The Northern Ireland Question
Also by Brian Barton BROOKEBOROUGH, THE MAKING OF A PRIME MINISTER FROM BEHIND A CLOSED DOOR: Secret Court Martial Records of the 1916 Easter Rising NORTHERN IRELAND IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR THE BLITZ: Belfast in the War Years THE EASTER RISING (co-author with Michael Foy) THE NORTHERN IRELAND QUESTION: Myth and Reality (co-editor with Patrick J. Roche) THE NORTHERN IRELAND QUESTION: Perspectives and Policies (co-editor with Patrick J. Roche) THE NORTHERN IRELAND QUESTION: Unionism, Nationalism, and Partition (co-editor with Patrick J. Roche)
The Northern Ireland Question The Peace Process and the Belfast Agreement
Edited by
Brian Barton Tutor, Department of History The Open University, UK and
Patrick J. Roche Former Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly Northern Ireland
Editorial matter, selection, introduction and conclusion © Brian Barton and Patrick J. Roche 2009 All remaining chapters © respective authors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–20380–8 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–20380–9 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Northern Ireland question : the peace process and the Belfast Agreement / Brian Barton, Patrick J. Roche. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–20380–8 ISBN-10: 0–230–20380–9 1. Northern Ireland – Politics and government – 1994– 2. Great Britain. Treaties, etc. Ireland, 1998 Apr. 10. 3. Northern Ireland – Relations – Great Britain. 4. Great Britain – Relations – Northern Ireland. 5. Peace Movements – Northern Ireland. I. Barton, Brian, 1944– II. Roche, Patrick J., 1940– DA990.U46N6736 2009 941.60824—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
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Contents List of Illustrations
vii
List of Abbreviations
viii
Notes on Contributors
x
Introduction Brian Barton and Patrick J. Roche
1
1
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement Brian Barton
12
2
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement Thomas Hennessey
38
3
Implementing Devolved Government 1998–2002 Graham Gudgin
57
4
The Belfast Agreement and the Constitutional Status of Northern Ireland Austen Morgan
84
5
The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement Sydney Elliott
105
6
Unionism and the Belfast Agreement Christopher Farrington
131
7
Northern Nationalism and the Belfast Agreement Cillian McGrattan
147
8
Republican Paramilitaries and the Peace Process Jonathan Tonge
165
9
Loyalist Paramilitaries and the Peace Process Ian Wood
181
10
The Belfast Agreement and Southern Irish Politics Catherine O’Donnell
205
11
The United States and the Peace Process Adrian Guelke
222
v
vi
Contents
12
The Triumph of the Belfast Agreement Paul Bew
238
13
The Case against the Belfast Agreement Dennis Kennedy
246
Conclusion Brian Barton and Patrick J. Roche
265
Bibliography
270
Index
277
Illustrations Tables 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10
Northern Ireland Assembly election, 25 June 1998 European Parliament election, 10 June 1999: Northern Ireland UK General election in Northern Ireland, 7 June 2001 District council elections results, 7 June 2001 Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2 November 2003 European Parliament election, 10 June 2004: Northern Ireland UK general election in Northern Ireland, 5 May 2005 District council elections results of 5 May 2005 Northern Ireland Assembly election, 7 March 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly 2003 intermediate transfers: Party and community voting cohesion 5.11 Northern Ireland Assembly 2003: Terminal party transfers from the four main political parties 5.12 Northern Ireland Assembly: Cross-community transfers: 2003 and 1998 5.13 Northern Ireland Assembly 2007: Terminal party transfers from the four main political parties
108 110 111 112 113 114 117 118 120 127 128 128 129
Figures 5.1 5.2
SDLP versus Sinn Féin, 1992–2007 UUP versus DUP, 1992–2007
vii
121 121
Abbreviations ANIA AP CP BBC DUP EU GP IICD IMC INC IND LAB IND N IND INLA IRA/PIRA LAB LVF MEP MLA NILP NIUP NIWC NORAID NSPCC PR PSNI PUP RUC SDLP SF SP STV TUC UDA UDP UIM
Americans for a New Irish Agenda Alliance Party Conservative Party British Broadcasting Corporation Democratic Unionist Party European Union Green Party Independent International Commission on Decommissioning International Monitoring Commission Irish National Caucus Independent Labour Independent Nationalist Independent Irish National Liberation Army Irish Republican Army/Provisional IRA Labour Party Loyalist Volunteer Force Member of the European Parliament Member of the Legislative Assembly Northern Ireland Labour Party Northern Ireland Unionist Party Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition Irish Northern Aid National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Proportional Representation Police Service of Northern Ireland Progressive Unionist Party Royal Ulster Constabulary Social Democratic and Labour Party Sinn Féin Socialist Party Single Transferable Vote Trades Union Congress Ulster Defence Association Ulster Democratic Party Ulster Independence Movement viii
Abbreviations
UK UKUP US UUP UUC UVF UWC WP
United Kingdom United Kingdom Unionist Party United States Ulster Unionist Party Ulster Unionist Council Ulster Volunteer Force Ulster Workers Council Workers Party
ix
Contributors Brian Barton has tutored in history with the Open University since 1995 and has authored or edited 11 books on Irish history and politics. His publications include, From behind a Closed Door; Secret Court Martial Records of the 1916 Easter Rising, The History Press, 2008 and (co-authored with Michael Foy) The Easter Rising, Sutton Publishing, 1999 and he contributed chapters on Northern Ireland to A New History of Ireland, Vol. 8, produced by the Royal Irish Academy and published in 2000 by Clarenden Press. Lord Bew is Professor of Politics in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published extensively on Irish history and politics and his most recent publications are Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789–2006, Oxford University Press, 2007 and The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement, Liffey Press, 2007. Sydney Elliott is Senior Lecturer in politics in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published extensively on electoral issues relating to Northern Ireland and is author of Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, 1968–1998, Blackwell Press, 1999. Christopher Farrington is Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College, Dublin. His most recent publication is Ulster Unionism and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, Palgrave, 2006. Graham Gudgin is Senior Economic Advisor, Oxford Economics and was Special Advisor to the First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly (1998–2002) and Director of the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre (1985–98). He has published extensively on economic matters relating to Northern Ireland including a contribution to The Northern Ireland Question: Nationalism, Unionism and Partition, Ashgate, 1999. Adrian Guelke is Professor of International Relations in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published extensively on Northern Ireland politics including Northern Ireland: The International Perspective, Gill and Macmillan, 1988. Thomas Hennessey is Reader in History at Canterbury Christ Church University and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has published
x
Contributors xi
several books on the history and politics of Northern Ireland including, The Evolution of the Troubles, 1970–72, Irish Academic Press, 2007. Dennis Kennedy has worked as a journalist in Northern Ireland, the United States, Ethiopia and the Republic of Ireland and was Deputy Editor of the Irish Times (1982–85). From 1985 to 1991 he was Head of the European Commission Office in Northern Ireland and from 1993 to 2001 lecturer in the Institute of European Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast. He has been a long-term commentator on northern-Irish politics both as a journalist and as an academic and his publications include, The Widening Gulf, Blackstaff Press, 1988 and Living with the European Union: The Northern Ireland Experience, Macmillan, 2000. Cillian McGrattan is currently completing a PhD at the University of Ulster on British government, SDLP and Ulster Unionist Party policy-making. Forthcoming publications include, ‘Dublin, the SDLP and the Sunningdale Agreement: Maximalist Nationalism and Path-Dependency’, Contemporary British History (forthcoming, 2008) and (with Aaron Edwards), The Northern Ireland Conflict, Oneworld Publications, forthcoming 2009. Austen Morgan is a barrister in London and Belfast and has published extensively on legal aspects of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and is author of The Belfast Agreement: A Practical Legal Analysis, Belfast Press, 2000. Catherine O’Donnell was a post-doctoral fellow at the Humanities Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin, 2005–07. She has published in Irish Political Studies and Contemporary British History and contributed to a collection on the 1966 commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising edited by Professor Mary E. Daly and Dr Margaret O’Callaghan, 1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 2007. Her book, Fianna Fail, Irish Republicanism and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–2005 was published by Irish Academic Press, Dublin, in 2007. Patrick J. Roche was Lecturer in Economics at the University of Ulster (1974–96) and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (1998–2003). His publications on Irish nationalism includes a contribution to Jurgen Elvert (ed.), Northern Ireland: Past and Present, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994 and he is co-editor (with Brian Barton) of three books on the ‘Northern Ireland question’ including, The Northern Ireland Question: Nationalism, Unionism and Partition, Ashgate, 1999. Jonathan Tonge is Professor of Politics in the School of Politics, University of Liverpool and Chair of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom. He has published a wide range of journal articles and book
xii Contributors
chapters on Northern Ireland and his recent books include Northern Ireland, Polity, 2000 and Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change, Pearson, 2002. Ian Wood was Lecturer at Napier University until 2002 and is currently Tutor with the Open University in European History. He is author of the best-selling, Ireland during the Second World War, Caxton Press, 2002 and Churchill, Macmillan Press, 2000 and Churchill, Caxton Press, 2002. He has worked extensively for the media and covered the conflict in Northern Ireland for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, Sunday Times, The Mirror and Sunday World.
Introduction Brian Barton and Patrick J. Roche
The analyses contained in this volume cover various aspects of the Northern Ireland peace process. These include: the historical background to the Belfast, or Good Friday, Agreement (10 April 1998), and an account of the negotiations which led to it; the repercussions of the Agreement – the efficacy of its institutions, its significance regarding the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and its impact on the electoral fortunes of the leading local political parties; its effects on the development of unionism and nationalism; its impact on the respective paramilitary organizations; an examination of the role of Southern Irish parties in the peace process; and an evaluation of United States’ involvement. The two concluding chapters offer contrasting overall assessments of the Belfast Agreement. The first two chapters deal with the historical background to the Agreement, and with the negotiations that led to it. Barton’s analysis begins by stressing Westminster’s initial reluctance to impose direct rule in Northern Ireland (during the late 1960s), despite the deepening political crisis, and it highlights the significance of Bloody Sunday in prompting this decision. It describes how, subsequent to it, the British government immediately initiated interparty discussions, with a view to the creation of devolved institutions, with power-sharing and an Irish dimension imposed (so correcting the presumed defects of the Stormont system), and then briefly charts the formation, and rapid collapse, of the Sunningdale Executive. Thereafter, in the late 1970s, it notes that the British government came to accept the necessity of direct rule for the near future, and how similarly the republican leadership adopted a ‘long war’ strategy. As a consequence, the structure of the IRA was reorganized, and Sinn Féin emerged as a campaigning party, complimentary with, and of equal weight to, the military wing; the Maze hunger strike, which transformed the character of the Northern Ireland conflict, was a milestone in this process. This chapter then discusses the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) – the motives behind it, its impact on London/Dublin security cooperation, the unionist protest campaign against it and its longer-term political significance. This 1
2
The Northern Ireland Question
is followed by an analysis of the origins of the ‘peace process’ – the context and content of the Hume-Adams talks (1988); of the Brooke-Mayhew talks (1990–92); and of the British government’s simultaneously conducted, private contacts with the republican leadership. In each case, it assesses the evidence these provide of any movement in the political positions assumed by the respective participants. The final section deals with the Hume-Adams document (June 1991) and compares its content with the Dublin and London governments’ response – the Downing Street Declaration (December 1993). It discusses the background to the IRA ceasefire (August 1994), and then the Anglo-Irish Framework Document (February 1995) which was intended to provide the basis for future interparty talks, and was devised to suggest to republicans that a settlement transitional to unity was not far distant, whilst reassuring unionists regarding the future of the Union. The chapter ends in late 1997, by which time the talks had been in session for almost two years (they began in January 1996), and there was little indication that they were likely to produce agreement. Hennessey begins his account, ‘negotiating the Agreement’, by highlighting how the formal negotiations continued to flounder until early April 1998. They had become ‘fixated’ – impaled – on the nature of any new North-South bodies, and never seemed likely to achieve Senator Mitchell’s deadline (set on 28 March) of reaching agreement by 9 April. He stresses throughout how external intervention was central to any progress being made. In January, Blair and Ahern – who shared many common positions – had produced Heads of Agreement, which were intended as the outline of a settlement, to be refined in interparty discussion; subsequently, they had resolved between themselves the key constitutional issues – the amendment of Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic’s constitution, and Westminster’s repeal of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act; and, later, they had agreed a document on the formation of North-South institutions, which was given to Senator George Mitchell on 5 April. In response to an earlier request from the two governments, Mitchell also presented a draft agreement to the parties on the following day, 6 April. The content of this (the ‘Mitchell Document’) precipitated a ‘crisis’ in the discussion process, particularly with regard to its treatment of Strand Two – the powers of the North-South Ministerial Council, and its relationship with the proposed Northern Ireland Assembly. Hennessey graphically captures the frenetic character of the negotiations conducted over the next four days, 6–10 April. In these, he notes, London and Dublin played a decisive role; they negotiated with each other and were involved, both individually and in combination, in a series of bi-lateral discussions with the key participating parties, occasionally supported at moments of crisis by President Clinton speaking on the telephone from Washington. When agreement was at last reached on Strand Two, it acted as a catalyst for further talks on Strand One, but there was throughout the constant danger of total breakdown, with one or other of the parties leaving
Introduction 3
the table. As late as mid-day on Good Friday, it seemed likely that the associated issues of arms decommissioning and Sinn Féin membership of the Executive would wreck the emerging settlement. The chapter concludes by evaluating the respective roles of Ahern and Blair in the talks process, and by assessing which of the participants did best – the unionists or the nationalists – out of the agreement reached. It concludes by suggesting that the negotiations process illustrates above all the ‘power of personal diplomacy’, but stresses also how vital was the shared desire amongst participants to end the conflict, after more than a quarter of a century of violence. The next three contributions analyse the repercussions of the Agreement, examining the efficacy of the governmental structures it created, the extent to which it changed Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, and its impact on the electoral fortunes of the major parties. Gudgin’s contribution focuses on the period 1998–2002, and assesses the effectiveness of the devolved institutions that had been agreed, and which operated through the Executive and the Assembly. It identifies two fundamental constraints on effective devolved government. The first relates to the nature of the Executive itself. It was the ‘centre piece’ of the architecture of devolution established under the Belfast Agreement, and functioned as an involuntary coalition, selected from the four major parties in the Assembly, by the operation of the d’Hondt mechanism; this imposed an institutional constraint. As an involuntary coalition, it consequently lacked central control – a circumstance exacerbated by the lack of a collegiate relationship between the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) – and it was formed by parties with underdeveloped political programmes and radically divergent long-term (unionist/nationalist) political objectives. The second constraint Gudgin addresses was the unstable political context in which the Executive had to operate post-1998. In essence, this was due to the inclusion of Sinn Féin in government and the fact that its interpretation of the Agreement did not require the decommissioning of IRA weapons; though this was resisted by unionists, it was rooted in the ambiguities of the Agreement itself. Sinn Féin membership of the Executive without any prior handover of arms, combined with the release of republican and loyalist prisoners, and the reconstruction of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC; the ‘peace process’ dimension of the Agreement), eroded unionist support for implementation of the Agreement. Between 1998 and 2002, the Executive was suspended four times. By the time of the election in 2005, the UUP had lost 55 per cent of its support in 1997. The effectiveness of government was largely due to the broader UK and EU context, and the fact that the local civil service was well integrated into the UK system; as a consequence, much of the legislation and many of the departmental actions would have occurred whether or not Northern Ireland had had devolved structures. Gudgin’s overall conclusion is that the Assembly probably had little real impact on the lives of most of the people it served; hence their ‘resounding silence’ when it was suspended in October 2002.
4
The Northern Ireland Question
Morgan’s chapter provides a detailed analysis of the legal and constitutional content of the Belfast Agreement (that is, the British-Irish Agreement and the Multi-Party Agreement). He focuses on two fundamental questions: did it provide for a united Ireland – his core content – and did the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) succeed in replacing it at St Andrews in October 2006? In essence, his contribution is directed towards a refutation of both claims. Clearly, the sections of the Belfast Agreement most relevant to the question of Irish unity are those dealing with constitutional/legal issues, and the provisions for devolved government in Northern Ireland. Morgan’s position is that the document is ‘firmly rooted’ in the 1920–22 partition settlement in Ireland – that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom is recognized in Article 1, paragraphs (i) and (iii) of the British-Irish Agreement (signed by Blair and Ahern on 10 April 1998). Northern Ireland’s status within the Union is based on the 1800 Acts of Union, and Morgan argues that these were not repealed by either: (1) the reference in Article 1, paragraph (iii) of the British-Irish Agreement to the Union ‘reflect[ing] and rel[ying] upon’ the ‘present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland’ or (2) the repeal of section 75 of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. His perspective is that reference to the Union ‘reflect[ing] and rel[ying] upon’ unionist aspiration is a political (as distinct from a legal/constitutional) statement, and that the repeal of section 75 of the 1920 Act did not involve a constitutional abrogation of the United Kingdom’s territorial claim to Northern Ireland. This interpretation is obviously compatible with the ‘consent principle’ set out in Article 1, paragraph (iii) of the British-Irish Agreement – that a change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland would require the ‘consent of a majority of its people’. More specifically, a united Ireland would also require the agreement of the electorate of the Republic, but since the cession of territory from one state to another must be by international agreement, a united Ireland would require (in addition to the approval of the Northern and Southern electorates) agreement between Dublin and London as set out in the 1998 Northern Ireland Act. The ‘consent principle’ in the Belfast Agreement is located within the notion of ‘self-determination’ but Morgan stresses that the fact that unification requires consent North and South (plus agreement between London and Dublin) means that it does not incorporate or concede what he refers to as ‘the classic right of self-determination’ – that is, the notion of ‘self-determination’ which is central to traditional ‘one nation’ Irish nationalism. This interpretation of the ‘consent principle’ within the Belfast Agreement is reinforced by the repeal of Articles 2, 3 of the Republic’s constitution – specifically the ‘territorial claim’ which would have been inconsistent with the ‘consent principle’ incorporated into the Belfast Agreement. As a consequence of these considerations, the import of Morgan’s legal/constitutional interpretation of the Agreement is that it actually consolidated the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the Union.
Introduction 5
In Chapter 5, Elliott analyses the electoral implications of the Belfast Agreement. As its enthusiasts had hoped, the referendum on its terms, held on 22 May 1998, resulted in an overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote of 71.1 per cent, against a ‘No’ vote of 28.9 per cent. The expectation then was that in subsequent contests the electoral position of the more moderate parties – the UUP and SDLP – would be consolidated, at the expense of the DUP and Sinn Féin. But the implementation of the Agreement produced precisely the opposite outcome; in terms of vote share, by 2001, Sinn Féin was the largest nationalist party and, by 2003, the DUP was the dominant unionist party. The decisive period for this unanticipated electoral dynamic was from 1999 to 2003. These years were marked by a significant decline in unionist support for the Belfast Agreement (it had never stood at more than 55 per cent of the unionist electorate) and a substantial movement of nationalist votes to Sinn Féin. The consolidation of the political domination of these two parties from 2003 onwards provided the electoral basis for the 2007 DUP/ Sinn Féin deal, which was followed by the restoration of both the Assembly and the Executive. Elliott’s chapter provides a detailed analysis, based on election statistics and surveys, of both the vote management strategies and communal voting patterns which in combination resulted in this transformation of Northern Ireland politics. The next two chapters consider the impact of the Belfast Agreement on unionism and on Northern nationalism. Farrington’s analysis begins with a consideration of the changes which occurred in unionist ideology and political strategy prior to 1998. He detects a movement within unionist ideology during the early 1990s from an ‘ethnically exclusive’ to a ‘multinational’ view of the British state. He argues that this multi-national interpretation of the state was highly significant, because it provided an ideological framework within which unionists were able to present the state as capable of accommodating those Northern Irish nationalists who were committed to the principle of consent. The concomitant shift in political strategy was from a ‘stone faced’ opposition, which had resulted in the marginalization of unionism prior to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, to one of active engagement in the political process. These ideological and strategic shifts did not of course bring about a homogeneous unionism – there were divisions within unionism on the extent to which the multi-national perspective should incorporate the substance and symbolism of a ‘thick British identity’, and there was strategic divergence on the issue of engagement in the pre-1998 political process. These divergences explain the variation in unionist responses to the peace process. But Farrington’s core thesis is that these ideological and strategic shifts (which were profoundly influenced by unionist experience of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement) were a necessary precondition for unionist engagement in the pre-1998 ‘peace process’. In relation to unionism’s split over the Belfast Agreement, Farrington distinguishes between the key ‘constitutional’ questions – power-sharing, NorthSouth institutions and consent – and those relating to conflict resolution,
6
The Northern Ireland Question
such as prisoner release, policing and decommissioning. He argues that the ‘constitutional’ matters were broadly uncontroversial for unionists; rather, their opposition to the implementation of the Agreement was ‘framed’ by the issues of policing and decommissioning. He considers that the divergent nature of their response to the implementation process was exacerbated by ‘institutional’ factors such as political competition between the DUP and the UUP, and by the ratification process within the UUP. He suggests that it was the question of decommissioning which prevented Trimble from effectively mobilizing unionist opinion in favour of the Agreement. Farrington’s position is that by 2007 the issues of policing and decommissioning were largely resolved, and that consequently the DUP was faced with a political context in which the implementation of the Agreement was more likely to be received favourably by grassroots unionism. Farrington’s contribution is complimented by McGrattan’s on Northern nationalism, the central emphasis of which is on the commitment of Northern nationalism to the traditional objective of Irish unity. His perspective specifically involves a rejection of the depiction of the SDLP under the leadership of Hume as ‘revisionist’ (with respect to the ultimate unificationist goal of traditional Irish nationalism) and pragmatically disposed to an accommodation with unionism. He therefore discounts the presentation of Northern nationalism in recent analyses as: (1) increasingly willing to participate with unionists in the operation of Northern Ireland state structures as a conscious dilution of commitment to unification; and (2) engaged in replacing the unificationist rhetoric of traditional Irish nationalism with the language of ‘equality’, and with a reappraisal of the ‘British presence’ in Ireland. McGrattan’s core position is that Northern nationalism is committed to a strategy of ‘banking’ gains from British policy interventions (such as the proroguing of Stormont), and of exploiting the divisions within unionism. He argues that this strategy is directed towards the long-term nationalist objective of Irish unity, not the accommodation of unionism. He considers that this nationalist approach was consolidated by the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement (which opened up new opportunities for the emergence of pannationalism) and, more specifically, by the Hume-Adams policy convergence, 1988–93. His position is that the Northern nationalist commitment to Irish unity remains intact under the 2008 DUP-Sinn Féin ‘consociational’ pact, and consequently that a constitutional settlement, or rapprochement, is unlikely between nationalism and unionism. Chapters eight and nine relate to the impact of the Belfast Agreement on the republican and loyalist paramilitaries. In his contribution, Tonge highlights the ‘neutering of the IRA’ and the ‘electoral growth of Sinn Féin’ as ‘among the most striking features of the peace process’. He identifies four phases in the evolving relationship between these two arms of republicanism. From 1970–80, Sinn Féin was ‘cheerleader’ for the IRA, an organization which espoused traditional republican beliefs, regarded the armed struggle
Introduction 7
as legitimate – it was the almost exclusive focus of republican energy – and was then deeply distrustful of politics. During 1981–93, Sinn Féin’s relative status was transformed to one of parity of importance, of complimentarity, with the IRA. The 1981 hunger strike had changed the Party’s attitude towards the electoral process, a ‘twin-track’ approach was adopted, one crucial symptom of which was its recognition of the Dail in 1986. The third phase began in 1994, with the IRA ceasefire; from then until 2005, Sinn Féin became the ‘sole political vehicle of republicanism’ – the dominant arm. It opposed the continuation of the armed struggle, appealed to the IRA to abandon physical force, to decommission its arms, and support Sinn Féin entry into government, urged Britain to act as ‘persuaders’ of unionists regarding unity, and sought to form a pan-nationalist front. However, John Major’s shelving of the Framework Document, and insistence on the handover of weapons and on a ‘quarantine period’ prior to inclusive inter-party talks, caused such strains within the IRA that its campaign was temporarily resumed – not because of the imminence of a partitionist settlement, but in order to hold the organization together. Ultimately, Tonge argues, Sinn Féin/IRA was not strong enough politically or militarily to achieve unity, and therefore sought a settlement on the best terms possible. Sinn Féin recognition of the Northern Ireland state, and of the consent principle in the Agreement, were the price it paid for entry into government and its acquisition of political influence. It regarded both of these as being in the best interests of the nationalist electorate, and the most effective means of attaining an ‘Ireland of equals’; prisoner release and reforms relating to police, human rights, and the equality agenda, followed. Tonge discusses ‘“dissident” IRAs and resistant republicans’, and he also emphasises the gradual character of the IRA’s ‘going away’ – exploiting the vagueness of the terms agreed in order to avoid splits, and extract further concessions from Britain. But since 2005, Sinn Féin has become the ‘exclusive republican vehicle’; it entered the fourth and final phase in its evolutionary relationship with the IRA. The concluding section of Tonge’s chapter provides a comprehensive and lucid examination of the extent to which republican ideology changed over the previous thirty years, how this has been variously interpreted, and how the conflicting analyses might be synthesized. In his study of the loyalist paramilitaries, Wood indicates at the outset that though the role of the UDP and PUP was ‘not decisive’ in the Belfast Agreement negotiations, they did ‘help to shape a purposeful atmosphere’, and notes that their respective leaderships subsequently campaigned for a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum. But their experience thereafter – in the Assembly election (June 1998) – diverged. The PUP vote held up well; it was better at distancing itself from its paramilitary associations than the UDP, for whom the contest was ‘a fatal blow’, which served to accentuate the UDA’s growing disenchantment with the peace process. During the decade
8
The Northern Ireland Question
that followed, the trajectory of both parties, and of their associated paramilitary organizations, showed broad similarities. In this period, UVF members were involved in recurring feuds with the UDA and LVF, and in sectarian and racist attacks, rioting, drug dealing, and other criminal activities. This was noted and excoriated in successive IMC reports. As a consequence, the PUP was fined £25,000 in 2004 and in 2005 the Secretary of State declared that the British government no longer recognized the UVF ceasefire. By early 2006, some leaders of the force spoke of winding down its military structure – going ‘out of business’ – arguing that the UVF no longer served any legitimate purpose since republicans now accepted the principle of consent. Similarly, at the time of the St Andrews’ Agreement negotiations, David Ervine spoke of the approaching ‘end of their [the UVF’s] existence.’ In the 2003 Assembly election, he was the only PUP member to survive; the Speaker ‘refused to sanction’ his subsequent request to ‘sit on the UUP’s benches at Stormont’. Likewise, post Belfast Agreement, the UDA ‘descended’ into crime. In addition, it experienced recurrent, vicious, internal power struggles (closely related to Johnny Adair’s ambition to take over the movement), and indulged in brutal feuding with the UVF and continued its sectarian attacks on Roman Catholics and on their property. Consequently it too was repeatedly censured in IMC reports. However, from 2004, influential figures within its Inner Council energetically sought to move the organization away from illegality and paramilitarism towards political engagement, the pressures to do so having increased following the IRA’s formal abandonment of the armed struggle in July 2005. They were successful in standing down from their commands, or in expelling, prominent recalcitrant members, forcing some to seek refuge in Great Britain. But these distracting internal preoccupations consistently neutralized those UDA elements who might otherwise have made a significant contribution to the political process. Thus the UDP had expired by 2001, and the UDA was not represented in the St Andrews’ Agreement negotiations. In his conclusion, Wood defends the ‘right’ of members of both the UDA and UVF to a ‘real political role ... if they so choose [and] ... if ... at last prepared to consign the gun and balaclava to history.’ Chapters 10 and 11 set the Belfast Agreement in a broader context – that of the Irish Republic and the US. In her analysis of Southern Irish politics, O’Donnell’s core thesis is that the text of the Agreement incorporated the ideological perspectives of both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Though historically both these parties had been committed to Irish unity, the main issue that had divided them during the 1970s and 1980s was their differing positions on Northern Ireland. The ideology of Fianna Fail has consistently been rooted in a notion of ‘self-determination’ that incorporated the integrity and sovereignty of the ‘one nation’ on the island of Ireland, which it understood to be the ‘national territory’. The thrust of its policy during the 1970s and 1980s was that the partition of Ireland was the root cause of republican
Introduction 9
violence. The logic of this position was therefore that progress towards Irish unity was essential in order to remove this root cause, and to erode support for the IRA. In contrast, the ideological commitment of Fine Gael from the early 1970s was to unity by consent, with a policy focus on securing ‘power sharing’ in Northern Ireland, combined with a strong Irish dimension – as in the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. The Belfast Agreement incorporated the Fianna Fail notion of ‘selfdetermination’ and the Fine Gael ‘consent principle’ (this forms the basis of the current consensus on Northern Ireland between all the constitutional political parties in the Republic). Both now concur not only on the traditional long-term goal of Irish unity, but also on the short-term objective of the full implementation of the Agreement. Electoral competition between them with respect to the North now focuses on the issue of competency in the management of this short-term goal – that is of consolidating the peace process and of implementing the Agreement. O’Donnell argues that, for the first time since the start of the Troubles, there is now the basis for cross-party accord on short term as well as long term objectives in Northern Ireland. The focus of Guelke’s contribution regarding the role of the United States in the peace process and in the implementation of the Belfast Agreement is on the ‘high profile’ nature the Clinton administration’s involvement. But he stresses that this did not represent a break in the continuity of US policy towards the conflict, which stretched back over several decades. Guelke notes that Clinton’s interventions coincided with the ‘internal’ formation within Northern Ireland of the ‘elements’ of the peace process during the early 1990s, and with the end of the Cold War. Both of these considerations are relevant to his assessment of the two major, competing explanations for American involvement. The first is that the end of the Cold War weakened the significance of the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the US, and that this freed the latter from concern over offending the British government with respect to Northern Ireland. A second, alternative, perspective is that Clinton’s actions were a reaction to the opportunities created by the independent development of the peace process within Northern Ireland. Guelke provides a nuanced assessment of the evidence in relation to these approaches, and also considers the view that US intervention was significantly driven by domestic electoral considerations, and by the ‘ethnicization’ of the policies of the Democratic and the Republican Parties. He concludes by stating that what his survey ‘underscores is that there is no single overriding explanation of American engagement in the peace process’, and that ‘the American connection was simply one strand among many in influencing the course of British policy in Northern Ireland’. The concluding chapters provide contrasting assessments of the Belfast Agreement. Bew evaluates it within the context of a distinction between two of its dimensions – the ‘political constitutional settlement’ of Strands One
10 The Northern Ireland Question
and Two, and what he refers to as the ‘side-bar politics of the gun’ issues, such as prisoner release and arms decommissioning. He argues that the ‘political constitutional settlement’ was based on Blair’s decision to give ‘priority to the centre parties’; the Agreement is presented as having been created essentially by the UUP, and by the SDLP backed by Dublin. He considers its Strand Two content as being a significant dilution of the ‘Irish dimension’ proposed in the 1995 Framework Document, and asserts that the negotiation of the overall ‘political-constitutional settlement’ effectively broke the pan-nationalist unity of the SDLP and the Sinn Féin Party which was, as a consequence, marginalized. He suggests that in order to achieve a settlement, Blair therefore decided to off-set republican disappointment with the constitutional terms, by making significant concessions on ‘politics of the gun’ issues. Noting that both the SDLP and UUP assumed that their respective electorates would reward them for securing the Good Friday Agreement, Bew provides an explanation as to why this optimism proved to be misplaced. He considers that in ‘taking ownership’ of the Agreement, Sinn Féin made a crucial strategic decision which electorally positioned it to become the major party of Northern nationalism. Meanwhile, the DUP exploited the ‘politics of the gun’ issues to electorally marginalize the UUP; a vital overall factor in accounting for the centre parties (UUP, SDLP) being replaced by the extremes (DUP, Sinn Féin) was what Bew refers to as the ‘visible bribery’ of Sinn Féin by the Blair government. From their respective positions of dominance within Northern Ireland politics, Bew adds, both the DUP and Sinn Féin embraced the Good Friday Agreement ‘in a kilt’ at St Andrews in 2006. Nevertheless, Bew detects the potential for future political crisis. First, he notes that the Belfast Agreement in its implementation had (in Yeats’ term) acquired the ‘habit of eating its children’; the DUP and Sinn Féin have not escaped. The DUP experienced a serious by-election setback in February 2008, which was followed by Paisley’s resignation as First Minister on 4 March 2008, whilst the all-Ireland political strategy of Sinn Féin died in the ‘killing fields’ of the Republic’s 2007 general election. Second, there remains what Bew refers to as the ‘looming crisis’ over the devolution of policing and justice, which is demanded by Sinn Féin, but resisted by the DUP. However, Bew considers that it would be ‘exceptionally pessimistic’ to believe that the institutions established under the Belfast Agreement will not survive. He argues that the success of the Agreement is demonstrated by the willingness of the DUP (at a time of what he considers minimal pressure) to do a deal with Sinn Féin to operate its institutions. The Agreement was, he suggests, a victory for unionism because it ‘explicitly re-enacts’ British sovereignty in the North, while at the same time securing the removal of the Republic’s territorial claim. This, for him, represents the ‘triumph of the Belfast Agreement’. The core argument in Kennedy’s more critical appraisal is that the Belfast Agreement was (in Kipling’s phrase) a ‘Dane-geld’ paid to the IRA to secure an end to its armed struggle – with the release of convicted prisoners, the
Introduction 11
disbandment of the RUC and the participation of members of Sinn Féin in government being the most explicit elements of the payment made under its terms. But he also argues that at a more fundamental level it has left intact two major dimensions of Irish nationalism. The first is the demand for Irish unity. He asserts that the 1921 settlement provided a guarantee to unionists against any change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, but that the Belfast Agreement provides an entirely different emphasis – the guarantee is now for Irish unity – with the British state in future committed to adopting a neutral position in relation to this core issue. Second, he considers that the Belfast Agreement also leaves intact the nationalist cult of violence – the ‘ethos of 1916’. Kennedy detects a linguistic dimension in the Belfast Agreement which he argues amounts to a rewriting of history, and obscures the true nature of republican ‘terrorism’. In his view, this gives credibility to the IRA’s position that their campaign was a ‘struggle for justice’, rather than ‘terrorism’ directed against the Democratic government. These considerations are reinforced by what Kennedy presents as the marginalization of Northern Ireland within the Union, and by the extensive institutionalized role in relation to its affairs that is given to Dublin under the terms of the Agreement. The overall effect is to make it a ‘place apart’ within the United Kingdom, and to transpose issues relating to it from a UK to an Anglo-Irish, or ‘island of Ireland’, context. In Kennedy’s view, the Belfast Agreement does not provide a ‘final resolution’ to the fundamental issue of partition in Irish politics, and that it may well contribute to increased intercommunal polarization. He suggests that an agreement which leaves intact both the unificationist objective and the ‘ethos of 1916’ is likely to reinforce nationalist expectations, and may precipitate further republican violence. Similarly, he argues that the marginalization of Northern Ireland within the Union (both in the Agreement, and in current political discourse in the United Kingdom about the state of the Union) is equally likely to excite unionist fears. He considers that this potential for political instability is reinforced by what he identifies as the ‘structural weakness’ within the Belfast Agreement. He is referring specifically to the enforced coalition between the DUP and Sinn Féin (consequent on the application of the d’Hondt system), with their diametrically opposed political objectives with respect to the crucial issue of partition. Kennedy, therefore, presents the Belfast Agreement as a framework for instability which has rendered the fundamental political problem more intractable.
1 The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement Brian Barton
Direct rule With justification, Terence O’Neill observed, in 1972, that ‘[recent] British policy has been determined by a desire to avoid direct rule’.1 In August 1966, he had advised London that it was time to ‘call a halt’ to his modernization programme, owing to a furious Protestant ‘backlash’, with Ian Paisley’s ‘movement ... its main manifestation’.2 Both then and as the political crisis deepened, however, the Labour government pressed for continued reform, threatening otherwise legislative action by Westminster, and a ‘fundamental reappraisal’ of Northern Ireland–British relations. Labour ministers considered that the minority had legitimate grievances, that street demonstrations were justified, but that through the adoption of British standards, nationalist alienation could be mollified and British intervention avoided.3 Chichester-Clark, O’Neill’s successor, was similarly advised to ‘keep up the momentum of reform’. In 1969, as the violence escalated, he was warned not to rely on the armed forces to keep order as this was ‘bound to have ... constitutional consequences’; it would ‘make political intervention inevitable’.4 At the time, when British ministers reviewed their policy options, no obvious solution emerged. Troop withdrawal was thought difficult to justify if Stormont was introducing liberalizing measures and, even more so, if it adopted regressive policies, as this would mean abandoning the minority. Independence, it was believed would further polarize opinion in the North, result in increased violence and represent Britain abdicating its responsibilities. Some considered that unity was possibly in the long-term interests of Britain and Ireland, but with the stipulation that this must be by consent – a prospect not enhanced by what was perceived to be the ill-informed nature of Dublin’s policies. Re-partition was regarded as impracticable, given the concentration of Catholics in Belfast. It was felt that direct rule might possibly provoke a Protestant backlash; in any case, it was regarded as unpalatable at Westminster, difficult to terminate once initiated and ill advised 12
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
13
from historical experience, but maybe ultimately unavoidable. Draft legislation to introduce it was prepared in early 1969.5 In March 1971, British ministers were informed that, owing to the persistence and high levels of violence, Chichester-Clark’s government was ‘finished, [its] morale ... completely sapped’6; he resigned on 20 May, on the grounds of Westminster’s unwillingness to intensify the campaign against the IRA. His successor, Brian Faulkner, urged (July 1971) that internment was ‘vital’, the ‘situation demanded it’.7 O’Neill’s advice was that it would ‘solve nothing’, and that the minority had become so ‘alienated’ that reforms were ‘irrelevant’; he could see ‘no solution’.8 However, in March 1971, Special Branch had argued that internment should be introduced – not because it would be effective (it estimated only 20 per cent of the IRA, the ‘small fry’, would be caught), but because otherwise ‘Protestants will take the law into their own hands.’ Crucially, Edward Heath supported it; in July he had said that ‘we [must] ... contemplate’ direct rule, but as a ‘last resort ... It might well be right to agree to internment’ first.9 He had been informed that Faulkner was losing the support of his party’s extremists. Following internment (9 August 1971), increased nationalist alienation was reflected in rising PIRA recruitment and an upsurge in violence; the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) refused to enter talks with British ministers. Thus, one week later, Heath expressed support for a political initiative in Northern Ireland to increase the role of the minority in government. But, after discussing this with Faulkner, he concluded that it was ‘not realistic’.10 Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972) was a defining moment, though this was not immediately apparent; when Lynch phoned Heath that evening, Sir Edward responded abrasively, claiming that the IRA was attempting to ‘take over the country’ and that the violence would have been ‘over long ago’ had Eire prevented the movement using the South as a safe haven.11 Nonetheless, the incident helped shape subsequent British policy, and crystallize views emerging from late 1971. Though ministers voiced concern that the conflict was perhaps insoluble, and violent intercommunal confrontation unavoidable (a recurrent theme in government papers in the 1970s), they also shared the conviction that a decisive political initiative was essential. They felt that there was ‘no possibility of persuading Roman Catholics to go back to the old system’, and yet no hope of peace unless the IRA was deprived of their support. Moreover, it seemed evident that military activity alone could not bring peace, that action was required to retain public support for the troops in Northern Ireland and that the conflict was ‘affecting ... our whole position in the world’.12 During February–March 1972, firm proposals took shape, key elements of which broadly characterized British policy over subsequent decades. It was thought that the minority must be offered a ‘guaranteed role in government’ (it would be necessary therefore to depart from the Westminster system), discrimination eradicated and internment phased out. Equally, it was
14
The Northern Ireland Question
felt that Protestants must be given reassurance regarding the integrity of Northern Ireland as part of United Kingdom; it was proposed to place the issue in ‘cold storage’ by the holding of a border plebiscite. To induce the Republic to take effective action against the IRA – regarded as a precondition of peace – there was consensus on the need for a ‘constitutional association’ between North and South, as was intended in 1921. Finally, it was considered that, given the North’s dependence on the army for internal security – probably for years – Westminster must take over the duty of maintaining law and order; though Britain had legal responsibility, it had only limited control over policy. Moreover, neither the Labour Party nor the minority in Northern Ireland would accept Stormont retaining this power. There was also a general feeling that for reform to succeed, Britain might have to impose direct rule in the interim, and that the consolidation of the army’s military success required an improvement in the political context.13 When confronted with these proposals, Faulkner showed ‘some readiness’ to bring Catholics into government (if not for Irish unity as a ‘present possibility’), but he doubted the efficacy of a border plebiscite, and ‘vehemently’ opposed the transfer of security powers to Westminster, regarding it as an unacceptable demotion of Stormont, which would be perceived as an IRA victory (Chichester-Clark would have been amenable to this change).14 He favoured continuing the existing policy of attempting to defeat the IRA, and of further reform by an unreconstructed Stormont. Overall, British ministers considered that the changes they proposed were more important than his survival. This was despite their concern that direct rule might become permanent, provoke loyalist violence and the IRA to extend its campaign to Britain. Its introduction was the decisive moment of the crisis – that it was done three years after the army was deployed was arguably ‘the greatest mistake of British policy during the “troubles”’ (Bew, 2007a, p. 496). Faulkner resigned, Stormont was suspended and a Secretary of State, William Whitelaw, assumed its executive authority (24 March 1972). He continued with the reform programme (prioritizing local government, the Special Powers Act and internment). But, in his words, ‘one of the prime objects’ of direct rule was that it would create a climate for constructive talks with and between local politicians.15 Devolution would ease the administrative burden on Westminster and it was believed to be what the Northern Ireland electorate preferred. There was also the anticipation that devolved structures could be restored quickly and that they would bring political stability and facilitate economic revival.
Sunningdale Whitelaw initiated political discussions from the moment of his appointment. When the formal sessions eventually began (mid-1973), Sinn Féin was not invited on the grounds that its presence would be repugnant to British opinion and unacceptable to unionists.16 However, in mid-1972, the British
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
15
government had made private contact with republicans – to explore their position given the new circumstances, encourage political responses and at least create a breathing space in the violence. The PIRA had emerged in 1969, in the context of sectarian conflict, minority alienation, perceived Official IRA failure and with Southern government support. It was dedicated to physical force to achieve an all-Ireland republic, distrustful of politics and determined to crush unionist resistance; in 1970, it launched an all-out offensive against ‘British occupation’. By 1972, its confidence in quick victory abounded – its popularity and military credibility had soared, despite internment its campaign had intensified, it had dictated much of recent Westminster policy towards the North and, with legitimacy, it could regard Stormont’s collapse as its own achievement. When PIRA called a truce (26 June), Whitelaw expressed hopes for the ‘emergence of political personalities ... linked with ... but separate from the IRA’ who might take a ‘role in future political discussions’. He attributed the ceasefire to Britain’s success in isolating the IRA from the minority and to ‘genuine fear of the increasing strength of the UDA’.17 But, for Martin McGuinness, the ‘only purpose’ of the subsequent secret talks was ‘to demand a British declaration of intent to withdraw’ – it was hoped within three years (Powell, 2008, p. 46). This was not forthcoming, but Britain did concede ‘special category status’ for republican prisoners. On 9 July, the PIRA campaign resumed; in London, this confirmed the view that political progress was vital, given the unattractiveness of the options. If the two communities proved to be ‘irretrievably irreconcilable’, the alternatives discussed were a ‘reconsideration of our responsibilities’ towards Northern Ireland, or the introduction of ‘extreme measures’, with no certainty that they would ‘eradicate the IRA’. In fact, after Bloody Friday (21 July 1972), some ‘sterner measures’ were taken (troops entered ‘no-go areas’); Whitelaw considered that otherwise there was ‘a very serious risk of direct action on the streets on a considerable scale’ by loyalists.18 Encouraged by Whitelaw’s reports on his talks with Northern politicians, the Conservative government introduced legislation (early 1973) to provide, in effect, a new constitution for Northern Ireland and correct the presumed defects in the Stormont system. It provided for the election of an Assembly (held under proportional representation, 28 June 1973), with limited legislative and executive powers (security was not devolved). To attract minority support, it was specified that the Executive must have cross-community support. To satisfy unionists, a border plebiscite was planned. Ministers believed that without their backing there would be no devolution and lives would be lost; they were convinced that, though yet to materialize, the ‘Protestant backlash was not a myth’.19 In addition, the British government was fully committed to the creation of a Council of Ireland, prepared to provide it with executive powers and to permit it to monitor matters still reserved to Westminster. Without the Republic’s commitment to the initiative, it considered that no Northern settlement could be permanent, the
16
The Northern Ireland Question
Dublin government would not act firmly against the IRA (and ‘our task would be immeasurably increased’), and it might induce the South to recognize the North’s constitutional status.20 This new all-Ireland body was equally valued and prioritized by the SDLP, who regarded power-sharing as insufficient to reassure the minority, given its dissatisfaction with the extent of police reform and the continued operation of internment. John Hume, regarded by British officials as the party’s ‘Jesuitical ... theoretician’, hoped to exploit unionist fragmentation and Westminster’s anxiety to build up the SDLP as a bulwark against the IRA.21 Overall, Britain’s proposals indicate recognition both that the governance of Northern Ireland required different treatment from other UK regions and that conflicting national identity lay at the heart of the conflict. From September 1973, protracted talks were held with those parties which broadly accepted the scheme proposed (Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), SDLP and Alliance). During the weeks following, Whitelaw informed colleagues that there were ‘concessions on all sides’. In return for an absolute unionist majority on the Executive, Faulkner accepted power-sharing and a Council of Ireland, but at the cost of growing internal party opposition both in the Assembly and the constituencies. In November, Whitelaw noted that ‘the main and continuing problem’ was his survival as leader, adding that he ‘must be kept afloat’ or there would be no executive. For their part, the SDLP accepted the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as defined in the 1973 Act, and their minority position on the Executive – recognizing that otherwise the devolution initiative would founder. In reciprocation, Whitelaw decided to release over 60 republican internees (December 1973) and crucially to ‘lean towards’ the SDLP’s position regarding the Council of Ireland; given the balance of the executive, he deduced that Faulkner ‘can go a long way [here]’. Nonetheless, he resisted pressure from the SDLP and Dublin for agreement on the details of the new North-South body before the formation of an executive. Thus, the composition of the latter was agreed by 21 November and, two weeks later, its members met British and Irish ministers at Sunningdale and decided on the powers and structures of the Council of Ireland; in Dublin it was hoped that it might evolve into joint authority. Northern parties opposed to power-sharing were excluded.22 On 1 January 1974, the new Northern Ireland government took office with Faulkner as Chief Executive. Its greatest achievement lay in its formation; whilst it lasted, it suffered from acute internal strains even within its circumscribed powers, whilst the Assembly frequently dissolved into chaos, its committees proved ineffective. The Executive’s collapse was due mainly to lack of unionist or republican support. On 4 January, Faulkner lost a vital vote in the Unionist Council on the Council of Ireland, despite Dublin supportively ‘staging’ the arrest of several PIRA members on the previous day; the criticisms were so bitter and personal that he instantly resigned as leader to form his own party. Likewise, the Westminster election (28 February
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
17
1974) was, in Merlyn Rees’s phrase, a ‘severe blow’ to him, which ‘affected the morale of the Executive’23; eleven of the twelve seats were won by unionist rejectionists. The Ulster Worker’s Council strike (begun 15 May 1974) precipitated Sunningdale’s collapse, when loyalist paramilitaries, trade union leaders and some unionist politicians (Paisley, William Craig, etc.) combined to mobilize the industrial strength of the Protestant working class in opposition to it. Though British ministers described it, on 24 May, as ‘an attempt by extremists to establish an unacceptable, neo-Fascist government’, they did acknowledge that the Executive was ‘not in control ... on the ground’, and that moderate Protestants were moving over to the strikers’ side.24 They felt themselves to have been in constant political retreat since 1968. Many were uneasy about power-sharing, but they viewed the Council of Ireland with particular suspicion, especially because Dublin had not reciprocated by amending its 1937 Constitution. Local industrialists informed Harold Wilson that most of their workforce regarded it as ‘a step towards absorption into the Irish Republic’25 – as indeed the SDLP hoped. Moreover, there was a growing perception that the Republic was failing to cooperate adequately in security matters. On 10 January, Francis Pym had said that the South’s policy ‘in coming weeks [would be] ... of crucial importance’, and noted that already Northerners regarded aspects of it as a ‘fiasco’.26 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF ) bomb outrages in Dublin and Monaghan (17 May 1974) were intended to discourage the Republic from ‘meddling’ in Northern politics. The Executive itself split along party lines on whether to confront the strikers or negotiate with them; the Labour government rejected both options and offered only ineffectual support. Faulkner along with his Unionist colleagues resigned on 28 May. Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – its electoral appeal ascending throughout the 1970s – embodied an aggressive, narrow defence of Protestant interests and was emboldened by this success. It pressed for a return to majority rule and, mainly for this purpose, deployed the strike weapon again – unsuccessfully – in May 1977. The Unionist Party was further weakened by Sunningdale. Earlier, the fall of Stormont had dealt it a hammer blow, removing its main perceived bulwark against Irish unity, cutting it off from civil service advisors and truncating its leader’s powers of patronage, thus accentuating its divisions. It was more deeply split after the fall of the Executive; the episode confirmed its uneasiness regarding new political initiatives – concerned that the North’s constitutional status would be compromised. In the media, it became associated with negativism, a refusal to participate in imaginative dialogue, a movement identified with ancient privilege and recent sectarian oppression. Whilst some supported devolution, key figures (Molyneaux, Powell, etc.) were integrationists – recognizing that Stormont’s restitution was unobtainable; direct rule at least preserved the Union, albeit precariously, and might reduce the violence.
18 The Northern Ireland Question
The SDLP, in contrast, appeared productive of ideas, progressive and constructive in approach, its leaders well received and influential in Dublin and London. That it held out the prospect of peace, if nationalist alienation was eradicated, heightened its political leverage, whilst its anti-imperialist/ nationalist interpretation of the conflict found widespread acceptance. Its concessions had helped make Sunningdale possible, but it was less flexible than it seemed. Its initial advice to Whitelaw (12 December 1972) had been that he opt for joint Dublin/London authority over Northern Ireland, adding that ‘what was needed was the long-term certainty of political union by 1980, within the context of the EC’.27 Two months later, a British official described it as a party of ‘dedicated republicans’.28 By inflating the powers and role of the Council of Ireland, it made Faulkner’s position untenable.
