The Fenian Way ✒ continues his exchange with Anthony McIntyre on the inferences to be drawn from John Crawley's book which detailed systemic shortcomings within the IRA.

AM: We now move to bring our exchange to a conclusion, if not in this exchange then certainly in the next. We are on the home strait now, so to speak. We agreed upon rounding it off that we would try to address some of the observations raised or questions posed in the comments section over the course of the past six exchanges. We felt that given the valuable input of those making the comments, the fairest thing to do would be to take account of their contribution and weave it into the exchange.

A recurring theme has been the issue of alternatives. We know for sure that the leadership never sought any alternatives and actively discouraged them from emerging while dissuading people from even thinking about them. I recall Adams one time publicly saying that people should not even be allowed to think about an alternative to the Good Friday Agreement. Although I do think that was to push back against sections of unionism trying to bypass it. But it indicates how much of a talisman the GFA had become for the leadership. It really had nothing else. Any discussion of possible alternatives was viewed by those leaders like the tide going out, which would leave them exposed as naked. They needed their project firmly bedded down and were not going to risk it being uprooted by sceptical republicans flagging up the shortcomings while proposing other solutions to the problem. The leadership relied so much on the British solution it even had Jonathan Powell write statements for it and now the latest crop of state papers show that John Hume was also writing statements to be used by the leadership. Even if that message supposedly sent to the Brits that the war is over and we need your help was never sent, the leadership were certainly getting the help of both the Brits and Hume as it moved to embrace the internal settlement.

I think perhaps the best way to proceed is to include the questions and observations raised and then either of us might try to respond to them.

We can see from the following three commenters that they do not feel there was much space for an alternative to work in. That had effectively been closed down.

Brandon: If a straightforward military victory was not possible, then what was the alternative? … I don’t see how this would result in anything except a ‘civil war’ scenario in Belfast, and most probably other parts of the North. With an uptake in sectarian attacks against Catholics, support for the IRA would have grown, but to what extent would it have to have grown to win the conflict it found itself in? Had the Libyan arms kicked off large-scale offensives across the North, with significant British army losses, UKG would have been able to draw on significant resources and experience to suppress/oppress armed republicanism.

Alfie: One does wonder if things would really have been much different had the leadership been more competent. The British cannot have been expected to have remained tactically or strategically static in the face of a more efficient and effective IRA campaign. Indeed, it is questionable whether the IRA and its support base could have sustained a full-blown counterinsurgency. Indeed, even in an ideal scenario, would the only difference have been a longer, bloodier campaign with the same outcome or could anything more than even joint sovereignty have been extracted from the British government? And would that in itself have been worth its weight in bodies and in blood?

Steve R: They had a choice between a low level war of attrition which did nothing for them, a large scale new offensive which would have given the British Hawks a carte blanche or winding the armed campaign up in favour of politics.

TFW: I understand completely why your readers would want more meat on the bone as it were regarding potential alternative strategies, but I need to stress that the alternative outlined here was only relevant to the political circumstances that existed pre-ceasefire. It cannot be used, as I said earlier, in a copy and paste exercise to justify armed actions today. Also, given the nature of the platform, a broad stroke outline is all that is possible but hopefully the basic premise of it can be grasped.

AM: I think that is fair enough. Your general thrust is to reject the mantra that there is no alternative. Moreover, you suggest that any proposed alternative was of its time and strategic place. We are in a different time and place now and alternative strategies that might have been pursued then have no traction in the strategic terrain of today.

TFW: The key point in exploring the issue of alternatives is not to fall into the trap of a binary restriction. A reasonable proposition in any armed conflict has political merit. No strategy is guaranteed success, but the price of a failed strategy should never be the legitimate basis for the struggle itself. Any assessment of a military/political alternative must accept beforehand certain realities concerning armed struggle and the politics of armed struggle, namely:

  • The issues raised in John’s book and the issues raised in this exchange would need to be rectified.
  • Armed Struggle could not militarily achieve British withdrawal from Ireland.
  • The role of armed struggle was to undermine British sovereignty.
  • Armed struggle needed realistic and attainable political objectives at the core of a military strategy to give effect to that undermining role.

The political and constitutional Achilles heel of the British presence was the draconian measures they employed to maintain it. And we know they themselves recognised this by their huge efforts to implement the policy of normalisation.

AM: Was there any specific point at where the state was most vulnerable, and which would have proved susceptible to republican strategic probing?

TFW: Yes, the Six Counties were not as British as Finchley! The frontline of the normalisation policy was policing and, by extension, the criminal justice system which are the bedrock of any functioning society. When you consider that the RUC were the most discredited police force in Europe, and possibly beyond, and the criminal justice system was the envy of the apartheid regime in South Africa it was an obvious circumstance to politically exploit to discredit the claim of sovereignty itself.

AM: The apartheid South Africans had once said they would swap their panoply of repressive laws for one section of the Special Powers Act. While the Special Powers Act had long gone into abeyance your point remains valid because more modern emergency powers were introduced which allowed for the repressive apparatuses to continue in the mould that created them – repression. We had less the rule of law and more the rule of law enforcement resulting in what one BBC investigative journalist characterised as murder on an industrial scale.

TFW: From a strategic perspective armed struggle was to be focussed on disrupting the functioning of the RUC, policing in general, to the fullest extent that each operational area could achieve, and that each area would set themselves operational goals as a structured means to improve their abilities to carry out this task. The weaponry and tactical know how were available to facilitate and sustain this.

AM: The late Dominic McGlinchey once commented to me in the prison that it was not beyond the bounds of possibility through the determined application of a military strategy to render it impossible for the RUC to come into large areas of the nationalist North without huge military back up. I think he believed there was a lack of will and a serious dearth of strategic ideas.

