Commentary

Tim Pat Coogan argues in The Troubles (pp. 325-326) that the seeds of the 1994 IRA ceasefire were laid in 29 September 1979 when the Pope made a speech for all people to reject violence and find a different way. The argument he goes on to make in his book, while possibly holding some validity, gives way too much credit to the Pope and the hold of Catholicism and religious feeling inside those in the IRA.  More likely Northern Ireland had finally reached the point where the people had suffered enough and that an accommodation could come unlike 1975 when the IRA truce failed and Frank Steele had made his infamously callous remarks:

The unionists didn’t want it [the ceasefire] as they wanted the British army to go on knocking hell out of the IRA.  The RUC didn’t want it as they wanted to be able to fight with the British army against the IRA and restore some credibility and morale which had taken such a knock over internment.  The Protestant paramilitaries didn’t want it as they saw themselves fighting alongside the British army against the IRA. Part of the British army didn’t want it as they reckoned the IRA could still beaten militarily.  The hard-line IRA didn’t want it.  I know this sounds callous to say, but I don’t think either community had suffered enough to want peace, to make peace an absolute imperative.  And so we entered into something I don’t think anyone expected; twenty-five years of killing, maiming and destruction.  We [Britain] may have got fed-up but, contrary to IRA expectations, we have not gone away. (Provos, pp. 146-147)

Northern Ireland had moved into a totally new era.  Yes. It was an era marked by horrific violence.  Much had changed within Loyalism with the rise of a self-assured cadre of activists who had fought in the war, and who were essentially challenging the Republican movement to find a way to end the war.  They had shown the Republicans they could be as ruthless as the IRA and challenged them to engage them in the political arena.  The Republican movement had changed also.  With the ascendancy of the Northern Leadership and the focus on the political as well as the military struggle, the IRA, through its political party, Sinn Fein, was moving, albeit slowly, towards a ceasefire and compromise.  The involvement of the U.S. government and the willingness of the British government to engage with the IRA were also significant factors in this period.

So, in this section what we will do is examine the long, slow, torturous and sometimes violent shift from the military struggle to the political struggle.

Required Readings

1. Building Blocks for the second peace process

2. The Brooke Initiative; pp. 225-231 in Dixon

3. pp. 184-199 in McKittrick

4. pp. 85-92 in Edwards and McGrattan

Recommended:

1. Sinn Fein/SDLP talks

   1. Primary Documents from Sinn Fein on their evolution towards a peace strategy.

      1. 1983-Report of the New Ireland Forum

      2. 1987-A Scenariofor Peace

      3. 1992-Jim-Gibney-Speech_Bodenstown Speech - This was a crucial speech in the Peace Process

      4. 1992 Towards a Lasting Peace

      5. 1994- Report of the Sinn Féin Peace Commission

      6. 1995-Building a Permanent Peace

      7. 1998-ABridge to the Future

      8. 1998-SF-SDLP Talks

Commentary (cont.)

Even though a peace process had begun and people on all sides realized that no one could win, the violence continued and intensified.  The IRA raised its level of violence, as you will see; all the while its leadership was working towards a political settlement.  The Loyalist paramilitaries did the same. Each had their own reasons for this.  There are a number of arguments as to why the IRA continued and intensified its violence. One argument is that the IRA had successfully shot and bombed Sinn Fein’s way into a position where they were now a political force and so we can view their increased violence in terms of trying to put Sinn Fein in a better position in the negotiations.  Another argument is that the rank and file of the IRA was totally committed to the armed struggle and believed that the war should be prosecuted to its end.  Whichever argument we accept the reality is that from 1986-1994 the IRA carried out many deadly attacks and bombings that, at times, looked to end any hope of a political settlement.

The IRA, after the AIA, also increased the pressure on the British government. Attacks increased in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s and bombings on the “British Mainland” became commonplace.  You can see this escalation in both Loyalists and Provos and the thinking behind the offensive.  Again, the Provisional IRA saw the process behind the AIA and the AIA itself as further justification of its tactics as it believed that it was winning the war and that it could win the war by increasing the pressure on Britain.  However, as we will see, this offensive would have dire consequences as the Loyalists would launch their own offensive in response to the AIA and also to the increased IRA violence and renewed offensive.

Required Reading

1.         Chapter 21and 22 in Provos – Keep in mind when reading this the dual track of politics and military pressure.

2.         Chapter 9 in Provos; Enniskillen; Warrenpoint

3.         pp. 191-194 in McKittrick; Shankill Bomb

 

Commentary (cont): Taking the War and Political Struggle to the IRA

In the same way the IRA escalated its military campaign while its leadership sought a way out of the military conflict, the Loyalist groups escalated their violence. The irony of this escalation was that it was facilitated by the Steven’s Inquiry. By May 1990, 59 people, mainly Loyalist paramilitaries, were charged with various terrorist offenses as a result of the Stevens’ Inquiry as the collusion between the security forces and the paramilitaries came out into the open.  However, although it exposed the nature of the “Dirty War,” it had a terrible side effect.  The collusion of the security forces with the paramilitaries had as one of its goals to use “selective” targeting of individuals the State wanted taken care of but could do nothing about and also to keep the situation in Northern Ireland at an “acceptable level of violence.”  (This was a phrase used by the Home Secretary of Northern Ireland Reginald Maulding in 1971.)  