The ‘long war’ Though the level of violence dropped post-1972, it still so polarized opinion that prospects for an agreed internal settlement remained remote. Nonetheless, British ministers persisted with attempts at devolution. They attributed Sunningdale’s failure partly to their having been too prescriptive. Thus, in 1975, when a Constitutional Convention was organized, it was provided with loose guidelines only, and informed that if it could devise a settlement, with intercommunal support, this would be implemented by Westminster. However, in the Convention election (1 May 1975), unionists who opposed power-sharing and favoured institutions on the Westminster model won 54 per cent of the vote. Reflecting this, its main report proposed (November 1975) a return to majority rule and made no provision for an Irish dimension. This was as unacceptable to Westminster as it was to the SDLP. Meanwhile, the government’s secret contacts with PIRA, facilitated by Protestant clergy acting as intermediaries, had resulted in a second ceasefire (December 1974–September 1975). In June 1974, Harold Wilson had proposed British withdrawal and the granting of dominion status to Northern Ireland – to the horror of the SDLP, the Irish government and even Washington. It contributed to a local context of ‘fevered speculation ... about the possibility of British disengagement’ (Patterson, 2007, p. 248). In subsequent talks, British ministers agreed to finance Sinn Féin-manned ‘incident centres’ in nationalist areas (to enable the party to monitor the cessation, in liason with government officials, and defuse volatile incidents). Though numerous other concessions were offered, British withdrawal was not – due primarily to divisions within Britain’s political leadership and opposition from Dublin. Thereafter, both the British government and the republican movement appear to have accepted that there would be no quick breakthrough in Northern Ireland. Roy Mason (James Callaghan’s appointee as Secretary of State, 1976–79) expended little effort on devolution. He defended direct rule, downplayed any Irish dimension to the conflict and claimed to have
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
19
‘shattered the myths of [British] political, economic and military withdrawal’. His declared aim was to bring ‘peace, political calm and stabilisation’.29 The broad direction of security policy was towards ‘criminalisation’ – the adoption of normal legal procedures in response to violence, in part to foster the perception that its roots were criminal rather than political. One consequence was that, in 1976, PIRA prisoners lost the special category status gained in 1972. Labour ministers also encouraged the ‘Ulsterisation’ of the conflict, to reinforce the view that it was an internal UK problem, amenable to ordinary policing methods. Thus the number of troops in the Six Counties was reduced (by 6000 during 1972–76), and local policing services expanded (to over 10,000 Royal Ulster Constabulary and reservists in 1977) and their arms, equipment and organization improved. Simultaneously, steps were taken to stimulate the Ulster economy, to eradicate the causes of disorder and counteract its impact on investment. Westminster also introduced legislation to eliminate sectarian discrimination, and improve social welfare provision, largely to help legitimize the state within the minority community; but the broad impact of Labour’s policies (1974–79) was to antagonize it. This contributed to the government’s fall. When it lost a vital Commons division by 311 votes to 310 (28 March 1979), the two Northern nationalist MPs had abstained. After c1975, Northern republicans likewise reappraised their strategy, with Adams as its main architect. Recognizing that there would be no quick victory but rather a ‘long war’ – lasting possibly two decades, the leadership initiated structural and tactical changes, and converted the movement to a ‘twin-track’ approach. On the military side, prompted in part by Britain’s recent security measures and intelligence penetration, a secretive PIRA structure was devised, open battalions and companies being replaced by underground cells; in addition, a new Northern command was formed, and volunteer training in interrogation techniques was improved. At the same time, it was decided to expand the movement’s political involvement. Deficiencies here had been exposed during the second ceasefire, which had damaged the organization’s cohesion and collective morale; its members were then exclusively conducting an ‘armed struggle’, without which there was no campaign at all. In the mid-1970s, Sinn Féin became a campaigning party, rather than merely an IRA support organization, concerned to broaden republican support. That such an initiative was needed is suggested by the 1976 peace movement in west Belfast, which provided evidence of a growing war weariness, sentiments which must have been reinforced when Pope John Paul II appealed for peace at Drogheda (September 1979). However, the government’s phasing out of special category status for IRA prisoners created new opportunities. From 1976, the prisoners’ initial campaign in response had included the ‘dirty protest’, refusal to wear prison uniform, and a hunger strike which had disintegrated by December 1980; these had attracted scant public interest. But Bobby Sands, OC Maze Prison, amongst
20
The Northern Ireland Question
others, was convinced that the issue could be exploited to mobilize support and puncture popular indifference. The hunger strike, led by Sands from 1 March 1981, transformed the political character of the Northern Ireland conflict. Sympathetic pressure groups were formed, supportive marches attracted tens of thousands and the Maze became the focus of media and political attention. Chance circumstances provided an opportunity to exploit this favourable context. When Frank Maguire died (independent Nationalist MP at Westminster for FermanaghSouth Tyrone since 1974, and ex-IRA internee), Sinn Féin nominated Sands as its candidate in the resulting by-election; he stood unopposed by any other nationalist representative. His victory, a propaganda coup, provided evidence that the Provisionals’ campaign had significant electoral backing. On 5 May 1981, Sands died having, through his death, solidified support for the republican cause, and magnified political tensions throughout the North; unionists had observed it with incomprehension and contempt. Sinn Féin also took advantage of an election in the Republic (11 June 1981). It put forward nine H-Block prisoners, so enabling the party to test its electoral appeal without raising the divisive issue of the legitimacy of the Dail, as none of them would be in a position to take their seats. Two of them were successful, Fianna Fail was defeated in a close contest and a Fine Gael/Labour coalition returned briefly to office. The prisoners’ death toll had reached ten before the deadlock was broken through the initiative of the families of those refusing food, and the timely intervention of a local priest, who led them in a delegation to the Northern Ireland Office (early October). That the essentials of the terms agreed had been on offer since June suggests that the action had been prolonged for reasons of political calculation. Subsequently, Adams and other Northern urban republicans succeeded in asserting their leadership of the movement and proceeded to exploit further the gains of the H-block agitation. It had reinforced their view that the political process could be a valuable adjunct to the physical force campaign; at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Danny Morrison graphically summarized their strategy, stating: ‘Will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other hand, we take power in Ireland?’ But, he urged, ‘political activity won’t get the Brits out, the IRA will’ (Bew and Gillespie, 1999, p. 157). In June 1983, Adams became Westminster MP for West Belfast and, five months later, was elected Party President. In November 1986, Sinn Féin formally abandoned its policy of abstention from the Dail. Earlier that year the PIRA, at its first general army convention since 1970, had ratified this increased political involvement – if its physical force campaign was not compromised. Nonetheless, as Sinn Féin became engaged in community politics, broadened republican support and challenged the SDLP, ineluctably its relationship with its military wing changed. It became one of equivalence and complimentarity, and with it the likelihood of pragmatism diluting republican ideals increased.
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
21
The armalite/ballot box strategy was the most dynamic influence on Northern politics during the early 1980s, quickly consigning constitutional nationalism to an uncertain future, whilst also pushing Fianna Fail towards a more republican posture in the Republic. In contrast, the loyalist paramilitaries operated in a much less favourable context. Their not inconsiderable influence on events derived mainly from the fears that their brutal activities engendered. Following the 1974 Ulster Workers Council (UWC) strike, they were largely ‘frozen out’ by respectable unionist politicians. Their pro-state, sectarian terror, acting on the precept ‘a Catholic for every Protestant’, was widely regarded as irrelevant and unnecessary within their own communities, as the security forces’ response to the Provisionals became more effective (Wood, 2003, p. 88). They failed to develop a political programme enabling them to compete with success in elections. The appeal of their representatives was hampered not just by their paramilitary associations but also by the class deference of the Protestant electorate. The UVF was numerically small and politically incohesive. Its forages into politics were typified by occasional, narrowly focused, pressure groups, which campaigned on issues lacking appeal within the broader unionist constituency, or parties with platforms devised specifically to attract loyalist working class support. The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) did periodically attempt to seize the political initiative. In the mid-1970s, elements within it proposed negotiated independence, within the Commonwealth and with equal rights guaranteed, as a possible ‘common denominator’ for Ulstermen, a ‘third way’. Some of its members also promoted a revised version of Ulster’s history to counteract the republican slogan: ‘Brits out’. Such ideas generated more interest from media commentators than from the movement’s rank and file or the Protestant community at large. Thus, Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) candidates rarely attracted more than 2–3 per cent of votes cast in any form of election. Moreover, the government consistently acted much more successfully against pro-state than republican violence.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement, 1985, and its aftermath Britain’s most ambitious attempt at an Irish settlement since the 1920s occurred under the Thatcher government. Initially there was much continuity between its policies and those preceding it. On security, emergency legislation introduced in the 1970s was marginally amended and seemed to be assuming permanency and, despite the impact of the hunger strike, the shift towards ‘police primacy’ continued. Where innovation did occur, it tended to be controversial – such as the use of ‘supergrasses’, and alleged ‘shoot to kill’ policy adopted by the security forces from the late 1970s. Likewise, the Conservatives’ social and economic measures largely echoed those of previous administrations; the ‘Thatcher revolution’ was less
22
The Northern Ireland Question
ideologically driven when applied to Northern Ireland than to Britain. Nor was there much reason to anticipate constitutional innovation during her premiership. The Party’s 1979 manifesto had contained a commitment merely to increase council powers in the North but this was not implemented. The murder of Airey Neave (30 March 1979), an integrationist, removed its greatest enthusiast. Instead, two further attempts were made at devolution. Responding to pressure from the United States in early 1980, Humphrey Atkins, Secretary of State, called a conference of local politicians to discuss the formation of a regional government; the UUP refused to attend, and it collapsed as there was no ‘real common ground’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 387). In 1982, his successor, James Prior, attempted ‘rolling devolution’, but the SDLP’s non-participation eliminated any prospect of consensus. These two initiatives highlighted the continuing irreconcilability of the unionist and nationalist positions. The UUP feared that the devolution plans were part of a British strategy of extrication from Northern Ireland; it broadly favoured continued direct rule but would have welcomed local government reform. The DUP still sought a modified Stormont – with majority rule, no built-in power-sharing and no Irish dimension. The SDLP had likewise been wary of both devolution schemes. John Hume (leader, November 1979) was critical of their lack of provision for an Irish dimension. He was also aware that the elected assembly in any internal settlement would be unionist-controlled and was concerned at Sinn Féin’s new political strategy. From 1974, he espoused an all-Ireland approach and was already considering the construction of an international coalition to pressurize Britain to change policy. His apparent wish to impose a settlement over the heads of the Northern majority caused resignations from his party (Gerry Fitt, Paddy Devlin). In May 1983, he helped organize the New Ireland Forum in Dublin, where he argued strongly for unification; the Forum report (May 1984) similarly backed a unitary Irish state as its option of first preference, though both a federal arrangement and joint London/Dublin authority in Northern Ireland were thought worth consideration. Thatcher dismayed its authors by dismissing all three with the phrase: ‘Out, out, out’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 400). Yet, on 15 November 1985, Thatcher was to sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement – her most innovative response to the conflict. It established a joint ministerial conference of British and Irish ministers, backed by a permanent secretariat, which was to meet regularly to discuss mainly political, security and legal matters relating to Northern Ireland. Thus, for the first time, Dublin’s right to be consulted on the region’s internal administration (in effect, to defend the interests of the minority) was recognized and formalized, and the political identity of Northern nationalists acknowledged in its institutions. Like Sunningdale, it illustrated to Irish nationalists that the constitutional position of the Six Counties could be modified. The unionist parties were not consulted about the Agreement’s terms, but Article
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
23
1 was included specifically for their reassurance – that there would be no change in the North’s constitutional status without majority consent. Moreover, they were given an incentive to soften their future negotiating position; Dublin’s consultative role would be reduced – but not, as Thatcher claimed ‘knocked out’ – if in interparty talks Northern politicians could agree on devolved power-sharing structures (Bew, 2007a, p. 532). Few could have foreseen that Thatcher, whose ‘instincts [were] ... profoundly unionist’, would have agreed to such terms (Thatcher, 1993, p. 385). After all, in 1983 the Sinn Féin Party had peaked electorally, whilst the level of violence in the North had fallen consistently, 1981–85. Moreover, Charles Haughey’s emergence as Taoiseach (December 1979), with his republican perspective and language, seemed likely to dim the prospects for such an accord; he regarded Northern Ireland as a failed entity, called for British withdrawal and demanded that unionists accept unity. Moreover, the Falklands War (1982) had embittered Anglo-Irish relations; Thatcher wrote that the Republic’s attitude then was ‘what angered me most’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 394). However, countervailing factors influenced the Conservative leadership as well. Sinn Féin’s initial electoral success – overstated by Dublin and the SDLP – appeared to threaten the stability of Ireland, not just the North, and made the reduction of Northern minority alienation seem a matter of acute urgency. Also, Thatcher was under powerful external pressure – from Labour, Dublin, the EC and the United States – to move beyond direct rule and containment and seize the initiative. There was in any case a growing governmental consensus that trenchant action was required; the region complicated Britain’s international relations, was a significant financial drain, absorbed substantial numbers of troops and created security problems throughout the United Kingdom (highlighted by the PIRA bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton, during the Conservative Party conference, 12 October 1984). The options open to London were limited – unionists opposed power-sharing, and nationalists regarded integration and institutions modelled on the Westminster model as unacceptable, whilst Thatcher rejected joint authority. Her own instincts drew her towards a pragmatic and radical approach, a course facilitated by her large Commons majority. Her officials encouraged her to consider an Anglo-Irish initiative, and she was persuaded that it would presage increased, cross-border security and judicial cooperation; this was for her the ‘acid test’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 397). It was anticipated that this would stifle unionist opposition. Thatcher did not in anyway believe the Agreement would weaken the Union, as it caused ‘no derogation in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom’ (p. 402). Even under Haughey, with whom Thatcher had easier personal relations than with FitzGerald, Anglo-Irish relations improved. In 1980, the two premiers had agreed to meet regularly, laid plans (the Taoiseach claimed) to discuss the ‘totality of relations within these islands’ and commissioned
24 The Northern Ireland Question
joint studies regarding potential areas of North-South cooperation (Thatcher, 1993, p. 390). Nonetheless, FitzGerald’s succession (December 1982) offered an ‘opportunity to improve the climate’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 395). He adopted a liberal agenda in the South and, though committed to Irish unity, his party had accepted the principle of consent in Northern Ireland since the early 1970s. Ministerial contacts with Britain increased; private discussions, begun in 1982, preceded lengthy negotiations which culminated in the Agreement. By 1989, the joint ministerial conference established in 1985 had convened 30 times. The newly instituted, bi-partisan approach suited both governments. They shared broadly similar, short-term objectives in Northern Ireland – the equal recognition of both traditions, adoption of fair employment practices, devolution and so on. Whilst the South’s formal consultative role in its administration was likely to reduce criticism of Britain’s policy there, Dublin politicians generally valued the Republic’s new status. Haughey, however, initially denounced the accord as a ‘major setback’ (claiming it made too many concessions to unionists and conflicted with the Forum Report and 1937 Constitution), and this contributed to splits within his party and failure to win an outright Dail majority. Once back in office (March 1987), he had little option but to endorse it, whilst seeking structures that would ‘transcend’ it (O’Donnell, 2007a, p. 66). Conservative government expectations regarding the efficacy of the Agreement proved misplaced. Though it was to contribute to a reappraisal of the armed struggle amongst republicans, Sinn Féin immediately denounced it – depicting it as a mechanism for bolstering the SDLP whilst marginalizing themselves, tightening security, reinforcing partition and insulating Westminster from international criticism. The IRA retained its working class support and, aided by Libyan arms, intensified its campaign. Loyalist paramilitary activity also increased, their members targeting those ‘collaborating’ with the accord, conducting random attacks on Catholics, planting bombs in Dublin city centre (November 1986). Whilst, predictably, the level of violence thus rose sharply, the security benefits which British ministers anticipated would flow from increased Anglo-Irish cooperation did not materialize. Though the Republic passed extradition legislation (December 1987), London’s repeated inability to have its terms implemented favourably strained intergovernmental relations. For their part, the Dublin authorities protested that grave miscarriages of justice were occurring in Britain, expressed concern at Westminster’s apparent quashing of an internal enquiry into ‘shoot to kill’ allegations against the security forces, and pressed for liberalizing measures – police reform, shorter prison sentences, more judges in Diplock courts and so on. Britain, however, extended its emergency legislation – imposing a broadcasting ban on paramilitary spokespersons, empowering courts to draw inferences from a suspect’s silence and so on.
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
25
Nor was the virulence of the unionists’ opposition to the Agreement foreseen in London; they felt that they had been humiliatingly out-manoeuvred by their opponents and had misjudged the Thatcher government – that their trust had been betrayed. Despite Article 1, they unanimously condemned the accord as a ‘conspiracy’ and a ‘diktat’, because it had been negotiated in secret and lacked majority consent. They also considered that it had changed the nature of the state, by establishing unbalanced political structures in which they would have little influence and which threatened the Union. They noted that the SDLP would be guaranteed executive posts in any acceptable, future devolved government, feared that Britain would adopt a neutral stance in the joint ministerial conference and correctly anticipated that the Republic would champion the rights of Northern nationalists. They were outraged that Dublin should have been provided with a formal consultative role without making any reciprocal change in its 1937 constitution. The protest campaign orchestrated by their leadership included mass demonstrations; a ‘day of action’ (3 March 1986); the refusal to pay rates; the disruption of the work of unionist-controlled councils; and a boycott of talks with British ministers. The UUP severed its historic relationship with the Conservative Party and agreed a pact with the DUP. Subsequently, all 15 unionist MPs resigned their Westminster seats to precipitate by-elections and fight them on a single issue – the Agreement. Overall, Thatcher observed: ‘Our concessions alienated the unionists without gaining the level of security cooperation we had a right to expect’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 415). Nonetheless, the unionist response was more muted than it had been to Sunningdale – partly because, unlike it, the functioning of the accord was immune to their protests. Unionist leaders were also constrained by the fact that if the impact of their actions seemed likely to weaken the Union, this would cause division within their ranks; Thatcher thought it did ‘weaken their standing in the rest of the United Kingdom’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 402). Thus, three months after an unexpectedly low turnout of their supporters in the 1987 Westminster election, their total boycott of talks with British ministers was abandoned. Their exclusively negative, oppositional campaign, aimed at destroying the new structures (‘Ulster says No’), was by then widely regarded as inadequate. Though it had halted any advance towards joint authority or power-sharing devolution, the new institutions were assuming an air of permanence. The leadership thus gradually modified its strategy and, hoping to exploit Conservative disenchantment with the accord, proposed more broadly based alternatives to it, directed at having the North’s status within the Union unambiguously reaffirmed and accepted in both Dublin and London. The UUP’s preference was for continued direct rule, with possibly some devolution of administrative responsibilities to local politicians, whilst the DUP favoured the establishment of an elected assembly in Belfast with powers similar to Stormont’s before abolition. In
26 The Northern Ireland Question
time, as a consequence of the internal ideological debate prompted by the Agreement, the unionist movement came to accept a less ethnically exclusive view of the Northern Ireland state. Meanwhile, frustrated by, and critical of, the unionist leadership’s campaign, the loyalist paramilitaries implemented their own strategy – a pattern to be repeated in the 1990s. Elements within the UDA produced a conciliatory policy document, entitled Common Sense (January 1987), as an attempted accommodation with republicans and, its authors believed, the only alternative to civil war. It proposed devolution within the United Kingdom, power-sharing with those who accepted Northern Ireland’s right to exist and a written constitution and bill of rights. Though it strongly influenced UDP thinking during the 1998 talks, its immediate impact was largely negated by the UDA’s continuing campaign of sectarian murder (Spencer, 2008, p. 70–73).
The Hume-Adams talks, 1988 Despite the hopes of constitutional nationalists, fully shared by Conservative ministers, the republican movement was not marginalized post-Agreement. Not only did IRA violence rise but the Sinn Féin vote also consolidated at 30–40 per cent of the nationalist electorate. Hume’s prediction that the unionist leadership would negotiate power-sharing institutions by the end of 1986 was also misplaced. But, in the changed political context, he and his party were in any case naturally impelled towards building on the new institutional structures and pressing for joint authority. He thus initiated a dialogue with the republican movement, so ending its isolation, and beginning the peace process and the attempted formation of a pan-nationalist front. Circumstances were propitious for such a strategy. During 1985–86, republican rhetoric continued to declaim a total commitment to the armed struggle and the certainty of ultimate victory. Nonetheless, an intense debate on future strategy was already emerging within its leadership. The physical force campaign had reached military stalemate and hopes of ultimate triumph had begun to dissipate. The ballot box/armalite strategy had been a limited success only, in part because the PIRA campaign alienated elements within the nationalist constituency; as Hume observed, it had caused the deaths of twice as many Irish Catholics as the security forces during the first 20 years of the ‘Troubles’. It was, however, difficult for the movement to ‘fine tune’ its operations to avoid civilian casualties, or actions widely interpreted as sectarian – especially in view of the ‘Ulsterisation’ of the security forces. The resulting failure of Sinn Féin to become a more potent political force highlighted the Provisionals lack of electoral support. In the 1987 Westminster election, the party’s share of the vote was little over half that of the SDLP, and in the 1989 council elections, it lost one-quarter of its seats. In the Republic, its success in 1981 had fuelled expectations that it could
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
27
win perhaps five Dail seats within two further elections, possibly hold the balance of power and compel Southern leaders to exert greater pressure on British ministers to withdraw from Northern Ireland. But in elections in the late 1980s, it polled less than 2 per cent, and won no seats. The continuation of the armed struggle also frustrated Adams’s strategy of forming an ‘antiimperialist alliance’ with the SDLP and Fianna Fail. The party risked not only political marginalization but also a settlement being agreed by others – exploiting the impact of the ‘long war’. For Hume, these shifting republican perceptions provided new opportunities – to end the violence and unite nationalist forces and use both to extract further concessions from Britain. Moreover, if Sinn Féin could be brought into negotiations, this would help stifle any future Westminster initiative directed towards establishing agreed political structures within the Six Counties. When Hume met Adams for discussions in 1988, both shared similar positions on key issues – they opposed any internal settlement in Northern Ireland, and agreed that Ireland had a right to self-determination, that unionists could not veto unification and that Britain should actively persuade them to accept it. Hume, however, citing the 1985 Agreement, argued that Britain’s stance towards partition was now neutral – it had no military or economic interests in Northern Ireland – and, if unionists and nationalists could reach agreement on unity, London would facilitate its realization. In his view, to achieve this goal, Northern Protestants needed to be conciliated, and the physical force campaign was therefore counter-productive, a ‘negative factor’, delaying political progress (Rowan, 1995, p. 16). Adams’s view was that though Britain’s policy might be shifting – because of the PIRA campaign – it retained a strategic interest in Northern Ireland and was determined ‘to impose its will by force on the Irish people through the dominance of the Six County state’. On the core question of how to induce Britain to change its policy, he advocated that Sinn Féin and the SDLP, with Dublin, ‘launch an international and diplomatic offensive to secure national self-determination’ (p. 17).
The Brooke-Mayhew talks The British government also sought a way forward. Prompted by the failure of the Agreement to fulfil expectations, and the ongoing military stalemate, it initiated further round table discussions with the constitutional parties (the Brooke-Mayhew talks, 1990–92). Throughout, ministers acted as neutral facilitators, expressing no preference regarding any particular form of constitutional settlement. By March 1991, one significant step had been taken – a three-strand agenda had been adopted, which was to provide the framework for all negotiations to 1998 (internal structures to be decided first, then North-South institutions and finally those between Britain and Ireland). It was also accepted that nothing was agreed until everything was
28
The Northern Ireland Question
agreed. The proceedings suffered from the disruption caused by changes to key personnel (Reynolds replacing Haughey as Taoiseach, 6 February 1992; Mayhew succeeding Brooke as Secretary of State after the Westminster election, 9 April 1992). Also the participants suspected that the real initiative lay elsewhere; unionists were rightly concerned that Hume was placing greater emphasis on reaching a peace deal with Sinn Féin than with them. Nonetheless, the discussions were distinguished from those preceding them by their constructive nature and a ‘new subtlety of discourse’ (Bew, 2007a, p. 540). The workings of the Agreement were suspended to facilitate involvement by unionists, and they showed an increased openness and flexibility in their position. They conceded, in principle, power-sharing in a devolved Northern Ireland assembly, and also an Irish dimension, and were willing to discuss Strand Two though agreement had not been reached on Strand One, and to travel to Dublin to meet Southern ministers. Still anxious to transcend the 1985 accord, they urged the Republic to unlock the barrier to greater cooperation by amending its constitution; they proposed the creation of NorthSouth bodies, based on reciprocal respect and equity between a Northern Ireland assembly and the Dail, and charged to promote mutually beneficial social and economic initiatives. But they objected to the creation of a single all-Ireland body, and to the Irish government having any executive role in Northern Ireland affairs. Fianna Fail’s immobility on the constitutional issue was criticized by other Dail parties and helped produce deadlock. Likewise, the SDLP was unresponsive to unionist proposals, regarding them as focusing too heavily on an internal solution, which would have attracted republican accusations of a ‘sell-out’ had they supported them, and they distrusted their opponents – part of the legacy from the collapse of Sunningdale. Wedded to its own policy documents and to a European model, it proposed that the Northern assembly should be a largely advisory body, without legislative powers or effective control over the executive. The latter was to be composed of one representative each from Ireland, Britain and the EEC, and three others elected in Northern Ireland by proportional representation. The talks process ended (November 1992) without agreement and with no acceptable solution yet in sight. The persistently high level of violence continued to polarize opinion; on 17 August, the ‘official’ number of victims of the ‘Troubles’ reached 3000. Sinn Féin had condemned the Brooke-Mayhew talks for not being inclusive, but the British government from October 1990 had intensified its private communications with the republicans. When disclosed by the press (November 1993), this generated much distrust and acrimony between the participants (over who had initiated the contacts and the content of the exchanges) and much anger amongst unionists. The sticking point appears to have been the republican demands that Britain commit itself to withdraw by a date to be agreed, and that it exert itself to gain unionist acceptance for
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
29
this policy. Though British ministers might happily suggest during these discussions that the tide of history was flowing towards unity, they consistently espoused the principle that any change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional status must have the consent of its people and refused to act as ‘persuaders’ for Irish unity.
The Hume-Adams document Meanwhile, pressures within the republican movement to call a ceasefire continued to mount. In the 1992 Westminster election, the Sinn Féin vote fell to 10 per cent (the SDLP won 23.5 per cent), and Adams lost his seat. A significant causal factor was the increased activity and effectiveness of the loyalist paramilitaries; in 1992–93, they were responsible for more deaths than republicans were for the first time in the ‘Troubles’. The tempo of the Provisionals’ campaign had also risen (1990–94), and it was conducted efficiently, but it was having little or no discernable impact. There was little reason to believe that more could be achieved by persisting with it, and some grounds for anticipating that a political initiative might prove productive. From intelligence penetration and private communications, London was aware of republican thinking and convinced of the ‘possibility of making real progress towards peace’ (Powell, 2008, p. 71). Given their small 1992 Commons majority, Conservative ministers presented not only a pro-Union posture, but they also indicated that they would be flexible and imaginative in the event of a ceasefire. Already, in 1990, Brooke had conceded that it ‘was difficult to envisage a military defeat of the IRA’ (Hennessey, 1997, p. 285), and affirmed that Britain would accept Irish unity if it had majority support, and that it had ‘no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland’ (Patterson, 2007, p. 320); with the ending of the Cold War, it was difficult for republicans credibly to question these last sentiments. By the 1990s, the Treasury’s annual subvention to the region was approaching £4 billion, and opinion polls in Britain, 1991–92, indicated that only 30 per cent thought it should remain within the United Kingdom, whilst 60 per cent supported troop withdrawal (Tonge, 2002, p. 207). Both percentages were likely to have risen after successive PIRA bombs had exploded in London, 1992–93 – possibly, to increase republican leverage in future talks. There is also evidence of a softening in the republican position – partly in reciprocation to Brooke’s comments. Its leadership spoke of British withdrawal in a generation – rather than a few years – and indicated that joint authority might be acceptable as part of a process to end partition. A Sinn Féin analysis (published 1992) looked to London and Dublin to resolve the conflict – London to persuade unionists to accept unity, and Dublin to pressure the British to adopt this strategy in recognition that partition had failed, and to mobilize the international community to support a ‘peace process’ in Ireland. This document was significant, as it indicated an
30 The Northern Ireland Question
increased recognition of unionist identity (Adams, 1995, p. 209; Cox, 2006, pp. 484–85). Such ideas were refined in further exchanges between Adams and Hume, who was in effect ‘acting as the de facto representative of the Irish government’ (Moloney, 2002, p. 408). From early 1991, Hume was mainly concerned with producing a joint, Anglo-Irish declaration; its purpose was to outline British intentions in Northern Ireland, and set out agreed principles for any final settlement, sufficiently open to republican aspirations as to permit a ceasefire. The draft he proposed to Adams (October 1991) re-formulated the principle of Irish self-determination, making it dependent on ‘the agreement and consent of the people of Northern Ireland’ (Patterson, 2006, p. 323). Fianna Fail had come to accept this principle, recognizing that without it there would be a ‘rupture with Britain ... serious internal political instability’ in Ireland (Moloney, 2002, p. 409), and that Dublin simply could not afford the cost of unity. Adams too was prepared to make this ‘fundamental compromise’ – at least to facilitate the construction of a pan-nationalist front which might be able to shift Britain towards a more proactive position (Moloney, 2002, p. 409). This was to include Sinn Féin, the SDLP, Fianna Fail and also Irish-Americans, who were themselves moving away from support for violence to force British withdrawal, in favour of inclusive negotiations and an agreed settlement. Northern republican leaders calculated that if Clinton (who had raised Irish issues in his successful 1992 presidential campaign) was sympathetic to pan-nationalist goals, this would add to the pressure that could be applied and also make it easier to sell a compromise to more fundamentalist IRA elements. Following their meetings in April and September 1993, Adams and Hume issued statements affirming that an internal Northern Ireland settlement was ‘not a solution’ and asserting Ireland’s ‘right to national self determination’. As in Hume’s 1991 document, these included the stipulation that ‘the consent and allegiance of unionists are essential ingredients if lasting peace is to be established’, but this was qualified by the statements that the majority ‘cannot have a veto over British policy’ and that the ‘British government must join the persuaders’. They also repeated that ‘the London and Dublin governments have the major responsibility to secure political progress’ (Hennessey, 1997, p. 286; Tonge, 2002, p. 147). Meanwhile, Adams had himself produced a draft Anglo-Irish declaration (June 1992 – it became known as the Hume-Adams document) which was more republican in tone than either Hume’s or their joint statements had been. In it, Britain was not only to re-iterate that it had no selfish interest in Northern Ireland and accept the principle of Irish self-determination, but commit itself to introduce legislation to give it effect ‘within a specified period to be agreed’ and ‘use its influence and energy to win’ unionist consent. Reynolds handed this document to Major (June 1993). He had earlier advised the IRA to abandon the timeframe, adding that ‘we simply are not
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
31
going to persuade the unionists to do anything’ (Moloney, 2002, pp. 410, 412). However, a Southern plan, leaked in November 1993, suggests that he retained hopes that Britain might be induced to become persuaders for unity (Bew, 2007a, p. 541). Before then, Major and Reynolds had begun drafting their own declaration. Hume had put them under pressure to do so by declaring it to be ‘the most hopeful chance of lasting peace that I have seen in twenty years’; he urged them to ‘hurry up and deal with it’ (Patterson, 2006, p. 325). Also, continuing atrocities in Belfast, and the press disclosure of British contacts with the IRA had created a ‘dangerously unstable public mood’, and there was a ‘need for a highly public clarification of policy’ (Bew, 2007a, p. 541), setting out its future parameters – partly in anticipation of Sinn Féin involvement after a ceasefire. Learning from the experience of the 1985 Agreement, and conscious of their small majority, British ministers kept the unionists closely informed – Molyneaux and others contributed to the negotiations and helped with the drafting of the text.
The Downing Street Declaration The Downing Street Declaration (15 December 1993) was a brief and original document, which confirmed elements of the Hume-Adams draft. Britain repeated that it had no selfish interest in Ireland, and recognized Ireland’s right to self-determination – but only on the basis that the Irish government wished to operate this principle with the support of a majority in the North. Thus, Northern Ireland (rather than all Ireland) would self-determine its own future, and Britain act as facilitator – not of Irish unity – but of an agreed Ireland. For its part, the Irish government accepted that unity was ‘best achieved’ with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland – in the Hume-Adams draft, unionist consent had been merely desirable. Reynolds also indicated that in the event of a settlement the Irish constitution would be amended; during the Brooke-Mayhew talks, the Republic had merely stated that in such circumstances it ‘could’ be changed (O’Donnell, 2007a, p. 89). But in its recognition of Irish self-determination, and of two ‘traditions’ – not two nations – the Declaration preserved the integrity of the 32 County nation and incorporated tenets central to Fianna Fail ideology and rhetoric. Though Adams claimed that the Declaration represented a significant shift in Britain’s position and spoke of the potential for political advance, republicans generally hesitated to either endorse it or declare a ceasefire. It offered them no prospect of joint authority, let alone unity, embraced the principle of consent, contained no British commitment to act as persuaders and provided no time limit for Britain’s withdrawal. The leadership prevaricated, conducted consultations with members, called for ‘clarification’ and appealed for unconditional dialogue. Meanwhile, pressures were applied
32 The Northern Ireland Question
and inducements offered to them. To Britain’s fury, the SDLP and Dublin persuaded Clinton to grant Adams a visa (January 1994); the President also implored the IRA to lay down its arms. Reynolds lifted the media ban on Sinn Féin (January 1994), and announced the formation of a Forum for Peace and Reconciliation (opened October 1994), thus inviting republicans into the Republic’s political mainstream. But he also threatened to marginalize Adams by proceeding down ‘the three strand talks/framework document road’ with Major (Patterson, 2006, p. 328). His blend of cajoling and bullying was probably the decisive factor in influencing republicans. They also made their own realistic assessment of their options. When canvassing IRA volunteers, the republican leadership stressed the potential of the pannationalist alliance to promote political progress. In addition, a strategy document entitled ‘TUAS’ (‘tactical use of armed struggle’) implied that, if the ceasefire tactic failed, the armed struggle could resume. The PIRA declared a ‘complete cessation of military operations’ on 31 August 1994. As a consequence, Sinn Féin emerged as the dominant republican wing; soon, bar some fringe paramilitary bodies, it became the movement’s only means of affecting political change. The loyalist paramilitaries, who had initially delayed responding to the Declaration until the position of PIRA was known, greeted its cessation with cynicism, suspecting a secret deal with Westminster, and/or a republican ruse to gain concessions. However, they too declared a ceasefire (13 October) to last for as long as the Provisionals kept theirs. They were influenced by the Declaration’s reference to consent, the clarifying reassurances appended to the British copy of the document, the promise of a referendum on the outcome of future negotiations and, no doubt, by the palpable public desire for peace.
The Anglo-Irish Framework Document The republican ceasefire reaped almost immediate rewards – the lifting of the broadcasting ban in Britain (September 1994), easing of travel restrictions to England and the United States, contact with government ministers and officials in Dublin, London and Washington – which transformed Sinn Féin’s public profile, credibility and capacity to raise funds, and thus its electoral prospects. Other advances included the first prisoner releases in the Republic and a reduced troop presence in the North. Above all, the Anglo-Irish Framework Document (22 February 1995) regarding Northern Ireland’s political future, and the basis for further interparty talks, was devised to suggest to republicans that a settlement transitional to unity was not far off. The North-South bodies which it set out in concrete and specific terms appeared to come close to joint authority; they were powerful and autonomous, with harmonizing, consultative and executive powers, and were intended to be dynamic – their functions capable of future extension.
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
33
The Document had also been intended to reassure unionists that the talks process posed no threat to the Union and, though Mayhew later spoke enthusiastically of the ‘triple lock’, it failed to do so. It aroused their fears that an all-Ireland government would evolve by stealth, without any formal transfer of sovereignty. They dismissed it as ‘a sop to the IRA’ – the price it had extracted for its ceasefire – and noted with unease its failure to deal explicitly with Ireland’s territorial claim. Owing to his apparent misjudgement of the UUP’s relationship with the Conservatives, it undermined Molyneaux’s leadership of the party; in September 1995, he was replaced by David Trimble. However, satisfying unionist anguish was for republicans, their own response was one of disappointment. At the time of the ceasefire, some of their leaders had been led to believe that British withdrawal would quickly follow – perhaps within the next ten years. In these circumstances, the previous 18 months seemed like a protracted process of British obstruction; despite their cessation, and collective nationalist pressure, no interparty talks, inclusive of Sinn Féin, had taken place. The Conservative government had indeed responded cautiously to the ceasefire. In part, it did not wish to appear to make concessions to IRA threats or blackmail. More crucially, given its weakening Commons position (it had a majority of one in April 1996) and deepening divisions over Europe, it had little option but to be responsive to unionist opinion. Moreover, the cohesion of the pan-nationalist front had been lessened by John Bruton’s emergence as Taoiseach (December 1994); he had a more sophisticated and conciliatory approach to Northern Ireland, and was more attuned to majority sensibilities, than his predecessor. At Westminster, the Blair led Labour Party (from May 1994) supported the main thrust of Conservative policy. In addition, Britain’s political leadership broadly shared unionist scepticism regarding the genuineness of the IRA ceasefire, noting the omission of the term ‘permanent’ from its declaration, the fact that its Army Council had not ratified it, and that republican leaders occasionally threatened a return to violence and were ‘selling’ the cessation to volunteers as tactical – the ‘tactical use of armed struggle’ – rather than as a final break with violence. From intelligence sources, it was also evident that the Provisionals were still targeting security forces and amassing weapons. The Declaration had said that only a ‘permanent’ renunciation of violence would entitle Sinn Féin to enter talks. The two governments had interpreted this as the handing over of arms and both had made this clear to the Party at the time of the ceasefire. But, the IRA refused to do so, and Sinn Féin represented the stipulation as a demand for surrender, not a negotiated settlement, a denial of its mandate and a delaying tactic. The British and Irish governments temporarily sidelined the arms issue by appointing an international body, chaired by Senator George Mitchell, to advise on a way forward. The Mitchell Report (January 1996) proposed a
34
The Northern Ireland Question
‘twin-track’ approach – that decommissioning coincide with the interparty discussions. It also recommended that the participants should affirm their commitment to the six Mitchell ‘principles’ of democracy and non-violence. Acting on a casual suggestion, also by Mitchell, and supported by the UUP, Major decided to advance the holding of talks by means of the election of a Forum; this body was to provide a reservoir from which the members of the parties’ negotiating teams could be drawn and to enable them to renew their democratic mandate. On 4 February 1996, however, a massive bomb near Canary Wharf, London, signalled the resumption of the Provisionals’ campaign. During late 1995, the balance of opinion amongst republicans had been moving against the ceasefire. Progressively, their exaggerated expectations, regarding the imminence of all-party talks on the creation of structures transitional to unity, had been frustrated. They had increasingly resented Major’s ‘prevarication’ – including, most recently, his plans for an election and ‘binning’ of the Mitchell Report. Consequently, PIRA unity was coming under mounting strain. Though it attributed the return to physical force to the dilatoriness of the Conservative government, to unionists the incident confirmed that the cessation had been a mere stratagem, conditional on the republicans getting their way. But, over the 16 months that followed, the Provisionals did not resume the full-scale armed struggle; they focused their operations mainly on Britain, so signalling to ministers that, if the ceasefire was renewed, their demands would have to be listened to. As a result of their actions the loyalist cessation came ‘close to collapse’ (Spencer, 2008, p. 156). The Forum elections had been held (30 May 1996) under a complex system which guaranteed fringe party representation. The loyalist parties improved their performance sufficiently to be guaranteed Forum seats – a consequence of the fact and nature of their paramilitaries’ ceasefire. Helped by the low level and external nature of PIRA operations, Sinn Féin polled its highest vote since the hunger strike, thus increasing the likelihood of a further ceasefire. This prospect was further enhanced by Blair’s electoral landside (1 May 1996); republicans had been awaiting the opposition’s return to power, believing that it would proceed with a settlement that would be transitional to Irish unity. The formation of a Fianna Fail administration under Bertie Ahern (6 June 1997) likewise provided them with a further inducement to risk a political initiative. Both new leaders were amenable to Sinn Féin entry into talks, after a credible cessation of violence, provided it had first signed the Mitchell Principles. The Labour leadership had regarded the decommissioning demand and the notion of a ‘decontamination period’ as ‘mistakes’ by Major (Powell, 2008, p. 83). Mitchell’s appointment as talks chairman, despite unionist objections, was also encouraging; Adams and others were confident that any US input would follow an Irish-American agenda. On 19 July 1997, PIRA declared a
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
35
‘complete cessation of military operations’. In response, Sinn Féin was offered entry into talks after six weeks (announced 23 August); thus, the Declaration’s requirement of a ‘permanent’ renunciation of violence was set aside and, likewise, the Mitchell Report’s ‘twin track’ proposal; Sinn Féin’s only commitment at the talks was to be willing to discuss the arms issue. The Labour government also promised ‘confidence building measures’ – police reform, the strengthening of fair employment legislation and so on.
Interparty talks, 1996–97 Meanwhile the interparty talks, begun in June 1996, had, in Major’s phrase, become ‘stuck’ – mainly on the arms issue. They were abandoned over the Westminster election period (5 March–3 June 1997), and only briefly re-convened after the election (adjourned 28 July). Their resumption, on 9 September 1997, was inauspicious. The DUP refused to participate; Mitchell described this as a ‘fatal error’ but added that ‘agreement would have been impossible with them in the room’ (Powell, 2008, p. 18). Trimble’s involvement was endorsed by the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) conference (28 October), but he initially refused to enter into faceto-face dialogue with republicans. Earlier, after Sinn Féin had signed the Mitchell Principles (9 September 1997), a senior IRA spokesperson immediately indicated that its members would ‘have problems’ with them, 30 reflecting their deepening apprehension that their core objectives would become emasculated in the talks process. Continuity IRA sought to attract disgruntled volunteers; others formed the Real IRA. Whilst punishment beatings and acts of vicious violence by the main paramilitaries continued unabated, fringe republican and loyalist groups persisted with their campaigns. Overall, levels of violence rose sharply, 1995–97. Nevertheless, the eight parties represented at the talks did make some meaningful progress. The substantive issues were being discussed; on 24 September, the formation of a sub-committee on the handing over of arms was agreed, and a chairperson appointed for the International Body on the Decommissioning of Arms. Mitchell streamlined procedures and, before the Christmas recess, proposals had been tabled on Strands One and Two of the agenda, and discussions on these been held in plenary sessions. However, as Powell observed, ‘we had succeeded in getting the parties in the same room’ by January 1998, but ‘the talks seemed to be going around in circles without getting anywhere’ (Powell, 2008, p. 25). Such was the lack of progress that Ahern predicted a ‘dire period’ of renewed violence by early in the New Year (Godson, 2004, p. 314). There was little reason to anticipate agreement. Since Sunningdale, successive interparty negotiations had ended in failure, and the prospects seemed even more remote, given Sinn Féin
36 The Northern Ireland Question
involvement; Martin McGuinness had publicly declared (Elliot and Flackes, 1999, p. 111) that Sinn Féin was ‘going to the negotiating table to smash the Union’. Yet, by late 1997, a greater sense of realism suffused the positions of each of the main participants. By this time, unionists generally found power-sharing acceptable and North-South bodies also – if they served a practical purpose. Trimble, learning from the experience of the 1985 Agreement, favoured involvement in negotiations, fearing that otherwise a less palatable pro-nationalist solution would be imposed and his party left marginalized and impotent. Amongst republicans, there was a shift away from physical force – their campaign had exposed the limits of what it was capable of achieving; a greater willingness to accept partition in the short term; and an acceptance that unionist acquiescence in unity was at least desirable. But any devolved structures agreed would need to be presented as transitional to British withdrawal and required to be counter-balanced by strong, independent North/South institutions. Meanwhile, within the SDLP there was a recognition of unionists’ British identity and an acceptance of the need for majority consent (though some ambiguity as to how it might be expressed). Hume had succeeded in finding a form of words which reconciled the consent principle with the hallowed nationalist belief in Ireland’s right to self-determination and the integrity of the Irish nation. In the Republic, even Fianna Fail appreciated the need for majority consent to unity; this increased understanding of unionism, exemplified by Ahern, was reflected in its willingness to revise the 1937 Constitution. But the party would never concede that there were two nations in Ireland – as opposed to two ‘states’ or ‘traditions’ – or compromise on the principle of 32 County Irish sovereignty. Changes in the nationalist position in part reflected an awareness of the consensus on Northern Ireland that had been reached by the two main British parties. Both accepted the principle of majority consent, and that Britain should act in the role of neutral facilitator of reconciliation and that republicans should be fully integrated into the political process. But even if the Northern Ireland parties could reach agreement on the consent principle, power-sharing, the powers and composition of NorthSouth bodies, and the amendment of the Republic’s constitution, other issues, at least as divisive and emotive, and perhaps more intractable, remained. These included police reform, arms decommissioning and prisoner release. Much would depend on the qualities of leadership shown by local politicians, how responsive they were to the public’s thirst for peace, and how deep their own desire not to perpetuate the violence which had caused 3700 deaths over the previous 30 years. But the nature and direction of the external pressures applied to them – by Blair and Ahern, and by the United States – was likely to be decisive. Compromise was possible. But it seemed more probable that the talks would become impaled on ideological absolutism, atavistic prejudice and paramilitary violence.
The Historical Background to the Belfast Agreement
37
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
O’Neill to Heath, 10 February 1972, PRO/PREM15/2192. 5 August 1966, PRO/CAB164/574. 19 November 1968, PRO/CAB164/334. Home Secretary to Chichester-Clarke, 9 August 1969; records of meeting, 21 May 1969, PRO/CAB164/574. Memoranda, 21 April, 1 May 1969, PRO/CAB130/416; 19 October 1969, PRO/ CAB164/574. Telegram FCO to PM’s Office, 13 March 1971, PRO/PREM15/476. Intergovernmental meeting, PRO/CAB128/48. O’Neill to Heath, 20 July, 14 August 1971, PRO/PREM15/2192. Conclusions, 22 July 1971, and telegram FCO to PM’s Office, 13 March 1971, in PRO/CAB 128/48. Heath to Lynch, 2 September 1971, PRO/CAB128/48. Transcript, PRO/CAB164/1175. Cabinet papers, 3 February, 2 March 1972, PRO/CAB128/48; 3 March 1972, PRO/ CAB129/162/1. Cabinet papers, 3 February, 2 March 1972, PRO/CAB128/48; 3 March 1972, PRO/ CAB129/162/1; 11 January 1972, PRO/HO328/232. Chichester-Clarke to Home Secretary, 9 August 1969, PRO/CAB164/574; cabinet memorandum, 8 February 1972, PRO/CAB164/1175. Memorandum, 13 June 1972, PRO/CAB129/163/9. Ibid. Conclusions, 22 June 1972, PRO/CAB128/50/32. Conclusions, 13 July, 27 July 1972, PRO/CAB128/50/39. Cabinet papers, 26 February 1973, PRO/CAB128/168/7; 3 March 1972, PRO/ CAB129/162/1. Cabinet papers, 19 February 1973, PRO/HO328/232. Sunningdale papers, PRO/FCO87/219. Conclusions, 1, 8 November 1973, PRO/CAB128/53; memorandum, 13 November 1973, PRO/CAB129/173. Conclusions, 10 January, 14 March 1974, PRO/CAB128/53. 24 May 1974, PRO/CAB129/177/6. 29 May 1974, PRO/PREM16/143. Conclusions, 10 January 1974, PRO/CAB128/53. Minute, 12 December 1972, PRO/PREM15/1016. Minute, 15 February 1973, PRO/CAB190/55. ‘Public Records, Northern Ireland, 1977’, in News Letter, 28 December 2007. An Phoblacht, 11 September 1997.
2 Negotiating the Belfast Agreement Thomas Hennessey
Kick starting the talks By the end of 1997 the multi-party talks process had been going since 1996. In terms of progress it had gone, precisely, nowhere. The Northern Ireland peace process (basically a combination of the political process that began with the Brooke-Mayhew talks of 1991–92 combined with the process tempting the Republican movement away from armed struggle) was in danger of paralysis. There was not even an agenda for discussion. Downing Street decided to remedy the situation. A ‘Heads of Agreement’ paper was hammered out between the Prime Minister, Tony Blair; Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern; and the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), David Trimble – over the weekend of 10–11 January 1998. This was somewhat difficult at times since Blair was in Japan. Nevertheless, a compromise was reached. The significance of the document was that, although devoid of detail, it set out for the first time the outlines of an agreement as a basis for discussion. Published on 12 January, ‘Propositions on Heads of Agreement’ read: Balanced constitutional change, based on commitment to the principle of consent in all its aspects by both British and Irish governments to include both changes to the Irish Constitution and to British constitutional legislation. Democratically elected institutions in Northern Ireland, to include a Northern Ireland Assembly, elected by a system of proportional representation, exercising devolved executive and legislative responsibility over at least the responsibilities of the six Northern Ireland departments, and with provisions to ensure that all sections of the community can participate and work together successfully in the operation of these institutions and that all sections of the community are protected. A new British-Irish Agreement to replace the existing Anglo-Irish Agreement and help establish close co-operation and enhance
38
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 39
relationships, embracing: An intergovernmental council to deal with the totality of relationships, to include representatives of the British and Irish governments, the Northern Ireland administration and the devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales, with meetings would be twice a year at Summit level. A North-South Ministerial Council to bring together those with executive responsibilities in Northern Ireland and the Irish government in particular areas. Each side will consult, co-operate and take decisions on matters of mutual interest within the mandate of, and accountable to, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Oireachitas respectively. All decisions will be by agreement between the two sides, North and South. Suitable implementation bodies and mechanisms for policies agreed by the North-South Council in meaningful areas and at an all-Ireland level. Standing intergovernmental machinery between the Irish and British governments, covering issues of mutual interest and including non-devolved issues for Northern Ireland, when representatives of the Northern Ireland administration would be involved. Provision to safeguard the rights of both communities in Northern Ireland, through arrangements for the comprehensive protection of fundamental human, civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights ... a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, supplementing the provisions of the European Convention [on Human Rights] and to achieve a full respect for the principles of equity of treatment and freedom from discrimination and the cultural identity and ethos of both communities. Appropriate steps are to be taken to ensure an equivalent level of protection in the Republic. Effective and practical measures to establish and consolidate an acceptable peaceful society, dealing with issues such as prisoners, security in all its aspects, policing and decommissioning of weapons.1 For David Trimble the crucial part of the paper was the section that dealt with the creation of a ‘council of these islands’. The council would be merely consultative. It would have no powers, but it would facilitate contact and cooperation. It was within this East-West (relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic) umbrella, in the UUP’s view, that any North–South (between Northern Ireland and the Republic) relationship should be located. Trimble considered that the Propositions paper supported this view, for it stated that this body was to ‘deal with the totality of relationships’. The North–South relationship was a part of that totality and so, logically, it had to be comprehended within it. Any North-South council, concluded Trimble, would have to be ‘merely consultative’2 – and would not have the executive powers envisaged for the Council of Ireland in the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, and for the North-South body in the Framework Document of 1995. Trimble had no problem with subsidiary cross-border bodies with executive powers – so long as the proposed North-South body
40 The Northern Ireland Question
did not have such powers. Why? Because a North-South body with executive powers – such as the Council of Ireland in the Sunningdale Agreement and the Framework Document’s North-South body – would have the potential to be an embryonic all-Ireland government. Sinn Féin reacted with fury to the Propositions paper. Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Féin was angry that the proposed North-South body did not seem to have executive powers – and, therefore the potential to create an embryonic all-Ireland government. He complained: ‘The two governments’ position had been that the North-South body would have executive powers. We want to know whether that continues to be their intention.’3 The concern reflected by the Republican movement was illustrated when the Provisional IRA (PIRA) issued a statement echoing Adams’s concerns. The PIRA confirmed that ‘it did not regard the ‘propositions on Heads of Agreement’ document as a basis for lasting peace settlement’. It was a ‘pro-Unionist document and has created a crisis in the peace process’.4 Significantly, this was probably the first time that Sinn Féin had to accept that there would, in successful negotiations, be a Northern Ireland Assembly. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), in contrast, backed an assembly in Northern Ireland. Seamus Mallon, the party’s deputy-leader, described it as ‘absolutely wrong and dishonest’ for Sinn Féin to claim that the new assembly under discussion represented a return to Stormont. Mallon asked: ‘Does anyone seriously imagine that the SDLP or the Irish Government would agree to the creation of a new Stormont? How daft can they get? They are totally misrepresenting the type of body which we are currently talking about.’ Rather than being something which would work against nationalists, what was on offer was the opportunity to create a body which would give nationalists, for the first time, a share of executive power in Northern Ireland: ‘It would be something absolutely new.’5 This exchange illustrated that the SDLP and Sinn Féin did not always have the same nationalist outlook. It also demonstrated that the Irish government was prepared to reach out to unionists – even at the expense of angering Sinn Féin. In another effort to demonstrate to the UUP that they were serious about a deal, the Irish government passed – through Martin Mansergh (the Taoiseach’s special advisor on Northern Ireland) to one of Trimble’s advisors, Austin Morgan – a copy of revised Articles 2 and 3 that would remove the Republic’s claim to Northern Ireland. The new Article 2, rather than, as before, claiming that all of the territory of the island of Ireland constituted the national territory, stated: ‘It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and seas, to be part of the Irish nation.’ The new Article 3 enshrined the consent principle: ‘recognising that a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island’. The phrase ‘both jurisdictions in the island’ recognized that there are two states in Ireland – the
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 41
Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – rather than one as the 1937 Constitution had. The Irish, in return, had secured from the British a commitment to repeal the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Mansergh believed that the Government of Ireland Act was the equivalent of a British territorial claim to Northern Ireland. Now it would be removed. The British, in turn, committed themselves to a united Ireland if a majority of people Northern Ireland voted to cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland. Constitutional issues, then, had been resolved outside of the formal talks process. Trimble was comfortable with all of this: he realized that the British ‘territorial claim’ to Northern Ireland rested upon the Act of Union 1800 rather than the Government of Ireland Act. The Irish had backed the wrong horse. Yet, despite these moves the talks, themselves, remained fixated on North–South relations almost to the exclusion of everything else. And the talks remained a talking shop with no progress. All this changed on 9 April 1998.
