity, then certainly minimal gestures and they had to be challenged on that. It had to be brought home to them, for example, that a two week ceasefire that loomed large in their eyes was not worth

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talking about in terms of the wider world. What was at issue was always an unambiguous transition into democratic politics and it could never be permissible to have a bit of violence and a bit of politics. It wasn’t just a moral issue, it was also a practical one in that no democratic politician could become compromised by an organization that was capable of a massacre in the morning. I think that the governments were very consistent in that area. There could not be ambiguity on the dividing line between a political process and physical force. When we engaged with them it was evident that the republican leadership were extremely good tacticians, particularly with short-term objectives, in their choice of personnel and in spotting gaps or discrepancies in the position of people they dealt with and you had to be correspondingly alert when dealing with them. They would be extremely careful in mapping out the ground of negotiation, as well as analysing the relationships between the people they were dealing with. They would be very careful in cross-checking what each party said to them. They kept meticulous notes of every syllable uttered and probably have a wonderful cache of manuscripts waiting for historians which records in great detail what was said. You had to go to considerable trouble to keep the demarcation lines very clear and ambiguity was never far away. There were certainly some ambiguities on violence and policing, but they were gradually eliminated. One of the things which I recognised from the outset, and which is fundamental in negotiations anywhere with people being drawn into the democratic process, was the issue of good faith and I mean that in a pragmatic as well as moral sense. First of all republicans were ‘getting off the tiger’s back’, which was a dangerous transaction at the best of times, and anything that smacked of bad faith or even a surprise was something they were extremely allergic to. This was because they were a network, with some important elements below the surface that they had to take with them. They were naturally very careful. It wasn’t that they tried to wrong foot us for its own sake, or regarded the confounding government as a game. After all, if you are working on the hypothesis that they actually wanted the enterprise to succeed then they had no particular interest in destroying the government they were dealing with. They obviously had an interest in preserving and asserting their own agenda as best they could and were extremely careful about text and doctrine and very sensitive to nuances of language, but they also knew pretty much where they were heading at any given time. They tolerated imperfections in text, from their point of view, because it was obviously a negotiation. However, they would have been at pains to ensure their movement could live with the text that finally emerged and there was an immense amount of polishing with regards to that. Along with our British colleagues, we found a path through the minefield of

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the theological or doctrinal issues, the application of self-determination, for example, and all those other tricky concepts that were capable of torpedoing the negotiations at any time. We wrapped them in generally acceptable packages, whether verbally elegant or not. These packages were happily not reopened in the later stages of the negotiations, which thereby enabled concentration on practical issues rather than becoming embroiled in doctrinal abstractions. O hUiginn continued to expand on how Sinn Fein approached negotiations and dialogue by highlighting their tangible fear of reacting spontaneously to developments and being seen to move at the behest and speed of others: The republicans had been through the school of hard knocks and these were not people who had inherited conventional political procedures. They emerged through the street and as a product of a very grave crisis in Northern Ireland. Their tradition was defined by its rejection of the politics of Dublin and London. At the same time they were highly intelligent and skilful, having come from political isolation and there was a large learning curve to be grappled with and that made them keenly alert to the possibility that they might be cheated or surprised. They fielded people with considerable drafting skills, particularly in the later stages when it was a more openly co-operative enterprise. We were trying to finding something that accommodated their position without obviously driving the unionists and the British off the reservation. They had people who were ingenious at coming up with the formula in negotiation, but they were never spontaneous in terms of ‘Let’s give this a try, why don’t we?’ For that reason it was not prudent or wise to throw surprises, so a lot of things would be signalled deliberately in advance. Negotiations by definition require a lot of things that have to be brought into the light of day carefully and judiciously and with a keen eye to what would be sustainable for either side. There could be no question of mere pointscoring on the lines of saying ‘I will wipe the floor with these guys today’ or whenever. It’s true that a certain silence on the outworking of the negotiations was necessary because it would have been fatal to the mix if some Irish politician had adopted a macho posture of ‘I will show them what’s what’, because that would have had reverberations right back along their system. Let me add, to the great credit of our politicians, that I cannot recall a single instance in all my years of involvement where the process was exploited for partisan purposes. Part of the problem was that there was only a quite small area where the parties could find common ground and we had to get everybody to arrive at this space and avoid unproductive alternatives. Since we believed

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there was only one place the peace process could land, so to speak, we had to insist on that area as our goal. This was seen by some as making difficulties for ideological reasons, but it reflected a pragmatic judgement. I would also add that one small miracle of the peace process is that it never got drowned in theology. If you look at events in Irish history such as the civil war in the 1920s, for example, you can see how things could sink horribly into a morass of doctrinal issues which not only cost lives, but left a legacy of bitterness. We were concerned to find stepping-stones through this potential morass. There was a real danger of failing on that score given the complications of self-determination, independence etc., and other genuinely thorny issues. The key was neutral or benign respect for the primacy of choice of the people of Northern Ireland and that was never really negotiable. Acceptance of that principle changed the situation psychologically because it enabled the shift from a ‘winnertakes-all’ approach to one based on parity of esteem. But, for former British civil servant ‘William’, it was apparent that ‘the principle of consent’ caused problems for Sinn Fein, suggesting a wider fear about being ‘duped’ in the process. It was this fear, in particular, ‘William’ contended, that led Sinn Fein, where possible, to present shifts and developments as successfully negotiated outcomes in order to sell a positive image of engagement to the PIRA and subsequently bring them along in the process: We were always conscious that the big difficulty was getting republicans to accept the principle of consent and no doubt they would have had a problem convincing people this was the best thing to do in the long run. The skill was in presenting what they achieved as a victory. They sold the Good Friday Agreement as a victory compared to the unionists who achieved more of what they wanted fundamentally than republicans, but sold it as a defeat. Sinn Fein were very good at dressing up what was happening as something they were in control of and directing, as opposed to having something imposed on them. So they were very good at presenting things as their plan, as it were. The Canary Wharf bomb was a huge blow to us but in some ways it was for them too. As soon as it happened they absorbed it and were trying to present a narrative about how it happened, what it meant and how we get back to where we needed to go next. So they were thinking in a relatively long-term way, whereas the unionists would have focussed on the violence starting again and how terrible that was. Sinn Fein were very good at moving on from great difficulties. Fergus Finlay, who was foreign policy advisor to two coalition Irish governments from 1993 to 1997 and involved in negotiations that led to

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the DSD and the Frameworks Document widened the analysis of Sinn Fein’s ability to control developments, offering this summation: There was a lot of intellectual commitment to doing business with the Provos but there was also a visceral dislike of them too. I think we struggled to try and understand what the Provos were really after and we could never understand why they had this endless opposition to institutions in Northern Ireland. I have always believed that they were committed to a peace process, but less sure about what outcome they wanted. They seemed to know what they wanted to get away from, but not where they wanted to go. They appeared to be looking for a peg to hang their hat on, but they did not see many pegs as acceptable to that end. When the Good Friday Agreement came along they accepted it and decided it was what they wanted, rather than accepted it because it was the achievement of their goal. They had to milk every situation in order to have something to take back. I don’t imagine any Irish official was ever at a session with Provisional republicans which ended with them saying ‘We have a deal’. It never happened. It was always ‘We will have to think about it and go back’, always thinking of the next step. They always wanted another slice. But you had to accept their style because it was the only way to do business with them. Finlay went on to particularly emphasize the discipline and coherence of Sinn Fein’s negotiating technique, which, like others, he also saw as inextricably linked to fears of a split with the PIRA: There was always one message, always and astonishingly so. I thought that Adams was the more calculating of the two because McGuinness was the more emotional. You were always talking to the ideology, but there was an emotional content to nearly every conversation that you had. It wouldn’t be overt, because they were trying to get away from violence, but they were also dealing with their own personal histories. In terms of the ideology there was never any admission that the violence was wrong, immoral or counter-productive. Their identity meant that they could never admit to being wrong. Their whole negotiating approach was to take whatever they could get, put it in their back pocket and go away and come back the following day for a further increment. They didn’t get increments, they got increments. I’ve always believed that the principle motivator for Adams was the unity of the movement and he would never take a jump to put the unity of the movement at risk. And if that is your principle motivator then you are prisoner of the most recalcitrant person in your group. You’re always going to bend, arguing this is the increment I got yesterday and being sent back the next day for another. I am not

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sure this was tactical either because I think it was driven by the fact that outcomes were never clear in their heads, they never quite knew what the result was and the end result that they were after. They knew what they wanted to get away from and their speed was determined by the slowest mover. But they could never trade as a consequence. They would never say ‘We will do this if you do that’. It was always ‘We will have to go away and consult and come back’. The psychology of moving away from something that you’ve stopped believing in without knowing where you want to go and how you are going to get there underpinned a lot of that too. There’s never going to be a moment when it’s possible for the republicans to persuade everyone they won, or admit to everyone they lost. There are only two kinds of politicians in the end, those that are driven by outcomes and those who are driven by process and the Provos are process-driven. If they don’t win they split and the avoidance of the split is the key thing. How do they do it? By claiming that everything that happens is what they wanted to happen. Remember the PIRA ceasefire and the scenes on the streets of Belfast? We’ve won, we’ve won, but what did they win? They just stopped killing people. So the view is that if you don’t win you will split and if there are three people left to carry on the struggle it’s all been for nothing because avoidance of the split is the key. If you look at the Provos in very crude simplistic terms, for a long time is was Brits out politics, a very clear outcome where the end justifies the means and the result was a complete corruption of everything you could hold dear about republicanism. They then said that is not the objective any more, we’ve got to get away from that, but still had not settled on where they wanted to end up so it’s an open-ended process. It may end in them being in power in both parts of the island of Ireland, but still with separate administrations and separate jurisdictions at the same time. And, at some point, they will say that Ireland is united or that they won something which was not won. On Sinn Fein’s relationship with the PIRA, Jonathan Powell identified how difficult it was to be certain on Sinn Fein’s negotiating position given that the Army Council of the PIRA was kept away from direct face-to-face meetings. This served the strategic aims of Sinn Fein to use the influence of the ‘absent participants’ of Army Council representatives to control the pace of negotiations and to create time and space to work through contentious issues more thoroughly before moving to the next stage: Adams did say to me that Tony wanted to meet the Army Council but that these people are military men and not interested in politics so it may make things worse rather than better. It was not going to be a meeting of minds, so it was probably the right decision. It was also in their interest

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not to let this happen because they could continue to stress how people are difficult and that we might have questioned why we were trying to convince people like that, which could have been counter-productive. It was probably in both our interests that we did not meet them. We had to guess their bottom line and their relationship with the organization. They would say things like ‘If you don’t remove the towers along the border we are going to have trouble with the South Armagh brigade because nothing has changed in their lives. As long as you have a tower outside Murphy’s house he’s not going to think much has changed and if you want to stop dissidents they are the people who are going to have to help us’. We saw the value of that argument and the importance of carrying that constituency with them. Also, if you want a lasting agreement, they had to feel that they, as well as the other side, had won and there had to be no winners and losers from that point of view. Not really knowing what their bottom line was also made the process last longer. It probably would have been better if they had cut to that quicker. When we got to an issue and I would ‘Here’s our idea’, or ‘here’s what the unionists might wear, what do you think about it?’ they would challenge it. A lot of the meetings took place on their turf and we decided that would be better than them coming to us. So, I did quite a lot of meetings with them in safe houses in West Belfast or Derry. On the point of where meetings took place we decided it was the right thing to go to their turf instead of demanding that they came to Downing Street or the grand rooms of Stormont, a symbol of repression. To go to a place where they felt they were not being bugged was important because they would then feel better about what was happening. I think it was a good idea and when we do this with other insurgent groups we go to their turf, where they are more relaxed and willing to give you a little more about what their position is. You want to suggest things to people, but not to insist on ownership. This is important to give space to think about things and to allow ideas to be kicked back and forth. So it’s a process of feeling things out in those terms and this worked better on their turf. The military organization helped them a lot in terms of negotiating leverage but, apart from Adams and McGuinness, I don’t think they [the military organization] had many political minds. They had been leaders for decades, unlike most political leaders, and this meant that they had to separate the paramilitary mind from the political mind. But Adams and McGuinness were better at thinking about how something would be received by the constituency, how to sell what is agreed, what would look best for their side and what things would look like if they were forced to surrender and then go on television to defend it. Part of the leadership art for them was staying in sync with history because history is so important to the movement; the idea that you can’t betray your history and that you don’t mention physical security. They would quite

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often talk to me about threats to their lives, about the risks they were taking, the graffiti at the end of McGuinness’ street saying ‘We will get you’ from dissidents, or the danger of a 17-year-old being given a gun and told to go and kill him. They were very conscious of their own security and the risks they were taking. It wasn’t just normal political interplay. If they took a wrong step they could quite easily have been bumped off and this concentrated their minds in terms of thinking about the negotiations. Former British civil servant ‘Mark’ also saw Sinn Fein as tactically coherent but stressed notable differences in how they approached negotiations compared to the unionists, with Sinn Fein adopting a more authoritarian leadership-driven approach which provided a clearer sense of future focus that became a framework by which to weigh and consider the outcomes of the present from a much longer-term perspective: One was always reading into whatever Sinn Fein negotiators said that it was only part of a composite approach seeking to achieve republican objectives which, early on, were consciously backed up by acts of terrorism. They had a very clear and disciplined negotiating style and you never got one member of the team saying one thing and another one saying something slightly different, as you did with other groups. Sinn Fein would move in a very limited way around their core negotiation area. They were very clear about their objectives in the various strands of negotiations. They took hard-line positions and they tended to just keep asserting them. You tended to find they would adopt a position where the leadership would come forward with a proposition and that would be the position that everyone would sign up to and go along with. You could draw a parallel with the Catholic Church where what was passed down from on high was just accepted by the rest of the team and became part of the doctrine. You have this tradition within Catholicism about the infallibility of the Pope and that kind of top-down view of the world which contrasts with the individual conscience expressed in the Presbyterian approach and this is similar in politics, where everybody has to make up their own mind and make their own call politically, not necessarily do what the leader says. It always seemed to be the case that nationalists and republicans would start from a big picture and then work down to something practical, whereas the unionists always wanted to start right down at the bottom level and agree on some practical things and then move up to a sort of construct. There was a perception that unionists were very much conviction politicians where, when presented with an issue, they would react immediately on the basis of what their conviction was at that point. In contrast, nationalists would be much more political and rather than react to a point instinctively they would think it through and come

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back with a counter-proposition, which was made on a political rather than instinctual basis. So unionists would react instinctively and viscerally whereas Sinn Fein would pick something up, turn it over and think about it and work out what the most politically effective response would be that they could agree amongst themselves, and then the leadership would say this is the response and that would be what they would push forward on. Adding to the discussion Dermot Gallagher, who, as said, was ambassador in Washington from 1991–1997 before becoming head of the Anglo-Irish Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and later secretary-general of the department, contributed this overview on how he saw the ability of Sinn Fein as negotiators: In discussions and negotiations, Adams and McGuinness were cautious in responding immediately to ideas and drafting that we might advance. They would often say ‘Well, we need to reflect on that’, or ‘we will try and take that further’. They were in particular careful to keep the PIRA’s Army Council well briefed on issues, and to have matters thrashed out there, before being in a position to move further. Also, they particularly left the drafting on almost all issues to the governments, especially the Irish government, tending to turn down formulae but without stating precisely on what basis. It often tested our ingenuity to work out their reasoning for doing so but, painstakingly, and on the basis of regularly revised drafting, real progress was ultimately achieved. However, I have to say that from the outset I took the – perhaps at the time somewhat optimistic – view that once the republican leadership had taken a serious and conscious decision to enter into the process, they were unlikely to resile from it except in exceptional circumstances, and I could not envisage either of the two governments allowing such circumstances to develop. We realized from the beginning that any ultimate agreement had to balance the constitutional with the institutional. In other words, the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as part of the UK had to be endorsed, subject to it being changed by a majority in the North, while at the same time a new institutional balance, both internally in the North and between North and South, had to be put in place. The latter issue, with its all-Ireland dimension, was crucial for Sinn Fein, as it was for the SDLP and the Irish government. Likewise all three attached central importance to the issues of policing, the administration of justice and the overall equality agenda. Gallagher similarly acknowledged the single or unified approach as working to contain the pace and development of issues within a wider context that was particularly oriented to assuaging republican anxieties about movement and its potential collective impact. A concern about republican prisoners by Sinn Fein was an example of this and the dangers

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of not representing the interests of the republican movement as a whole featured strongly in Sinn Fein’s attempts to avoid accusations that they had disrespected republican former combatants, or distanced themselves from the validity of armed struggle: Prisoners were a particular issue of the highest priority for Sinn Fein. The party were determined not to let any prisoner remain in jail for any significant length of time and I doubt if we would have left Castle Buildings in Belfast with an Agreement on that Good Friday evening if an acceptable formula on prisoners had not been agreed. However, it was not possible at the time to reach agreement on some other highly sensitive issues, in particular policing, the administration of justice and the decommissioning of paramilitary arms. The most that could be achieved was the drawing up of terms of reference and an overall framework which would enable agreement on them to be reached at a future date. In other words, it was about putting a conceptual framework and terms of reference in place for actual delivery down the road. I think it would be fair to say that, as we approached the end game of the negotiations, it was down to the two governments, working closely with senator Mitchell and in consultation with the parties, to take the lead and to try and reach a common judgement as to where an ultimate fair and balanced compromise might be. It was central to our thinking, in this regard, that all sides would be able to stand up from the negotiating table with sufficient substance and concessions to persuade their own constituencies of the merits of an agreement, including, of course, its potential to deliver definitive peace. Sinn Fein did not actually sign up to the Agreement on Good Friday but claimed that they had to convene a special Ard Fheis to enable them to do so. However, we could see that organizing such a special conference was the equivalent of effectively endorsing the text. The securing of a positive outcome to the Ard Fheis was significantly helped by the release of high-profile prisoners to attend the session. Overall, I had a feeling that, from the beginning, Sinn Fein had a reasonably good sense of where the Agreement would lead them and the type of accommodation that they and their support base could live with and endorse. However, until close to the end, they took the tactical view that they had to oppose certain proposals. An example of this was their opposition for a long period to the proposal for an internal administration in Northern Ireland. While the logic was clear – they could not concede initially that there would not be a 32 county republic at that time – it struck the other participants as decidedly odd in practical terms as, at the same time, Sinn Fein were arguing for all-Ireland institutions, which would in practice have been unimaginable without representatives of the government in Dublin and of whatever administration would be put in place in Belfast. Another important dimension to bear in mind for Sinn Fein, as of course

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as it was for others, was that there should be a perceived new beginning across all fronts, be it institutional, or constitutional, or policing, and central to all of this was the equality agenda within Northern Ireland. During the negotiations Sinn Fein, from time to time, tended to indulge in history lessons, but no one really felt that these would impede a more pragmatic negotiation. At times also, we felt that they were playing for time in order to bring their constituency up to speed and to accept of a particular position the leadership were prepared to take. The overriding fear of a split between Sinn Fein and the PIRA was expressed as a primary concern of Sinn Fein by all the British and Irish officials interviewed here, and explanation of how this featured strongly in Sinn Fein’s negotiating position was extensively articulated by Tim Dalton who worked over a long period with Sinn Fein on the ending of paramilitary structures and the decommissioning of weapons: I think during the early stages they didn’t have enough militarists convinced to end the conflict. They had to wait until this happened and this  involved their coming back to us from PIRA gatherings on many occasions indicating that progress was possible but also that more had to be offered by the governments if they were to win the argument. Sometimes, when they said they needed more, I felt it was not so much a matter of gathering a few extra concessions but simply needing the time to persuade the PIRA that the basic power-sharing arrangement on the table was something that should be accepted. There were many conversations about rights that would apply to the minority community as part of the settlement deal. This was not surprising since discrimination and the denial  of basic rights to the minority community, followed by violent suppression of the authorities of peaceful efforts to secure those rights, was what opened the door in the late 1960s and early 1970s to IRA/PIRA intervention. The post-violence civil rights to be enjoyed by the minority community, was a matter, therefore, on which the negotiators had to secure results. There was a view amongst some in the security community – and indeed some outside of that community – that the delay in reaching agreement had little to do either with efforts to persuade the PIRA, or secure rights for the minority community. The theory, amongst those who held that view, was that the PIRA was exhausted and very near defeat, needed a break, and were tolerating a negotiation process so as to secure a breather and re-invigorate their fighting capacities. The proposition, in other words, was that the governments were being duped. This fortunately, was a minority view, both within the security community and more generally. It would obviously have represented an enormous gamble for the governments to rely on the exhaustion theory. How many lives would it cost to find out if the theory was right? There is little doubt,