The Security Forces, officially or unofficially, supplied the UDA/UFF and UVF with intelligence on suspected IRA men and women that the paramilitaries then used in targeting.  But, as part of this collusion, and prior to the Steven’s Inquiry and the arrests, the UDA/UFF, in particular, was riddled with government agents, and the government was able to restrain the UDA/UFF from indiscriminate killing as you can see clearly in McKittrick on page 329.  The death toll from UDA/UFF murders up until the collusion was discovered was very low. With the uncovering of the collusion and the arrest of the UDA/UFF leadership a new and very aggressive group of young Loyalists intent on taking the war to the IRA and killing as many Republicans and Catholics as possible rose to leadership in the UDA/UFF.  Some did this from purely sectarian motivations, but others carried out retaliation and killings with another goal in mind.  In their book on Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, David Lister and Hugh Jordan make the point that “In the end [the] 'Stevens 1' inquiry . . . removed any restraining influence the security forces had over the UDA in its Shankill Road Heartland.”  This led to a terrible upsurge in violence in the years 1990-1994, at the same time that the IRA went on its renewed bombing offensive. “The upsurge in violence was horrendous. By 1992, the UDA and UVF were out-killing the IRA for the first time since 1975, claiming the lives of 36 people compared to the Provisionals (IRA) 34. In 1993, the contrast was even greater.  The loyalists claimed 47 victims, 31 of whom were killed by the UDA, compared to 36 by the IRA.” (Lister and Jordan, 2003, p. 66)

At the same time many UDA men saw the Stevens inquiry as the best thing that happened for the Loyalist cause.  As Adair put it, “He [Stevens] had done a good job, had got rid of all the shite.” (Lister and Jordan, 2003, p. 66).  For more information on that see Inside the UDA by Colin Crawford and None Shall Divide Us, by Michael Stone.  These are “personal” accounts by former UFF and UVF gunmen and so must be taken with a “grain of salt,” but you can see how many Loyalists viewed the impact of the Stevens inquiry.  

So, as we moved into the third decade of the conflict, The UVF and the UDA were now totally ready and capable of taking the war to the IRA, while at the same time addressing the IRA indirectly to end the war. This was evident in 1994, after the Shankill bomb, when one UVF commander addressing the IRA said:

If you carry out these actions, we’re going to put it to you.  Be in no doubt about that.  Look stop this!  It’s not making sense, because every time you do it, we can do it, too.  If necessary we’ll do something that’s even more atrocious than you have just done.  Don’t do it. (David Ervine, p. 146)

David Ervine on the Counterpoint programme in 1993 “. . . challenged the IRA intellectually: ‘Lay down your arms and represent your people.  The only way out of this is dialogue’ (David Ervine, p. 147).

However, it would take another year of killing by both sides, and an aborted Loyalist ceasefire.  (They planned on calling one in July of 1994, then the IRA shot dead Ray Smallwoods, ironically one of those who was moving the UDA towards a cease fire.) True to the words of the UVF commander, for each IRA attack the UVF and the UDA struck back.  The result was a rising tide of naked sectarian violence that culminated in Greysteel (October 1993) and Loughinisland  in June 1994. 

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The Following is Not Required

Commentary (cont): Loyalist Violence and State Collusion

Throughout the conflict accusations circulated over and over again about “collusion” between the security forces and the Loyalist paramilitaries.  In 1982 John Stalker was put in charge of an inquiry into collusion but was removed in what became known as the “Stalker Affair.”  It was not until the late 1980’s that this collusion came out in the open and was investigated by the ongoing Steven’s Inquiry into the “Dirty War” and the collusion between the security forces and the Loyalist paramilitary groups.  You will see in the readings how this inadvertently came out into the open when the UDA shot dead a Catholic claiming he was in the IRA and showed newspapermen the intelligence files they had proving that.  This led to the first real investigation into collusion.

Required Reading

1.         pp. 231-232 in Dixon—Read this to understand why there was fear in the Loyalist community and how that leads to increased violence, again.

2.         Chapter 17 in Loyalists

3.         Guardian Article on Collusion in 1974

4.         Steven’s Inquiry Summary; Key Extracts from the Steven’s Inquiry

5.         Coursepack:  pp. 183-192 in Inside the UDA, "Allan"—This is an account of how one UFF gunmen killed an innocent Catholic based on faulty intelligence provided by the British.  This intelligence was deliberately falsified because the British did not want the actual target killed.

6.         Coursepack:  pp. 42-45 in Inside the UDA, "Collusion"

7.         The full Steven’s Report-3

8.         A License to Murder – Panorama Programme (BBC TV) on Collusion in the killing of Pat Finucane