by Ed Moloney
The British were not alone in wishing to soft-pedal the policing issue with Sinn Fein. At least one of Ian Paisley’s closest lieutenants was of the same view, arguing that it was an undeliverable demand for the republicans. But the DUP leader himself took a tougher line, recognizing that without Sinn Fein signing up to the PSNI, a power-sharing deal would be devoid both of moral value and any credibility within his own community. So it was that at St. Andrews Paisley dug his heels in and prevailed.
Ian Paisley’s conversion to power-sharing with Sinn Fein is one of the most extraordinary and least understood features of the peace process. In one way he appears to be the most unlikely candidate for partnership government with republicans. After all he had spent his entire political life opposing any and all forms of political reconciliation, accusing fellow unionists who advocated accommodation with even moderate nationalists as traitors and “Lundies.” Many even blamed Paisley for the Troubles on the grounds that his agitation against the mildly reforming unionist prime minister Capt. Terence O’Neill in 1969 which led to his downfall paved the way for the slide into conflict, violence and ultimately the birth of the Provisional IRA. Gerry Adams’s own decision to join the IRA in 1964 followed riots in West Belfast stirred up by Paisley. The idea of Ian Paisley sharing a political bed with Gerry Adams seemed laughably absurd.
But there are other aspects of Paisley’s politics which help to explain why a deal between them is both possible and likely. One is, quite simply, that he could argue to his own people that he had forced the IRA to decommission (even though the truth may have been much more complicated) and by obliging Sinn Fein to accept political office in an arrangement based upon the consent principle and acceptance of the policing and criminal justice system, he had achieved something that had eluded every other unionist leader: the final and certain political and military defeat of Irish republicanism and the longterm security of the union with Britain.
The other has to do with Paisley’s history of conflict with, and rejection by, the major pillars of the Northern Protestant establishment. Spurned and reviled by the mainstream Protestant churches, he set up his own Free Presbyterian Church and set about poaching and winning converts from the competition. He was banned from the Orange Order and so he built up the Independent Orange Order as a rival. Politically shunned as an irritating and embarrassing nuisance by the mainstream unionist party, he set up his own party, first the Protestant Unionists and latterly the Democratic Unionists and then set about bringing his rivals down. He was always the outsider but now, in his eighty-first year, victory stared him in the face, victory over the IRA and victory over the unionist establishment that had always shunned him. Ending his political career as Northern Ireland’s first minister was surely an irresistible prize. It was also evidence of another key and often over-looked—aspect of Paisley’s political character: his innate pragmatism.
Paisley’s judgement on the PSNI issue proved to be correct, and more accurate than Peter Hain’s. On January 28, 2007 Sinn Fein met in an extraordinary Ard Fheis in Dublin’s RDS and on a show of hands overwhelmingly passed a leadership motion advocating the acceptance of the PSNI and authorizing Sinn Fein’s executive, or Ard Comhairle, to implement the decision upon the satisfactory establishment of the power-sharing executive. While there was no count, media estimates put the majority in favor at around 90 percent. Of the much predicted internal opposition there was no or little sign; only Sinn Fein’s youth wing, Ogra Sinn Fein, opposed the motion.
There are several significant aspects about the vote. One rests on the fact that around half the votes at every Sinn Fein Ard Fheis are IRA votes and they are cast in whatever direction the Army Council decrees. Had the Adams leadership wished to signal that it could not move as fast as others wanted and required more concessions, it could have been easily arranged, and even more readily accepted in Downing Street and Dublin. But that course was resisted, surely evidence that the Provo leaders knew they had come to the end of their journey.
Another conclusion from the scale of Adams’s victory is that the British and Irish governments had been completely wrong, possibly for years, in their assessment of the internal threat to his leadership and its consequent freedom to move. As one government participant noted in an email to the author: “The margin of the vote says loudly and clearly that he [Adams] could have done this years ago. Would the dissident threat have been greater then? Maybe, but the benefits of getting the business done and finished would have outweighed the small risk of having a few dozen more dead-enders joining RIRA, which is completely penetrated anyway. More toughness from Blair earlier would have done the trick.”4
The indulgence shown to the Provo leadership by Blair and Ahern had, over the years, chipped away at the center ground of Northern Ireland politics and now, with the Sinn Fein decision on the PSNI out of the way, the stage was set to complete the process.
A fresh election to the Stormont Assembly was held on March 7 and it would be difficult to have designed an election more calculated to appeal to sectarian passions and to strengthen the most extreme parties. With inter-party talks likely to precede any formation of a power-sharing Executive, the voters were effectively being asked to send the strongest possible team from “their side” into negotiations with “the other side.” The DUP at one point was quite blatant about this, warning Protestants that a vote for any other unionist party could open the way for Sinn Fein to top the poll. Sinn Fein made no comment but privately must have been gleeful, for their message, more discreetly communicated, was exactly the same. In such ways did the extremes feed off each other.