TFW: And he was right. Military policing is precisely what the British did not want. From a political perspective a national and international campaign directed against the completely dysfunctional criminal justice system in the Six Counties would seek support for international oversight of a new system representing a derogation of British sovereignty.

The political value of the third-party option is that it opened the prospect of a settlement beyond a binary stalemate without compromising the validity of the republican position but at the same time demonstrating the willingness of republicans to reach a settlement.

The language of the campaign would be justice and democracy as opposed to the vapid peace and reform. The vacuum created by the absence of the RUC in republican areas would be filled by republican activists administering community and restorative justice projects as was done during the early twenties.

With international involvement as a necessity for a potential settlement it would be extremely difficult for the British to portray the conflict as a solely internal security problem or to portray itself as honest broker between two warring factions. An internal settlement could not be on the agenda.

Even if the British resorted to a military crackdown of republicans it would have to be done in the face of a potential resolution with an international dimension, firmly placing themselves as the aggressor against reasonable republican demands and rejecting opportunities for a settlement. Their actions would be seen as anti-settlement whilst ours would be seen in the opposite light. The Hunger Strikes demonstrated that republicans could not be defeated within the British criminal and penal system so where was the sense in sending more republicans to it? As I said in the review of John’s book the squandering of the political potential gifted to our struggle by the hunger strikers was a counter revolutionary act.

AM: That would have required two factors to chime at the right moment: a huge amount of international goodwill and a weakening of British resolve. There were certainly misgivings about the RUC in the US. However, I saw no sign of a weakening of British resolve to prosecute the war. The supposed iron will of Thatcher had been broken by the hunger strikers, but an element of the leadership concealed that from everybody which created the impression that the Thatcher government was more determined than it actually was. Had the body of the Movement known of how the Thatcher resolve had been broken by the hunger strikers, it might not have been so susceptible to a strategy that ultimately produced so little. But I am speculating. What I am certain of is that the Major government was only ever interested in an internal solution and was prepared to communicate with the leadership once it read the smoke signals coming from the key players on the Army Council as an indication of a willingness to capitulate on the constitutional question and settle for an internal solution. The type of scenario sketched by yourself might have made the Brits feel it was not worth the candle. Consequently, the confluence I referred to above might not have emerged.

TFW: The Hunger Strikes gave us the international goodwill in an unprecedent way and as I mention above it was squandered by the leadership fixated on an internal settlement. Thatcher’s resolve was as a direct result of her own intelligence regarding the resolve, or lack of, of elements of the republican leadership to pursue the issue of sovereignty. They knew who they would eventually negotiate with. The British position didn’t harden, it didn’t have to. The IRA leadership conceded the ground. The so-called neutrality declaration by Peter Brooke should have been challenged with terms for a ceasefire once the British agreed to the UN administering sovereign responsibilities whilst the rights to sovereignty over the Six Counties were resolved in international law. Declaring neutrality, whether they were lying or not, opened the door for a third-party option.

AM: There are a lot of moving parts in that which would have needed to anchored before the type of process you suggest could evolve. How could the UN have been prodded into getting involved in the way you suggest? It would have needed the assent of the British which was unlikely to be forthcoming.

TFW: The UN was one option, but an obvious one due to its charter and function. A confederation of Dublin, London and Brussels could have been another. Involvement by Washington in a statutory way was yet another. It’s not exactly important who the outside agency would be but rather that any such involvement would represent a derogation of sovereignty. Consider, if our commitment to struggle was determined on our assumptions that somebody might say no to our demands then there’s no point in struggling at all. This was a credible strategic approach worthy of effort.

AM: But how would the movement have been able to effectively liaise with those other parties without in essence delivering a ceasefire prior to any undertaking from the British to consider what might have amounted to a derogation of sovereignty? The space for negotiations was created after the leadership had signalled its intent to accept an internal solution.

TFW: But you may be falling into the binary trap I mentioned earlier. The IRA was not the only party to the conflict with obligations in the conflict. From the Dublin perspective Articles 2 & 3 should have been ruthlessly pursued by republicans to mount pressure on Dublin to pursue its constitutional obligations. When the McGimpsey brothers challenged the legitimacy of those articles after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement the Dublin High Court dismissed the challenge and described 2 & 3 as ‘constitutional imperatives’ which should have prompted republicans to go back to the High Court to demand what Dublin was doing to honour this ‘constitutional imperative’?

AM: There is always that danger of being trapped by our own settled perspective, and I am as susceptible to it as others. This is why it is always good to have our perspectives challenged. You bring a freshness to it that prevents staleness taking hold. But even when there was no dispute about there being a constitutional imperative, Dublin did nothing to advance a unity agenda and for all its posturing on the imperative, it still stuck rigidly to the unity only by consent of a majority in the North principle.

TFW: But Republicans didn’t challenge Dublin regarding Articles 2 & 3, they were short-sightedly dismissed. I remember Vincent Browne asking the then Irish Ambassador to London, Noel Dorr, did he ever raise the cases of the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four with the British and he replied, No.

Why not inquired Browne?

Because the British never raised it with us.

You get the picture! You must also remember that when constitutional nationalism came together in the New Ireland Forum all three of their proposed solutions directly impacted on the issue of sovereignty; where would be the sense of constitutional nationalism entering a conflict resolution process where their own solutions would not be on the agenda?

As a conflicting claimant of sovereignty over a disputed region Dublin would also be required to seek international arbitration to resolve that dispute. It is on these fronts that Irish republicanism could and should have engaged with Dublin in seeking a constitutional solution, not as persuasion, but as obligation.