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in my view, that the PIRA could have fought on and that many more people would have died as a consequence. The more convincing reason for delay was not that the PIRA simply needed a breather or that additional concessions were required but, as I’ve already said, that all – or at least the great majority – of their supporters had to be persuaded that the basic deal on offer was enough to justify an end to the armed conflict. The last thing the leaders could afford was a split. The PIRA had ample experience of splits and it was essential for the leaders to keep that in mind because when republican activists split it’s not like the break-up of a company – if you happened to be on the wrong side of a PIRA split it could be very bad for your health. We would have known from security briefings when certain meetings were taking place. We would get reports that a number of significant figures had turned up somewhere or other and gone into a conclave, so we knew that at least a process was underway and that it did not appear to be malign. I believe that some of the pro-negotiations people attended those meetings and brought propositions from the negotiating table, they weren’t always sure in advance what the answer was going to be. If the answer brought back to the negotiating table was a ‘no’, basically all we could do was express grave disappointment, say that the time was running out, that the door to government leaders was closing etc. But we always had to keep a window open somewhere in the attic, no matter how far back the negative answer had pushed us, because further talk was the only way forward. If, in any negotiating process, you believe there is a genuine intention on the part of a significant number of people to come to a settlement, you simply keep at it. Former British civil servant ‘Mark’ commented, like Sir Quentin Thomas, on the fears that Sinn Fein had of dealing with a British government they were distrustful of (at least in the formative years of the peace process) and saw this as strongly related to concerns about any potential splitting of the PIRA if they moved too quickly or without demonstrable gains: From the British government end there were those who thought that republicans stitch them up and abuse the democratic process, whilst there were also others who believed that republican leaders had seen the futility of terrorist methods and that engaging in a talks process was the only effective way ahead. But this recognition also had to contend with the prospect that this would involve bringing a very difficult rump of people with them. So the answer was to make it easier for the more enlightened, political end of the leadership to bring the whole movement into a talks process and we talked a lot about the ‘lobster pot’, that once they were in it would be almost impossible for them to go back to long-term armed violence. The idea was to get them into the talks process and then create circumstances where they would not go back

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to violence, that was the model we had. Right from the beginning there were signs that it could have that effect. There were no terrorist incidents during the 1991 talks, which were only six weeks long. And there were so significant terrorist incidents during the 1992 talks from April to November either. So you could tell that they did not think it would be a good idea to destabilise the talks process even if they were feeling that pressure. Although 1992 does not stand out as a good year at another level, because once the talks had ended there were a number of multiple murders, people could nevertheless see that when the talks were on the killing was off. One of the things that constantly drove us nuts was the language that came back from the PIRA, often incredibly convoluted and systematically ambiguous, both of which were hopeless for giving the unionists sufficient confidence to deal with what they needed to do. One of the reasons though that you needed a central synthesising process was because you needed two or three people who had actually been in the discussions and had heard all views but were able to boil everything down so it didn’t kind of proliferate and get unmanageable. With Sinn Fein you never knew when they were being spontaneous or not. It was almost impossible to tell. They had a wide variety of techniques and a lot of different moods so you were never sure in the event of anger whether it was synthetic anger or genuine anger. At times they played hardball to such an extent they overdid it. Because of that it was much harder to assess when they were going out on a limb because acting unilaterally was difficult for them. We never did meet the Army Council so it was difficult to be explicit about the level of influence, but it was factored into the accounts given that this influence was highly likely. They spoke about their worries over dissidents a bit and were saying ‘If you push us too hard you will wake up tomorrow and find us both dead in a ditch’, but it was normally a good idea not to react to such propositions and continue working on trying to get the most constructive atmosphere possible. The tendency to try and hold ground as much as possible came across from all the officials interviewed, but Tim Dalton gave one of the fuller accounts of how the Sinn Fein leadership used mutually enforcing (if also different) roles at the negotiating table to do this: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are in many ways very different personalities but, when it came to business, they talked as if they were a single person. Adams did most of the talking and McGuinness would later punch in questions. It’s a fairly common negotiating practice to test the water with new ideas or concepts in a tentative, bit-by-bit way – sometimes described as ‘just thinking aloud’. They may sometimes come across in a fairly convoluted way so as to leave an idea in the air rather than have it met with the immediate rejection which a more direct

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presentation or blunt question might receive. Martin McGuinness having listened to a (sometimes lengthy) government-side presentation would say ‘So what you’re saying to me is a, b and c’, and he would correctly identify all the underlying nuances and intentions. You were not going to get past them with obscurity, but they also knew when it was wise to allow a new suggestion or concept to float for a while so as to take the time to explore its possibilities. If conversation became difficult, and matters were not progressing as any of us wanted, Adams and McGuinness would sometimes leave for a break so as to talk amongst themselves and talk with their backup team. They were always trying to find the absolute minimum we wanted or could settle for – what the minimum was that would get them over the line. This again, of course, is a fairly standard way of conducting negotiations – industrial relations negotiators will be very familiar with it. It was very important to Sinn Fein that they would be seen to abide by what they promised and for that reason they attached considerable importance to their documents and statements. If we told them that the governments needed the PIRA to say something or other they would remind us that they were not the PIRA but would endeavour to use their influence. Sometimes they would ask us to produce a draft of what we thought the governments might like to hear and I found myself – as did others – preparing drafts. The drafts had to include statements about past PIRA achievements, the sacrifices of those who had died in the fight for Irish freedom etc. as there was no point in producing something that looked like it had come from a seminary. There was an abundance of the required language in previous PIRA statements so it was a matter of re-suing some of this and then trying to introduce some words or concepts that, if included in a PIRA statement, could then be taken as a sign of progress on the part of the PIRA. There was, of course, no way in which a PIRA statement was every going to be drafted end-toend by outsiders but, over time, texts slowly began to approximate what we were looking for. For example, words like ‘completely’ and ‘all arms’ (instead of ‘arms’) slowly became embedded. There was a certain amount of gamesmanship in all of this language trading but it was a necessary part of the task of moving mindsets closer to peace. Extending this summation further still, Dalton went on to stress how important language and its interpretations became in the interactions with Sinn Fein, pointing out that drawing out the process of drafting and redrafting text enabled Sinn Fein to convey themselves as ‘strong negotiators’ and shaping the process of exchange more than being shaped by it: We didn’t always know what precisely was wrong with government texts presented to the negotiators and here I am referring to texts other than draft PIRA statements. I remember on one occasion that a text we gave to

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the Sinn Fein team – I cannot remember which text – was brought back by them at a later meeting with a whole series of blue-coloured deletions through it. It was as if we had, once again, failed an exam but without an alternative script showing why we merited a ‘fail’. However, we continued to work on text after text because it was vital to maintain a sense of engagement and of forward movement i.e. to keep people talking and drafting, while the important process of persuasion within republicanism continued away from the table. When I refer to talking and drafting, I should explain how business was structured on the Sinn Fein side. The principal negotiators, as everybody knows, were Adams and McGuinness who, as I’ve said, acted as one at the negotiating table. They usually travelled to meetings with a support team which included different people at different times, depending on what the priorities happened to be. Gerry Kelly was very regularly in attendance at meetings alongside Adams and McGuinness. Other prominent team members included Aidan McAteer and Ted Howell, who were quite heavily involved in analysing and preparing texts, Leon Green and Bairbre de Brun who were engaged in working through human rights and policing issues and occasionally Seanna Walsh and Joe Reilly. Martin Ferris and Pat Doherty attended certain meetings and, as senior Sinn Fein figures, we tended to read their presence as a matter of some significance. They attended the Good Friday negotiations and Martin Ferris was very involved throughout the peace process in issues to do with prisoners, which was a very important grouping when it came to reaching eventual agreement. Rita O’Hare attended meetings in Dublin and was in contact with their American support base, but she could not attend meetings in Belfast for legal reasons. So, all-in-all it was a sizeable and resourceful support team. But, I felt that one problem with their negotiating style was that they sometimes tended to overstate their opposition to propositions which didn’t seem to be that problematic. They would sometimes tell us that something was not on (‘it won’t fly’) even though we felt sure that it could be on. You might say that was a tactic, indeed a normal negotiating tactic, but sometimes it backfired in that it left government negotiators with the impression that there was a much higher mountain still to be climbed than was the case in reality. This gave rise, occasionally, to frustration and anger, which are not positive contributors in an any negotiation process. Adams and McGuinness always took the lead on what I might loosely call ‘the PIRA agenda’ and topics such as the ending of the military campaign and the issue of arms. On these topics they tended to be absolutist. When it came to political structures they were much more open to persuasion and choreography than they were on the absolutes. The problem of knowing the extent to which Sinn Fein had to be given space to make decisions was made pronounced, according to former senior

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British civil servant ‘Peter’, by the coherence of the Sinn Fein team and the closeness of their leadership: They were a very disciplined group with Adams and McGuinness very much in charge. Both were setting the direction and were recipients of the briefing on detail, because there were levels of detail and most were not that well versed in the finer points or minutiae of, for example, what kinds of towers were on the border, or what recommendations on policing might be. We would have a fairly good stab at predicting substance, but would not be so good at predicting whether a meeting would end in blockage or some kind of movement. A great imponderable was whether it was all down to negotiating tactics or whether something was genuinely difficult, or not, for them. Guinness seemed to be a bit more flexible, but my sense was that it was Adams who called the shots and who might be looking a bit harder for a particular solution. I’ve never seen a political double-act to compare; they were astonishingly close, astonishingly good. They had all these phrases and you couldn’t get a fag paper between them. It was a pretty telepathic impression that they managed to give. But it was partly an optical illusion, because that discipline obviously permeated the whole machine really. The discipline became more important and difficult as they moved into the endgame, having to decide whether to jump or not. This was even more the case when you produced very detailed briefs or fifty-seven page documents like the one which appeared one Christmas and resulted in a fourteen hour meeting. It was a whole set of wish lists, a menu of negotiating points they were after. But you could never be really sure when a particular negotiation was focused on what you thought it was focussing on when there was invariably this side agenda, which was designed to try and squeeze a few more drops out. An ability by Sinn Fein to apply pressure in order to try and maximize leverage on the two governments, was at one level an attempt to squeeze advantage, but at another stood as evidence that they could give the PIRA proof of not deviating from set goals, as former British civil servant ‘William’ verified: Their whole approach was to get you to understand the knife-edge they were sitting on with the Army Council. Although they did not use those terms that was the constant refrain from them, that and using the Irish to pressure us by saying ‘Unless we get a bit more from London this process is going to collapse’. That was the psychology of it. That we are the reasonable guys but you need to deal with us and show results because the others are far less reasonable and you may have to deal with them. One of the real difficulties we had was making the judgement of how real the threat of a return to violence was. On occasions they would bring

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someone like Martin Ferris to a meeting, who wouldn’t necessarily say a thing, and the psychology of that was interesting because they were doing that in order to show what meetings were like and that they weren’t selling republicans down the river. They were also doing this to show us that these are the kind of guys you need to understand we are dealing with. Everything was done in a calculated way. It was sending a message to us and him. For ‘William’ the role and function of language and ambiguity played a very important part in the early stages of the peace process, enabling the different parties to articulate oppositional positions within a common terrain of negotiations. On this, and how Sinn Fein adapted to the problem of articulation, he went on: Ambiguity was a key factor on the critical issues and the language reflected that, so you were never sure how far they were going to move and they played it that way more than most. Also, they were much better at selling things to their constituencies than others. One has to bear in mind that these guys didn’t do much else than this and they were completely focussed on it. They were focussed on language and its variations, had fall-back positions in their heads and could always advance another argument if one wasn’t working. They were obviously very careful about what they said. When Adams was alone with the prime minister the discussion was more down-to-earth than it would have been with five others around the table. Mitchel McLaughlin appeared to me to be the most political and perhaps most ready to compromise, but then you had others, like Martin Ferris, who would be brought along when they wanted to say something quite sharp. It was difficult to get an absolute sense of what they were thinking but, of course, there were people from the NIO etc. who were talking with other bits of the republican movement, so we did form a good impression of what others thought too. Republicans are much more unified as a negotiating unit and would have made more careful preparation for that compared to the unionists. They were also happy to avoid things when they were clear, such as the ‘principle of consent’. Their language was always conditioned to leave a chink of light in case they wanted to go back. Tying them down on things like what ‘being peaceful’ meant was always difficult. I don’t think they ever really negotiated the GFA, because, in the end, they did not get what they wanted. They got some of what they wanted, but they did not get what they essentially wanted, even though they said they did. They were always much more comfortable with manipulating words, covering ambiguity and finding formulations than the unionists were. It seemed to me that every word they used had a history behind it, so there was a code about what words meant, and avoiding word that aroused suspicion or might be

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meaningless to the outside world. Words like ‘durable’ or ‘lasting’ also created suspicion for them. We had to think of words which would help move things forward as well as try to conceal ambiguities where possible. But as time goes on things must become less ambiguous and something has to happen or not. You were constantly trying to nail the jelly to the wall realising that you were not going to succeed, but that you at least might be moving forward in some way. Former Irish foreign policy advisor Fergus Finlay also viewed the use of ambiguity as an integral part of Sinn Fein’s negotiating skill and technique: I think that ambiguity was built into them. They lived and died by what they saw as the armed struggle and they were wedded to it, committed to it and then wanted to end it without ever admitting it was wrong, shaming, or that it had set the cause of Ireland back. In a lot of the negotiations there appeared to be this kind of ‘late night’ moment when people would say ‘If it was up to me I would do it, but you have no idea of the pressures I am under’, but they never revealed anything. The only audience that mattered to them was their own and they were terrified of revealing any weaknesses to that world. In my dealings with them though their basic tactic was really to stress it was up to us and that was their basic position – we’ll respond but you can think of an initiative. The PIRA ceasefire was, I guess, an initiative, but it was in response to an orchestration by a whole range of other people. But though ‘constructive’ ambiguity was important for creating space and movement between the parties, for former British civil servant ‘Peter’, this ambiguity was more about cultivating a sense of acceptance and ownership of the process: The ambiguity changed the context and although most were good at using ambiguity they all knew that there were real agendas being worked through as well. Some of my colleagues thought that Sinn Fein were the supreme chisellers, kind of working a very detailed agenda and chipping away. It was not really about ambiguity, but it was done under the pretence of that. My sense through this was that they were extremely well briefed and fantastically well prepared, with a continuity of take on all issues. You really did feel as though you had to be on your toes. You were talking to people who were tricky, charming, charismatic, fascinating to deal with and with a whole load of different modes of behaviour such as good cop/ bad cop, conciliatory/aggressive, would use tantrums or be charming, or keep you at a meeting for fourteen hours, or be convivial, so it was a very skilful, thought out operation. They were incredibly systematic. At times they said that they needed to go away and talk to some people, and,

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occasionally, we would tease them in saying that they would be talking to themselves, but it was very difficult to get a completely sure-footed fix on what was going on, or whether the guys from the military side were calling the shots. I was fascinated by the relationship between McGuinness and Adams. They played their hand most often, in my experience, in the second phase 2002–2004, when Martin was set up as more the kind of free-thinking one, more constructive and thinking more broadly, whereas Gerry would be seen to be rhetorically harder. They used to love to trade on the opposition of the question about Martin being more military and Gerry being more the commanding presence, and they would often just walk off together and chat. Ambiguity and how differences in language and logic came into play, with regard to interpretive possibilities, reflected techniques of persuasion and interrogation which Jonathan Powell saw in the following way: Republicans were very discursive, very florid. McGuinness would get going on various rants about fairness, but often it did not really mean a lot. On the unionist side they were extraordinarily literal, a sort of Doubting Thomas, where you say this and you don’t mean anything else. They would talk past each other because the florid stuff that was coming from republicans was seen by unionists as rude and offensive and they often did not understand what they were on about. The role of the governments was important here in interpreting between the two sides, where they would say ‘Look republicans really mean this and here’s where you might be able to go’. They would say to the unionists that when republicans seem to be promising this, that does not mean they are going to do it because they could mean this. This observation was further expanded by Sean O hUiginn, who commented on the importance of Sinn Fein’s ability to adapt language and potential meaning to support negotiating aims and organizational expectations: It was very important to take the language dimension seriously because of the potential for ideological disputes and we worked to avoid these as much as possible. With coinages such as ‘parity of esteem’ you could spend days discussing nuances of meaning, but the main thing was to issue a kind of new linguistic currency in order to adjust how people thought and to reinforce the impression that something new was happening. I think the idea of parity of esteem – essentially a proactive form of equality – was used by us previously in employment legislation, but it has clear application in the wider political context too. Much of the peace process was a textual discussion since the new dispensation

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has to be defined in words. Since the object of the exercise was to get the Provisionals into exclusively democratic politics the nature of language was very important to that end and the drafting had to promote and not undermine that outcome. I think that the republicans did display an excess of caution but I also had some sympathy for that given that it was an unprecedented movement. I’m sure they did exaggerate the ferocity of some of their wilder men in their jungles, but to refute that tactic would have meant intruding into the personnel and management of the leadership we were dealing with and that would not have been prudent. That would have been a force for mistrust and disruption. It was important to remember that Sinn Fein and the republicans were coming from a point of isolation and it would have been initially very hard for them to have guidelines they could rely on as to what was realistically achievable in negotiations. They had to learn that micro-ceasefires, which they thought would be overwhelming gestures, amounted to next to nothing for the governments. It was clear that if the language on the doctrinal side of things had been unacceptable for either side then it was the end of business. It was vital to find a platform, however tortured linguistically, where people on all sides could see clearly their fundamental goals and values were not out of the frame and that was why a successful resolution of language issues was the precondition which enabled the negotiations to concentrate on the practical aspects of the problem. The explanation O hUiginn provided, for Tim Dalton, was a result of Sinn Fein’s skill in using ambiguity for adaptive purposes and, to indicate this, the way leaders dealt with the problem of decommissioning was illustrative: With regard to ambiguity, it is necessary to bear in mind that some things had to be left ambiguous. Many of us knew on Good Friday that while the Agreement was psychologically huge there was a large amount of work to be done afterwards. The language in the Agreement was sufficiently flexible and broad in its scope to secure public support, but those who had been close to its creation were very much aware that it could be read by different people. Arms decommissioning was a classic example where some could argue that its timing etc. was all clearly covered, while others could see what was said as providing them with some ‘wriggle room’. However, as I say, different issues had to be managed in this rather complex multi-layered way, as was the case with Sinn Fein’s effort to secure a move away from the militarist demand for a date for British withdrawal towards the idea of a consent-based, united Ireland. This was a huge lift for the Sinn Fein team. At the end of the negotiations they could – and can – say that although there is no British withdrawal in the Agreement the united Ireland ideal remains very much intact, though the

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route map has changed. It would be achieved by political rather than violent means. Arms decommissioning was an extremely difficult issue both prior to and subsequent to the Good Friday Agreement. I think it’s fair to say that it went closer than most other issues to scuppering the negotiations completely. The problems of decommissioning and committing to the delivery of exclusively peaceful politics continued to dog the peace process after the GFA of 1998 and it would be more than a decade before tests and disagreements about policing, security and justice were finally overcome (see Cochrane 2013: 202–254). The decommissioning of weapons was an area which was incrementally dealt with by the republican leadership and concluded in 2005, but the tactical and strategic approaches which had defined Sinn Fein’s approach to negotiations continued to be shaped by fears about being duped and conceding ground without tangible advantage. The GFA had created the political environment for a more constructive engagement between the political parties in Northern Ireland, but cementing the necessary foundations to bring about sufficient consensus on all democratic institutions and structures, which would ensure effective and productive power-sharing, required much more patience and work.