The Mitchell Document On 25 March, Senator George Mitchell, the independent chair of the talks, made a dramatic announcement – 9 April 1998 was the deadline by which an agreement would have to be concluded. Mitchell was determined to get to the first landmark in his schedule: an initial draft of a comprehensive agreement by 3 April, based on the discussions and papers submitted by the talks participants. In most of areas – changes in the Irish Constitution and British constitutional law; prisoners; policing; criminal justice and a new British-Irish Council, there was a common British-Irish government position. By 3 April, however, there was no draft document for the political parties to consider. The main area of discussion between the British and Irish governments centered on Strand Two and what was required to keep Sinn Féin on board without alienating the unionists. In London the Prime Minister and Taoiseach met, in an attempt to resolve the North-South differences. Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern instructed their officials to bring an agreed document to Mitchell in Belfast on 5 April. The governments’ officials now requested, on behalf of the premiers, that Mitchell present a composite document to the parties – including the section relating to Strand Two agreed in London – with the remainder composed by the Chairman’s team in Belfast, as the Chairman’s document. A reluctant Mitchell agreed, although the final draft of Strand Two, containing a number of annexes, was not available for the parties until late on 6 April. The unionist parties were aware that the document which would eventually emerge would be most unpleasant in Strand Two. When the misnamed ‘Mitchell Document’ was finally revealed to the parties, later that night, the talks almost collapsed. Most of the constitutional aspects appeared satisfactory to the UUP – the recognition of consent; the
42
The Northern Ireland Question
recognition of the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and options including the SDLP and UUP models, for consideration in Strand One – the internal government of Northern Ireland. It was Strand Two which produced the crisis. Here there were no options – everything had been decided for Unionists. Together with an outline of the envisaged North-South Ministerial Council the document contained a series of annexes outlining the areas in which the Council would decide common North-South policies, specific areas where decisions would be taken on action for North-South implementation and a series of North-South implementation bodies. The Council’s authority and functions were to be derived directly from London and Dublin. Effectively, the Northern Ireland Assembly was by-passed. It was not Belfast, but London and Dublin that determined the remit of the Council. There were pages and pages of areas containing proposed North-South cooperation that would be carried out by the North-South Ministerial Council. The UUP’s deputy leader, John Taylor declared: ‘I wouldn’t touch this paper with a 40-foot barge pole’ (Hennessey, 2000, p. 164). Blair embarked for Belfast in an effort to save the talks. According to Alastair Campbell, Blair was furious because he felt both Mitchell and the Northern Ireland Office had not handled the UUP properly. The Prime Minister felt that they did not understand how, because the Irish government had such a close relationship to the SDLP, London had to give the UUP the sense that ‘we were there for them, at least keeping an eye on things from their perspective, even when we were pushing them in a certain direction’. On the aircraft to Belfast, it became clear to Blair what Trimble’s problem was: the areas for cooperation were too numerous and too all-encompassing. Blair was fed up ‘because he and Bertie had not actually negotiated all of this, Mitchell insisted it was all in here’. He felt Trimble ‘had a point here’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 287–88). In fact, on the helicopter to Hillsborough Castle, Blair, ‘looking for someone to blame’ decided that one of his senior aides, John Holmes, had let him down. Holmes, in fact, had tried to persuade Mitchell not to table the two offending annexes on North-South bodies but the Irish had insisted. And Blair had agreed the text of the draft agreement himself (Powell, 2008, p. 91). When Trimble arrived at Hillsborough Castle, to greet Blair, he appeared to the London team to be calm and lucid and said simply – and repeatedly – that he could not do a deal on the basis of what was on offer in Strand Two. Blair ‘said effectively that he would negotiate for him’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 288). Blair and his team spent two hours with Trimble, in the Lady Gray room, working what amendments might make the document acceptable to the unionists. In the view of Jonathan Powell, Blair’s Chief of Staff, Trimble’s problem was not so much the North-South bodies themselves, as the amount of space given to them in the agreement. Seven out of eleven pages in the entire document were devoted to them as well as the two long
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 43
annexes. It was proposed that there should be eight North-South bodies created by legislation passed in the House of Commons so that they would not be accountable to the Assembly, and between them the two annexes set out 41 areas of cooperation. Trimble wanted all North-South bodies to be accountable to the Northern Ireland Assembly rather than imposed by Westminster. By the time Trimble left Hillsborough, the British had ‘a raft of detailed amendments’. Blair then phoned John Hume, the leader of the SDLP, to get the nationalist perspective. Hume was aware that Trimble had a problem but urged the British not to let the unionists veto the agreement. John Alderdice, the leader of the Alliance Party, then came to see Blair and confirmed that the agreement was not deliverable, as it stood, in the unionist community. The annexes were far too long. David Ervine, the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) (associated with the Ulster Volunteer Force) concurred when he visited next. Finally, Mitchell arrived and took the same line. As Powell recalled: ‘We had to get the Irish to back down on their ambition for so heavy an emphasis on North-South co-operation or there was no prospect of success’ (Powell, 2008, pp. 92–93). But, as the Prime Minister prepared for bed that night he told Campbell that his gut feeling was ‘very negative. He couldn’t see how to fill the gaps’. The next morning Blair told Campbell that his task for the day was to get Trimble ‘pointing in a more positive direction’. Trimble had to be ‘out there being more positive than the neanderthals’. Although the Prime Minister had to see all the parties throughout the day, the emphasis was on Trimble (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 288). Gathering in the Queen’s bedroom, Blair phoned Trimble to reassure him that the British would get the amendments he needed from the Irish. As Powell noted: ‘We were terrified he would just walk out of the talks without further ado. He had said to us the previous day that perhaps the best thing to do was just wait till after Easter and see what could be rescued’ (Powell, 2008, p. 93).
Persuading the Irish Bertie Ahern, at this juncture had suffered a personal loss that was shattering: the death of his mother. An emotionally drained Taoiseach flew to Belfast after his mother’s funeral. Blair and Ahern breakfasted together that morning. The Taoiseach had helicoptered up to Hillsborough, from Dublin, the night before, having kept watch over his mother’s body earlier. Blair had to give Ahern ‘a very hard message’: there had to be a complete rewrite of the North-South part of the agreement. Ahern explained how difficult this would be. He was already going to propose to the Irish people that they amend their constitution and remove the territorial claim to the North. If he did so and got nothing in return ‘he would look like an idiot’. And he had no confidence that the unionists would actually agree to the creation of the
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The Northern Ireland Question
North-South bodies at all unless they accepted them in advance and they were enshrined in Westminster legislation rather than left to the goodwill of the Assembly. After all, pointed out Ahern, such bodies had been agreed in the 1920s and at Sunningdale, in 1973, but had never actually been delivered. What was more, if he conceded on this point, the unionists would be back asking for further concessions (Powell, 2008, p. 95). As Ahern put it, the unionists wanted the consent principle enshrined, an Assembly, the Irish constitutional claim on the North gone ‘and they want to give fuck all in return’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 290). Despite this, Ahern did not rule out making amendments because, he realized, they were essential to get the UUP back on board. He therefore agreed to leave Paddy Teahon, one of his senior aides, and Dermott Gallagher, from the Irish Foreign Ministry, to negotiate changes while he returned to Dublin for his mother’s funeral. John Holmes was detailed, by the Prime Minister, to negotiate with the Irish officials while Blair helicoptered to the Stormont estate for further talks. As soon as he arrived, Blair saw Trimble and a UUP delegation. The Prime Minister told them that he had made it clear to the Irish that they had to amend the text on North-South matters radically and that there could be no progress elsewhere until this was unblocked. But to do this he needed a clear commitment from the UUP that if he unblocked this issue, they would be prepared to move on other matters, particularly Strand One. Throughout this first day, Blair was ‘jittery, uncertain we would succeed, and his mood was volatile’. He decided that the best use for Powell was to sit down with the UUP and work on the subsidiary North-South bodies. Powell worked with Reg Empey from the UUP. The UUP, Powell recalled, ‘would tell me their ideas as great secrets, and I would pass them on to the Irish in a suitably modified form to try and build an agreement’. Ahern meanwhile returned late in the afternoon and a tripartite meeting was convened involving the British, the Irish and the UUP. Ahern indicated to the meeting that the Irish would agree to radical changes to Strand Two (Powell, 2008, pp. 95–96). The Governments were surprised when John Taylor announced that there was room for manoeuvre. The governments had been expecting the opposite (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 289). It was agreed that the Irish and the UUP should go away and agree a text between them (Powell, 2008, p. 96). Trimble and Taylor returned to consult their supporters. After this trilateral, Trimble returned later, and said he had a UUP solution that would ‘do the trick’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 96). In the meantime, Gerry Adams had wandered into Blair’s office and asked to see him on his own. He said Sinn Féin definitely wanted an agreement but the British ‘had to give him a deal he could sign up to, and not just on the key issue of prisoner release’. Adams suggested to Blair that an agreement in the current circumstances was perhaps too difficult. Blair was convinced that Adams was trying to send a covert message and, for the next 36
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 45
hours, ‘was constantly nervous that Sinn Féin would not be able to accept the agreement’. Powell recorded in his diary how ‘I thought Adams was just play-acting to attract some attention away from the unionists’ (Powell, 2008, p. 97). The next morning – Thursday – Blair discovered that the Irish and the UUP had failed to stay up all night negotiating a text. The Prime Minister ‘was furious’. Blair called Trimble to say that Ahern’s pragmatism meant a deal was possible on Strand Two ‘but Trimble should not push his luck’. Trimble said he understood (Powell, 2008, p. 97). Next up was breakfast with the Irish. Blair confided to Ahern that he was still not optimistic. Ahern, in turn, was sceptical about Trimble’s willingness to compromise: the Taoiseach commented ‘I’m not sure I trust these guys.’ North-South bodies, policing and decommissioning were going to be the toughest areas. The Irish still wanted clear Westminster legislation to set up the implementation bodies; otherwise, argued Paddy Teahon, it would just be like Sunningdale: built on sand, all too easily collapsible. Yet, Ahern pointed out, Dublin was expected to change their constitution yet, there was no ‘on the other hand’ of equal clarity. The Taoiseach believed that the unionists would ‘use every trick in the book’ to stop the North-South bodies happening (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 291). But, by midday, ‘everything seemed as if it might be on track’. Trimble’s ‘trick’, which he brought to Blair, was a UUP draft accepting six North-South bodies and giving a list of sample areas of cooperation between Northern Ireland and the Republic to be laid out in an annexe. Powell thought: ‘It wasn’t that different an approach to that in Mitchell’s original draft, but was acceptable to the Unionists because it was their idea’ (Powell, 2008, p. 97). However, for the UUP, it was fundamentally different: the North-South Ministerial Council would not have any functions upfront and it would be for the Northern Ireland Assembly to agree at least six matters for future cooperation and implementation. Thus it would be the Northern Ireland Assembly deciding North-South cooperation rather than the British and Irish governments or the North-South Ministerial Council. Authority in North-South cooperation would spring from Northern Ireland. By 1:05 p.m., Blair was ‘ranting and raving’ because he wanted to see Ahern who was locked in discussions with the SDLP. Alastair Campbell suggested to the Prime Minister that ‘he turn off the charm tap’ and ‘start to get a bit heavier’ with the Irish (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 291). When he did see the Irish, Blair put the UUP proposal to Ahern and persuaded him he had to work from it. The Irish came back with a few amendments. Trimble indicated he was willing to accept the majority of them. The British thought ‘we had had agreed text’. Then ‘things began to unravel’ (Powell, 2008, pp. 97–98). The other issue concerning the governments was the attitude of Sinn Féin. When Blair met with Adams and Martin McGuinness (Sinn Féin’s
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The Northern Ireland Question
chief negotiator) at 5:55 p.m., he found they were unhappy: ‘all the big concessions’ had gone to the unionists – a changed constitution, an assembly, the right to veto implementation bodies. McGuinness asked: ‘what can we point to?’ Blair replied: ‘changes to the UK constitution, nationalist identity recognised, implementation bodies, changing to policing, prisoners, equality agenda’. And he pointed out that everything was protected by ‘mutually assured destruction’. If the Assembly failed all other institutions fell as well; if the North-South implementation bodies did not occur then the Assembly would fall. Everyone could win but everyone had to compromise. But Adams responded that the Unionists were the perceived winners while Republicans were seen as the losers. Blair’s comment to this was that getting results from the Unionists was like ‘getting blood out of a stone’ and he was not persuaded by Sinn Féin’s arguments. But Adams insisted that he could not accept a unionist veto on the implementation bodies. Policing was also a problem. Blair, though, refused to accept that Adams could not sell this to the republican movement: it was a programme for change and a lot of the change was going to be to the benefit of Adams’s community. Adams replied that Blair was speaking as a British prime minister and that his community did not listen to British prime ministers. The Prime Minister’s voice ‘was rising’ while Adams’s was ‘becoming softer’: ‘We have dealt with decommissioning on your terms, We did [the] Bloody Sunday [tribunal] ... I appreciate the pressures on you, believe me I do, but this is fundamental change and you would be mad to turn away from it.’ Adams answered that ‘we want to do the best for our people, to end the conflict with hope’. After Adams and McGuinness left, Jonathan Powell said that the Sinn Féin performance had been merely a good cop, bad cop routine to drag out more concessions. But Blair was ‘downcast’ believing the republican leadership would be unable to ‘get it through to their heavies’. He added: ‘You have to remember that they are negotiating with at least a modicum of worry someone will come along and blow their brains out if they go too far.’ Blair then met, at 7:30 p.m., with Hume and the SDLP. Hume was also worried about the feasibility studies regarding North-South bodies. ‘No, no’ explained Blair: these meant that the six bodies would be set up by the time the Assembly was up and running. He repeated his line about mutually assured destruction of institutions. They were not convinced. Then Blair met again with Trimble, Taylor and Reg Empey. The UUP were in a better mood – which John Holmes took to be a bad sign ‘because the other lot would be falling off the end’. This was borne out in a further meeting with Sinn Féin – McGuinness, at one point, said to Blair: ‘Believe me, this is no threat, but they [the IRA] could return to violence’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, pp. 291–93). By this time Blair had been unable to contact Ahern for several hours. ‘His disappearance’, recalled Powell, ‘should have sounded alarm bells’
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 47
(Powell, 2008, p. 98). By 10:30, that evening, Blair was ‘very down’ again. John Holmes had come back from the Irish with more Strand Two changes, including a list of 20 implementation bodies they wanted included. Holmes lay down on the sofa, just shaking his head. Blair concluded: ‘I’ve been wasting my time.’ Holmes stated this was all about ‘keeping Sinn Féin on board’; Blair observed that the Irish would just push the UUP ‘off board again’. Then Ahern arrived with Mo Mowlam, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (who had been, largely, marginalized during this stage of talks), to go through the implementation bodies list (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 294). Blair ‘completely flipped’ when he saw them: he shouted at all of the British officials and ‘was mildly impolite to the Irish’. He told Ahern that there was absolutely no chance of selling the new draft to the UUP: the Irish had to negotiate on the basis of the UUP text. Ahern saw the point of this (Powell, 2008, p. 96). Meanwhile, an Irish official, ‘named Wally’, came in and said cross-border food safety ought to be removed from the list because the Irish government was ‘not quite ready for it’. Ahern observed: ‘We are going to poison everyone instead.’ Blair went through the list removing different implementation bodies. After they left, an exasperated Blair just said: ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 294).
Agreement on Strand One The broad agreement in Strand Two was the catalyst for movement in Strand One. Here, the main players were the SDLP and UUP. John Hume expected something substantial from the Unionists: they had secured changes to Articles 2 and 3; ... there was a clear acceptance of the principle of consent in relation to the changes in Northern Ireland; there was an acceptance of an assembly; and of British-Irish institutions. ‘All of these proposals would be in the interests of unionists. The question is, what are they willing to do in return for all of that? Given that all the parties from the nationalist tradition are totally committed to agreement, how could the unionists be out in public arguing that they are being subsumed into a united Ireland against their will?’ As Seamus Mallon explained, all parties had accepted a certain system for the appointment of ministers, but Unionists had not agreed to parallel consent: ‘The unfortunate situation is that we have not been able to reach an understanding or approach an agreement on the very central basis of what is required by nationalists in relation to Strand One, and that is the consent of both sections of the community to every decision that will be made in that assembly.’ He also pointed out that parallel consent meant that nationalist and unionist consent would be necessary for all-important decisions (Hennessey, 2000, p. 167). However, the UUP was shifting its position on Strand One. John Taylor emerged as sympathetic to the SDLP’s model. First, Taylor felt that departments of government were interconnected – ‘you have to have some body
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that connects the heads of the departments together, and therefore it would have to be some form of executive or cabinet’. Second, he accepted Hume’s argument that the heads of the departments should be called ‘ministers’ rather than the UUP preference for ‘chairman of the committee’. Taylor put it to Trimble that ‘no matter where you go in the world if you just say, this is the chairman of the health committee, in Northern Ireland, or something, they’ll think he’s some local councillor’. He also thought it would be a gesture to the SDLP in getting agreement: ‘And when we conveyed this, I remember John Hume jumping with delight and saying, “Thank you very much, this is great news.” So that set a good tone to get the rest of the agreement on Strand One.’ A key factor in the SDLP-UUP agreement emerging in Strand One was the absence from the meeting of the UUP MP, Jeffrey Donaldson. He had been sent, with junior members of the talks team, to meet the Irish Attorney-General: ‘it was a non-event’ Donaldson recalled. The absence of Donaldson, according to Mallon, ‘transformed things ... the mood had changed, the temperature had changed considerably’. Sean Farren, of the SDLP, recalled that Mallon went through the key points and Trimble said ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’. This was around midnight. Martin Mansergh remembered: ‘John Hume and company erupted into our room and started hugging everyone in sight, because they had achieved an agreement where they had got practically everything they wanted’ (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, p. 235).
Prisoners But where did agreement between the SDLP and the UUP in Strand One and between the UUP and Dublin in Strand Two leave Sinn Féin? Their whole strategy appeared to have been based on Dublin securing a powerful North-South arrangement on their behalf. But Ahern had done the deal with Trimble. Now Dublin was becoming worried about the noises coming from Sinn Féin. By 12:15 a.m. – Good Friday – the British became aware that the Irish were being ‘spooked’ by Sinn Féin during a meeting between officials. Blair, at this stage, believed Sinn Féin ‘didn’t want a deal at all. They were holding the whole thing to ransom’. At 12:30 a.m. Blair spoke to Ahern. Sinn Féin was stuck on three years for prisoner releases. As arguments went on about the size of the Assembly, Blair, at 2:15 a.m., asked Hume and Mallon what Sinn Féin was up to. Hume replied that ‘it was all about prisoners’. They wanted them out in one year ‘and think they will end up with two’. At 2:30 p.m., during a meeting with David Ervine about the size of the Assembly, Blair was suddenly worried that he had told Hume that the British were prepared to offer one year for prisoners. He got on to Hume and told to ‘forget he had said it’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, pp. 295–96). In the second of two meetings with Adams and McGuinness, the Republicans produced a list of their concerns – containing 78 points on
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 49
which they wanted answers from the two governments. It was 4:00 a.m. on Good Friday. Ahern believed that Sinn Féin was not going to sign up to an agreement. He sat down with Adams and McGuinness talking through all the points they had raised and recalled: ‘I painfully went though every single one of those with them, arguing as passionately as I could for the benefits of doing a comprehensive deal.’ Blair had detailed Mowlam to work with the Taoiseach. She found herself sitting down at the table with ‘some people’, at the other end, ‘who were obviously members of the Army Council. You don’t ask names – you just say hello and get on with it’. Gerry Kelly asked ‘when is the first prisoner getting out and when is last prisoner getting out?’ The British stuck to three years. Sinn Féin rejected this outright (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, p. 238). Reflecting on the prisoner issue, Jonathan Powell conceded later: ‘We got ourselves in a frightful muddle about prisoners.’ It seems Mowlam had suggested to Adams and McGuinness that the British could, after all, release prisoners after one year. Blair ‘got very cold feet’ when she told him this. Campbell and Powell were ‘worried about the response of the British public who were not at all prepared for the extraordinary act of releasing murderers’. Blair asked to see the senior Northern Ireland Office official on the subject ‘who was appalled at the idea’. When the British tried to pull the concession back, Adams ‘got very difficult’. He explained that ‘released prisoners are the best ambassadors for the peace process’ (Powell, 2008, pp. 100–01). Blair was close to calling on his last card. At 3:37 a.m., Blair spoke to the President of the United States. ‘Where are we?’ asked Bill Clinton. Blair replied that the negotiations had been going non-stop for three days: ‘We were close to a deal, and had been for some time. The problem is that every time we get close to a bottom line, a new one comes up. S[inn]F[ein] have an issue over prisoners, and on language. They want their prisoners out in a year. They want to put together a long list, which they just want to throw in at the last minute. They are playing silly buggers.’ Blair believed Sinn Féin was worried because the UUP was on board ‘and when they’re on board, SF feel they can’t be’. Clinton asked about the role of the Irish language in Northern Ireland that was also emerging as a problem and Blair attempted to explain it to him. Blair suggested that the President call Adams and emphasize the ‘big changes they had won’. There was no way the British could do a deal on prisoners unless Sinn Féin signed up to a wider agreement. British public opinion would only accept the release of prisoners if the Republicans signed up to the whole agreement. Blair said that the Irish and the SDLP were happy. It was now time to put pressure on Sinn Féin (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 296). When Clinton phoned Sinn Féin he found Adams pushing for six months on prisoners. But, significantly, the President detected a feeling that Adams was nervous about being blamed for the collapse of the talks. Clinton, in turn, found Trimble ‘really tight-assed’ on issues – the UUP leader had had
50 The Northern Ireland Question
some sleep and so was rational and had more energy. Now Trimble was looking for more concessions since he thought Adams was doing better. Clinton called Blair once more and told the Prime Minister: ‘I’d rather be on holiday with Kenneth Starr than hanging out with these guys.’ The President believed Sinn Féin was moving towards a deal but warned of the Unionists ‘running away’ once Adams agreed. The British decided that Clinton should call Adams again. They briefed the President that he should set out how difficult the prisoner issue was unless Sinn Féin signed up to the whole deal (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 297). Adams, recalled Clinton, said some very nice things about Blair. He seemed to really trust him, which is always a good thing in these kind of matters. But he said he just couldn’t live with two years, he said it was just too long ... Gerry said that he needed the prisoners because that would help him to sell it to the IRA ... I joked with him, I told him he was going to have to wait for the Catholic birth rate to change the electorate for that to happen. I said: ‘Your numbers are getting better all the time.’ I said, ‘Gerry you gotta understand this is a nightmare for Blair, because if there’s any act of violence after any of these guys get out, he’ll be accused of basically being made a dupe for murderers. And so its hard for him, and the longer it gets to wait, the more he can point to acts of good faith which justify this clemency’. (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, pp. 241–42) In the end, Blair agreed to give Adams a private oral assurance that if Sinn Féin signed up to a deal ‘we would bring forward release from two years to one’. The final thing that seemed to reassure Adams was Blair promising that he would not turn his back on the process once an agreement was signed (Powell, 2008, p. 101). Just when it was thought an agreement might have been reached, another crisis blew up – over an issue that the British thought had been sorted out. Paddy Teahon and Dermot Gallagher informed the British that they had persuaded the UUP to agree to two additional North-South bodies: one to deal with the Irish language, the other on international trade promotion. The British were surprised at this since the UUP had been particularly opposed to Irish involvement in these two areas: ‘But we took Paddy’s word for it and added the two bodies to the agreement’ recalled Powell. When they learnt of it, the UUP ‘blew a fuse’. According to Teahon and Gallagher they had cornered Ken Maginnis, the UUP MP, in a bar and he agreed to the two bodies. Blair brought Trimble and Ahern together to discuss the matter. Trimble ‘came across as appallingly rude to Bertie, who came within an ace of hitting him’. In the end, Powell had to appeal to Trimble ‘on bended knee to add a meaningless body’ ensuring North-South cooperation between health services in Ireland. Trimble agreed (Powell, 2008, pp. 102–03).
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 51
But ‘this was only a taster of what was to come’. Trimble had secured a few hours sleep at the nearby Stormont Hotel. When he returned the UUP delegation started raising new issues. The first of these was that Maryfield, the headquarters of the Anglo-Irish secretariat, be closed by the end of the year. The British could not find Ahern, so decided to send a letter, unilaterally, to Trimble assuring him that this would happen. Then Ken Maginnis came to see Powell about prisoner releases. He had heard all sorts of rumours regarding British concessions to Sinn Féin. Maginnis wanted clarification about exactly what was involved. Powell provided Maginnis with a handwritten letter explaining how the scheme would work. Maginnis ‘seemed content’.
Some Unionists say ‘No’ Around midday on the Good Friday the parties to the talks got the new text of the agreement. Powell recalled: ‘all hell broke loose’. Most of the parties had not seen any text since Monday. Trimble informed Powell that his party was in general revolt (Powell, 2008, pp. 103–04). Alongside prisoners releases and a commission to look at the future of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), was the plain fact that the agreement did not link decommissioning with Sinn Féin serving in the Assembly’s executive. Prior to the Mitchell Document the British had been keen to appease the UUP by connecting decommissioning with service in a new Northern Ireland executive. But Sinn Féin had made it clear that this would be unacceptable to them. According to McGuinness: ‘We made it clear that it would be a serious blunder for anyone to make a precondition of our participation in the executive an issue that decommissioning must take place.’ The deadlock, according to Blair, was broken because Sinn Féin ‘accepted the obligation of decommissioning within the context of a process, and that is the position that we came to’ (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, p. 243). Decommissioning now became the major issue. This, of course, was an issue that could affect Sinn Féin only. In the emerging agreement Sinn Féin would be allowed to serve in a power-sharing executive without the PIRA decommissioning first. The Mitchell Document only made reference to all parties ‘using their influence’ with paramilitaries to secure disarmament. Blair’s argument was that decommissioning would happen eventually ‘but of course its going to happen as part of the process – to take it out and isolate it as the only issue I don’t think is sensible’. When he met with Trimble and Taylor the Prime Minister was trying, desperately, to stop them walking out of the talks. At one part of the meeting, when Blair ‘really thought they were at the point of leaving – I was really concerned at one point that they would just get up and walk out – I remember actually getting up and saying to them, “For goodness sake, calm down, we will sort this out, there is a way through – there has got to be, we haven’t come this far to fail now”’ (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, p. 247). Blair tried to explain that, with everyone waiting to sign an agreement, he could not
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reopen negotiations on such a fundamental point. The other parties and the Irish would not tolerate it. The Prime Minister sent the UUP away to reflect. Blair was determined that the talks would not collapse at this late stage. He came up with the idea of a letter (Powell, 2008, p. 105) – one, as Blair recalled, that suggested that ‘if people did go back to violence, and there were insufficient ways of getting rid of people in those circumstances from the democratic process once they had shown that they were not prepared to abide by the democratic process, then we would review the rules for that. So I gave them that assurance. Then we dictated the letter, basically giving them the assurance that they needed, and perfectly justifiably needed’ (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, p. 247). Blair also rang Clinton and asked him to talk to Trimble. The UUP leader recalled: ‘I told him [Clinton] what the problem was. I told him there was a possible solution in terms of what the Prime Minister was planning to do. I said that if that solution is delivered, then we’ve got an agreement, but if it is to be delivered we need the Irish government and the SDLP to give us space for it to happen.’ Clinton realized the position Trimble was in: ‘I remember him telling me that he wouldn’t be able to maintain his leadership position if it looked to his people as if he were being played for a fool on this decommissioning. He needed to be able to tell them that they could pull out of the process if it became a fraud in his eyes’ (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, pp. 247–48). The letter was dictated by Blair as Powell typed it up on a laptop while John Steele of the Northern Ireland Office offered comments. It was signed by Blair and taken by Powell to Trimble. Powell ‘was confronted by a locked door. They were debating whether or not to accept the agreement inside, and I couldn’t get in to give Trimble the letter’. Finally, Powell attracted the attention of one of the younger unionists and he was let in (Powell, 2008, p. 105). The letter from the Prime Minister stated: I understand your problem with paragraph 25 of Strand One is that it requires decisions on those who should be excluded or removed from office in the Northern Ireland Executive to be taken on a cross-community basis. This letter is to let you know that if, during the course of the first six months of the shadow Assembly or the Assembly itself these provisions have been shown to be ineffective, we will support changes to these provisions to enable them to be made properly effective in preventing such people from holding office. Furthermore, I confirm that in our view the effect of the decommissioning section of the agreement ... is that the process of decommissioning should begin straight away. Trimble recalled: ‘Jonathan gave me the letter, I was standing there, starting to open it, when I saw John Taylor was coming up beside me, so I held it so that John could read at the same time as me. As we reached the end of the
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 53
letter together John said: “Well, that’s fine, we can run with that.”’ But Jeffrey Donaldson was not satisfied – the letter was not part of the final Agreement but a separate document to which no one else had signed up to. Donaldson ‘felt that the discussions were going nowhere, that we were not going to get the kind of safeguards and the changes to the text of the Agreement’. But Trimble now believed that ‘there was a consensus, but that it wasn’t unanimous. What wasn’t clear to me at that stage was that the reservations were of such a radical nature that they would lead people to walk out’. Ken Maginnis’s view was: People knew that we hadn’t got as much of our wish-list as we would want. They knew that if we walked away we would be surrendering things that we did want. And so there was this balancing act. Eventually we took a quiet moment again, we looked through it, and I remembering saying to David: ‘Well, David, I’ll accept it.’ And he looked round and he said: ‘I’m going to accept it.’ And there was comparative silence; one or two people nodded, and then Jeffrey Donaldson said he wouldn’t accept it. It was difficult, I remember we were all emotionally drained at that moment, there were people close to tears. (Mallie and Mckittrick, 2001, pp. 250–51) Empey explained the rationale behind accepting what was now on offer: We had been dying death by a thousand cuts for 30 years. Unionism had been excluded from the decision-making process since 1972. Throughout that period, direct rule had worked against unionism. Terrorism had gone on. Policy decisions had been taken on a whole range of issues that were not in the interests of unionism. (Mallie and Mckittrick, 2001, p. 251) Trimble rang Blair and told him that he had managed to persuade his colleagues with some difficulty. The UUP leader then phoned Mitchell and told him: ‘We’re ready to do the business.’ Donaldson, however, was not ready to do any business: ‘I informed the leader that I was returning to my constituency. It wasn’t a walk out, in the sense that the negotiations had been concluded anyway. I just felt that the terms of this Agreement were unacceptable. I was devastated’ (Mallie and McKittrick, 2001, pp. 250–52). At 5:00 p.m., Good Friday, 10 April 1998, Mitchell announced to the Plenary Session that an Agreement had been reached. This was the Belfast Agreement. To have reached this stage, despite all the outstanding issues that remained to be resolved, was a staggering achievement given the diverse interests of the participants. At one level it demonstrated the power of personal diplomacy; as Alastair Campbell recalled: ‘If you had to pin me down and ask me to explain how it suddenly came together, I couldn’t’ although he thought that the final Blair-Ahern-Adams-McGuinness meetings were crucial. Campbell thought that the negotiations showed Blair at his infuriating best: ‘Once he got the bit between his teeth, and decided to go for
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it, he always knew best, there was no one else [who] could put a counterview, he was like a man possessed. He would ask to see someone and then ten seconds later shout out “Where the fuck are they? I need them NOW.” He would pace out and down, go over all the various parts of the analysis, work out who was likely to be saying what next, work out our next move’ (Campbell and Stott, 2007, p. 290). As the British delegation left Castle Buildings, Jonathan Powell recalled: We raced up to Stormont Castle and into the helicopters. As we were taking off I got a call from Buckingham Palace saying the Queen wanted to speak to the Prime Minister. I explained it couldn’t be done now but he would call her as soon as we landed. In the helicopter Tony, John [Holmes] Alastair and I collapsed in exhaustion-induced hysterical laughter having, we thought, concluded a peace agreement that would resolve the problem of Northern Ireland once and for all. In front of us, an RAF gunner sat on the floor, with his legs dangling out into open space, pointing an oversize machine gun at Castle Buildings below us. Of course, it turned out not to be the end at all but the beginning. (Powell, 2008, p. 106)
Conclusion In essence, until the three days before the Belfast Agreement was secured, the talks process at Castle Buildings was a charade. The broad outlines of an agreement had been fleshed out, after Heads of Agreement, during BritishIrish negotiations and government-party bilaterals, outside the formal talks process. What the talks, at Stormont, did do was to make the key participants aware of what each others’ position were in the key areas – particularly in Strands One and Two. But it was only when the British and Irish premiers arrived at the talks that the minutiae were agreed. Even then key issues, such as policing and criminal justice, had to be farmed out to future commissions and reviews. The role of the premiers was crucial. If Blair had not decided to back Trimble in his demand for changes to the Mitchell Document then the talks would have ended there and then. This was the first crucial decision. The second was that of Ahern to renegotiate Strand Two. Ahern did this despite some opposition from his officials. Fortunately, Ahern – like Blair – was a party leader that was not weighed down by ideological baggage associated with his party’s history. Ahern had made crucial moves in reassuring Unionists with regard to a Council of the Isles in Heads of Agreement (true, it may have no constitutional implications for the Republic but it was, clearly, a symbolic institution as far as Trimble was concerned); and the early commitment to ending the territorial claim to Northern Ireland. One
Negotiating the Belfast Agreement 55
could argue that by revealing their hand on this much earlier in the negotiations the Irish lost a crucial bargaining position; but it did demonstrate that Ahern’s administration was ready to cut a deal with unionism. And, finally, Ahern took a leap of faith with regard to the unionists agreeing to make the North-South Ministerial Council a functioning institution – although Blair’s support for Trimble left the Taoiseach with no alternative but to accept this or collapse the talks. On the nationalist side, Strand Two was Ahern’s call. After all he represented the one sovereign government that would participate in the NorthSouth Ministerial Council. Once Ahern decided to make the deal with Trimble on Strand Two, the SDLP and Sinn Féin had to accept this – or walk from the talks. For Hume, and the SDLP, this meant the abandonment of a central plank of policy relating to a powerful Irish dimension dating back to 1972. But it did mean, as compensation, the securing of power-sharing in Northern Ireland – something that Hume had first raised in 1970 – and the insertion of parallel consent as the necessary safeguard. This, of course, meant that Trimble and the UUP had conceded something they had resisted since 1973. As for Sinn Féin the final agreement saw the collapse of their ‘Tactical Use of Armed Struggle’ strategy – the hope of creating a pan-nationalist alliance stretching from Belfast and Dublin to Irish America. Sinn Féin wanted a North-South body with executive powers; but Ahern made a North-South deal, through Blair, with Trimble that did not threaten the Union. Consent was now the only way to end the Union. Sinn Féin had not wanted a Northern Ireland Assembly – but Heads of Agreement had ended that hope too. Having said that, Adams and McGuinness seem to have come around to the idea of Sinn Féin being part of a Northern Ireland government quite quickly. The bottom line was that, once Strand Two had been settled, Sinn Féin had a choice: to stay in the talks or leave. But where would they go if they left? Back to violence? Would that unravel the new North-South arrangement? The answer was: no, it would not. The proposed reform of policing – a crucial issue for all nationalists – might have occurred but Sinn Féin would be excluded from the government of Northern Ireland and there would have been no prisoner releases. Sinn Féin had little choice but to stay in the talks. Crucial to reassuring them that the concerns of the people they represented would not be abandoned – the so-called ‘Equality Agenda’ relating to reforming the previously irreformable Northern Ireland – was Adams’s and McGuinness’s apparent faith in Blair: it was unprecedented for Republicans to rely on the word of a British Prime Minister. No other Prime Minister could ever have achieved this. Added to this was the role played by Clinton – as that of a confidence-building figure above the fray. Overall, it would seem that, in terms of the constitutional conflict between nationalism and unionism on the island of Ireland it was the latter that triumphed. Trimble believed that he had secured all his primary demands: a
56 The Northern Ireland Question
Northern Ireland Assembly; a consultative North-South Ministerial Council without executive functions; subsidiary cross-border bodies agreed by the Northern Ireland Assembly and not by London and Dublin; a British-Irish Council that was, in essence, a mirror image to the North-South Ministerial Council; the end of the Republic’s territorial claim to Northern Ireland; the principle of consent recognized in the Agreement; and the replacement of the bilateral Anglo-Irish Agreement with an inclusive British-Irish Agreement. By any stretch of the imagination these were impressive achievements. Yet the perception grew that, somehow, the unionists had ‘lost’. How was this so? One can only grasp ‘how’ by understanding the triumph of emotion over logic in unionist hearts with regard to the right of Sinn Féin to sit in a Northern Ireland executive without prior decommissioning; add to this the release of prisoners; and the commission into the future of policing. These issues had not been addressed during the talks process – they had been skirted around. The talks had been dominated by Strand Two and the nature of the proposed North-South Ministerial Council. Even during the crisis negotiations of the final days the initial problem was Strand Two. It was only after this had been resolved that it became apparent to the UUP talks team what would be included in a comprehensive agreement that kept Sinn Féin on board. Until this point the other issues were secondary because without UUP satisfaction with Strand Two there was going to be no agreement in the first place. In the end, the negotiation of the Belfast Agreement demonstrated, among other things, the power of personal diplomacy. But this would not have been possible if it had not been for more than a quarter of century of conflict and a desire to end it. Parties and governments were prepared to move on issues that, a few years before, would have been unthinkable.
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Propositions on Heads of Agreement, 12 January 1998. News Letter, 17 January 1998. Ireland on Sunday, 18 January 1998. Irish Times, 22 January 1998. Irish Times, 7 February 1998.
3 Implementing Devolved Government 1998–2002 Graham Gudgin
Introduction The final suspension of the devolved Assembly in October 2002 was met with a resounding silence inside Northern Ireland. There were no demonstrations in the streets and few letters to the newspapers. It was little mentioned in private conservations and among many young adults, including graduates, it was little noticed. Some were unsure whether it was still there months later. In a BBC poll soon after suspension, half of all respondents said that they did not want the Assembly back unless the IRA was disbanded or all paramilitary activity ceased. A further one in five said that they did not want the Assembly back in any form that included Sinn Féin. In the months that followed, the main issue exercising public opinion appeared to be strong opposition to the fact that Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) were still being paid apparently for doing little. Outside Northern Ireland, there was little more than a resigned sense of déjà vu. After all this was the fourth suspension in three years and weary observers could be excused for having lost count and lost interest. What did this lack of interest mean? Did it signify that the Assembly had made so little impact on people’s lives that its demise was little noticed? Or did Northern Ireland’s voters share a wider sense of indifference, glad that a source of division and perhaps embarrassment had finally gone. Was it merely that ‘it was too short-lived for the community to feel a sense of loss at its collapse’ (Purdy, 2005, p. 353). Or did voters share the low expectations implicit in the view of David Trimble’s biographer, Dean Godson, ‘the fact that it happened at all was a miracle in itself’? (Godson, 2004, p. 12). Whatever voters thought, it was clear that the British and Irish governments were only temporarily deterred in their efforts to implement the Good Friday Agreement. No atrocity, from the Canary Wharf bomb onwards, had deflected what became known as the ‘peace process’. A series of delays and suspensions mixed with murders, civil disturbances, breaches of ceasefires and allegations of gunrunning and spying during the Assembly 57
58 The Northern Ireland Question
period similarly did not lead the two governments to view their chosen path as hopeless. As we now know, their perseverance led to a resumption of devolution in an apparently more stable form. In consequence, the process from the Good Friday Agreement through the 1999–2002 Assembly to the resumption of devolution in 2007 came to be widely regarded as the crowning achievement of Tony Blair’s controversial premiership and a triumph for Anglo-Irish cooperation. This chapter asks what the experiment in devolution achieved. This is partly a question of constitutional politics in that the Assembly was an important, probably essential, step in achieving more stable devolution in 2007. Since this question has been exhaustively investigated in Godson’s definitive biography, the emphasis here is more on the impact on Northern Ireland of the Executive and Assembly as a regional government. One issue is whether the period succeeded in its attempt to confirm the local electorate’s majority view that devolved government was better than direct rule from Westminster by ministers with no accountability to local electors. It is a mark of Godson’s priorities, and one expects also of his readers, that in over 800 pages on David Trimble, he has very little to say about Trimble’s achievements as First Minister (as opposed to his travails in keeping the process alive). A more direct account of the work of the Executive and Assembly by Martina Purdy fills much of this gap in a very useful, if somewhat uncritical, account (Purdy, 2005). One of the arguments of this chapter is that if the devolved government had made more impact on voters’ lives, there might have been more support for its survival. In practice, voters noticed too little real difference from direct rule. In a period of less than three years, pock-marked by suspensions and dissent, it was perhaps too much to expect that real progress could be achieved. Certainly, there is little evidence that the public’s expectations were anything but low. The majority of voters were relieved that the parties were working together, that most political violence had ceased and that Northern Ireland’s tattered reputation in the wider world was at last being repaired. Anything else could be regarded as a bonus. This sense appears to have been widespread even among the Agreement’s opponents, supporters of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP), though their sense of outrage at the continued inclusion of Sinn Féin with a still active IRA grew as time went on.
Political context The Assembly was eventually set up in the last month of a millennium much of which, to borrow a phrase from Paul Bew, was marked by the ‘politics of enmity’ (Bew, 2007a). The architecture of the new devolved government had been laboriously agreed in the Good Friday Agreement, enacted by the Northern Ireland Act of November 1998 but not implemented until
Implementing Devolved Government 1998–2002 59
December 1999. The delay was due to unionist opposition to forming a devolved government which included Sinn Féin without decommissioning IRA weapons. The period was marked by intense disagreement on what exactly had been agreed on Good Friday, underlain by an erosion of unionist support for an Agreement many saw as outrageous. The ambiguities built into the contorted language of the Agreement not only delayed the setting up of the Assembly but also bedevilled its short life, leading ultimately to four suspensions. It also occupied much of the time and energy of leading members of all of the major parties, and especially the First and Deputy First Ministers and their senior colleagues preventing them from spending time on wider policy issues. In addition to the five months of suspension between December 1999 and October 2002, there were six months in 2001 during which David Trimble had resigned as First Minister with Sir Reg Empey acting as a temporary stand-in. Even this list of disruptions does not do justice to the full impact of the decommissioning issue. The efforts to nullify Seamus Mallon’s resignation as Deputy First Minister in November 1999 and to redesignate the two Women’s Coalition MLAs as unionists or nationalists, in November 2001, to reinstate David Trimble as First Minister and Mark Durkan as Deputy First Minister gave the process of setting up and maintaining the Assembly an unreal quality. In addition, two of the twelve ministers, the DUP’s Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds,1 refused to attend Executive meetings, leading to protracted disputes and legal proceedings about access to Executive papers. Around all of this was the continual need to appeal to the UK government, and the fluctuating willingness of Tony Blair and successive Secretaries of State to help the fully democratic parties deal with the unenviable position in which he had placed them. The ambiguities within the Good Friday Agreement were widely agreed as essential to reaching any agreement at all. The Agreement itself was an amalgam of overlapping processes. The much abused term ‘peace process’ might most properly be applied to a deal between the UK government and Sinn Féin and the IRA, to end almost three decades of violence in return for prisoner releases and a reduction of British Army numbers and installations. On top of this was laid a political process aimed partly, in the words of one Northern Ireland Office official, as ‘netting republicans into shallow water’. An important additional aim was to build a more secure settlement through involving unionists and constitutional nationalists in a devolved government. One key element of the process was the refusal of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) to contemplate any deal which did not give Sinn Féin a reasonably automatic place in any devolved government. This key stipulation stemmed from their belief, based on the Sunningdale Agreement, that the unionists could not be trusted to share power with them alone. Other, more current, motives are likely to have included a wish to avoid losing support to Sinn Féin and to maintain cohesion within the wider nationalist family to further their key long-term aim of a united Ireland.
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The consequence of the Good Friday Agreement was that the three major pro-Agreement parties entered the Assembly with sharply different views on its purpose, with a fourth party, the DUP, apparently devoted to wrecking the Agreement while taking up ministerial positions. Sinn Féin strongly resisted any interpretation of the Good Friday Agreement that meant it had to give up weapons over any predetermined timescale. The real issue, according to Ed Moloney, seems to have been that Adams and McGuinness had reached their own secret agreement with the rest of the IRA, stipulating that they could take part in a (partitionist) Stormont government but not that weapons would be given up or the IRA disbanded (Moloney, 2002, pp. 469, 488). When the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) insisted that the Good Friday Agreement set out a timetable for decommissioning2 the stage was set for a titanic political struggle. The SDLP took a more literal interpretation of the Agreement than the UUP. Even if they occasionally expressed irritation with Sinn Féin for not being more helpful, they were generally unwilling to join the unionists in imposing meaningful sanctions on Sinn Féin, and were furious when the British government did so indirectly through suspending the Assembly.3 Underlying all of this was the unfinished business of partition. Sinn Féin insisted to their supporters that they had joined the Assembly to destroy the Union. In their party conferences, the SDLP also continued to make a united Ireland as their primary objective. A pragmatic British government ignored these fundamentals, assuming perhaps correctly that once nationalists were involved in a Northern Ireland Assembly their nationalist goals would be deferred indefinitely and in any case were largely rhetorical. The truth was that, as long any majority unionist party accepted the deal, the British government was indifferent to the long-term outcome, and took no measures to assess demographic or other influences that might lead eventually to a united Ireland. Against this David Trimble assured his supporters, probably more truthfully, that the Agreement had preserved the Union, although the UUP leadership played up the dangers to the UK link to make this achievement seem more significant. Perhaps not surprisingly in these confusing circumstances the UUP’s electoral position was almost as untenable from the beginning of the Assembly as Faulkner’s had been 25 years earlier. The fracturing of the unionist vote between a myriad of small parties in the 1998 Assembly elections disguised the fact that anti-Agreement candidates secured 55 per cent of the unionist votes.4 The fractured nature of the anti-Agreement vote allowed the UUP to secure 28 of the 58 unionist MLAs, but this was only sufficient to secure a majority of unionist Assembly votes if supported by the two paramilitarybacked Progressive Unionist MLAs. Following the defection of two UUP members, even this contingent majority later disappeared.5 This, together with the fact that a further three MLAs subsequently defected in the post-2003 Assembly showed how precarious was the UUP’s support for the Agreement.
Implementing Devolved Government 1998–2002 61
By the 2001 general election, the UUP was down from ten to six MPs, but again the result disguised a more serious reality. An analysis of the voting patterns suggested that only tactical voting by SDLP and Alliance supporters (the latter mainly in North Down) saved the loss of all but two Westminster seats, including Trimble’s own.6 The only two UUP MPs elected without such tactical support were the anti-Agreement candidates Jeffrey Donaldson and Martin Smyth. Not surprisingly, Trimble gave this analysis no publicity inside or outside the party. The underlying reality eventually became plain to all in the 2005 general election when the UUP saved only a single seat and lost all others including Trimble’s. The estimate is that by the 2005 election the UUP had lost 55 per cent of their 1997 supporters (120,000 votes) and gained 30,000 former Alliance voters in partial compensation. The majority of these vote losses occurred in 1998, before the Assembly was even formed, and by the end, the UUP had radically changed its support base and had become a much diminished party. No First Minister within the United Kingdom, except perhaps Faulkner in 1974, has ever had to lead an administration with his party’s support crumbling so dramatically.
