The End of the Party

by Andrew Rawnsley

  TV news channels marked the moment with archive footage reminding viewers of the many casualties of that ‘armed struggle’: the mass murders at the cenotaph in Enniskillen, in the pubs of Birmingham, at the bandstand in Regent’s Park, at the Grand Hotel in Brighton and so many other locations. Blair welcomed ‘a step of unparalleled magnitude’. He was careful to acknowledge that people were going to be sceptical after so many ‘false dawns and dashed hopes’, but he prayed: ‘This may be the day when finally … peace replaced war, politics replaces terror on the island of Ireland.’107

  On 26 September, General de Chastelain announced that all IRA weapons had been put beyond use. Two clergymen, a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest, were the witnesses.108 The Provisional IRA was once one of the world’s most merciless killing machines. It took 1,700 lives in Northern Ireland, Britain, the Republic and Europe in its twenty-six years of existence. A terrorist organisation which invented the car bomb and still regarded itself as undefeated in the field had finally gone into liquidation.

  The absence of war was not a guarantee of a stable peace. There was still the epic challenge of convincing Ian Paisley’s Unionists to share a government with the Republicans. Many of the DUP were viscerally hostile. They first demanded a period of ‘decontamination’ before they would engage in serious talks and then said they would put the issue out to ‘consultation’ of their members. It was still inconceivable to many that old Dr No would really be capable of saying yes to power-sharing with Republicans. Here a critical mellowing role was played by Blair’s gift for cultivating relationships. He gradually forged a bond with the Unionist founded in their shared interest in religion. They were very different faiths: the Presbyterianism of Paisley and the closet Catholicism of Blair. Yet Blair made it work. On one occasion, he rang the Unionist from the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and described to an appreciative Paisley the biblical view over the Mount of Olives. The Unionist leader would visit Number 10 bearing religious texts for Leo. Staff were at first surprised and then grew accustomed to the sound of warm laughter coming from the Prime Minister’s den when the two men were having a tête-à-tête. ‘They seduced each other.’109 Reflecting on his illness the previous summer, Paisley told Blair that he’d had ‘a near meeting with my Maker’ which had altered his perspective.110 The Prime Minister was further encouraged when the other man told him, and more than once, that he did not want to be remembered as ‘just an old man determined to say no’.111 He seemed increasingly attracted by the idea of being the leader who presided over a definitive end to the Troubles. ‘Did we play on that?’ says Tom Kelly. ‘Of course.’112

  On 6 April 2006, Blair visited the Navan Centre in County Armagh, the ancient capital of the High Kings of Ulster. It was eight years since the Good Friday Agreement. Much had been achieved since. The IRA had declared itself out of business. Northern Ireland was enjoying the blossoming of normal civic life. Where once troops were on the streets, now the police patrolled as they would in the rest of the UK. Splendid new buildings, dockside developments and restaurants were flourishing in Belfast. Locals went to see the Buena Vista Social Club and the Royal Shakespeare Company.113

  The worst year of the Troubles saw the murder of almost 500 people. The annual killing rate had now fallen to single figures. Though at a lower intensity than at any time since the 1960s, there was always the risk of a slide back into bombings and mass murders if politics could not be made to work.