Endgame: After Good Friday The path to the Good Friday Agreement had been convoluted and complex. Sinn Fein had been included and excluded from the process as a response to the alternating expression of politics and armed force which were used interchangeably to underpin an overall strategy of change. But, the involvement of Sinn Fein in the peace process and absorbing them into the pragmatic politics which culminated in the GFA was a path which could not be sustained by recourse to armed struggle when things were not going to plan. The GFA had come from intensive work by the two governments more than unionists, loyalists, nationalists and republicans. It had concluded with there being no change to the status of Northern Ireland without majority consent, had relocated the power to take decisions to an elected Northern Ireland Assembly and, through North-South co-operation, guaranteed fairness and equality for all. It had also threatened to exclude from government those who advocated or committed violence and would refuse the release of those prisoners who did not reject violence (Powell 2009: 116). Overall, as Powell observed, it was ‘an agreement to disagree’ where even the name of the Agreement was contested (for unionists, the Belfast Agreement and for nationalists the Good Friday Agreement) (Powell 2009: 108). But the referendum after the GFA, to gauge public support, demonstrated emphatic and widespread consent amongst nationalists for

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political development, further validating the Sinn Fein initiative to close out the PIRA. Attempts to get power-sharing to work in Northern Ireland, as noted, hit problems on a regular basis until full policing, justice and legislative powers were devolved in 2010. In February 2000, devolved government was suspended from London when UUP leader David Trimble threatened to resign because of no discernible progress on decommissioning (a problem which, as we know, dogged the peace process and political relations until 2005), and although the two governments were constantly getting the parties to work together obstacles were always present. In April 2001, three PIRA members were arrested in Columbia training FARC guerrillas to use explosives and in September of the same year London temporarily suspended the Assembly to try and buy more time on decommissioning. The announcement on 23 October that weapons had been ‘put beyond use’ did little to assuage unionist concerns and relations were further soured when in October 2002 four Sinn Fein officials were arrested after police raided Sinn Fein offices for evidence of a suspected PIRA ‘spy-ring’. It would take until 2005 for the PIRA to declare an end to the armed campaign and during that time decommissioning dominated the political agenda, with Sinn Fein using the issue to maximize their bargaining position (Powell 2009: 207). By 2002, the British and Irish governments were beginning to intensify the pressure on Sinn Fein to stop prevaricating and make a clear commitment to exclusively peaceful means of political representation. For the British, whereas the first phase of the peace process had been built on constructive ambiguity from the Agreement of 1998 to the suspension of the Assembly in Northern Ireland in 2002, the second phase was to try and get clarity and commitment from all the parties on policing and justice, as well as deal with the turbulence of relations, from 2003– 2007 – a period in which David Trimble and the UUP was succeeded by the anti-Agreement DUP and its leader Rev Dr Ian Paisley. (Blair 2010: 189). By 2002 ambiguity, which had been vital to laying the foundations of the peace process, was fast becoming a liability, as unionist support began draining away because of a lack of progress on decommissioning (Powell 2009: 211). On 18 October 2002, Blair made what became known as the Belfast Harbour speech (made at the Belfast Commissioner’s Office) where he conveyed the message that it was possible ‘no longer to implement the Good Friday Agreement by small steps’ and that it had to be done ‘by one giant leap’. The purpose of Blair’s speech was also to make it clear that ambiguity ‘has ceased to be constructive and had become a hindrance’ (Powell 2009) (see also Blair 2010: 190), and to impress the view that ‘the threat of the IRA returning to violence was no longer a negotiating lever to make the Brits do what they wanted but had become the key to blockage to progress’ (Powell 2009: 212). In response, Gerry Adams gave a speech which contained a section drafted

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by Jonathan Powell including the words ‘I do believe the logic of the peace process puts us all in a different place. So if you ask me do I envisage a future without the IRA? The answer is obvious. The answer is yes.’ This was followed a few days later by a comment from Martin McGuinness who publicly admitted ‘My war is over’ (Powell 2009: 213). What then followed was a Joint Declaration drafted by the two governments which outlined the need for greater commitment in deed and word to support agreed democratic structures and institutions of devolved government. Offering further elaboration on the need to end ambiguity on such areas, and to demonstrate commitment in this way, Powell recalled: They [Sinn Fein] left most of the creativity to the two governments and we had to be the ones who came up with ideas to resolve problems because they rarely made a sort of constructive proposal themselves. They would tend to work out a piece of strategy for the next three months and when it came to the end of it they had little idea and would look for someone else to come up with ideas for the next phase, and it tended to be us who did that. After a long period of ambiguity, when we saw that we were losing support on the issue of decommissioning, we had Blair’s speech at Belfast Harbour in the Commissioner’s Office, when he demanded that it was either the Armalite or the ballot box, but that it couldn’t be both any more. About three days after that speech Adams called me up and asked me to write a response for him. I tried to write a speech from a republican frame of mind and wrote half of a speech and sent it to him, including a phrase which said he could imagine a future without the PIRA. I was expecting him to change it so was very surprised to see two days later on the television Adams reading out this speech almost unchanged. So there was a lack of creativity on their side and sometimes it required others to think of ideas for them. Underlining the point that Blair’s speech was a key moment in the shift from ambiguity to clarity, former British senior civil servant ‘Peter’ provided background detail on the speech and how it had been prompted by a collapse in choreography because news about initial decommissioning had not been enough for the unionists to move to the next stage: I think the Belfast Harbour speech probably marked the end of the ambiguity phase. It was the Joint Declaration, where we were trying to get everybody to sign up for the purposes of the choreography, when it all went wrong because de Chastelain came back from witnessing the decommissioning and then said that he could not describe what he had seen. The whole thing was set up to be another kind of hot-house, the big deal gets struck and it was all premised on that press conference which went horribly wrong. Trimble was going bananas because he saw this as

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no basis to proceed. It was very odd. General de Chastelain went missing, sort of held incommunicado by whoever P. J. O’Neill was, and we couldn’t get hold of him. Then it transpired that he felt bound by what he’d had to agree with P. J. O’Neill, to not say what he had seen. But within a few days it had become apparent that more detailed information might be available and Adams and McGuinness changed their position a short time after too. I think they started off taking the same mute line that the PIRA interlocutor had taken – we are not going to decommission and subject ourselves to humiliation, that kind of argument. But within a few days there was all this stuff about what was in the estimate about the stock of weapons to be decommissioned and McGuinness was saying that we could have a list of key items and talk about percentages. If that had been available on the day when de Chastelain went out in front of the cameras then it might have been a different story. You could not help asking if this was a case of miscalculation through playing hardball because that is what they thought they had to do. It was very difficult to second guess that. To what extent the prevarication by Sinn Fein was used strategically in order to draw support from David Trimble and the UUP is debatable, but Sinn Fein had worked on the basis that power-sharing was not likely to work until the DUP were the dominant unionist party for some time. This happened in November 2003 when the DUP became the main unionist party for government in the Assembly elections. The DUP’s opening position was that there would be no government without decommissioning and the disbandment of the PIRA. However, further problems were to follow before this came about. In December 2004 there was a robbery at the Northern Bank in Belfast where 26.5 million pounds was stolen for which the PIRA was blamed, followed just over a month later on 30 January 2005 by the brutal murder of Robert McCartney by PIRA members in Belfast. In response to requests from the British and Irish governments to stop engaging in criminal and paramilitary activity the PIRA issued an announcement on 2 February 2005 (no doubt also a response to internal pressures over the decommissioning issue) trying to depict its previous gestures as a mark of good faith and the comments of the two governments as disingenuous. The statement emphasized what the PIRA saw as stalling by the two governments, in not moving quicker or more decisively to implement the GFA, pointing towards three initial acts of decommissioning (on 23 October 2001, 11 April 2002 and 21 October 2003) as a indication of clear intent. Under external pressure from both the bank robbery, but especially the McCartney murder, the PIRA could not have anticipated the determination of Robert McCartney’s sisters to bring international attention to what members of the PIRA had done and the pressure this would bring from America (McCartney 2007). Three subsequent statements from the PIRA did little to ease the tension. In the first statement on 16 February 2005, the PIRA maintained that they were not involved

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in the murder of Robert McCartney and that ‘Those who were involved must take responsibility for their own actions which run contrary to republican ideals.’ The second statement released on 25 February reported that there had been an internal investigation into the murder resulting in the court martial and dismissal of three volunteers, ‘two who were high ranking’. Finally, and from a public relations point of view, disastrously, the third statement released on the 8 March spoke of senior PIRA representatives meeting with Robert McCartney’s sisters sometime before the 25 February statement, where those representatives had told the sisters they were prepared to shoot those directly involved in McCartney’s murder. The statement also said that the sisters had made it clear that they did not want this to happen but to see those responsible brought to justice in court. It is hard to believe that the bank robbery, the McCartney murder and growing international dissatisfaction with Sinn Fein’s foot-dragging on decommissioning and signing up to devolved policing and justice were not used by Adams and McGuinness to make the case to the PIRA leadership that the organization was now diluting confidence in the peace process, and hampering the ability of Sinn Fein to advance politically. Media attention on the PIRA was pulling Sinn Fein back towards the organization rather than away from it and undermining the image of political credibility. It was also creating a picture of uncertainty which was at odds with the often confident and coherent approach by Sinn Fein at political level (Campbell 2013: 65). For the British though, the bank robbery and the McCartney murder justified extra pressure to try and bring an end to criminality and paramilitarism. As Jonathan Powell recalls in his book Great Hatred, Little Room (2009), the public and media reaction to these events ‘made it clear to the meanest intelligence in the republican ranks that the dual strategy could no longer work and strengthened the hands of those who wanted to opt for the purely political path’. ‘We had to use the moment to force them to choose finally between the political route and descending into a purely mafia-style organisation. The IRA needed to decide to give up unilaterally’ (Powell 2009: 268). As Powell also put it ‘We [the British] had to use the crime to drive the process into the endgame’ (Powell 2009: 263). What the recollections of Powell and Blair both highlight is the importance, even in the midst of what seemed like a series of deflations and breakdowns, of keeping the participants of the peace process involved in that process and not letting it deteriorate to the extent where a commitment to engagement eroded or collapsed because of perceived credibility problems. For the British, therefore, the most important part of the process was to maintain a context of relations which would keep participants locked in to ‘a valid design concept accepted by all parties’. As Blair described the necessity of this: ‘Without such a framework of principle, progress in conflict resolution is difficult, if not impossible. It is an enduring reference point. It constitutes guidance. It also traps the parties within it. Once they accept the framework

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they can’t argue things inconsistent with it; or if they do, the inconsistency tells against them. So, if there is an agreed programme for policing, based on the principle of equal treatment, how can there be a paramilitary army operating alongside it? Actually, once the principle of peace for powersharing is agreed, the rationale for the IRA – founded to create a united Ireland without the consent of the Unionist majority – disintegrates. Likewise, once equality of treatment is accepted as the basis of governing, how could Unionism continue its opposition to Sinn Fein members in the government, provided of course they were committed to peace?’ (Blair 2010: 182). The importance of thinking in terms of a framework within which relationships can be managed and developed had long been the preferred way of thinking for nationalists such as John Hume, who believed that dealing with divisive relations required transforming the very framework within which that divisiveness existed (Millar 2009: 3). The framework meant containing potential splits within the process so they could be worked through and overcome rather than ending the process and having no means by which to draw the protagonists back together. As can be seen from the chronology of events through to 2010, there were many divisions, differences and serious disputations over movement, choreography and making a power-sharing government work (Powell 2009: 308), but, for Sinn Fein, making sure that the DUP would commit to government and not make it unworkable after decommissioning ((Powell 2009: 241) – perceived as likely given Paisley’s statement in December 2004 that the PIRA should ‘wear sackcloth and ashes’ to show repentance for their past actions – as well as getting the PIRA to accept devolved policing and justice (Powell 2009: 216)) were the main stumbling blocks to progress, reflecting significant concerns within the PIRA about moving on these areas. On 28 July 2005, former PIRA prisoner Seanna Walsh released a statement to the media announcing the end of the armed struggle. The statement began by stressing that the PIRA leadership was in the process of concluding the decommissioning of weapons under the auspices of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) and that this would be further verified by two independent clergy witnesses (who turned out to be Rev Harold Good and Father Alec Reid). The statement stipulated that this decision had come at the end of a long process of internal consultation and that support for the move was a vindication of the Sinn Fein position. Decommissioning was also seen as the blockage which, when removed, would allow ‘full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement’. The statement then went on to contextualize the end of militant action within the process of tradition and conventional discourse about commitment to Irish unity and the validity of the armed struggle. As the statement put it: ‘We are very mindful of the sacrifices of our patriot dead, those who went to jail, volunteers, their families and the wider republican base. We reiterate our view that the armed struggle was entirely legitimate. We

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are conscious that many people suffered in the conflict … . The IRA is fully committed to the goals of Irish unity and independence and to building the Republic outlined in the 1916 Proclamation … . This comprehensive series of unparalleled initiatives is our contribution to this and to the continued endeavours to bring about independence and unity for the people of Ireland.’ A simple subsequent statement released through the BBC on 26 September 2005 added: ‘The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann announced on 28 July [2005] that we had authorised our representative to engage with the IICD to complete the process to verifiably put arms beyond use. The IRA leadership can now confirm that the process of putting our arms verifiably beyond use has been completed.’ After more intense negotiations the Northern Ireland Assembly was recalled on 15 May 2006 but only to conduct policy debates and not to work on legal matters. This was in advance of political talks that took place at St Andrews in Scotland from 11–13 October which set out to construct a route map for further talks between November 2006 and March 2007. The two governments used St Andrews to try and get the DUP to agree to share power with Sinn Fein and for Sinn Fein to accept and support a police service in Northern Ireland, which they would need to demonstrate a commitment to by joining a policing board. The governments also called for the devolution of policing and justice to take place by May 2008. The parties were then asked to return in November 2006 to acknowledge the necessary legislation and to prepare for a nomination of the Executive in Northern Ireland by mid-March 2007, with a deadline of 26 March 2007, to have the Executive in Northern Ireland up and running. St Andrews created enough momentum and progress for Paisley and Adams to meet on 26 March 2007 and for a power-sharing dispensation to be restored on 8 May. However, full transfer of policing and justice powers did not take place until April 2010 and needed further legislation to satisfy the parties. In early 2010, Gordon Brown (who had succeeded Tony Blair) and Brian Cowen (who had succeeded Bertie Ahern) put the final details together in the Hillsborough Agreement which formally and finally secured the transfer of policing and justice to Northern Ireland. It had taken since 2003 for the DUP and Sinn Fein to share power and unrelenting perseverance from the two governments since the GFA to overcome constant prevarications, breakdowns, breakthroughs and renewed attempts to restore energy to a fragile power-sharing arrangement (see Spencer 2015 for a more detailed analysis of British government involvement in the peace process). The transition from armed struggle to politics had been long, difficult, complex and enmeshed in careful judgements about how tradition could be accommodated within a new context of pragmatism. That pragmatism would require acknowledgement that violence had, at best, prepared the ground for entry into the political process, but that any future progress would now be dependent on political and not military capability.

CHAPTER SIX

Rebels and Reconciliation

The ‘dissident’ threat The success of Sinn Fein’s political republicanism in Northern Ireland has revealed tensions with militant republicanism which rejects political compromise short of British withdrawal and Irish unity. A number of ‘dissident’ republican groups which have separated from the Sinn Fein project also indicate a resistance to power-sharing whilst a British presence remains in Northern Ireland. Such fragmentations are not new. In the modern period, the emergence of the INLA in 1974 from a split with the OIRA, which itself formed in a split from Provisional republicans, argued that the militant emphasis of Provisionalism lacked necessary awareness of the need for political understanding or direction (McDonald and Holland 2010: 6), highlighting tensions about the legitimacy of using violence to support political change. Its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), which similarly formed out of a split from the Officials, aligned itself with the INLA (which initially used the name the People’s Liberation Army as well as other cover names such as the People’s Republican Army and the Catholic Reaction Force) in order to try and underscore violence with a revolutionary socialist ethos, which it believed Provisional republicanism had failed to acknowledge the importance of. The INLA remained largely opposed to the peace process but called a ceasefire in August 1998 once the referendum on the GFA showed overwhelming support for power-sharing. It also went on to decommission weapons in 2010. The tension with the PIRA, in the struggle to retain dominance as defenders and liberators of Catholics in Northern Ireland, was elaborated in an interview with one of the INLA’s leaders, ‘Alan’, who offered this background: It was clear the Provisionals had their sights in negotiating with the British from the mid-1980s. That they knew they could not win militarily and that they would end up sitting face-to-face with the Brits to reach some kind of compromise. The Provisionals did not want any other republican

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grouping upsetting their political agenda and they sought to undermine and absorb our leadership, our policies and our activities. They would say that the INLA leadership was ‘MI5 layered’, that they were all informers and involved in extortion and robberies, when they were pocketing all the money themselves. In 1987 a number of people left the INLA and formed another group and there was a feud and as soon as that happened our chief of staff was killed. We believe the Provisionals had a hand in this because once the feud was over those people resigned and in one block, joined the Provisionals. We also have information that the Provisionals were supplying this group with weapons and intelligence on us. In the prisons we learned from others how the Provisional leadership was involved in actions against us. They did not want any other grouping to speak for republicanism. They wanted to speak in totality. They also didn’t want the INLA in the hunger strikes because it interfered with their own control of them. ‘Alan’ then went on to talk about how the PIRA ceasefire of 1994, and Sinn Fein’s engagement with the British, made armed struggle increasingly difficult to justify for the INLA: The 1994 ceasefire was no big surprise. What was surprising was the reaction of the Provisionals when they called it and how Sinn Fein went into overdrive in relation to propaganda. It was clearly an end to the armed struggle. Some of the questions we asked ourselves, at leadership level, revolved around whether we had the manpower, the weaponry, the finance and the support to conduct an effective campaign against the British and the answer to all those questions was no. That debate intensified in 1997 when we knew a motion would be proposed at the Ard Feish for our guys to call a complete ceasefire. We examined the GFA closely but we quickly rejected it too, mostly on the grounds that it copper-fastened partition. Adams was saying there would still be a united Ireland and Trimble was talking about partition being copper-fastened and indeed that was what the Agreement seemed to be suggesting. What was telling was the high percentage of those who voted for the Agreement in the republican community. Adams was telling those people that what they were buying into was a stepping-stone to a united Ireland. Although we thought that people did not really understand what they were voting for we also saw that people were calling for republicans to take the political road. When we called the ceasefire a few did leave, but we’re talking no more than a handful. There were also some senior people in the Provisionals who tried to join us after the Agreement and one senior figure asked for a meeting with me in Belfast. When I arrived to speak with him a number of other senior Provisionals saw the meeting taking place and it set tongues wagging that such a well placed Provisional was

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meeting with a senior INLA figure. He told me there were some twenty to thirty Provisionals who were ready en masse to join the INLA. But it was a non-starter. I got back to him later and explained that each of those people could apply to join individually and each application would be judged on its own merits, but they didn’t want that. That reinforced our suspicions that these people had an agenda and that was to join the INLA in order to try and take it over. So we made it clear that the answer to a block of people joining was a no, no. Some twenty to thirty Provisionals could also cause problems for the leadership made up of some seven people. The INLA was always very small, perhaps two hundred to five hundred maximum at any given time. The opposition of the INLA to the GFA nevertheless clearly led to a reflection amongst its leadership on the futility of ongoing violent struggle, and its ceasefire in August 1998 as a response to that debate also led other ‘dissidents’ to question the legitimacy of violence. One example of this was when the Real IRA, which was formed in 1997 (in objection to the Mitchell Principles which stressed a commitment to exclusively peaceful means of engagement in the talks process), sought the advice of the INLA leadership on whether to continue with physical force. As ‘Alan’ recalled: Around early 2009 the Real IRA Army Council asked to meet our leadership in Derry and we went along to that. They were going through a period of relative quiet and said that they had been more or less dormant for a year and that during that time there had been lots of internal discussions and debates about what road to go down, and they wanted our advice. We said we believed they should call a ceasefire and should open up talks with the British in relation to their prisoners and if they went down the road of decommissioning we would support that. We advised them to try and create relationships with different groupings such as ourselves and anybody on the left who opposed to Stormont. We argued that there was a need to open a broad front, but a non-armed broad front, and to try and establish bona fide credibility with the republican/nationalist community. We said that we were opposed to the GFA but we did not want to go back to the past. They thanked us for the meeting but also rejected the advice about a ceasefire and pursuing the political road. There were no more formal discussions along those lines, but there would be discussions over other issues such as a prison protest or the emergence of other factions. Low level stuff, but businesslike. We have very little to do with Continuity IRA. We last spoke about ten years ago over prisoners. There was an important release at that time and that was what we spoke about. I think the emergence of dissidents of late has come about from those who felt betrayed by the way Sinn Fein was going, and who felt they had ‘missed out’ in certain

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actions. Really, though, it’s too late. You cannot recreate what happened in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. Remember there was a mass mobilization of people over Bloody Sunday and the hunger strikes. I also think the British have learned their lessons since the PIRA ceasefire because they have not killed one republican activist. The main dissident republican groupings, which emerged in opposition to the Sinn Fein/PIRA decision to pursue talks and negotiations and reach a power-sharing accommodation, include not just the Continuity IRA (linked with the grouping Republican Sinn Fein and attributed to the murder of Constable Stephen Carroll in March 2009) and the Real IRA (said to be linked with the grouping the Thirty-Two County Sovereignty Movement and blamed for the murder of the two soldiers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey at Masserene barracks in March 2009), but also Oglaigh na hEireann (translated as the ‘Volunteers of Ireland’) which formed in a split from the Real IRA in Strabane in 2006 and is believed to have support from the ‘pressure group’ Republican Network for Unity, a vigilante group Republican Action Against Drugs which formed in 2008 from elements of the Real IRA, Eirigi which advocates republican socialist politics, and a further grouping calling itself ‘the IRA Army Council’ which formed in 2012 (as an assimilation of RIRA, RAAD and a new IRA) and claimed responsibility for the murder of prison officer David Black in November 2012. Individuals from this grouping, along with some other groupings, are also believed to have been involved in the murder of Constable Ronan Kerr in April 2011. This latest edition to the fragmented world of rebel republicanism epitomizes the tendency amongst such groupings to justify their presence by resisting the continuation of Britain’s involvement in Northern Ireland. As the new IRA stressed in July 2012 when it announced itself, its leadership ‘remains committed to the full realisation of the ideals and principles enshrined in the Proclamation of 1916’ and seeks to confront the way in which ‘Non-conformist republicans are being subject to harassment, arrest and violence by the forces of the British crown’. Setting its justification in the long trajectory of an uncompromising stance towards the British presence, the announcement went on: The IRA’s mandate for armed struggle derives from Britain’s denial of the fundamental right of the Irish people to national self-determination and sovereignty – so long as Britain persists in its denial of national and democratic rights in Ireland the IRA will have to continue to assert those rights … . The necessity of armed struggle in pursuit of Irish freedom can be avoided through the removal of the British military presence in our country, the dismantling of their armed militias and the declaration of an internationally observed timescale that details the dismantling of British interference in our country.