Economic context Except in Northern Ireland, governments are most often judged on the economic prosperity they bring to voters’ lives. In this respect, the devolved Assembly was doubly blessed. Its period coincided with one of the most rapid increases in public expenditure ever experienced in the United Kingdom. Departmental spending rose at an average rate of 9 per cent per annum during a period when general inflation was only around 2 per cent. This greatly eased the challenges of government and meant that finance ministers were able to meet most reasonable departmental needs without reducing budgets elsewhere. One notable fact was that budgets were generally underspent, leaving amounts of up to £100 million available for redistribution in quarterly monitoring rounds. Again, this provided the system with valuable financial lubrication. Levels of spending per head were a third higher than in England and subsidized by taxpayers in the rest of the United Kingdom with around £3,000 a year for every person in Northern Ireland. This high level of spending in part reflected extra needs, including a relatively large number of children to be educated for the size of the population. There was thus no large surplus which could be used to fund higher public-sector wages or more generous handouts compared with England, as was the case in Scotland. Nor was there sufficient money to pay for major upgrading of infrastructure, including replacement of the archaic water and sewerage systems. This did not mean that Northern Ireland had been starved of infrastructure spending to finance the Northern Ireland Office security budget, as all of Northern Ireland’s political parties claimed. It reflected instead a reluctance either to
62 The Northern Ireland Question
pay fully for water and sewerage through direct charges or to privatize the industry as in England and Wales. The other stroke of good fortune was that the Assembly came in the middle of a long economic boom. Over 70,000 new jobs were created between 1998 and 2003, an increase of almost 10 per cent. This meant that there were few economic difficulties to deal with, and that the electorate was generally content. Only a small part of this prosperity can be ascribed to either the ceasefires or subsequent political progress, since most was due to the wider success of the United Kingdom. However, the ceasefires did result in a rise in inward investment in call centres, which were previously reluctant to take the risk of disruption in Northern Ireland. Some increase in other investment, including hotels, may also have occurred: but most of the new investment in retailing and other sectors were well advanced before the ceasefires. General consumer confidence was rising and house prices, which had been 25 per cent below those in Scotland prior to the ceasefires rose to 10 per cent above Scotland after the Assembly was formed. Elsewhere growth in the economy was underpinned by low costs and high levels of public subsidy. Finally, religious differences in economic well-being had ceased to be politically divisive by the time the Assembly was formed. This was due to a raft of legislation and regulations on fair employment and equality and the further undertakings included in the Good Friday Agreement itself. It was not that the legislation necessarily led to much change: actual religious differences in unemployment were not much lower than in the 1960s when they helped to precipitate the troubles, nor were they improving rapidly. Catholics remained much more likely to be unemployed than Protestants: but although the actual numbers had changed only a little, nationalists had ceased to actively blame higher unemployment on discrimination.7
The architecture of devolution The institutions of devolved government were designed to secure a peace agreement rather than for efficient government. It is a credit to the flexibility of the politicians who operated them between 1999 and 2002 that they did as well as they did in these circumstances. The essence of almost all democratic systems is managed competition between parties. Opposition is essential to hold the government to account and to maintain honesty and efficiency. The Good Friday Agreement, coming at the high point of Western political correctness, emphasized cooperation instead of competition, and the system lacked any significant opposition. The Assembly was devised with 108 MLAs to ensure the inclusion of a wide range of parties, notably the small paramilitary-linked loyalist parties.8 This is one MLA for every 17,000 people, compared to one for 40,000 in Scotland and one for almost 100,000 at Westminster. The MLAs were given generous salaries and
Implementing Devolved Government 1998–2002 63
allowances as a further incentive to implement the Agreement, although this caused public disquiet, especially when the salaries continued to be paid during periods of suspension. More importantly, the d’Hondt formula, said to have been championed by the SDLP and specifically by Mark Durkan (Purdy, 2005, p. 273), parcels out ministries to parties according to their electoral strength. Unlike most democratic systems, this leads to an involuntary coalition. In Northern Ireland’s case, any party with above about 10 per cent of the electorate can form part of the government. In the 1999–2002 Assembly this resulted in a four-party coalition. The advantage of this to the SDLP and the two governments was that Sinn Féin was certain to be included in any devolved government. It will not have escaped the notice of the other three large parties that they were also guaranteed a share in power. For Sinn Féin, inclusion in government represented a natural right reflecting their electoral mandate, but minority parties with around 20 per cent of the vote do not normally share in government unless by voluntary coalition. For the unionist parties the inclusion of Sinn Féin caused a severe problem that lasted to the final day of the Assembly. The d’Hondt arrangements, and the automatic inclusion of Sinn Féin, led to considerable instability once it was clear that the IRA had no intention of decommissioning at least within the lifespan of the Assembly. The weakness of the d’Hondt arrangement was that serious differences between parties brought down not just the government, as in most democracies, but the whole system of government. The situation was made even more difficult by the weakness of the First and Deputy First Ministers within the Executive. The system had been devised with power residing with ministers, as at Westminster. Unlike Westminster, there was little central cohesion. The cohesion of Westminster governments comes from the power that prime ministers possess, as party leaders, to hire and fire ministers. At Stormont, this power related only to the few ministers within the First Minister’s own party. Even more oddly, Seamus Mallon, as Deputy First Minister, lacked this power since he was not his party’s leader. David Trimble realized these shortcomings too late, particularly his weakness vis a vis the DUP Ministers who refused to attend the Executive and hence to observe any cabinet collectivity. Responsibility for the Strand One negotiations (dealing with arrangements for devolved government) in the talks leading to the Good Friday Agreement were left with Sir Reg Empey on the unionist side. The UUP unrealistically held out for a committee system, without any ministers, to limit Sinn Féin’s power, and acceded to nationalist demands late in the day with little time to work out the consequences. Trimble himself took responsibility for Strand Two, dealing with North–South relations, and successfully negotiated a set of arrangements relatively harmless from a unionist point of view.
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Trimble and Mallon did, however, have the power to decide the number and nature of government departments, up to a legal maximum of ten. After doing the requisite calculations to maximize party advantage, both decided that the maximum gave the most scope for patronage. As a result, the existing six departments were divided into ten. The biggest change came to the old Department of Environment whose planning functions were split between three of the new departments. Trimble, as a former lecturer in planning law, viewed this as necessary to prevent any one party coming to dominate the highly visible and often controversial planning decisions. The need to deal with an involuntary coalition system again trumped any thoughts of efficient government and opened up another source of dissention between departments. The difficulty between Trimble and Mallon in reaching agreement on the departments and the number of North-South bodies was symptomatic of their poor relationship. It was not until Mallon went into hospital for an operation that agreement was reached on 18 December 1998 with the pragmatic SDLP Chief Whip, Eddie McGrady.9 The operation of the d’Hondt rules was a dramatic political chess game which highlighted the lack of trust and cohesion between the coalition partners. Each party leader chose departments according to a predetermined set of rules.10 The UUP had first choice as the largest party, the SDLP second and so on through the DUP to Sinn Féin. The rules gave the UUP fifth choice and then the ninth, with the other parties following suite. The result was three departments each for the UUP and SDLP and two each for Sinn Féin and the DUP. Each party leader was given 15 minutes in the Assembly to make his next choice, and each had to react to the choices of the other parties without prior notice or negotiation.11 Trimble chose Enterprise, Trade and Industry first in deference, it was believed, to Empey’s personal preference.12 The UUP had seen the danger in Sinn Féin taking the politically sensitive Education Department, but declined to forestall the possibility by taking it themselves. Instead, they relied, with no negotiation, on the DUP doing the necessary. The SDLP took Finance as their first choice. The UUP had neglected this, taking the perverse and naïve view that this portfolio held little power. The SDLP realized its importance and took it to prevent it falling into the hands of either Sinn Féin or the non-attending DUP. The DUP in its turn took Regional Development a high-spending portfolio with important powers in planning and transport. Ian Paisley Junior later claimed that the DUP failed to prevent Sinn Féin taking Education to erode unionist support for the Agreement. (Purdy, 2005, p. 86) Sinn Féin had the fourth choice and duly selected Education. To widespread shock, Martin McGuinness was appointed minister. With someone widely believed within the unionist community to be chief of staff of the IRA as Minister for Education, unionist support for the Agreement was indeed
Implementing Devolved Government 1998–2002 65
further undermined, although in practice McGuinness proved to be an uncontroversial and conciliatory minister, at least until his last day in office. Within 45 minutes, all ten departments had been selected, and two junior ministers were then appointed to the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers (one UUP and one SDLP). It emerged that Sinn Féin controlled both Education and Health and with them 60 per cent of the government’s discretionary budget. The UUP had the smallest overall budget in controlling the Department of Trade and Industry, the new cut down Department of the Environment and the tiny Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. This apparently eccentric set of choices was made by Trimble with limited consultation with either colleagues or advisors. Following Disraeli’s advise to ‘never explain, never apologise’, Trimble did not make it clear why he had done it. The most obvious logic is that his attention was still on the potential damage to be done in the North–South bodies and he selected departments controlling four of the six bodies. As well as the Assembly and Executive, the Good Friday Agreement contained agreement on a North–South Ministerial Council and associated implementation bodies, an East-West British Irish Council, a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and a Civic Forum. This was a formidable array of institutions for the governance of less than two million people. The North–South Ministerial Council had been expected to be the most difficult to agree, but in the end caused no more problems than the other arrangements for devolution. The SDLP had hoped for cross-body bodies on trade promotion, inward investment and business development and tourism, but agreed to a list of six bodies excluding these. The UUP was adamant that the main government bodies dealing with the economy should not be taken out of the Assembly’s hands, although they did concede a separate joint tourism promotion company. By 18 December 1998, the details had been agreed for all of these bodies, but it was to be another year before they were to be set up, as wrangling continued on the decommissioning issue. David Trimble took a gamble under pressure from the UK government and agreed to establish the Assembly and other institutions in December prior to the start of decommissioning. This was done on the understanding that decommissioning would soon follow. It did not, and the devolved bodies were suspended in February 2000 to the intense annoyance of nationalists North and South. A further series of talks at Easter and in May 2000, involving the two governments, produced fresh undertakings on decommissioning from Sinn Féin, and once again Trimble agreed to restore the institutions ahead of actual decommissioning. On May 22, devolution was restored giving the new administration what turned out to be a further year before the next series of two suspensions and the resignation of the First Minister. After David Trimble’s re-election as First Minister in November
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2001 the Assembly ran for a further 11 months until the ‘Stormontgate’ spy scandal led to a fourth and final suspension.
The Executive With these interruptions, disruptions and falling support for the UUP, not to mention the baleful influence of Drumcree marches and their banning, a succession of murders, bombs and civil unrest, plus continuous attempts to reverse UUP support for the Agreement and unseat Trimble, it was surprising that any serious government business was done in the Assembly. Although these events were nothing less than serious and occupied much of the time of the key party leaders, it was also true that a good deal of time was left to all other participants to run the normal business of government. A determined and well-organized coalition might have made more progress, but many expected that this involuntary coalition of politicians with sharply divergent goals, including those who had recently viewed unionists as ‘legitimate targets’, would be unable to work together. A widespread view, especially outside Northern Ireland was that the cause of the political dispute was mutual antagonism between religious communities. This view, although almost universal outside Northern Ireland from Tony Blair downwards, always underestimated the importance of the underlying territorial dispute. With an unusually large minority, sharp differences in national allegiance and a neighbouring government to encourage minority aspirations, Northern Ireland’s problem was more akin to those in Israel or the Balkans in its intractability and quite unlike that in South Africa. Personal relations could often be reasonably good, a fact noted by journalists at international conferences. The expectation that antagonistic personal relations would make running a Northern Ireland Executive terminally difficult proved inaccurate. The fortnightly Executive meetings were generally cordial and constructive. Two of the few exceptions were connected with the flying of flags on government buildings and Trimble’s decision to exclude Sinn Féin ministers from North-South Ministerial Council meetings due to delays in IRA weapons decommissioning. Only once were civil service and special advisor observers asked to leave a meeting. Martin McGuinness was particularly genial, and although Bairbre de Brun was more combative, this is likely to have reflected her relatively recent roots within Sinn Féin and her position as one of only two females in a male-dominated body. The constructiveness of Executive meetings may well have been helped by the absence of the two DUP ministers. When in public view, in the Assembly chamber, DUP members maintained a barrage of hostility towards Sinn Féin, as well as distain for the UUP. In private, however, there was much less aggression and a willingness to get business done. The DUP members sat with Sinn Féin members on Assembly committees, for instance, and generally worked constructively.
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Divergences of view within the Executive In some ways the more serious impediments were the indifferent state of relations within the Executive between the First and Deputy First Ministers, and the lack of interest or preparation for policy-making by the various parties and perhaps particularly the UUP. Trimble had hoped for a collegiate relationship between the UUP and SDLP as lead partners in the Executive, but he never achieved this with Seamus Mallon. Renewed efforts once Mark Durkan took over as Deputy First Minister also came to nothing in the end. The SDLP showed a curious lack of empathy with Trimble’s difficulties and repeatedly accused him of not ‘selling’ the Agreement strongly enough, even though events clearly demonstrated that his position on the Agreement cost far more votes than any other party.13 In addition, the UUP Assembly group eventually suffered five defections to the DUP, the only major party to suffer any such losses.14 Trimble in fact tried hard to sell the Agreement to his often-sceptical party. His argument that it preserved the Union, with new safeguards including the removal of the Irish territorial claim in Articles 2 and 3 of its constitution, did not persuade those in his party who had not regarded the Union as having been under any pressing threat. In private meetings, the argument that every rejection of government proposals led to less favourable proposals at a later date may have had more leverage. In any event, these were the best arguments available in the circumstances. The SDLP’s lack of empathy is likely to have stemmed from a pervasive nationalist and republican sense of entitlement stemming from their selfview as an oppressed people. It is noticeable, for instance, in the interviews for Martina Purdy’s book, Seamus Mallon described himself as having been born in the ‘hungry thirties’. He was in fact the son of a headmaster father and a nurse mother and hence comfortably off by the standards of the time (Purdy, 2005, p. 38). Similarly, Martin McGuinness is described as starting life in ‘relative poverty’ (p. 90) despite the fact that his father was fully employed as a foundryman and later became a foreman. He was also convinced that an early failure to get a job was due to discrimination (p. 91). Neither he nor any other nationalist politician mentioned the contribution of large family size to any lack of family prosperity even though Mallon was one of five children and McGuinness one of seven. To the SDLP, the Good Friday Agreement was a just reward for their people’s past suffering, even if not a realization of their aim of unification. They were the only party to celebrate visibly once the Good Friday Agreement was signed. This outlook made it difficult for them to appreciate how distasteful much of the Agreement was to many unionist voters. Some SDLP leaders attempted to overcome their party’s inbuilt distaste for unionists. Mark Durkan certainly tried to do so once he became party leader and Deputy First Minister in September 2001. Even in his case, relations between Trimble and the SDLP went steadily downhill under the weight of events including differing interpretations of how to handle the Holy Cross and Cuan Place intercommunal rioting.
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More serious differences existed between Trimble and Seamus Mallon, Durkan’s predecessor as Deputy First Minister. Despite Mallon’s courageous stand against IRA violence he was in many ways an old fashioned nationalist. His approach to negotiations clashed with Trimble in style as well as content. Mallon has been described as being unable to stand Trimble (Purdy, 2005, p. 30). Trimble in the estimation of some of his own advisors tried hard to tolerate Mallon but found him equally hard to take.15 Even with these personal antipathies, the relationship could have worked without the serious political difficulties over decommissioning. Trimble, for instance, went along with the SDLP’s strong emphasis on the need to support religious equality in legislation and administrative practice, even though he may not have believed strongly in its necessity. Both men shared a common desire to oppose the DUP’s perceived duplicity, half in and half out of the Executive. However, it was the UUP which faced the serious electoral onslaught. The DUP opposed any power sharing with Sinn Féin, even while involving themselves in sharing such power in local authorities, in Assembly committees and indirectly through taking ministerial positions. Later in 2007, they abandoned this position once they were in a position to take the top jobs in the Assembly and once IRA decommissioning had been completed. For the duration of the 1999–2002 Assembly the DUP were never less than a formidable thorn in the UUP’s side. Without a clear initial majority of unionist MLAs, and with subsequent defections and other divisions in the UUP’s approach, Trimble had to proceed on a day-by-day basis with much time spent on merely surviving. Lack of worked-out programmes These major difficulties would have undermined any party’s attempt to put its programme into operation. A more severe weakness was that all parties, and particularly the UUP, had no well-worked programme. The UUP manifesto outlined a series of views, but many of these were not deeply held, and appeared to have been cobbled together for electoral purposes. There was no formal system of committees for making UUP policy. Responsibility for such policies as education and health was unclear, inappropriately and unhelpfully divided between MPs and MLAs. When individual Assembly committee chairmen attempted to be more proactive, as with Danny Kennedy and Education, they could not rely on David Trimble to reflect group recommendations in election manifestos. Around half of UUP MLAs were members of the Orange Order, an introverted organization that emphasized mysticism and hierarchy rather than intellectual or social achievement. David Trimble characterized many UUP MLAs as ‘viewing politics as a spectator sport’ for their lack of interest in Assembly debates.16 One of Trimble’s key achievements was to encourage non-Orange graduate MLAs including the Queen’s University economists Dermot Nesbitt and Esmond Birnie, plus James Leslie with a background in
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international banking. Two of these three were Cambridge graduates, one with a PhD, and two advisors, also had PhDs. However, without wide administrative experience himself, he did not develop a systematic approach to policy-making in his party.17 The SDLP had a more coherent ideology based on the achievement of social justice and equality. This meant that their ministers were more proactive in attempting to advance Northern Ireland’s already elaborate, and arguably unnecessary, procedures for promoting equality. They introduced some of the few significant changes which stemmed from politicians, including the introduction of grants for students from poorer backgrounds. Sinn Féin ministers also tended to have left-wing instincts, privileging the interests of workers and the unemployed over employers and consumers, although this rarely amounted to a worked-out philosophy. Attempts at cohesion One of the usual features of coalition government is post-election bargaining on the nature of the coalition’s programme. In the Northern Ireland Assembly, with its d’Hondt rules, no bargaining was necessary, because the composition of the government was predetermined as soon as the election results were known. In addition, Executive ministers had been fully briefed by their departmental civil servants long before they considered the need for a common programme. The lack of a common programme emerged early in the Executive’s life as it became obvious that there was little progress to report. In response, the Head of the Civil Service brought to the Executive the idea of an ‘Agenda for Government’. This was a programme of ten initiatives to give an early impression of government dynamism. These were mostly pre-existing initiatives, and hence were essentially an attempt to persuade the public that they were something new, but some minor upgrading of existing programmes was possible including Department of the Environment’s suggestion of extra road safety officers. A common programme was, however, a requirement of the Good Friday Agreement and the first triennial Programme for Government was duly published in March 2000. It announced itself, in the rather grand New Labour style then in vogue, as ‘a shared vision for our society’.18 The vision, for ‘a peaceful, inclusive, prosperous, stable and fair society’, was as usual in such documents a collection of platitudes but, in view of Northern Ireland’s troubled past, this description was understandable. The content of the Programme was rather more prosaic. It consisted of 256 individual proposed actions organized into five, very broad priorities including working for a healthier people and investing in education and skills. Most of the proposed actions were routine departmental programmes and could be described as business as usual, such as ‘assisting Translink to annually replace 25 buses and coaches which have exceeded their useful life’.19
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What was new in the Programme for Government was, first, a much higher degree of transparency about what government was actually doing, all conveniently arranged in a single, well-produced volume. Second, the Programme incorporated Public Service Agreement targets; for instance, a 30 per cent reduction in truancy by 2003. The setting of targets had become a major if controversial feature of UK national administration, and its adoption in Northern Ireland was intended to denote a similar move towards more effective government. Of course, targetry only helps if the targets are challenging, and are monitored and used to refine the objectives and delivery of policy. The Executive did show willing in this respect in producing annual reports each year setting out progress in implementing the Programme for Government actions and Public Service Agreement targets. In the 2001–2002 Report, around half of the Programme actions were described as achieved or substantially achieved and only 13 as unlikely to be achieved. Many of the achieved actions meant only administrative progress (for example, ‘working group established’), what was much less clear was the success in achieving targets in the external world. For instance, targets to reduce Northern Ireland’s scandalously long hospital waiting lists were not met and were omitted from the following year’s Public Service Agreement. Similarly, progress on achieving numeracy and literacy targets for 11 year olds in 2004 was described as ‘positive’ in 2001–2002, but it later emerged that the targets had not in fact been met, and they were later revised downwards. The other main innovation ostensibly designed to achieve cohesion in policy was the Executive Programme Funds aimed at breaking down the silo mentality in individual departments. These involved holding back money from departmental budgets to finance a series of interdepartmental projects. These were selected by the Executive from departmental bids under six headings including ‘tackling poverty’ and ‘promoting efficiency’. Initially, only £16 million was allocated, but this was to build up substantially. In practice, the Funds were mainly used by departments as a second shot at financing proposed projects that had been turned down in the initial bids to the Finance Department. In the absence of strong ideas from the parties, it was going to take more than this to promote cross-department working. In any case, it was never clear what advantages were expected from such proposals. In theory, the Programme for Government was to precede the budgets which in turn were to be designed to fund the Executive’s priorities as it listed them. In practice it was never clear that these were independent exercises. Underlying both were departmental strategies and associated bids for funding. The great majority of Programme for Government actions appeared to be as likely to have emerged under direct rule as under devolution. It was far from clear what difference was being made, despite the fact that the Programme for Government was subtitled ‘Making a Difference’. At the same time, an increasing number of departments’ projects were being
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funded under Private Finance Initiative contracts especially in school and hospital building. A UK-wide initiative aimed at introducing private sector efficiency into building and operating public buildings. In practice, it created a further barrier to transparency. Towards the end of the Assembly, the Executive was given the power to borrow up to £200 million a year from central government, under the Reform and Reinvestment Initiative, to help fund major infrastructure projects. This was to be repaid through higher rates revenues. Associated with this was a new Strategic Investment Board of private sector people, whose role was to agree an investment strategy. Part of the aim here was not only to reduce the power of the DUP controlled Department of Regional Development, but also again to promote cohesion. The research to evaluate this experiment has yet to be done, but initial impressions are that once again predictable departmental bids are dominating the strategy, while few new or interdepartmental ideas are taken up. Ministerial achievements The lack of central control within the Executive meant that, unless additional finance was required, decisions and achievements could be made independently by individual ministers and reported to, rather than agreed by, the Executive as a whole. There were only occasional turf wars and the First and Deputy First Ministers attempted little interference in departmental affairs.20 The independence of ministers in much of their decisionmaking became a matter of controversy and eventually changed in the St Andrew’s Agreement in 2006. Ministers can be described as having three main roles: representing the government; making day-to-day decisions within their departmental remits; and instigating reforms. There was little complaint and some admiration about the representative functions. Martin McGuinness, for instance, tended to impress outsiders with his even-handedness, affability and willingness to understate his republican background.21 In conducting day-to-day business, ministers generally ran their departments with little controversy. Peter Robinson, Nigel Dodds and Martin McGuinness all tended to impress the Speaker with their ability to defend their departments in the Assembly. Relations with civil servants were also generally good, although the dual character of the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister made for greater problems here. Even Sinn Féin Ministers quickly dropped their initial suspicions as their departmental civil servants adopted the classic professional mode of the British civil servant in support of their minister. Controversy was partly avoided because so many decisions were merely a rubber stamping, or natural development of, existing civil service programmes. Where ministerial decisions were more personal they were frequently populist and excited little press or public opposition. The more notable decisions of the administration which made a difference compared
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with a putative direct rule administration contained limited ideological coherence as might be expected, but were rather a set of reactions to circumstances. Reg Empey’s decision to fund a proposed gas pipeline to the North West, for instance, was well received by the business community and by the Irish government (who gained gas supplies for Donegal). This was a clear example of a ministerial initiative since the civil servants had decided that it represented poor value for money in comparison with alternative solutions to energy need in the North West – that is strengthening electricity power distribution cables. A ministerial direction was needed to protect the civil servants in this case of bypassing the normal rules on project appraisal (Purdy, 2005, p. 125). Some of Empey’s other major decisions were arguable. He received further business support for amalgamating Northern Ireland’s four business promotion agencies into the single InvestNI, but did little to reduce their wasteful expenditure.22 He took a prominent role in opposing the privatization of Belfast port. This had been a condition of the additional money pumped into Northern Ireland through the ‘Chancellor’s Initiative’ of 1998, but was blocked by the Assembly, and chiefly by Belfast City Councillors within the Assembly, who preferred that the port should stay under their control. The chance to add to Northern Ireland’s pitifully small number (six) of public limited companies was missed, but with a weak business community and no local champions for free enterprise there were few objections. One advantage for DUP ministers in choosing Regional Development was its potential in announcing eye-catching decisions in a context of rising expenditure. An early initiative from Peter Robinson to provide free public transport for the elderly mirrored schemes elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The political potential was immediately recognized in the Executive which promptly attempted to highjack the idea for itself, but failed and it was eventually announced by Robinson’s DUP successor, Gregory Campbell. Other announcements on replacements for Northern Ireland’s ancient rolling stock were rather routine, but Robinson failed to get support for much needed road and light rail improvements around the increasingly congested city of Belfast. One set of road improvements that was announced was less planned. On announcing his retirement, Seamus Mallon demanded a major road improvement in his constituency, from Newry to the border. Unionist ministers rejected what they saw as a Mallon memorial road, but were easily persuaded by a suggestion from special advisors to extend the concept to upgrading the main road from the border through to the port of Larne which improved roads in a unionist area. Education had the potential to be the Executive’s sternest test, mainly because Martin McGuinness was well known to be opposed to academic selection in secondary education. Northern Ireland’s grammar schools had survived the general move towards comprehensivization across the rest of the United Kingdom in the 1970s. As a result, Northern Ireland’s performance in
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national school examinations had increasingly outshone Great Britain, with resulting high levels of university entry. The grammar schools had majority public support, with particularly strong support from Protestant middle-class families, but were opposed by influential parts of the educational establishment and the Catholic church hierarchy. McGuinness proceeded slowly, offering among other things to hold private discussions on the 11+ with Trimble. The final suspension of the Assembly came before he could make much progress, and a last-day attempt to announce the abolition of selection came to nothing. McGuinness’s other main innovation was to scrap schools league tables, a pro-trade union, anti-consumer act that once again excited little condemnation in Northern Ireland’s subdued culture of public comment. A more successful and popular educational reform was part of the SDLP’s strong adherence to helping the disadvantaged. This was a proposal to extend student grants and additional bursaries to those from less well-off families. This had already been pioneered in Scotland where more money was available to improve on conditions in England. A lack of funds prevented abolition of tuition fees in Northern Ireland as pioneered in Scotland, but the general thrust of the policy was popular across the Executive. Ministers and the Executive as a whole were at their most motivated in dealing with crises, as long as these were not divisive and did not involve intercommunity conflict. One such crisis involved an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, another was an outbreak of the human bacterium cryptosporidium due to a collapse in the antiquated sewerage system. The foot and mouth outbreak was impressively dealt with by the quiet but able SDLP Agriculture Minister, Brid Rodgers. She clearly made a difference by first closing the Northern Ireland ports to animal movements against mainland wishes, and second by facing down farmers in nationalist border areas where illegal animal movements were rife. The Executive had to consider a number of often-controversial, cross-departmental issues that could not be decided by individual ministers. These included first, a reform of Northern Ireland’s overly complex system of local government and local administration of health and education, and second reform of rates and water charges. The Executive proved unable to reach decisions on such issues and multiparty ‘away days’ made little progress. These issues were subject to extensive external reviews, but where party interests were at stake, as with local authority boundaries, agreement proved impossible; even years later little progress has been made.
Office of First and Deputy First Minister The department created to service the First and Deputy First Ministers, and to coordinate the Executive, was widely regarded within the civil service as somewhat dysfunctional. Government business was held up for weeks or months as advisors and ministers, and eventually perhaps the Executive,
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considered papers and proposals. Some viewed it as a ‘black hole’ (Purdy, 2005, p. 207). The fault really lay with the cumbersome, involuntary coalition system. It might have been improved had the UUP and SDLP been able to work better together, but this was not to be. On top of the mutual suspicions and dislike described above, there was also the tendency for David Trimble to spend part of most weeks away from Northern Ireland. In general, he was approachable and frequented the staff canteen, unlike his unionist predecessor Terence O’Neill who was said to have swept imperiously past colleagues to dine each day with his private secretary in Stormont’s formal dining room. However, the job of First Minister held limited appeal for Trimble23 and he craved time in London, at Westminster, in bookshops or at the opera or receptions. Mallon described Trimble’s actions as ‘an appalling problem’ (Purdy, 2005, p. 208), but Trimble’s staff and advisors felt that these activities provided a helpful distraction in the demanding circumstances of maintaining an Executive in the absence of decommissioning. The task of obtaining agreed positions between Trimble and Mallon for Executive meetings was a constant challenge, often delaying the start of Executive meetings. In these tense sessions, the work of a few senior civil servants in smoothing conflicts between the First and Deputy First Ministers was impressive.24 In spite of apparently insuperable divergences of view at times, these individuals ensured that the system did not break down. Unlike other departments, the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister had two junior ministers to take some of the burden of work from the First and Deputy First Ministers. Whether they really did so was debatable, but the presence of additional ministers who did not attend Executive meetings, increased the potential for conflict. One conflict was between the UUP junior minister Dermot Nesbitt and the SDLP Finance Minister, Mark Durkan. The dispute concerned the Economic Policy Unit, set up as part of the formal arrangements of 18 December 1998 to coordinate economic policy across the Executive. Although the Economic Policy Unit’s statutory powers were strong, it was stillborn due to the unwillingness of Durkan to relinquish any Department of Finance and Personnel power. Nesbitt attempted to assert the Economic Policy Unit’s authority but received little backing from Trimble who at this stage was still trying to build a relationship with the SDLP. The second conflict was between Nesbitt and the SDLP junior minister Dennis Haughey. Nesbitt had agreed with Haughey a review of the reasons for the continued large disparity in unemployment rates between Catholics and Protestants. As an academic economist, Nesbitt knew that good research evidence existed to suggest that the disparity had little to do with discrimination and hence was beyond the influence of government. Haughey realized too late the difficult position he was in, since it was unthinkable that the SDLP could admit an inability to diminish a disparity they had always held to stem from past, if not present, discrimination. SDLP criticism of a report
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on this issue, written by civil servants of the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, resulted in an appeal to two Great Britain-based professors to adjudicate on the research. Their report supported Nesbitt’s conclusions, but both reports were successfully buried by SDLP ministers. This was the only government report that this author knows to have been suppressed during this period.25 Trimble had little direct involvement in this issue, perhaps to avoid souring his relationship with the SDLP, and perhaps also because unionists generally fought shy of appearing hardline on issues connected with discrimination.
Assembly legislation One of the functions least known to the public was paradoxically the Assembly’s role in making new laws. It is unlikely that many people within Northern Ireland could have named any one of the 34 Acts passed by the Assembly before suspension in 2002. This was paradoxical because a strand of opinion within the UUP had opposed legislative powers in an Assembly that was likely to include Sinn Féin, fearing destabilization. These unionists preferred the system of administrative devolution adopted for Wales. Experience proved that it was right to go straight to legislative devolution, as in Scotland, albeit without the devolution of law, order and justice and hence the capacity to create new offences. In practice, the great majority of new laws were routine and uncontroversial. Most brought Northern Ireland into line with existing laws in England or the EU. In the case of EU laws, like the Product Liability (Amendment) Act 2002, adoption of the law was mandatory and the role of the Assembly was merely as a rubber stamp. Legislation to bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom could, however, be amended in the Assembly and occasionally was. One of the more heated examples was the Local Government (Best Value) Act 2002. This was a bill to bring Northern Ireland into line with local authority practice in Great Britain, where compulsory competitive tendering had been scrapped in favour of a more general duty to secure best value and to adopt a regime of continuous improvement in services. Normally this might have been uncontroversial, but in an Assembly where the majority of MLAs were also local councillors any change in council practice proved difficult. In this case the difficulties were compounded by the somewhat fractious relationship between a relatively inexperienced (UUP) Environment minister and an Assembly Environment committee headed by the ambitious DUP MLA (and former MP) William McCrea keen to make his mark. In the end, a compromise was reached and passed by the Assembly. Almost no legislation originated from the parties, each of which entered the Assembly with little in the way of a well thought-out legislative programme. The dominance of Northern Ireland politics by constitutional and security concerns meant that social, economic and environmental concerns
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tended to be underdeveloped and ill focused. This did not stop individual ministers identifying with pieces of legislation and claiming credit for them. Reg Empey was closely associated with, and praised for, the amalgamation of Northern Ireland’s four separate industrial development agencies into a single body – InvestNI. This was achieved through the Industrial Development Act 2002 which had been in gestation since before devolution, stemming from the McKie Review of Industrial Strategy begun in January 1998, the private sector Northern Ireland Growth Challenge and The Department of Trade and Industry’s Strategy 2010. In principle, Empey could have blocked the legislation but he was unlikely to have done so since the change was popular with the business community. It also provided useful publicity giving an impression of decisive action. It is not known whether the change made much difference, but it was noticeable that the Minister and department avoided the much more difficult but necessary changes to the wasteful system of grants and subsidies to the private sector.26 Strategy 2010, in which the recommendations implemented in the Industrial Development Act were first published was caricatured by economists as ‘tragedy 2010’. Within the Department of Trade and Industry it was quietly dropped, once its sponsor the Department of Trade and Industry Permanent Secretary, Gerry Loughran, had moved on to become Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Where legislation was not a straight read-across from Great Britain or EU law, the likelihood was that it originated from the ‘permanent government’ as the Northern Ireland Civil Service saw itself in an era in which both direct rule and Assembly, ministers came and went with bewildering speed. This is not to say that the civil service in any way impeded or ignored the wishes of the new Assembly ministers. On the contrary, the welcome which most senior civil servants initially gave devolution appeared genuine. A lifetime of semi-detached, unaccountable and uninterested direct rule ministers made devolution appear as a new lease of life, although this palled quickly as the frustrations of devolved coalition life became apparent including onerous requirements to ‘proof’ actions for equality. The bills brought forward from departments were usually in response to pressing needs or updating of out-of-date rules. One example was the Railway Safety Act 2002. The Northern Ireland law on railway safety had been little changed since the nineteenth century since changes could be effected in a small state owned system without legislation. However, a number of rail accidents in 1998, together with the publicity from the Hatfield rail crash in England, brought the issue of rail safety into the limelight and Northern Ireland law was brought into line with current best practice in the United Kingdom. Most of the ‘technical’ legislation of this sort exercised the Assembly only slightly, but where it impinged on voters’ interests, especially those of rural interests as in the (Dangerous) Dogs (Amendment) Act 2001, there could be
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opposition from MLAs. Much of this legislation was already in the pipeline by the time the Assembly was eventually set up in December 1999. Once the backlog had worked its way through the Assembly the lack of new bills from within the devolved government became an embarrassment and the number of days on which the Assembly sat diminished. This problem was exacerbated by the long lead-time for bills which originated within the new system. It is doubtful that the volume and content of legislation would have been much different had direct rule continued. Certainly, few divergences from the likely path of a continued direct rule regime were noticed by the general public, and this contributed to public indifference to the Assembly. Even where the devolved administration could lay some claim to originality, or at least enthusiasm for change, dissention within the system delayed bills beyond suspension in 2002. This was the fate of the Children’s Commissioners Bill which became law only as a direct rule Order in Council in 2003. The bill proposed to establish a commissioner to represent children’s interests, an idea pioneered in Norway which had become internationally popular and was adopted in Wales. There was general agreement on the principle, but disagreement within the Executive on the powers of the commissioner. The SDLP argued for strong powers including powers of entry and the right to investigate a child’s past, perhaps motivated by a desire to deal with paedophile priests, but the UUP wished to avoid undermining family authority and Sinn Féin ministers attempted to protect their Departments’ interests against a new source of intrusion (Purdy, 2005, p. 327) In the end, the Executive agreed to stronger powers than elsewhere including powers of entry to public buildings. Whether this measure has added significantly to existing protections for children is unknown. It is unlikely to be as important as the Children (Leaving Care) Northern Ireland Act 2002 promoted from within the civil service. This attempted to correct the scandalous neglect of children leaving care homes at age 16. Around a third of all legislation dealt with the routine business of government including budgetary, social security or administrative matters. Budget bills were of course always a matter of keen competition between ministers striving to extend or protect their budgets, but the process was in general well managed by the successive SDLP Finance Ministers Mark Durkan and Sean Farren with outstanding disputes amicably settled in Executive meetings.
Assembly committees Assembly committees were established with considerable powers which were stronger than those for Westminster Committees (Osborne, 2002, pp. 283–99). Crucially these included the power of initiating new legislation. The wisdom of this additional weakening of central control might be
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questioned, given the weaknesses already outlined above. Once again, the powers agreed under the Good Friday Agreement were aimed at securing a ‘peace agreement’ rather than effective government. In practice, the power to initiate new legislation fell at the first attempt as the conflict with ministerial powers became obvious. Most committees held their ministers to account in a somewhat routine and unchallenging manner but some were more pressing. The degree of challenge and controversy appeared to depend on the character of the chairman. Where there was particular expertise, as with the SDLP health committee chairman and general practitioner, Dr Joe Hendron, a challenge was made where he disagreed with proposed reforms. One such disagreement was on the abolition of GP fund-holding, a left-wing reform from Sinn Féin. Chairmen keen to make a splash also caused difficulties for ministers. One was the DUP Environment Committee chairman William McCrea who harassed the UUP minister Sam Foster by testing the regulations on access to papers. Perhaps the major Committee initiative, and the only attempt to initiate legislation, came in the Higher Education Committee led by the UUP former economics lecturer Esmond Birnie. The Committee pre-empted a ministerial consultation on student finance by introducing its motion to the Assembly. This called for the introduction to Northern Ireland of recent Scottish reforms, abolishing fees at local universities and expanding local places by 4000. These were beyond the intentions of Sean Farren, the SDLP minister concerned, and outside his department’s budget, and were thus opposed by him. In the Assembly, SDLP (and some UUP) members who had supported the proposals in committee helped to vote them down (Osborne, 2002). The power of the ministers within the governing parties ensured that committees did not dilute their powers. In future, it seems likely that committee powers to introduce legislation will be restricted to uncontroversial cross-departmental issues. More constructively, committees could help to shape policies and their delivery through good working relations with their minister. Mark Durkan worked well with the Finance Committee chaired by the Sinn Féin member Francie Molloy. In general, this was a learning period for committees, most of whose members had no executive experience. In future Assemblies it is likely that committee chairpersons will include more ex-ministers and as a result the influence of committees is likely to rise.
North, South, East and West Much of the attention given to governance in the Good Friday Agreement was focused on the North–South bodies. After all, this was the third historic attempt to establish formal cross-border cooperation, and it was this issue that had destroyed the major previous attempt to establish a devolved power-sharing Assembly in 1974. Under the Good Friday Agreement,
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nationalists made strenuous attempts to achieve something close to joint authority, but without the dangerous symbolism of a ‘Council of Ireland’. The strong opposition from the UUP, and David Trimble personally, received sufficient support from the UK government to avert a crisis. In the event the six cross-border bodies and six areas of cooperation proved relatively uncontroversial and were Trimble’s major achievement in the Good Friday Agreement. For the UUP, the bodies merely encapsulated the sensible cooperation they had always supported. To guarantee no constitutional slippage, all decisions were under ministerial control and had to be reported to the Assembly. As a belt and braces measure, Trimble ensured that his own UUP ministers controlled four of the six bodies. There was enough symbolism for nationalists to describe the arrangements to their electorates as a move towards unification. The symbolism was increased at the first meeting of the North–South Ministerial Council in December 1999 when Southern ministers arrived in a cavalcade of two dozen official limousines, described by one reporter as being ‘like a mafia wedding’ (Purdy, 2005, p. 114). Whatever the symbolism, the reality was mundane. The six bodies encompassed food safety, waterways, some coastal administration, Irish and Ulster Scots languages,27 special EU programmes and trade and business development. Total Northern Ireland government spending on all six bodies was only £11 million (out of a total of £5,000 million). The six areas of cooperation (transport, agriculture, education, health, environment and tourism) all had a limited focus. In each case it is not obvious that cooperation needed new bodies or enhanced formality, but nor was any particular damage done to the effectiveness of government. By this time, there were few if any impediments to cross-border activity by the private sector except for such things as a different currency. The main impediments arose in the public sector and reflected mutual difficulties in organizing and financing activity outside national jurisdictions. It has not been obvious that the cross-border arrangements under the North–South Ministerial Council made much difference to the efficient provision of public services in border areas. The poor relation of the Good Friday Agreement institutions was the British-Irish Council sometimes called the Council of the Isles. This was an attempt by David Trimble to balance North–South bodies with an institution that pulled both Northern Ireland and the Republic closer to the political orbit of the United Kingdom. It was indulged rather than opposed by Northern nationalists and the Irish government, all of whom correctly saw it as being of limited importance. It was only ever a talking shop, and one that quickly lost any influence it might have had when the UK government set up Joint Ministerial Committees to coordinate policy between Westminster and the three devolved regional governments within the United Kingdom. The importance of the Joint Ministerial Committees was limited at this time because Scotland, Wales and the United Kingdom as a whole all had Labour governments, but they did make the British-Irish Council even more
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redundant than it otherwise would have been. British-Irish Council meetings, which were attended by representatives of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, had an imbalanced and unworldly feel. They could, however, have forged personal relationships of importance to Northern Ireland, on such issues as attracting financial investment, but the limited interest in economic development within Northern Ireland meant that this was not done.
Conclusions The establishment of the devolved government at the end of 1999 was hailed at the time as a historic moment. The expectation was that it would cement the ceasefires and usher in a new era of improved community relations. Little thought was given at the time to what else a new government might achieve. Its mere existence was enough for most people, although senior civil servants, the business community and others close to government hoped that devolved government would be more responsive to local preferences than direct rule had been. Low public expectations and a favourable financial context eased the path of an administration hemmed in by other difficulties. The disruptive political context required enormous amounts of time and energy from senior politicians, but even without these distractions the existence of an involuntary coalition formed by parties with sharply divergent long-term interests was probably enough to have prevented effective government. Most of the unionist groups within the Assembly had strong doubts about the morality of the Agreement. Within the UUP, whose participation was essential for the success of devolution, around a third of the MLAs remained continuously uneasy about doing business with Sinn Féin. The UUP’s core electoral support ebbed away early in the period, and their position within the Assembly was undermined by defections to the DUP. With the notable exception of the DUP the parties nevertheless set out to work as constructively together as conditions allowed. However, a system designed with insufficient central control, and run by parties with underdeveloped political programmes, meant that progress was always going to be limited. Add to this the poor personal relations between First Minister David Trimble and Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon, and it was perhaps surprising that anything of value was achieved. In fact the achievements of the devolved government were at least as good as those of direct rule administrations. This can be ascribed in large part to the strong momentum inherent in the government system within the United Kingdom. Much legislation and departmental actions would have occurred anyway, and it was carried through the system by the civil service with limited ministerial involvement. Although most civil servants were keen to serve their new political masters, the fact is that they got limited
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guidance on policy. The focus of Northern Ireland on the issues of the border and security had undermined the development of a more normal political culture from long before direct rule was introduced. The subsequent lack of experience in many areas of policy meant that this Assembly was always going to be a learning experience. More than this, however, was a deeper factor. Many of the current generation of politicians had been attracted into politics by the importance, and perhaps the glamour, of stark issues of national identity and survival. It was not obvious that they would ever develop much more than a perfunctory interest in matters of economics, health, education or the environment. The arrival of such people may require a new generation of politicians bred in a more peaceful age. This would require partition to wither away as a political priority, but whether it will do so remains to be seen. The underlying causes of division in Northern Ireland were deliberately left largely unaddressed in the Agreement. They remain a slumbering elephant in the room and are likely to come back to haunt future Assemblies once Sinn Féin’s initial conciliatory phase within the Assembly ends. The Assembly provided no final answer to the question of whether effective governments can be run with little real collectivity of purpose. Dissent within the 1999–2002 administration was largely avoided by kicking divisive issues into touch with policy reviews. Few hard decisions were made, and the more eye-catching initiatives tended to be populist measures made possible by an easy financial context. The lack of progress right up to 2008 suggests that such issues will be a real problem for Northern Ireland’s involuntary coalition system. Eventually a more normal system of voluntary coalitions may have to evolve, but reform of the existing system may be as difficult to achieve as was the Good Friday Agreement in the first place. Was the first post- Good Friday Agreement Assembly a success or a failure? Its mere existence must be counted a success for supporters of the Good Friday Agreement. The moral outrage that accompanied proposals to include Sinn Féin in government slowly ground down even supporters of the Good Friday Agreement as Sinn Féin attempted to enjoy the fruits of power without the full move to non-violent methods required in all democracies. Had the IRA controlled their fringe activities in Columbia and spying operations within Stormont and Castlereagh, the Assembly might have survived. In the end it foundered, but must nonetheless be judged a vital stepping-stone to the Assembly that was formed at the end of 2007. The DUP’s moral outrage was quickly put aside once weapons decommissioning was completed, and once they were in a position to dominate the Assembly in place of their ministerial unionist opponents in the UUP. Did devolution improve government in Northern Ireland? The Assembly probably made little real impact in most people’s lives and hence the public indifference to its demise. The UK and EU contexts and a civil service well integrated into the UK system ensure a reasonably high degree of continuity,
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efficiency and even ongoing reform. The cost of inefficiencies was in any case financed from outside Northern Ireland, so that local electors did not bear the burden. Shortcomings in the delivery of public services were severe in some areas, but it was pressure from the UK government, the EU, from within the civil service or professional and other bodies that were most likely to provide the pressure for reform. Locally elected ministers gave this system a little more acceptability within Northern Ireland, and made some difference here and there. In general, they lacked the administrative experience, often lacked sufficient interest in social, economic and environmental policy and perhaps also lacked the intellectual confidence to do more in this short experiment but the distractions of constitutional politics were also a significant factor.
Notes 1. Later replaced by Gregory Campbell and Maurice Morrow when the DUP adopted the additional tactic of switching ministers. 2. A literal reading of the Good Friday Agreement does not fully support this interpretation. However, this is a fault of the Good Friday Agreement and its ambiguities. It is hardly credible that one participant in the devolved government could retain an active private army. After the twin towers attack in New York, not even previous fellow travellers in the United States and elsewhere would support Sinn Féin’s view on weapons. 3. The one offer by Seamus Mallon in November 1998 to contemplate future sanctions, two years ahead, was not credited by unionists and was not repeated. 4. This calculation makes allowance for estimated support in uncontested seats. 5. The two defectors, Peter Weir and Pauline Armitage were assisting the DUP as early as the July 2000 Assembly motion to exclude Sinn Féin (Purdy, 2005, p. 309). Pauline Armitage was later suspended from the UUP for her refusal to back Trimble in an Assembly vote and subsequently sat as an independent unionist. 6. General Election 2001. ‘Analysis of Sources of UUP Support’. Unpublished Report prepared by Graham Gudgin for the First Minister, 2001. 7. Although they rarely speculated on what other factors might cause higher catholic unemployment. 8. In the event the calculation failed to secure the election of a single UDP member, linked to the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and this may have delayed the arrival of a loyalist ceasefire. 9. Martina Purdy reports that Mallon left instructions that nothing was to be agreed without him and subsequently kept in touch with the ongoing negotiations by telephone (Purdy, 2005, p. 60). 10. The rule is described in section 18 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. A party was eligible to nominate the net minister when it had the highest value for the formula S/(1+M) where S was the number of seats held by the Party on the first day of the Assembly, and M the number of ministers held by the Party. One oddity of this formula was that defections from a party made no difference to its entitlement. 11. In a more promising start to the 2007 Assembly the departmental allocations were pre-negotiated.
Implementing Devolved Government 1998–2002 83 12. Martina Purdy states that Empy wanted the job and had strong support within the party for getting it (Purdy, 2005, p. 85). Sir Reg himself states that his original personal preference if offered a department was Department of the Environment because of his interest in local government. However, others steered him towards the Department of Trade and Industry and this was in part because it was the face of Northern Ireland to the United States etc and the main player in North/ South institutions which was feared would be used by Sinn Féin as a platform to project a republican Northern Ireland to the world (personal correspondence). It is notable that when he himself came to choose departments as party leader in the next Assembly he went for the spending departments controlling 57% of the revenue budget. 13. My own experience of watching Trimble ‘selling’ various Sinn Féin offers to the UUP Assembly group convinced me that his tactics were close to optimal in face of a deep and continuing reluctance among a substantial number of UUP MLAs. 14. Although the UKUP lost four MLAs to a newly formed NI Unionist Party due to a policy clash with the leader Bob McCartney. 15. The personality clashes between Trimble and Mallon are well described by Martina Purdy (Purdy, 2005, pp. 30–32). 16. Private conversation with the author, 2001. 17. Once Trimble’s influence waned the best educated MLAs and advisors fell by the wayside. Leslie was deselected, Birnie defeated and Nesbitt left politics. One of Empey’s first actions as new leader was to let go Steven King, the UUP’s last advisor with a PhD and one of their few talented communicators. Steven King had been Trimble’s advisor and his post had thus lapsed and no alternative was found for him. 18. Northern Ireland Executive, ‘Programme for Government: Making a Difference, Office of the First and Deputy First Minister’, March 2001. 19. ‘Programme for Government’, p. 48. 20. David Trimble was strongly warned-off when he attempted an early intervention with the Prime Minister on an agricultural matter. 21. He avoided any republican symbols and wore a badge of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). 22. Sir Reg Empy has stated to the author that ‘InvestNI hasn’t worked out as planned. Its creation, which was widely supported, was followed after six months with the collapse of Stormont. I had little time to see it develop, and it has not worked out as I envisaged’. 23. Trimble had a remarkable lack of egoism about high office and often remarked that he would enjoy doing things other than heading the Northern Ireland administration. See, for instance, the remark ‘my bid for freedom failed’ made at the resumption of the Executive in 2003 (Purdy, 2005, p. 301). 24. The work of Tony McCusker was notable within The Office of the First and Deputy First Minister and Andrew McCormick behind the scenes in Department of Finance and Personnel. The SDLP advisor Colm Larkin, a former EU civil servant was also very constructive. 25. The report was subsequently obtained by Dermot Nesbitt under a freedom of information request and hence placed in the public domain. 26. See end-note 22 above. 27. The importance given to Ulster Scots was chiefly to balance aid to the Irish language and to offer something to unionist opponents of the Good Friday Agreement. It brought an element of farce into the new government dispensation.
4 The Belfast Agreement and the Constitutional Status of Northern Ireland Austen Morgan
Introduction This chapter deploys a legal approach to the Northern Ireland question, by analysing the 1998 Belfast Agreement. The nature of that Agreement – which is firmly rooted in the 1920–22 partition settlement in Ireland – is defined below. Northern Ireland’s continuation as a part of the United Kingdom (which is not in doubt) is a matter of international law. The analysis here deals mainly with domestic law, because the Belfast Agreement principally reordered the internal constitution of Northern Ireland; devolution was restored to Belfast, when it was also being extended to Edinburgh and Cardiff. This discussion of the Belfast Agreement respects the legal text and considers two major questions. First, does the Belfast Agreement amount to a road map to a united Ireland? Second, did the St Andrews Agreement of 2006 effectively replace the Belfast Agreement? Both questions are answered in the negative, detailed reasons are given below. This is not law for lawyers; it is legal argument for scholars in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. The touchstone remains the principle of legality: namely, the rule of law internationally, binding states parties; and the rule of law domestically, binding public bodies and natural and legal persons.
