Different Folks Different Strokes

Anthony McIntyre ☠ A friend rang earlier this week to inform me that the Belfast republican Kevin Hannaway had died.

I had not known Kevin, so merely commented that he was the second septuagenarian with an IRA history to die this week. The Belfast nationalist, Ted Howell, had also passed. Both men were 78.

I never welcome the death of anybody but at the same time was saddened by neither. I didn't know one and barely knew the other. No one lives forever, and at 78, there was little place for either man left to go, leaving me philosophical on the grounds that in order to be able to live we have to be able to die. And at that age . . . Although had either made it into their eighties or beyond, I would not have begrudged them it.

The friend, an astute former republican prisoner, made the point to me that the life of each man constituted separate but rich tapestries through which the republican struggle and its usurpation could be traced. Kevin remained a republican to his end, implacably opposed to the partition principle of unity only by consent. He had been tortured as one of the Hooded Men in 1971, and forty four years later would find himself once again imprisoned for IRA related activities.

Ted stepped away from the republican path once he accepted the partition principle of unity only with the consent of a majority of the population in the North. This is the unionist veto in that those who favour the union with Britain, if they have the numbers, can veto Irish unity, as they have always done since the formation of the state of Northern Ireland. The destruction of the consent principle was the stated objective of the IRA campaign. This is not said from any judgmental position where one shroud is waved triumphantly over another. It is merely observational. Nor is it to argue that coercive republicanism be cherished, and consensual nationalism abjured. Both have failed in equal measure. As much as each hoists the tricolour, what really counts - the chequered flag heralding the end of the race to a united Ireland - is not remotely visible.

When asked by the Belfast News Letter for my thoughts on the role of Ted Howell, I responded:

I attended only one meeting with him where he seemed fastidious and single minded. Not really open to a different take, I felt. The question is whether he was a strategist in his own right or an instrument through which Adams strategised. He was a much more crucial component than say Hartley or Gibney, so I suspect the former. But ultimately he helped deliver an outcome that inverted the logic of the PIRA campaign. The GFA was a solution to a problem republicans claimed didn't exist - an internal conflict within the North which was how the British defined the problem. No longer was it defined as Ireland's British problem. Republicans also accepted the British terms for withdrawal - only by consent. So ultimately despite being renowned as a great cook the dish he helped serve up was as British as Yorkshire Pudding.

It would be wrong to blame Ted Howell for the failure of the Provisional IRA campaign to coerce the British out of Ireland and coerce the North into a unitary state. While other erudite republicans like John Crawley appear to disagree, the IRA's armed struggle was from the outset an impossibilist project. Ted managed that failure and sought to massage it into something else. In short, he helped put a smile on the face of a corpse.

For all his backroom style and the furtive aura he might have assumed, Ted was amazingly popular. Despite his fondness for alcohol and knowledge of fine wines, he managed to escape the opprobrium that Brendan Hughes or Dolours Price had hurled at them for a similar penchant. Being a lover of whiskey, I judge none of them for the predilections of their palate.

Just as republicans are shunned by former colleagues in life, labelled as alcoholics, malcontents and ne'er-do-wells, the alienation can continue right to the grave. Because Ted Howell was a strategic powerhouse in driving Sinn Fein's consensual nationalism he was afforded a trio of pallbearers made up of people who have at some point served as the IRA Chief of Staff.

None of these people turned up today for the funeral of Kevin Hanaway despite him having served at the uppermost levels of the IRA, at one point being Adjutant General. Kevin had never veered away from the republican path. For that reason his funeral attracted armed British police rather than IRA Chiefs of Staff.

Ted Howell and Kevin Hannaway both served in the ranks of the IRA. Neither lived to see a united Ireland. No volunteer who took part in the IRA's armed struggle shall. Ted Howell's hope for reunification lay in the border poll, something the British had allowed in 1973. The IRA bombed London on the day it was held. Kevin Hannaway's hope lay in a rejuvenated IRA that might again take the war to the British capital. Although divided by many things both men are brought together in a unity of opposites characterised by failure. Ted Howell's reformism failed to remove British rule from Ireland. Kevin Hannaway's revolutionism fared no better.

Charlie Haughey once described Northern Ireland as a failed political entity. Yet, much to our annoyance it has prevailed and demonstrated that republicanism, whether embodied in its abandonment by Ted Howell or in its embracement by Kevin Hannaway, rather than partition, has failed lamentably.

Eternal Dreamless Sleep to both.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.