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This tradition of separatism grew, of course, with republicanism itself and is connected to a romanticized ‘past’ Ireland which acts as a reference point for maintaining ‘national self-consciousness’ (Beckett 1981: 417). It also derives perceived legitimacy from a ‘mandate’ of imagined significance and interprets any political relevance in terms of the conditions which influenced violent insurrection at the beginning of the twentieth century. Though made illegal in 1918, it was Sinn Fein who emphasized the declaration of independence stressed at the time of the Rising in 1916, who proclaimed itself as the parliament of the Irish Republic in 1919 and who implemented a constitution (Beckett 1981: 445). In 1919, the IRA was reformed with the aim of fighting in order to make ‘regular government impossible, and the cost of holding the country so great that the British would be compelled to withdraw’ (Beckett 1981: 447). However, the IRA could, and did no more at that time, than make normal government impractical and did not force the British to leave. The result was Michael Collins signing the Irish Free State treaty in 1921, Ireland becoming ‘a self-governing dominion within the empire, enjoying the same constitutional status as Canada’ and where members of the Irish parliament were to take an oath of allegiance to the crown ‘in virtue of the common citizenship of Ireland and Great Britain and her adherence to and membership of the group of nations forming the British Commonwealth of Nations’ (Beckett 1981: 453). This political compromise led to deep division as the IRA fractured into ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ treaty camps with anti-treaty elements stressing separatist ideals. Such resistance contributed to civil war and underscored the long history of violent attempts (though sporadic and at times dormant) to remove the British presence from Ireland. To some extent, modern ‘dissident’ republicanism views itself in the context of this long and romanticized history, and there is a tendency to make comparisons. Michael Collins (like Gerry Adams with the GFA) saw the 1921 treaty as a ‘stepping-stone’ as well as creating the ‘freedom to achieve freedom’ (Keogh 1994: 2), but dissident elements then (as with Adams and Sinn Fein now) viewed the political compromise as a sellout and saw Collins as a traitor because of it (Keogh 1994: 4). Yet, even though at root there is an appealing similarity in these historical tensions, between political compromise on the one hand and military absolutism on the other, with rebel groupings now competing to represent the moral purity of armed struggle, there are considerable differences between circumstances in Ireland in the early twentieth century and Ireland in the early twenty-first century, and modern-day rebel groups must be seen as a product of these differences. Today, ‘dissident’ republicans seek definition through rejecting the political compromise made by Sinn Fein and the PIRA, and its actions are a statement of that rejection. As Frampton observed, ‘dissident’ republicanism is a refusal ‘to accept the presumed “verdict” of history’, where ‘there is only one possible terminus for republicanism: the

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achievement of an independent, united republic encompassing the whole island of Ireland. That the peace process has not delivered that outcome confirms it marks only a false dawn’ (Frampton 2011: 8). The belief that those such as the new IRA have a ‘mandate’ because of history, relates to Frampton’s contention that for such groupings ‘Their collective view is that being popular is of no consequence, as compared to the virtue of being correct’ (2011: 281), but indicates a problem of explanation as well, since how can so many dissident groupings all claim to represent the same purity of conviction given they exist as separate from and largely in competition with each other? More recent studies indicate a number of factors that come into play in the structure of different rebel groupings. Morrison notes that ‘timing, context, influential individuals, regionalism and age’ all shape the formation of rebel groupings, and that regional differences, in particular, mean that localized concerns and communal attitudes inform levels of support and actions more than national or ideological consensus (2011: 37). In relation, membership of some of the smaller ‘dissident’ groupings appears ‘personality-driven’ rather than ideologically driven (Saunders 2012: 253). Horgan and Gill’s analysis further finds that ‘activity, geographical distribution and recruitment patterns, age, employment status and role profiles’ all influence rebel group formations (2011: 61), but that ‘strategic, goal-oriented, or organisational issues’ are much less important than ‘personality figures and prevailing social issues’ (Horgan 2013: 42). These differences underscore the fragmentary nature of ‘dissident’ republicanism, which, Patterson argues, should be seen less as an extension of traditional militant objectives driven by imperatives of national independence and decolonialization, and more ‘as a product of [its] essentially communal/ sectarian logic’ (2011: 90). For Tonge, however, the presence of ‘dissident’ groups ‘reflects the latest tensions between, firstly principle and tactic and secondly, the utility of “armed struggle”’ (2011: 98–99), and is a phenomenon ‘characterised more by fluidity of membership, heterogeneity and division than by solidity, homogeneity and unity’ (2011: 107). At a strategic level, Tonge points out how ‘dissidents’ (which he prefers to call ‘ultras’), given the political support for Sinn Fein and power-sharing in Northern Ireland, tend to operate as separate and fragmented entities they are unable to bring about a united Ireland through force and know that, at best, what they can try to do is make power-sharing unworkable. As he puts it, ‘the short-term aim of continued violence is to provoke a security force backlash, expose the British state as “draconian” and still essentially colonial and thus elicit sympathy for “oppressed” republicans in their community, allowing the armed struggle to gather momentum’ (Tonge 2011: 114). The numerous rebel groupings reflect not just localized structure and appeal, but autonomous difference and competitiveness as each seeks to exert as wide an influence as possible across the broader republican

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community (Horgan and Morrison 2011: 645). For the INLA leader ‘Alan’, the differences between the rebel groupings and were briefly summarised thus: It’s to do with ideology to some extent. The Continuity IRA came about in 1986 and they didn’t want anything to do with the PIRA ceasefire when it was called. Apparently, the Provisionals waved the big finger at them and told them no actions, otherwise they were going to wipe out the leadership. The same threats were also issued to the Real IRA when they formed, but they ignored them. The Provisionals did kidnap a number of people around South Armagh and basically told them that if any cops were attacked, or any Brits were killed, then they would be killed. The Continuity IRA might see themselves as genuine dissidents because they split over the abstentionist issue (although they didn’t become militarily active until after the PIRA ceasefire of 1994), whereas for the Real IRA emerged as a rejection of the Mitchell Principles calling for a commitment to non-violence in 1997. I think some individuals within the groupings have relationships and would be supportive of each other in relation to certain activities. Having said that, relations between the groupings have soured in the last couple of years and there are disagreements about leadership and intent. ‘Alan’s’ suggestion that Continuity IRA members would probably see themselves as ‘true dissidents’ because of their fracture from  the Provisionals before other subsequent groupings, indicates the importance of historical continuity, and how compromise tends to dilute meaning and legitimacy. Such a perspective also reflects the need to maintain a ‘purist’ strain of armed republican intransigence (Tonge 2004: 672). But, this historical determinism needs to be considered against other distinctions in identity and cultural association. As Tonge reminds us, alongside the influence of the history of tradition are such categorizations as ‘militant Nationalists, unreconstructed militarists, romantic Fenians, Gaelic Republicans, Catholic sectarians, northern defenders, international Marxists, socialists, libertarians and liberal Protestants’ (2004: 672), and these distinctions serve an imagination which, as Deane gleans from nationalist literature, inculcates the belief that ‘(a) Ireland was a culturally distinct nation; (b) it had been mutilated beyond recognition by British colonialism; and (c) it could nevertheless rediscover its lost features and thereby recognise once more its true identity’ (Deane 1998). A problem inherent to such a worldview however, and as Dean notes, is that ‘it depends upon the exclusion from literary history of the dynamics of historical change and particularly, the actuality of historical atrocity. For what does it matter what the atrocity was, what do “breaks-down” matter if, in spite of or because of them, the national spirit continues

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to be represented over and over?’ (1998: 115). The inconvenience of changed political or historical circumstances and the actions taken for ideological reasons, which remain incompatible with such circumstances, matter less when actions are interpreted through a prism of exclusivity and dogmatism. Such an imagination, constrained by this introversion, is not only homogenizing but totalizing (Deane 1998: 146). The moral absolutism which is created by the ambition of Irish unity through violence also lacks critical recognition of how justification for this is invariably inward-looking, focussed primarily ‘on the notion of recovery and redemption from ruin and oppression’ (Deane 1998), and legitimized through releasing the innocence of the repressed from the evil of the repressors. As a means for doing this, and as Deane observes, national discourse ‘adopted the English attitude that Ireland was exceptional and recalcitrant and took it in a reverse direction, making a virtue rather than a fault of this, consolidating it into an argument for independence and separation rather than into an argument for dependence and assimilation’ (1998). This means that the ‘normalizing narrative of progress and economic development’ become incidental to reality, which is itself constructed through the prism of repression and release. Republicanism which is unable or unwilling to admit that political change short of full Irish unity is acceptable can perhaps be seen to exhibit the tendencies of such discourse in its most acute and rigid form, recycling the ‘traumatic experience from which recovery has to be made’ (Deane 1998: 193). Though this inward-looking perspective also sustained the motivation of the PIRA until formally renouncing its campaign in July 2005 to support the political development of Sinn Fein, the presence of ‘dissident’ groupings acts as a reminder that Irish unity has not (as yet) come about by way of democratic politics and so, for them, vindicates the continuation of armed actions until the British leave. But, the inward-looking perspective brings with it obvious denials, perhaps the most apparent being that removal of the British ignores Protestant/unionist desires to remain British and for Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. In more moderate recognitions of this dilemma, even political republicanism has shown a profound misreading of unionism and its need to retain British influence as much as possible. Mitchel McLaughlin in a piece The Irish Republican Ideal published in 1998 demonstrated this view, stressing how unionists ‘seem to convey an impression of bring confused about their sense of national identity and exude a feeling of being threatened by political developments beyond their exclusive control’ (1998: 78). Further contending that the ‘one-dimensional approach by the unionist community to its sense of identity is inimical to efforts to create an agreed Ireland’ (McLaughin 1998: 79), McLaughlin went on to assert that this ‘onedimensional approach’ ‘dictates that unionism determines its relationship

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with the rest of the people of Ireland in terms of the continued existence of the union with Britain’ but that such an ‘assertion of an absolute and unconditional right to a political union will not produce an agreed Ireland’ (1998: 81). This agreed Ireland, McLaughlin evokes, is  an  assimilated version which ‘has to be rooted in our republican ideology’ and which finds definition ‘in the words and deeds of Tone, McCracken and Emmett; of Lalor, Pearse, Clark and Connolly … . It lies in the words and deeds of Maire Drumm, of Bobby Sands and Mairead Farrell’ (2001: 3). This Ireland too is the ‘historical and collective experience’ drawn from myths and martyrs of republican narration that envisage coalitions across republican groupings. However, the ‘dissident’ approach has problems with such an emphasis when this comes to mean accepting a continuation of British jurisdiction and a Stormont government until the majority democratically decide otherwise. Although this emphasis may be counterproductive in the sense that in the new political environment it is likely to deliver more votes to Sinn Fein and so reinforce a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, it nevertheless hints at the persistent vigilance of opposition. But, as former PIRA man Gerard Hodgkin, still critical of Sinn Fein if opposing a return to violence, articulated in an interview with The Guardian, ‘The tactics and strategy they [the “dissidents”] are trying to develop are tactics and strategy that we tried, but which failed: the British can deal with these frames of reference. There is also no popular support for armed insurrection and without a support base armed insurrection is irresponsible’. Hodgkin went on, ‘The dissident world is fractured over many groups, ranging from some misguided patriots to agents of the state to outright rogues who are abusing my community rather than protecting it. But it is important to highlight the futility of pursuing a failed strategy’ (‘State if watching you, ex-IRA hunger striker tells dissidents’, The Guardian 14 January 2014). The success of the PIRA/Sinn Fein approach and its ability, thus far, to deter any significant fracturing of volunteers to ‘dissident’ groupings can be put down to a number of reasons which include: marginalizing rebels through political and communal pressure; highlighting military ineffectiveness of ‘dissidents’ as shown by the Omagh bomb of 1998 which killed twenty-nine people; keeping hard-line elements on-board because of sufficient ambiguity in statements; maintaining senior and respected PIRA figures to underscore leadership strategy; reiterating the logic that if the PIRA could not defeat or expel the British there is no way ‘dissidents’ can; using electoral gains to sell progress and ‘mask the political reverses of the Good Friday Agreement’; using divisions and disagreements within unionism to further convey the impression of success; and perhaps, most importantly, because ‘overwhelming support of Catholics for the GFA, almost all voting in favor of a deal which kept Ireland partitioned for the foreseeable future, was indicative of the

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willingness of Catholics to prioritize internal political change over longerterm constitutional ambitions’ (Tonge 2004: 677–678). Yet, the appeal of the ‘dissident’ group continues, no doubt, because it signifies ‘an undiluted form of national self-determination, based upon the sovereignty of the Irish people as a single unit’, fusing with the homogenizing and totalizing tendencies of nationalist discourse (Tonge 2004: 689), and because it offers clarity and consistency in its conceptualization of political and social change short of the unequivocal withdrawal of Britain from Northern Ireland. Moreover, although there exists low-level support for ‘dissidents’ within the nationalist community, it is evident that this does not extend to support for a ‘dissident’ political front (Evans and Tonge 2012). Perhaps too this is shaped by some recognition that strategic objectives within republican groupings not only lack a vital centre of focus, but, as noted, because they exist largely as a response to localized social concerns and as reflections of the personality of leaders (Horgan 2013: 42). Unsurprisingly, the presence of the various groupings produces contradictory positions in terms of ethos and reading of wider social and political changes (Horgan 2013: 106). The lack of political cohesion and emphasis amongst ‘dissident’ groupings also goes some way towards explaining why, for many (but not all, as Eirigi shows), socialist discourse and conviction is lacking, with those such as Oglaigh na hEireann positioning themselves as not just against a power-sharing government, but as defenders of working class communities against criminals and drug dealers (‘Dissident interview was like a journey into the past’ Belfast Telegraph 3 November 2010), thereby pointing towards the perceived inadequacy of policing and its lack of credibility in dealing with local crime. As Horgan notes, what unites ‘dissident’ groupings is both protest rather than strategy (2013: 125) and presenting that protest as ‘an alternative to Sinn Fein’ (2013: 129). Such positioning comes from identifying ‘possible stepping-stones to greater mobilization and recruitment, whether by appealing to otherwise “recreational” rioters or “flippable” members of sister dissident groups or by forging erstwhile alliances with criminals if this serves their short-term or medium-term future resourcing’ (Horgan 2013: 131). This approach also relies on galvanizing the anger of disillusioned youth as well as former PIRA recruits, adults who reject the Sinn Fein project and those born after the 1994 ceasefire whose imaginations are shaped by the popularized myths of struggle which they did not experience (Horgan 2013: 135). What the ‘dissident groupings’ have in common, Horgan argues, is an essential desire for a united Ireland and a resentment of how dissident prisoners are treated (largely captured and charged by a criminal justice system given consent and support by Sinn Fein) (2013: 150). But, importantly, that commonality is not enough to harness a ‘dissident’ presence that has the power or ability to destabilize the Sinn Fein project. The presence of so many ‘dissident’ groupings indeed works against this possibility rather than contributes to it, not least because the groupings

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‘lack the ability to choreograph their activity in a way that results in a clear systematic assessment of their capabilities’ (Horgan 2013: 151). At the time of writing, there is no doubt that the groupings have the capability to continue with sporadic killings and low-level disturbance, but they do not appear to be keen on returning Northern Ireland to full-blown conflict (killing loyalists would certainly contribute to that end, which ‘dissidents’ have avoided). As said, the main hope appears to be making current policing and justice arrangements unworkable. That republicans are able to influence and oversee how policing and justice works is secondary to the fact that those republicans have consented to doing so in a province which functions under British jurisdiction, and which has rendered the armed struggle unsuccessful (although, as said, Sinn Fein would probably contend that political success came from the armed struggle and, in that sense, are inextricably linked). In such a climate, the aim of ‘dissidents’ is to expose republican politics (as represented by Sinn Fein) as managed failure, and although this is unlikely to have significant impact, for ‘dissidents’ it remains important to keep the myths of armed struggle alive in order to capitalize on any emergent stasis, or perceived unrest, in the Sinn Fein project which may later materialize. The problem of politics for republicanism, short of a united Ireland, was highlighted by former PIRA volunteer Richard O’Rawe who, though supportive of the armed struggle being brought to an end, said in an interview: It was always accepted that the moment you went into the political system it would swallow you up. You then become another political party and you lose any revolutionary edge. Because of that you lose tactically and not just in terms of armed struggle, but you lose your militancy and that is what has happened. Another problem is that it highlights the actuality of whether people in the Republic of Ireland are willing to accept the North as part of a unitary state. But I don’t think that’s a position that can be taken for granted. On the romanticism of the armed struggle, the mythology of resistance, and the lack of recognition this gives to how compromise and pragmatism are essential for political advancement, O’Rawe went on: The struggle was romanticism and there was always this lack of critique, a lack of penetrative analysis as to whether it was necessary. The expectation was that three million people in the South would take us in, but if they don’t then where do we go? This is also a question that should be put to the ‘dissidents’ whose main concern is how their organizations are run. All talk about a socialist Irish republic is bullshit, sustained by notions of this idyllic world where the working classes are in charge. Nobody ever took that apart or looked at the consequences of what to do when, and if, it did not happen. Having said that, there was also

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an appreciation towards the end of the armed campaign that there was massive infiltration and although the PIRA could have continued on a low key campaign, it was never going to succeed. The alternative to it was the prize of power at Stormont and a serious electoral presence, but the price of that had to be the abandonment of the armed struggle, the giving up of weaponry and the dilution, or the abandonment, of republicanism itself. I think that the ‘ism’ died when the decision was taken to end armed struggle. For some years before the ceasefire it was clear that armed struggle had run its course and that it was not going to work. And once armed struggle is reduced to a tactic, as opposed to a sacred tenet, there’s no point in going on because it becomes immoral. In my view, there is now no republican strategy to bring about a united Ireland. It’s gone and I think this is a reflection of the fact that republicanism never really knew where it was itself. For the reasons given above, perhaps it should come as no surprise that for those such as O’Rawe, the PIRA campaign ended in failure, calling the mythology of armed struggle into question in the process: The PIRA did not win the war, they lost it and that calls into question the starting of it in the first place, bringing with it a whole series of questions such as: did the PIRA leadership ever sit down and think before they started about what was needed to bring success? Did they ever say what the minimum and maximum set of demands would be? Did they ever ask where they were going and how they would get rid of the Brits and how they would deal with the Republic once they had removed the Brits though armed force? Did they consider the situation we would be in if the British withdrew? None of this was rationally debated and if it had you would have been posing a whole series of very negative situations, which would have led you to conclude that there should have been careful consideration of armed struggle, because we don’t know what situation it might bring about. And that would call into question the whole rationale behind the war. You could also ask from this why Sinn Fein did not support the SDLP in 1974, given the twenty years of hell it cost to come to the same place. The lack of critical reflection comes back to the sacred tenet of armed struggle and its ability to deliver the desired outcome in its own right. To question that was to contemplate the idea of defeat and so there was never any debate or discussion about what people were actually prepared to tolerate. The mentality was that armed struggle would bring about the desired goal and it should continue for a hundred years if need be to do that. This became the norm, but when the war weariness crept in it became evident that there was less enthusiasm to push on with this and that we should see where the political process would take us.

