by Penn Rhodeen
The decommissioning of arms is perfectly clear. If people are prepared to enter into the democratic process, then they don’t need arms. If they need arms, then there must be a question about how serious they are about entering into the democratic process. Now, we need to examine this matter. It isn’t a matter of semantics, it isn’t a matter of detail, it is a matter of principle and it is a matter of practice. The reality is that if Sinn Féin are to move forward as I wish to see them do, and enter fully into the democratic process as I wish them to do, and to enter into the talks with the other political parties as I hope they will do, then they are going to have to put themselves in a position where the other political parties will sit down and talk to them.
Spring passed into summer and summer into fall, still with all-party talks nowhere in sight. Major’s characteristically wordy statement of September 21, 1995—more than a year after the ceasefire was declared—was liberally sprinkled with protests that all he really wanted to do was get the talks under way as soon as possible, coupled with a plea for understanding that he as prime minister simply had no way to get the unionist parties to the table if they didn’t want to come and that only IRA compliance with the British preconditions would get them there:
Let me add just a couple of points about the future. Firstly, all-party roundtable talks—the sooner that I can convene all-party roundtable talks on a constitutional settlement, the happier I will be. I would be perfectly happy to do so this afternoon if that were feasible. But in the reality of politics, there is no purpose whatsoever in calling all-party talks unless there is a pretty good chance that all the parties are going to be there if we were to do so, and if parties began to absent themselves, perhaps permanently, perhaps in large numbers, then we would have made a mistake in our move forward.
I can’t force people to the conference table, I can’t coerce them to the conference table. I can only encourage them to go to the conference table. The plain truth is simply this: The majority parties in Northern Ireland, representing the majority of the people in Northern Ireland, will not come to the conference table until Sinn Féin / IRA have begun the process of actual decommissioning.
Major’s newest statement ignored the obvious point that he was prime minister of the United Kingdom, of which Northern Ireland was a part, and he was head of a powerful political party that was formally named the Conservative and Unionist Party. Further, because Major himself had devised the preconditions at the heart of the stalemate, he certainly had the ability to withdraw or adjust them in order to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the ceasefire.
As Morrison sees it, there was plenty for a leader to work with:
The ceasefire was a dream come true and there was real momentum. With that momentum and the upswing of hope, it would have been difficult for the unionists to reject full talks. But instead of building on that momentum, Major stonewalled and coached the unionists in resistance. It was time not for speeches but for taking action. Major had real opportunity, but instead he talked himself and others out of it, killing the momentum. The unionists were not the ones who listed the reasons not to talk. Major created the reasons not to talk, and eventually the unionists said, “Right, that’s why we won’t talk.” But it was hardly their initiative. So whatever the problems may have been with unionist reluctance, Major never really tested it. On the contrary, he stoked and encouraged it, and prolonged by years the period that it took to get down to the hard bargaining that led to the Good Friday Agreement.
Major’s defenders argue that he was handcuffed by a razor-thin Tory majority that depended on unionist MPs, and that letting Sinn Féin come to the table would cost him unionist support and cause his government to fall. Morrison believes that claim was specious:
The excuses have been given that it was his precarious political position, that he was dependent on the unionists to maintain his majority, and while that was literally true, no one at the time believed that the Labour opposition would bring down his government in any way that could be attributed to unionist objections to things that were happening in Northern Ireland, no matter how that vote of confidence was couched. Labour was not going to be part of that kind of a vote because they always viewed it as a matter of bipartisanship, not as something that should be played for political advantage. Much as they were interested in getting into government, they were not interested in doing it on the say-so of the unionist parties.
Tony Blair, who succeeded Major as prime minister when his Labour Party trounced Major’s Conservatives in 1997, confirms Morrison’s analysis that Labour wouldn’t have been a party to taking down Major’s government over Northern Ireland. Citing the approach taken by his predecessor, when it was discovered that Major’s government had been conducting direct conversations with the IRA despite their repeated claims to the contrary, Blair said, “John Smith deliberately decided not to go for the government over it, which was an act of great statesmanship, actually, because I’m not sure whether, if it had happened the other way around, Conservatives wouldn’t have gone for us.”
Blair candidly acknowledged that his party would have welcomed any opportunity to oust Major’s government but stressed that Northern Ireland was off limits for that purpose: “I think we would have tried to bring them down any way we could, but not on anything attached to this issue.”
Bill Clinton has an interesting take on Major’s supporters’ claim that he had to focus on protecting his position. In essence, he sees a lost opportunity:
It’s hard for me or anyone else to make a judgment about someone else’s politics, and the British system is complicated, but I think ironically that not doing more with the ceasefire probably hurt him politically, because what he thought, I believe, was, “Oh my God I did this and now I gotta be careful, we’re going to have elections, we’ve been in a long time.” But the truth is, once you’ve been in a long time, the only way you can stay in is if people think there’s a new reason to be for you. So I don’t think his political analysis was correct, but I think it was, from a conventional point of view, understandable.