In such a political context the terms for a ceasefire would now be radically different because a settlement would have been agreed to beforehand, a ceasefire would facilitate its implementation. Prisoner release would have been based on the logical conclusion that if proper policing and justice could not be administered by the British then those imprisoned for struggling against that fact were fully justified in doing so and as such would qualify for unconditional release. They would not be exploited as emotional leverage to accept British terms.

AM: Does this not leave out unionism? In the wider discourse there seems to exist a chicken and egg type collision of perspectives on unionism: is unionism in Ireland at the behest of the British – or are the British in Ireland at the behest of unionism? Republicanism has never persuasively argued that it was the first.

TFW: The question of unionism would require a paradigm shift in attitudes towards their position. Unionism, as a proxy for British interests in Ireland, has devastated the country from the plantations to partition. The question that needs to be addressed is not ‘how can we force a million unionists into a united Ireland’ but how can unionism be allowed to force the rest of the population out of one.

AM: The problem then arises of the unionist position being presented as not being one of forcing the rest of the population out of a united country but of a unionist wish to dissent from the nation which is democratically underpinned by a majority of people on the island who agree that the North stays out of a unitary state until such times as a majority of people in the North decide otherwise. That would be regarded as a democratic endorsement of partition. Republicans would see a sleight of hand in it but it is a powerful argument.

TFW: But only normalisation could deliver that scenario, republicans held all the ace cards to scuttle that agenda. And as I said from the outset this was a potential pre-GFA alternative. Unionism cannot justify its stance by trying to democratise partition. Nor can it be allowed to present itself as some form of cultural tradition to distinguish itself from the rest of the people on the island. Triumphalist drum beating and bad grammar English can never constitute a cultural identity. The policy of continuous appeasement of unionist demands that flagrantly deny any semblance of democratic norms must be exposed as a source of conflict rather than resolution. Unionism has no argument, that’s why it continually needs a gerrymander to sustain it. This is the force of our justice and democratic argument. The Proclamation answers any follow-on questions.

AM: That sounds more an ethical perspective than a political-strategic one. We are still left with the problem of ethically right not being politically right. Should nationalism be any more obligatory than, say, Catholicism?

TFW: The ethical problem would be for those trying to justify the maintenance of the status quo. It would be politically right for republicans to exploit that to the fullest. As for Catholicism I take my lead from the Fenian Proclamation of 1867. At all times the cornerstone of the strategy would be the issue of sovereignty and republican self-belief in the validity of our cause. All the ingredients were there to formulate alternative strategies. The above is a broad outline of one such alternative.

AM: I think you have made an arguable case that there were alternatives and that they were never considered because the leadership had its mind set on an internal solution. But I think what is being suggested by the three commenters above is that even with alternatives there was little likelihood of them being successful.

TFW: Which brings us back to Powell and his amazement of how little the British had to give in return for the magnitude of what republicans gave away. Your own observation makes it clear that the logic of Powell’s assertion contains the inherent fact that they would have been prepared to give more. But the republican leadership, like Mr Dorr, never asked for it.

AM: There is much in that. We might have to wait on the release of state papers to find out just how much more they were willing to give. While we had hoped to conclude on this one, there remain some questions posed in the comments section which we agree merit a response given the clarity and focus those who contributed helped bring to the discussion.

⏩ The Fenian Way was a full time activist during the IRA's war against the British. 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

In Quillversation 🎯 IRA Leadership Squandered Potential Alternatives

The Fenian Way ✒ continues his exchange with Anthony McIntyre on the inferences to be drawn from John Crawley's book which detailed systemic shortcomings within the IRA.

AM: We now move to bring our exchange to a conclusion, if not in this exchange then certainly in the next. We are on the home strait now, so to speak. We agreed upon rounding it off that we would try to address some of the observations raised or questions posed in the comments section over the course of the past six exchanges. We felt that given the valuable input of those making the comments, the fairest thing to do would be to take account of their contribution and weave it into the exchange.

A recurring theme has been the issue of alternatives. We know for sure that the leadership never sought any alternatives and actively discouraged them from emerging while dissuading people from even thinking about them. I recall Adams one time publicly saying that people should not even be allowed to think about an alternative to the Good Friday Agreement. Although I do think that was to push back against sections of unionism trying to bypass it. But it indicates how much of a talisman the GFA had become for the leadership. It really had nothing else. Any discussion of possible alternatives was viewed by those leaders like the tide going out, which would leave them exposed as naked. They needed their project firmly bedded down and were not going to risk it being uprooted by sceptical republicans flagging up the shortcomings while proposing other solutions to the problem. The leadership relied so much on the British solution it even had Jonathan Powell write statements for it and now the latest crop of state papers show that John Hume was also writing statements to be used by the leadership. Even if that message supposedly sent to the Brits that the war is over and we need your help was never sent, the leadership were certainly getting the help of both the Brits and Hume as it moved to embrace the internal settlement.

I think perhaps the best way to proceed is to include the questions and observations raised and then either of us might try to respond to them.

We can see from the following three commenters that they do not feel there was much space for an alternative to work in. That had effectively been closed down.

Brandon: If a straightforward military victory was not possible, then what was the alternative? … I don’t see how this would result in anything except a ‘civil war’ scenario in Belfast, and most probably other parts of the North. With an uptake in sectarian attacks against Catholics, support for the IRA would have grown, but to what extent would it have to have grown to win the conflict it found itself in? Had the Libyan arms kicked off large-scale offensives across the North, with significant British army losses, UKG would have been able to draw on significant resources and experience to suppress/oppress armed republicanism.