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Ending the armed struggle brought with it a reorientation in focus from the Sinn Fein and PIRA leadership. The struggle to end the British presence in Northern Ireland was always a strategy with a future bearing, and the longer the conflict went on, the more obvious it became that this was not going to happen. But, the reorientation which has emerged in tandem with political progress has come to involve looking backwards as part of moving forwards. Or, to put it slightly differently, whereas the armed struggle was about winning a war and looking ahead on that basis, now the emphasis is on winning the past and using the past to try and drive progress through a narrative and frame of ‘reconciliation’.

Claiming the past to shape the future Sinn Fein’s prolonged and concerted emphasis on the need for a reconciliation process has been a key part of the leadership’s strategy to develop the peace process in recent years and has been consistently stressed by Sinn Fein’s chairperson Declan Kearney as a central part of the vision for movement and progress. Talking about this emphasis, Kearney provided the background: We began to look at the issue of reconciliation with renewed focus around 2011, but it has been integral to the republican narrative throughout the entire scope of the peace process. It seems, in the first instance, this comes from work done by the Sinn Fein leadership to assess and evaluate our relationship with the Protestant and unionist community. We have begun to place a strategic focus on what more can be done to try and build the peace process and to take it to a new level. That, we believe, is the new direction the peace process must go in, which is towards developing a reconciliation process that builds on the solid foundations of the peace and political processes themselves, but also to find mechanisms for how we can begin, at this stage in our journey, to heal the hurt and pain which we have all lived as a direct result of the conflict and to try to build new relationships which are both political and human in its most developed sense. Kearney then spoke about how Sinn Fein messages on reconciliation are framed by generalities rather than specifics, keeping the possibility of wider discussion necessarily ambiguous: We have tried to put forward a non-prescriptive perspective on how reconciliation might unfold, on the basis of complete inclusion of all sections of society and particularly those most hurt by the conflict. We have to develop an approach that is considered in a very reflective way. It may well be that the best hope for a reconciliation process is to try

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and develop discourse about accepting who we are and where we are at, and on the basis of that discuss with one another, without prejudice or expected constitutional outcomes or allegiances, how to build a process to help heal the divisions and hurt of the past. The discussion within Sinn Fein has taken very firm root within the party with regard to opening up a reconciliation phase which is not driven by a political imperative per se, but also recognising that we have made enormous progress in both our peace and political processes, which cannot be taken for granted. There is a need to look at how we can open up possibilities for the peace process which do not recycle discussions that lead to the fossilising of politics. There is also a moral dimension to all of this in that political leaders need to ensure that new generations grow up in a better society than we did. The trajectory of Sinn Fein’s reconciliation message follows a similar pattern which is to use the concept of reconciliation in an all-Ireland context in an attempt to draw others onto similar terrain. The language of inclusiveness, so often expressed in public statements, provides the basis for this general context, and we can see how variances in the tone and language of statements intersect with this overall frame of reference. To indicate the pattern, it is important to look at the focus of messages, which Kearney as chairperson has come to personify and routinely articulated. At an Easter commemoration speech at Milltown Cemetery on 8 April 2012, Kearney pointed out how ‘Equality, democratic rights, political leadership and allIreland institutions enshrined in the Good Friday and other Agreements are the basis for continued change’, with the ultimate aim being ‘An Ireland of Equals’ (reiterated at the Ard Fheis on 25 May). On 24 October, Keaney delivered a further address ‘National Reconciliation in Ireland – The Need for Uncomfortable Conversations’ at Westminster, calling for a ‘need to continue the unfinished journey of our peace process’ which can only come about by a ‘collective resolve’ and ‘being prepared to embrace new thinking’. That speech, made at the heart of what Sinn Fein would see as the colonial repressor, also criticized unionism and was as much an attempt to provoke unionists into reacting as it was to talk up the need to actively debate the value of reconciliation, which was, and still is, undefined. What is evident from the Westminster address is how Sinn Fein see such a debate moving from ‘national discussion’ to ‘a national reconciliation strategy’ (itself disputed between republicans/nationalists who see nationality in an Irish context and unionists/loyalists who see nationality in a British context) which is ‘co-ordinated under the auspices of the North-South Ministerial Council’ and so framed by mechanisms which favour national assimilation rather than recognize national separation. The outcome of the ‘national reconciliation strategy’ would be to establish ‘an independent, international truth commission’ and this could be facilitated, argued Kearney, by closing the Northern Ireland Office, getting the British secretary of state to relinquish involvement in Northern Ireland, absolving powers to the Northern Ireland

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Executive and announcing a date for a Border Poll (all of which were received badly by unionism and loyalism – particularly the Border Poll). The ground for discussing reconciliation, and to further prepare the republican base for developing discourse around this area, was evident in two articles which Kearney produced for the republican paper An Phoblacht in February and March 2013. The first, ‘The past, reconciliation and the future of the Peace Process’ was written just a few months after a vote in Belfast to remove the Union Jack flag from flying over its council offices at City Hall every day of the year. This decision resulted in violence and street protests from loyalists and unionists who saw the removal of the flag as a blatant disregard for their identity and an attempt to erode that identity by stealth. The removal of the flag also demonstrated the importance of ‘the symbolic’ both for those who wanted it down, and those who wanted it to stay up. A final decision to fly the flag on designated days of the year was hardly taken as a compromise by loyalists and unionists, and unravelled constructive dialogue between loyalists and republicans which had been developing at communal levels. The fallout from the flag issue then fed into further hostility and dissent over loyalist parades and continues, at the time of writing, to have soured the political atmosphere, hindering the possibility of amicably dealing with social and political problems through compromise. For Kearney, such a response reflected an ‘anti-democratic backlash against the continuing change and transformation which the Good Friday Agreement began’, and this reaction obstructed the development of ‘vision and ability to compromise’. The loyalist/unionist response against the decision to remove the British flag was further evidence, Kearney claimed, of political unionism’s inability ‘to embrace the process of change’. ‘Perhaps’, Kearney went on, ‘we should reflect on the value of trying to build a reconciliation process in the here and now, by setting aside recrimination, and by continuing to replace the divisions caused by hurt inflicted during our political conflict with new human and political relationships’. ‘New thinking’, he continued, ‘and leadership from political leaders is required which encourage generosity, compromise and forgiveness by us all’ and to ‘create the space within which to place a strategic focus on designing a reconciliation process’. A further piece ‘Engaging with other republicans’ that Kearney wrote for An Phoblacht in February was an attempt to reach out and engage with ‘dissident’ republicans opposed to Sinn Fein’s political ambitions. In it, Kearney stressed how ‘political and democratic methods and campaigns are the only way to build popular support and political strength to realise national democracy and independence. That is a long-term process. It requires the patient setting out of strategy and politics nationally and in local communities which in turn wins widespread support.’ Recognizing how ‘dissident’ resistance is unsettling the cohesive voice of republicanism, Kearney stated ‘We want to engage with you but there is no longer a political context justifying the use of any armed activity’. Therefore, ‘there is

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an obvious importance for engagement between Sinn Fein and republicans who oppose our party’s strategy, and through political discussion to seek to persuade those involved in militarism to stop and to organise support for their views in an exclusively political way’. Keaney concluded his appeal for engagement with promoting the need for a strategic consensus across republicanism: ‘If republicans share a broad ideological tradition, nothwithstanding differences, then we ought to explore the potential for common ground. We should strategically discuss how our political projects can contribute to realising the essence of republicanism: the unity of our people and the achievement of Irish national democracy.’ At a Sinn Fein Republican Youth National Congress session on 2 March 2013, Kearney continued the reconciliation theme, referring to equality and parity of esteem as prerequisites for progress and the GFA as a reference point for both. Kearney stressed how equality and parity of esteem would ‘need to be embraced as instruments of inclusion and integration and as a means to encourage mutual understanding’. Working out what equality and parity of esteem mean is essential, Kearney explained, for finding ‘common ground’, and this ‘common ground’, for republicans, would be ‘a synthesis of how we unify our people, as well as democratically achieving territorial reunification’. A few weeks later, on 12 April, at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, in a speech Reconciliation and Legacy, Kearney’s reconciliation message continued, proposing that any subsequent process that might emerge from a desire to seek reconciliation should be an extension of the commitment to achieve ‘the unity of our people, and persuading for an agreed, multicultural, united Ireland’. It was time, Kearney pointed out, ‘to explore common acknowledgement for the hurt caused by all past actions’. And similar ground was tracked in another speech in a European Parliamentary Group study seminar in May where parity of esteem and equality ‘need to be embraced as instruments of inclusion and integration and a means to encourage mutual understanding’. This would require, impressed Kearney, ‘Affirming equality between and respect for all cultural traditions, and political allegiances should represent common ground to be built upon’. Sinn Fein, he went on, ‘respects and celebrates the multi cultural reality of modern Ireland’ and seeks ‘an Ireland that embraces its entire people, but is also outward and forward looking’. With ‘reconciliation at its core’, a united Ireland ‘must be a synthesis of processes which unify our people and bring about national democracy’, and it is by way of ‘such inclusive processes of dialogue that a new, agreed Ireland will emerge’. Kearney reiterated the same themes once more in An Phoblacht in July 2013 in ‘A new framework for the unfinished business of the past’. In this, he restated how an ‘initiative of common acknowledgement by all sides … of the hurt and injustices caused by and to each other could introduce a powerful new dynamic to the Peace Process’, and that ‘republican/nationalist and unionist sections of our community

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should begin their own discussions about the decisions and possible compromises which would ensure the past does not hold back the peace or political processes’. The new direction would require ‘a new phase of the Peace Process based on reconciliation and fully embracing equality, parity of esteem and mutual respect’. These presentations reflect not just a consistency in approach but an attempt, through repetition, to drive the agenda on dealing with the past in order to influence perceptions about the future, and there are other implications at work here as well. Gaining influence over, or control of, the past in ways which puts the British state as the root cause for the conflict not only makes the republican response more credible (in the eyes of some), but it is likely to steal further ground from ‘dissident’ republicans who accuse Sinn Fein of deserting the principles of republicanism to enter a powersharing Executive. The reconciliation emphasis also offers an opportunity to re-engage with tradition, but using it to officially expose injustice and victimhood for the benefits of historical revisionism, and to underscore the drive for British withdrawal (as well as making Sinn Fein the leading Irish party voice on reconciliation and the legacy of conflict). A reconciliation process (were it to happen) would be a chance too for Sinn Fein to impose a narrative which connects the armed struggle to Irish unity through the merits of political transformation and influence. However one sets out to define truth (and it is highly likely that republican ‘truth’ will be more circumstantial than evidential; note too how the South African model adopted four different concepts of truth to accommodate differences (Boraine 2000: 288–291) or reconciliation, will, of course, be an extension of political ambition and the process required to serve that end. Of particular interest in the above examples is Kearney’s message to other republicans who are outside of the Sinn Fein political project. The process of assimilation that Kearney infers through his talk of common ground and mutuality is, ultimately, a homogenizing exercise which seeks to absorb difference into a wider frame of Irish nationalism. One can see how immediately this would be rejected by unionists and loyalists, who would read any such process through an opposing frame of British nationalism. In that sense, the notion of common ground would be, at minimum, highly disputable, and although Sinn Fein might consider such disputations an essential part of the dialogue process, it is clear that an ‘agreed’ way ahead is unlikely given such competing claims. That Sinn Fein is stressing a non-prescriptive approach to reconciliation on the basis that unionists and loyalists will use substance as a means for recriminatory discourse and response misses a vital point, and that is that without such detail, unionists and loyalists are unlikely to engage. Ambiguity, which was so important for moving the peace process along during its early stages, is likely to find less and less support the longer the peace process goes on (and particularly without the involvement of the two governments), and for many unionists and loyalists, it signifies uncertainty which is detrimental

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to understanding and so involvement. Inevitably, a consequence of this is that the more unionism and loyalism rejects Sinn Fein’s overtures towards reconciliation the more they appear resistant to change and the more unreasonable they become. Here, it is pertinent to further probe Kearney’s intentions when delivering the many speeches he has made on the need for a reconciliation process, and who he envisages is receiving and interpreting those speeches. On this, he said: I am conscious that whenever I speak and address these issues I am speaking to republicans, of course, but also trying to reach a wider community. When the message is being delivered it may be more for republicans, or it may be more for those outside of republicanism. We are conscious that many unionists and Protestants still hold dear to the precepts and principles of the biblical word and that they hold this in relation to the values that shape their daily lives. Some method of progress was made to open up private engagement with political unionism and it was interesting to note that the feedback, in private, was never reflected in the comments and engagement in public. In fact, there was a very sharp contradiction in respect of the sentiment that had been shared privately with myself and other republican leaders and then how that debate was articulated in public terms, and we felt that for a long time in the months after the address I made at Westminster in October 2012 [‘National Reconciliation in Ireland – The Need for Uncomfortable Conversations’]. Then, we tried to promote a non-prescriptive, non-sectional point of view, but others within political unionism appeared to be attempting to derail the potential for opening that discourse and media interviews and other encounters then descended into the politics of recrimination, along with the cul-de-sac of that type of circular argument. The Westminster speech, in part only, was about setting out for political unionism a catalogue and an assessment of how it had contributed to the political conflict and to make the point that we can all recriminate with very good reason and justification, but that reconciliation is not a one-way street because all sides have been hurt as a result of actions by all sides. For as long as political unionism continues to dig in and resist a reconciliation discourse being opened up it will have the effect of putting a brake on communities to move on and look at new possibilities. We have built a peace process on the basis of having separate political allegiances and have moved to a point of political co-existence with those differences, but the next step is to try and deal with the pain that still exists in communities. A lot of time is taken in trying to create a discourse and how we design our remarks. Those who pay attention to we are saying, and recognise that investment of time and thought, will see we don’t want to speak to ourselves and that we are trying to shape a context which will lead to

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new forms of dialogue. Language is very important and it needs to be humanising, so we need to experiment with phrases and language which helps to build confidence and we need to start to listen unconditionally with one another. Restating why Sinn Fein does not intend to substantiate on any detail about the mechanisms that might be used to facilitate reconciliation, or define what it means, Kearney stressed: We have had the position for some years now of wanting to see the development of a truth and recovery process, and that the mechanism for taking that forward would be the setting up of an independent international process sponsored by an international organization such as the United Nations. We have deliberately avoided spelling out the detail and modalities of how such a mechanism would take root and operate in society. This is for the simple reason that others have refused, so far, to put serious proposals on the table. If there was a range of proposals we could have a serious and realistic discussion about the way forward. We have avoided placing any more detail on the core proposition that we have put forward because it is too important to allow such a project to be devalued on the basis of a squabble about the detail of Sinn Fein’s proposals. There will be those who take issue with the proposal simply because it’s Sinn Fein’s proposal. We need a discussion around what a truth and recovery process can and should deliver, and on the basis of hearing as many voices as possible, work collectively for what is going to be best for everyone. No one community is in a position of pre-determining what a truth and recovery process should be, other than to say that it must be very carefully and strategically worked out and will require a plan that commands the maximum support across the communities. That is also one of the reasons why we have avoided placing any more detail upon the core strategic position that we have tabled. Internal discussion and public expression of that debate is developing an increased traction within republicanism and has been the subject of debate at our Ard Fheis. It continues to be discussed in considerable detail at leadership level within the party, but also at local and regional levels too. Kearney then went on to acknowledge the importance of maintaining debate with the republican base for seeking support and leadership opportunities in transformation of process, along with the value of drama (emotive) and dynamic (strategic) appeal within that process: Process is key because through implicit processes and inclusive discussion we can all begin to better understand the apprehensions, fears and oppositions that we have in relation to the direction of travel that our

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society has embarked on. If you study the peace process and apply a simplistic credit and debit approach then I think strategically the greater share of credits far outweighs the number of debits, and ensuring that success has been secured requires a careful management of process. This applies also to opening up this next phase of the peace process. The history of modern negotiations, not just in Ireland but in South Africa, is that the most important negotiation to be conducted and facilitated is always with your own base and republicans have vested enormous political and intellectual time and energy in engaging and negotiating with our base and using strategic leadership to manage that process. Managing is a fundamental requirement and is an obligation and responsibility for political leadership and dealing with a reconciliation process will challenge our leadership once more. We have a longer term vision of achieving national democracy on the island and a new republic that accommodates all sections of society regardless of ethnic, cultural and religious background. There is no trap in the republican strategy with regards to inviting others to engage with us on what parity of esteem, equality and inclusivity should mean. In the final months of 2013, US diplomat Richard Haass and his colleague Meghan O’Sullivan worked on a series of recommendations to try and overcome the impasse that had been created in Northern Ireland by protests over flags, other symbolic expressions of identity, and trying to deal with the past. When the Haass team forwarded their final draft of the recommendations on New Year’s Eve, 2013, after months of listening to a cross-section of interested parties in Northern Ireland, they were accepted by Sinn Fein but rejected by unionists. Kearney and others saw the value of using Haass as an impetus to push the reconciliation debate on and tried to use the external mediating influence of Haass to not only lend extra weight to the importance of dealing with the past, but offer a more formalized structure for doing so. As well as proposing official authorities to deal with such areas as identity, culture and tradition, or the adjudication of public events, along with an office to deal with commemorations and protests (but offering little more than an amalgamation of the Report of the Consultative Group on the Past (2009) – chaired by Robin Eames and Denis Bradley – and A Shared Future (2005) Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration (2010) and Together: Building a United Community (2013) produced to support a Northern Ireland strategy to improve communal respect and toleration), as well admitting no recommendation for overcoming the problem on displaying flags and emblems, Haass gave most attention to the area Contending with the Past. Recognizing the need to support victims and survivors, the most interesting section in relation to the reconciliation debate can be found under Acknowledging Past Acts and in particular wording such as ‘To advance reconciliation and healing at both the individual and

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societal levels, acknowledgements should be more than apologies. Saying sorry is necessary but not sufficient. Full acknowledgements would include an unqualified acceptance of responsibility, express an understanding of the human consequences for individuals and society, and include a sincere expression of remorse for pain and injury caused. Statements of regret and reconsideration are also welcome’. Suggesting the formation of a Historical Investigations Unit to replace the contentious Historical Enquiries Team set up in 2005 to investigate unresolved murders during the Troubles, this body would also complement an Independent Commission for Information Retrieval (ICIR) working alongside a further body, the Implementation and Reconciliation Group (IRG). The ICIR and the IRG would ‘offer meaningful insight into the political and strategic context of events during the conflict’ as well as examine ‘serious human rights violations’ and provide ‘a legacy that is particularly important for the work of reconciliation’ (An Agreement Among the Parties of the Northern Ireland Executive on Parades, Select Commemorations, and Related Protests; Flags and Emblems; and Contending With the Past, 31 December 2013). The ICIR would also be able to ‘offer “inadmissibility” or “limited immunity” in both civil and criminal courts to those providing information in connection with the incidents described’, who would also remain anonymous if they so wished. Moreover, further efforts which allowed for ‘multiple narratives of those who lived through conflict’ must be seen to have ‘clear social and historical value’ as part of a process of sharing experiences. All the above are designed to provide a framework of measures that influence a rebuilding of process in order to move Northern Ireland away from problems around identity (especially for unionists and loyalists), which have contributed to a slide in confidence away from the peace process towards intransigence. Kearney and others within Sinn Fein have called upon the mainstream unionists parties to endorse the Haass recommendations and so help move the debate about change ahead, but there is growing fear within both unionism and loyalism that change means loss, not gain, and that to accommodate Haass would also mean accommodating Sinn Fein demands further. Rather than embargoing a response to the recommendations until ‘everything is agreed’, the initial reaction from Sinn Fein that the recommendations would be accepted made it harder for unionists to do the same. If Sinn Fein wanted Haass to succeed, it perhaps would have been preferable for the first and deputy first minister to agree a joint response and so remove any side claiming ownership of Haass before any other. In February 2014, a further problem emerged with ‘revelations’ that hundreds of letters were given to ‘On the Run’ republicans, effectively amounting to immunity from prosecution for past murders and crimes during the Troubles. The letters, which were agreed by the Blair government, are seen by many unionists and loyalists as part of a ‘secret deal’ in order to get Sinn Fein to commit to the democratic structures of

