Ireland Since 1939

by Henry Patterson

  If decommissioning had begun it might have been easier to deal with these criticisms, particularly as the DUP was heavily involved in the institutions of the Agreement: sitting on Assembly committees with republicans and participating in the Executive, although refusing to sit around the cabinet table with ‘Sinn Féin–IRA’ ministers. The election result, which saw Sinn Féin out-poll the SDLP for the first time, demonstrated the gains from the ‘peace strategy’. Yet senior republican figures were still telling the rank and file that there would be no decommissioning.94 Attempts to justify republicans’ refusal to move on arms pointed to an ongoing campaign of pipe-bomb attacks on Catholic homes by elements of the UDA and the challenge of republican dissidents. These justifications were shown to be less than convincing when, in October 2001, the IRA began to decommission, regardless of the continuation of sectarian attacks and the scorn of fundamentalists who claimed the Provos had finally surrendered. That the weapons issue was at last addressed was a product of events in Colombia and New York that put irresistible pressure on the leadership of Sinn Féin.

  Despite Irish fears that the new US President, George Bush, would adopt a more distant approach to Northern Ireland, US strategic concerns ensured an engagement that, for the first time since 1994, republicans would find unwelcome. The arrest of three Irish republicans in Bogotá on 6 August 2001 and the claim of the Colombian authorities that they had been training FARC guerrillas was acutely embarrassing for Adams, who was unable to give a satisfactory explanation to either the Bush administration or those wealthy Irish-Americans who had raised millions of dollars for the party in the 1990s. The events of 11 September put irresistible pressure on Adams to demonstrate, beyond contradiction, that republicans were not part of the ‘international terrorist network’. Irrespective of the instinctive anti-imperialism of many republicans, Adams moved quickly to accommodate the White House and corporate Irish-America and on 26 October the IRA announced that it had begun the process of decommissioning.95

  The IRA's action enabled Trimble to contemplate returning to government with Sinn Féin. However, under the terms of the Agreement he needed to be re-elected First Minister with the support of at least 50 per cent of the members of the Assembly who had designated themselves unionist. He failed on the first attempt because of the defection of two UUP Assembly members. Four days later, in a manoeuvre he admitted was ‘tacky’, he returned to office – courtesy of three members of the Alliance Party and of one from the Women's Coalition who had redesignated themselves as ‘unionist’ for that purpose.96 Trimble might assert that ‘I'm not a Faulkner, lacking legitimacy’,97 but his loss of a unionist majority in the Assembly was an important symbolic blow, one that was accompanied by increasing evidence of political disaffection in the broader unionist community.

  Protestant ‘alienation’ became a central theme in the speeches of NIO ministers and had a particularly ugly manifestation in the blockade of a Catholic primary school in North Belfast, which began in the autumn of 2001, where declining working-class Protestant communities in areas such as Ardoyne and Tiger Bay felt themselves losing out in a zero-sum territorial conflict with Catholics. A much broader section of the unionist community found it difficult to accept a republican presence in government, even with increasing signs that there was little chance of the Provos going back to war. This did not stem simply, as some commentators claimed, from an unwillingness to accept equality with Catholics. Rather, it rested on a perception that the new dispensation was based on the steady dilution of the North's Britishness as reflected in changes in the name and symbols of the RUC and disputes over the flying of the Union flag on public buildings.

  The end of unionist hegemony within the northern state and the associated rise in nationalist and republican self-confidence both contributed to a prevalence of what Steve Bruce has called the ‘dismal vision’ in the Unionist community:98 a vision of inexorable decline in terms of demography and economic clout. Yet, looked at from the perspective of the period covered in this book, this seems an overly black picture. The massive economic and social changes that had transformed the Republic since the 1960s have consolidated a twenty-six-county-state patriotism that prioritizes stability over unity. The end of the IRA's armed struggle and the acceptance by Irish nationalists of the ‘consent’ principle contributed powerfully to the stabilization of the northern state.