  The Prime Minister and his Chief of Staff could not yet be certain whether what they now faced was ‘the final ascent or just another false summit’.114 Blair used the speech at Navan to reflect on the long climb so far. ‘What has happened is an object lesson in conflict resolution. The problem is that the Good Friday Agreement can provide procedures, mechanisms and laws. What it can’t do is enforce a belief in the other’s good faith.’115 He challenged the DUP and Sinn Féin to come to terms and employed the pressure of the deadline to force the pace. The leaders of the parties were set a November end date for agreeing to the reformation of a power-sharing executive. If they didn’t come to a deal ‘we call time on this and seek another way to go.’116 That would mean prolonged direct rule from London with the implied threat to the Unionists of ever closer involvement by Dublin. Further psychological pressure was applied by Peter Hain, the fifth Northern Ireland Secretary under Blair. The first, Mo Mowlam, deployed her vibrant, gutsy and impetuous personality to win over the Nationalist community. ‘She was like a personal whirlwind,’ observed one who saw the ‘huge infusion of energy’ she brought to the task.117 To Nationalists, she cut an attractively different figure to her male and often patrician predecessors who had come over as colonial viceroys. She melted Catholic suspicion towards the British Government with her frank and warm style. The price of her success with Nationalists was that it provoked an allergic reaction to her among Unionists. Her successor, Peter Mandelson, kept the Unionists on board and persuaded them to make the first leaps into government. John Reid, an unusual hybrid of Catholic, Celtic-supporting, working-class Unionist, presided over the first act of IRA decommissioning. He was followed by Paul Murphy, who helped keep the process breathing through some of its most perilous and least rewarding years. He also gained the unique distinction of ‘being the first Secretary of State who didn’t offend either side’.118

  Peter Hain’s contrasting contribution was to unite all the Northern Ireland politicians in hostility towards him. He energetically set about turning Northern Ireland into the People’s Republic of Peter Hain. He announced the abolition of grammar schools, the introduction of water rates and other measures that were unpopular in Northern Ireland, especially with Paisley’s party. As an additional goad, he threatened to cut off the salaries and expenses of the Assembly members, who were still being paid even though it had been suspended since 2002. ‘The stark choice we presented them with was go into power or we close you down.’119 It was a cunning form of blackmail.

  The deadline for agreement was very tight when the parties were brought together for three days of talks at a golfing hotel at St Andrews in October 2006. The location was chosen rather whimsically because Powell felt Scotland was physically and spiritually closer to Northern Ireland. On the eve of these talks, the Independent Monitoring Commission produced a report which was positive about the cessation of IRA activity.120 This gave credibility to Gerry Adams’s claim that the Republicans were delivering ‘big time’ on their commitments.121 Ian Paisley was continuing his evolution from demagogic dinosaur to man of peace. On the eve of the St Andrews talks, he met with Archbishop Sean Brady, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland. The Paisley of earlier times had denounced the Pope as ‘the Anti-Christ’.122

  They arrived on the east coast of Scotland to be greeted by lashing rain, biting wind and fog so thick you couldn’t see the sea. ‘This is Ballymena weather,’ joked Paisley, who lost his hat to the wind.123 To make the scene more surreal, the hard man of Unionism and former terrorists negotiated amidst tartan-clad American golfers.

  ‘We have been almost ten years working on this, myself and the Taoiseach,’ said Blair a little wearily at an opening news conference with Ahern. ‘Now is the time to get the business done.’124 The mood soon soured when they got down to hard talking. Proximity didn’t seem to bring the two sides together. It drove them further apart. The big trust issue now was policing. Once the IRA declared its ‘war’ over, the Unionist focus concentrated on the Republicans’ willingness to endorse the Police Service of Northern Ireland as a sign that they were committed to the rule of law. As was so often the case over the many years of negotiating, mistrust between the two sides was manifested as an argument about sequencing. The Unionists demanded that Sinn Féin commit to the police before they were let into government. The Republicans wanted the government set up and policing and justice devolved to the Assembly before they would endorse the police service. Paisley still would not talk directly to Sinn Féin. His delegation, worried that the old man
was being charmed into softness, wouldn’t let him hold one-to-one talks with Blair. The DUP demanded that Sinn Féin hold an Ard Fheis – party meeting – to endorse the police. Adams scornfully wondered whether Paisley could even pronounce Ard Fheis. By the Friday morning, when Blair sat in his hotel suite groaning to Powell that it was ‘hopeless’, his pessimism seemed well-founded. These talks, like so many before them, were descending into the excruciatingly familiar exchanges of recrimination. Later that day, the British and Irish governments circulated a 5,000-word document setting out an intricate set of moves designed to build confidence between the two sides with a new target of creating an executive on 26 March 2007. Peter Hain hyped this as ‘an astonishing breakthrough’.125 Yet there was not truly a real deal between the parties.