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government, policing and justice. First minister Peter Robinson of the DUP made it clear that he would resign if the British government did not begin an enquiry into the ‘letters issue’ (with little chance they will be rescinded), and prime minister David Cameron agreed to appoint a judge to oversee such a process before reporting back in May 2014 (around the time of the local elections). The ‘letters issue’ became public and a source of media excitement after John Downey was acquitted in February 2014 from the murder of four members of a Horse Guard Parade (along with the injury of thirty-one others) in Hyde Park, London in July 1982, when a PIRA bomb was detonated in a parked car as the horse parade passed by. The judgement on Downey’s prosecution noted how ‘It would be unfair for the defendant to be tied because on 20 July 2007 … he was given a clear written assurance on behalf of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Attorney General that there was no outstanding direction for prosecution in Northern Ireland in relation to him, that there were no warrants in existence, that he was not wanted in Northern Ireland for arrest, questioning and charge by the police and that the Police Service of Northern Ireland were not aware of any interest in him by any other police force in the United Kingdom … ’ This judgement led to Downey being acquitted and to hostile reaction from unionists in Northern Ireland, who not only saw the decision as an insult to victims of those murdered during the conflict, but also inconsistent with articulations about dealing with hurt and pain as part of reconciliation. Sinn Fein’s response was to present the ‘letters issue’ as no surprise, and in public and media reports stress that this had been known about for sometime. The response was also intended to try and turn unionist hostility into another example of resistance to power-sharing and equality. It is unlikely that the disputes over symbols of identity, or how to deal with the past and the problems of justice in relation to that past, will significantly derail the Sinn Fein emphasis on reconciliation, a debate they have invested considerable time and energy in over recent years. Dealing with the past (however that is defined) also means dealing with the future and using the past in order to support political ambitions for that future. It would not be wise to become sidetracked into a debate that does not serve that end. It could be argued that the repetitive nature of Kearney’s articulations on the need for a reconciliation process amounts to the equivalent of a single-transferable speech for Sinn Fein, so routinely has it been employed to emphasize a need to re-engage with the past (notably also wide-ranging, ambiguous and reasonable in tone). But, the nature of politics and power-sharing within which Sinn Fein is involved in Northern Ireland and the daily problems of dealing with such areas as roads, schools, hospitals and the economy means that the prospect of maintaining or developing a grand or meta-narrative is minimized, a deficiency that reconciliation discourse addresses. What we can see here, in this final chapter, is that republicanism in Northern Ireland today is effectively confronted by two choices. One is to support the Sinn Fein

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project and the emphasis on using the past to support political development through the current route, and the other is to reject the Sinn Fein project and emphasize imaginations of the future as coterminus with the tradition of using force to expel the British. Most likely is that the former will prevail unless, of course, the latter leads to a serious escalation of violence which draws reaction from loyalists. In that instance, it is probable that any efforts of the power-sharing government to resist a return to conflict will come under huge strain, so further dividing politics as a mechanism to stop or prevent violence if social conditions deteriorate to that end. Because of this, politics in Northern Ireland must retain an acute awareness of the potential dangers that lurk in both looking forwards and backwards. And, because unionism seems unable to overcome an inherent lack of confidence about change, so this can have bearing on the effect that Sinn Fein might have on Northern Ireland as a whole. Against this backdrop, however, and while it could be also argued that while ‘dissident’ republicans have nothing to lose Sinn Fein does, it seems likely that the longer Sinn Fein works to establish itself as a political party and expands on that basis, so the more futile violence (and so the tradition that espouses its value) becomes. Indeed, one might even believe that the presence of ‘dissidents’ helps to ensure the continuity or success of Sinn Fein precisely because the alternative is to concede that politics is unworkable, and that violence is the endemic (counter) response to contested relations and politics in Northern Ireland. But, there is also the possible problem that the more time passes without demonstrable gains which give the impression of clear momentum towards a united Ireland, the more uneasy republicans will become and the more likely the perception will grow in certain republican factions that politics alone will not deliver the changes required. As recent events in Northern Ireland show, with Sinn Fein’s success in getting the Union Jack flag removed from being flown every day over City Hall in Belfast and the backlash from loyalists that followed, political gains are being played out at the symbolic and cultural level as well as within the democratic process of competing for votes. It is also possible, given the reaction by loyalists, that this development sends the message to republicans that gains are being made precisely because of the scale of reaction and that loyalists angrily arguing that their identity is being eroded and diminished further supports the perception that republicans are exerting growing influence over social and cultural life in Northern Ireland. One possible danger, though, is that this might be seen crucial as an adjunct to political advancement and so part of an ongoing strategy to communicate gains and advantage in ways not possible through the conventional (and much slower) path of winning votes and seats. A  further danger is that seeking advantage through the terrain of symbolism and cultural expression will make political progress increasingly difficult, in turn requiring more and more emphasis to be put on the symbolic and the cultural to show accumulative gains.

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For sure, the focus on dealing with the past is the next phase of political development for Sinn Fein. But, if a formal reconciliation process were announced (however defined) – and Sinn Fein would no doubt attempt to represent republican actions as ostensibly legitimate responses to British coercion in Northern Ireland – perhaps such a process is not without potential risk for exposing the actions perpetuated by the republican movement in the name of Irish independence as ultimately irresponsible, if not criminal. Further, managing the impression that the British and the unionists are those who should be made most accountable for suffering imposed throughout the conflict and getting some official recognition of that by reducing reconciliation to a record of who suffered the most (not forgetting that two-thirds of the deaths during the Troubles were caused by republicans), may not be so easy given the widespread and unpredictable consequences of post-trauma, organizational corruption and individual criminality which took place under the ‘say nothing’ cover of conflict and paramilitarism. What has become apparent towards the end of 2014 is that for republicans (and no doubt in time others) reconciliation will be as much a matter of facing the abuse that has been carried out within their own communities as it will trying to turn those without into being the protagonists of conflict, and so more answerable for the loss of the life that resulted. And, what has made such a possibility more acute is revelations by republican Maria Cahill (the grand-niece of leading PIRA figure Joe Cahill) in October 2014 that, as a sixteen-year-old, she suffered sexual abuse and was raped by a senior republican between August 1997 and September 1998 and then, on making this known to another family member, was subjected to a ‘kangaroo court’ of high-ranking republican figures, made to come face-to-face with her alleged rapist and questioned for some six months about what she had experienced and where, Cahill insists, she was expected to withdraw her allegations. This revelation made big news in Ireland with both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael seeking to use the story to attack Sinn Fein and call for an allIreland PIRA abuse inquiry to further claims that a number of republicans were moved into the Republic from Northern Ireland during the Troubles on the basis of sex crime activity. In November 2014, assertions by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael that there are grounds for investigation of some twentyeight others who have come forward to have the truth of what happened to them known led to fierce exchanges in the Dail, with taoiseach Enda Kenny saying of the republican movement, but particularly targeting Gerry Adams and the Sinn Fein leadership: ‘They thought so much of this Republic that they would honour their rapists. Gift us their child abusers under that socalled elite republican dispensation’. Whether this story and more sex abuse victims coming forward has the potential to derail Sinn Fein’s political progress is uncertain (an Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll reported in the Irish Times on 9 October 2014 found popular support for Sinn Fein was neckand-neck with Fine Gael on twenty-four points), but what is likely is that

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such stories will have a very real propensity to expose a more sinister side to the republican movement and pose significant challenges to a controlled and coherent republican narrative about the past. What the Cahill revelations bring to light is that a reconciliation process (if it were to happen) cannot be just a matter of politicians using any such process to bolster political objectives, but will need to address suffering and trauma at personal, interpersonal and institutional levels (reports such as Troubled Consequences by the Commission for Victims and Survivors in 2011, Transgenerational Trauma by Wave in 2014 and Child Sexual Exploitation in Northern Ireland: Report of the Independent Inquiry in 2014 highlight only too well the extent of individual trauma/post-trauma experiences in Northern Ireland), and it is here, in relation to individual testimony, where dominant communal and organizational narratives risk being seriously undermined. As long as Sinn Fein is able to contain issues connected with the past within the terrain of political discourse, it is likely to control such debates with effectiveness, but if addressing the past means responding to the more unpredictable pain of individuals rather than just communities (and bearing in mind how this will destabilize the homogenization and generalization of group narratives), then the major challenge for ongoing political development will be coping with what is said outside of political debate, for that will not be so easily manageable.

Conclusion

The movement from armed struggle to political struggle reveals an impressive feat of management and control. But, the journey outwards (towards politics) has also changed the journey inwards (imagination), with the physicality of militant conflict now less appealing than the power and psychology of political motivation. Entering the political domain has required a transformation not just in terms of image and presentation, but thinking, reasoning and logic, for entering such terrain means that progress must now be achieved primarily through language rather than acts, through pragmatism rather than principle, and through flexibility rather than rigidity. The traditions which sustained the militant republican impulse may still find expression and articulation at annual commemorations and moments of symbolic remembering, but the ambiguities of political discourse now take precedent over the certainties of conflict. During conflict, when volunteers are being asked to risk their life, it is obvious enough why clarity and principle would prevail (why would one risk death on the basis of some vague or ambiguous objective?), but once involved in the political arena, which relies on engagement with opponents and others, so the previous certainties become counterproductive and obstructive if pursued with the same vigour and assuredness. And, because the political relies on persuasion, perceptual management and control of core aims and strategies through language, so the skills of reflexivity and adaptation become more important. Note how today that talk of a socialist Ireland has become talk of an all-Ireland, an inclusive Ireland, a multicultural Ireland and an Ireland of equals, as well as a united Ireland (along, no doubt, with a number of other Irelands), giving the impression of transformation and progressive adjustment to political messages. But, what of this new-Ireland that Sinn Fein and republicans in Northern Ireland want to unite and what of those Catholics less inclined to share this aspiration? In the late 1970s, travel writer Dervla Murphy set out to journey across Northern Ireland in an attempt to understand its people. In one of her observations, she noted how surprised she was with ‘the number of moderate Catholics who admitted – often with elaborate, apologetic explanations – that in a changed atmosphere, which did not make them feel inferior, they would willingly forget about a united Ireland and be faithful to a power-sharing Stormont substitute if it did not insist on ritual

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affirmations of loyalty to the Crown’ (1978: 180). She also expressed the view that ‘the non-IRA Catholics are far more mentally and emotionally flexible than the Protestants and so more likely to compromise’ (1978: 59– 60). In 1990, political scientist John Whyte came to a not totally dissimilar conclusion, when, in his wide-ranging analysis of religious, political and economic factors that shape Northern Ireland, he found ‘that Catholics are less determinedly in favour of a united Ireland than Protestants are against it’ (Whyte 1990: 83). Both these viewpoints seem to have added poignancy when compared to a Life and Times Survey carried out with 1,200 citizens across Northern Ireland in 2011 which concluded that 73 per cent of those interviewed wanted to stay in the United Kingdom, with 52 per cent of the Catholic interviewees favouring the union with Britain rather than a united Ireland. However, when the Life and Times Survey was conducted again in 2013, there had been some movement across the categorizations. So, although only 15 per cent of those interviewed thought that a united Ireland was attainable within twenty years, there had been an increase in those who saw themselves as Irish, up from 26 per cent in 2010 to 32 per cent in 2013 and a reduction in those who saw themselves as Northern Irish down from 29 per cent to 22 per cent. A further shift had occurred amongst those who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, down from 72 per cent in 2010 to 63 per cent in 2013, and Catholics calling themselves Northern Irish had also fallen from 26 per cent to 17 per cent during the same period. To add to the statistics, a further survey conducted by the Belfast Telegraph in September 2013 found that only 3.8 per cent of those polled wanted to see the border removed with immediate effect, with a predicted ‘less than a quarter of the population – being prepared to vote for Irish unity even in the longer-term aspiration of 20 years in the future’ and with 22.3 per cent favouring Irish unity before then. The Telegraph also concluded that Catholic support for a united Ireland straight away was up from 7 per cent the previous year to 12.5 per cent, but Catholic support for Irish unity after 2013 had dropped from 41 per cent in 2012 to 27 per cent in 2013, with some third of those questioned undecided on the issue. From a Sinn Fein perspective, these figures suggest a change which favours their political cause since the 2013 statistics highlight a growing support for Irishness (not defined), and a significant turn towards conventional identity differentiation that suits them much more than a new grouping that defines itself as Northern Irish and which suggests an Irishness framed by a Northern Ireland, rather than a united Ireland, context. This increasing support for Irishness may also be a contributory factor for as to why, in the Republic of Ireland, Fianna Fail (founded in 1926, calling itself The Republican Party and according to its constitution aiming ‘to secure in peace and agreement the unity of Ireland and its people’), at its 2014 Ard Fheis, announced an intention to participate in elections in Northern Ireland from 2019. This certainly presents a possible threat to Sinn Fein as the dominant Irish party

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in Northern Ireland and may force the party to further distinguish what it means by Irishness alongside a mainstream Irish political party. It may also pressure Sinn Fein to differentiate itself less along symbolic and cultural lines and more along economic ones, and, in particular, having to re-articulate an emphasis (although modified) on republican socialism. This, although speculative, is also problematic given the globalized nature of national economies and the integrated and interconnected pathways to trade and economic planning. The challenges for political advancement against such a backdrop are therefore heightened. But, in 2014, the socialist emphasis of Sinn Fein is, to say the least, moderated. A quick glance at the party website (http://www.sinnfein.ie/ policies) indicates the priorities now categorized as: Advancing The Peace Process; Getting Ireland back to Work; Economic Plan for Recovery – There Is A Better Way; Real Investment in Frontline Services; Rebuilding Rural Ireland; and EU/International. And, on economic alternatives, the party talks ambiguously about ‘growing the economy to a sustainable recovery, making sure the most vulnerable in society are protected, and that those who can afford to contribute the most are asked to do so’. Progressive talk focuses mainly on levels of taxation through ‘fair measures’ and, on frontline services, the priority is support for public services that ‘deliver for all citizens’; especially with a universal public health system ‘that provides care free at the point of delivery’, and an education system ‘that is accessible to all and responsive to the needs of those it serves’. ‘Getting Ireland Back to Work’ recommends an economic stimulus to re-boot economic generation and job creation while ‘Rebuilding Rural Ireland’ talks about ‘harnessing what rural Ireland has to offer rather than looking at how it can be targeted for cuts’, where, by better using ‘the unique offering or rural Ireland and its people … sustainable rural economies can be built to offer meaningful employment opportunities’. And, on the EU/International context, the party comments ‘we wish to see a true partnership of equal sovereign states, cooperating in social and economic development’. More broadly aligning itself with other ‘oppressed nations and peoples’, Sinn Fein points towards South Africa, the Palestinians and the Basque County as places which have elicited support and so invites comparison with republicans and Catholics who have similarly have sought to overcome political and social disadvantage. The above areas may intimate a left-leaning political agenda, but the proposals also amount to a moderate shift in the largely centrist nature of Irish politics. Of course, it can be argued that advocating serious change is going to frighten rather than attract any electorate, and that the goal is to build initial political support before then communicating real radical intentions later, but what the above approach demonstrates is that making political gains will mean competing on the very restricted ground of consensual Irish politics which has little room for revolutionary zeal and rhetoric. Indeed, one could argue that the more a party makes ground on the

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basis of careful differentiation in this consensual terrain, the more it is likely to stay there and seek an aggregation of marginal gains at best. Gaining political respectability in such an environment will require not exploiting the mythological tendencies of violent republicanism, but downplaying those tendencies where possible, or, at least using them very selectively. This may not amount to apologizing for the armed struggle, which, of course, is part of the traditional identity and central to the romanticized imagination, but inferring through word and deed that its effects were and are counterproductive for Irish unity. If it is so that the segregation of Ireland provided a situation where ‘Its insidious and ultimately fatal flaw was the creation in Northern Ireland of a minority more disaffected than any Irish faction under the Union’, as Fitzpatrick contends (Fitzpatrick 1998: 242), then the mythology of violent republicanism in Northern Ireland is likely to have far less purchase on the popular imagination in the Republic of Ireland and so is less able to capitalize on a sensibility that might claim some general Irish appeal. Recurring concerns about PIRA violence can be seen in the way Martin McGuinness was called to justify his and the PIRA’s actions when he competed in the Irish presidency elections in 2011 and in recurring questions about why Gerry Adams will not admit his role in the PIRA leadership (which he denies). Such examples highlight the counterproductive implications of association with the PIRA and so the lack of popular support for armed struggle as an instrument for change. This also points towards the need for a careful two-pronged approach by Sinn Fein to made political advancement. One, more concerned with using the traditions and connections of Sinn Fein to the PIRA in Northern Ireland, and the other downplaying this connection in the Republic of Ireland. But, this poses another question, which is to what extent does seeking to capture republican, nationalist and Catholic votes in Northern Ireland hinder the appeal of Sinn Fein in the Republic of Ireland if both audiences are shaped by different experiences of British influence and so Irish influence? Arguably, one might suggest that the conflict in Northern Ireland drew from and used more fervently the emotive and dramatic emphasis of republican narratives to reinforce commitment to armed struggle in ways less relevant for the South. That the romanticism of armed conflict in Northern Ireland was being played out alongside the realism of pragmatic politics in the South where, although there may exist support in the Republic for the PIRA, there is also confusion and contradiction in this identification since there also exists a disregard and distaste for the impact of violence, itself reinforced by perceived indifference which republicans in Northern Ireland believe has been shown by those in the South. And, even if, as Hanley notes, ‘The historical status attached to the IRA meant many people wanted to identify with them’, so many in the South remained largely ‘repulsed by their actions’, effectively resisting the attempt to find merit on physical force (Hanley 2013: 456). Identification by those in

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the Republic with the PIRA was not an identification that presented itself as uncritical support for the IRA’s ‘noble’ fight for independence between 1916 and 1921 (Hanley 2013) (note also Fergus Finlay’s interview comment for this book on Irish engagement with republicans in the early stages of the peace process: ‘There was a lot of intellectual commitment to doing business with the Provos, but there was also a visceral dislike of them too’). Paradoxically, it may be because of the tension that exists between support for political republicanism on the one hand, but disregard for violence on the other, that helps explain the gains made by Sinn Fein in the South (in March 2014 Sinn Fein hold fourteen seats in the Dail and twenty-eight seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly), where political progress and relinquishing armed struggle parallel the wider social distaste for republicanism in militant form, but where popularity is retained because of historical linkage to the sentiment of Irish unification. What, therefore, looks highly likely is that political advancement for the long term will require a growing separation from the mythologies and metaphors that sustained imaginations about the validity of the armed struggle, but that those myths and metaphors will still require some (if progressively less evident) expression and articulation if Sinn Fein is to maintain the image that has not totally deserted traditional principles and motivations. And, this must be handled carefully to minimize the risks attached with highlighting what republicanism was but no longer is. What is also clear is that because to continue to talk about the value of armed struggle risks undermining the validity of politics, so Sinn Fein will want to make the linkage between violence and politics increasingly ambiguous and diffuse, with the attractions of militant resistance replaced by the more liquid reality of political communications and delivering messages to best meet the shifting terrain of policy articulation (Spencer 2006). Importantly, too, the transition from war to peace has brought with it another indisputable realization, which is that the Northern Ireland problem is essentially now an internal matter, and that Britishness is inherent to the tensions and antagonisms inside as well as outside Northern Ireland because of Protestantism, unionism and loyalism. Adherence to the consent principle enshrined in the peace process negotiations effectively countered the republican assertion that change is not possible without British withdrawal. Participation in the political process is an admission that this way of thinking was, if not flawed, then wrong, and that the tendency to construct self-definition in relation to the British outsider has required a shift to increasingly depict the obstruction to a united Ireland as the political forces inside Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland itself, and where, as McIntyre observed in 1995, the ‘dynamic towards a united Ireland’ is simultaneously complemented by ‘a dynamic for reform within the North of Ireland’ which, from two fronts, converged to render the military campaign redundant (McIntyre 2008: 151).