  However, the Good Friday Agreement was an elite-brokered settlement that balanced precariously on deep reserves of communal distrust and antagonism. This was particularly so in the Protestant community, where Trimble and pro-Agreement unionists found it increasingly difficult to counter a growing mood of sour cynicism about post-Agreement Northern Ireland. Trimble's upbeat portrayal of the constitutional and material gains since 1998 had a solid basis in reality. He had relied on the argument that the Agreement was a partitionist settlement in which the consent principle had been enshrined. Unionists did appear to be more confident about their constitutional future. According to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, the percentage of Protestants who believed that there would be a united Ireland in the next twenty years had fallen from 42 per cent in 1998 to 32 per cent in 2003. This may have been influenced by the results of the 2001 Census, which, despite the increasingly triumphalist predictions of Sinn Féin, were distinctly anti-climactic. Although the Protestant share of the population had fallen from 58 per cent in 1991 to 53 per cent, the Catholic share had risen by only 2 per cent to just under 44 per cent. Trimble's main internal critic, Jeffrey Donaldson, commented that ‘A united Ireland is not even a remote possibility and it's time for republicans to accept that.’99 Similarly DUP propaganda increasingly focused not on creeping reunification but rather on the claim that the Agreement had institutionalized a nationalist agenda and on its supposed marginalization of Protestant and unionist values and culture.

  That this message found a ready audience was also clear from the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, which showed a steep decline in the belief that the Agreement benefited unionists and nationalists equally: from 41 per cent of Protestants in 1998 to 19 per cent in 2002. At the same time the view amongst Protestants that nationalists benefited a lot more than unionists rose from 31 per cent in 1998 to 55 per cent in 2002.100 This growing alienation was in part a response to specific policies, particularly those to do with the early release of prisoners and policing. But it also related to the broader conception underlying the Agreement that institutions and public policies should reflect ‘parity of esteem’ for nationalist and unionist identities and allegiances. Decades of provincial self-government and thirty years of violence had accentuated a defensive ‘little Ulster’ mentality that found it extremely difficult to differentiate between the institutional recognition of Irish national identity and de facto joint authority. The problem was intensified because it was increasingly Sinn Féin that dominated the tone and idiom of northern nationalism. Many unionists were only too ready to take republicans at their word when they depicted their goal of participating in the governance of Northern Ireland as a mere stage in the inevitable transition to a united Ireland.

  Trimble's ability to counteract popular unionist disaffection was weakened by the IRA's reluctance to move beyond its initial acts of decommissioning and the continuing evidence that, although it was no longer actively targeting the security forces, it was still a functioning paramilitary organization involved in punishment attacks, intelligence gathering and criminality. A raid on the headquarters of Special Branch in Castlereagh in March 2002 was suspected by the security forces to be an IRA operation. By June, Blair was privately wondering, ‘Are the Provisionals in transition or are they messing us about?’101 On 4 October of that year the Police Service of Northern Ireland carried out a very public raid on the offices of Sinn Féin at the Parliament Buildings, as part of an ongoing investigation into an alleged republican spy-ring at the heart of government. Sinn Féin's chief administrator at Stormont, Denis Donaldson, was arrested, and John Reid, t
he Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, had little choice but to suspend the devolved institutions.102

  The depth of the crisis produced a major intervention by Blair in a speech given at the Harbour Commissioners' Offices in Belfast on 17 October 2002. He praised Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness: ‘I think they have taken huge risks in order to bury the past.’ However, at the core of his speech was the argument that the republican delay on complete decommissioning was, by far, the greatest threat to the Agreement:

  But the crunch is the crunch. There is no parallel track left. The fork in the road has finally come… we cannot carry on with the IRA half in, half out of the process. Not just because it isn't right any more. It won't work any more.