The Belfast Agreement of 10 April 19981 The Belfast Agreement, facilitated by the United Kingdom and Irish governments, was concluded on 10 April 1998. It has a section entitled Constitutional Issues (of which more below). But the Belfast Agreement provided mainly for another devolved administration2 in Northern Ireland (Strand One), with North-South (Strand Two) and East-West (Strand Three) institutional links. There were also five sections dealing with rights, decommissioning of paramilitary arms, security, policing and justice, and prisoners – which 84
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have been characterized as ‘from terrorism to democracy’ (Shipley-Dalton, 1999). The Belfast Agreement comprises two agreements: the Multi-Party Agreement voted upon by the political parties, plus the two governments, on 10 April 1998; and the British-Irish Agreement, signed immediately afterwards by the two heads of government, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern.3 The Belfast Agreement has two faces, political and legal. The political face is the Multi-Party Agreement, with the support of the two governments having no legal effect, and the British-Irish Agreement being annexed only for information.4 The legal face is the British-Irish Agreement, signed by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, with the Multi-Party Agreement as Annex 1 (there being an Annex 2). The relationship between the British-Irish Agreement and the Multi-Party Agreement is determined by Article 2 of the former: ‘The two Governments affirm their solemn commitment to support, and where appropriate implement, the provisions of the Multi-Party Agreement.’ The expression ‘and where appropriate implement’ means that the obligations have to be legally extracted, by lawyers acting for clients, from the text. To what obligations did the UK government agree? And did the Irish government reciprocally commit itself to separate actions? These are questions of legal argument and debate.
Did the Belfast Agreement provide for a united Ireland? This is not an obvious question to pose, given the content of the Agreement. However, the Belfast Agreement had a strange, unifying cultural effect. The nationalist minority in Northern Ireland, which favours a united Ireland, culturally appropriated the Belfast Agreement (and even christened it the Good Friday Agreement). The unionist majority, which wishes to remain part of the United Kingdom, split between support for the Agreement and all-out opposition: but the leaders of ‘No’ unionism cited in evidence, not their own analysis but the claims of the most extreme nationalists. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Dr Ian Paisley, published a policy paper in 2003, entitled Towards a New Agreement, which, by implication, accepted the wishful thinking of their political opponents. The DUP policy paper claimed that ‘the flaws in the Belfast Agreement are so fundamental that it requires to be replaced with a new agreement ... It is clear that the Belfast Agreement is a process towards a united Ireland’.5 The assertion that the Belfast Agreement contains a road map to a united Ireland may be examined through the focus of eight discrete issues contained in the Belfast Agreement. The Preamble to the British-Irish Agreement: ‘a new beginning’ One of the five recitals (as they are called) refers to ‘a new beginning in relationships within Northern Ireland, within the island of Ireland and between the peoples of these islands’. This phrase had been the foundation
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of the multi-party negotiations, leading to the Strands One, Two and Three sections of the Belfast Agreement. First, ‘a new beginning’ is in the context of the Multi-Party Agreement. Second, it is rhetoric, of little use to a court interpreting the Belfast Agreement. Third, ‘a new beginning’ (read with the other recitals, including ‘partnership, equality and mutual respect’) refers more likely to the integration of Catholics in Northern Ireland. Fourth, the recitals are unlikely to refer to a united Ireland, since this is not provided for in any detail in the agreement. Article 1 of the British-Irish Agreement: consent, recognition and self-determination The inspiration for this is Article 1 of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, where the two states parties had failed to fully define (not determine) the status of Northern Ireland. There was Irish acceptance of the consent principle in 1985, but no recognition of Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom. This article represents an updated constitutional understanding by London and Dublin, made possible by the ending of the Irish territorial claim (see further below). For the first time, the United Kingdom obtained recognition of Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom, in paragraphs (i) and (iii) of Article 1. Reference to the Union ‘reflect[ing] and rel[ying]’ upon unionist aspiration is a political statement, and not a legal repealing of the fundamental 1800 Acts of Union which could only be repealed expressly by Parliament.6 The ideological price paid by the UK government was the introduction of the concept of self-determination. In Ireland, this has always been associated with separatism. Few in Ireland recognize the changes in the meaning of self-determination in international law since 1945. It was always about peoples, not nations. The association with sovereign, independent statehood gave way, in 1960, to a wider range of outcomes, including free association and even integration with another state (Morgan, 2000). There is some evasive drafting in paragraphs (ii)7 and (iv) of Article 1, but it is clear that the United Kingdom did not concede that the Irish people (in two states) had a classical right of self-determination. This is evident in the idea of separate referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, of two conditions precedent to a united Ireland and not simply a numerical majority in an all-Ireland vote. Paragraph (vi) of Article 1 deals with citizenship, generally a matter of domestic law. However, few realize that Annex 2 of the British-Irish Agreement contains an important qualifying declaration by the two states parties, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Evidently, the London and Dublin negotiators, when working on their constitutional understanding (above), did not have a full grasp of the limits of United Kingdom and Irish nationality law (the latter having an extraterritorial
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effect in Northern Ireland from principally 1956). Annex 2 of the BritishIrish Agreement (often overlooked) which contains an agreed definition of ‘the people of Northern Ireland’ made no changes to UK and Irish nationality law. Those were matters respectively for the Westminster Parliament, and the Oireachtas in Dublin. According to UK law in 1998, all those born in Northern Ireland became British citizens (though the birth rule had been strengthened in 19838). As for the Republic of Ireland, there was no birthright in Northern Ireland to Irish nationality. There was, under heavily retrospective 1956 domestic legislation,9 with an extraterritorial effect (to which London did not object), a peculiar descent rule. All those born in Ireland before 1922 (whether alive or dead) were deemed Irish citizens. A successor born in Northern Ireland could acquire citizenship by descent, according to Irish law. This descent rule seemingly expanded across generations with time. The descent rule for the Republic of Ireland, in contrast, ran for only one generation; a child of an Irish parent, born abroad, could acquire Irish nationality, but not pass it on. Paragraph (vi) of Article 1 did not give Irish nationality to Northern Ireland Catholics for the first time. It, along with Annex 2, acknowledged UK acquiescence in the extraterritoriality of Irish law since 1956. This is when the real change was made in 1998. An amending citizenship act in the Republic of Ireland in 200110 was necessary because of the Irish constitutional changes. Unfortunately, the United Kingdom allowed the Irish to legislate a new birth rule, which may have subsequent extraterritorial implications.11
The Declaration of Support in the Multi-Party Agreement: ‘a new beginning’ and ‘reconciliation’ This first section of the Multi-Party Agreement resembles a preamble to an international agreement. However, it refers only to the political parties and not to the two states parties. This is partly because paragraph five of the first section begins: ‘We acknowledge the substantial differences between our continuing, and equally legitimate, political aspirations.’ States do not have such political aspirations; they are legal persons in international law. The political aspirations here – a united Ireland or a continuing United Kingdom – belong to political parties. There is a reference to ‘a new beginning’ in paragraph one of this section, but this would seem to resemble ‘a fresh start’ in paragraph two of this section. That does not imply a legal constitutional revolution. The object of the Multi-Party Agreement is defined in paragraph two of this section as ‘reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust’, and in paragraph five of this section as ‘reconciliation and rapprochement within the framework of democratic and agreed arrangements’.
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Constitutional Issues: two referendums The Constitutional Issues section of the Multi-Party Agreement has two paragraphs. Paragraph one is an endorsement of the constitutional understanding of the two states parties in Article 1 of the British-Irish Agreement (but without any reference to Annex 2). This is discussed above under Article 1 of the British-Irish Agreement. The endorsement by the political parties, in this section, has no additional legal effect. Paragraph two of Constitutional Issues introduces Annexes A and B to this section, namely proposed constitutional changes in United Kingdom and Irish law respectively. First, these are part of the Multi-Party Agreement. Second, they are only annexes to a section. Third, the wording of paragraph 2 of this section shows that they relate to government undertakings, politically conditional upon the Multi-Party Agreement being agreed. The legal status of Annexes A and B is to be found in Article 4 of the British-Irish Agreement, which deals with entry into force. Neither government agreed in the Belfast Agreement to change its constitution; that is a matter for Parliament in the United Kingdom and the people in the Republic of Ireland. But constitutional changes were stated to be conditions precedent for the British- Irish Agreement entering into force (which it did on 2 December 1999). Annexes A and B are not equivalent, despite references before and during the negotiations to balanced constitutional changes. The United Kingdom did little. It was the Republic of Ireland that ended its territorial claim, contained in Articles 2 and 3 of its 1937 Constitution and known by its Irish title, Bunreacht na hÉireann. Annex A to the Constitutional Issues section contained two provisions: the so-called constitutional guarantee to Northern Ireland; and the repeal of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The latter – the Partition Act – had been largely repealed in 1973. It was finished off as a statute by section two of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, on 2 December 1999. Some minor provisions, however, were re-enacted, by the Northern Ireland Act 1998. They could have been left in the truncated Government of Ireland Act 1920; clearly, the United Kingdom wanted to be seen to repeal that statute in its entirety. Section 75 of the 1920 Act, misunderstood by anti-Agreement unionists as some sort of UK territorial claim to Northern Ireland, was about parliamentary, and not territorial, sovereignty. Territorial sovereignty is a concept of international law; parliamentary sovereignty, in contrast, is a doctrine of the UK constitution. Repeal of section 75 of the 1920 Act did not affect Northern Ireland’s constitutional status as part of the United Kingdom. That is a matter of international law. Nor did repeal affect Westminster’s power to devolve functions to Northern Ireland, and then to subsequently suspend the operation of the Assembly on four occasions in following years. Westminster remained sovereign, as it were, within the United Kingdom: powers given to Belfast could be, and were, taken back by London.
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The phrase ‘and this Act shall have effect notwithstanding any other previous enactment’, in section two of the Northern Ireland Act, was legally of no consequence. Later acts may expressly or impliedly repeal earlier enactments. The UK intention was to allow some nationalists to argue that, somehow, the 1800 Acts of Union was being repealed by the Northern Ireland Act 1998. They were not. There was no express repeal of the 1800 Acts of Union. And no court has, or will, hold that this section two impliedly repealed, in Northern Ireland, the British Act and its companion Irish Act. Section one of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 amounted to a shift in UK constitutional law. Parliament had applied the consent principle to Northern (and Southern) Ireland from 1920: unity could only come about with the agreement of the Belfast and Dublin parliaments. In 1949, in the Ireland Act, Westminster stated that Northern Ireland would not cease to be a part of the United Kingdom, without the consent of the Northern Ireland parliament. There was a similar so-called constitutional guarantee in 1972, which was not immutable. In 1973, the law was changed to provide for the consent of the people of Northern Ireland, as a condition precedent for a united Ireland: Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973. Consent was attached to the people in the absence of a parliament. The difference between the Ireland Act 1949 and the provisions of the Belfast Agreement is that, while in the Ireland Act 1949 the assumption was that Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom, in the Belfast Agreement the guarantee was extended to envisage an option of a united Ireland. What had been implied was made express. This is the effect of section 1(2) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Meaning may be assigned in the form of UK intention (as it is by nervous unionists afraid of a sell-out); but the legal point is that, if there is no vote to leave, Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom. The UK constitutional change, contained in section one of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, amounted to the incorporation of part of Article 1 of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement: the idea of introducing legislation at Westminster to provide for a united Ireland. However, a new condition precedent, a LondonDublin international agreement, is specified in law. This had not been in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. It is now in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. If London and Dublin do not agree, regardless of whatever votes there are, there can be no transfer of Northern Ireland from one state to the other. The cession of territory from one state to another (an extremely rare act) has to be by international agreement. Another reason for such a London-Dublin agreement is the possibility that the Republic of Ireland might not vote for a united Ireland even if Northern Ireland did so.12 The people of Northern Ireland can no longer bring about a united Ireland on their own; they need, not the Irish government, but the people of the neighbouring state, who have shown no desire to take over a part of the United Kingdom.
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Such legal drafting means a united Ireland by consent (even with two referendums) is not a likely consequence of the Belfast Agreement. However, an old idea, of Catholics eventually out breeding Protestants, promoted by a few nationalist ideologues,13 became almost inevitability in minority culture. The hand was overplayed in the run up to the 2001 census. On 19 December 2002, the figures on the religious breakdown of Northern Ireland were published. It was 53.13 per cent Protestant to 43.76 per cent Catholic, with 3.11 per cent unallocated.14 The expectation had been 46–47 per cent Catholic. One statistical estimate puts the sectarian split at 55.5 per cent Protestant to 44.5 per cent Catholic.15 The prospect of demographic parity lies in the medium term, if at all. Given the lack of complete fit between ethnicity and politics, a united Ireland by democratic means is not necessarily achievable. It is an open question whether the chances of nationalists achieving a united Ireland, with the Belfast Agreement, will improve or diminish over time. Most likely, the aspiration to a united Ireland will become a casualty of the advances of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Annex B to the Constitutional Issues section is much more important, and involved an Irish constitutional amendment by referendum. The Irish constitution dates from 1937 (and it amounted to a legal revolution in the 26 Counties); Article 47 provides for its amendment. The affect of Annex B was to end the Irish territorial claim, whereby the Republic of Ireland claimed ‘the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas’. The citizens of the Republic voted in a referendum on 22 May 1998 to end the ‘territorial claim’. The outcome of the referendum meant that Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 Constitution, which had referred to the ‘national territory’ as being the whole of Ireland, and to ‘the re-integration of the national territory’, were dropped. But the citizens of the Republic did not vote on the Belfast Agreement; only the electorate in Northern Ireland was so consulted and the referendum on the Belfast Agreement was held in Northern Ireland on 22 May 1998. It is a travesty to claim that the people of – geographical – Ireland voted for the Agreement in an all-Ireland plebiscite. Unfortunately, out of a desire to placate republicanism, the logic of the Irish constitution was disrupted with the new proposed Articles 2 and 3 for the 1937 Constitution in Annex B. New Article 2 referred to nationality, citizenship (already dealt with in Article 9) and, strangely, the so-called Irish diaspora.16 New Article 3, drawing upon suggested reforms over the years, contained unity by consent (with two majorities necessary), and the principle of peaceful means. Both articles referred to the Irish nation, which was described as having a ‘firm will’ in Article 3. The Irish nation would have been acceptable in the preamble to the constitution, or even a redrafted Article 1 of the 1937 Constitution with no legal effect (Morgan, 2000). It is essentially an aspirational concept. The Irish nation has no meaning in
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practical articles of the Irish constitution, as was evident from the original Article 3 and more so from the proposed Article 3. The new Articles 2 and 3 failed to convince unionists generally that the territorial claim had been definitively ended. This was compounded by republican spinning, encouraged by the Irish government, about essentially reformulating the irredentist claim to Northern Ireland. In Irish constitutional law, the claim was removed from the 1937 Constitution. In Irish political culture, the deception of nationalists and their opponents continued. Strand Two: North-South Ministerial Council In the multi-party negotiations, Strand Two was balanced by Strand Three, dealing with East–West relations. Strand Two is about North–South relations, between Belfast and Dublin. This balancing of Strands Two and Three (London–Dublin relations) was a new development. The aborted Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 had envisaged a more significant Irish dimension, than the one which emerged eventually on 2 December 1999. And the concept of North-South practical cooperation in the 1985 AngloIrish Agreement was not then balanced by any concept of a west European council of the isles (similar to the Nordic council). To the bilateral North-South Ministerial Council, unionists were able to retort: there would be a multilateral British-Irish Council; and even the bilateral British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference with Northern Ireland observers. One difference between 1973 and 1998 must be acknowledged. The unionists cut back the number of North-South matters in the multi-party negotiations from 49 to nil. They agreed to a work a programme to identify six implementation bodies and six areas of cooperation by 31 October 1998. These were eventually agreed between Belfast and Dublin on 18 December 1998. There was no similar provision for a work programme in Strand Three, though arguably the first paragraphs 5 and 10 of Strand Three allow for EastWest arrangements of varying geometry. The point has been made by some about the Irish government, in alliance with Northern Ireland nationalists, driving the North-South Ministerial Council since 2 December 1999. The answer is there is a unionist veto to all this activity. Nationalist ‘North-Southery’ (as it was called pejoratively by the DUP) is not the fault of the Belfast Agreement alone. Similarly, there are no legal limitations on the extent of the British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (even given nationalist foot dragging and a lack of UK enthusiasm). It is to the credit of unionists, who are ideologically adverse to over government that they do not want to create pretence – as political opponents of nationalism – about a restoration of the old United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, based upon practical cooperation between London and Dublin. A great deal of ink was spilt providing for legislation in London and Dublin. The North-South Ministerial Council did not need Strand Two of the Belfast
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Agreement to be created, much less a supplementary London-Dublin agreement of 8 March 1999. It comprises ministers from a subordinate administration in the UK meeting with ministers of a sovereign neighbouring state, the Republic of Ireland. Such activity is part and parcel of good neighbourly relations: Dublin ministers can do what they want; Belfast ministers must operate within the constitution of the United Kingdom. The six implementation bodies, which account for tiny proportions of the budgets in Belfast and Dublin, are widely misunderstood. Again, legislation in London and Dublin was talked about. So even was private contract law, as if the UK and Irish governments were simply companies. Eventually, the bodies were created by another international agreement of 8 March 1999. They are treaty bodies, or international organizations. Legislation was only necessary to transfer domestic functions out of the two states. These international organizations represent the alienation of sovereignty by two states. The result is all-Ireland public bodies, but without unilateral interference by the Republic of Ireland in Northern Ireland. They are mutual. Northern Ireland Ministers share responsibility for what were once aspects of the domestic life of the Republic of Ireland. During the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which began in October 2002, questions were even being asked, by a unionist peer, at Westminster, about rivers in the Republic of Ireland, now under Waterways Ireland. The UK government had to answer these questions, though some officials in Dublin (and Northern Ireland) were clearly uneasy about seemingly a restoration of nineteenth-century rule of the Republic of Ireland from London. The Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity section The Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity section is divided into two subsections: human rights and economic, social and cultural issues [sic]. Nationalists emphasize the constitutional aspects of the Belfast Agreement plus the North-South Ministerial Council but secular radicals (some of whom would take the same position regardless of the state in which they resided) have read into the loose drafting of this section many of their own aspirations. In the human rights subsection, the new Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, on which there was considerable over-representation of the controversial Committee on the Administration of Justice, which had promoted its own draft bill of rights in 1993, was required to consult and then advise the UK government on the scope for defining in Westminster legislation rights supplementary to the European Convention on Human Rights (which was incorporated in domestic UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998). Though the UK state discharged its obligation under the first paragraph four of this section of the Belfast Agreement on 24 March 1999, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has continued to campaign for its bill
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of rights. In doing so, it has shown its dependence ultimately upon republicanism.17 A bill of rights is one of the things Sinn Féin says the United Kingdom still has to deliver. The UK and Irish governments are known to be opposed to any such Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission bill of rights. Indeed, a Northern Ireland Office Minister, Des Browne MP, wrote to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission on 22 November 2001, effectively rejecting what was proposed.18 It is unlikely that the Northern Ireland Office now favours a Committee on the Administration of Justice bill of rights for Northern Ireland. Central government reviewed the position after the Human Rights Act 1998 (which applies throughout the United Kingdom), and decided upon no new rights. The Belfast Agreement commitment was always limited: advice (which has a clear legal meaning); and rights supplementing the European Convention, which is plain, clear English. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission promoted a human rights consortium based on the state-sponsored community and voluntary sector. As a result of the Comprehensive Agreement of 8 December 2004 (see below), the idea of a human rights forum – embracing the political parties – was articulated. This finally became a term of the St Andrew’s Agreement of 13 October 2006 (see below). On one view, the community and voluntary sector will force the political parties to do its bidding; on another, political disagreement19 will mean the human rights forum goes nowhere fast or at all.20 Most likely, this process in Northern Ireland will be overtaken by events. David Cameron has articulated the idea of a UK bill of rights (with domestic rights). The European Convention on Human Rights would remain. Cameron may have forced this agenda on the new government of Gordon Brown in the summer of 2007, though much remains to be seen. The first paragraph nine of the Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity section is extremely important. Though the Belfast Agreement is a bilateral treaty, the Republic of Ireland has very few obligations under it. Most of them are concentrated here: ‘comparable steps by the Irish government’ (being the first paragraph nine of the Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity section). These include ‘strengthen[ing] and underpin[ning] the constitutional protection of human rights’ to ‘at least an equivalent level protection ... as will pertain in Northern Ireland’. The Irish government was late in introducing a European Convention on Human Rights Bill. The European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 – only partly modelled on the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998 – does not meet the requirements of the Belfast Agreement. Nationalists have made little, if any, effort to ensure mutuality on the part of the two states parties. The Irish government has been tardy about its obligations. But it has joined Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in continually demanding of the United Kingdom that it fully implement the agreement.
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The first paragraph ten of this section provides for a joint committee between the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and a similar body in the Republic of Ireland. Again, nationalists see this as another instance of ‘all-Irelandism’, even though these two bodies needed no such sanction to meet. However, this is not seen by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission as an example of human rights internationalism (involving a similar interest in Great Britain). It is seen by that quango as an aspect of a new constitutional arrangement where Northern Ireland, on the basis only of paragraph 1(v) of the British-Irish Agreement, is seen as an entity in transition from the United Kingdom to the Republic of Ireland. This is a measure of the legal illiteracy of the human rights community in general (supposed experts in international law): in international law, a region such as Northern Ireland has to belong to one state or another. Decommissioning The Decommissioning section of the Belfast Agreement required all paramilitary organizations to decommission their weapons by 22 May 2000. Even if it had not, there is an argument that the principle of legality (in the absence of express exception), in both international and domestic law, could, and should, be read into the Belfast Agreement. There is nothing in the Belfast Agreement, providing that the IRA, or any paramilitary organization, would be legally recognized. There is a principle of the rule of law in international law, which militates against status being given to terrorists (in this case, nationalist separatists). An international, or even domestic, court might well read such a principle into the Belfast Agreement. Similarly, the rule of law in Northern Ireland treats republican (and loyalist) violence as criminal conduct, subject to suitable sanction. This does not mean, as happened in Northern Ireland, that Sinn Féin, de-proscribed by the UK government, could not be used as a convenient front organization: Gerry Adams (he says) was never a member of the IRA; Martin McGuinness (he says) left in 1973; yet they are invaluable interlocutors with the secret terrorist organization. The loyalist paramilitary organizations (one of which did begin voluntarily to decommission on 18 December 1999) are not an issue here. Only one of them had (two) representatives in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1999. Neither of these members had a hope of becoming a minister in the devolved administration. In 2003, and again in 2007, there was only one loyalist elected to the Assembly. There was never any prospect of loyalist politicians, with unexplained relationships with paramilitary organizations, holding executive office in Northern Ireland under the Belfast Agreement. Not so Sinn Féin, which had two ministers in the Executive from 2 December 1999. Having refused to decommission before then, the republicans continued to refuse to get rid of their arms. All sorts of spurious arguments were tried: concerning the start of the two-year period specified for
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decommissioning in the Belfast Agreement, paramilitary decommissioning generally, even the state abandoning its monopoly of the use of violence, and ultimately – the meaning of decommissioning (putting beyond use). With the Belfast Agreement limping badly, the IRA was forced to decommission on two occasions, in 2001 and 2002. However, there was a complete lack of transparency. The fourth suspension of the Assembly in October 2002 was occasioned by a number of incidents allegedly involving republicans: the training of FARC narco-terrorists in Colombia; the raiding of police special branch in Belfast; and the spying on Northern Ireland Office ministers. There was a third decommissioning in 2003. The year 2005 – seven years after the Belfast Agreement – may have seen a significant breakthrough: an IRA statement of 28 July 2005 formally ordered an end to its armed campaign (but not disbandment of the paramilitary organization); on 26 September 2005, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning reported that the IRA had finally decommissioned21 but not necessarily completely disarmed, as was subsequently indicated by the Independent Monitoring Commission22 which had been established in January 2004. Policing and Justice This section – Policing and Justice – looked like it would lead to the undoing of the Belfast Agreement. Paragraph three provided for the UK government establishing an independent commission on policing (which Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, chaired) and a review of the criminal justice system (an inside job performed by civil servants). UK ministers rapidly discharged these obligations. Reports on policing and criminal justice were published respectively in September 1999 and March 2000. The UK government had only promised in paragraph six of this section (Policing and Justice) to discuss implementation of the recommendations. In domestic law, ministers could not fetter their discretion. The response of nationalist Ireland was to demand the implementation of the Patten Report in full and much the same for the criminal justice review, though it excited very little public attention. Legislation followed: the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000; and the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002. The SDLP joined the new Policing Board, with the support of the Irish government. Sinn Féin still wanted to implement Patten in full (as the slogan went), and, at Weston Park in July 2001, where the political parties and the two governments assembled to try and restore the Assembly, further legislation on policing was promised. A second policing bill was introduced in Parliament in December 2002, supposedly to implement Patten in full: leading to the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003. In February 2003, Sinn Féin was still arguing that it was not enough. The republicans claimed that ‘a new beginning’, used in paragraph one of this section, referring to an opportunity for the police service winning the
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support of the community as a whole, meant essentially what they wanted it to mean as regards policing.
The rise of the DUP and the attempt to replace the Belfast Agreement Sinn Féin in government, and David Trimble’s failure to secure decommissioning, further discredited the Belfast Agreement in unionist eyes. It was to the First Minister’s credit that he brought about suspension of the Assembly in October 2002. However, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – the principled opponent of power-sharing and practical North-South cooperation – was to be the electoral beneficiary. The November 2003 Assembly elections, and the May 2005 Westminster contest, set the context for the political emergence of the DUP as the voice of Ulster unionism. The DUP overtook the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in the 2003 Assembly elections, with 30 members to David Trimble’s 27. The DUP took the seats of independent unionists, who were unable to hold them. However, the consequence of the elections was David Trimble, as the interlocutor with Tony Blair, gave way to Ian Paisley shortly after the November 2003 Assembly election, the Donaldson three23 defected to the DUP. Paisley had 33 seats (later reduced to 32 over the resignation of a DUP member of the Assembly) and Trimble was reduced to 24, becoming the third party, behind Sinn Féin, for the purposes of d’Hondt. The sectarian principle (of the two communities voting for the more extreme representatives in competition) also saw Sinn Féin supplant the SDLP: 24 to 18 seats. The republicans now justified their standing with Downing Street. Mark Durkan, increasingly sidelined, tried to attract back attention by becoming more republican than Sinn Féin. The SDLP – the creature of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin24 – began to show signs of government withdrawal symptoms. The switch from proportional representation to first past the post made the emergence of the extremes even clearer in the May 2005 Westminster elections. This was Tony Blair’s third successful electoral outing. In Northern Ireland, Paisley came back with nine seats to the UUP’s one (Lady Sylvia Hermon). Disaster was symbolized in David Trimble’s exit from the House of Commons (to be ennobled subsequently as Baron Trimble of Lisnagarvey). The formerly dominant Ulster Unionist Party – now under Sir Reg Empey – effectively relied upon its crossbench peers for parliamentary profile. In the nationalist camp, Sinn Féin came back with five seats (up one) to three for the SDLP (Eddie McGrady, Mark Durkan and Dr Alasdair McDonnell). The government continued to indulge Sinn Féin abstentionism, by giving them rooms, money and propaganda and lobbying opportunities at Westminster. The SDLP managed the transition from John Hume and Seamus Mallon to much fuller parliamentary participation, being pro-government on general issues but anti-government on Northern Ireland.
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The Comprehensive Agreement of 8 December 2004 The Comprehensive Agreement of 8 December 2004 (following the Leeds Castle talks in Kent in September 2004) was the first in which the DUP participated in negotiating. Paisley had his 33 Assembly seats, but a Westminster general election was also anticipated. The manoeuvring of the parties by the two governments fell apart seemingly over the refusal of the republicans to have decommissioning photographed; Dr Paisley, and his son Ian Paisley Jr, who had made this a break point, upstaged the modernizing wing of the DUP, led by Peter Robinson MP, who was less insistent upon decommissioning being photographed. Given that the Comprehensive Agreement – seeming to eclipse the Belfast Agreement – reappeared in a subsequent form (see below), it may be visited only briefly. The full title of the 20-page document is Proposals by the British and Irish Governments for a Comprehensive Agreement. The Comprehensive Agreement comprised: a set of proposals by London and Dublin (nine paragraphs); Annex A, a timetable for devolution; Annex B, UK proposals for changes to Strand One and joint proposals for changes to Strands Two and Three of the Belfast Agreement; and Annex C, draft statements by the IRA, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, the DUP and Sinn Féin (seemingly all crafted by UK and Irish officials). It is unclear how much, if any, Sinn Féin and the DUP agreed with Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern; the DUP denies it signed up to certain things, but Sinn Féin is content to be given credit for agreeing with St Andrews without claiming it. The Comprehensive Agreement is the source of a trade by the two extreme parties: decommissioning by the IRA (and support by Sinn Féin for the police and justice); for DUP support for power-sharing and effectively the Belfast Agreement (negotiated after Ian Paisley had walked out of the multiparty talks in 1997).25 The DUP, to all intents and purposes, signed up to the Belfast Agreement on 8 December 2004, even though it did not lead to the restoration of devolution in February 2005 (to be followed by the devolution of policing and justice).
The St Andrews Agreement of 13 October 200626 Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern decided to hothouse the Northern Ireland parties in a hotel at St Andrews (the apostrophe not being used) for three days, this Scottish coastal town being chosen to impress the DUP, which affirms Ulster-Scots culture in Northern Ireland. As in 2004, the parties did not agree, even with the two governments mediating. However, they were given until 10 November 2006, to endorse the St Andrews Agreement. The principal issues were: would the DUP support power-sharing including Sinn Féin; and would Sinn Féin come out in support of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
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The St Andrews Agreement comprised 13 paragraphs, and the following annexes: institutional changes (A); human rights etc. (B); financial package (C); timetable (D); national security (E). The St Andrews Agreement is not legally binding in international law (something the UK government sought to avoid admitting in a parliamentary answer27). It therefore differs from the Belfast Agreement. The St Andrews Agreement resembles, in derivation and status, the 2001 Weston Park proposals, the 2003 Hillsborough joint declaration and the 2004 Comprehensive Agreement; indeed, the St Andrews Agreement is the Comprehensive Agreement reheated. The DUP secured its institutional changes (Annex A), but the nationalists also obtained concessions. Attempts were made to improve accountability, the DUP’s goal, in the involuntary coalition of ministers from four parties. The nationalist quid pro quos included human rights and the Irish language. There was very little on finance for either side (Annex C). The extreme unionists effectively agreed in Annex D to Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness being nominated as First Minister and Deputy First Minister on 24 November 2006; and the Assembly going live on 26 March 2007. Sinn Féin, in contrast, surrendered little or nothing. It had to consult its executive ‘and other appropriate party bodies’ by 10 November 2006 (but not expressly the special conference necessary to endorse the police). However, the devolution of policing and justice was scheduled, in the main text, for May 2008. Annex E also provided for MI5 accountability in Northern Ireland. The republicans also gained in the profuse Annex B: a bill of rights forum; an Irish language Act; more powers for the human rights commission; and effectively the employment of Irish nationals from the Republic of Ireland in the Northern Ireland senior civil service – the DUP, in comparison, getting empty gestures on Ulster Scots, parading and reverse discrimination (the 50/50 rule) in police recruitment. The Secretary of State, Peter Hain, told Parliament on 16 October 2006 that the St Andrews Agreement ‘may come to be seen as a pivotal moment in Irish history’.28 Lord Smith of Clifton, for the Liberal Democrats, was uncharacteristically dyspeptic on 22 November 2006, during the passage of the first Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill: This flawed bill accurately reflects the character of the politics of Northern Ireland. It is but a fig leaf to camouflage the almost irreconcilable elements at work. Whether it will provide a foundation for an operating, representative and democratic system of devolved government – as all people of good will would wish – is extremely doubtful. This wretched bill comprises the wish list of DUP demands and a corresponding Sinn Féin wish list. Where the two conflict, it is either silent or offers a fudge. The idea that the bill is based on robust principles which, taken together, facilitate the creation of a power-sharing Executive, as it should be, is
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far from the truth. Rather, it is a patchwork of cobbled-together partisan clamourings with a touch of half-baked Northern Ireland Office ingenuity. 29 Disagreement broke out immediately. The DUP over-spun the idea of Martin McGuinness taking an oath on 24 November 2006, supporting the police, the Special Branch and even MI5. Sinn Féin continued to do nothing, demanding effectively party control of the police and justice before it would even schedule a conference to abandon opposition to the rule of law. On 27 October 2006, the DUP published a short, illustrated paper, Your Verdict: What is it to be? Formally a consultation for the 10 November 2006 decision, the document made four points: (1) negotiations were continuing; (2) the DUP’s position was: no delivery (by Sinn Féin), no deal; (3) the St Andrews’ Agreement was immeasurably better than the Belfast Agreement; and (4) essentially, there was no alternative – saying ‘No’ would let Sinn Féin off the hook on law and order. According to the St Andrews Agreement, the political parties had to accept it by 10 November 2006. The sanction was dissolution of the Assembly even though there was no such power in the Northern Ireland Act 2006. There was no such acceptance, not even seemingly from the centrist parties. The DUP stated it did not have to move towards power-sharing (there was work in progress), until Sinn Féin had moved on policing; Gerry Adams affirmed the need to agree on the devolution of policing and justice first. The next deadline – according to the St Andrews Agreement – was 24 November 2006, when the ‘Assembly [would] meet[s] to nominate’ the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. The DUP thought that the St Andrews Agreement meant that Martin McGuinness would have to sign up to the rule of law at an early stage. The UK government, therefore, sought to downgrade 24 November 2006, to spare the DUP from its miscalculation, but above all to protect Sinn Féin from having to affirm the rule of law. First, the Northern Ireland Act 2006 (with the key deadline), which had been enacted on 8 May 2006, was repealed on 22 November 2006. Second, a new transitional Assembly was created by legislation; the nomination of First Minister and Deputy First Minister was detached from the due date of 24 November 2006. Third, a new deadline of 26 March 2007 – after an election on 7 March 2007 – was created by the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006. The Assembly was summoned to meet on Friday, 24 November 2006, with the DUP and Sinn Féin required to indicate an intention to nominate at some point in the future. Commentators would describe the proceedings, which had to be adjourned to 27 November 2006 (because of a paramilitary attack on Parliament Buildings by Michael Stone, a convicted loyalist, who had been released from prison under the Belfast Agreement), as resembling Alice in Wonderland.
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First, Dr Paisley read out a statement, less a key sentence agreed with the Prime Minister.30 Second, Gerry Adams stated an intention to nominate Martin McGuinness, and the latter was even permitted to speak. Third, the Speaker, reading from a text prepared by the Secretary of State, pronounced that the requisite intentions had been indicated. Four, the DUP showed the first signs of splitting, when a faction – dubbed the dirty dozen – put out a statement denying that Dr Paisley had indicated he would become First Minister. Five, Dr Paisley, clearly under pressure from 10 Downing Street, added the sentence back in, in a personal press release later that day. He said he was willing to become First Minister, but he did not say it in the Assembly. In mid-January 2007, Sinn Féin published a resolution to be put to its special Ard Fheis. The resolution referred to civic policing, to be distinguished from MI5 security work. The resolution referred to ‘support for the PSNI and the criminal justice system’. Few commitments were given: (1) to join the Policing Board; and (2) to take the pledge of office for ministers. The resolution concluded: ‘the ardchomhairle [or executive] is mandated to implement this motion only when the power-sharing institutions are established and when the ardchomhairle is satisfied that the policing and justice powers will be transferred’. On 26 and 27 January 2007, an IRA convention was held secretly in Dublin. The following day, Sinn Féin – including considerable numbers of IRA members – held its Ard Fheis in public. The party formally came out in support of policing, but the terms of the commitment were as above. Assembly elections were held on 7 March 2007. The extremes prevailed further over the centre parties. The DUP was returned with 36 seats and Sinn Féin with 28: a majority of the Assembly.31 The UUP and SDLP had respectively 18 and 16 seats. There were seven Alliance Party members and three independents. The government had threatened devolution or dissolution (the DUP claiming that the Secretary of State had used this phrase 56 times in public). On 25 March 2007, the Secretary of State prepared his exit route: if the parties could reach agreement, then the UK and Irish governments would help. The Secretary of State denied that legislative amendment was possible. Suddenly, on 27 March 2007, emergency legislation was presented to Parliament. The Northern Ireland (St Andrews’ Agreement) Act 2007 was rushed through in just over five hours. The deadline was put back to 8 May 2007, the date agreed by the DUP and Sinn Féin.
Did the DUP replace the Belfast Agreement? The simple answer is ‘no’. The British-Irish Agreement signed by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern on 10 April 1998 is intact. So also is the Multi-Party
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Agreement, voted upon by the parties (with Sinn Féin abstaining) on the same date. The DUP, of course, had walked out of the all-party negotiations in July 1997. But for such unionist division, David Trimble – in the opinion of Senator George Mitchell, the chairman (Mitchell, 1999, pp. 3–5, 181–83) – would not have voted on Good Friday for the Multi-Party Agreement; if there had been no Belfast Agreement, there would have been no St Andrews Agreement and Ian Paisley in power with Martin McGuinness. Decommissioning seems to have happened in September 2005, though it may not have been complete and it was certainly not transparent. The IRA giving up its arms was partly because David Trimble had majored in this issue from 10 April 1998. Admittedly, it happened on the watch of Dr Paisley, between the Comprehensive Agreement of 8 December 2004 and the St Andrews Agreement of 13 October 2006. However, the DUP cannot claim – as it does – to be solely responsible for forcing the IRA to disarm. The Belfast Agreement had led to the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The DUP did not alter the former. It did, however, secure amendments to the latter. Such amendments had been prefigured in Annex B of the Comprehensive Agreement, for Strands One, Two and Three. The same amendments resurfaced as Annex A of the St Andrews’ Agreement. They were legislated in part 2 (sections 5 to 19) of the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006. The changes secured by the DUP, as a result of coming in from the cold (or rather, being brought into the centre of politics by unionists voting against David Trimble) fall into five categories. They may be listed as follows: (1) Ministerial conduct: widened scope of the Executive Committee; a strengthened ministerial code; 30 Assembly members able to refer ministerial decision to the Executive Committee; a strengthened pledge of office. (2) Ministerial appointments: separate election of First Minister and Deputy First Minister with the former position going to the largest party. (3) Committees: a statutory committee for the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister; committee to review the functioning of the Assembly and Executive Committee. (4) North/South Ministerial Council and British-Irish Council: strengthened control over ministerial participation in the North/South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council. (5) Miscellaneous: change of community designation only on change of party. Three points may be made. One, some of these provisions, particularly under ministerial conduct, are decided improvements, and should have been – but
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were not – agreed by Trimble/Mallon or Trimble/Durkan. Two, other provisions, in particular the separate election of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, are retrograde and indicative of the Balkanizing tendencies of the DUP and Sinn Féin. These two extreme parties are prepared to cooperate, so that each can get resources for its own community. And three, the reforms in total – which were opposed generally by the SDLP – fall far short of the DUP’s criticisms of the Belfast Agreement’s implementation. Their major proposals, for example, are now reduced to a committee to review the functioning of the Assembly and Executive Committee. Where now a smaller Assembly? And the shift from involuntary, to voluntary, coalition? These were key aspects of the DUP criticism of the operation of the Belfast Agreement.
Conclusion A number of points may be made. One, Ian Paisley, rather than Sinn Féin, moved on 26 March 2007. It is naïve to hail this as an outbreak of reconciliation. The two communal leaders had separate reasons for cooperating in securing the return of devolution. Two, 8 May 2007 is unlikely to go down in history as the beginning of a new phase of self-government. Trimble/ Mallon and Trimble/Durkan did not work. Things are different, but Paisley/ McGuinness has no inherent dynamic – other than cooperation for communal ends. Three, d’Hondt – the mathematical formula whereby the executive emerges from the legislature – makes the Executive Committee the principal area of decision making. Ten plus two ministers (the statutory composition of the Executive) are unlikely to engage in meaningful political bargaining; instead, a civil service agenda will be dressed up as a programme of government. The only possible dynamic is the SDLP and UUP supporting the Alliance Party against Sinn Féin and the DUP (nearly 60 per cent of the Assembly). Four, which tradition is winning? Republican terrorism may have ended (the principal concern of the United Kingdom), but the price is republicans in power – aided, not hindered, by officialdom in Belfast. Unionists still think Stormont is the answer to all problems; nationalists have learned to use it in an all-Ireland context. Five, the Belfast Agreement, as amended by the St Andrews Agreement, remains baroque. The dependency culture and the sectarianism of the troubles have been institutionalised. The right of dead Assembly members to vote – section 17 of the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006 – is an example of the loss of constitutional touch. This was enacted by Westminster, and is therefore lawful, but how does it relate to the framework of democratic and agreed arrangements in the declaration of support in the Belfast Agreement? Six, there was considerable merit in the DUP’s critique of the Belfast Agreement. Unfortunately, Ian Paisley, looking for historical rehabilitation, plumped for a system of government that can only unite Irish and Ulster nationalists vis a vis London, the better to then fight at home about the division of sectarian spoils.
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Notes 1. The following paragraphs on the Belfast Agreement first appeared as ‘Did David Trimble Really Agree to a United Ireland’, The Commonwealth Lawyer (Journal of the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association), April 2003, 64. 2. The Northern Ireland Parliament had existed from 1921 to 1972. There was also a short-lived so-called power-sharing experiment in 1974. 3. Plus Marjorie ‘Mo’ Mowlam and David Andrews. 4. Cm 3883 of 1998, entitled: The Belfast Agreement: An Agreement Reached at the Multi-Party Talks on Northern Ireland. This was voted upon in the referendum of 22 May 1998 in Northern Ireland: Validation, Implementation and Review, paragraph 2. 5. See DUP policy document Towards a New Agreement, 2003, pp. 5–6. 6. Thoburn v Sunderland City Council [2002] EWHC 195 (Admin) [2002] 3 WLR 247 DC, 279–83 per Laws LJ. 7. Essentially, the separate United Kingdom and Irish positions of 1993 and 1995 were added together, with important deletions in the latter. 8. Birth in the United Kingdom led traditionally to citizenship. From 1 January 1983, a person also needed a parent who was a British citizen: British Nationality Act 1981. 9. Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. 10. Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. 11. Section 6(2)(a) of the 1956 act as amended states: ‘a person born in the island of Ireland is an Irish citizen from birth if he or she does ... any act which only an Irish citizen is entitled to do’. It does not state citizenship is acquired under a birth rule: note ‘from’ and not ‘by’. Citizenship would appear not to be a matter of law, but of administrative discretion. However, this will be determined, as regards Northern Ireland, by the continuing descent rule, which survives through section three of the 2001 Act. The new Irish birth rule is tautologous: one is an Irish citizen if the Irish government treats one as such. 12. I discuss the uncertainties in the cession of Northern Ireland in Morgan, The Belfast Agreement, pp. 144–45. 13. Principally, Tim Pat Coogan and Brian Feeney, joined later by David McKittrick. 14. BBC News, 19 December 2002. In terms of religious identification, it was 46 per cent protestant to 40 per cent catholic with 14 per cent declaring no religion. Seven per cent of the latter were allocated to the protestant category and four per cent to the catholic one, with three per cent being unknown. It is possible that the seven per cent is an underestimate, the four per cent an overestimate, and many of the three per cent being more protestant than catholic ethnically. 15. Garret FitzGerald, Irish Times, 21 December 2002. 16. An enthusiasm of a former Irish president, Mary Robinson. 17. Irish News, 5 February 2003. 18. Letter in the House of Lords’ library. 19. A bill of rights was originally a unionist idea. It then became identified with nationalism. David Trimble and the UUP stuck with the Belfast Agreement. The DUP, however, came out in favour of a bill of rights in the comprehensive agreement, but it also criticized the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission as exceeding its remit. The UUP, under Sir Reg Empey, appears to be tailing the DUP. It remains unclear what either unionist party understands by a bill of rights.
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20. This prediction was confirmed on 31 March 2008, when the forum’s 245-page final report was published in Belfast amidst a welter of boycotting and political disagreement. 21. Available from IICD at its addresses in Dublin and Belfast. See also the IICD report of 19 January 2006. 22. Seventh Report of Independent Monitoring Commission, HC 546, 19 October 2005, paragraphs 3.13 to 3.18; Eight Report of Independent Monitoring Commission, HC 870, 1 February 2006, paragraphs 3.13 to 3.25; Tenth Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, HC 1066, 26 April 2006, paragraphs 2.12. to 2.21. 23. Three members of the UUP led by Jeffrey Donaldson MP. 24. According to (Delaney, 2001, pp. 310–79). 25. This is clear from paragraphs two and three of the joint proposals issued by London and Dublin. 26. The paragraphs below first appeared in my Current Law Statutes annotations to the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2007. 27. Hansard, HL vol. 686, col.WA149. 28. Hansard, HC vol. 450 col.587. 29. Hansard, HL vol. 687 col.352. 30. This was to the effect that, if it fell to him (Dr Paisley), he would accept the post of first minister: Sunday Times, 26 November 2006. 31. 64 of the 108 members.
5 The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement Sydney Elliott
Introduction One of the abiding memories of the referendum count in May 1998 was Rev. Ian Paisley and his son Ian pushing their way out of the King’s Hall in Belfast to the accompaniment of chants of ‘dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur’ from supporters of the newer unionist parties. The expectation was that a new era of politics was beginning: a new political settlement had been agreed and it was expected that a new cleavage of pro-Agreement versus anti-Agreement would emerge and persist into the future. Nine years later the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) had fallen to third and fourth position, Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) had disappeared and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) was reduced to one seat, but Rev. Ian Paisley as leader of the largest party was First Minister in partnership with Martin McGuinness deputy leader of the second largest party, Sinn Féin, an outcome which would have appeared incredulous in 1998. The aim of this chapter is to follow the electoral dynamics of how this came about; to attempt an explanation derived from political events, survey and other evidence. The argument is that the key period was from 1999 to 2003: Sinn Féin overtook SDLP in the 2001 general election; Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) overtook Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in the second Assembly election in 2003. Most attention will be paid to this period for it set a course for the DUP/Sinn Féin deal in 2007. Ever since the Downing Street Declaration in 1993 and the paramilitary ceasefires of August and October 1994, politics and elections took on a greater significance for all the political parties. The use of the Forum election in 1996 as the mechanism to create a pool of negotiators for talks placed the emphasis on participation and inclusion for at least the top ten political groups (Elliot, 1997, pp. 111–22). It used to be said that nothing ever changed in Northern Ireland elections but events since 1997 have proved that decisively wrong. 105
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The Northern Ireland Question
The parliamentary elections in May 1997 produced major changes at Westminster with the return of a Labour government under the leadership of Tony Blair after 18 years in opposition. In Northern Ireland, changes in party strengths in the parliamentary and district council elections set the baseline for negotiations which began in September 1997 and ended in April 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. The foundation for the new political arrangements was the referendum on the Belfast Agreement, held on 22 May 1998, and the Northern Ireland Assembly election on 25 June 1998.
Referendum on the Belfast Agreement The referendum was hailed in the press as the first simultaneous all-Ireland ballot since 1918, an assertion that ignored successive European elections since 1979. The five-week campaign was remarkable for the divisions in the unionist community. The DUP and United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP) had left the talks two months before Sinn Féin entered in September 1997 and firmly opposed the Agreement. The focus was on differences within the UUP. The Council of the UUP backed leader David Trimble on the Agreement but six of its ten MPs opposed it and the Orange Order said it could not endorse it even after a meeting with the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Opinion polls showed around 25 per cent of voters were undecided on how they should vote; and two specific issues, prisoner releases and decommissioning, were the main points of concern for unionists. To convince them the Prime Minister visited Northern Ireland three times during the campaign, on 6, 14 and 20 May. On the first occasion he was accompanied by John Major in a joint appeal for a ‘Yes’ vote and announced a fund for victims of violence. On 12 May, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced a ‘peace through prosperity’ economic investment package of £350 million. Opinion surveys began to show a movement in an affirmative direction and the image of John Hume and David Trimble on stage with Bono on 19 May at a U2 concert seemed to signal the new politics. On 20 May, the Prime Minister issued five handwritten pledges to reassure unionist voters, after his earlier speech and visit on 14 May were regarded as insufficient. President Clinton, at the G-7 summit in Birmingham, said that the Agreement safeguarded the principle of consent that everyone would gain from its endorsement and predicted it would facilitate later investment. There was more certainty about the attitude of the nationalist community to the Agreement. The SDLP regarded it as very close to its own prescription. The Sinn Féin special Ard Fheis on 10 May in Dublin, attended by leading Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoners from the Maze and Portlaoise prisons, called for a ‘Yes’ vote North and South and 331 out of 350 delegates voted to take seats in the new Northern Ireland Assembly, reversing a policy of 77 years.
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On polling day, 22 May, the question on the ballot paper was very straightforward: Do you support the Agreement reached at the multi-party talks on Northern Ireland and set out in Command Paper 3883? The count took place in a single counting centre at the King’s Hall, Belfast on Saturday, 23 May, in the presence of observers and the world’s press and broadcast media. The turnout of 81.1 per cent was the second highest of any election in Northern Ireland after the 89 per cent of 1921. The result was decisively in favour of the Agreement. The total poll was 953,583 and the ‘Yes’ vote secured 71.1 per cent leaving the ‘No’ vote with 28.9 percent. There was no breakdown of the official statistics by constituency but a Sunday Times/Coopers and Lybrand exit poll showed that only North Antrim had a majority against.1 There was debate on whether a majority of unionists had voted for the Agreement. The exit poll had said that 96 per cent of Catholics had voted in favour but only 55 per cent of Protestants. It was clear that the ‘No’ vote remained a significant problem. In the simultaneous referendum in the Republic of Ireland, on new Articles 2 and 3 and an addition to Article 29, there was never any doubt about the outcome. The changes proposed were passed overwhelmingly by 94.4 to 5.6 per cent but the turnout was lower than in Northern Ireland at 55.6 per cent.
The 1998 Assembly election Polling day was 25 June 1998 when the 1,177,969 eligible electors had the opportunity to elect 108 members for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Each of the 18 parliamentary constituencies returned six members elected by the Single Transferable Vote (STV) method of proportional representation using the Droop quota. The election produced 277 candidates from some 17 parties and three groups of independents. There was a wide choice of candidates in each constituency with an average of 15 candidates; the largest number was in Strangford with 22 and the lowest in Mid Ulster with 13. Turnout at 68.76 per cent of the valid vote was 4.26 per cent better than for the 1982 Assembly, but lower than for 1973. The highest was in Mid Ulster with 83 per cent but North Down had only 59.28. The campaign, especially among the unionist parties, was like a rerun of the referendum. The DUP and UKUP campaigned against the Agreement and the debate within the UUP over candidate selection was based on ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ positions. For the nationalist parties the competition between SDLP and Sinn Féin remained important with each seeking top position yet emphasizing the new politics and rejecting the need for any formal electoral pact. Hence, the focus of the election was whether the parties in favour of the Agreement would do well or whether anti-Agreement parties would
108 The Northern Ireland Question
challenge the settlement. The pro-Agreement parties polled 75 per cent, an improvement over the 71 per cent of the referendum. The anti-Agreement parties gained only 28 (25.9 per cent) of the 108 seats. Hence, the referendum decision was confirmed and the 28 opposition seats did not represent a majority of unionists. Party performance was also important in the election (see Table 5.1 below). David Trimble’s fears in the 1996 Forum election of unionist ‘vote shredding’ were realized in 1998. For the first time ever in an Assembly-type election, the UUP was knocked off top position by SDLP with 22 per cent to 21.3 per cent of the first preference votes. It did not help for the advance warning given by the accuracy of the RTE/Carlton/UMS exit poll. The UUP vote share fell by 2.9 per cent compared with the Forum 1996 and by 11.4 per cent from Westminster 1997. Democratic Unionist Party also declined by 0.7 per cent over 1996 but their partners UKUP increased by 0.8 per cent. Even the Loyalist parties, PUP and UDP, found their vote shrinking by around 1 per cent each. The only other group of unionists to gain were the independents opposed to the Agreement. The nationalist and republican parties again polled well. While SDLP topped the poll for the first time, their share at 22 per cent was only 0.6 per cent better than in 1996. Sinn Féin, however, experienced their fifth increase since 1993 and with 17.6 per cent, 2.1 per cent higher than in 1996, they had closed the gap with SDLP. In 1992, the nationalist vote had split 70:30 in favour of SDLP but in 1998 it narrowed to 55:45.