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This redundancy poses some awkward questions for the continued romanticization of republican struggle that prevailed throughout the conflict and, in particular, the validity of the utopian vision created by Tone, Pearse, Connolly, Sands and others. The emotionalism of the utopian vision sustained by these figures has been incrementally replaced by the harsh realities of the political moment, and ending armed struggle without the longed for British withdrawal has without question required a comprehensive effort in terms of control and leadership. Interestingly, it has arisen not from a clear severing of the political project from the military campaign, but through a process of incremental disengagement, where the military campaign has been reframed as essential to create the conditions from which politics can be advanced. It has required portraying the transition as a continuum of intent and purpose rather than a rupture, and stressing how armed struggle and politics complement rather than contradict each other. The idealism of ending the British presence through the long war has been replaced by the dream of doing so through the long peace and seeking to co-ordinate political gains made in Ireland, both North and South, simultaneously. This will require, however, fusing two different notions of Irishness: one which draws from republicanism built on armed struggle and the other which draws from republicanism which rejects armed struggle. And, while the former is decidedly uneasy about the growing absence of armed resistance from contemporary discourse, the other requires that absence. Carrying the bulk of republicans along with the Sinn Fein project has not only been a success of managerial style and technique, given the differences between military and political outlooks, but has happened because efforts have been focussed on dealing with the movement as a ‘moral community’, with transformation reflecting a vision of republican progress driven by authoritarian direction and continuity (personified by Gerry Adams’ role as Sinn Fein president since 1983). But, such control, to repeat, has depended too on conjoining contradictory strategies of violent and politics. Just as violence was a response to social and political conditions, so the transition to politics is necessarily a response to changes in those social and political conditions, where to not respond to the opportunities and challenges afforded by that shift through political representation would expose the futility of arguments for change. Managing this shift has required applying interpretations, reasoning and judgements which have been less influenced by concerns over literal anomalies and more by the general framework within which changes are contained and advanced. Where, for example, the image of journey can still be pursued, and where the path to God (a united Ireland) is still available, if not via the same methods as before. Perhaps too an inclination to avoid ‘either/or’ thinking because of a preference for ‘both/and’ thinking and the tendency to imagine the world as unpredictable, means that change can be explained almost in terms of pilgrimage as much

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as strategy (or where pilgrimage and strategy intersect). It does not seem such a leap of faith (excuse the analogy) to see the following passage written by former Archbishop of Westminster Basil Hume O.S.B. as almost providing a vision for Sinn Fein’s political motivation and intent: ‘Life is a pilgrimage. We are on the march, and sooner or later we shall reach our destination. That destination we call heaven. There we shall see God as He is, and that experience will be the cause of a happiness which will be complete and have no end. We are made for that’ (Hume 1984: 25). The emphasis on pilgrimage is an emphasis of movement. It is also an emphasis that does not isolate change and difference, but views each within a general context of flux. This does not mean (as we have seen with ‘dissidents’) that all are going to except change which they believe is a violation of tradition and principle, but it does mean that transforming tradition and principle is more easily managed when interpretive positions are shaped by the tendency to see truth as movement and within parameters of thought that encourage absorption more than exclusion. As long as change can be justified as an extension rather than rejection, and if there are other social and political circumstances which can be used to demonstrate the value of transformation (South Africa proved influential in the thinking of Sinn Fein), it is more likely that the communal ethic can be maintained. That is, if the sacred pursuit of a united Ireland can be convincingly communicated, then that aspiration is not a violation of a dream, but an alternative path to pursue it. In relation, the just war argument has no meaning without expectations of a just peace, and when the conditions for a just peace are created so, devotion to the just war becomes immoral. This, it seems, illustrates the predicament for ‘dissidents’ who oppose the Sinn Fein project. They may at one level see themselves as representing a history of purity and tradition but, at another, their presence is an immorality because they have refused to acknowledge the changed social and political circumstances in which they now live. And, more importantly, they have rejected the desires and aims of the wider community who recognize those circumstances and expect change because of them. Notably, the ‘dissident’ threat is also a reminder of the tradition and value that modern political republicanism is trying to forget. In Northern Ireland, where ‘dissidents’ are primarily active, their presence (no matter how peripheral) invariably signifies a tradition which exposes what political republicanism has sought to leave behind. And, this is more than just a potential embarrassment because ‘dissident’ republicanism is the continuum of historical identity (even if criminality is also taking place through such organizations) which strives to preserve the idealism of the founding fathers and so the dominant narratives of identity. For them, the Sinn Fein project is nothing short of acquiescence to British jurisdiction and capitulation to the argument that the segregation of Ireland, even if changeable over the long term, is also acceptable as it stands and that no matter how much attempted

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persuasion there is to try and create the impression that this is not the case, that is how it is. But, recognition of the need to accept change brings with it an implicit acknowledgement that change must follow in how identity is conceptualized too. This means an opening of space where possible obstruction to political advancement is no longer without but within, where Sinn Fein must now contend with other forms of Irish republicanism seeking to influence the narrow ground of political policy. But, to make the political advancement required, Sinn Fein will have to shape and maintain an image of authoritative ‘political respectability’ and do so within the limits of a largely consensual political system. The party will, to restate, need to transplant the rigidity of traditional utopianism with the pragmatism and constant fluidity of political communications and image management. As such, this will, as David Rieff observed, require movement beyond the sacred tenets where this is no compromise (Rieff 2011: 69), into a realm which depends on compromise, and where moral absolutism will need to give way to moral relativism in response to the unpredictability and spontaneity of political events and circumstances. And, in the process of so doing, it will need to constantly reconsider, reinterpret and, at times, even distance itself from the very myths which have been integral to its own history and identity.

AFTERWORD

On 23 December 2014, the main parties in Northern Ireland, along with the British and Irish governments, endorsed the Stormont House Agreement (SHA), which laid out plans for finance and welfare reform as a response to austerity measures agreed by the two governments. The Agreement secured consent on finance and welfare measures alongside recommendations for dealing with the past. Those recommendations included establishing a commission on identity, culture and tradition; a mental trauma services body to work with victims and survivors; an oral history archive ‘to share experiences and narratives related to the Troubles’; a historical investigations unit to examine ‘outstanding Troubles-related deaths’; an independent commission on information retrieval; and an implementation and reconciliation group to ‘oversee themes, archives and information recovery’. The SHA effectively restructured the areas raised by the Haass talks the previous year but had made the various commissions set up to address legacy issues dependent on achieving participant agreement across areas of finance and welfare. Concerns over public funding had therefore created a context of engagement which was also used to move the parties towards accepting the need for a process to address the legacy of conflict. Although the two governments were needed to oversee the negotiations that led to the Agreement, and will need to remain engaged to direct the various bodies set up to oversee legacy issues, Sinn Fein also used the process of negotiations to reinforce the image of being an anti-austerity party. This image is consistent with the one being similarly communicated in the South, where it has positioned itself against government measures deemed to be unpopular with much of the public (such as the imposition of water rates). That Sinn Fein signed up to an agreement which effectively gave legislative authority to cuts in the welfare budget would, on the face of it, seem to pose interesting presentational problems for the party and its anti-austerity articulations in the South. But, instead, the Agreement was presented as a success for Sinn Fein where, because of its resistance against the cuts, the party was able to argue that welfare reductions were less drastic than they would have otherwise been without its involvement and that, indeed, because of persistent campaigning against welfare cuts beforehand, the party had helped to ensure even more money for the welfare system. This claim was contested by others, however, as a positive spin on a situation where money secured for welfare was diverted from other

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services and, in particular, was taken from the Block Grant system used by the Executive. Here, to put it simply, the contention is that Sinn Fein, along with the DUP, had managed to redistribute existing budgets from the Executive to support benefit claimants who were destined to lose out by the reforms. In relation, suggestions that Sinn Fein was not convincing in their grasp of the mathematics in the negotiations, but preferred to emphasize ideological positions (particularly in relation to dealing with the past and on reconciliation), would be consistent with the tendency to think in terms of positions that reinforce strategic direction, core narratives and long-term ambitions. However, intimations from Sinn Fein representatives that the PIRA could not play any significant part in an information or truth recovery process because it no longer exists appear problematic when considered alongside recent press stories which allege heavy republican involvement (PIRA and ‘dissidents’) in mass smuggling and operations (‘The smoking gun: how cigarettes became the IRA’s new weapon’, The Sunday Times, 15 February 2015) and could be taken, to say the least, as a gesture of bad faith. Just how Sinn Fein manages to circumvent or diffuse criticism that it is not an anti-austerity party, given its compromises in the SHA, is easier when other parties have failed to communicate the same anti-austerity rhetoric prior to, and during the negotiations, and who cannot capture the same political ground, even retrospectively, because of this. But the image being perpetuated that welfare was secured by Sinn Fein involvement runs parallel with the general propensity to present unwanted outcomes as success stories, as well as being reflective of the party’s ability to turn potentially negative stories into positive ones. So, as welfare legislation was signed off through the Executive in February 2015, those such as Declan Kearney were able to maintain that protections in welfare were a direct result of Sinn Fein strategy, arguing ‘While other parties were prepared to acquiesce to the Tories, Sinn Fein refused to give way.’ And while ‘All the other parties – including the SDLP – were prepared to compromise on welfare protections,’ Sinn Fein was not. Moreover, in using the opportunity to depict the Irish government as weak in the negotiations, Kearney espoused how that government had ‘behaved as a cheerleader for nationalising austerity on an all-island basis by actively supporting the British Government’s policy to introduce welfare cuts in the North’. Sinn Fein had therefore successfully provided a bulwark against the pervasive ‘London/Dublin Tory axis’ and in the process presented itself as the credible player working to develop an ‘Irish Left alternative’ collation to challenge for government in Dublin (‘Sinn Fein negotiations strategy at Stormont entrenches welfare protections in legislation’, An Phoblacht, online, 13 February 2015). This alternative complements Sinn Fein’s aim to develop strategic and political direction in order to achieve ‘An Ireland of Equals’, and the party has sought to augment its international profile as a party of the left by attaching itself to those such as SYRIZA in Greece, which came

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to power on a strong an anti-austerity, socialist platform (The tipping point to secure political power for change’, An Phoblacht, February 2015). Suggested mechanisms for dealing with the legacy of conflict now point towards a series of steps to tentatively underpin what Sinn Fein would, no doubt, prefer to view as a ‘reconciliation’ process. However, as previously noted, such a process would most likely be used by Sinn Fein to reinforce an equality agenda, while trying to hold the British and others accountable for conflict. What would present a real problem for Sinn Fein, if this process were to happen, is any insistence on confidentiality, as this would hinder the possibility of exploiting such a process for propaganda opportunities. Another interesting development which might emerge from steps to address the past is the potential challenges this might pose for the ‘double-vision’ which has historically sustained the nationalist/republican imagination (mentioned in the opening chapter), since what may well prove hard to escape is the matter of responsibility and broader recognition that conflict is reflective of problems with Irishness perhaps even more than Britishness, and where victims and perpetrators are asked to reflect on questions of conscience, hatred and sectarianism (more issues of conscience are likely to undermine ideological justification). There is another potential issue at stake with a reconciliation process too, which, as suggested, is to do with the extent of ‘post-trauma’ suffering in Northern Ireland and the importance of one-to-one counselling and individualized therapy as a response to that suffering. Such therapy is necessarily a private and confidential affair, where the individual is helped to avoid possible impact that may reinforce rather than help with the pain and suffering of trauma. However, since effective therapy depends on ‘a social context that affirms and protects the victim’ and which ‘is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered’ (Lewis Herman 2010: 9), it also depends on a strong drive at the political level to acknowledge the victim–perpetrator relationship and the need to particularly support victims in this relationship. As Lewis Herman identifies, improvements in this area ‘occur only when they are supported by a political movement powerful enough to legitimate an alliance between investigators and patients to counteract the ordinary social processes of silencing and denial’ (2010: 9) But if a reconciliation process becomes primarily the currency of the political then (in the Northern Ireland context anyway), it risks merely using victims (however defined) to support political narratives rather than individual needs. Or, to put it another way, victims are likely to be seen as credible victims only when their experiences and stories intersect with narratives of political value. As seen from some of the key British and Irish government officials interviewed in this book, Sinn Fein were routinely drawing direction and motivation in talks and negotiations from a strong sense of presenting themselves as victims, but at a corporate rather than individual level. The social

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danger from reinforcing the corporate message, rather than the individual benefits of reconciliation is that the past becomes a matter of reinforcement instead of release and risks creating a culture of re-victimization in the process. Unless this is very carefully handled and managed at the political level, a reconciliation process will serve to augment division rather than help end it (the opposite of what one would expect reconciliation to do). Having said that, the SHA has nevertheless set out a series of initiatives to deal with matters of the past which will require considerable attention to procedural fairness, responsibility and accountability before there is likely to be engagement from the protagonists and victims of conflict (bearing in mind the overlap that may exist between these two categorizations when protagonists see themselves as victims too). For now, the fact that mechanisms to try and address the past are being formally enacted and legislated for is in itself an advantage for Sinn Fein given that they have pressed for this most of all, but, this is not to say that such a process is without risks for republicans too. As Sinn Fein prepares for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, it will be seeking to link history and continuity with change and political transformation. It will be working to establish itself as a radical left-wing party born of republican socialist tradition at the same time as continuing to emphasize the discriminatory and harmful effects of British authority in Northern Ireland, so keeping the question of Irish independence at the forefront of the Sinn Fein message. At one level the focus for change will be using the myths and romanticized imaginings of the past to provide a foundation from which movement takes shape, while, at another, this movement will need to keep the problem of British involvement alive so as to maintain a challenge against which leadership and struggle can be defined. Political growth in the South will require more of a focus on issues and concerns internal to Ireland, while the concern over British jurisdiction is more likely to focus on the North. Although there will be some convergence across these two areas, it seems likely that the two narratives, one on Irish independence and the other on political development, will not be given equal weight given that the ability to exert increased pressure on British involvement in Northern Ireland is likely to be related to political growth in the Republic too. And, as said, the possibility of a reconciliation process may create problems for both strands of strategic direction because of risks from public exposure of PIRA activity, which will serve to keep the perceived immorality and criminality of PIRA struggle alive. Even in the likely event that republicans will interpret actions in a context of British and Irish responsibility, and will see armed struggle as a matter of social and political conditions, there will are still evident problems from trying to represent the personal as ostensibly a manifestation of the political. The separation of the personal from the political will become a dilemma of both conscience and responsibility if a reconciliation process

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is to be initiated and Sinn Fein will need to be vigilant to such distinctions. Because of this who would rule out the possibility that engagement in any future reconciliation process will create the biggest problem for the political advancement of Sinn Fein? And yet, having said that, who would rule out the possibility that this political advancement is precisely what might happen? But, if that were to occur and the utopia of a socialist Irish independence was achieved, it would no doubt also bring with it the stark realization that, like all utopias, its imagined appeal, once realized, amounted to little more than a false dawn. At that point, the myths of identity and tradition will no longer hold the fascinations of the past and the instability of an interregnum is likely to emerge where the presence of the colonial outsider is fast disappearing from view. Then, Ireland will be faced with the problem of re-defining itself on the basis of its own contradictions and internal tensions and that will require another phase of transformation for republicanism if it is to develop and prosper.

LIST OF INTERVIEWEES

Bradley, Denis (Father) Brooke, Peter (Lord) Canny, Michael (Father) Crilly, Oliver (Father) Dalton, Tim Daly, Edward (Bishop) Doherty, Patrick (Father) Durkan, Mark Farren, Sean Finlay, Fergus Foster, Gerry Gallagher, Dermot Garland, Sean Gibney, Jim Hartley, Tom Hodgkin, Gerard Kearney, Declan

Lennon, Brian (SJ) Magee, Patrick McConville, Gerry McLaughlin, Mitchel Morrison, Danny Murray, Raymond (Father) Murray, Sean O’Callaghan, Sean O’Donnell, Joe O’Hare, Sean O hUiginn, Sean O’Reilly, Gerry O’Rawe, Richard Powell, Jonathan Thomas, Quentin (Sir) Tierney, John Walsh, Seanna

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INDEX

Adams, Gerry Catholicism 64, 68, 86, 104–5, 109 ‘dissident’ republicanism 226, 229 Father Reid and 64 methods of insurgence 59 O’Rawe criticism 61–2 oratory in 1979 19 peace process 139–44, 148–9, 151–2, 154–7, 159–62, 164, 170–2, 178–9, 190, 197–8, 202–4, 206, 210–14, 216, 219–22, 224 PIRA membership 81, 253 political front 111–13, 115–16, 119–35 Provisional delegation 56–7 on separatist nationalism 20 Afterlives (O’Rawe) 61 Ahern, Dermot 122 Algerian revolution 45 Alliance Party 57 Alonso, R. 51, 54 American civil rights movements 100–1 An Phoblacht 43, 66, 87, 111, 239–40 Ancram, Michael 169–70 Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) 37, 80, 111, 113, 116, 120–1, 136, 139, 146 Anglo-Irish Treaty 40, 42–3 Aquinas, St Thomas 83 Ard Fheis 46, 49, 129, 207, 238, 240, 243, 251 armed struggle alternatives to 116, 129 Anglo Irish Agreement (AIA) 117–18 Catholicism 42, 65–8, 71, 84–7, 89–90, 99–100, 102–3, 106–7, 109, 120

Downing Street Declaration (DSD 1993) and 152 economic and strategic purpose 136 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) 223–4, 229 hunger strikes 61 IRA campaign 43–4, 46, 48, 55, 143, 145, 157, 228 Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) 52–3 legitimacy 15, 36–7, 50, 94, 191 PIRA’s 2–4, 15, 32, 35, 45, 57, 62, 93, 102, 112–15, 119, 122, 124, 128, 144, 149, 154, 161–2, 165, 173, 177, 184, 223, 226, 236–7, 253–4 puritanical faith 1 republican view 150, 172 SDLP dialogues 123, 127, 131, 137, 167 Sinn Fein’s 38, 117, 127, 134–6, 145, 165–6, 181, 189, 194, 207, 218, 230, 235, 241, 255 transformation of identity 39–40 transitional phase 113 TUAS document 158 Armstrong, K. 10–11 Army Council (PIRA) back-channel process 143 ceasefire debate 154, 161–4 decommissioning problem 191 DSD, rejection 155 first general meeting 47 GHQ meeting 123, 151 groupings 228 level of influence 210 Real IRA 227 republican movements 59

272

INDEX

Sinn Fein’s vs. 203, 206, 213 textual negotiations 197–8 tier of control 151 Ashe, Thomas 20–1, 23, 112 Azimkar, Patrick 228 Bakewell, J. 72, 83 Bartlett, R. 21 Bauman, Z. 18 Bean, K. 36, 39, 112, 115, 118 Beckett, J. C. 41, 229 Bedau, H. A. 82 Beiner, G. 22 Beresford, D. 60 Berman, D. 66, 86 Berresford Ellis, P. 18–19 Bew, P. 42, 45, 57–9, 61, 91, 116–17, 144, 146, 152, 170–3, 175, 177–8 Bishop, E. 86–8, 91, 113, 116, 118 Biting At The Grave (O’Malley) 23 Blair, T. 177–81, 194, 219, 222–4, 245 Bloody Sunday 55–6, 195, 228 Bloomfield, D. 141, 143, 146–7 Bourke, J. 22–3 Bowyer Bell, J. 48, 50, 55, 88–9 Bradley, Father Denis 94 Breatnach, D. 87 Brewer, J. D. 85 British control 42, 54, 131 British forces 42, 54, 56 British Imperialism 43, 96 British withdrawal 53, 112, 134, 153, 155, 217, 225, 241, 254–5 Building a Permanent Peace (Sinn Fein document) 172 Cahill, Joe 159, 171, 248–9 Campbell, A. 179, 222 Campbell, B. 61 Campbell, C. 23 Canary Wharf bombing 173, 175–7, 190, 201 Canny, Father Michael (Derry) 97 Castelli, E. A. 27 Catholic Church denunciation of the IRA 70 education, role of 99–100 group thinking 104–5

institutional power 8, 77–9 Irish identity 72 liberation theology 68 mediation role 64 peace process 124 political ambition 49, 92, 103 power structure 91 republican thinking 70–1, 84–97, 107–9, 205 social and political affairs 74–5, 85 spiritual leadership 18 surveillance role 75–6 the Troubles and 90 use of armed struggle 65, 67 Catholicism Adams 64, 68, 86, 104–5, 109 armed struggle 42, 65–8, 71, 84–7, 89–90, 99–100, 102–3, 106–7, 109, 120 common good, notion of 36–7, 64, 69, 72, 83, 87–8, 110 funeral rituals 26 liberation theology 68 martyrdom in 23 militant republicanism 66 modern 68 moral control 76, 81 peace process 39 political role of bishops 26 prison system 65 Provisional movement 67 republicans and 40 revolutionary ethos 41–2 rigidity of authority 40, 73, 80 rites and rituals 69 socialisation processes 71–2 theology of nationalism 17, 42 Vatican Two, impact on 77 ceasefire in 1972 4 in 1976 59 in 1986 231 in 1990 143 in 1994 157, 168, 172, 175, 178–9, 190, 226, 234 in 1998 225, 227 Army Council 154, 161 Belfast 203

