It didn't hold in all circumstances. While almost a year would elapse before the IRA embarked upon a killing spree under the cover name of Direct Action Against Drugs, it had never desisted from punishment beatings, intelligence gathering, intimidation or robberies throughout its cessation.
On the last day of summer 1994, while standing on the Whiterock Road with Tommy Gorman, a Sinn Fein member approached us and asked if we would be going over to the celebration cavalcade where flags would be waved and flower bouquets handed out. Flowers remind me of funerals. If we were to go to the graveside to observe the IRA's campaign and our hopes for a British withdrawal being lowered into the ground, it did not seem appropriate to attend in celebratory mood. The IRA was being wrapped in a shroud and here were its undertakers inviting us all to party.
The Sinn Fein member was a friend so our exchange was without rancour. Still, our answer was not the affirmative he had hoped to hear: only turkeys celebrate Christmas, we won't be going. Later the same day, in the community centre at the top of the Rock, we listened to Bernadette McAliskey being interviewed for radio where she made the comment that the war is over and the good guys lost. Clarity delivered concisely. Tommy's view, expressed openly, that she was right earned him a visit from the thought police.
It was clear that alternative opinions on the politics governing the ceasefire were to be as welcome in West Belfast as the RUC had been. Whereas the RUC would later be made welcome once it changed its name, the holders of different opinions to this day remain persona non grata. Activists with bullshit detectors were to be frozen out while those prepared to believe anything so long as it was whispered to them were invited inside the big tent, it never occurring to them to ask why the embracing abode was shaped like a dunce's cap.
A few days into the ceasefire, as I disembarked from a black taxi in Turf Lodge carrying a book about the IRA or Sinn Fein, I was stopped and searched by the DMSU, that well paid body within the RUC that aggressively policed the poorest areas. I was returning from the Linen Hall Library so the book was hardly seditious. The cop made some comment about it after seeing the title. I replied that it was amazing he was still only a constable if he could actually read. He went off on one about the IRA having surrendered. Not having managed to dilute my disdain, search completed, he was still muttering as I sauntered off into the estate.
As it turned out, he was right. The IRA had in fact surrendered and within 11 years would have decommissioned its weaponry and announced that its war to secure a British declaration of intent to withdraw was over. I couldn't criticise the decision to surrender too harshly, having suggested in a jail paper that at some point the organisation might have to consider a conditional surrender given the balance of forces and the severely limited strategic potential to become hegemonic even within northern nationalism while armed struggle continued. But the conditions for any surrender should be the most favourable, limited only by political and strategic constraints and not shaped by the considerations and calculations of political career management.
There was no ignominy in surrender. The leaders of 1916 had surrendered rather than risk further death and destruction raining down upon the civilian population of Dublin. Those leaders were punished with death rather than rewarded with lucrative political careers. Theirs was an unconditional surrender. By contrast, the surrender by the 1990s leadership was conditional, with good conditions for the leaders.
On the last day of summer 1994, while standing on the Whiterock Road with Tommy Gorman, a Sinn Fein member approached us and asked if we would be going over to the celebration cavalcade where flags would be waved and flower bouquets handed out. Flowers remind me of funerals. If we were to go to the graveside to observe the IRA's campaign and our hopes for a British withdrawal being lowered into the ground, it did not seem appropriate to attend in celebratory mood. The IRA was being wrapped in a shroud and here were its undertakers inviting us all to party.
The Sinn Fein member was a friend so our exchange was without rancour. Still, our answer was not the affirmative he had hoped to hear: only turkeys celebrate Christmas, we won't be going. Later the same day, in the community centre at the top of the Rock, we listened to Bernadette McAliskey being interviewed for radio where she made the comment that the war is over and the good guys lost. Clarity delivered concisely. Tommy's view, expressed openly, that she was right earned him a visit from the thought police.
It was clear that alternative opinions on the politics governing the ceasefire were to be as welcome in West Belfast as the RUC had been. Whereas the RUC would later be made welcome once it changed its name, the holders of different opinions to this day remain persona non grata. Activists with bullshit detectors were to be frozen out while those prepared to believe anything so long as it was whispered to them were invited inside the big tent, it never occurring to them to ask why the embracing abode was shaped like a dunce's cap.
A few days into the ceasefire, as I disembarked from a black taxi in Turf Lodge carrying a book about the IRA or Sinn Fein, I was stopped and searched by the DMSU, that well paid body within the RUC that aggressively policed the poorest areas. I was returning from the Linen Hall Library so the book was hardly seditious. The cop made some comment about it after seeing the title. I replied that it was amazing he was still only a constable if he could actually read. He went off on one about the IRA having surrendered. Not having managed to dilute my disdain, search completed, he was still muttering as I sauntered off into the estate.