Table 5.1
Northern Ireland Assembly election, 25 June 1998
Party SDLP UUP DUP SF AP UKUP Independent unionist PUP NI WC UDP Others Total
First preference votes 177,963 172,225 146,989 142,858 52,636 36,541 23,127 20,634 13,019 8,651 15,674 810,317
% votes
Seats
22.0 21.3 18.1 17.6 6.5 4.5 3.0 2.5 1.6 1.1 1.8 100.0
24 28 20 18 6 5 3 2 2 0 0 108
Note: Electorate 1,178,556, total poll 824,391, invalid vote 14,074, valid vote 810,317, turnout 68.76 per cent.
The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement
109
The UUP came out as the largest party in the allocation of seats with 28 seats followed by SDLP with 24. The focus was on how many seats the antiAgreement unionists could muster. The 20 DUP, 5 UKUP and 3 Independent Unionists totalled 28, the same number as UUP but the two PUP members, David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson brought the pro-Agreement unionist total to 30. Together with the 24 SDLP and 18 Sinn Féin and 6 Alliance and 2 NI Women’s Coalition, some 80 members of the Assembly were proAgreement. The narrowness of the division within unionism still left doubt about the stability of the Assembly especially since several UUP members were known to have reservations about the Belfast Agreement. The Assembly met for the first time on 1 July under Lord Alderdice, the temporary Presiding Officer and elected David Trimble (UUP) as First Minister and Seamus Mallon (SDLP) as Deputy First Minister, and appointed two committees to report when the Assembly next met on 14 September.
The 1999 European Parliament election The faltering start of the new Assembly – with the Executive functioning from 1999 and experiencing a number of suspensions (four by October 2002) – meant that momentum behind the new institutions was lost. In addition, the European Parliament election of June 1999 played a significant role in providing an early victory for DUP and anti-Agreement unionists after their disappointments at the 1998 referendum and Assembly election. The European Parliament election in Northern Ireland on 10 June 1999 attracted only eight candidates, the lowest number since 1984. Turnout rose for the second successive European Parliament election to 57.7 per cent, 8.3 per cent higher than in 1994. The effect was to increase the quota and make it more difficult to produce a changed result. Rev. Dr Ian Paisley (DUP) topped the poll for the fifth successive European Union election with 28.4 per cent. As in 1994, he was closely pressed by John Hume (SDLP), who was 2,031 votes behind, with 28.1 per cent, and his party’s highest vote total of 190,731. The cohesion of the Sinn Féin vote behind Mitchel McLaughlin with 17.3 per cent meant that John Hume’s opportunity of replacing Paisley at the top of the poll was denied as was the opportunity to spike the DUP claims that the election was a referendum rerun. Jim Nicholson’s (UUP) share of the vote fell by 6.5 per cent to 17.6 per cent but he remained in third position, ahead of Sinn Féin and consigning it to runner-up position (see Table 5.2 below). The election proved opportune for the anti-Good Friday Agreement parties, for based on Ian Paisley’s usual performance with 28.4 per cent and 3 per cent for Bob McCartney (UKUP) the anti-Agreement group had posted some 31.4 per cent of the vote. For the shaky Executive there was the knowledge that there would be no more elections before the spring of 2001.
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The Northern Ireland Question
Table 5.2 European Parliament election, 10 June 1999: Northern Ireland
Candidate
Party
First preference votes
% vote
Paisley, Rev. I Hume, J Nicholson, J. F. McLaughlin, M. Ervine, D McCartney, R. L. Neeson, S Anderson, J. McK
DUP SDLP UUP SF PUP UKUP AP NLP
192,762 190,731 119,507 117,643 22,494 20,283 14,391 998
28.4 elected stage 1 28.1 elected stage 1 17.6 elected stage 3 17.3 3.3 3.0 2.1 0.2
Note: Electorate 1,190,160, percentage poll 57.71, valid votes 678,809, invalid votes 8764, quota 169,703.
The 2001 UK General election in Northern Ireland Parliamentary and district council elections had never coincided before in Northern Ireland and there was a further complication because different methods of election were used. Although there were fewer candidates than in the 1997 election, interest in the election was high and the two simultaneous elections did ensure an improved turnout for the district councils. Turnout in Northern Ireland at 68 per cent was the highest in the United Kingdom (59 per cent) and the electoral competition resulted in considerable change. The UUP lost four seats, two to Sinn Féin in West Tyrone and Fermanagh-South Tyrone and two to DUP in North Belfast and Strangford. But the UUP won back the South Antrim constituency and also North Down from Bob McCartney (UKUP). Ulster Unionist Party remained the largest party with 26.8 per cent of the vote. In the competition for leadership among nationalist and republican voters, Sinn Féin came out on top. By adding two constituencies, they had four seats to SDLP’s three and with 21.7 per cent of the vote to SDLP 21.0 per cent they had achieved a position of leadership 20 years after the hunger strike by-elections had sown the seeds of a political path for republicans. The seats held by Seamus Mallon and John Hume began to look increasingly vulnerable to Sinn Féin at the next election. The Alliance Party vote shrunk to 3.6 per cent and to 28,999 votes, partly because of their stepping aside in favour of pro-Agreement candidates (see Table 5.3 below).
The 2001 district council elections The decision to hold the district council elections on 7 June 2001, the same day as the parliamentary elections, produced a turnout of 68 per cent. The
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111
Table 5.3 UK General election in Northern Ireland, 7 June 2001 Votes Party
2001
UUP 216,839 DUP 181,999 SF 175,933 SDLP 169,865 AP 28,999 UKUP 13,509 Independent 8,379 Unionists PUP 4,781 NIWC 2,968 Others 7,102 Total 810,374
% votes
Seats
1997
2001
1997
2001
1997
258,349 107,348 126,921 190,815 62,972 12,817
26.8 22.5 21.7 21.0 3.6 1.7
32.7 13.6 16.1 24.1 8.0 1.6
6 5 4 3 0 0
10 2 2 3 0 1
1.0 10,934 3,024 17,589 790,769
0.6 0.4 0.7 100.0
0 1.4 0.4 2.1 100.0
0 0 0 18
0 0 0 18
count did not begin until Monday, 11 June 2001 and there was speculation over whether electors would vote in the same way as in the parliamentary election since they had the freedom of the preferential ballot. With Proportional Representation (PR) (Single Transferable Vote [STV]) and multimember constituencies voters can clearly indicate their party of first choice and tactical voting is less important than with the X- vote in single-member constituencies. Broadly speaking the party changes in the parliamentary election were reflected in the district council results. Ulster Unionist Party remained the largest party with 154 seats, a loss of 31 since 1997, and polled 23.0 per cent of the vote. Democratic Unionist Party came second with 131 seats, a gain of 40, and 21.5 per cent of the vote. Social Democratic and Labour Party managed to hold 117 seats a loss of only three seats, and Sinn Féin won 108, a gain of 34 seats. However, as in the general election Sinn Féin, with 20.7 per cent overtook the SDLP with 19.4 per cent. The Alliance Party vote of 5.1 per cent was its normal but with 28 seats it had lost 13 since 1997 (see Table 5.4 above). It did hold the balance of power in Belfast City Council. One of the biggest changes was the reduction in the representation of small parties and independents from 71 in 1997 to 40 in 2001. In part, this was a product of the targeting of seats by the larger parties. For example, many of the DUP gains were at the expense of independent unionists and smaller parties. Only two district councils out of 26 were controlled by a single party. The norm was the representation of three or four parties in each council and cooperation. One of the initial concerns after the election was the impact of changing party strengths on existing power sharing
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The Northern Ireland Question
Table 5.4
District council elections results, 7 June 2001 First pref. votes
Party UUP DUP SDLP SF AP PUP Others Total
% First pref. votes
Seats
2001
1997
2001
1997
2001
1997
11,336 169,477 153,424 163,269 40,443 12,261 69,858 790,068
176,239 98,686 130,417 106,938 41,421 13,774
22.95 21.45 19.4 20.67 5.1 1.55 8.8 100.0
29.7 15.6 20.6 16.9 6.6 2.2 8.4 100.0
154 131 117 108 28
185 91 120 74 41
44 582
72 582
632,197
arrangements. These had been mainly between SDLP and UUP but gains by Sinn Féin and DUP threatened these arrangements.
The 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election The arbitrary postponement of elections from 1 May to 29 May, then to the autumn (2 November) in the hope that ‘acts of completion’ would help the centre ground, proved illusory. Once the election was called, recognition of the changes in political opinion could not be postponed. The general election in 2001 with six seat changes, one-third of the total, was feared by many as a precursor of more changes. The election attracted enough attention to gain 256 candidates, 40 fewer than in 1998, but still 2.4 for every seat. The candidates used 17 different labels and in addition there were 21 Independents. The length of the campaign – the full five weeks – meant that issues were ventilated and politicians tested by the campaign despite the employment of some new local methods, including battle buses, helicopters and message texts. Despite the fears about turnout, arising from the weather, the short hours of daylight and the effectiveness of the register, some 63.1 per cent of registered electors voted. This was 5.7 per cent down on the original 1998 election but it was similar to the turnout at the 1982 Assembly election. Table 5.5 below sets out the direct comparison in terms of seats and votes from the Assembly election in 2003 compared with 1998. The extent of the change was in part exaggerated by the five- year time span for the changing party share had been indicated by the Westminster general election and the district council elections held on the 7 June 2001. The parliamentary election had shown Sinn Féin overtake the SDLP as the largest nationalist party in terms of votes with 21.7 per cent of the votes for Sinn Féin and 21 percent
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Table 5.5 Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2 November 2003
Party
Seats no. (1998)
DUP UUP SF SDLP AP Independents PUP UKUP NIWC Others
30 (20) 27 (28) 24 (18) 18 (24) 6 (6) 1 (0) 1 (2) 1 (5) 0 (2) 0 (3)
Change on 1998 10 −1 6 –6 – 1 –1 –4 –2 –3
Change % on Change % general Change Seats First pref. on 1998 election % on DC % votes % Assembly 2001 2001 27.8 25.0 22.2 16.7 5.6 0.9 0.9 0.9 0 0
25.7 22.7 23.5 17.0 3.7 2.8 1.2 0.8 0.8 1.8
7.6 1.4 5.9 –5.0 –2.8 2.2 –1.4 –3.7 –0.8 –3.4
3.2 –4.1 1.8 –7.1 –0.1 1.8 0.6 –0.9 0.4 –4.4
4.2 –0.3 2.8 –2.4 1.4 –1.7 –0.4 – – –7.0
of the votes for the SDLP giving four parliamentary seats to Sinn Féin and three to the SDLP. The UUP had maintained their lead over DUP by 4.3 per cent and six seats to five but benefited from the absence of Alliance candidates in some constituencies. A truer picture was revealed by the district council elections where the gap between UUP and DUP was only 1.5 per cent. A projection from the district council figures towards the Assembly showed the two parties neck and neck with DUP with perhaps a lead of one seat.2 It is arguable, therefore, that the main changes within the unionist and nationalist blocks occurred between 1998 and 2001; the Assembly elections of 2003 added to the pace of change. The long-term trend in the nationalist vote since 1982 is upwards and since 1998 it has been regularly over 40 per cent. Sinn Féin’s early successes in 1982 and 1983 soon reached a plateau and slow decline to 1992 and the loss of the West Belfast parliamentary constituency. Since 1993, it has had successive increases at each election, overtaking SDLP in 2001 and forging further ahead in 2003. Inside the five years of the Assembly Sinn Féin had turned the tables on SDLP in terms of seats and votes. Social Democratic and Labour Party’s recent peak was 1997 but after topping the poll in 1998 the party failed to check the decline. The long-term trend in the unionist vote is downwards and normally bumps along the 50 per cent mark. In the 1981 district council election DUP polled 26.6 per cent to 26.5 per cent for UUP but the gap in seats remained in favour of UUP. The gap was widest at Westminster general elections but narrower at Assembly and district council elections. As with Sinn Féin, the DUP has closed the gap since 1998 and produced a remarkable success in
114
The Northern Ireland Question
the 2003 Assembly election. However, DUP gains have been mainly at the expense of smaller unionist parties and UUP increased its vote share and did not lose a seat to their rivals. The fragmentation of the unionist vote was checked but the dominant strand within unionism was still a matter of dispute.
The 2004 European Parliament election Polling day was Thursday, 10 June 2004. The Northern Ireland constituency retained its three members and the STV method of proportional representation (On enlargement UK representation was reduced from 87 to 78). The election was contested by seven candidates, one less than 1999 but also the lowest number since direct election of the European Parliament began in 1979. It was also the first election in 25 years when the names, Ian Paisley (DUP) and John Hume (SDLP) were absent from the ballot paper, in part due to age and health factors but it was also a product of new regulations against Members of the European Parliament (MEPs)being members of their national parliaments. The SDLP nominated Martin Morgan, a social worker from north Belfast, who had a high profile as Lord Mayor of Belfast 2003–04. Democratic Unionist Party selected Jim Allister, a barrister and Queens Counsel, who had left active politics in 1987 after disagreement with the party over the parliamentary candidacy in East Antrim. Sinn Féin nominated Bairbre de Brun, MLA and Minister for Health in the devolved Assembly. The only candidate with a record in the European Parliament was Jim Nicholson (UUP) seeking a fourth term as MEP.
Table 5.6
European Parliament election, 10 June 2004: Northern Ireland First pref. votes
Candidate Allister, J. H. De Brun, Bairbre
Party
2004
1999
DUP
175,761
192,762
SF
144,541
117,643
Nicholson, J. F.
UUP
91,164
119,507
Morgan, M. Gilliland, J. McCann, E. Whitcroft, Lindsay
SDLP IND SEA GP
87,559 36,270 9,172 4,810
190,731
% vote 2004 32.0 Elected stage 1 26.3 Elected stage 1 16.6 Elected stage 3 15.9 6.6 1.7 0.9
1999 28.4 17.3 17.6 28.1
Note: Electorate 1,072,669, percentage poll 51.7%, valid votes 549,277, quota 137,330, invalid votes 5,467.
The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement
115
There were persistent concerns about turnout given the lower poll in the second Northern Ireland Assembly election in November 2003 and the impact of new anti-fraud measures on the electoral register. Despite publicity from the Electoral Commission and the Chief Electoral Officer and good weather, turnout fell by 6 per cent to 51.7 per cent. The result of the election was that DUP topped the poll again, Sinn Féin replaced the SDLP in second place and UUP came third, as usual (see Table 5.6 below). The election was not fought on European issues and the results were absorbed into the domestic political struggles. Sinn Féin overtook the SDLP as the largest nationalist/republican party in 2001 by 21.7 per cent to 21.0 per cent. They went further ahead in the Northern Ireland Assembly election in November 2003 with 23.5 per cent to 17.0 per cent and in the 2004 European election Sinn Féin secured 26.3 per cent of the vote compared to 15.9 per cent for the SDLP.
The 2005 UK general election in Northern Ireland Ever since the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in November 2003 had registered significant changes of support for the four main parties, the focus of attention by the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland governments had moved to seeking a deal with DUP and Sinn Féin at its core. One effort in the early summer of 2003 at Lancaster House was postponed but when the contacts were renewed, the talks failed to conclude at Leeds Castle, Kent in September 2004. A renewed attempt broke down on 11 December 2004 over the transparency of decommissioning. The main issue in Northern Ireland had been ‘transparency’ but in the Republic, the emphasis had been on ‘criminality’, and the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, had regularly criticized the IRA. However, the robbery of the Northern Bank in Belfast of £26.5m on 21 December 2004 soon had people recalling earlier events – a major cigarette heist, and a £1m robbery at Makro, which had also been laid at the door of the IRA – and criminality was added to transparency. On 31 January 2005, the brutal murder of Robert McCartney and the serious injuries to his colleague in a pub adjacent to the Northern Ireland Court buildings in Belfast was linked to the IRA and Sinn Féin and this undermined any prospect of revived talks before a general election. Northern Ireland probably had more warning of the date of the general election than anywhere else. The date was given away by Northern Ireland Office Minister, John Spellar, when he announced legislation in February 2005 to have Northern Ireland district council elections on 5 May 2005, some two weeks ahead of the fixed four-year cycle date. However, Tony Blair did not officially set the date until 5 April 2005. Only two of the main parties expressed confidence in the outcome of the election, the DUP and Sinn Féin. Both the SDLP and UUP had suffered reverses in the Assembly election in November 2003 and feared worse was to follow. The SDLP faced
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The Northern Ireland Question
the prospect that they might not hold the seats of retiring MPs, namely, Newry and Armagh (Seamus Mallon) and Foyle (John Hume) and the Sinn Féin vote in South Down (Eddie McGrady) was increasing. Although UUP had retained its seat in the European Parliament in 2004, the success of DUP meant that none of the five UUP MPs could feel safe from a rampant DUP. The DUP electoral strategy was built upon their six parliamentary constituencies and the district councils within them extending to adjacent constituencies. In addition, there was a decapitation strategy aimed at winning David Trimble’s Upper Bann constituency and leaving their rival unionist party leaderless. The most difficult seat was North Down, held by Lady Sylvia Hermon (UUP) and there a form of words was agreed which prevented Robert McCartney (UKUP) splitting the DUP vote. There was debate about a unionist pact over South Belfast and Fermanagh and South Tyrone but DUP strategy was primarily based upon contesting all 18 constituencies to establish itself as the ‘voice of unionism’. Sinn Féin had a difficult time since January 2005 from erstwhile supporters in the United States on the issue of criminality. There was no invitation to the White House for St Patrick’s Day 2005 and Senator Edward Kennedy pointedly refused to meet Gerry Adams during Adams’ trip to the United States in March 2005. Congress passed a resolution condemning IRA violence and supporting the campaign for justice led by the sisters of Robert McCartney and his partner. This atmosphere undoubtedly influenced the appeal by Gerry Adams on 6 April 2005 to the IRA to adopt political and democratic methods for he was convinced that there was an alternative route to their goals. Whatever the criticism from unionists, the statement went down well with the republican community. Criticism from abroad would not impede the cohesiveness of the Sinn Féin electoral machine. With the four main parties contesting all 18 constituencies other voices including the Alliance Party had difficulty being heard. There were 104 candidates in all, 32 from outside the main parties representing at least six differing political opinions. Turnout fell by 5.5 per cent to 62.5 per cent of the registered electorate. The predictions that none of the seats held by Sinn Féin or the DUP were under threat held good. The UUP lost four of its five seats – three to the DUP and one to the SDLP. The DUP won East Antrim, South Antrim and Upper Bann. The SDLP won South Belfast with a divided unionist vote. The DUP vote share of 33.7 per cent showed a 10 per cent swing within the unionist vote since 2001. Sinn Féin won five seats taking Newry and Armagh from the SDLP and retaining West Tyrone, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Mid Ulster and West Belfast. The surprise was their failure to take the Foyle seat vacated by John Hume but stoutly defended by the SDLP party leader, Mark Durkan. One of the points of resistance to Sinn Féin was in West Tyrone where the performance of Dr Kieran Deeny (Ind.), a hospital campaigner, took 26.8 per cent of the vote and reduced Pat Doherty (Sinn Féin) to a 5000 majority. The one UUP seat which held out against
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117
Table 5.7 UK general election in Northern Ireland, 5 May 2005 % Votes
Seats no.
Party
2005
2001
1997
2005
2001
1997
DUP SF UUP SDLP AP UKUP PUP NIWC Others Total
33.7 24.3 17.8 17.5 3.9 – – – 2.8 100
22.5 21.7 26.8 21.0 3.6 1.7 0.6 0.4 1.7 100
13.6 16.1 32.7 24.1 8.0 1.6 1.4 0.4 2.1 100
9 5 1 3 0 – – – 0 18
5 4 6 3 0 0 0 0 0 18
2 2 10 3 0 1 0 0 0 18
DUP was in North Down where Lady Sylvia Hermon had a 4944 majority over Peter Weir (DUP) with five other candidates present. The election outcome revealed the polarization within society with the election of ten unionists and eight nationalists and republicans (see Table 5.7 below). Within each community, there was one larger party, DUP (33.7 per cent) and Sinn Féin (24.3 per cent), and one smaller, UUP (17.8 per cent) and SDLP (17.5 per cent). The four main parties polled 93 per cent of the votes. The biggest casualty of the election was David Trimble, the former First Minister, who was out of Parliament and, accepting responsibility for defeat, he resigned as UUP leader. Trimble was replaced in June 2005 by Sir Reg Empey who defeated challenges from Alan McFarland and David McNarry.
The 2005 district council election The district council elections were again held on the same day as the general election, Thursday 5 May 2005. There were 918 candidates seeking the 582 seats for the 26 district councils. At 63.5 per cent, turnout was down some 5 per cent on 2001 but it remained higher than the 54 per cent of 1997 when local elections were held two weeks after those for parliament. Given the primacy of the general election, the district council count did not begin until Monday, 9 May 2005. As the results came in from the 26 district councils it was soon clear that the vote gains made by the DUP and Sinn Féin in the general election would be reflected in proportional seat shares under PR (STV). The DUP replaced UUP at the top of the poll, as they did at the general election, with 29.6 per cent of the vote and 182 seats, a gain of 52 seats. Sinn
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The Northern Ireland Question
Table 5.8
District council elections results of 5 May 2005 % first pref. votes
Party
2005
Seats no.
2001
1997
2005
2001
1997 91
DUP
29.6
21.5
15.6
182
131
SF
23.2
20.7
16.9
126
108
74
UUP SDLP AP GP PUP UUC Others Total
18.0 17.4 5.0 0.8 0.7 0.3 5.0 100
23.0 19.4 5.1
29.7 20.6 6.6
154 117 28
185 120 41
1.6 0.3 8.4 100
2.2 0.0 8.4 100
115 101 30 3 2 2 21 582*
0 44 582
0 71 582
* The six seats in Cookstown, Ballinderry were returned unopposed when only six candidates were nominated.
Féin was second with 23.2 per cent of the vote and 126 seats (see Table 5.8 above). Ulster Unionist Party slipped to third place with 18 per cent and 115 seats, a net loss of 40 seats. Social Democratic and Labour Party polled 17.4 per cent and won 101 seats, a net loss of 16. Alliance polled 5 per cent, a small fall, but with 30 seats showed a net gain of two seats. The Green Party gained three seats, all in Co. Down, with less than 1 per cent of the vote. However, all the smaller parties lost out to pressure from the larger parties. The United Kingdom Unionist Party lost its two seats, NI Women’s Coalition lost its only seat in North Down and the Progressive Unionists lost two seats. The number of independents and others elected fell to 21 from 44 in 2001 and 71 in 1997. Through transfers from smaller parties both DUP and UUP gained ten seats each, above their proportionate share of seats. The SDLP had a strictly proportional outcome and Sinn Féin won nine seats fewer than its share of the vote merited. Even PR (STV) in the district council elections could not hide the growing polarization in political life. After the election there were talks at Downing Street between the UK government and Sinn Féin and separately with DUP. Whatever the details discussed, there was agreement that significant movement had to come from the IRA. However, the election had come and gone and there was still no response to Gerry Adams’s plea on 6 April 2005 for the IRA to consider an alternative route to the armed struggle. There was heightened tension over the July Orange Order parades. The long awaited statement from the IRA ordered an end to the armed campaign from 4.00 p.m. on 28 July 2005. The language was clear and direct: All IRA units were to dump arms and volunteers were to assist the
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119
development of purely political and democratic programmes through peaceful means. Volunteers were banned from engaging in any other activities. The leadership authorized representatives to engage with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning to verifiably put arms beyond use in a way to enhance public confidence. It proposed two independent witnesses, one Protestant, one Catholic, to testify to putting arms beyond use. It also accepted that there was now an alternative way to achieve their republican and democratic objectives, including a united Ireland – the advice offered by Gerry Adams in April. The IRA statement freed Sinn Féin to pursue its political ambitions in the Republic where an election was due by May 2007. The UK government was convinced of the sincerity of the IRA statement and made rapid moves on demilitarization while awaiting IRA actions. However, by frontloading its actions, the government was in danger of further alienating unionist opinion. Sinn Féin had been brought in from the cold since 1997 and the IRA now accepted the Adams strategy. The presumption seemed to be that at some stage unionist alienation could be easily addressed. The price of republican compliance was the serious diminution of the pro-Good Friday Agreement unionism and the removal of its greatest exponent, David Trimble. The UK general election of 5 May 2005 in Northern Ireland registered significant changes in political strength and personalities. Although the trends were evident earlier, in 2001 and in the Northern Ireland Assembly election of November 2003, they did not seem to register outside the island of Ireland until David Trimble (UUP) lost his seat and Rev. Ian Paisley (DUP) replaced UUP as the dominant voice of unionism; and Gerry Adams’s Sinn Féin had replaced SDLP as the largest nationalist party and John Hume (SDLP) went into retirement. However, by racing ahead with demilitarization, before any IRA action, there was a risk that unionism would be further alienated without any redress. Pro-Good Friday Agreement unionism was reduced to a parlous state and there was a widespread perception that the ideals of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement had been replaced by a bilateral deal with Sinn Féin and that the largest unionist party, the DUP, was of no account. The ideals of the Good Friday Agreement were in danger of being reduced to a deal between two states over the heads of the unionist population. However, events did progress after IRA decommissioning in September 2005. Democratic Unionist Party remained sceptical in public but progress was made on other issues and it was decided to open another attempt to achieve the restoration of devolution. It was launched at the Navan Centre, Armagh in April 2006. It was based on a deadline of 24 November and comprised two sessions of 12 weeks on each side of the summer break. The venue was Stormont, the delegates were the MLAs and its agenda was set by the Secretary of State – it was not a restored Northern Ireland Assembly. Progress was made and it was decided to take the talks to St Andrews in Scotland in
120 The Northern Ireland Question
October 2006. There, agreement was reached through bilateral discussions between the British and Irish governments and the main parties; the parties were then invited to sign up to the St Andrews Agreement. The one remaining issue was whether Sinn Féin would agree to take its place in the new policing structures. A special Ard Fheis called by Sinn Féin at the end of January 2007 decisively agreed to work the new policing structures. This was the signal for the Secretary of State to set the date for fresh Assembly elections for 7 March 2007.
The 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election The election produced changes in the individual and party composition of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Some MLAs stood down while others were rejected by the electorate but some 79 of the outgoing members were returned along with 29 new members. Sinn Féin with 11 and DUP with 10 were the main contributors of new members. Among the new members were seven women, including Anna Lo for Alliance, the first MLA from a Chinese ethnic minority background. The main winners from the election were the two largest parties, DUP and Sinn Féin, who had gains of 4.4 per cent and 2.6 per cent of the first preference votes respectively. These changes were also reflected in seat gains, six for DUP (or three if the UUP defections in January 2004 are excluded), and four for Sinn Féin (see Table 5.9 below). The situation for UUP and SDLP continued to get worse. The UUP dropped to fourth place with 14.9 per cent of first preference votes, a fall of 7.7 per cent. The SDLP was close behind with 15.2 per cent, a fall of 1.8 per cent. By winning some seats late in the count, UUP ended up with 18 seats to 16 for SDLP. Ulster Unionist Party had lost six seats since 2003 (or three if Table 5.9 Party DUP SF UUP SDLP AP GP PUP UKUP Others Total valid vote Turnout
Northern Ireland Assembly election, 7 March 2007 First pref. votes
Votes %
Change %
207721 180573 103145 105164 36139 11985 3822 10452 31312
30.1 26.2 14.9 15.2 5.2 1.7 0.6 1.5 4.6
4.4 2.6 −7.7 −1.8 1.6 1.4 −0.6 0.7 –
690313
63.0
−0.1
696538
63.5
−0.5
Seats no. % Change 36 28 18 16 7 1 1 0 1
6 4 −9 −2 1 1 0 −1
The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement
121
45 40 35
% vote
30 25 20 15 10
SDLP Sinn Féin
5
TOTAL
0 1992(W) 1993(DC) 1996(F) 1997(W) 1997(DC) 1998(A) 2001(W) 2001(DC) 2003(A) 2005(W) 2007(A) Election year/type
Figure 5.1
SDLP versus Sinn Féin, 1992–2007
55 50 45 40
% vote
35 30 25 20 15 UUP
10
DUP 5
TOTAL
0 1992(W) 1993(DC) 1996(F) 1997(W) 1997(DC) 1998(A) 2001(W) 2001(DC) 2003(A) 2005(W) 2007(A) Election year/type
Figure 5.2
UUP versus DUP, 1992–2007
122 The Northern Ireland Question
the defections were excluded) and SDLP lost two. Since the first Northern Ireland Assembly election in 1998, both parties had together lost 34 seats. The SDLP had appeared to make progress in 2005 in checking the rise in Sinn Féin support. However, Figure 5.1 above shows that the gap continued to widen in 2007. For the UUP, Figure 5.2 above shows that the DUP dominance was growing in 2005 and it continued in 2007. DUP now has twice as many votes and seats as UUP – a very difficult situation to reverse.
What generalizations can be made about the Northern Ireland Assembly election of 2007? First, the dominance of DUP among unionists and Sinn Féin among nationalists increased significantly. Both proved their capacity to mobilize supporters and to organize them through vote management to deliver the maximum result. Second, there was no significant support for an alternative negative political stance, whether unionist or republican. The attempt by the UKUP leader, Bob McCartney, to give expression to a unionist anti-St Andrews’ Agreement position may have been commendable, given the shift in the DUP position, but the election option rather than a referendum undermined his campaign capacity. The UKUP total was 1.5 per cent and the party leader lost his North Down seat in the process. Similarly on the republican side, the number of independent anti-policing candidates and the presence of six republican Sinn Féin candidates for the first time, did not damage Sinn Féin’s well-tested electoral machine. Third, while the nationalist percentage vote has continued to increase that of the two main unionist parties has fallen. Previously they would have been bumping along around 50 per cent. In 2007, the UUP plus DUP share stood at 45 per cent. After the election, the focus of attention shifted to the next deadline, 26 March 2007, when the posts in the Executive would be allocated. The St Andrews’ Agreement required that the nomination for First Minister, made by the largest party, and for Deputy First Minister, made by the second largest party, had to occur on 14 March. However, the Northern Ireland (St Andrews’ Agreement) Act 2006 did not carry any such requirement. In his open letter to the newly elected MLAs, the Secretary of State merely stated that he would be asking Dr Paisley and Martin McGuinness to confirm to him that they were content to be First Minister and Deputy First Minister respectively in a restored Assembly before 25 March. On 25 March, the Secretary of State moved a Restoration Order to end the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, effective since October 2002. The next day the Northern Ireland Assembly was supposed to form an Executive, by running the d’Hondt mechanism, and all ministers were to affirm the new pledge of office. However, DUP resistance resulted in an agreed date of 8 May which Sinn Féin accepted. Given the party seat share in the election, the parties had the following choices for ministerial posts in the Executive: DUP first, third, seventh,
The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement
123
ninth; Sinn Féin second, sixth, eight; UUP fourth, tenth; SDLP fifth. On this occasion, the parties had some knowledge of other party preferences. Despite the poorer unionist turnout and a reduced number of seats, the composition of the Executive was four DUP, three Sinn Féin, two UUP and one SDLP. This outcome of six unionists and four nationalists was the same as would have resulted in November 2003 if the Assembly had been permitted to meet and run d’Hondt.
Explanations for the decline in unionist support for the Good Friday Agreement 1998–2003 The peak in support occurred at the referendum and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in May–June 1998. The 71.1 per cent ‘Yes’ vote and 81.1 per cent turnout gave the Good Friday Agreement a good send-off. There was no breakdown of the results but two exit polls, by the Sunday Times/ Coopers and Lybrand and Ulster Marketing Surveys, gave an indication of the relative community support. Both showed 96 per cent nationalist support for the Good Friday Agreement; however, the unionist community was almost evenly divided at 52 per cent against and 55 per cent in favour. Work based on the Northern Ireland Referendum and Election Study showed 57 per cent Protestant and 99 per cent Catholic supported the Good Friday Agreement (Hayes and McAllister, 2001). The Assembly elections in June showed an improvement in the pro-Agreement position: the pro-Agreement parties polled 74.4 per cent and won 80 of the 108 seats. The division in unionist opinion continued: Pro-Agreement unionists polled only 24.9 per cent, about one-third of the pro-Agreement total, while anti-Agreement unionists polled 25.6 per cent; the former, however, won 30 seats to 28 for anti-Agreement unionists. Significantly, the turnout fell in the month since the referendum to 68.8 per cent, a reduction of 12.2 per cent. The consistently high nationalist support for the Good Friday Agreement over time masked a rapid decline in unionist support over the next five years. In 2003, surveys showed 96 per cent of nationalists would still vote for the Good Friday Agreement while only 46 per cent of unionists would do so. However, the 46 per cent of unionists was barely credible given the rapid fall in unionist support during the period 1998–2000. The Northern Ireland Referendum and Election Study found that 57 per cent of Protestants had voted ‘Yes’ compared with 99 per cent of Catholics.3 Subsequent Northern Ireland Life and Times surveys found Protestant support declining from 57 per cent in 1998 to 53 per cent in 1999, 47 per cent in 2000 and 46 per cent in 2003. Research showed that in 1998, 40 per cent Protestants believed that the Good Friday Agreement benefited nationalists ‘a lot more’ and 16 per cent ‘a little more’ than unionists; by 2003, 75 per cent of unionists believed that nationalists had benefited most. The main specific concerns in 2003 were the suspension of the Assembly and police reform.
124 The Northern Ireland Question
Given the original almost equally divided Protestant support for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, it was a surprise that the situation had changed so quickly. In part, it was due to the Labour government approach which held that Protestants had nowhere else to go and that republican issues had to be redressed even if they dragged their feet on issues agreed in 1998. Such underlying attitudes meant that there were consequences for the perceived effectiveness of UUP and SDLP if Sinn Féin negotiating demands continued to be met. The continued overwhelming Catholic support in 2003 meant that twothirds of the population still supported the Good Friday Agreement but it had clearly lost Protestant support to a significant degree. The official government position asserted the stability of the settlement but there were doubters, including the US Consulate in Belfast, which commissioned its own poll to gain independent evidence. The changes were evident in the 2001 parliamentary and district council elections, which were held simultaneously on 7 June. Sinn Féin overtook the SDLP by winning 21.7 per cent of the vote to 21 per cent for the SDLP and by winning four seats to three in the parliamentary elections; in the district council elections Sinn Féin was also ahead by 20.7 per cent to 19.4 per cent of the first preference votes but lagged behind SDLP by 108 to 117 seats. Both parties were strongly proAgreement and the changes represented adjustment within the nationalist community. The changes in unionist representation had implications for the future of the Good Friday Agreement. The UUP was in some difficulty fighting against the DUP’s anti-Agreement stance when six of the nine UUP MPs also opposed the Good Friday Agreement. In the event UUP topped the poll with 26.8 per cent of the vote to 22.5 per cent for DUP but with two DUP seat gains in North Belfast and Strangford and two UUP losses to Sinn Féin in West Tyrone and Fermanagh-South Tyrone, the UUP now had six seats at Westminster to five for DUP. At one level, the UUP had successfully fought a rearguard action against DUP: it did lose two seats but it won back South Antrim, lost in a by-election to DUP, and it had defeated Bob McCartney (UKUP), a political ally of DUP in opposition to the Good Friday Agreement. However, the assistance of pro-Agreement parties in some constituencies and the divisions within the UUP made the position less secure. The starker reality was more evident in the district council elections where the STV was used. In it the gap between UUP and DUP was 1.5 percentage points – 23.0 per cent UUP to 21.5 per cent DUP; UUP had 154 seats, a loss of 31 seats since 1997 and DUP had 131, a gain of 40 seats. The failure to achieve decommissioning of IRA weapons within the twoyear period after 1998, the reform of policing, the IRA break-in at Castlereagh Police Headquarters and the discovery of an IRA spying plot at Stormont – ‘Stormontgate’ – all added to the DUP weaponry against the Northern Ireland Executive and First Minister, David Trimble. The suspension of the
The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement
125
Assembly in October 2002, while the North-South Bodies continued, albeit on a reduced basis, fed the belief that unionists had benefited little from the Good Friday Agreement. The government, fearful that the change in unionist and nationalist opinion might endanger the Good Friday Agreement, twice postponed the Assembly elections, due in May 2003. They were held in November under criticism and resulted in DUP going decisively ahead of UUP and Sinn Féin further ahead of SDLP. By now, the government had decided to pursue the possibility of a deal between DUP and Sinn Féin to replace that between UUP and SDLP. It was to take a further three years but the electoral movement to sustain it had already occurred in 2003.
The preferential ballot, communal voting and an inclusive executive Proportional Representation using the STV method and the Droop Quota have been used for all Northern Ireland Assembly and district council elections since 1973. The preferential ballot allows voters to register preferences for all candidates and parties by ranking them 1, 2, 3, and so on. Voters can express preferences between parties and between candidates within the same party instead of making a single categorical choice. Despite appearances voters have only one vote; preferences beyond the first are instructions to the returning officer about what to do with the ballot paper in the event that the candidate with the first preference has no further need of it, either because he/she has been elected with a surplus or because he/she was eliminated with too few votes. The preferential ballot adds to the power of the voter, minimizes vote wastage and the transfers at each stage provide a unique insight into the mind of the electorate on polling day. Vote-management strategies have been prominent in recent elections as parties struggled to retain control over their voters and the persistence of communal voting was evidence of their success. In the district council elections of 1997, a year before the Belfast Agreement and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, the pattern of transfers was clear. The percentage transfers when candidates from the same party were present revealed a high index of cohesive party preferences. The main parties achieved around 80 per cent of transfers to their continuing candidates. In 1997, the highest average percentage was achieved by Sinn Féin with 88.7 per cent, followed by SDLP with 85.1 per cent, Alliance Party 78.3 per cent, UUP 76.5 per cent and DUP 76.2 per cent. The smaller parties were less successful in retaining transfers within their own party. The percentage transfers when candidates from the same party were no longer present, terminal transfers, gives a good guide as to which party voters regarded as closest to their original choice. In recent district council elections the lower preferences expressed by DUP and UUP voters favoured one another strongly. In 1997, some 72.2 per cent of DUP terminal transfers
126
The Northern Ireland Question
went to UUP and 62.5 per cent of UUP terminal transfers went to DUP. The terminal transfer relationship between SDLP and Sinn Féin has varied since 1982 but by 1993 a majority of SDLP transfers (54 per cent) went to Sinn Féin and Sinn Féin was approaching reciprocity (46 per cent). In the 1997 district council elections, there was a marked increase in the disposition of the respective party voters to support the other party. The averaged percentage transfer from SDLP to Sinn Féin was 59.9 per cent and Sinn Féin to SDLP 62.7 per cent. Social Democratic and Labour Party was the second choice of Sinn Féin voters everywhere, but Sinn Féin was the second choice of SDLP mainly in the West. The picture that emerged from the transfers between SDLP and Sinn Féin was fairly clear. Their respective voters have a clear view of party identity: until 1989, the respective party voters regarded the SDLP and Sinn Féin as competing rather than complementary nationalist parties but after 1993 the pattern changed towards a complementary model. In the first Assembly election in June 1998, there were expectations that a new voting cleavage would develop between parties in favour of the Good Friday Agreement and those that opposed it. However, voters told the exit polls that very few would give preferences beyond their own party. The intermediate transfers showed DUP retaining 72 per cent within the party, UUP 71 per cent, SDLP 70.5 per cent and Sinn Féin 87 per cent. The number of terminal transfers were limited and perhaps too few to build generalizations. There were six instances of terminal transfers from the UUP and 24.4 per cent went to SDLP, 35.8 per cent went to UKUP and 30.9 per cent went to DUP. There were six instances of terminal transfers from the SDLP: 10.3 per cent on average went to UUP and 56 per cent to Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin transfers went 70 per cent to SDLP; DUP terminal transfers went 42 per cent to UUP. In the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election it was all too evident that the political parties were familiar with vote-management tactics to combat the voting power of the elector under the STV. Parties argued that if voters were prepared to follow party advice on how to vote, then the maximum number of party candidates could be returned. The correct number of candidates had to be nominated at a time when political opinion was changing within each block. The main parties usually retained 70 and 85 per cent of transfers within the party when candidates were still running and in recent years, Sinn Féin and SDLP had the highest figures. In 2003, DUP was highest with 82.5 per cent followed by Sinn Féin with 80.4 per cent; SDLP had 77.7 per cent and UUP 71.8 per cent (see Table 5.10 below). The ‘within community’ column shows that any vote leakage from the main parties remained within the same political community. The other noticeable fact was the small percentage which was non-transferable, indicating that the vote was used among the party candidates, probably as advised by the parties. The main interest usually concerns terminal transfers where the party no longer has a candidate in play. Transfers to other parties, at this stage,
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127
Table 5.10 Northern Ireland Assembly 2003 intermediate transfers: Party and community voting cohesion Party
No. of cases
Vote values transferred
% within party
% within community
Nontransferable
DUP UUP SF SDLP
16 21 10 12
37053 43628 11253 27695
82.5 71.8 80.4 77.7
94.0 82.5 94.8 89.8
3.8 7.8 4.5 7.2
reflects the voters choice of party closest to the original choice. It may also reflect party advice concerning the retention of support within the same community. In the Northern Ireland Assembly election of 2003 there were some 71 stages where the votes transferred were from a party which still had at least one candidate in the running and capable of receiving transfers. These transfers, often called intermediate transfers, involved some 128,927 vote values. Finally, there were 61 terminal transfers, where the candidate whose votes were being transferred no longer had any member of the same party available to receive transfers. These terminal transfers involved some 56,189 vote values and form the core of this analysis. The tendency is for smaller parties to transfer to the main party within the same communal block. There were nine terminal transfers from smaller unionist parties, fourteen from centrist parties and six from independents. There were 32 terminal transfers involving the four largest parties, DUP, Sinn Féin, UUP and SDLP, from the two main political blocks and transfer values of 36,336 or 65 per cent of the total. The quantities and direction of transfers was interesting. The table above contains 15 instances of terminal transfers from DUP and an average 38.8 per cent to UUP candidates. There were some high transfers to UUP with 98 per cent in West Tyrone, two mid-90 per cent in Upper Bann. There was a high level of non-transferable votes at 39.5 per cent but especially in East Belfast, East Londonderry and Fermanagh and South Tyrone. In North Antrim, North Belfast, Strangford and South Down the party advice seems to have been to prefer the smaller unionist parties before UUP. In the eight instances of UUP terminal transfers, there were no DUP candidates available to receive transfers due to the fact that the DUP candidates had been elected early. Table 5.11 shows an average of 41.8 per cent transfers to SDLP in the eight instances. The highest was 72.6 per cent in Upper Bann followed by 61.8 per cent in Mid Ulster and 44.5 per cent in Foyle. In contrast with a transfer of 0.6 per cent to Sinn Féin the figures for SDLP from UUP look like a conscious attempt to extend the support first seen in 1998. The level of non-transferable votes was high at 54.8 per cent.
128 The Northern Ireland Question Table 5.11 Northern Ireland Assembly 2003: Terminal party transfers from the four main political parties PARTY from/to
Vote values DUP OTHU PUP UUP AP + others SDLP
DUP N = 15 16766
7.05
SF
IND NTV
5.2 38.8
1.7
2.7
1.1
1.4 39.5
0.4
2.4
41.8
0.6
54.8
83.4
UUP N = 8
8985
SF N = 5
5898
0.3
0.1
0.9
1.9
SDLP N = 4
4687
0.3
0.6
15.6
23.5
0.1 13.5 42.1
4.1 13.8
NTV = Non-transferable vote.
Table 5.12 Northern Ireland Assembly: Cross-community transfers: 2003 and 1998 Party from/to DUP UUP SF SDLP
No. of cases 2003 1998 2003 1998 2003 1998 2003 1998
15 9 8 6 5 8 4 6
Vote values 16766 15087 8985 6827 5898 17121 4687 12744
DUP
0.3 0.3 0.3 0.9
UUP
0.9 3.1 15.6 9.3
SDLP
SF
NTV
2.7 3.0 41.8 31.6
1.1 0.4 0.6 0.4
39.5 21.8 54.8 25.1 13.5 25.9 13.8 33.0
NTV = Non-transferable vote.
The four instances of SDLP terminal transfers showed an average of 42.1 per cent for Sinn Féin, 23.5 per cent for Alliance and 15.6 per cent for UUP and 13.8 per cent non-transferable. Two specific instances of transfers to Sinn Féin were much higher: in West Belfast there was an 87.1 per cent transfer from Alex Attwood and a 98.6 per cent transfer in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. There was one very interesting transfer in Lagan Valley where 91 per cent of Patricia Lewsley’s 362 surplus elected Norah Beare, who was on the Jeffrey Donaldson side of the UUP, but it could have been a gender vote. Sinn Féin transfers were virtually in one direction – towards SDLP. In the five instances, the average to SDLP was 83.4 per cent: in East Londonderry it was 98.5 per cent but in Mid Ulster only 62 per cent. Less than 1 per cent went to UUP. Some 13.5 per cent were non-transferable. The level of cross-community transfers was low (see Table 5.12 above). Out of 15 terminal transfers from DUP, involving 16,766 vote values, SDLP candidates were present to receive transfers on 12 occasions and received 2.7
The Electoral Dynamics of the Belfast Agreement
129
per cent vote values; Sinn Féin was present on five occasions and received 1.1 per cent transfers. There were eight terminal transfers from UUP involving 8,985 vote values. The SDLP was present on all occasions and received 41.8 per cent vote values as transfers; Sinn Féin was present on four occasions and gained 0.6 per cent vote values. Social Democratic and Labour Party had four terminal transfers involving 4,687 vote values. The UUP candidates were available on two occasions and received 15.6 per cent vote values and the DUP received 0.3 per cent. Sinn Féin had five terminal transfers involving values of 5,898. Ulster Unionist Party was available on each occasion and received 0.9 per cent vote values and DUP received 0.3 per cent. In 2007, the parties further honed their vote-management skills (see Table 5.13 below). The main parties retained between 75 and 85 per cent of transfers within the party ticket when they still had candidates in the running. There were fewer terminal transfers but the pattern was interesting because DUP was now the largest party and the largest unionist party. Despite the keen rivalry with UUP some 75.5 per cent of DUP terminal transfers went to the UUP. The UUP strongly favoured DUP with 49 per cent but it also gave 19 per cent to SDLP. Sinn Féin still strongly favoured SDLP with 67 per cent of terminal transfers. The SDLP pattern, however, changed with Alliance becoming the most favoured party for the first time since 1993. It may have been a product of the small number of cases but it could have been a factor of losing some of its more nationalist voters to Sinn Féin. There were some signs of increased activity between the UUP and SDLP in 2003 and 2007 but there was no marked change in the overall communal voting pattern. The UUP transferred 19 per cent to SDLP but only 0.8 per cent to Sinn Féin. The SDLP transferred 14 per cent to UUP and 2 per cent to DUP but their main preference moved to Alliance from Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin’s terminal transfers only distributed 2.5 per cent to unionist parties and only 1.2 per cent to their main partner in the Executive, DUP. The DUP transferred 6.5 per cent to SDLP but only 0.2 per cent to Sinn Féin. The STF is a very sophisticated method of election which delivers proportional results. However, questions have been raised about its use in
Table 5.13 Northern Ireland Assembly 2007: Terminal party transfers from the four main political parties Party from/to
Vote values
DUP N = 6 UUP N = 5 SF N = 13 SDLP N = 6
6630 13284 11109 11632
NTV = Non-transferable vote.
DUP 49.0 1.2 2.0
UUP
AP
SDLP
SF
NTV
75.5
0.4 – 3.4 16.9
6.5 19.0 67.0
0.2 0.8
15.8 25.6 23.0 36.3
1.0 14.0
13.8
130 The Northern Ireland Question
a deeply divided society where candidates from one community can be elected with votes solely from the same community (Horowitz, 2001). The main argument being that the political settlement might be better secured if there was interdependence for electoral success on the other community. The other argument being that communal representation could be achieved by the simpler device of communal voting rolls, rather than the STF. The formation of the Northern Ireland Executive in May 2007 with Rev. Dr Ian Paisley (DUP) as First Minister and Martin McGuinness (SF) as Deputy First Minister would have appeared incredulous in 1998. However, the institutional model adopted in the Good Friday Agreement and, more recently in the St Andrews Agreement, has major elements of consociationalism. The Agreement was brokered by the British and Irish governments with American influence and agreed to by the local political elites. A four-party coalition government representing 98 of the 108 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly leaves little room for opposition. Party political opinion, with one large party and one smaller one in each communal block, has not developed around a new cleavage. The analysis of the preferential ballot transfers revealed a strong pattern of communal voting with few signs of degeneration. It is as well to remember that the Executive formation is by way of a secondary election by members of the Assembly. It represents the fundamental cleavage in Northern Ireland society but it was not elected directly by it. The system has proved robust enough to accommodate change in the two largest parties. The 2007 Assembly election placed DUP 2:1 ahead of its unionist rival in seats and votes and Sinn Féin 1.7:1 ahead of SDLP. Figures 5.1 and 5.2 above show DUP and Sinn Féin could go even further ahead at the expense of their more moderate rivals. The glue holding it together is mainly the hunger for local political power exuded by DUP and Sinn Féin.
Notes 1. The Sunday Times, 24 May 1998. 2. Economic Outlook and Business Review, vol. 18, No. 4, November 2003, p. 23. 3. Ark Research Update, No. 32, January 2005.
6 Unionism and the Belfast Agreement Christopher Farrington
Since the IRA called a ceasefire in 1994, the language of the peace process has been one dominated by the twin ideas of ‘change’ and ‘progress’. At most points in this process it has seemed that unionists have been the obstacles to both ‘change’ and ‘progress’. Sometimes this has been justified, while at other times this has been the result of ‘spinning’ by Sinn Féin, as it was easy to fit this interpretation into well-worn frameworks of analysis of unionists as obstinate and bigoted. This has meant that it seemed more of an intellectual puzzle when the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) engaged with a peace process and agreed to a peace agreement than when the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP) stayed away from the process and opposed it. This chapter seeks to explain these variations in unionist responses to the peace process and show how the politics of unionism intersected with the politics of the peace process to produce inertia in the process of implementation. It will first examine questions of ideology and strategy in the period before the Belfast Agreement. It will then examine the varying unionist responses to the Agreement before seeking to use this analysis to understand the dynamics of the implementation of the Agreement.
