Rebel, writer and occasional reconciler: Former Sinn Féin publicity director Danny Morrison on his decades of activism, the search for peace and unionism’s decline
The coining of the now infamous phrase “ballot box in one hand... Armalite in the other” wasn’t rehearsed, according to its author Danny Morrison. It came to him just as he reached the podium to speak at Sinn Féin‘s 1981 ard fheis.
Those words came to represent a key juncture in the republican movement’s history. The policy of abstentionism was jettisoned soon after by Sinn Féin – then widely described as the political wing of the IRA – as it sought to emulate the electoral successes witnessed during the Hunger Strike.
For Morrison, then aged 28 and Sinn Féin’s director of publicity, his imprisoned comrades’ campaign for political status, which saw 10 young men die over a two-and-a-half month period in 1981, including three INLA inmates, was “pivotal” and “the most astonishing event of the conflict”.
What he doesn’t countenance, however, is that the end of abstentionism was part of a premeditated strategy, led by Gerry Adams, that aimed to supersede armed struggle with politics.
Continue @ Irish News.
Behind a paywall, could have done with a laugh too!
ReplyDeleteHe makes an interesting point or two. Sent you a copy of it by email.
Delete"Morrison believes the IRA’s campaign gave the SDLP “incredible negotiating muscle”
ReplyDeleteInteresting point. The rapid collapse of the SDLP vote once cessation happened and Republicans went solely democratic politic minded led to massive vote increases for Sinn Fein too. Would suggest that the vast majority did not want armed action on their behalf?
"“The really interesting thing is we more or less agree about every conflict outside
Ireland and what unites us is that it should never happen again. We must use as much
influence as we have amongst people for that purpose.”
Far more unites us than divides us. The stubbornness that he correctly identifies among the PUL community is the siege mentality. It'll take a few generations to calm down but it'll get there.
Footnote; I've been around the planet multiple times and have seen countless bilingual signs, such a daft thing for my community to focus on. Where's the jobs and proper housing? A properly funded and working NHS? These are important things not pish like blocking signs.
Steve - I think he is right about the SDLP being empowered by the mere fact of the IRA campaign. It always made them the more acceptable face of nationalism to both unionism and the British.
ReplyDeleteI think he has a point when he says there would have been no IRA campaign had the GFA been introduced in 69. The acknowledged founder of the Provisional IRA claimed the organisation would never have been formed had the British introduced Direct Rule on the same day they brought the troops in. That tends to gel with Morrison's point.
But the GFA still amounted to a failure and a repudiation of the IRA campaign. The IRA's stated goal was Brits Out - a declaration of intent to withdraw. The GFA was the diametrical opposite of that: it legitimised the reasons the Brits said they were in the North - consent of a majority there. It also was an acquiescence by republicans in the Brit terms for leaving - unity only by consent.
Morrison makes the point that Sunningdale was not brought down by republicans. What he fails to say is that republicans were as opposed to it as unionism. Adams claimed it made the SDLP the first Nationalist partitionist party.
My own view is that had republicans conveyed to the Brits how little they were prepared to settle for (it even surprised Jonathan Powell) the Brits would have moved mountains to get the unionists to accept.
Constitutional nationalism prevailed not republicanism. Morrison knows this because even in the 80s he alluded to the dynamic driving the IRA campaign, which few others seemed to refer to.
Interesting that Morrison claims he was sceptical of negotiations with the SDLP. He penned an article in one of the early issues of Iris Bheag (probably early 1987) in which he argues precisely for that. He was also one of the participants in said negotiations at the beginning.
DeleteI believe, in any case, that what AM and others argue above is essentially academic at this stage of the game. Brexit and the general trajectory of Britain have shifted the balance. There might be Irish unity in our life time. It is possible. However, republicanism seems to be have been reduced to anti-partitionism, including amongst 'traditionalists.' It's been stripped of its wider goals and outlook. For those interested, Kevin Bean wrote an insightful book chapter on this process many moons ago. It's become even worse since then with the rise of social media and the decline of the written word.
Paraphrasing Neitzche
ReplyDelete'Irish Republicanism is dead. Irish Republicanism remains dead. And Irish Republicans have killed it ... What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?'
Paradoxically, republicanism lives in the cemeteries. It commemorates its dead which conveys a sense of looking back but seems to have no strategic perspective on the future. The far right brand of republicanism is having more success connecting to people.
DeleteNecrophilia rules!
ReplyDeleteWhatever floats people's boats.
T'is not for me any longer.