Alfie: One does wonder if things would really have been much different had the leadership been more competent. The British cannot have been expected to have remained tactically or strategically static in the face of a more efficient and effective IRA campaign. Indeed, it is questionable whether the IRA and its support base could have sustained a full-blown counterinsurgency. Indeed, even in an ideal scenario, would the only difference have been a longer, bloodier campaign with the same outcome or could anything more than even joint sovereignty have been extracted from the British government? And would that in itself have been worth its weight in bodies and in blood?

Steve R: They had a choice between a low level war of attrition which did nothing for them, a large scale new offensive which would have given the British Hawks a carte blanche or winding the armed campaign up in favour of politics.

TFW: I understand completely why your readers would want more meat on the bone as it were regarding potential alternative strategies, but I need to stress that the alternative outlined here was only relevant to the political circumstances that existed pre-ceasefire. It cannot be used, as I said earlier, in a copy and paste exercise to justify armed actions today. Also, given the nature of the platform, a broad stroke outline is all that is possible but hopefully the basic premise of it can be grasped.

AM: I think that is fair enough. Your general thrust is to reject the mantra that there is no alternative. Moreover, you suggest that any proposed alternative was of its time and strategic place. We are in a different time and place now and alternative strategies that might have been pursued then have no traction in the strategic terrain of today.

TFW: The key point in exploring the issue of alternatives is not to fall into the trap of a binary restriction. A reasonable proposition in any armed conflict has political merit. No strategy is guaranteed success, but the price of a failed strategy should never be the legitimate basis for the struggle itself. Any assessment of a military/political alternative must accept beforehand certain realities concerning armed struggle and the politics of armed struggle, namely:

  • The issues raised in John’s book and the issues raised in this exchange would need to be rectified.
  • Armed Struggle could not militarily achieve British withdrawal from Ireland.
  • The role of armed struggle was to undermine British sovereignty.
  • Armed struggle needed realistic and attainable political objectives at the core of a military strategy to give effect to that undermining role.

The political and constitutional Achilles heel of the British presence was the draconian measures they employed to maintain it. And we know they themselves recognised this by their huge efforts to implement the policy of normalisation.

AM: Was there any specific point at where the state was most vulnerable, and which would have proved susceptible to republican strategic probing?

TFW: Yes, the Six Counties were not as British as Finchley! The frontline of the normalisation policy was policing and, by extension, the criminal justice system which are the bedrock of any functioning society. When you consider that the RUC were the most discredited police force in Europe, and possibly beyond, and the criminal justice system was the envy of the apartheid regime in South Africa it was an obvious circumstance to politically exploit to discredit the claim of sovereignty itself.

AM: The apartheid South Africans had once said they would swap their panoply of repressive laws for one section of the Special Powers Act. While the Special Powers Act had long gone into abeyance your point remains valid because more modern emergency powers were introduced which allowed for the repressive apparatuses to continue in the mould that created them – repression. We had less the rule of law and more the rule of law enforcement resulting in what one BBC investigative journalist characterised as murder on an industrial scale.

TFW: From a strategic perspective armed struggle was to be focussed on disrupting the functioning of the RUC, policing in general, to the fullest extent that each operational area could achieve, and that each area would set themselves operational goals as a structured means to improve their abilities to carry out this task. The weaponry and tactical know how were available to facilitate and sustain this.

AM: The late Dominic McGlinchey once commented to me in the prison that it was not beyond the bounds of possibility through the determined application of a military strategy to render it impossible for the RUC to come into large areas of the nationalist North without huge military back up. I think he believed there was a lack of will and a serious dearth of strategic ideas.

TFW: And he was right. Military policing is precisely what the British did not want. From a political perspective a national and international campaign directed against the completely dysfunctional criminal justice system in the Six Counties would seek support for international oversight of a new system representing a derogation of British sovereignty.

The political value of the third-party option is that it opened the prospect of a settlement beyond a binary stalemate without compromising the validity of the republican position but at the same time demonstrating the willingness of republicans to reach a settlement.

The language of the campaign would be justice and democracy as opposed to the vapid peace and reform. The vacuum created by the absence of the RUC in republican areas would be filled by republican activists administering community and restorative justice projects as was done during the early twenties.

With international involvement as a necessity for a potential settlement it would be extremely difficult for the British to portray the conflict as a solely internal security problem or to portray itself as honest broker between two warring factions. An internal settlement could not be on the agenda.

Even if the British resorted to a military crackdown of republicans it would have to be done in the face of a potential resolution with an international dimension, firmly placing themselves as the aggressor against reasonable republican demands and rejecting opportunities for a settlement. Their actions would be seen as anti-settlement whilst ours would be seen in the opposite light. The Hunger Strikes demonstrated that republicans could not be defeated within the British criminal and penal system so where was the sense in sending more republicans to it? As I said in the review of John’s book the squandering of the political potential gifted to our struggle by the hunger strikers was a counter revolutionary act.

AM: That would have required two factors to chime at the right moment: a huge amount of international goodwill and a weakening of British resolve. There were certainly misgivings about the RUC in the US. However, I saw no sign of a weakening of British resolve to prosecute the war. The supposed iron will of Thatcher had been broken by the hunger strikers, but an element of the leadership concealed that from everybody which created the impression that the Thatcher government was more determined than it actually was. Had the body of the Movement known of how the Thatcher resolve had been broken by the hunger strikers, it might not have been so susceptible to a strategy that ultimately produced so little. But I am speculating. What I am certain of is that the Major government was only ever interested in an internal solution and was prepared to communicate with the leadership once it read the smoke signals coming from the key players on the Army Council as an indication of a willingness to capitulate on the constitutional question and settle for an internal solution. The type of scenario sketched by yourself might have made the Brits feel it was not worth the candle. Consequently, the confluence I referred to above might not have emerged.