  In an attempt to make it look as though they had made solid progress, Tom Kelly ran off to the press centre and changed the backdrop for the final news conference from ‘St Andrews Talks’ to ‘St Andrews Agreement’.126 This was a ruse into which the media bought. Once they had the leaders lined up in front of the banner, Tony Blair prevented any discussion, which might have exposed the absence of a solid agreement, by getting up to make a short speech to Paisley and his wife congratulating them on their golden wedding anniversary. Wags joked that his wedding day was the last time the Reverend had ever said ‘yes’ to anything. Blair presented the Paisleys with a leather photo album. Bertie Ahern had come with a much better gift: a bowl made of wood from a walnut tree at the site of the Battle of the Boyne. When Blair learnt about Ahern’s superior present the night before, he complained to Powell: ‘We have to get something better than a photo album!’ Blair then said to Ahern: ‘Bertie, I wonder, should we give them the bowl from both of us?’ Ahern laughed that it was ‘a nice try’.127

  It was probably more persuasive on Paisley that the best token came from the Prime Minister of the Republic. Paisley clasped the hand of Ahern, the first time the Unionist had ever shaken the hand of an Irish Taoiseach. Paisley called it a ‘great day for peace’ and ‘a great day for all Ireland’. Gerry Adams got to his feet and led the applause for Paisley and his wife. Blair and his team took this as proof that the DUP leader had finally crossed ‘the psychological barrier’ of accepting that he would become First Minister in tandem with a Sinn Féin deputy.128 It was certainly an extraordinary spectacle that no-one ever expected to see.

  Yet as soon as the two sides departed Scotland, they were again bitterly quarrelling about sequencing and the wording of the loyalty oath to the police. By the Christmas of 2006, the long and winding road was at another impasse. Blair’s premiership had only months left. He had just been interviewed by the police over ‘cash-for-coronets’. Pressure from within the Labour Party for him to quit Number 10 interlocked with a growing media view that there was little remaining purpose to his premiership. He was ridiculed when the press discovered that he was spending a week of the Christmas and New Year break at the Florida villa of Robin Gibb. Commentators hooted that the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ was an appropriate soundtrack for his dwindling premiership. The media were wrong. Blair spent virtually all of that holiday trying to sweat the peace process to a resolution. In Florida, he got up at five in the morning because of the time difference to call the principals. Only on Christmas Day and Boxing Day did he not work the phone. He made more than a dozen long calls on New Year’s Day, most of them to Paisley. He did not tell the Reverend that he was ringing from a room where John F. Kennedy had sex with Marilyn Monroe. The phone talks were conducted to the background sound of Cherie complaining that it was ruining their break and threatening divorce.129 Blair eventually decided to leave his family to enjoy Miami’s winter sunshine and flew back to Britain early to try to fix the latest crisis.

  After constant back and forth, a big hurdle was cleared at the end of January 2007. A secret IRA Army Convention and then a public Ard Fheis gave a mandate to Adams and McGuinness to support the police. This was a major overturning of historic republican theology. It was made easier because, thanks to earlier reforms, a third of police officers were now Catholic. In early March, there were elections for a new Assembly. The DUP and Sinn Féin were confirmed as the two largest parties at Stormont. The DUP won 36 of the 108 seats in the Assembly. Sinn Féin secured 28. The UUP took 18, the SDLP 16 and the non-sectarian Alliance party 7.