In his analysis of Major’s failure to capitalize on the ceasefire, Morrison reflects a sympathetic understanding of the unique challenges unionist politicians faced in doing politics effectively—and why they desperately needed Major to lead them, not to reinforce and pander to the reluctance they would naturally feel:
From the early 1970s, when the British closed down the devolved government at Stormont, until very recently, there was no government or any authority worthy of the name exercised by politicians in Northern Ireland. They were elected to things, they served in positions, there were parties, and there were party leaders, but they had no power. Even their local councilors and governments had little or no power that wasn’t superseded by the government at Westminster. The unionist politicians had no occasion to hammer anything out that mattered. They just had the occasion to hammer out their own obstinacy, their own clear view of right and wrong, and their superior views over those of their opponents. It was all about rhetorical battles and not at all about governmental ones. In that context, it would require an enormous shift for politicians to sit down and start negotiating. It was always going to be slow and a learning experience, and the sooner it started, the better. It was going to be hard slogging to go from hot air to negotiation.
One remarkable feature of the peace process was that whenever a top figure was summoned by history to move things ahead in a bold and essential way, often at serious risk to his or her political or personal well-being, in every case except one the call was answered. The sad truth is that John Major did not answer history’s call when his great moment—the long-demanded IRA ceasefire—came. He demonstrated over and over that he was unalterably locked into his preconditions, obstacles that made all-party talks impossible.
Major’s unwillingness or inability to do what history demanded of him is particularly disappointing in light of the important positive aspects to his earlier involvement in Nort
hern Ireland: He certainly de-Thatchered British policy by moving away from the Iron Lady’s unyielding determination to use every bad development in Northern Ireland to demonstrate how tough she was, how it was all a simple matter of cops versus criminals, right versus wrong. In negotiating the Downing Street Declaration, Major displayed a willingness to engage with an Irish prime minister in a full-hearted way that no British prime minister had ever done, and the accord he and Reynolds reached undeniably helped move the peace process forward. But it was the IRA ceasefire—what Morrison has called the great watershed of the entire peace process, the crucial event that made all future progress possible—that presented Major with his greatest moment of opportunity, and he just wasn’t able to seize it. In Morrison’s poignant description, Major “could look through the door and know that there was something better on the other side, but he could never bring himself to actually walk through. So he wasn’t really wrong. He kind of got it, and he did some brave things, but he never cashed the check. It was just not in him.”
Nancy Soderberg, so bold in helping Clinton carry the process forward, feels that focusing on Major’s failure to meet the challenge of the IRA ceasefire is unfair. She stresses that Major chose to become seriously involved in the search for peace, something British prime ministers hadn’t previously done because it seemed to be such a no-win proposition. Major had the option of steering clear of the whole mess, but he decided to engage and made genuine strides. Conor O’Clery, the Irish Times Washington correspondent who closely observed the development of the peace process and the American role in it, shares that perspective:
I wouldn’t be too hard on John Major. He worked constructively with Reynolds on some issues. He went so far as to develop a good relationship with him. Remember that no British prime minister had ever sought to have a good relationship with the Taoiseach. Thatcher did it, but while holding her nose. I think, to his credit, he and Albert Reynolds sat down and talked on an equal basis about bringing the process forward. He may have failed to grasp the initiative as he might have, but given all the historical pressures on him and the atmosphere at the time where Sinn Féin was untouchable, it was a big ask.
Soderberg and O’Clery aren’t alone in their sympathetic regard for Major. Bill Clinton, while discussing the value of Major’s accomplishment in the face of considerable resistance from his own party, spontaneously interjected, with real affection: “He was low-key and all that, but I rather liked him.” It was a testament to how far Major had come, when during negotiations building up to the Downing Street Declaration, an overheated John Hume accosted him in the bar in the House of Commons and said, “Gladstone failed, Lloyd George failed, and Churchill failed. If you succeed you will go down in history as the prime minister who brought peace to Ireland. Take the leap.” When Major got well-and-truly stuck, unable to walk through Morrison’s door, it was undeniably poignant.
But it is also undeniably true that by the summer of 1994, eighteen months after the Downing Street Declaration, the entire centuries-long history of the conflict had narrowed to a single issue: Major’s long-standing insistence that the IRA declare an unconditional ceasefire before all-party talks could begin.
The focus on declaring a ceasefire had been so intense for so long that no one had really thought very much about this problem: What if the IRA delivers the ceasefire, but the British still won’t convene all-party talks? Before the ceasefire, such an outcome seemed no more likely than the possibility of Gerry Adams refusing to go to New York for the peace conference after pressing so hard for a visa. Yet as the months ground on, that remote possibility hardened into an undeniable truth: John Major would not or could not—who could possibly know which, let alone why?—convene all-party talks. Whether he understood that he was at serious risk of squandering the unprecedented ceasefire is an abiding mystery that even his own autobiography does nothing to resolve.