TFW: The Hunger Strikes gave us the international goodwill in an unprecedent way and as I mention above it was squandered by the leadership fixated on an internal settlement. Thatcher’s resolve was as a direct result of her own intelligence regarding the resolve, or lack of, of elements of the republican leadership to pursue the issue of sovereignty. They knew who they would eventually negotiate with. The British position didn’t harden, it didn’t have to. The IRA leadership conceded the ground. The so-called neutrality declaration by Peter Brooke should have been challenged with terms for a ceasefire once the British agreed to the UN administering sovereign responsibilities whilst the rights to sovereignty over the Six Counties were resolved in international law. Declaring neutrality, whether they were lying or not, opened the door for a third-party option.

AM: There are a lot of moving parts in that which would have needed to anchored before the type of process you suggest could evolve. How could the UN have been prodded into getting involved in the way you suggest? It would have needed the assent of the British which was unlikely to be forthcoming.

TFW: The UN was one option, but an obvious one due to its charter and function. A confederation of Dublin, London and Brussels could have been another. Involvement by Washington in a statutory way was yet another. It’s not exactly important who the outside agency would be but rather that any such involvement would represent a derogation of sovereignty. Consider, if our commitment to struggle was determined on our assumptions that somebody might say no to our demands then there’s no point in struggling at all. This was a credible strategic approach worthy of effort.

AM: But how would the movement have been able to effectively liaise with those other parties without in essence delivering a ceasefire prior to any undertaking from the British to consider what might have amounted to a derogation of sovereignty? The space for negotiations was created after the leadership had signalled its intent to accept an internal solution.

TFW: But you may be falling into the binary trap I mentioned earlier. The IRA was not the only party to the conflict with obligations in the conflict. From the Dublin perspective Articles 2 & 3 should have been ruthlessly pursued by republicans to mount pressure on Dublin to pursue its constitutional obligations. When the McGimpsey brothers challenged the legitimacy of those articles after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement the Dublin High Court dismissed the challenge and described 2 & 3 as ‘constitutional imperatives’ which should have prompted republicans to go back to the High Court to demand what Dublin was doing to honour this ‘constitutional imperative’?

AM: There is always that danger of being trapped by our own settled perspective, and I am as susceptible to it as others. This is why it is always good to have our perspectives challenged. You bring a freshness to it that prevents staleness taking hold. But even when there was no dispute about there being a constitutional imperative, Dublin did nothing to advance a unity agenda and for all its posturing on the imperative, it still stuck rigidly to the unity only by consent of a majority in the North principle.

TFW: But Republicans didn’t challenge Dublin regarding Articles 2 & 3, they were short-sightedly dismissed. I remember Vincent Browne asking the then Irish Ambassador to London, Noel Dorr, did he ever raise the cases of the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four with the British and he replied, No.

Why not inquired Browne?

Because the British never raised it with us.

You get the picture! You must also remember that when constitutional nationalism came together in the New Ireland Forum all three of their proposed solutions directly impacted on the issue of sovereignty; where would be the sense of constitutional nationalism entering a conflict resolution process where their own solutions would not be on the agenda?

As a conflicting claimant of sovereignty over a disputed region Dublin would also be required to seek international arbitration to resolve that dispute. It is on these fronts that Irish republicanism could and should have engaged with Dublin in seeking a constitutional solution, not as persuasion, but as obligation.

In such a political context the terms for a ceasefire would now be radically different because a settlement would have been agreed to beforehand, a ceasefire would facilitate its implementation. Prisoner release would have been based on the logical conclusion that if proper policing and justice could not be administered by the British then those imprisoned for struggling against that fact were fully justified in doing so and as such would qualify for unconditional release. They would not be exploited as emotional leverage to accept British terms.

AM: Does this not leave out unionism? In the wider discourse there seems to exist a chicken and egg type collision of perspectives on unionism: is unionism in Ireland at the behest of the British – or are the British in Ireland at the behest of unionism? Republicanism has never persuasively argued that it was the first.

TFW: The question of unionism would require a paradigm shift in attitudes towards their position. Unionism, as a proxy for British interests in Ireland, has devastated the country from the plantations to partition. The question that needs to be addressed is not ‘how can we force a million unionists into a united Ireland’ but how can unionism be allowed to force the rest of the population out of one.

AM: The problem then arises of the unionist position being presented as not being one of forcing the rest of the population out of a united country but of a unionist wish to dissent from the nation which is democratically underpinned by a majority of people on the island who agree that the North stays out of a unitary state until such times as a majority of people in the North decide otherwise. That would be regarded as a democratic endorsement of partition. Republicans would see a sleight of hand in it but it is a powerful argument.

TFW: But only normalisation could deliver that scenario, republicans held all the ace cards to scuttle that agenda. And as I said from the outset this was a potential pre-GFA alternative. Unionism cannot justify its stance by trying to democratise partition. Nor can it be allowed to present itself as some form of cultural tradition to distinguish itself from the rest of the people on the island. Triumphalist drum beating and bad grammar English can never constitute a cultural identity. The policy of continuous appeasement of unionist demands that flagrantly deny any semblance of democratic norms must be exposed as a source of conflict rather than resolution. Unionism has no argument, that’s why it continually needs a gerrymander to sustain it. This is the force of our justice and democratic argument. The Proclamation answers any follow-on questions.