  This was the moment of truth. Polling suggested that a good majority of the people of Northern Ireland wanted the restoration of devolved government, including most of Paisley’s voters. He was increasingly seduced by the prospect of being First Minister. Gordon Brown met him, Adams and McGuinness to talk about an economic package for Northern Ireland which was desired by both sides. To the amusement of the others, Paisley walked out of the meeting at one point loudly declaring that he had to take a call from President Bush. This artful stroke of his ego had been set up by Blair.130

  The more resistant members of his party wanted another delay in the timetable. Sinn Féin was induced to agree in return for Paisley appearing with Adams in a staged reconciliation photograph to demonstrate that the DUP was serious about power-sharing. Tony Blair was in Berlin, listening to Simon Rattle conduct a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, when Tom Kelly took a call from a senior official at the Northern Ireland office. Robert Hannigan reported: ‘We’ve got a problem with the table.’ It was a classic Northern Ireland quarrel about symbols. The Unionists and the Republicans had agreed on the photo only to fall out about how they would pose for it. The DUP demanded an adversarial seating plan. They wanted Paisley to sit opposite Adams in order to prove to Unionists that he wasn’t selling out to their enemies. Sinn Féin wanted the table arranged so that Adams and Paisley sat next to each other like partners. They needed to demonstrate to their supporters that power-sharing was going to be for real. This squabble over seating brilliantly encapsulated what Blair and those who worked with him had been up against for a decade. The conundrum was eventually resolved by the ingenuity of Robert Hannigan. He proposed making the table diamond-shaped and sitting the two men at the apex.131 Paisley and Adams would then be both next to each other and opposite each other, adversaries and partners at the same time.

  On Monday, 26 March 2007, the two men sat for the historic photograph and pledged that power-sharing between their parties would begin on 8 May. It was a breakthrough that no-one familiar with the history of Northern Ireland thought they would ever see. The two parties came to remarkably quick agreement about which ministries they would take in the new government. ‘This is going to be all right, you know,’ Peter Hain said to the Prime Minister. Blair gave Hain a ‘quizzical, somewhat sceptical’ look.132 After so many previous crises and collapses, seeing would be believing.

  There was something repellent about the eventual outcome of the peace process: the power was going to be carved up and the glory enjoyed by the two parties who had most fed the hatreds that fuelled the Troubles. They got to enjoy the rewards of the efforts and sacrifice of moderates who had dedicated themselves to peace for far longer than the extremes. Yet it was probably inevitable, if regrettable, that the peace could only be made secure through a deal between the polarities. This was not the route to a settlement that Blair originally intended to take, but he had got to the destination in the end.

  Many others played vital roles, but the single most important factor in achieving this prize was the dedication displayed by Tony Blair. Though David Trimble paid for his courageous contribution with the loss of his seat in the Commons, he was still prepared to praise the Prime Minister. ‘You could say that eventually something would have happened. It wouldn’t have happened at this time without Tony Blair.’133 Martin McGuinness sees him as ‘The first British Prime Minister to make a seriously positive contribution to the resolution of all the injustices and conflict and violence and death that existed here for far too long.’134 Peter Hain is right to say that no previous Prime Minister gave Northern Ireland such ‘laser-like focus’ and ‘continuous attention’ to k
eep ‘the show on the road’.135 Bertie Ahern was another impressed that ‘in spite of all the different pressures on him … he kept at it, bringing the full force of the Prime Minister’s office. The peace process just would not have happened without him.’136 John Major laid some foundations, but his party had too much historical baggage and he had too little authority to progress further. Gordon Brown had neither the personal skills nor the empathy for Ireland that were required. Blair sustained the process through all the cycles of breakthrough, deadlock and setback. He pressed on when most leaders would have given up. One of the senior civil servants at the Northern Ireland office observed that he’d ‘seen the Prime Minister almost literally pick up the parties and carry them over a line they didn’t want to cross’.137 Powell recalls: ‘He was constantly ordering me to make impossible things happen’138 and eventually the impossible did.

  Blair drew on the full hand of his skills: his persevering optimism, his capacity for forging relationships with a wide variety of enormously tricky characters, his deviousness in negotiation when it was called for, his courage in taking risks, his inspirational talent with words, his capacity to immerse himself in detail when he wanted to, his ability to read moods, situations and other politicians, his energy and his creativity. This was a win for both his style and his substance. It was a victory for political ingenuity, persuasion and persistence over decades of hatred and violence.