The peace process The question of ideology The question of ideology has been at the centre of the Northern Irish peace process. This is unsurprising, given that the conflict is an identity-based conflict. However, identity-based conflicts are much more difficult to resolve than non-identity ones because of the indivisible and non-negotiable nature of identities (Licklider, 1995, p. 686). Northern Ireland was therefore seen as an intractable conflict with little hope for resolution. The changes which have taken place since the early 1990s, challenge many of these assumptions, analyses and observations. Identity and changing identity have been 131
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at the heart of the peace process. The earliest work on how the peace process developed outlined the complicated ideological shifts which occurred to bring about changes in political strategies (Mallie and McKittrick, 1996). In this way ideology was invested with causal importance; it made people do things and change things which they might not otherwise have done. The second wave of scholarship accepted this causal argument related to identity but asked why the ideology had changed. Broadly speaking, this has led to a consensus that nationalists and republicans re-evaluated their analysis of unionism and, specifically, incorporated the principle of consent into their ideology. This occurred when John Hume found a way of reconciling consent with the key republican idea of self-determination. A further stage was needed, though, when the Irish and the British governments endorsed this reconciliation in the Downing Street Declaration. Republicans were willing to discuss these changes in the context of, first, a three-way stalemate between themselves, loyalists and the British state (English, 2003), and, second, a changing British-Irish relationship which saw the British state clearly establish its position in relation to Northern Ireland and which gave an institutional role to the Irish state in relation to Northern Ireland. The significance of these changes was quite fundamental. By finding common ground between the nationalist desire to have a united Ireland and the unionist desire to stay within the United Kingdom, the traditional interpretation that the two communities had incommensurable goals was challenged. It also built upon new interpretations of the content of the two main identities, British and Irish, which argued for more open and overlapping conceptions. As should be obvious, unionists are not active agents in this discussion. Changes in unionist ideology were not significant for the emergence of a peace process in the early 1990s. However, this is not to say that there were not changes in how unionists analysed the state, the position and attitudes of nationalists, and the conflict in general. Moreover, there were also considerable changes in the articulated content of unionist British identity. This process can be traced to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which questioned the unionist relationship with the British state and prompted a wide-ranging discussion on the range of ideological questions outlined above (Farrington, 2006a). Therefore, while changes in unionist ideology were not necessary to bring about a peace process, they were necessary to allow unionists to engage in that process. Prior to the changes in the 1990s, the content of unionist ideology was too ethnically exclusive to accommodate nationalists in the state in Northern Ireland (Whyte, 1990; Todd, 1993) and it was necessary to radically rethink the nature of the state to allow for a resolution of the conflict. The question of ownership of the state has been at the centre of the current conflict. The civil rights campaign of the 1960s made claims based on the unequal positioning of the state in relation to the two communities in Northern Ireland. The IRA later made claims based on the disputed
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sovereignty of the state. However, it is the civil rights claims which can be seen to be the basis for most of the reforms agreed to in the Belfast Agreement, such as equality legislation, human rights provisions and the guarantee of nationalist participation in government. Ruane and Todd argue that these reforms fundamentally realigned the state; it was no longer structurally British but instead was structurally neutral. They argue that this, in part, explains why unionists reacted so ambivalently towards the Belfast Agreement (Ruane and Todd, 2001, pp. 923–40). It is undoubtedly true that some of the issues involved in realignment were contentious and affected unionist responses to the Agreement. However, there have been subtle and important shifts in how unionists have analysed the nature of the state which helps explain, first, unionist engagement with the process, and second, the changing attitude of the DUP. During the campaign against the Anglo-Irish Agreement, unionists argued that the Agreement represented a fundamental change to the nature of the state which had occurred without the consent of those within the territorial area of the state. The subsidiary and connected issue was that the change had been towards the opposing ethnic group within the area (Farrington, 2006a). In this sense, they probably had a correct reading of what the AngloIrish Agreement was supposed to do. However, this prompted a debate within unionism concerning the nature of the Union, and therefore the state, and how this could be reconciled with a divided society in which the very nature of the state was contested. Unionists articulated an interpretation of the British state as a multinational state, capable of incorporating different national identities and thus capable of providing a framework for reconciling unionist British identity and nationalist Irish identity (Aughey, 1989; Schultz, 1997, pp. 92–110). This interpretation has been criticized from a number of angles. First, it has been criticized because it fails to recognize sufficiently the particular distinctiveness of nationalist Irish identity in Northern Ireland (O’Neill, 1994, pp. 363–77). Second, it has been criticized because it reduces the concept of British identity to something exceptionally thin and incapable of fulfilling the functions required by a national identity (Porter, 1996). Third, it has been criticized on empirical grounds: this is not how unionists understand or practice their British identity (Cochrane, 1997). All these criticisms have some validity but what they fail to convey is how this reinterpretation provided an ideological framework into which the unionists who endorsed this interpretation could place Northern Irish nationalists. By the reasoning of these unionists, if the British state could incorporate different nationalities, then it could, theoretically, incorporate Northern Irish nationalists who subscribed to the principle of consent. This effectively meant relinquishing an exclusive claim over the state by one ethnic group. Of course, this interpretation of the British state was not unanimously accepted within unionism. In particular, most unionists wanted to keep
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some kind of ‘thick’ British identity, including some of those who were sympathetic to the above argument. For these unionists, a peace process needed to demonstrate unambiguously that the existence of the British state in Ireland was not contested in the short to medium term. It also did not go quite so far as to look to empty the state of all its symbolic content and, therefore, unionists were still agitated about issues such as flags or languages. This was, broadly speaking, the position of the DUP. The DUP understood the peace process as a continuation of the ideological struggle for control of the state and therefore was looking for indicators of change in nationalist attitudes towards the Northern Ireland state. The question that the DUP was not prepared to think about was, what kind of changes was it prepared to countenance to bring about these desired changes within nationalism? Therefore, in the case of the DUP, its decision to finally sign up to the St Andrews’ Agreement was a response to the changes by republicans, which had occurred as a result of changes already made to the state by the Belfast Agreement. These changes by republicans finally fulfilled the DUP criteria for entry into government which the DUP had established long before the Belfast Agreement. The question of strategy While ideological explanations have been the most popular for analysing the republican movement away from violence, there has been an increased popularity for strategic, and particularly strategic military, explanations. These explanations fit more readily with the comparative findings on internal conflicts which seek rational explanations of conflict resolution behaviour (Zartman, 1989; Pruitt, 2007, pp. 1520–41). Richard English has argued that the three-way stalemate between republicans, loyalists and the British state was crucial in bringing about a peace process in the 1990s (English, 2003). Moreover, as we obtain more information about the changing military capacity of the IRA and the changing intelligence network of the British state, it seems that it will be necessary to think more carefully about the interactions between republican’s military strategy and their political strategy in more rational, and less ideological, ways. Unionist involvement in the peace process also has strategic dimensions. These are obviously not related to a military campaign but instead relate to how the actions of other political actors have meant that unionists have had to alter their political strategy. These strategic differences actually marked the dividing line between unionist political parties during the peace process. Ideological differences broadly cut across political parties (Farrington, 2006b, pp. 49–72), whereas strategic differences were common in differentiating between them. These strategic differences can be seen as a product of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The Anglo-Irish Agreement is a crucial part of the modern history of Northern Ireland. Its effects on all parties to the conflict have been profound and we still probably don’t understand exactly
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how the Anglo-Irish Agreement changed or affected change in the structure of the conflict. However, we can see clearly how it was a causal factor in altering unionist political preferences and strategies. When unionists opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, they did so unanimously and in numbers (Farrington, 2006a). The rest of the world saw the Anglo-Irish Agreement as a positive and progressive step and saw the unionist campaign as the vestiges of a privileged community protesting at the attempt of the two governments to reach a balanced and sensible way of managing the problem. The campaign against the Anglo-Irish Agreement has been, unfairly criticized for its negative tactics and oppositional stance. Many of the arguments used by unionists have some merit and the manner of its negotiation and announcement were never likely to endear unionists to its provisions. It is worth remembering that even the most liberal and open-minded unionists were as opposed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement as the most hard-line and recalcitrant loyalists. However, the inability of this campaign to bring about the destruction of the Anglo-Irish Agreement led to, first, the breakdown of the unionist pact and, second, to the proliferation of alternative political strategies for obtaining unionist goals. The shared interpretation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement created cohesion among unionists about the necessity of opposing it. As part of this opposition, the two unionist parties at the time, the UUP and DUP, formed a formal electoral pact. In the early period of the campaign, this meant joint speeches, statements, coordinated action and so on. The pact came into difficulty in 1987 when the two parties campaigned on a joint manifesto and only nominated one candidate per constituency. This prompted two high-profile departures, one from each party: Jim Allister from the DUP and Robert McCartney from the UUP. The pact did not continue past the 1987 general election but it did have some long-lasting effects on unionist politics. First, it halted the DUP challenge to UUP dominance in unionist politics for almost 15 years. The DUP was disproportionately affected by the pact, as it was the challenging party without the benefits of incumbency. In 1983, it was close to taking at least one Westminster seat from the UUP and was building in other constituencies. This progress was stopped by the pact and it took the differing strategic interpretations of the peace process for the DUP to challenge the UUP. The DUP was no longer prepared to leave Westminster seats unchallenged because the UUP had a policy with which it did not agree. When this was combined with an increasing number of elections held using proportional representation, it allowed the DUP to build a party base more effectively in constituencies where it had stood aside since the campaign against the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The campaign also pushed unionists into an awkward corner in relation to future political initiatives on the future of Northern Ireland. Unionists stated clearly that they would not engage in any political discussions until the Anglo-Irish Agreement was removed; the subsequent Brooke-Mayhew
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talks were constrained by these procedural difficulties. However, when that process failed and an alternative process emerged involving paramilitary ceasefires and the inclusion of the political wings of paramilitary groups, the experience of the Anglo-Irish Agreement process had significant effects on how unionists engaged with this new process. In particular, the marginalization of unionism from the Anglo-Irish Agreement process was a significant factor in the thinking of the UUP, as Trimble demonstrates: I remember a parliamentary colleague saying at the time [of the ceasefires] that we should simply to adopt a particular position and then present ‘a stone face’ to the opposition. In effect he was recommending that we should not try to achieve anything and revert to saying ‘no’ all the time. Now, there could be situations where we would be justified in doing that. I can remember when it was believed in this party that, if we closed down the avenues that government was trying to explore, they would then be driven back to what we believed to be the only valid position that could be adopted, to the particular outcome we wanted, because there would then be no other way they could go. I know that there were people who thought that and at the time there was a reason for thinking that that was a viable strategy. That strategy was adopted for a while, but it led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. But closing down various options in the hope of driving them back to a democratic route did not work. The government went a different way, one that hadn’t been anticipated because it had not happened before. So simply saying ‘we adopt a stoneface to these challenges’ does not necessarily get you where you want. (Trimble, 2001, p. 44) This was a prominent argument used by pro-Agreement UUP members in the debates over the Agreement. For example, Ken Maginnis argued: ‘A political process would continue, even if there was a “No” vote – the telling difference would be that unionism would be disregarded as bogus, insincere and impotent.’1 This was exactly the position unionists found themselves during the negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Gary McMichael provided another narrative of how the Anglo-Irish Agreement prompted a pro-Agreement and pro-peace process response from within unionism. He argued that the futile experience of the Protestant working class of participating in protests against the Anglo-Irish Agreement but witnessing neither alternative strategy nor any success in the removal of the Anglo-Irish Agreement prompted loyalists to devise and carry out their own strategy: The grassroots had to do the legwork and then were invariably let down by their political hierarchy. The Anglo-Irish Agreement was the last time that happened. In 1987 the UDA produced the first and only blueprint for an alternative to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. From that moment on
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the die was cast that the grassroots would provide their own leadership and step beyond the narrow parameters created for them by others.2 The Anglo-Irish Agreement also created the alternative strategic response which was born from the experience of the Agreement. While sections of the UUP saw danger in being isolated from the policy-making process, the DUP and other sections of unionism saw the new process as the natural continuation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement process. They saw a process premised on addressing the concerns and demands of nationalists without attempting to reach a balanced, consensual settlement to the Northern Ireland conflict. It is difficult to argue that disengagement from the talks process was an effective political strategy, which is why it has been more common to interpret this strategy as an ideologically motivated reaction against the inclusion of republicans in the process. This is, of course, partly true but we must also recognize that this section of unionism had been and was deeply uncomfortable with the parameters of the proposed settlement, which had been established by the Anglo-Irish Agreement, without their input, and developed further by Hume and Adams. Robert McCartney’s critique of the Framework Document rested on precisely this basis: why get involved in a process of negotiation when the parameters (and much of the detail) have already been established without any reference to your demands or ideas (McCartney, 2001, pp. 137–50)? Therefore, the divisions within unionism over whether to engage with the talks process in 1996 can be seen as a result of the differences of strategy and ideology which characterized the internal unionist debate throughout the 1990s. In particular, we should not discount the role of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in prompting these debates.
Analysing the Belfast Agreement Unionists gave a lukewarm response to the Belfast Agreement. It is well known that unionists were split over the Agreement, with just over 50 per cent voting for the Agreement and just under 50 per cent voting against the Agreement. This division continued throughout the long and protracted implementation of the Agreement when unionist public opinion moved away from the pro-Agreement camp, as shown through various public opinion surveys and election results. However, there was a paradox at work because, although opinions on the Agreement itself shifted from proto anti-Agreement, opinions on some of the substantial provisions of the Agreement, such as power-sharing and the North-South dimension, were of a ‘wait and see’ nature and were not necessarily anti-Agreement (MacGinty, 2004, p. 98). Nevertheless, the Agreement became the focal point for unionist division over the peace process. After the Agreement, unionists no longer identified themselves by ideological or even by institutional differences
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but instead identified themselves by their opinion on the Agreement. It is well established that unionism is divided generally by political options, which include issues of national identity and preferred political structures (Todd, 1987; Cochrane, 1997). However, it is the political divisions emerging from these alternative analyses of the political environment post-Belfast Agreement which concern us here. A taxonomy of unionist responses to the Agreement may be derived from an examination of the speeches and statements of leading unionist politicians (Farrington, 2006a). There are four main positions: a principled yes, a pragmatic yes, a pragmatic no and a principled no. The ‘principled yes’ is a position held by those who believe that the Belfast Agreement represents a positive and important development for Northern Ireland. They agree with the broad ethos of the Agreement, which particularly includes governing through consensus. There is the commitment in this position that surpasses a ‘unionist’ analysis; the Agreement is interpreted from an appeal to the general populace of Northern Ireland, not just the unionist community. The ‘pragmatic yes’ position takes a more partisan view of the Agreement. They support it but interpret it within a unionist perspective. By this reading, the Agreement is a positive document but only because it represents a ‘good deal’ for unionists, the ‘best deal’ for unionists or because, on balance, it contains more positives than negatives. The ‘pragmatic no’ position has a similar reasoning to the ‘pragmatic yes’ but concludes that the Agreement is a ‘bad deal’, not the best possible deal or because, on balance, it contains more negatives than positives. Those who espouse the ‘principled no’ position argue that the Agreement is inherently bad because, among other things, it involves compulsory coalitions with terrorists, releases prisoners and contains other clauses and conditions that are found to be morally repugnant. Many of the problems for the successful implementation of the Agreement lie in concentration of the debate within unionism between the ‘pragmatic yes’, ‘pragmatic no’ and ‘principled no’. It seems unlikely that even prominent members of the (pro-Agreement) UUP leadership were to be found within the ‘principled yes’ category. Moreover, the nature of the ‘pragmatic yes’ category means that those who subscribe to this viewpoint are susceptible to alter their viewpoint depending on how or if the balance appears to change. Therefore, while it was possible to persuade a slim majority of unionists to support the Agreement through a campaign conducted by members of civil society (Couto, 2001, pp. 221–38), without such a concerted and sustained effort there was a dramatic slippage of support from the UUP to the DUP.3 How did these divisions play out in relation to the key issues of the Agreement – power-sharing, North-South institutions and consent? In 1974, there was undoubtedly opposition to the idea of power-sharing. While there was also some replication of this opposition in 1998, overall the idea of power-sharing was accepted, notwithstanding Sinn Féin’s
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protestations on 15 July 1999 when d’Hondt was unsuccessfully run for the first time. Contrary to Adams’ pronouncement that the political movements by unionists around this time showed that they ‘didn’t want a Catholic about the place’.4 The debate over power-sharing was over the inclusiveness of power-sharing. There was a widespread acceptance that the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) would be in government. Whether this was an acceptance of realpolitik or a genuine change in attitudes towards the SDLP is open to debate. However, there is evidence from local government and from previous initiatives that power-sharing was an agreed principle and that majoritarianism was not as dominant a demand as it had been in the aftermath of the proroguing of Stormont. Indeed, the debates in 1973 and 1974 were premised on the question, ‘should nationalists be in government?’ However, the debates in 1998 were premised on the question, ‘what kind of democratic credentials does a party need to have in order for it to be in government?’ This significant shift in the framing of the debate perhaps disguises anti-Agreement support for the principle of power-sharing and explains why the DUP could enter a power-sharing executive with Sinn Féin in 2007. The DUP did not establish its opposition to power-sharing in 1998 but did establish its opposition to the democratic credentials of Sinn Féin. When those credentials changed, this opened up the possibility that the DUP would enter government with Sinn Féin. The second set of institutional arrangements that we should have expected to be contentious were the North-South arrangements. The NorthSouth arrangements in 1973 were the primary reason for the collapse of the Sunningdale experiment and there were serious misgivings among unionists over the proposals of the British and the Irish governments in both the Framework Document of 1995 and in the Heads of Agreement document of January 1998. It was this aspect of the latter document which prompted John Taylor to state that he wouldn’t touch it with a ‘40 foot barge pole’.5 These misgivings were informed by an analysis which rested heavily on a neo-functionalist interpretation of institutions. It is undoubtedly the case that these assumptions were shared by nationalists and republicans and by the Irish government. In 1973, for instance, there was a strong neo-functionalist interpretation guiding Irish government proposals for a Council of Ireland.6 However, while unionists and unionist public opinion were opposed to a North-South dimension with this rationale, there was less opposition to a limited and practical manifestation of North-South bodies.7 Therefore, the limited extent of the bodies established under the Agreement broadly coincided with what unionist public opinion was willing to accept. The changes which Trimble and the UUP managed to negotiate to the preferred agenda of the British and Irish governments were a considerable success for unionism. Moreover, the institutional rationale for North-South bodies is a unionist one. Compare the words of David Trimble in 1998 with Dermot
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Ahern in 2005. Trimble stated: ‘The arrangements to be established here [on cross border cooperation] provide for practical and mutually beneficial co-operation between Northern Ireland, and the rest of the regions in the British Isles.’8 Dermot Ahern, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs stated at an SDLP conference: North-South is not just about co-operation in the border areas. It is about cooperating across the island for the benefit of all the people of the island. In our approach to North-South cooperation the principles of mutual interest and benefit are unambiguous.9 As the North-South institutions became less contentious, the DUP’s opposition to them also lessened. The third constitutional aspect which was relatively uncontentious was the provisions relating to constitutional change, or in more common parlance, consent. At the time, Trimble and many academics made the argument that the provisions relating to consent (and the fact that republicans and nationalists had signed up to them) represented a real and significant victory for unionists.10 As Ken Maginnis argued: Acceptance of our constitutional gains would be the first de facto admission by the republican movement that its so-called struggle has failed to break the will of the pro-Union majority in Northern Ireland.11 Of course, consent had been diluted by its reconciliation with self-determination but the practical manifestation of this reconciliation was a fairly unthreatening concurrent referendum on the Agreement. However, there is an unresolved debate as to how important consent really is for unionists’ position. The formulation of consent in the Agreement is as much a mechanism for unity as it is a guarantee of the Union. Granted, there will need to be a significant shift in the demographic balance and in the structure of public opinion. Even if this scenario was to emerge, the question as to the role and position of unionists will still exist in a united Ireland. However, the debate was not about consent but about the legislative trade-off between Articles 2 and 3, and the Government of Ireland Act. This debate centred on the most effective method for securing the Union: was it a mechanism which rested on the preferences of the people, or was it a legal instrument? However, the debate in unionism was relegated to one of little importance as the compromise reached in the Agreement was generally seen as a fair and balanced compromise on one of the fundamental questions of the conflict. However, despite these commonalities, unionism was still characterized by division. The question is, did the Agreement create these differences or did it simply crystallize pre-existing differences into coherent political groups? The Agreement cut across the ideological divide in unionism
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(Farrington, 2001, pp. 49–72). This may be because assessing the Agreement required assessing issues which were not directly related to the key points of ideological difference within unionism. Perhaps surprisingly, the key constitutional issues of the Agreement were not the key points of contention. The lack of controversy on the constitutional issues is interesting and raises some important questions about the opposition to ‘change’ in Northern Ireland during the peace process. First, Donald Horowitz’s argument that there had been a long process of discussion throughout the Troubles and that by the 1990s this had led to a broad consensus as to what a ‘solution’ would look like is convincing (Horowitz, 2002, pp. 193–220). Whereas in 1974 there was opposition to key aspects of the institutional deal, such as power-sharing and the Council of Ireland, in 1998 the opposition was to the additional aspects of the deal and the institutional arrangements were broadly uncontroversial. Instead, the most controversial issues were those relating to the process of conflict resolution or transformation, such as the issue of prisoner release, reforming the police service, and the question of arms. It was these issues which were to frame the implementation process and it was the resolution of these issues which was to provide the context got the dramatic deals of 2006 and 2007.
Implementing the Agreement The ambivalent unionist response to the Agreement was the cause of many of the difficulties which the Agreement encountered. The key sticking points became decommissioning and policing. At the time, there were many accusations made about why unionists were reluctant to enter into power-sharing arrangements without the prior decommissioning of weapons. Nationalists in particular were explicit in attributing sectarian motivations to the reluctance. However, the debates on decommissioning and policing disguised some fundamental misunderstandings about the interpretation of the conflict by the opposing sides. Nationalists failed to appreciate how decommissioning was tied up in a unionist interpretation of the Troubles as violence perpetrated on them by republicans. Unionists do not have a clear idea of how nationalist violence was related to the nature and practice of the state. Therefore, violence was something that happened to them, not by them, and therefore, for unionists, getting rid of the guns was a key requisite for ending the conflict. Unionists, for their part, failed to understand that reform of the police was also related to nationalists’ interpretations of conflict, which saw the nature and role of the state as a key reason for violence. Reform of the police was therefore, for nationalists, an essential part of the reform of the state. These issue-based accounts of the implementation only tell a partial story, however, and we need to have a more thorough understanding of the various interacting explanations. Here, I want to look at two further explanations
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which help build a more complete picture about how the process which led to the Agreement, the process which resulted from the Agreement and the divisions within unionism over the Agreement interacted to produce the remarkable changes in Northern Irish politics. The first explanation is an institutional one: how did the existence of two political parties affect the political environment? The second is linked to the first, and seeks to explain the crisis of implementation through the process by which politicians sought support for their position among their electors and the population in general. In a more political way: how did the selling process affect implementation?
Institutions At the debate over the Agreement at the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue, Lord Alderdice remarked: Dr Paisley did not get his copy of the Agreement from the Belfast Telegraph. He did not read through it and say ‘I do not agree with this. We will have to oppose it.’ He had already decided that he was against the Agreement. Indeed, he was against it months and months ago. Even if Sinn Féin had opposed it, and regardless of what was in it, he would have been against it. Dr Paisley had walked out of the talks, so, no matter what agreement was reached, he was going to be against it.12 Alderdice is of course correct but there may be a number of reasons why Paisley and the DUP were always going to oppose an agreement which emerged from the talks process. First, they could have genuinely disagreed with the content of the Agreement. There is undoubtedly an element of truth to this explanation. As we have seen above, the assessment of the provisions of the Agreement framed the debate within unionism post-1998. However, there is also an institutional reason why Paisley would have been against any agreement emerging from the talks. The DUP were electoral rivals to the UUP and this mitigated against any ‘objective’ analysis of the Agreement. It would have made no electoral sense to credit your electoral rivals with a success when public opinion was ambiguous on the issue and therefore the only sensible electoral strategy was to oppose the Agreement. The policy shifts made by the DUP after 1998 can also be seen in the context of an institutional rationale: as a political party which involved competing for votes, the DUP had to change its policy because unionist public opinion was not as anti-Agreement as the DUP policy (as discussed earlier). To challenge the UUP successfully, the DUP needed to moderate its position in order to persuade those ‘soft’ yes and no voters to change party preference. Thus, the institutional necessity to compete for votes changed the DUP policies and behaviour.13
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The institutional structure of the UUP is also a crucial part of the story of implementation. Ratification is a key part of peace processes (Frensley, 1998, pp. 167–91) and the Belfast Agreement was subject to various types of ratification processes. The most obvious one was the referendum but it also had to go through the policy-making structures of the various political parties. The most difficult processes which it had to go through were the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis and the special conferences of the Ulster Unionist Council. Indeed, it was the particular structures of the Ulster Unionist Council which came to characterize the implementation process. The highly decentralized and democratic nature of the Ulster Unionist Council allowed factions within the UUP to develop and act as a continual restraint on the leadership’s ability to make decisions and take risks. However, the political culture of the Ulster Unionist Council meant that it was not prone to challenging the leader’s position. Therefore, almost every vote on the Agreement was framed and interpreted as a policy matter, rather than a battle for the leadership of the party. Even when this interpretation became harder to sustain, when it became increasingly obvious that Burnside and Donaldson were alternative leadership figures, the original issues remained dominant. Moreover, when leadership challenges did eventually arrive by, first Martin Smyth14 and then by David Hoey and Robert Oliver,15 the battle lines were so entrenched that Trimble could do what no other political leader in Western Europe could do and survive a stalking horse (or combination of two stalking horses) obtaining the support of 40 per cent of his party.16 Other institutions were also used in the intellectual and political battle against the Agreement, in particular the Orange Order was utilized. However, the Order, unlike the DUP, had no particular institutional rationale for opposition. Indeed, its position on the Agreement led to the severance of its formal ties with the UUP. There have been various studies showing that Orange Order membership was significant in explaining opposition to the Agreement (Tonge, 2005a, pp. 70–74) but we need to ask what the wider significance of the Order’s position was among unionist public opinion. The Order’s influence has declined significantly since the start of the Troubles and, although the Drumcree dispute gave the impression of continued relevance, it might be seen more as the last throws of a dying political force.
Selling the Agreement The institutional dynamic within unionist politics was played out over the implementation of the Agreement and this has had important effects on how the unionist community responded to, and were mobilized over, the Agreement. It is important to recognize that public opinion is not necessarily as malleable as some think that it is. Throughout much of the debate on this question, there is an assumption that politicians have extraordinary
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powers of motivation and leadership. Paul Dixon has suggested that unionist leaders are not as autonomous from their followers as might be presumed and, using evidence from the Anglo-Irish Agreement campaign, has suggested that Molyneaux’s and Paisley’s ability to open negotiations with the British government was constrained by the opinion of their party membership and unionist public opinion (Dixon, 2004, pp. 146–49). We can see a similar process occurring throughout the implementation of the Agreement as the institutional dynamics played themselves out over the vagaries of public opinion. What was unionist public opinion and how was it shaped? There was a unionist majority in support of the Agreement in 1998 but this majority was at least partly the product of a campaign of persuasion and ‘spin’. There were significant intellectual and financial resources mobilized during the referendum campaign to persuade unionists to vote for the Agreement. The non-party ‘Yes’ campaign ended up devoting most of its resources to target undecided unionist voters, rather than conducting the overarching positive campaign representing the Agreement as the coming together of unionists and nationalists which was the initial intention (Couto, 2001, pp. 221–38). The Northern Ireland Office also played a significant role by framing the Agreement as a ‘new dawn’ for Northern Ireland by the front cover of the copy of the Agreement that was sent to every household in Northern Ireland. Anti-Agreement unionists complained about the allocation of money by the British government on publicizing the Agreement, as this meant that the pro-Agreement position had access to a much greater sum of public money.17 In addition, there was the international support of major world figures. Given that this amount of resources and effort only led to an estimated 57 per cent ‘yes’ vote, it is unsurprising that it was not possible to hold this level of support. This is especially the case when we also know that most of this support was ‘soft’ (Hayes and McAllister, 2001, pp. 73–95). Nevertheless, there is a strong current of feeling that the reason why the Agreement hit so many difficulties during implementation is because Trimble failed to sell the Agreement to grass roots unionism more vigorously during the referendum campaign and throughout the subsequent implementation period. This argument assumes: (1) that Trimble wanted to sell the Agreement, (2) that unionist public opinion was amenable to a pro-Agreement sales pitch, (3) Trimble could have conducted a successful pro-Agreement sales pitch. Each one of these assumptions is contestable and the very fact that Trimble did not embark upon such a sales pitch, combined with the DUP’s success with an anti-Agreement message, gives an indication that it might not have been possible. The importance of decommissioning should not be overlooked. Almost all the debate in 1998 was framed by the decommissioning issue and what it represented. Many of Trimble’s difficulties stemmed from the fact that he
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was unable to resolve the issue to the widespread satisfaction of unionists and the political moves rested upon a lot of choreography. In contrast, the DUP moves were made in an easier environment. Moreover, the fact that decommissioning occurred meant that the analysis of the anti-Agreement unionists was falsified. In 1998, Robert McCartney wrote: ‘It [the IRA] will not decommission until Irish unity has been achieved.’18 This was a widespread belief at the time and demonstrated unionists’ deep suspicion of motives of Sinn Féin. When decommissioning occurred without Irish unity, this said something much more fundamental about the relationship between the political goals of Sinn Féin and the violent methods of the IRA. It became increasingly difficult for unionists, or republicans, to argue that Sinn Féin was using a ‘ballot box and armalite’ strategy or that republicans had not accepted the legitimacy of the British state in Northern Ireland. Once the DUP had concrete evidence that these changes had occurred, through the report of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) and the support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), then power-sharing with Sinn Féin became possible.
Conclusion This analysis points to the intersection of institutions, political ideas, the political process and political issues in explaining how unionists reacted to the peace process. The inability of Trimble to bring the majority of unionists with him through the implementation process but the relative ease with which the DUP have managed this process since St Andrews raises important questions about the nature of the original agreement, the divisions within unionism over it and the political dynamics within unionism as a result of it. The process which led to the Agreement helped create the divisions within unionism over the Agreement. However, these divisions were based on distinct issues and were played out through a range of institutions. The process since 1998 has focused on resolving those issues. Therefore, the main difference between the St Andrews Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement is that by 2007 almost all of the difficulties that unionists identified with the Agreement in 1998 had been resolved. The North-South bodies were able to demonstrate that they were not a united Ireland in embryo, policing was reformed without the widespread opposition among unionists that might have been anticipated, Sinn Féin began to look like a normal political party, and decommissioning occurred. All of these changes did not and do not mean that it was not necessary to ‘sell’ the deal but it did mean any deal was more likely to be received favourably by unionist grassroots. It also makes it much more likely that a deal will be stable and provide good government for Northern Ireland.
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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
News Letter, 19 May 1998. News Letter, 5 May 1998. For more on this see (Farrington, 2006a). See his comments in The Independent, 15 July 1999. News Letter, 8 April 1998. See Farrington, 2007. See results of the 1999 and 2000 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, available at: http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/results/polatt.html#crossborder. News Letter 18 April 1998. Speech by Dermot Ahern at ‘North/South makes sense’ conference, 7 October 2005, available at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/mfa/da071005.htm. See, for example, Bew, P. (1998a) ‘The Unionists have won, they just don’t know it’, Sunday Times, 17 May 1998; Bew, P. (1998b) ‘Consent is the key’, The Times Literary Supplement, 24 April 1998. News Letter, 12 May 1998. http://www.ni-forum.gov.uk/debates/1998/170498.htm. For more on this see chapter 5 of (Farrington, 2006b). Irish Times, 27 March 2000. Irish Times, 29 March 2004. See Irish Political Studies, vol. 21, No. 1, 110–11 for information on votes of the UUC during the peace process. See the comments by anti-Agreement Unionists in Hansard, 22 April 1998, cols 931–40. News Letter, 19 May 1998.
7 Northern Nationalism and the Belfast Agreement Cillian McGrattan
Introduction Although there are strongly divergent views on the series of events that constitute the modern Northern Ireland peace process, no account of modern Northern-Irish history and politics can ignore the contribution of Northern nationalism. Until now, much of the academic and journalistic work on Northern nationalism has concentrated on subtle ideological shifts. On the one hand, academics have argued that Northern and Southern political elites have widened nationalist or republican ‘discourses’ to emphasize equality issues, or to reappraise a continued British presence (Ivory, 1999; Todd, 1999; Bean, 2002; Hayward and Mitchell, 2003). A related body of work links these rhetorical shifts to broader institutional changes that have apparently given expression to new aspects of nationalist identity. This ‘institutionalist’-type approach stresses that nationalists are apparently more and more willing to participate alongside Ulster unionists in operating Northern Ireland state structures (Murray, 2003; McGovern, 2004; MacGinty, 2006). On the other hand, leading journalists have produced solid, empirical and – given the often-unprecedented access – perhaps unrepeatable studies of the peace process and republicanism (Mallie and McKittrick, 1997; Moloney, 2002). In this case, the tendency is to concentrate on political elites – a trend that is echoed in academic descriptions of how actors ‘perform’ certain ‘scripts’ to mobilize their grassroots or to win sympathy from the British or Irish governments (Dixon, 2002). Within this plethora of studies, however, there is a dual propensity to (1) ignore the affect that British state intervention plays on Irish nationalist policy direction, and (2) to portray ostensible changes in policy as indicative of a more accommodative attitude towards Ulster unionism. Furthermore, and although it is beyond the remit of this chapter, it is fair to point out that this confusion over the relationship between nationalism and unionism – plus the relatively uncritical nature of much of the work – has facilitated nationalist politicians appropriating certain aspects of it as part of an emerging narrative of republican sacrifice (Godson, 2007). 147
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This chapter takes an alternative perspective. It re-examines the empirical record and, contrary to the conventional academic wisdom, questions the importance of ideology to political outcomes. Instead, it analyses the decision-making and the policy direction of the Northern nationalist factions – namely, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Féin. It critiques the notion that the SDLP introduced new and pragmatic elements into Northern nationalist politics from the early 1970s and thereby questions the prevailing academic narrative of how the SDLP – and its longterm leader John Hume – acted as a revisionist force to profoundly shape the 1990s peace process (McGovern, 1997; Murray, 1998; Todd, 1999). In fact, the historical record suggests an alternative narrative of continuity with traditional and incremental nationalism. This focus on policy direction and specific historical choices reveals a crucial problem that is ignored or obscured by more ideologically centred analyses: why modern Northern nationalism continually failed to reach an agreement with Ulster unionism. Contrary to the ideological or even the institutional approaches, a more explicitly historical analysis acknowledges that Northern nationalist policy direction is not about accommodating Ulster unionism, but rather seeks to outmanoeuvre unionist concerns through an incremental strategy. Ideological and institutional approaches have confused superficial strategic concessions on the part of Northern nationalism with the accommodation of unionist, or even Westminster sentiments, when, in fact, for Northern nationalism, constitutional and institutional changes have always run handin-hand. For example, an apparent concession on an area such as the recognition of the need for majority consent for radical change actually belies the end goal of creating a context in which reunification is inevitable – in this, the ubiquitous idea of an increased ‘Irish dimension’ has been far from insignificant. The central claim of this chapter is, rather, that nationalist policy direction proceeds on a cumulative path towards the end goal of gradual reunification. For nationalist elites, favourable concessions (primarily, greater Dublin involvement in the North) are ‘banked’ or ‘pooled’ and apparent setbacks, which might be perceived as favouring unionism, played down to maintain Catholic mobilization – in short, continuity and change coexist and gradual reunification remains the key target. Importantly, as the chapter points out, that policy direction is essentially ‘unificationist’ and self-reinforcing rather pragmatic and accommodative, and, furthermore, that that direction inhibits the likelihood of Northern nationalism achieving a stable settlement with Ulster unionism. To substantiate this depiction, the chapter asks how did this policy direction emerge and how did it manifest itself in nationalist political developments. The historical record demonstrates that Northern nationalism was radicalized not by unionist obduracy, but by the desire to accrue ‘gains’ with each new political initiative (McGrattan, 2008). From the early
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1970s, increased British intervention, together with the fracturing of Ulster unionism, created a perception within nationalism of opening opportunities or of a more favourable political context. This appreciation encouraged the pursuit of anti-partitionist end goals by Catholic politicians – reform and moderation were effectively ruled out and, instead, nationalist politics became progressively more entrenched and less accommodative. The academic tendency to distinguish between institutional and constitutional change when examining nationalist politics (Ivory, 1999; MacGinty, 2006), therefore misses the crucial point that modern Northern nationalist policy direction and mobilization equates institutional change with constitutional change. Although the SDLP and Sinn Féin conceded mid-range goals on institutions and the idea of consent to negotiate the 1998 and 2007 accords with David Trimble and Ian Paisley, the end goal of gradual reunification remains solidly in place. Finally, this project is far from metaphorical; again, it is neither primarily emotive nor even psychological in origin. Instead, it proceeds from calculated assumptions by the Catholic community as to how best to maximize their political standing and power. As such, anti-partitionism rather than moderation lies at the heart of what might euphemistically be called the nationalist peace strategy. The broad implication of the chapter is that while an elite consociational pact presently benefits both Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a long-term constitutional settlement may be more protracted.
Explaining Northern Nationalism? Accommodation and ‘Just-so-ism’ As Jonathan Tonge points out, since the first IRA ceasefire of 1994 the traditional divide between ‘constitutional’ or participatory and ‘physical force’ or abstentionist forms of Irish nationalism has begun to disappear (Tonge, 2005a, p. 115); however, a problem arises in the tendency to over-state Northern nationalism’s accommodative aspects and ignore its long-term direction. The conventional view is that Northern nationalism’s willingness to participate in the post-1998 state structures demonstrates a new moderation and pragmatism. Yet this fails to distinguish what are ostensible concessions by nationalism from what remains an underlying policy thrust directed towards the gradual creation of a reunificationist scenario. Within this view, arguably the predominant strand emerges from the ‘journalistic’ account of how the peace process was inspired and set in motion by John Hume and Gerry Adams in the 1980s (Mallie and McKittrick, 1997). This narrative describes how a war-weary section of the republican movement began to plot a path towards peace as early as 1982 (Moloney, 2002). The intervention of John Hume at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s gave legitimacy to this Adams-led Provisional IRA vanguard, opened diplomatic vistas in the form of Dublin and Washington allies and set the scene for the 1994 ceasefire.
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Despite Henry Patterson’s warning that there is a ‘teleological tendency’ at work in assuming the Hume-Adams rapprochement created the 1990s peace process (Patterson, 1997, p. 225), the persuasive simplicity of the narrative has won academic backing (Murray, 2003; McLoughlin, 2005; Murray and Tonge, 2005). Mark McGovern, for example, claims that ‘Irish nationalism created the Irish peace process’ (McGovern, 2004, p. 54), while Gerard Murray argues that ‘the Good Friday Agreement is the culmination of SDLP influence’ (Murray, 2003, p. 56). Such accounts tend to ignore or downplay the alternative options confronting the SDLP and Sinn Féin – in the first instance, of maintaining their distance – and thereby over-emphasize the ‘inevitability’ of the peace process and the singular contribution of Northern nationalist politicians to its genesis. Certainly, the leaderships of both the SDLP and Sinn Féin faced internal dissent. Eddie McGrady, for example, criticized Hume’s willingness to abandon constitutional politics by negotiating with republicans (Murray, 1998, p. 183). Again, in May 1990 the republican newspaper, An Phoblacht, criticized the SDLP for being ‘part of the effort to stabilise Ireland in the interests of Britain and of the Irish establishment’.1 Arguably, a much stronger argument has been made that the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement reflected an SDLP influence in its institutionalization of the ‘Irish dimension’, and that 1998 was not an inevitable ‘culmination’ of nationalist leverage, but instead reflected the necessity of involving the local parties in the political process once again (Bew, 2007a, pp. 531–35; Bloomfield, 2007; O’Kane, 2007). Similar, teleological, ‘just-so’ problems arise with the ideological accounts of Irish nationalism (Ivory, 1999; Hayward and Mitchell, 2003). This work derives inspiration from Jennifer Todd’s seminal papers on Irish political discourses (Todd, 1990, 1999) and looks to subtle shifts in rhetorical strategies or political programmes to ascertain the basic character of Irish nationalism and more accurately define its central concepts. Todd, for example, argues that ‘the extent and precise character of the ideological changes [in Irish nationalism] depends on how the Good Friday Agreement is interpreted’ (Todd, 1999, p. 49). In a similar spirit, Katy Hayward and Claire Mitchell claim that ‘politics is a struggle over meanings, labels, and identities; for this reason, the theoretical and empirical focus is on the social construction and organisation of language’ (Hayward and Mitchell, 2003, p. 293). In this view, the nationalist ‘equality discourse’ suited the purposes of nationalist political leaders during the 1990s in that it allowed the more contentious issue of constitutional change to be shelved (p. 296). Thus, the language of rights and equality of opportunities replaced that of constitutional reform as a mobilizing tool to maintain Catholic acquiescence during the 1990s peace process. In other words, strategic shifts in nationalist discourse are assumed to arise from the immediate needs and benefits of contemporary political elites. The fundamental problem is that it is not enough to assume that the benefits explain the changes: if that was indeed a reasonable strategy, then
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presumably, any political outcome could simply be read-back in a ‘just-so’ fashion to a careful selection of earlier events. It leaves open a range of questions as to how the SDLP and Sinn Féin elites knew that a language of equality could successfully replace that of constitutional change. More importantly, by conflating outcomes with causes – that is, Catholic acquiescence with a ‘shifting’ rhetoric – it removes the changes from their political context, and, in this instance obscures the changes that took place during the 1990s. It is surely more reasonable to assume that neither Sinn Féin nor the SDLP possessed a hitherto unheralded political omniscience, and that therefore they did not simply and subtly substitute ‘equality’ for ‘reunification’. Even if nationalist politicians plotted such rhetorical shifts, there was no guarantee that they would result in the kinds of agenda-setting and mobilization changes depicted in the literature. A longer-term and more discerning perspective actually points to the importance of equality issues at the formation of the SDLP and acknowledges their historical continuity as a meaningful aspect of nationalist politics. This perspective suggests, furthermore, that the accruing of ‘equality’ concessions is not separate from constitutional reform but is part of the broader project of establishing a political environment most amenable to ending partition. The historical approach, with its depiction of a cumulative nationalist project also contrasts with those analyses that tend instead to emphasize a narrower political context. In a similar fashion to the ideological approach, the tendency of certain academic accounts to over-emphasize the role that political leaders can play confuses the long-term processes that shape nationalist policy direction. Paul Dixon, for example, argues that the Adams-Hume peace strategy was but a ‘script’ played out for the purposes of mobilizing the Catholic masses in the first instance, and winning governmental sympathies in the second (2002). According to this interpretative framework, not only do political elites tailor their messages to suit their ‘audience’, but that academics can comprehend and ‘de-code’ these ideas. Quite why academic and political elites share these perceptual powers while the ethnic masses blindly follow is left unexplained. Indeed, as Arthur Aughey points out, both the Sinn Féin leadership and their political supporters may actually hold the same values (Aughey, 2002; Tonge, 2005a). Undoubtedly, political elites may have stakes to maintain; however, to reduce the peace process to a series of choreographed manoeuvres is to obscure the constraining influence that previous policy choices have on future options. As with the ideological literature, the fact that ‘unintended consequences’ may occur in the out-workings of strategic manoeuvres, or from the intervention of other ‘players’ means that elite ‘choreography’ at best provides only a partial picture of historical change.2 That is to say, the idea of ‘constructive ambiguity’ not only leaves open serious questions concerning the pace and timing of the 1990s peace process – that is, why did it not occur before then – but also mistakenly equates apparent nationalist
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concessions with underlying and historically embedded reunificationist tendencies. The more far-reaching critique of Northern nationalism by Anthony McIntyre throws light on the teleological nature of these conventional approaches. The case is informative because McIntyre also explains modern republicanism as a product of the purpose it is meant to serve – Catholic mobilization – rather than because of causal factors: to put it another way, republican support follows a ‘politicization’ of the Catholic community. Specifically, McIntyre argues that the growth of the republican movement from the 1970s onwards is a direct response and reaction to British military repression (1995). However, by placing the onus on the British army, his explanation neglects the role that British intervention played in undermining the Northern state apparatus and facilitating the initial radicalization of Northern nationalism from the end of the 1960s and early 1970s (Bew, 2007a, p. 496). In so doing, the explanation fails to account adequately for the persistence of nationalist sentiment long after the dissipation of the angry demonstrations that followed events such as Bloody Sunday or the hunger strikes. To avoid these types of ‘just-so’ explanations it is necessary to look at how British state intervention played and continues to play a major role in shaping nationalist mobilization. Linked with this is the need to examine how historical and self-reinforcing processes encouraged the establishment of a ‘unificationist’ agenda at the expense of more moderate, mid-range goals such as the possibility of reaching an internal settlement with Ulster unionism. The question as to why Irish nationalism failed so often to reach an accommodation with Ulster unionism is, therefore, less to do with military repression, less to do with an ‘incoherent’ ideological character or even with ‘choreographed scripts’. Rather, it is inextricably linked to the mobilization and radicalization of the Northern Catholic community since 1969. The question concerning nationalism’s relationship with Ulster unionism lies at the heart of this chapter and so it is to the historical unfolding of Catholic mobilization that the next sections turn.
Plus ça change? Northern nationalism in historical perspective By focusing on overt changes in rhetoric and discourse, on the one hand, or on policy and strategy on the other, scholars of modern Northern nationalism have tended to overlook the gradual changes and the deep-seated continuities revealed in the historical record. More precisely, in focusing solely on ideological shifts or short-term strategic concessions, conventional analyses fail to capture the cumulative, incremental and anti-partitionist character of both the physical force and constitutional nationalist protagonists, and hence underestimate the mobilizing potency and very real meaning of that reunification agenda for Catholic politics.
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The implications of this characterization are threefold. First, modern Northern nationalism followed a ‘layered’ path in which British interventions and concessions were ‘banked’, and setbacks downplayed in the targeting of future goals. Second, following British intervention from 1969, this policy direction entailed a radicalization of Catholic politics away from internal reform of the Northern state towards a more nationalistic and antipartitionist position, and the perception that, owing to the continuing constitutional uncertainty, this was feasible in its own terms – regardless of unionist sentiments. Third, the 1998 and 2007 accords are less a settlement of ethnic competition or an accommodative threshold but rather mark another step in this process.
The ‘greening’ of the SDLP British state intervention directly affected the continued radicalization of Northern nationalist politics throughout the Troubles. That process of radicalization proceeded from the July 1971 decision of the SDLP to pursue a reunification agenda at the expense of internal reform (McGrattan, forthcoming, 2009). Indeed, this radicalization necessitates a rethink as to the party’s contribution to the peace process. Gerard Murray (Murray, 2003; Murray and Tonge, 2005) and Peter McLoughlin (McLoughlin, 2005), for instance, capture the conventional wisdom in pointing to certain similarities between early SDLP thinking and aspects of the Belfast Agreement – that is, a Belfast-based power-sharing executive and an institutionalized all-Ireland dimension (in other words, Strands One and Two of the agreement). However, the implication that SDLP policy-making somehow established the framework for the 1998 Agreement is misleading in several ways. First, it obscures the fact that the 1998 cross-border links fall well short of the original SDLP vision. Also missing, therefore, is an explanation as to why this occurred – namely, due to the long-term unionist unease with constitutional changes that entailed an executive role for Dublin in Northern Ireland (McGrattan, 2007). Again, it is not sufficient to say that the SDLP analysis of ‘two different sets of national identities and allegiances’ is ‘enshrined within the Good Friday Agreement’ (Murray, 2003, p. 55), as this overlooks the very real part that the SDLP’s commitment to gradual reunification via a strong ‘Irish dimension’ played in perpetuating those antagonistic outlooks. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, the SDLP’s historical record – its strategic decisions and policy choices – from 1971 to 1998 reveals a nationalistic outlook that sought to accumulate concessions rather than ‘settle’ for more moderate power-sharing alternatives. The conventional narrative describes how John Hume and the SDLP transformed modern nationalism from the 1970s, and created the conditions for the Good Friday Agreement (Todd, 1999; Murray, 2003; McLoughlin, 2005). Within this perspective, the SDLP emerged from the civil-rights era as a pragmatic party far removed
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from the doctrinaire politics of the ‘old’ nationalist groupings – although it favoured reunification, unionist consent was recognized as necessary for any constitutional change. However, the credibility of this thesis falters as early as July 1971 with the party’s decision to leave the Stormont system following the shooting of two Catholics in Derry by the British army. The withdrawal overturned the SDLP’s original willingness to participate in a reformed Stormont system – and to participate in governmental policy committees (McLoughlin, 2005) – and effectively locked the party into a unificationist policy direction. This ‘locking-in’ was rendered ever more concrete following the introduction of internment a few weeks later in August (Devlin, 1993, p. 161). From the summer of 1971, therefore the idea of nationalists merely ‘settling’ for committee seats in a devolved parliament was no longer negotiable and instead the party pursued a more assertive and nationalistic agenda. That agenda informs a series of internal SDLP position papers, the first of which, dating from September 1971, highlighted the priorities of full powersharing and an institutionalized Irish dimension. Specifically, it called on the party to mount a challenge to ‘the right of the Unionist Party to claim more than mere equality, there is no right to veto’ (original emphasis). In addition, the policy paper claimed that any solution that ignored the ‘interdependence of the two parts of Ireland would be useless’ and envisaged a 100-member commission (chosen by the SDLP, the Unionist Party and the Dublin and London governments) to run Northern Ireland in the place of Stormont.3 The withdrawal from Stormont in 1971 and the decision to pursue a nationalistic agenda had a knock-on effect of limiting the SDLP’s – and its supporters – willingness to reach a compromise with Ulster unionism. The nationalistic turn envisaged a cross-border institution that could facilitate eventual reunification. The unwillingness to compromise is evidenced in the internal debate where little reference was made to the attitudes of the Protestant community. Indeed, when that issue was considered, the party displayed an assertive mind-set: ‘We should stop talking in mealy-mouthed terms of the anti-unionist population or the minority, but should play the card of Irish nationality as hard as the unionists play the British national card’.4 Internal policy documents, therefore, date the ‘greening’ of the SDLP to a much earlier period than is assumed by present party histories (Murray, 1998, pp. 77–95). Importantly, this chronology also overturns existing accounts of the party’s reformism, suggesting that a radical vision began to emerge long before ‘Bloody Sunday’ and it was that that shaped the SDLP’s nationalism, rather than a nationalistic outlook being simply forced upon it due to IRA ‘outbidding’ (McLoughlin, 2005). Importantly, although the possibility of republican ‘outbidding’ may have played a vague role in establishing a nationalistic agenda, the determining force was that the party actually
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sought to take advantage of unionist fragmentation to push through a strong ‘Irish dimension’. Furthermore, the party actively sought to mobilize against the Provisional IRA and its inability to achieve political concessions to establish itself as the principle Catholic spokespersons.5 This outlook carried through into the 1973–74 Sunningdale period as both the SDLP and the Dublin government sought to maximize the concessions they hoped to achieve from Faulkner and Westminster, and target the end goal of gradual reunification, regardless of unionist opposition (McGrattan, forthcoming, 2009). Indeed, contrary to Gareth Ivory’s assertion (Ivory, 1999, p. 91) this project implied that neither Dublin nor the SDLP saw much difference between constitutional and institutional change – institutional reform would create favourable conditions for constitutional change. In fact, the SDLP believed that unionist fragmentation would allow nationalists to achieve their goals more quickly.6 In short, the SDLP’s transformation of Northern nationalist politics was effectively limited to a short period between its formation in August 1970 and July 1971. The entrenchment of a nationalistic agenda and the effective abandonment of moderation meant that rather than changing end goals (in particular, its commitment to a ‘meaningful’ Irish dimension), both Northern and Southern nationalism sought to outmanoeuvre Ulster unionism by highlighting its apparent ‘pathological’ unreasonableness and obduracy.7 Hume, for example, attempted to expose this perceived unreasonableness in several spheres, including the United States and European Parliament. Taking the European Community as a model of conflict resolution, Hume argued that cooperation depended on the establishment of institutions that accommodate communal rights and identities (Murray, 1998, pp. 91–95; Todd, 1999, pp. 53–55). His application of this insight to Northern Ireland sought to undercut traditional unionist suspicions by portraying their suspicions as vetoes and claimed that unless Britain became a ‘persuader’ for Irish unity and removed the constitutional guarantee, unionists would never agree to negotiate with nationalist. Only with the removal of the constitutional guarantee, he contended, would an ‘agreed Ireland’ be possible (Hume, 1996, pp. 303–04). Hume’s apparent recasting of the Northern Ireland problem proved an influential theme in the proceedings and conclusions of the New Ireland Forum (1983–84). The Forum was convened by the then Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald, to facilitate ‘consultations on the manner in which lasting peace and stability could be achieved in a new Ireland ... and to report on possible new structures and processes through which this objective might be achieved’ (New Ireland Forum Report, 1984). It also provided a mechanism to bolster the SDLP against resurgent republicanism (Fitzgerard, 1991, p. 463). However, the Forum’s conclusions chimed with traditional nationalist thinking – any solution must occur in an all-Ireland context – and all but
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ignored unionist difficulties with sharing power with a party dedicated to overturning the Union and with a settlement that ensured a Dublin role in running Northern Ireland (O’Halloran, 1987, p. 210).