AM: That sounds more an ethical perspective than a political-strategic one. We are still left with the problem of ethically right not being politically right. Should nationalism be any more obligatory than, say, Catholicism?

TFW: The ethical problem would be for those trying to justify the maintenance of the status quo. It would be politically right for republicans to exploit that to the fullest. As for Catholicism I take my lead from the Fenian Proclamation of 1867. At all times the cornerstone of the strategy would be the issue of sovereignty and republican self-belief in the validity of our cause. All the ingredients were there to formulate alternative strategies. The above is a broad outline of one such alternative.

AM: I think you have made an arguable case that there were alternatives and that they were never considered because the leadership had its mind set on an internal solution. But I think what is being suggested by the three commenters above is that even with alternatives there was little likelihood of them being successful.

TFW: Which brings us back to Powell and his amazement of how little the British had to give in return for the magnitude of what republicans gave away. Your own observation makes it clear that the logic of Powell’s assertion contains the inherent fact that they would have been prepared to give more. But the republican leadership, like Mr Dorr, never asked for it.

AM: There is much in that. We might have to wait on the release of state papers to find out just how much more they were willing to give. While we had hoped to conclude on this one, there remain some questions posed in the comments section which we agree merit a response given the clarity and focus those who contributed helped bring to the discussion.

⏩ The Fenian Way was a full time activist during the IRA's war against the British. 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

10 comments:

  1. John Crawley comments

    This has been an interesting discussion. I agree that sovereignty is the key. The ultimate political question is, where does constitutional authority in Ireland reside? With the Irish people or with the British Crown? The answer to this determines who in society possesses the lawful right to claim and exert the legitimate use of force and who, in opposing that, are criminals.

    A narrative has been spun that in the mid-1980s the IRA were planning a so-called ‘Tet Offensive’ with the vastly enhanced military capacity they acquired from Libya. Leaving aside the glaring omission that the IRA were not trained or organised to carry out combined armed military manoeuvres of this scope and sophistication the narrative continues that the seizure of the Eksund arms shipment in November 1987 forced a re-think on behalf of the IRA leadership.

    If that were the case, what is TFW’s opinion on the fact that in the second week of May 1987 (according to Ed Moloney) Gerry Adams sent a letter to Charles Haughey via Father Alec Reid outlining IRA terms for ending the armed struggle. This was six months before the Eksund was captured.

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  2. Under absolutely no circumstances would Loyalists have tolerated a UN " peace keeping " force in Northern Ireland. It would simply be a non-starter, and a huge red line for us particularly in the early 90s. There seems to be a bit of a blind spot with Republicans here, at times it's hard to work out whether it's the people or the politics referred to above that becomes an irreconcilable problem for them. They can't decide if the pul community are just confused Irishmen or the whole lot of them are part of the Brit state. They know there's an issue but it gets slung into the " Too hard basket "

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  3. Sean Bresnahan comments

    If we are to go by international standard and norms, constitutional authority lies with the Irish people alone, this on the basis of the right of nations to self-determination as set out under the UN Charter. The power to assert that authority, however, sadly lies not with the Irish people. It has been usurped by the British state, with the power of that state being waged to prevent the authority of the Irish people in their own land from being effected. While conquest bestows no democratic title, it remains a force to contend with. That is why the Army failed to shift the British to a different position on the core matter of constitutional authority — the British were and remain the more powerful political actor. Who was right was overridden by who held sway.

    The Republican Movement, cognisant of this, elected towards an approach in line with the ‘realpolitik’ (adopting the ‘Undefeated Army’ mantra to make the pill more easy to swallow). Yes there was a lot of lying and bullshit but anyone involved at the time who wasn’t aware of where we were going in my view was not being deceived. They were only deceiving themselves. The Republican Movement, essentially, accepted what was a ‘fait accompli’ but done so on the basis that time would erode the Unionist Veto it could not surmount, and with it the British claim to sovereignty which that veto was used to underpin in the absence of a legitimate right to maintain a presence in Ireland. In the meantime, the Republican function would be to ensure proper representation for its constituency so that things as they were pre-1969, in their overt sense, would be a matter of history only.

    Where does this leave things today? The right of the Irish people to self-determination, as provided for under international standard, continues to exist as a ‘thing’. The power of the British state to deny that right, and with it the ability of the Irish people to effect constitutional authority over their own land, remains a ‘thing’ likewise. Given how its behaviour has provided a leg up to British power so often across recent times (standing at the Cenotaph, waiting in line for the ‘royals’ etc), the commitment of those who inherited the power of the Republican Movement to properly representing their constituency and its interests (within the prism of realpolitik) has been undermined and is now questionable. The Unionist Veto, which underpins Britain’s claim to sovereignty, has been severely impacted by changing demographics. While each of us can make of all that what we will, we most certainly live in interesting times.

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    1. The UN promotes self determination of peoples but does not always hold that peoples and nations are the same thing. The republican perspective faces the difficulty that the self determination of the North has greater standing with the UN than any claim to self determination for the island as a whole.

      I think there was an equal amount of leadership deception and self deception. And it is always easier to deceive somebody who wants to be deceived.

      Time eroding the unionist veto was the Brit and Constitutional nationalist position. It was never a republican strategy for unity.

      The veto is still in place just as much as it was in 73. It resides with the North, not a specific faction within the North. And as things stand there is no indication that even were there to be a border poll that the North would vote for unity.

      My own view for what it is worth is that there will be moves made to have any border poll change to be predicated on a 60/40 majority, which I feel SF will sign up to and spin it the same way they spin their changed relationship with the monarchy.