As it turned out, he was right. The IRA had in fact surrendered and within 11 years would have decommissioned its weaponry and announced that its war to secure a British declaration of intent to withdraw was over. I couldn't criticise the decision to surrender too harshly, having suggested in a jail paper that at some point the organisation might have to consider a conditional surrender given the balance of forces and the severely limited strategic potential to become hegemonic even within northern nationalism while armed struggle continued. But the conditions for any surrender should be the most favourable, limited only by political and strategic constraints and not shaped by the considerations and calculations of political career management.
There was no ignominy in surrender. The leaders of 1916 had surrendered rather than risk further death and destruction raining down upon the civilian population of Dublin. Those leaders were punished with death rather than rewarded with lucrative political careers. Theirs was an unconditional surrender. By contrast, the surrender by the 1990s leadership was conditional, with good conditions for the leaders.
Had, as is sometimes suggested, the armed conflict ended in a stalemate rather than a defeat, there would have been a shared sovereignty between London and Dublin, a substantive recalibration of the constitutional status quo. The outcome expressed through the Good Friday Agreement did not remotely resemble joint authority. It was nothing short of an internal solution underpinned by a British declaration of intent to stay on the very same terms that were already in place throughout the IRA campaign.
The IRA's war of coercion failed. The British state's war for consent succeeded. Tony Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, would detail in his book Great Hatred Little Room just how far back from its original demands the Provisional leadership had been pushed in negotiations. The British never embraced the IRA position on withdrawal. The IRA embraced the British position on staying. Irish unity would only happen with consent - something the British, the unionists, the SDLP and Dublin political class had insisted on from the outset. The victor's terms had been accepted, and it was a sleight of hand to claim otherwise.
As poor an outcome as was achieved via the Good Friday Agreement, it seemed inconceivable in the summer of 94 that thirty years on the British would still be waging and winning extradition battles whereby those who were IRA volunteers at the time of the ceasefire would be handed over to the British for prosecution by a British police force, to face trial in a British non jury court and to end up being flung into a British jail.
As poor an outcome as was achieved via the Good Friday Agreement, it seemed inconceivable in the summer of 94 that thirty years on the British would still be waging and winning extradition battles whereby those who were IRA volunteers at the time of the ceasefire would be handed over to the British for prosecution by a British police force, to face trial in a British non jury court and to end up being flung into a British jail.
The war is over and the British are still taking prisoners with Sinn Féin’s approval. Meanwhile those who led those volunteers and negotiated the ceasefire stand idly by, much like thee lords in the Braveheart film, gazing on while the recipients of their false undertakings were being put to the English sword.
Thirty years on there is little choice but to be philosophical about the failure of the IRA campaign and the embracing of partition by Sinn Fein. There are always losers in war and the IRA leadership bought into the logic of George Orwell that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it.
While applying the Camus paradox on war that the armed struggle was as unavoidable as it was unjustifiable, the sad logic confronts us at every turn: the constitutional nationalist outcome that exists could have been achieved by constitutional nationalist means. Thirty years on from the 1994 ceasefire, while we can argue about who was right and who was wrong, it is probably better to take cognisance of Bertrand Russell's prudence:"war does not determine who is right – only who is left."
Thirty years on there is little choice but to be philosophical about the failure of the IRA campaign and the embracing of partition by Sinn Fein. There are always losers in war and the IRA leadership bought into the logic of George Orwell that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it.
While applying the Camus paradox on war that the armed struggle was as unavoidable as it was unjustifiable, the sad logic confronts us at every turn: the constitutional nationalist outcome that exists could have been achieved by constitutional nationalist means. Thirty years on from the 1994 ceasefire, while we can argue about who was right and who was wrong, it is probably better to take cognisance of Bertrand Russell's prudence:"war does not determine who is right – only who is left."
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I still can't understand why they are lifting people when it's been over for decades, wouldn't they get out under GFA provisions anyway? Or was McCauley being a bit too friendly with malcontents? And did any shinner utter a word of irritation about it?
ReplyDeleteSome will qualify for the limited 2 year sentence Steve.
ReplyDeleteOthers, 'early adaptors' like John Downey, would not qualify under the terms of GFA if convicted. It's most likely a death-in-prison sentence for this small cohort.
Thanks HJ,
DeleteDon't agree with people being lifted for this stuff so far down the track. Just doesn't sit right with me.
Nor me Steve, no more prosecutions. Truth retrieval perhaps if there's iron-clad guarantees
Delete