The counting, completed two days later, confirmed the virtual collapse of the center ground. Paisley’s DUP won 36 seats in the 108-seat Assembly, a gain of six seats while their Ulster Unionist rivals lost nine seats and fell to 18. Sinn Fein gained four seats to win 28 seats and the SDLP lost two seats, to win a mere 16 seats. It was a sectarian head count whose outcome had questioned the raison d’étre for a second unionist party and raised real doubts over the longterm future of the SDLP.
A power-sharing deal between Ian Paisley and the Adams/McGuinness leadership now looked a matter of when not if. For the British and Irish governments the outcome of the March 2007 election presaged a final triumph in their long, gruelling stewardship of the peace process. For the about-to-retire Blair in particular, his record in office deeply tarnished by the Iraq war and his relationship with President George W. Bush, the success of the Northern Ireland peace process is one of the few bright spots in his legacy. He and Bertie Ahern had brought final peace to one of Europe’s most troubled regions, but at the cost of handing it over to the least deserving, most adamantine elements of that society. That’s one tragedy about the way the peace process has worked. The other and greater tragedy is that it needn’t have ended this way.
1. The Eksund, docked at Brest harbor in November 1987. With its betrayal, the IRA lost 150 tons of Libyan weapons, but the peace process was saved. (AFP)
1-A. The Eksund’s captain, Adrian Hopkins, was wrongly accused by some IRA leaders of treachery. (AFP)
2. Gerry Adams as a young teenager in Belfast. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
3. Gerry Adams accompanies his father (wearing suspenders) on a republican march in Belfast at Eastertime, 1997. (Kelvin Boyes, Belfast)
4. The IRA’s first Belfast commander, Billy McKee (seated), and Proinsias MacAirt, photographed in Crumlin Road jail, 1971. McKee and Adams were later bitter rivals for the leadership of the IRA. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
5. IRA snipers engage British troops in West Belfast in 1972. (P. Michael O’Sullivan)
6. Joe Cahill officiates at an IRA funeral in 1971. A former IRA chief of staff and family friend, he could always be counted on to support Gerry Adams’s ideological shifts. (Victor Patterson Archive, Linen Hall Library, Belfast)
7. Jean McConville, with three of her ten children. She was killed and then “disappeared” in December 1972 by “the unknowns,” a sec
ret IRA unit created by Adams. Her body has never been found. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
8. Maire Drumm (far right, carrying bat), leader of the IRA’s women’s section, Cumann na mBan, marshals her supporters in Belfast. (P. Michael O’Sullivan)
9. A young Martin McGuinness, then Derry commander, joins IRA leaders for a press conference in June 1972: (left to right) McGuinness, Daithi O Conaill, Chief of Staff Sean MacStiofain, and Seamus Twomey, the Belfast commander. (Victor Patterson Archive, Linen Hall Library, Belfast)
10. Gerry Adams, photographed by the British army after his arrest in July 1973. (Victor Patterson Archive, Linen Hall Library, Belfast)
11. Cage 11 inmates pose for a secret photograph. Standing to the left of Adams (who is seated, front right), and wearing a mustache, is Brendan “Darkie” Hughes. Also standing, far right, the IRA icon and hunger-striker Bobby Sands. (Kelvin Boyes, Belfast)
12. Ivor Bell, pictured in 1974, was once Adams’s closest ideological ally, but the two men fell out when Sinn Fein began contesting elections. (Victor Patterson Archive, Linen Hall Library, Belfast)
13. The Sinn Fein Executive member Christin ni Elias in October 1981. Detested by the Adams camp, friends believed she might have been the target of an IRA assassination squad in December 1981. (Derek Speirs/Report, Dublin)
14. A police poster published after the La Mon massacre in February 1978. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
15. Public smiles but private strife: (left to right) Daithi O Conaill, Gerry Adams, and Ruairi O Bradaigh hide their bitter conflict from the cameras at Sinn Fein’s annual conference in 1980. (Derek Speirs/Report, Dublin)
16. Gerry Adams oversees the burial of the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands. Standing behind the masked IRA guard of honor, with folded arms and wearing glasses and a beard, is Tom Hartley, a leading member of Adams’s think tank. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
17. The body of the UDR sergeant Thomas Cochrane lies dumped beside a South Armagh hedgerow in October 1982. His kidnapping by the IRA led Father Reid to visit Gerry Adams to plead for his life. The contact prompted discussions about political alternatives to violence which developed into the peace process.
18. Cardinal Cahal Daly. When bishop of Down and Connor in 1984, he refused to support Father Reid’s diplomacy but agreed not to undermine it. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
19. Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich, an enthusiastic supporter of Father Reid’s initiative. (Derek Speirs/Report, Dublin)
20. Archbishop Justin Rigali of St. Louis, Missouri. A former secretary of the College of Cardinals in Rome, he kept Pope John Paul II and key American bishops informed about the Irish peace process. (Courtesy of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri.)