  The threat of violence, no matter how damped down, is no longer reinforcing the political, it is actually destroying it. In fact, the continuing existence of the IRA as an active paramilitary organisation is now the best card those whom republicans call ‘rejectionist’ unionists have in their hand. It totally justifies their refusal to share power.103

  The speech demanded the explicit end of all paramilitary activity by the provisionals, a firm commitment and a date for complete decommissioning. But though the next twelve months would show that words and actions could be extracted from republicans, they were, as Paul Bew has said, ‘the typical product of the grinding, inch-by-inch approach that had worn away at the legitimacy of the Agreement in the eyes of many and which Mr Blair explicitly disavowed at the Harbour Commissioners’.104

  For Blair there were limits to the pressures that could be placed on republicans. He did not share the common unionist view that the al-Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001 had transformed the international environment to such an extent that it would be impossible for the IRA to return to armed struggle and that there was therefore no reason to be patient with republicans. The full story of Blair's relationship with the republican movement must await the opening of the official archives, but a preliminary evaluation is possible. One factor in Blair's approach was the importance of the peace process and the Agreement to his own view of the major accomplishments of his premiership. He claimed, with justification, in the Harbour Commissioners' speech that he had spent more time on Northern Ireland than any prime minister since 1922. The end of the IRA and the restoration of an ‘inclusive’ government at Stormont would rank as substantial achievements. For Blair, Adams and McGuinness had proved themselves essential to accomplishing these goals.

  The information that the British security services were able to provide about the balance of forces within the republican movement was a second crucial factor. The role of what republicans dubbed ‘securocrats’ is inevitably one where speculation, rumour and conspiracy theory are rife. It is clear, however, that state intelligence agencies penetrated the movement at various levels. In 2003 it was revealed that Freddie Scappaticci, a leading figure in the IRA's internal security department, was ‘Stakeknife’, a British agent since 1978. Even more embarrassing for the republican leadership was the revelation, three years after the PSNI raid on Stormont, that Denis Donaldson, a former comrade of Bobby Sands and a key Sinn Féin apparatchik, had been a British agent for two decades. The outing of Donaldson, whose murder in April 2006 the IRA denied, led republican critics of Adams and McGuinness to allege that the whole peace process had been corrupted by British involvement from the beginning.105

  The reality is probably more subtle. The security services provided the intelligence that allowed the police and the military to bear down on the IRA's capacity to continue with any sort of effective campaign. In doing so, they reinforced the position of the more strategically minded in the republican leadership, who had themselves become convinced that the military campaign was stalemated and a major obstacle to the political advance of Sinn Féin. The continuing existence of the IRA, albeit in a relatively passive post-ceasefire mode, was useful as a form of leverage on Blair, who feared not a full-scale return to violence but rather some one-off ‘spectacular’ to register republican displeasure at setbacks in the process of change in Northern Ireland.

  Blair was well aware of the difficulties facing Adams and McGuinness in managing the liquidation of the IRA. However, he was also conscious that the resultant protraction of the process was deeply damaging to Trimble's position within the unionist community. It was because of this that he postponed the Assembly elections, due in May 2003, first for a month and then indefinitely. The two governments published a Joint Declaration setting out the steps to be taken by them in anticipation of an acceptable IRA statement. Paragraph 13 stated: ‘We need to see an immediate, full and permanent cessation of all paramilitary activity, including military attacks, training, intelligence gathering, acquisition of arms, punishment beatings and attacks and involvement in riot.’106

  While Trimble was prepared to work within the broad framework set out in the Declaration, critics like Jeffrey Donaldson and the MP for South Antrim, David Burnside, claimed that it delivered further concessions to republicans. Their opposition led to the twelfth meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council since the Agreement. Donaldson's resolution to reject the Joint Declaration was lost by 54 per cent to 46 per cent, and he, Burnside and the Reverend Martin Smyth resigned the UUP whip at Westminster.