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    2. Sean Bresnahan comments

      Tony, self-determination vis-a-vis the North has greater standing due onto British power, rather than onto international standard. Time eroding the Unionist Veto, yes, was a collapse into constitutional nationalism (as many of us argued at the time) — with the consideration that, while accepting Partition as a political reality, those who inherited the power of the Army (which was born from the communities we all grew up in) would propound an approach that would seek to best represent the overall nationalist community within the confines of the Partition system as an interim. This was enough for many, including more than a few of those who now would say they were duped. I don’t believe people were duped and believe the basics were understood. Things changed down the line though, for sure.

      (As a short aside, it is precisely the ability to argue that the strategy is still in place and is still being worked that keeps so many within the party orbit. Conversely, this impacts the ability of those now outside of the party to attract support at the party’s expense.)

      Part of the notion, here, was to build political strength so that it might be waged, in turn, towards the ultimate realise of the Republican object. That is what was held to justify the adopting of constitutional nationalist tactics. We weren’t constitutional nationalists. We were Republicans adopting some of their tactics to advance an object much wider to that of the SDLP. That object — the Republican object and our proposed prescription — was the standing of a 32-county republic in Ireland in the stead of the prevailing Partition system. This would ultimately require overcoming the Unionist Veto, with demographics (rather than our political strategy) being the engine that would drive this happening. Our political dealings were understood, instead, as a means to ensure that the Orange state would remain a concern for history alone.

      The main problem with all this, today, is that the new Sinn Féin are shifting from the fundamental prescription set out under TUAS, which can be found in ‘Scenario For Peace’. A ‘less strong’ variant of that same prescription was set out under its successor document, ‘Towards A Lasting Peace’, which with hindsight indicates the start of the rot. When we look at the party’s most recent discussion paper and take into account all of the public soundings from the likes of Michelle O’Neill, Matt Carty, the Kearney brothers and Jim Gibney, we can see that a collapse into full-on constitutional nationalism is now to hand. Should it come fully to pass — i.e. should the kites being flown make their way into actual policy paper and policy — that would be the real point of failure and the real defeat.

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    3. I think it is considerably more than that.

      The Dublin government do not challenge the right of the North as a people to self-determine.
      The electorate North and South, likewise.
      Those are powerful factors in addition to British power that militate against the ability of the people of Ireland as a whole to override the self determination of the North.
      The UN recognises the right to secede from the nation while not favouring secessionism as a general principle. Pakistan seceded from the nation of India, and Bangladesh seceded from the nation of Pakistan.
      As far as the UN is concerned, while the North does not have nation state status it does have the right as a people to determine its own future. That is the realpolitk of it which republicanism has been unable to overcome.

      There was never any interim strategy. That was subterfuge by the leadership in order to buy time to have the internal solution bed down. Everybody knew what the properties of an interim arrangement were but they never came into being. There was only ever an internal solution. This is why we had the ridiculous attempt to describe the GFA as a stepping stone to a stepping stone.

      There was no changing down the line - everything that happened was predicted in advance by the critics. The reason it could be predicted was because it was the logical outcome of where things were.

      Nor was the leadership a republican one adopting constitutional nationalist methods; once it accepted the partition principle it became a constitutional nationalist force. The claim that they were otherwise was bluff for the optics.

      Scenario For Peace was merely a stratagem to have peace floated: it was a wedge strategy used to introduce the Trojan Horse of an internal solution which they would call by some other name.

      All the people you named are doing noting that could not have been predicted 25 years ago. They are the logical outworking of the strategy.

      The defeat arrived a long time ago and is not merely happening today.



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    4. Sean Bresnahan Comments

      International standard in fact asserts that artificial gerrymanders are not possessed with a right to self-determination. The Six Counties, which is such a gerrymander, does not then have a right to self-determine in line with international standard. Its supposed right to self-determination is the product, rather, of conquest. But yes, very much so, that political progress towards Irish Unity is beholden to the so-called principle of consent is the political reality — the realpolitik. The Dublin Government does not challenge what you posit as ‘the right of the North as a people to self-determine’ because it has bowed to the realities of British power — just as did we.

      The interim I referred to was not an interim strategy on the part of the Republican Movement, purposed to advance Irish Unity by increment. The interim was and remains the realpolitik of itself — the continuation of the Partition system until a majority in the North for Irish Unity could be mustered. There is no strategy other than this to unpick Partition. There never was. There was a donning of the ‘Undefeated Army’ mantra to sweeten the pill but the rest is just as you’ve said — both now and at the time in question. Some might see it as ‘jobs for the boys’ while others might see it as representing our communities, in a system not of our want or design. It’s a matter for each individual at the end of the day.

      Well we might note, here, that if I was able to hear and digest and consider what you were saying at that time then so, too, were all others. ‘A transition to a transition’ was just guff to deal with your criticisms. Reality, regardless, was and should have been obvious. If it was obvious to me then it should have been obvious to those who’d been round the block. If I were able to ask questions of higher ups then so too were they. I don’t buy the idea that it was all chicanery by Adams and McGuinness. People went along with it when the hard truth is that what was happening was there to be seen. They accepted that strategy, which you rightly have styled as the ‘long wait’. That is exactly what it was and all it was ever understood to be. With fluff and guff attached, for sure, but the fundamental remains.

      There has, yes, been a ‘changing down the line’, though of course it can be held as the logical outworking of where we decided to go. The core change, here, is not the acceptance of Partition or the Unionist Veto — bad enough as these were. The change relates, rather, to the ultimate prescription, which was still maintained and posited post-acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement but has since been somewhat ‘parked’, suspiciously we might note given that the veto is now, at long last, coming under threat. The core change then, since agreeing to be bound by the realpolitik, is the change to the ultimate prescription — from posing the Irish Republic as the template for political change to the posing, instead, of Hume’s ‘agreed’ Ireland. That is a much different thing to accepting the way things are while working towards our core object by whatever means are available, for whatever length of time it demands.