21. Tom King, Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary from 1985 to 1989. He conducted a highly secret correspondence with Gerry Adams. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
22. Peter Brooke, King’s successor in Belfast. His overture to the IRA in November 1989 was partly inspired by the Father Reid–Gerry Adams diplomacy. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
23. The Fianna Fail leader and Irish prime minister Charles Haughey with his British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher. (Derek Speirs/Report, Dublin)
24-A. Jim Lynagh, the commander of the ill-fated East Tyrone Brigade. (Kelvin Boyes, Belfast)
24. As Gerry Adams attended Lynaugh’s funeral in May 1987, his secret cease-fire offer was en route to Charles Haughey. (Derek Speirs/ Report, Dublin)
25. Bloody Sunday, January 1972. Father Edward Daly, later bishop of Derry, shepherds one of the fourteen fatally wounded victims. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
26. Ferocious rioting in Derry followed the deaths on Bloody Sunday. (P. Michael O’Sullivan)
27. The aftermath of the IRA’s first “human bomb” attack, in Derry in October 1990. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
27-A. Patsy Gillespie, forced to deliver the bomb, died alongside five soldiers in the attack. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
28. John and Diana Lampen, with Traveler children in 1992. The Quaker peace workers were regarded by the British government as “the Father Reids of Derry.”
29. Tom “Slab” Murphy, South Armagh IRA leader and chief of staff from 1997 on. (John Cogill, Dublin)
30. Micky McKevitt, who masterminded the Libyan arms shipments with Slab Murphy and later led the opposition to Adams’s peace strategy. (John Cogill, Dublin)
31. Kevin McKenna, the longestserving IRA chief of staff.
32. The key think tank member and skilled IRA propagandist Danny Morrison leaves the Maze prison in 1995. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
33 A-B. Jim Gibney, a think tank member whose role was to fly controversial kites for Adams. Pictured in 1980 before the peace process began
(Pacemaker Press, Belfast) and after, in 1996. (Derek Speirs/Report, Dublin)
34. A rare photograph of the think tank chairman, Ted Howell (left), pictured with Gerry Adams during the Good Friday Agreement negotiations. (Alan O’Connor, Dublin)
35. Mitchel McLaughlin, the Derry-based think tank member who was loathed by IRA activists. (Kelvin Boyes)
36. Gerry Adams, the Irish prime minister, Albert Reynolds, and the SDLP leader, John Hume, in a show of Irish nationalist unity after the August 1994 IRA cease-fire declaration. (Derek Speirs/Report, Dublin)
37. The Belfast IRA commander Brian Gillen. Initially opposed to Adams’s peace strategy, he switched sides at the 1997 IRA Convention and was rewarded with a seat on the Army Council. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
38. Brian Keenan, had the image of an IRA hawk but his record showed unswerving support for Adams. Pictured here carrying the coffin of the IRA veteran Jimmy Drumm in 2001. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
39. On the eve of the 1996 IRA Convention, the British army HQ at Thiepval barracks in Lisburn, County Antrim, is bombed. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
39-A. Warrant Officer James Bradwell later died of horrific injuries, but his death helped to save the Adams leadership. (PA)
40. Martin Mansergh, the Irish government’s contact man for Father Reid and Gerry Adams. In the forefront is the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, who helped negotiate the 1997 IRA cease-fire. (Derek Speirs/Report, Dublin)
41. Changed times—Martin McGuinness as Northern Ireland’s minister of education after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, surrounded by young admirers. He was still chairman of the Army Council when this photograph was taken. (Pacemaker Press, Belfast)
APPENDIX 1
Special Sinn Fein Ard Comhairle Meeting, April 12, 1980
The divisions within the Provisional movement, between the Adams faction and the O Bradaigh–O Conaill supporters, over the amalgamation of An Phoblacht and Republican News, the Adams move to the left, the production of Adams’s so-called grey document, and the undermining of Eire Nua were graphically illustrated by the minutes of this Sinn Fein Executive meeting held in April 1980.
Danny Morrison:
Donegal refused papers—our man was arrested delivering them—didn’t have the courtesy to ring up and cancel.
Ruairi O Bradaigh:
If there is no confidence in Leadership, policies are no use to us. Anonymous articles and letters in AP/PN do not go down well. We must re-establish confidence by printing own names above articles.
Joe Cahill:
I never believed in Federalism. This may come as a surprise to many of you.
Joe O’Neill:
More harmony before amalgamation although I agreed with amalgamation. Reason for refusing papers— IRSP and other articles, disagreement with policy. Bundoran S. F. Cumann refused to sell papers—not Joe O’Neill.
Tony Ruane:
If there is some little mistake in the paper don’t exaggerate it. Sinn Fein was not fully acquainted before the document.