Morrison looks back on that period with distress and exasperation:
It was truly a surprise that John Major was so uninterested from the moment of ceasefire in grabbing the nettle and making something happen. He was trifling with the deal on offer and with world history, basically walking around the gas station with matches. His intransigence was totally backward looking.
Major’s relentless demands for a ceasefire, followed by his paralysis when it happened, begs the question of why he ever called it a ceasefire, when what he really meant was surrender. In Morrison’s mind, the answer lies in a failure of perception that has historically afflicted any number of British prime ministers: egregious underestimation of the opponent. Major felt free to call for a ceasefire when he meant surrender because it was inconceivable to him that Sinn Féin and the IRA would ever be capable of anything but stupid, self-defeating choices. So when the ceasefire actually happened, he had no idea how to respond, no strategy to pursue, and nothing but words to fall back on.
As Morrison wrote on the twentieth anniversary of the ceasefire, “A ceasefire, the fervent hope of all sensible observers, threatened the end to the ‘terrorist’ label and all the prohibitions on republican political activity. Major knew the world had changed. He just never figured out how to change with it.” Ironically, the man who condescendingly assumed the republicans would be prisoners of their own ideology, and therefore unable to stop the violence even when it was in their best interests to do so, was himself captive to an imperialist ideology that only with an IRA surrender could Sinn Féin get to the table—and he was caught utterly flatfooted when his opponents displayed the pragmatism, the political astuteness, and the flexibility to stop the violence and put the onus on Britain to respond. Major repeatedly cited instances in which he had, prior to the ceasefire, made mention of the various preconditions that he used to stymie all-party talks, but it got him nowhere. Simply put, he squandered the ceasefire. And his complaint in his autobiography that republicans spun the ceasefire, in his eyes a defeat for them, as a victory begs another question: Why didn’t he immediately declare victory and graciously usher Sinn Féin to the table now that their benighted republican comrades had accepted the wisdom the British had so charitably offered for so long?
Major’s inability to respond constructively stands in striking contrast to the way the loyalist paramilitaries responded to the ceasefire. On October 13, 1994, less than two months after the IRA declaration, they declared their own unconditional ceasefire, announced by none other than Gusty Spence, the avuncular ex-prisoner with the curved pipe that the Americans had met with in Dukes Hotel when they visited Belfast in 1993. Spence asked Bill Flynn, who had continued to forge connections with the unionist community, to join them when they told the world. The loyalists even asked him to look over the text of their announcement and offer suggestions. His only one was that they keep in their apology for the harm their violence had caused innocent victims. He told them he wished the IRA had done the same.
John Major praised the loyalist ceasefire, saying, “another very important part of the jigsaw has fallen into place.” The BBC reported that “the British government believes talks between Northern Ireland officials and Sinn Féin could be under way by Christmas.” But Major went on to signal that no one should expect anything to change very soon:
What we need to do is to absorb what has happened, consider it, and then decide how we move forward. We will do that in our own time and our own way. . . . We must analyze precisely what is being said this morning, precisely what it may mean. Just a few months ago, people were saying we would make no progress at all. They said the Downing Street Declaration wouldn’t work. We have taken it cautiously, we have taken it slowly. I believe one of the reasons that we have made the progress we are now beginning to see is precisely for that reason. So we don’t intend to be pushed.
The words with which the loyalists announced their ceasefire were eloquent and direct, and the heartfelt apology for the loss of innocent lives lifted their statement to a higher realm. But words weren’t the point: Action had been taken. Like th
e IRA, the loyalist paramilitaries stopped fighting. It’s difficult to imagine a more powerful testament to the genuineness of the IRA ceasefire than the actions of the loyalists who for so long lived and died in IRA crosshairs.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stalemate
The stalemate over John Major’s unrelenting insistence that the ceasefire be “permanent” and that the IRA start decommissioning weapons in advance of all-party talks ground on through the rest of 1994 and all of 1995. Late in the summer of 1995, with the IRA ceasefire a year old, Morrison, O’Dowd, Flynn, and Feeney returned to Belfast to explore ways to break the stalemate. When a British official stressed that the unionist parties would refuse to participate in any all-party talks that included Sinn Féin unless decommissioning had begun, adding that it wouldn’t do to have empty chairs at the negotiating table, Morrison replied that empty chairs were better than death and destruction.
When the Americans returned to New York, Feeney paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times that declared: “Mr. Major, you must act now. Convene all-inclusive talks or be judged on your failure to act.” The Americans were under no illusions that the ad would influence Major; their hope was that it would push the US administration to lean harder on the British.
The administration may not have needed such a push: As it became increasingly apparent that the British wouldn’t, or couldn’t, take advantage of the historic opportunity the ceasefire offered, a remarkable series of decisive and far-reaching actions on Northern Ireland were taken in the United States in an effort to get to all-party peace talks before it was too late. It was clear that Clinton was determined to do whatever he could to capitalize on this unprecedented opportunity.