      As an aside, when I put to him that our actions meant we were accepting these things — Partition and the Unionist Veto — your erstwhile colleague argued that we were only accepting them as an interim and for so long as the unionists could carry a majority (if yer aunt had balls she’d be your uncle says you but I’m not disagreeing — I’m simply putting down what was said at the time). The truth, no matter, is that it was all in front of anyone who cared to look at the time, just as you’ve said here. The idea that subterfuge on the part of the leadership is why people ‘bought in’ to me is soft and a latter day excuse for too many.

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  4. There is a circular logic in there premised on international standards being what republicanism wants them to be.

    The international standard as applied rather than theorised from a republican perspective does not hold the status quo in the North to be the result of conquest/coercion but of consent. We will see plenty of UN resolutions passed about Israel in Palestine but nothing relating to Britain in Ireland. I think the last thing the UN might have said about the North was something about the lag between it and the UK on abortion.

    Unfortunately, for republicanism the realpolitik is that international law defends the partition of Ireland every bit as much as it defends the partition of Pakistan or India before it.

    Even if correct that the Dublin government bends to British power, international law/standards don't actually see that but something different - an agreement on the North between two sovereign powers. Republicans might with good reason argue that such is a very ahistorical way of reading it but that does not alter the status of the North in international law by one iota.

    Armed struggle was a strategy to unpick partition: it was the opposite of unity only by consent. It was unity by coercion: coerce the British out and coerce the unionists into a united Ireland. It failed, and rather seek an alternative republican strategy the movement accepted the British terms for unity, becoming constitutional nationalists in the process. It never once moved towards winning what myself and TFW refer to as a rolling derogation of sovereignty.

    What I was saying at the time is not that different from what I am saying here: the leadership had settled for an internal solution, nothing else. I observed that the leadership was using subterfuge, so it is hardly a late in the day explanation. The leadership was dissembling. Some people believed them and stayed, others didn't believe them and stayed, others disbelieved them and left.

    Your view of the 'ultimate prescription' being the core problem is not that different from my own take on the acceptance of partition in that it has its roots there. What you are doing is adding a descriptive layer onto what was a already a serious strategic failure. I think there is a lot of merit in that which perhaps has not been covered enough.

    On an agreed Ireland, as Paul Bew once said to me an agreed Ireland is by definition not a united Ireland as an agreed Ireland has to have the agreement of the unionists.

    I know the ridiculous rubbish my erstwhile colleague was capable of spouting. I told him as much at the time. When I told him and his buddy at a public meeting that the only thing emerging from the process was a power sharing executive they told me I was accusing the leadership of selling out and that I didn't understand politics. I think I had a much better grasp of politics than either of them ever had!!!

    Was it there for everybody to see? I think it was but they simply did not all see it. The myth of a highly politicised rank and file was one that never got past me. I actually quipped in one of my pieces that if they were told to turn up at 3 o'clock on Sunday at Dunville park to catch the spacecraft to a united Ireland, they would be there in their droves and on their way home blame me and the securocrats for sabotaging the craft!!.

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    1. Sean Bresnahan comments

      It’s pretty clear that those who didn’t understand politics were the guys sitting in the Conway Mill and round the corner on Sevastopol Street. It was clear at the time and, more-so, it should have been clear to any thinking Irish Republican — even if they still wished to pursue the leadership’s strategy. If they thought ‘ack that Mackers is out of his tree and is better ignored’ then that’s fine. But they should have took heed of Tommy McK, or others, and thus that’s not an acceptable excuse (it’s an excuse that I’ve heard, from someone now full-fledged anti-Adams, which is why I mention it).

      Maybe now you might see why I think it not good practice to allow all our woes to be chalked down to chicanery on the part of the leadership. It’s a latter day excuse for far too many who want to jettison their own responsibilities (in some cases you’re talking men who policed ceasefires and went on to suck the truncheon). That’s not to say that people can’t be redeemed but to say that we all must be honest. Otherwise, the very same things will happen all over. I’ve already seen much of it do so if I’m honest, only on a smaller scale. Republicanism, sadly, can often be a shit show that way.

      Suffice to say, you CLEARLY had a much better grasp of politics than those concerned and the record now shows that. Not wanting this exchange to become circular, maybe it’s best to leave things at that. I don’t think we’re saying anything much different from the other to be honest in any event. Been a while since I commented on TPQ, due to a longstanding log-in issue which I still can’t resolve, being computer illiterate. (Says you how can a man who was a PRO be computer illiterate but there you have it.) Enjoyed the discussion and will consider availing of this means of commenting in future. Hope all is well down in Drogheda.

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    2. Sean - they did likewise with Tommy McKearney, Tommy Gorman and the Dark. But you are right, there were enough people pointing out the problems with the strategy yet they ignored them all.

      The deeper into the project it got the less credible became the stated reasons for not buying into it. However, I fail to see how those who accepted the PSNI can now be anti-Adams. I think your take applies more to the latter part while my own is more fitting for the earlier stages.

      I can be very forgiving and resile from taking these matters personally but like yourself not when someone is pissing down my back and tells me it is raining.

      There has been a long standing difficulty with comments - I don't know what it is. But if people can't get a comment to take all they need do is send it to me and I will put it up for them, much like has been done here.

      Drogheda is great - even the Shinners are friendly!!!

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