INDEX Bloody Sunday 56, 228 bombings and killings 1991 144 British expectation 148 Canary Wharf, bombing 173, 176 Downing Street Declaration 155–6 failures 59 five-point plan 58 formal negotiations 4, 137, 141 meetings at Dundalk 122 Morrison on 57 peace process 116, 159–60, 177–8 political context 1994 162 on punishment beatings 191 the Report 172 Sinn Fein 163, 169, 200 TUAS document 158 Celtic tradition 9–12 Chosen Peoples (Smith) 72 Christ, Jesus 16, 29, 32, 64, 70, 87, 95 Christian Brothers 103 Christianity 70, 72, 83, 86, 98, 103 civil rights movement 44–5, 77, 86, 90–1, 94, 195 Clarke, L. 142, 175 Clinton, Bill 152, 159, 171 Cochrane, F. 171, 218 Cold War 136, 142 Collins, E. 44–5, 69 Collins, Michael 42–3, 195, 229 Connery, D. S. 76 Connolly, J. 10, 18–20, 34, 41–2, 45, 53, 233, 255 constitutional nationalism 42, 44, 65, 116, 118, 137 Coogan, T. P. 23, 56, 58–9, 85, 120 Cooper, K. 22 Costello, S. J. 19 Coverley, M. 18 Crilly, Father Oliver 93 Currie, Austin 121–3 Dalton, Tim 192, 208, 210, 217 Daly, C. 84–6, 109, 116, 120 Daly, E. 56, 91–2 de Brun, Bairbre 212 de Chastelain 220–1 de Chastelain Commission 192 de Valera, Eamon 43, 74–5

273

Deane, S. 8–9, 231–2 Devenport, M. 116, 118, 121 Dillon, M. 80, 84–5 Dixon, P. 117–18 Doherty, Father Patrick 95, 212 Downing Street Declaration (DSD) 148–9, 152–7, 202 Drumm, Maire 233 Dudley Edwards, R. 15 Durkan, Mark 120, 133–7 Durkheim, E. 28, 71 Easter Commemoration 44, 238 Easter Rising of 1916 15, 40, 42 Eco, E. 81 Elliott, M. 16, 33–4, 76–9 English, R. 33–5, 45–6, 54–5, 69, 112, 115 Enright, A. 13 Evans, J. 234 Fanning, B. 74 Fanning, R. 42 FARC guerrillas 219 Farren, S. 121–3, 131, 137 Feeney, B. 142 Fennell, D. 19 Ferris, Martin 212, 214 Ferriter, D. 75 Fianna Fail 1927 43, 48, 74, 248, 251 Finlay, Fergus 202, 215, 254 First Dail 43 FitzGerald, G. 37–8, 117, 120, 146 Fitzpatrick, D. 253 Flynn, B. 20–1 Ford, A. 27 Forum on Peace and Reconciliation 159 Foster, R. F. 17, 19, 42, 52–3, 103, 154 Framework Document (FD) 170, 202 Frampton, M. 229–30 French Revolution 33 Fuller, L. 76–7, 210 Gaelic culture 10, 34, 50 Gallagher, Dermot 159–61, 193, 206 Gantz, J. 9 Garvin, T. 35

274

INDEX

Geoghegan, P. M. 42 George, Lloyd 195 Gibbons, L. 7–9 Gibney, Jim 45, 101–2, 146, 161–4, 172, 181–2 Gillespie, G. 57–9, 61, 116–17, 144, 146, 152, 170–3, 175, 177–8 Girard, R. 31 God and the Gun (Dillon) 84 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) 2, 130, 132, 168–89, 194, 201–2, 218–19, 223, 227, 233, 239 Great Hatred, Little Room (Powell) 179, 222 Greeley, A. 78–9 Green, Leo 212 Ground Rules for Substantive All-Party Negotiations 177 Guardian, The 142, 233 Guevara, Che 45 Gustafson, J. M. 82 H-Block committees 25, 62, 64, 70 Haass, Richard 244–5 Halbertal, M. 24 Hanley, B. 47, 253–4 Harden, T. 173 Haughey, Charles 37–8, 116, 119–20, 122, 124, 134 Hayes, M. 89 hEireann, Oglaigh na 157 Hennessey, T. 27, 120, 157, 172 Hill, J. 9, 176 Hodgkin, Gerard 63–4, 233 Holland, J. 225 Home Rule Crisis (1912–1914) 42 Horgan, J. 230–1, 234–5 Hot Press (magazine) 120 Howell, Ted 212 Hughes, Brendan 113 Hume, Basil O.S.B. (Archbishop of Westminster) 256 Hume, J. –Adams dialogues 4, 148–9 back-channel communications 164 Brooke on 142 divisive relations 223 Father Reid and 133

meetings with Sinn Fein 119–22, 134, 138 PIRA ceasefire 116 radio interview 125 Republican movement and 160 St Gerards meeting 121, 131 Tierney, John and 137 Hunger (film) 28, 30–1 hunger strike of 1980/81’s 3, 24, 27, 59–60, 84, 112 Adams’ decision 115 ‘back-channel communications’ 143 Catholics 65, 100, 102 examples 113 H-Block 70 INLA members 52, 226 leftism 63–4 mass mobilization 228 narratives 20–1, 23–5, 31 Redemptorists 132 religious nature 61, 114 rituals 26 Sands conviction 29–30, 32, 62 SDLP conference 125 security implications 116 Sinn Fein 117 Inglis, T. 72–3, 76 International Commission on Decommissioning (ICD) 192, 223–4 IRA 1916 Proclamation 224 2012 assimilation 228 all-Ireland IRA 248 Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiation 43 area defence 50–2 Army Convention 48–9, 151 in Belfast 49 campaign quality 144–5 Catholic influence 70–1, 77–8, 85, 91, 105, 251 Continuity IRA 227–8, 231 dissident groupings 230, 233 Downing Street Declaration 155 DSD 156–7 function of the auxiliaries 50–1

INDEX The Guardian on 142 historical status 253 The IRA Speaks on 54 military strategy 44, 46, 174, 178 national aims 47, 55, 58, 68 peace process 219–20, 222–3 political motivation 45–6, 229 power sharing arrangements 208 Real IRA 227–8 republicanism 113 splitting 3, 46 IRA conference see Ard Fheis Irish Capitalism 43 Irish civil war (1922–1923) 42 Irish Free State 42, 229 Irish independence 8–9, 20, 32, 37–8 Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) 52–3, 64, 103, 225–7, 231 Irish Republic Catholicism 69 civil rights movement 44, 117 constitutional status 229 history 1, 42 identity and purpose 35 IRA’s role 46 Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) movement 41 local defence groups 49, 52 modern interpretation 34 PIRA operations 151 socialism 235 Tone, Wolfe (founding father) 19, 32 Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) 41 Irish Republican Ideal, The (McLaughlin) 232 Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) 52, 225 Irish Times 140, 248 Ivory, G. 36–7 Johnson, M. 39 Johnston, K. 142, 175 Jonsen A. R. 82–3 Juergensmeyer, M. 87 Kearney, Declan 237–41, 243–4 Kearney, R. 7–8, 10, 13–16, 19–20, 23–4, 26, 32

275

Kelley, K. 67 Kelly, Gerry 143, 188, 212 Kenny, M. 68, 248 Keogh, D. 74–5, 229 Kiberd, D. 15, 17 Killing Rage (Collins) 44 Kitts, M. 87 Kristeva, J. 20 Lakoff, G. 39 Lalor, S. 233 Larry King Live (CNN show) 157 Lennon, C. 23–4, 96–7 Loyalist Volunteer Force 52 loyalists blockades 57 Catholic Church 84–5 civil rights protest 44–5 flags and symbols (removal of) 5, 239 Good Friday Agreement 218 Haas recommendations 245 IRA discussions 58 killing of 235 political development 154, 247 Provisional concern 59 as quasi-agents of the British state 135 reconciliation values 238, 241 Lyons, F. S. L. 16, 18 Mac Cana, P. 9 Mac Curtain, M. 10 MacIntyre, A. 71–2 MacStiofain, S. 47–8, 50–1, 54–7 Maillot, A. 36 Major, John Adam’s visa 160 ceasefire’s credibility 162 on DSD 156 Framework Document 170 IRA announcement 174 Iraq War Cabinet 144 meeting with Sinn Fein 148, 152–3 multi-party negotiations 176, 178 Washington Three 171 Mallie, E. 86–8, 113, 118, 153–4 Mansergh, Martin 122

276

INDEX

Marxism 68, 72, 99, 197 McAteer, Aidan 212 McCartney, C. 221–2 McCartney, Robert 221–2 McConville, Gerry 108, 174, 181 McDonald, H. 68, 87 McElroy, G. 84 McGarry, F. 15 McGee, O. 41 McGuinness, Martin Catholic faith 104 methods of insurgence 59 peace process 139, 142–3, 156, 160–2, 164, 170, 175, 179, 191, 195, 197, 202–6, 210–13, 216, 220–2 PIRA and 253 Provisional delegation 56 republican movement 62 Sinn Fein’s and 175 on socialist Ireland 50 TUAS document 170 McGuire, M. 47, 85 McIntyre, A. 38, 254 McKearney, T. 51–2, 56–7, 59–60, 65 McKittrick, D. 153–4 McLaughlin, Mitchel 108, 126, 131, 166, 214, 232 Meleady, D. 42 Mexican revolution 45 Middleton, P. 29–30 Millar, F. 223 Millar, S. 47 Miller, D. W. 73 Mitchell, G. 121, 130, 172, 178–9, 187, 207, 227, 231 Mitchell Report, The 172 Moloney, E. 45–7, 55–6, 65, 86, 113, 116, 121, 123, 151–3, 155, 157–9, 161–3 Moody, T. W. 33–4 Moore, C. 27, 115–16 Moral Monopoly (Inglis) 72 Morrison, D. 45, 57, 63, 83, 112–14, 121, 123–5, 127, 135, 144–6, 230 Morrison, J. 231 Murphy, D. 250 Murphy, W. 21–2

Murray, R. 90, 105, 165, 184–5 My Year with the IRA Provisionals (McGuire) 85 National Reconciliation in IrelandThe Need for Uncomfortable Conversations (Keaney’s speech) 238, 242 Neave, Airey 52 New York Times 157 Ni Bhrolchain, M. 9 Northern Ireland Office (NIO) 142, 169–70, 172, 190, 214 O Bradaigh, Ruairi 46, 119 O’Brien, B. 142–3 O’Brien, C. C. 34–6 O’Brien, E. 9 O’Callaghan, S. 45, 70, 104, 183 O’Clery, C. 90 O’Connell, Daniel 42 O’Connor, F. 79–80 O’Corrain, D. 86 O’Dochartaigh, N. 143 O’Doherty, S. 69–70 O’Donnell, R. 107, 112, 185 O’Driscoll, R. 11–12 O’Farrell, P. 17 O’Fiaich, Cardinal 64 O’Hagan, F. 57 O’Hare, Rita 212 O’Hearn, D. 25 O hUiginn, Sean 149–50, 176, 193, 198, 200, 216–17 O’Kane, E. 118 O’Malley, P. 23, 25–6, 60–1, 79–80 O’Neill, P. J. 221 O’Rawe, R. 27, 30, 61–2, 64, 70, 115–16, 129, 235 O’Reilly, Gerry 99–100, 165 O’Sullivan, Meghan 244 Official IRA (OIRA) 3, 6, 45–6, 48, 225 Old Testament, The 98 Orange Order 180 Paisley, Rev Dr Ian 4, 44, 57, 117, 219, 223–4 Parnell, Stewart 42

INDEX patriotism 15–16, 23, 69, 73–4 Patterson, H. 43–4, 46–7, 111, 230 peace process Adams 139–44, 148–9, 151–2, 154–7, 159–62, 164, 170–2, 178–9, 190, 197–8, 202–4, 206, 210–14, 216, 219–22, 224 Catholic Church 124 ceasefire 116, 159–60, 177–8 IRA 219–20, 222–3 McGuinness 139, 142–3, 156, 160–2, 164, 170, 175, 179, 190, 195, 197, 202–6, 210–13, 216, 220–2 Sinn Fein 81, 139, 141, 144–5, 147–8, 150–6, 158–6, 168–81, 183–5, 187, 189–92, 194–6, 198–201, 203, 205–15, 217 Social Labour and Democratic Party (SDLP) 139, 142, 145–6, 151, 155, 160, 167, 206 Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) 183, 194, 246 Powell, Jonathan 179, 191, 194, 196, 203, 216, 220, 222 Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration 2010, (Eames and Bradley) 244 Protestants arms trade 51 cultural distinctions 231 during 1930s 43 group thinking 104 IRA murders 85 Life and Times Survey 251 moral positions 80–1 negotiating practice 183 politicization 111, 242 Provisionals and 54 stasis and defence tendency 89 theological reasoning 182 Provisional IRA (PIRA) armed struggle 2–4, 15, 32, 35, 45, 57, 62, 93, 102, 112–15, 119, 122, 124, 128, 144, 149, 154, 161–2, 165, 173, 177, 184, 223, 226, 236–7, 253–4

277

Catholicism 45–54 constituency 173, 182 Heathrow Airport attack 154 leadership 50, 57, 60, 125, 168, 173, 187, 222–3, 236–7, 253 members 70, 81, 219, 229 Omagh bomb of 1998 233 physical force approach 52 recruitment process 51–2 statements 173, 211 three tiered defence structure 50 violence 1, 26, 51, 84–5, 123, 143, 253 volunteer 38, 44, 57, 61, 65, 69, 104, 113, 178–9, 183, 235 see also Army Council (PIRA); ceasefire Provos 49, 64, 93, 104, 132, 202–3, 254 Quinsey, Mark 228 Radcliffe, Timothy (Dominican Father) 83 Rafferty, O. P. 79, 84 Ratzinger, J. C. 68 Rebel Hearts (Toolis) 69 Reconciliation and Legacy (Kearney’s speech) 240 Redemptorists 104, 132, 134 Redmond, John 42 Reid, Alec (Father Reid) 64, 105–6, 116, 120, 123–6, 131–5, 164, 223 Report of the Consultative Group on the Past (2009, Eames and Bradley) 244 Republican News 141 republicanism armed struggle 235–6 ‘dissident’ resistance 225, 228–30, 239–40 in early nineteenth century 41 GFA of 1998 189 international attention 157 misreading of unionism 232 persuasion process 212 PIRA volunteers 175, 179

278

INDEX

Provisional populism 50 reconciliation 241–2 recovery process 243 rights and wrongs 176 strategic vision 166 violent 42, 194, 253 war to peace 138, 164, 254 Reynolds, A. 105, 148, 152, 159 Rieff, D. 2, 257 Rotary Club speech 140 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) 182–3, 194 Russian revolutions 45 sacrifice 7, 9–10, 14–21, 23–7, 29–32, 34–5, 38 Sands, Bobby 20–1, 23, 25–31, 61–4, 66, 70, 112–13, 233, 255 Saunders, A. 230 Saville Inquiry, The 56 Scenario for Peace, A (Sinn Fein document) 119, 121, 124–6, 143 Seldon, A. 178 Shanahan, T. 32 Shared Future, A (2005, Eames and Bradley) 244 Sharrock, M. 116, 118, 121 Sinn Fein armed struggle 38, 117, 127, 134–6, 145, 165–6, 181, 189, 194, 207, 218, 230, 235, 241, 255 Army Council vs. 203, 206, 213 Catholicism 49, 83, 93, 99, 101–3, 105, 107–8, 110 ceasefire 163, 169, 198 Connolly and Adams’ message 19 dissidents groupings 227–30, 232–7 DUP participation 5 electoral prospects 64 emergence 41 Gibney on 45–6 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998 2, 218–24 Hume–Adams dialogues 4 hunger strike 21, 26, 30, 61, 63 leadership perspective 55, 62, 226, 237–8

Morrison on 45, 57 negotiators 192, 205 peace process 81, 139, 141, 144–5, 147–8, 150–6, 158–6, 168–81, 183–5, 187, 189–92, 194–6, 198–202, 205–15, 217 PIRA vs. 63 political development 3, 26, 43, 60, 69, 111–38 public support, collapse 44 reconciliation debate 243–57 republicanism 20, 35, 37, 39, 65, 240–1 SDLP and 38 Smith, A. D. 72–3 Social Labour and Democratic Party (SDLP) armed struggle 123, 127, 131, 137, 167 in Council of Ireland 57 electoral politics 63 formal negotiations 4 nationalist programme 37–8, 56 peace process 139, 142, 145–6, 151, 155, 160, 167, 206 political force 111–12, 116–17, 119–28, 130–8 socialism 18–19, 38, 41, 45–6, 49, 55, 61, 64, 70, 97, 99, 252 Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, The (Sachs) 144 Spanish Civil War 45 Spencer, G. 30, 36, 72, 81, 85, 169, 179–80, 224, 254 Story of Pain, The (Bourke) 22 Sunday Tribune, The 170 Sunningdale Agreement (SA) 57 Taylor, C. 68 Taylor, P. 44, 83, 143 Thatcher, Margaret 37, 61, 63–4, 115, 142 Thomas, Sir Quentin 169, 177, 190, 198, 209 Tierney, John 137 Todd, J. 71

INDEX Together: Building a United Community (2013, Eames and Bradley) 244 Toibin, C. 7–8, 14 Tone, Wolfe 19, 26, 32–4, 42, 113, 146, 233, 255 Tonge, J. 117–18, 230–1, 234 Toolis, K. 69–71 Toulmin, S. 82–3 Towards a Lasting Peace 130, 147 Towards a New Ireland (FitzGerald) 37, 50 Towards a Strategy for Peace (Sinn Fein document) 121 Townshend, T. 41–3 Tracey, D. 78, 80 Trimble, David 4, 219, 221 Troubles, the 1, 3, 35, 40, 49, 52, 67, 78–9, 84–5, 90, 93, 100, 105, 150, 245, 248 TUAS document 158, 170 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) 4, 57, 170, 219, 221 Ulster Volunteer Force 44 unionism Border Poll 239 British policy 57, 132, 146 Catholic Church 106 defensive mentality 39 extreme version 5 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) 180 Haas recommendations 245 inward-looking perspectives 232–3 Keaney’s criticism 238, 242 one-dimensional approach 233 political gains 36 power-sharing arrangement 137, 223

Sinn Fein 247 Tone’s idea of 33 united Ireland An Phoblacht on 111 Catholicism 97, 107–8, 251 consent-based 217 DSD 154 final objectives 185, 190 Framework Document 170 GFA of 1998 2, 181, 226 INLA formation 53 IRA’s armed conflict 45, 223 nationalists context 39 peace process 142, 254–6 PIRA’s goal 1, 234–6 public support 175 rebel groupings 230 republican movement 145 Sinn Fein’s aim 1, 135, 138, 240, 247, 250 utopianism 5, 26, 40 United Irishmen, The (newspaper) 41 Vatican Two 77 Vietnam War 45 Walsh, Seanna 112, 173, 212, 223 War of Independence 15, 40, 42 Whitbread speech 140 White, R. W. 119 Whyte, J. H. 73–4, 251 Widgery Report, The 56 Wilkinson, D. J. 82 Wilson, Father Des 120 working class 19, 43, 52, 93, 96–7, 113, 234–5 Wright, Billy 52

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