  Trimble's response to the persistence of deep division in the party was a final major attempt to negotiate a comprehensive deal with the republican leadership in the autumn of 2003. He had been encouraged by successful joint efforts by UUP and Sinn Féin representatives to prevent violent outbreaks during the summer's marching season. So impressed was he by republican efforts that he shook hands with Gerry Adams for the first time. The handshake took place in private in September 2003 at the start of unprecedentedly intense negotiations between Sinn Féin and the UUP,107 which aimed to reach agreement on a form of sequencing through which IRA actions on weapons and a statement on future intentions would be followed by commitments by the two governments and Trimble. These would involve a decision to hold the postponed Assembly elections, agreement to devolve policing and justice powers within six months, and a unionist commitment to work and maintain the devolved institutions. Although Trimble and his colleagues had made it plain to republicans that there was a need for transparency and visibility in the decommissioning process, the IRA refused to contemplate a ‘Spielberg’ whereby the acts of decommissioning would be filmed or photographed. Trimble therefore was reduced to relying on a clear declaration from republicans that the IRA was going out of business, plus a detailed statement from General John de Chastelain, the head of the Independent International Decommissioning body.

  The two Prime Ministers had planned to come to Hillsborough to announce a deal on 21 October. But Blair rashly anticipated success by announcing that there would be Assembly elections in November, thus depriving himself of his main leverage on Adams. Adams's statement, which the IRA was supposed to endorse subsequently, was an advance on any previous republican formulation, as it implied that the implementation of the Agreement removed any justification for the continuance of the IRA. Blair had demanded that the statement be clear ‘in the way any ordinary member of the public can understand’, but Adams avoided any reference to the ending of the paramilitary activities of targeting, training and punishment beatings that had been mentioned in the Joint Declaration.108 Trimble's ability to deal with unionist scepticism was now dependent on General de Chastelain revealing that he had witnessed the destruction of a significant amount of IRA weaponry. The IRA, keen to avoid any hint of public humiliation, had insisted that the general's statement contain no inventory of weapons destroyed or any estimate of how much weaponry remained to be dealt with. To the consternation of Trimble, de Chastelain told reporters who asked for a timetable for the decommissioning process that he could not say when the process would finish.109

  Despite the failure of the negotiations, the UUP performed creditably in the Assembly election held on 26 November. The DUP did emerge as the largest party, with 30 seats and 25.7
per cent of the vote: ten seats up on its performance of 1998. However, most of the DUP gains had been at the expense of the smaller anti-Agreement unionist parties, not the UUP, and Trimble could take some consolation from the fact that the UUP vote was slightly up on its performance in 1998: its vote share was 22.7 and it lost only one seat, coming back with twenty-seven.

  Sinn Féin, which had overtaken the SDLP for the first time in the 2001 Westminster election, consolidated their lead, with twenty-four seats and 23.5 per cent of the vote to the SDLP's 17 per cent and eighteen seats.110 The election was the first that Mark Durkan, the Derry MLA and former assistant to John Hume, had fought as SDLP leader (Hume had retired as leader of the party in September 2001 and announced he would not stand for Westminster again). The party's strategy was incoherent, asking for moderate unionist votes to ‘Stop the DUP’ while at the same time trying to embellish its nationalist credentials by claiming it would seek a referendum on a United Ireland within the lifetime of the next Assembly. However, its most fundamental problem was the indispensable role that Adams and McGuinness were seen to play in the high politics of the peace process and that no SDLP politician could match.

  The election, with its demotion of Trimble and the UUP and the elevation of the DUP, threatened to alter the dynamics of the peace process in unpredictable ways. Within weeks of the election the DUP's position was strengthened by the defection of Jeffrey Donaldson and two other UUP MLAs, which gave Paisley's party thirty-three Assembly seats to the UUP's twenty-three. The implications for the Agreement and the peace process of the DUP's leadership role in unionist politics were viewed with relative equanimity by senior mandarins in Belfast, London and Dublin. Trimble, it was argued, had been too handicapped by a divided party and harassed by the DUP to be able to deliver a sustainable agreement with republicans. When and if Paisley did a deal with Adams, he could not be attacked from the right. The DUP, it was argued, was a more pragmatic party than its more lurid populist Protestant rhetoric might suggest.