Hume, Adams and the Anglo-Irish Agreement The early ‘greening’ of the SDLP and the radicalization of Northern nationalism had been carried through into the 1980s and was effectively ratified in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which afforded the Dublin government an institutionalized consultative role in the North. The reluctance to accommodate unionist sentiments and the aim of gradual unification underpinned what became to be known as the republican peace strategy of the late 1980s and 1990s. According to Ed Moloney, the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, began plotting a peace strategy as early as 1982. Moloney points out that while the hunger strikes demonstrated a groundswell of nationalist sympathy, the subsequent ‘armalite-and-ballot-box’ strategy had the unintended effect of enabling commentators to measure accurately ‘popular disenchantment with the IRA’s violence’ (Moloney, 2002, p. 245). Although both Dublin and the SDLP feared the upsurge in republican support in the early 1980s, by the time the Anglo-Irish Agreement negotiations entered their final stages in 1985, Sinn Féin electoral gains had peaked (Fitzgerard, 1991, pp. 528–32). Certainly, the Anglo-Irish Agreement did not erode Sinn Féin’s subsequent electoral performances, but it helped to constrain further growth of militant republicanism in the Northern Catholic population (Patterson, 1997, p. 209; Moloney, 2002, p. 241). More importantly, the Anglo-Irish Agreement increased the potential for a pan-nationalist approach and militated against intercommunal compromise, and it was this political context rather than a pre-assembled, longterm strategy that facilitated the emergence of the Adams’ project as the predominant strand of republican analysis. The Anglo-Irish Agreement marked another ‘gain’ in the nationalist project – its anti-power-sharing logic, plus an already entrenched anti-partitionist agenda directed nationalist policy-making towards joint-authority goals rather than power-sharing with potential cross-communal allies (Bloomfield, 2007, p. 63). In other words, the underlying thrust of the Anglo-Irish Agreement was to provide an alternative route to achieving the nationalist end goals as distinct from facilitating compromise with the unionist community. Although the Adams leadership already enjoyed a predominant position over potential challengers from within the republican movement (Moloney, 2002), the Anglo-Irish Agreement offered the possibility of opening a ‘second’ front – but while a ‘formal’ nationalist alliance failed to emerge from the Hume-Adams talks of 1988, it is undeniable that a certain convergence occurred. In other words, Hume’s attempts to ‘bring’ republicanism into the constitutional sphere had ramifications beyond nationalist party politics – they afforded Sinn Féin the
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‘legitimacy and popular support that violence was denying them’ (Alonso, 2004, p. 704). Following extensive intercessions by the West Belfast priest, Father Alex Reid in 1987, talks between Hume and Adams eventually began in 1988 with the objective of identifying a ‘common strategy on bringing about Irish unity, and also on issues affecting nationalists in Northern Ireland’ (Moloney, 2002, p. 277; Murray and Tonge, 2005, p. 166). The talks were framed by three immediate events in 1987 – the interception of the freighter, the Eksund and the loss of a substantial quantity of materiel by the IRA; the Enniskillen Memorial Day bombing; and the publication of the Sinn Féin policy document A Scenario for Peace.8 The first two events undermined the IRA’s capacity for escalating the ‘war’ and lent credibility to the secondfront argument. In addition, while the Scenario document was couched in traditional republican rhetoric, in itself, it established three core principles: it spelled an end to the Éire Nua federalist policy of the 1970s; it stressed the possibility of dialogue rather than military victory; and, finally, it offered the first recognition by Sinn Féin that ‘unionists existed’ (Feeney, 2000, p. 344). Despite this, the Sinn Féin delegation rejected Hume’s argument that the IRA campaign was counter-productive and primarily served to alienate Northern nationalists. They argued that the British presence was the major obstacle to a peaceful solution to the conflict and rejected SDLP claims as to the neutrality of Westminster following the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Instead, they claimed that Britain still enjoyed ‘strategic, economic, and political interests’ in Northern Ireland. Despite the annual £1.6 billion subvention, for Sinn Féin, British involvement in Ireland benefited the wider capitalist economy. In the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Agreement Sinn Féin was wary that the SDLP would cut a deal with the Ulster Unionist Party and seek to marginalize republican politics. It, therefore, pointed out that: Sinn Féin is totally opposed to a power-sharing Stormont assembly and states that there cannot be a partitionist solution. Stormont is not a stepping-stone to Irish unity. We believe that the SDLP’s gradualist theory is therefore invalid and seriously flawed.9 As regards unionist interests, Hume argued that unification of the Irish people must precede British withdrawal and that ‘unionists have a natural veto since they live on this island and since their agreement is essential if unity is to be achieved’.10 Sinn Féin, on the other hand, claimed that ‘to concede a veto on the exercise of national rights to a national minority ... would flout the basic principles of democracy’.11 Despite these areas of disagreement, two significant points of consensus arose. First, both groups reiterated the necessity of the British government acting as a ‘persuader’ for a united Ireland and that the Irish people
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‘be defined as those people domiciled on the island of Ireland’ (Murray and Tonge, 2005, p. 169). Second, unionist consent took a backseat to the reunification project. Little evidence existed to support the view that Britain would redirect its resources to persuading Ulster unionists to accede to a united Ireland. Even less thought appears to have been given to the associated problems of whether and why unionists may not wish to acquiesce in such a project or, indeed, why they espoused a British and not an Irish identity. Both Hume and Adams continued to argue that the logic of the AngloIrish Agreement impelled unionists to come to terms with Irish nationalism. For Hume, in particular, the agreement pointed almost inexorably towards joint authority rather than devolved power-sharing (Hume, 1996, p. 46). Following the formal break-up of the talks with Sinn Féin in September 1988, Hume resisted calls from party colleagues to reach a devolution compromise with unionist politicians within the terms of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The meetings in Duisburg between the SDLP, Alliance, DUP and UUP in October 1988, and the resultant pressure for devolution, therefore came to nothing in the face of the institutionalization of Dublin involvement in the 1985 Agreement (Bew and Gillespie, 1993, p. 217). Although the Anglo-Irish Agreement provided for a restored power-sharing administration (Article 4), its underlying implication was that any form of ‘internalist’ initiative would be both insufficient to and a setback for Northern nationalism (Patterson, 2007, p. 316). Both Hume and Adams meanwhile began to explore the alternative course of a pan-nationalist front, including Dublin allies and US sympathizers; to this end, their discussions continued intermittently and in private until 1993. In short, British intervention in the form of the Anglo-Irish Agreement was instrumental in providing the stimulus for Northern nationalist policy convergence and in providing a disincentive for nationalist-unionist compromise. Furthermore, although the opening of an Adams-inspired ‘second front’ took sustenance from the 1985 Accord, the Anglo-Irish Agreement in fact stalled progress towards the type of devolved institutions envisaged in the 1998 Agreement (Bew, 2007a, p. 534). Indeed, far from requiring a nationalist-unionist rapprochement, for Sinn Féin, the ‘second-front’, or ‘constitutionalist’ path entailed a nationalist compromise on republican terms. For example, the Adams-advisor, Tom Hartley, pointed out in June 1988 that Sinn Féin could actually take advantage of the ‘vulnerable green wing’ of the SDLP. Thus, he explained, republicans should advocate ‘correct political demands’, and that ‘each time the SDLP move into a position of accepting as its policy one of these demands, Sinn Féin should proceed to up the ante by bringing forward new demands’. Although Hartley commented that ‘correct political demands do not necessarily have to be republican political demands’, his pragmatism stretched only so far as towards the goal of getting ‘the SDLP to become more republican’.12
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Although broad agreement coalesced around key, unificationist policy goals, and despite the incentives offered by the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the process of building a more formal pan-nationalist alliance was far from straightforward. As Catherine O’Donnell (O’Donnell, 2007b) points out, the Sinn Féin–Dublin relationship was fraught with difficulties, with the Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, particularly reluctant to be compromised through press leaks. Despite dissenting intra-party voices, and the ambiguous relationships with Dublin, at the level of policy-making, both Sinn Féin and the SDLP continued to target reunification. In particular, the SDLP’s mobilization strategy depended on accruing gains and targeting further concessions. In short, while Northern nationalist policy convergence occurred at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, it was a nuanced process – but in that it occurred at all indicates the powerful underlying, cumulative logic at the base of the nationalist project.
No selfish strategic or economic interest In January 1990, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, initiated a new series of informal talks between the Northern-Irish parties. He urged the unionists to end their ‘internal exile’ and held out the possibility that, providing the talks move to a more formal footing, he would consider suspending the 1985 Agreement (Bew and Gillespie, 1993, p. 228). In a landmark speech on Britain’s role in Northern Ireland in November of that year, Brooke claimed that ‘the heart and core of the British presence is ... the reality of nearly a million people living in a part of the island of Ireland who are, and who certainly regard themselves as, British’. The British presence was not, he said, a national self-interest. Crucially, he concluded that ‘The British government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland, our role is to help, enable, and encourage’ (Patterson, 1997, p. 226). The republican response was somewhat tepid, claiming that, given its support for the unionist veto, the British position was still pro-Union – a bias that could be rectified were Britain to begin to use its resources to persuade unionists to acquiesce in ending partition. The second obstacle to a more forthcoming republican response was the prospect of a Westminster general election and the possibility of an end to the Thatcher premiership and the accession of a more congenial government (Patterson, 1997, p. 228; Moloney, 2002, p. 282). Despite these difficulties, the British government approached the republican movement in October 1990 in what was the first in a series of ‘backchannel’ negotiations, a record of which was later published by Sinn Féin (1994a). During these discussions, the British once again rejected the notion that they should become ‘persuaders’ for Irish unity – a notion that, nevertheless, formed a central plank of the ‘reprised’ Hume-Adams initiative of
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the early 1990s. These negotiations coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which effectively eliminated the Provisional IRA argument that Westminster retained a military-based and strategic interest in remaining in Northern Ireland. In addition, it removed the traditional US reticence about being seen to be interfering in the internal affairs of the United Kingdom by commenting on the Northern Ireland situation. Indeed, the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 coincided with a renewed US interest in the North and provided the Adams leadership with a ‘compensatory mechanism’ for the necessary accommodations that lay ahead (Patterson, 2007, p. 324). Negotiations at the constitutional level, meanwhile began in April 1991 and centred around what Brooke called ‘three main relationships: those within Northern Ireland, including the relationship between any new institutions there and the Westminster parliament; among the people of the island of Ireland; and between the two governments’ (quoted in Bew and Gillespie, 1993, p. 245). By the following year, the talks had made significant progress as regards unionist attitudes to the possibility of sharing power with the SDLP but faltered over the move to Strand Two – namely, the question of North-South links. Although the UUP leader, James Molyneaux, indicated a willingness to establish a closer relationship between Belfast and Dublin, neither Hume nor Dublin was willing to concede ground on the institutionalized role won in the 1985 Agreement. The ongoing Hume-Adams initiative created something of a high-water mark of nationalist consensus in 1993. The discussion papers (reprinted in Mallie and McKittrick, 1997, pp. 411–20) drew together the various strands of Northern nationalist policy-making since the late 1980s. The final draft of May 1993 called on the British government to state that it had no ‘selfish, strategic, political, or economic interest in Northern Ireland’ and that it would use its ‘influence and energy to win the consent of a majority in Northern Ireland’ to the selfdetermination proposals Hume and Adams suggested. These were that Britain would not interfere in the right of the political parties on the island to enter into constitutional negotiations, and, second, that the government declare its ‘readiness to introduce the measures to give legislative effect ... to this right ... and [allow] sufficient time for the building of consent and the beginning of a process of national reconciliation’ (Mallie and Mckittrick, 1997, p. 420). The subsequent Dublin-Westminster Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 went some way to meeting this conception but, critically, it avoided the ‘persuasion’ issue and reiterated the need for recognizing unionist consent: The British government agree that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish.
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Despite the relative setback that the Downing Street Declaration represented, the IRA declared a ceasefire at the end of August 1994. The Provisional IRA leadership explained the new alternative to the physical force campaign as facilitating the ‘advance [of] the struggle’ by getting the SDLP, the Irish government and the Irish-American lobby to promote ‘basic republican principles’.13 British withdrawal would no longer be an immediate prospect and the inevitable result of the armed campaign – instead, ‘another front has opened up and we should have the confidence and put in the effort to succeed on that front’ (Mallie and McKittrick, 1997, pp. 422–23). Importantly, this was a shift in strategy rather than policy direction – the priority remained reunification. At the level of policy direction, therefore, little difference exists between Mitchell McLaughlin’s claim that ‘the unity of the Irish people will be achieved by a process of national reconciliation, never by force’,14 and Adams’ more traditional definition of consent: ‘The unionists must be told plainly that, contrary to their illogical belief, the SixCounty area does not belong to them. It belongs to all our people equally, irrespective of falsely created majorities and minorities.’15
‘... plus c’est la meme chose’ – Belfast to St Andrews The contradiction between pursuing long-term unificationist goals and reaching a compromise with Ulster unionism characterizes the political development of Northern nationalism in the decade since the Belfast Agreement. Despite the restoration of devolved government since May 2007, the contradiction awaits resolution: while Northern nationalism gradually acceded to unionist concerns over constitutional and security changes, the end goal remains a united Ireland and the underlying policy thrust continues to be one of cumulative incrementalism.16 In other words, strategic concessions to unionism, including the operation of Stormont institutions and recognition of the ‘consent principle’, exist side-by-side with historical continuities. By concentrating on the overt changes in republican discourse especially, scholars have tended to obscure the underlying character of modern Northern nationalism – while assertions of a post-nationalist discourse miss the point completely. As the chapter demonstrates, the underlying character of Northern nationalism is discernible in the empirical record.17 Despite apparent shifts in political rhetoric and short-term strategic decisions, the policy direction of both Sinn Féin and the SDLP remains decidedly anti-partitionist, and the long-term strategic vision remains one of gradual, evolutionary change leading inexorably to a reunification scenario. It is at this level of policymaking and policy direction that Northern nationalism comes into conflict with Ulster unionism. Since 1998, several factors have contributed to the perpetuation of that conflict.
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The first set of factors relates to the attitude of the British government, which has been critical in shaping post-Belfast Agreement politics in Northern Ireland; in particular, the desire by Tony Blair to keep republicans on board by acquiescing in their ‘theological’ disquiet over decommissioning. The net result was a fatal undermining of Trimble-ite unionism and the marginalization of the SDLP within nationalist politics.18 British state intervention drove nationalist mobilization throughout the course of the Troubles, and by facilitating the institutionalization of the long-term aim of reunification, it continues to affect the divergence of nationalist policymaking from any accommodative settlement. A second set of factors driving change in Northern nationalist politics during the 1990s was Ulster unionist resistance to initiatives and proposals that failed to meet what they perceived as acceptable standards. To reach an agreement in April 1998, both the SDLP and the Irish government accepted a significant (and last minute) diminution of the Irish dimension. This factor occurred at a more subterranean or ‘hidden’ level and concerns how unionist resistance and agenda-setting work affected change at the level of nationalist and Westminster policy operation and implementation. In this view, unionist – and, in particular, DUP – resistance to the implementation of power-sharing in the absence of decommissioning was instrumental in creating the conditions for the May 2007 Accord. Despite these recent events, at the level of policy implementation, Northern nationalist policy direction continues to pursue a divergent path from that of Ulster unionism. The cumulative nature of this project equates institutional and constitutional change and that fact contradicts the widespread belief that Sinn Féin has been ‘confused’ by the complexity of the process and correspondingly ‘duped’ its supporters into accepting an ‘equality agenda’ instead of reunification (Hayward and Mitchell, 2003; McGovern, 2004; MacGinty, 2006, p. 126). The chapter also critiques the idea that the SDLP represented a new and more accommodative version of Irish nationalist politics. Instead, it argues that the SDLP instituted a nationalistic policy agenda that ruled out moderate, ‘internalist’ alternatives. The defining characteristic of that agenda – and, in fact, the modern Northern nationalist project in general – is the pursuit of cumulative change. On the one hand, this has proved enormously beneficial – Northern Catholic politicians have affected large-scale and long-term changes from a relatively powerless starting point. Northern nationalism achieved this through a cumulative process of ‘banking’ or ‘pooling’ key Westminster concessions such as the prorogation of Stormont, the institutionalization of Dublin involvement in the Anglo-Irish Agreement or, indeed, the reform of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and release of paramilitary prisoners. On the other hand, however, these perceived gains often militated against the possibility of reaching agreement with unionism – that perception encouraged the undermining of potential allies such as Brian Faulkner in
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the 1970s and the dismissal of power-sharing offers in the late 1980s. Events such as the Drumcree crisis in the 1990s only served to confirm Catholic beliefs as to the correctness of this nationalist vision and the ‘irreformability’ of the Northern state (Patterson, 1997, p. 291). These points were underscored during a recent exchange in the Guardian, in which Nick Stadlen QC interrogated Gerry Adams as to whether the republican campaign had been ‘worth it’: You describe [the Good Friday Agreement] as a compromise and accommodation, but from the point of view of the fundamental republican principle for which the IRA fought for 30 years – namely, Irish self-determination without a unionist veto, it’s a defeat isn’t it, rather than a compromise?19 The point that this chapter has sought to stress is that it is not enough to speak of either compromise or defeat. Since the Northern nationalist project implies instability rather than moderation, Adams logically attempts to defend the idea that the ‘armed struggle’ was ‘worth it’. Other methods may have achieved the same outcomes quicker, but, in short, it is, for Adams a question of ends rather than means – or, in his own words, ‘we shouldn’t get confused between strategies, tactics, objectives, and principles’. Indeed, the principle theme of this chapter is that modern Northern nationalism has continued to target reunification at the expense of cross-communal accommodation. The counterpoint is that that targeting occurred because nationalist policy direction was itself cumulative and self-reinforcing – the 1971 decision by the SDLP to abandon the Stormont system and pursue a more nationalistic path had knock-on effects for future Catholic mobilization. The discomforting conclusion is then that since this nationalistic vision is likely to push unionist politicians towards a defensive position, any kind of definitive constitutional rapprochement may be unlikely. As such, while the recent Sinn Féin-DUP pact suggests that potential instability may indeed be managed through consociational carve-ups, the longer-term prospects are less certain.20
Notes 1. See An Phoblacht 3 May 1990. 2. Adam Ferguson referred to this idea of unintended consequences in his dictum that ‘history is the result of human action, not of human design’ (Elster, 1989, p. 91). 3. ‘Draft working document on proposals relating to the present situation in Northern Ireland, September 1971’, Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (Belfast) (henceforth PRONI) D/3072/1/30/1. 4. Ivan Cooper, ‘Northern Ireland – a condominium? August 1972’, PRONI D/3072/17/319. 5. This aggressive anti-republican strategy is evident from early 1972. Given the Provisionals’ use of internment as a mobilizing instrument and the prorogation of
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6.
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
14. 15. 16.
17.
18.
19. 20.
The Northern Ireland Question Stormont, a March policy paper, for instance, asked ‘Are we still committed to the absolute condition that every last man be released before we go to the Conference table ... ?’ Some notes on future SDLP policy, March 1972’, PRONI D/3072/1/33/2. Thus, Hume told the Irish Northern Ireland liaison, Séan Donlon, in September 1973 that ‘Now that [Brian] Faulkner was at his weakest ... it [was] more important than ever that he should be inextricably tied to a fully worked out and agreed Council [of Ireland] before the executive was established’. ‘Report of Conversations with the SDLP, 27 September 1973’, National Archives of Ireland DT/2004/21/524. Seamus Deane, quoted in The Crane Bag, 1980 Vol. 4, No. 2, p. 42, ‘Interview with John Hume’. A Scenario for Peace, Sinn Féin, 1989, available at: www.sinnfein.ie. The Sinn Féin/SDLP Talks, Sinn Féin Document No 1, Sinn Féin, 1988, available at: www.sinnfein.ie. Ibid. SDLP Document No 3. Irish Times 13 September 1988. ‘Six-County Internal Conference, 25 June 1988’, Linenhall Library, Northern Ireland Political Collection (NIPC), Tom Hartley Papers’, PH 1566. The ‘TUAS’ document is reprinted in Mallie and McKittrick 1997. Although never specified in the document, the acronym is assumed to stand for either ‘Totally Unarmed Struggle’ or ‘Tactical Use of the Armed Struggle’. ‘The Unionists and the Irish Peace Debate’, Linenhall Library, NIPC P5685. Gerry Adams Presidential Address to Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Sinn Féin, 1994b, available at: www.sinnfein.ie. The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey for 2006–07 revealed strong levels of Catholic support for accepting a potential reunification initiative. However, flying in the face of recent electoral trends, the fact that the survey points to a weak Sinn Féin support (9 per cent) in comparison to the SDLP (22 per cent) indicates to certain reliability problems. The survey is reprinted in Irish Political Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2007. Eric Hobsbawm recently remarked on the depiction of history as discourse claiming that, ‘unless the facts change, no amount of changing names changes them’ (2007, 49). See Peter Mandelson’s arguments that for Blair, keeping the ‘process’ going – keeping Sinn Féin on board – was more important than the difficulties that Trimble faced, or the potential undermining of the SDLP. Guardian 13 and 14 March 2007. Nick Stadlen QC, ‘The Nick Stadlen interview with Gerry Adams’, Guardian, 12 September 2007. On this point, see Liam Clarke, ‘Smiles can’t paper over the cracks of powersharing’s lack of results’ Sunday Times, 13 January 2008.
8 Republican Paramilitaries and the Peace Process Jonathan Tonge
Introduction The ending of the Provisional IRA’s armed campaign and its replacement by the electoral rise of Sinn Féin were the defining features of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The process witnessed the demise of the IRA, the decommissioning of its weaponry and the evolution of Sinn Féin into the solitary representative of republicanism, at the expense of that movement’s militaristic tendencies. Sinn Féin’s electoral strength was sufficient to yield places in the Northern Ireland governing executive from 1999 onwards. Since the beginning of this century, the party has become the majority choice of the Catholic population and the second largest party overall in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin is also the only significant all-Ireland party attracting modest support in the Irish Republic. The dramatic transformation of Sinn Féin from IRA support group to highly competitive electoral force and partner in government obliged the party to trade its ideological ‘purity’ for a series of compromises, which the party protests do not dilute the ambition for Irish unity. Sinn Féin has crossed numerous rubicons to arrive at its modern position as the supposed embodiment of all that was once articulated via the IRA’s militarism. Sinn Féin has moved from decrepit IRA cheerleader to become the exclusive republican political vehicle, bereft of its paramilitary flipside, from 2005 onwards. This chapter examines the impact of the peace process upon republican paramilitaries. The three choices facing Provisional republicans were avowed continued articulation of their interests within Sinn Féin; withdrawal from militarism or politics; or exit towards new, ‘dissident’ IRAs. Few have exercised the lattermost choice, the majority seeming to prefer the new republicanism of Sinn Féin. This new republicanism has ditched much of the ideological baggage with which it was associated from 1916 until 1998. In assessing how the Provisional IRA has responded to the challenges of the peace process, the chapter draws upon analysis of IRA, Sinn Féin and ‘dissident’ republican materials, along with interviews with dozens of former 165
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IRA prisoners, to assess the impact of the peace process upon republican paramilitaries.
The way they were: pre- peace process republican orthodoxy Prior to the peace process, the Provisional IRA offered a set of traditional Irish republican beliefs, to which the immediate proposed ‘defence’ (a posture more than a reality) of Catholic areas breathed new life. Following the split with the ‘Official IRA’ in 1970, the Provisionals garnered support among Northern nationalists as sectarian conflict developed in Northern Ireland. However, the Provisionals rejected the frequent criticism of opponents that they were Catholic sectarians. Instead, the IRA viewed itself as the true government of Ireland, one merely temporarily overthrown by British failure to acknowledge the desire for unfettered Irish sovereignty expressed in the final all-Ireland election of 1918. The subsequent partition of Ireland, introduced by the ‘colonial’ British government, under unionist pressure, was viewed as illegal, as were all the institutions established as a consequence of the division of the ‘indivisible’ island. Irrespective of their detachment from the reality that most Irish people accepted ‘partitionist’ parliaments, the republican rejection of ‘normal’ constitutional politics was central to the movement’s approach. Armed struggle was viewed as legitimate, with any deviation from its use merely strategic rather than a principled or permanent renunciation. Electoralism was a tactic, which needed to be accompanied by abstention from any parliament which claimed jurisdiction over any part of Ireland, as the claim of such parliaments was illegitimate. Amid sustained IRA violence during the 1970s, Sinn Féin was very much the junior partner. The party did develop proposals for a federal Ireland, Éire Nua, during this period, in which a 32 County Ireland was to be governed mainly by four provincial parliaments. Yet there was little interest in the politics of federalism within the main arena of conflict, Northern Ireland. Even more importantly, there was little interest in electoral politics during the 1970s. The claimed mandate arising from the 1918 election meant that subsequent election successes, whilst potentially useful for morale, were not required. Electioneering was also seen as a waste of resources, a diversion from the ‘cutting edge’ of the IRA campaign. The party did not rule out taking seats on local councils in Northern Ireland, but it did not take part in elections.
Growing ‘parity of esteem’ between Sinn Féin and the IRA For a peace process to emerge, it was evident that one of the following was required: the IRA to be defeated militarily, a prospect which few in the British
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armed forces saw as realistic; a major political shift towards British withdrawal, sufficient to sate IRA demands; an even more unrealistic prospect, or, most feasibly, that the growing strength of Sinn Féin be used as the means by which the IRA might be persuaded, by republicans and non-republicans alike, to adopt a different tactical approach and forego armed conflict. The ‘Hume-Adams’ dialogue, between the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Féin leaderships, which commenced in 1988, was the most prominent attempt at persuading republicans to steer an exclusively political course. The dialogue was important in ending republican political isolation establishing a common nationalist position on the need for Irish self-determination (in reality co-determination for the two traditions on the island). Nonetheless, it is clear that Gerry Adams had already embarked on private initiatives to the British government, prior to dialogue with the SDLP, with the aim of ending the IRA’s campaign (Moloney, 2002). For Adams’s initiatives and tentative Sinn Féin-SDLP-Irish government pan-nationalism to develop, republicans needed to overcome their fears of constitutionalism, in which political activity would eventually lead to recognition of the institutions which the IRA and Sinn Féin opposed. Previously, parties arising from the IRA which had insisted that they would not be changed by entry into political institutions, had subsequently diluted their republicanism and criticized those who continued to use ‘extra-constitutional’ methodologies. Among the parties which had taken the constitutional road were Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Clann na Phoblachta and the Workers Party, all of which have been absorbed by a political system they had initially pledged to alter. Even before the peace process developed, the IRA’s status relative to Sinn Féin was shifting, as the political arm of the republican movement acquired increasing significance. Sinn Féin’s attitude towards elections changed dramatically in 1981, due to the republican hunger strikes in the ‘H Blocks’ in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland that year. The hunger strike was opposed by the republican leadership outside the prison, whilst the risky decision to contest a Westminster by-election caused further alarm. With the SDLP declining to oppose the Anti H-Block candidate Bobby Sands, the contest was a straightforward nationalist versus unionist event. As nationalist sympathy for the hunger strikers grew, Sands was elected, a republican triumph followed by the election of his election agent after Sands’s death and the subsequent election of two hunger strikers in the Irish Republic. In addition to the impact of the hunger strikes, there was a growing concern among republicans that the unwillingness to contest elections allowed the SDLP to portray itself as the unchallenged representative of the nationalist constituency. As Sinn Féin moved towards community politics and the defence of welfare rights of nationalists, the party criticized the SDLP’s ‘win some, lose some, easy relationship with public bodies in the North, whose bureaucracy and indifference to people’s needs has involved a social and
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economic oppression every bit as real as political and military oppression’.1 The defence of community rights and entry to electoral politics were seen as twin approaches likely to broaden republican support beyond the narrow channel of outright support for the IRA. Sinn Féin entered elections less concerned with adherence to the traditional position as the representative of the will of the Irish people and more as an ethno-regional party, even if the party’s armed wing ensured a continuing distinctiveness. The ‘revolutionary rules’ first outlined by Gerry Adams fused violence and electioneering. The rules contained the elements of ‘army, party, ideology, support and education’.2 What was unclear, however, was how the destruction of the ‘Army’ would complement the reconstruction increasingly sought by the party. Although the long-term aim of the British government was to divert militant republicanism towards unarmed political activity, there were considerable barriers to the eventual displacement of IRA activity by Sinn Féin activism. Following the election of Bobby Sands, the British government changed the rules to prevent prisoners being entitled to stand. During the 1980s, the British government introduced a broadcasting ban upon Sinn Féin, under which broadcasters were prohibited from transmitting directly the words of Sinn Féin officials, the party’s sentiments being conveyed by actors. The British broadcasting ban followed that imposed upon Sinn Féin by the Irish government during the 1970s. Moreover, from the 1990s onwards, the British government required election candidates to declare formally their commitment to non-violence. Within the republican movement, Sinn Féin candidates were mandated by the party’s Ard Fheisanna and the demands of the IRA to provide unambiguous support for the IRA’s campaign.
The move towards new republicanism: the IRA and Leinster House Although movement towards parity of importance of the IRA and Sinn Féin was apparent from the early 1980s, the shift towards electoral politics by republicans was accompanied by pledges that there would be no dilution of ‘armed struggle’. One of the architects of the ‘armalite and ballot box’ strategy, Sinn Féin’s director of publicity, Danny Morrison, nonetheless privately recognized the contradictions of the dual approach. Appeals for electoral support were likely to bring twin pressures: first, to end IRA violence to maximize electoral fortunes and, second, to enter the political institutions for which the party was contesting elections (English, 2003). In 1983, Sinn Féin’s Ard Fheis removed the party’s constitutional ban on contemplating accepting parliamentary seats. Those within the IRA concerned that electoral activity was leading to a running down of military activity and diverting resources, such as Ivor Bell in Belfast, were threatened
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with execution and forced to resign from the IRA (Moloney, 2002). The first decisive shift towards a new, pragmatic republicanism soon followed, when, in 1986, the IRA and Sinn Féin voted to recognize the parliament of the 26 County Irish Republic (Leinster House) as Dail Eireann, the legitimate legislature of that state. The new departure moved the IRA and Sinn Féin from the 1918–21 republican dogma of non-recognition of ‘partitionist’ parliaments. Bolstered by arms imports from Libya, the IRA pledged the maintenance of its campaign. Nonetheless, the 1986 decision can be seen as the start of the political process which shaped the eventual peace process, as the supposed principle of abstention was reduced to a mere tactic. The new politics brought few resignations from the IRA, although the 429–161 majority in support of the end of abstention at Sinn Féin’s 1986 ArdFheis indicated a sizeable number of dissenters. Led by some of the former Sinn Féin leadership, some committed abstentionists formed Republican Sinn Féin its President, Ruairi O’Bradaigh insisting that entry to the 26 County parliament amounted to a doomed attempt to ride constitutional and revolutionary horses pulling in opposite directions (Bishop and Mallie, 1988; Murray and Tonge, 2005; White, 2006). Republican Sinn Fein was warned by the Provisional IRA not to form a military wing (White, 2006). Although Sinn Féin retained a solid support base, the party articulated the interests merely of a minority in the North. The lack of decisiveness of Sinn Féin’s electoral mandate had created internal debate over the party’s abstentionist platform and heralded a move towards ‘quasi constitutional politics’ in which the IRA would eventually be obliged to exit the stage (Shirlow and McGovern, 1998, p. 174). The difficulty for Sinn Féin in impacting upon conventional political arenas lay in breaking beyond its base of one-third of the nationalist vote. The party’s support remained ghettoized structurally and territorially, confined largely to urban, working-class Catholics, or those living in poorer rural areas, within Northern Ireland. The middleclass nationalist vote was largely captured by the SDLP, whose voters were reluctant to offer Sinn Féin lower preference transfers. Moreover, the end of abstention from Dail Eireann made no impact upon Sinn Féin’s fortunes in the Irish Republic, where the party’s vote share was marooned at 2 per cent throughout the 1980s. The IRA’s campaign of violence and Sinn Féin’s leftwing radicalism were anathema to many Catholics throughout Ireland, who declined to support the party on moral (the IRA’s campaign was repeatedly condemned by the Catholic Church) and political grounds.
The IRA and the 1994 cessation of violence By the 1990s, the IRA was involved in several initiatives designed to end violence. The private Adams initiatives of the 1980s had firmed up into a more formal line of communication, albeit one still highly secret, dubbed the Back Channel (Mallie and McKittrick, 1996). The IRA also participated
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in the ‘Derry experiment’, in which some security measures were relaxed, amid a sharp drop in IRA activity in the city, as an indication of the potential peace dividend in the event of a permanent cessation of violence (Moloney, 2002). At the 1992 Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, the senior republican, Jim Gibney, in addition to warning republicans not to be deafened by the ‘deadly sound of their own gunfire’ scorned republican orthodoxy by telling the faithful: We know and accept this is not 1921 and that at this stage we don’t represent a government in waiting. We’re not standing in the airport lounge waiting to be flown to Chequers or Lancaster House. (Gibney, 1992) Earlier that year, Sinn Féin’s policy document, Towards a Lasting Peace, had called on the British government to act as a ‘persuader’ to unionists for a united Ireland. This amounted to a significant ideological departure in recognizing the separate existence and identity of unionists. The attitudinal language in respect of unionists had softened substantially from insistence that the ‘loyalist garrison in Ireland has to be destroyed politically and militarily’.3 During those years of conflict, republicans insisted that there could be no bridge to ‘the reactionary, pro-imperialist philosophy of loyalism which the Protestants of the North voluntarily espouse’.4 As cover for these ideological shifts, however, the IRA stepped up its bombing campaign and caused more damage in financial terms from 1990 to 1994 than during its entire campaign of the 1970s and 1980s. The private discourse of peace was accompanied by a public offensive. The 1993 Downing Street Declaration issued by the British and Irish governments indicated that a future political agreement would not yield a united Ireland or even joint authority. Instead, it coated an essentially unionist constitutional deal (previously dismissed by the IRA as a ‘unionist veto’) in which the future of Northern Ireland would be determined separately within Northern Ireland, in nationalist language of Irish self-determination – that is, that all of the people of the island would decide its future. Although Sinn Féin sought clarification of the terms of the Declaration, it was evident to any reasonably bright activist that the language of self-determination was superseded by the actuality of co-determination; Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic would determine the future of Northern Ireland together, but separately. Moreover, even if the people of the 26 Counties were allowed to exercise their view on the desirability of unification in a referendum (and they were given no such opportunity) its result would be irrelevant, as the future of Northern Ireland would be determined by a vote within the Six Counties. The IRA did not reject the Downing Street Declaration, an indication of the downgrading of the organization’s ambitions. The first outworking of the Declaration came via the British and Irish governments’ 1995 Framework
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Document, which offered a substantial all-Ireland dimension and allowed Adams (Adams, 1995, p. 229) to insist that the ethos of these was ‘clearly an all-island one’ which ‘moves the situation closer to an all-island settlement’. With the Conservative government having lost its Commons majority and reliant upon unionist votes at Westminster, the Framework Documents were shelved. What was clear, however, was that the IRA and Sinn Féin could back a deal based upon what republicans once labelled as ‘that sickening English term the Irish dimension’, as (very) distinct from unification.5 The temporary return of the IRA to violence in 1996 was not due to the imminence of a partitionist political deal. Instead, it was the British government’s continued enforced absence of Sinn Féin from negotiations around such a deal that caused rupture. The insistence of a beleaguered British government upon a quarantine period for Sinn Féin and the possible demand for decommissioning of IRA weapons in advance of a political deal – a demand sidelined as unrealistic by Senator George Mitchell, appointed to chair political talks – stretched the patience of militarists within the movement. A return to violence was endorsed eventually even by the Adams’s leadership as the only means of holding the IRA together. There are different perceptions of the IRA’s armed campaign during the 1990s. For some (for example, Moloney, 2002; McGladdery, 2006), this was the last throw of an organization whose violence had largely been ineffective and which was struggling to recruit new members. For others (for example, Taylor, 1997; Tonge, 2006a), the IRA’s huge bombings of the 1990s, notably at Bishopsgate, Canary Wharf and Manchester, were prohibitively expensive and represented a rare phase in the organization’s history when it demonstrated a strong military competence which at least slightly influenced political developments. Although the IRA oscillated between war and peace during the 1990s, the likelihood was of a permanent shift from violence. Sinn Féin (albeit not the IRA) agreed the Mitchell Principles of non-violence in 1996, which repudiated political violence. The shift of the IRA towards a permanent ceasefire was made a near-certainty by the election of a Labour government with a huge majority at Westminster in 1997. The acceptance of Sinn Féin within political negotiations and the abandonment of immediate demands for the decommissioning of IRA weapons were sufficient to satisfy most of the IRA. Sinn Féin and the IRA had the power of veto over any settlement which failed to offer sufficient reward to the Catholic nationalist minority in Northern Ireland, but the two organizations had insufficient political or military strength to realize their overarching goal of Irish reunification. Amid this realization, republicans attempted to extract the best deal possible via a political deal, although what emerged was one which offered a modest advance of republican objectives. The IRA had in effect accepted that the physical force approach had exhausted its viability and value. According to
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the organization’s last leader in the Maze, this was ‘not a moral decision’, but rather a choice made due to ‘practical reality’.
The 1998 Belfast Agreement: conflict resolution and the IRA As late as 1996, a member of Sinn Féin’s negotiating team, the former IRA prisoner Gerry Kelly, insisted that there could be ‘no return to Stormont’.6 Within two years, Sinn Féin accepted a deal which involved entry to a Northern Ireland executive and parliament under British jurisdiction. The party accepted the downgrading of the Irish government’s constitutional claim to Northern Ireland to mere aspiration. Although of no practical value, the constitutional claim had meant that the difference between the IRA and the Irish government in terms of unification was essentially one of methodology prior to 1998. In the Belfast Agreement, the Irish government and the IRA did not abandon the concept of 32-County nationhood, but accepted the existence of ‘two states within one nation’ (O’Donnell, 2007a, p. 196). Recognition of the state of Northern Ireland and the principle of consent within its borders was the price paid by Sinn Féin for entry to government and political influence. Sinn Féin’s political opportunities were conditional upon acceptance of the institutions of a state republicans did not formally recognize. The party placed itself within a ‘liberal democratic concept of electoral representation’ in which the size of the party’s mandate ensured a place in the government of Northern Ireland under the consociational power-sharing terms of the Good Friday Agreement (Bean, 2002, p. 36). Having pledged never to enter a Northern Ireland parliament, the IRA and Sinn Féin supported the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which facilitated participation in an Assembly and Executive. The Sinn Féin leadership secured an overwhelming (97 per cent to 3 per cent) majority for change at the party’s 1998 Ard Fheis. The leadership argued that the interests of nationalist voters would now best be served by Sinn Féin’s presence in political institutions, which the party could influence sufficiently to achieve progress towards an ‘Ireland of Equals’. Meanwhile, Sinn Féin continued to grow and in 2001, the party overtook the SDLP as the main nationalist representative. Several leading members of the IRA were involved directly in the negotiations on the Belfast Agreement. For the IRA, the most obvious immediate concern was the release of its prisoners. Adams told his party’s 1998 Ard Fheis, attended by a large number of prisoners, including some released temporarily for the gathering, that he had ‘told Blair that without prisoner releases there would be no deal’ (Adams, 1998). Sinn Féin argued for prisoner releases within one year, but readily settled for an agreement in which freedom was offered within two years: 242 republican prisoners were released under the terms of the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, with a further 57 in the Irish Republic.
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Beyond prisoner releases, the Belfast Agreement contained some other conflict resolution measures partly to satisfy the IRA. These included the establishment of policing, human rights and equality commissions. Each yielded substantial reforms, most notably the Patten Commission on policing which radically changed the composition, ethos and techniques of the former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Nonetheless, the IRA had effectively rewritten the terms of its campaign. Having fought a war to achieve territorial and political unification, it settled for a restructured, reformed Northern Ireland. As the journalist Suzanne Breen (Breen, 2000, pp. 18–19) acidly noted, if it wasn’t for the loss of life, it would be ‘side-splittingly funny’ that republicans reversed original positions to the point of demanding ‘Bring Back Stormont’.
Exiting the stage, but slowly: IRA activity after the Belfast Agreement The IRA could use a cost-benefit analysis to justify its political changes. Major splits have been averted; an armed struggle which was incapable of yielding outright victory has been called off without the stigma of outright defeat; Sinn Féin’s membership and electoral growth has risen sharply as the republican movement has moved towards pluralist politics based exclusively upon respect for the party’s mandate. Moreover, IRA members continue to perceive the Belfast Agreement as merely a staging post to Irish unity, even though the provisions of the deal offer little in this respect. Nonetheless, the IRA’s disappearance was gradual. The organization used its continuing existence initially for leverage purposes for Sinn Féin, a role unwittingly assisted by continuing unionist belief that the IRA’s war was somehow not over; that the organization, by announcing a tactical ceasefire had destabilized Northern Ireland and that it remained a threat. The Stormont Executive of 1999–2002 was always a fragile non-coalition of rival forces (Tonge, 2005, 2006a). It collapsed amid unproven allegations of an IRA/Sinn Féin ‘spy ring’ within the government and civil service. The alleged ‘ringleader’ of the spies, Denis Donaldson, was later exposed as a British spy. Credibly, Donaldson insisted shortly before his death that no such spy ring existed. Donaldson’s murder followed afterwards, a killing for which a fairly short list of suspect organizations existed. Despite this, the Independent Monitoring Commission, previously assertive concerning IRA activity, declined to make a judgement on the perpetrators, adding to suspicions of ‘dirty tricks’ involving the intelligence services. The IRA continued to ‘police’ nationalist areas and its members were responsible for at least 13 deaths from 1998 to 2005. The most prominent of the IRA’s killings was that of Robert McCartney in Belfast in January 2005, which led to a high-profile campaign against the ‘ceasefire soldiers’ of the IRA by the victim’s hitherto republican-leaning family. Although a
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temporary embarrassment, the controversy helped facilitate the denouement of the Adams’s strategy, the disappearance of the IRA. Accordingly, Adams used the start of the 2005 Westminster election campaign to formally ‘request’ the IRA to stand down, a missive which did not need to travel a great distance or require fresh deliberation within the IRA. When the IRA formally stood down after the election, it had not carried out an operation against British rule in Northern Ireland for almost eight years. The fourth and final phase of the decommissioning of IRA weapons followed shortly afterwards. At the time of the Belfast Agreement, the IRA issued conflicting signals over its willingness to decommission weapons. Although republicans mobilized under the ‘not one ounce [of semtex] not one bullet’ slogan, this referred to the earlier insistence upon prior decommissioning made by the British government. The IRA had, however, indicated that decommissioning might occur after a settlement, a senior member regarding ‘voluntary decommissioning’ as ‘a natural part of the peace process’.7 The slowness of the process owed much to the republican desire to use delays to see if concessions were possible. It derived even more from the lack of specificity of decommissioning requirements in the Belfast Agreement, a gap spotted by an eclectic collection of personnel, ranging from Jeffrey Donaldson to the IRA Army Council. For many former republican prisoners, the peace process produced a range of post-conflict activities related to their former actions. Most obviously, political campaigning for Sinn Féin was an option. The party has proved adept in mobilizing its vote, enjoying the most positive relationship between vote and turnout at the 2005 Westminster election (0.78, significant at p<.01; see Tonge, 2005b) of any party. Sinn Féin has also proved capable of enticing the support of younger voters and previous non-voters (McAllister, 2004). Whilst the party remains stronger among the nationalist working class than middle class in Northern Ireland, it is now much more cross-class in terms of support base than was the case pre-1997, with substantial inroads now being made to the SDLP’s electoral constituency (Mitchell, Evans and O’Leary, 2006). Sinn Féin has re-pitched its appeal to attract ‘new Catholic money ... largely apolitical but nationalistic in its aspirations’ that ‘found much that was attractive in Sinn Féin’s demand for parity of esteem and equality of opportunity’ (Catney, 2000). Former IRA members have also developed ever-increasing contact with the local state amid a myriad of state-sponsored organizations (Tonge, 2006b). Having previously attempted to destroy economic institutions, former paramilitaries now participate in the economic reconstruction of the Northern Ireland, encouraging inward investment through participation in public bodies such as the West Belfast Forum. Sinn Féin lauds the British Department of Education for funding projects in nationalist west Belfast, whereas British investment in Northern Ireland had been physically discouraged in previous eras.8 Other former IRA members have involved
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themselves in the former prisoners’ group Coiste, which has benefited from European Union Peace I and Peace II programme funding, or participated in cross-community initiatives (Peace I and Peace II funding is often conditional upon cross-community benefit). Although republicans cooperated with their loyalist former-combatant counterparts and Sinn Féin has engaged in ‘Unionist outreach’, the legitimacy of their rivals’ political positions is often still denied. In 2007, after over four years of political stalemate and nearly two years after the final standing down of the IRA, republicans took the inevitable final step down the constitutional path. At a special Ard Fheis, Sinn Féin adopted a position of support for civic policing. Given that the party accepted the British government’s line that intelligence gathering and normal policing were now separate entities, Sinn Féin was accepting the Police Service of Northern Ireland as a legitimate force. Although a small number of elected representatives resigned and a few more resisted taking places on policing boards, what was extraordinary was the overwhelming support for the party for this change. Acceptance of Northern Ireland as a political entity, in the short and medium terms at least, was now accompanied by active backing of the institutions of the state. Sinn Féin’s hand had been forced; to return to government, support for the police was required by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a condition made explicit in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement. The party’s political volte-face was complete.
The armed struggle hasn’t gone away entirely y’know: ‘Dissident’ IRAs and resistant Republicans For several years after the first ceasefire, IRA members were informed that a return to violence remained an option. Training, targeting and ‘punishments’ continued. In addition to the maintenance of structures, the combination of prisoner releases, the seeming exhaustion of armed struggle, the slow pace of decommissioning and disbandment and the electoral advances of Sinn Féin all helped to maintain a high level of unity among republicans. Given the extent of republican compromise, however, some rupture of the movement seemed inevitable. In 1996, the Continuity IRA emerged via the bombing of a Fermanagh hotel. Linked to Republican Sinn Féin, Continuity IRA attempted to maintain the ‘purist’ republican tradition of armed conflict to remove British sovereignty over Northern Ireland, whilst remaining politically untainted by links to any ‘partitionist’ parliaments. Although the Continuity IRA continued to operate episodically at a low level, a more serious potential threat emerged in autumn 1997 with the emergence of the Real IRA following the defection of the Provisionals’ QuartermasterGeneral. The Real IRA was linked to the 32 County Sovereignty Committee,
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originally formed as a group within Sinn Féin opposed to any political agreement which recognized Northern Ireland. The 32 County Sovereignty Committee represented the final serious threat to the new constitutionalism of the Sinn Féin leadership. The Committee argued that the sacrifices of IRA volunteers had not been undertaken to allow Sinn Féin to recognize a state the IRA had been attempting to destroy (Tonge, 2004, 2006a). Expulsion of the dissidents cleared the way for the final stage of the Provisionals, a process eased considerably by the revulsion felt towards the Real IRA after its killing of 29 civilians in its Omagh bombing in 1998. Although the Real IRA declared a ceasefire shortly afterwards, its ongoing threat was sufficiently serious for the Taioseach to send his political advisor, Martin Mansergh, to (unsuccessfully) seek a permanent eschewal of violence from the organization’s leadership in December 1998. Although the Real IRA did attract some individuals from the Provisionals, its support was small and scorned by Provisionals. Moreover, it was quickly infiltrated by intelligence agencies. The historical determinism upon which dissident groups rely is used to construct an argument that there will ‘always be an IRA’ whilst there is British sovereignty over Northern Ireland, with the durability of the physical force ‘tradition’ overcoming difficult times. Certainly, any analyst who offered a view in 1965 that Northern Ireland would yield the worst postWorld War II ethnic conflict in Western Europe over the following four decades would have been regarded as a bizarre eccentric. However, support for the ‘dissidents’ is modest, recorded at 7 per cent of nationalists in the only poll in which Republican Sinn Féin and the 32 County Sovereignty Committee (neither of which contest elections) have been listed as options (BBC Northern Ireland, Hearts and Minds, 16 October 2002). There is no obvious catalyst for a resumption of widespread violence amid the tacit acceptance of a two-state solution in the short and medium terms.
Why republican change? The IRA has undergone considerable transformation from its purported position as a revolutionary vanguard. Although not short of weaponry and capable of maintaining a military campaign for another generation, the IRA had to become cognisant of the political and structural reforms of Northern Ireland, which diminished the arguments of second-class citizenry which has sustained nationalist resentment (Ruane and Todd, 2001; Shirlow, 1997; Tonge, 2006b). A diminution in structural factors was accompanied by a decline in the ideological commitment of nationalists to the territorial unity of an indivisible, sovereign island, largely replaced by a vaguer ‘unityof-peoples’ approach, grounded in identity politics. As it wound down in 2005, the IRA pledged fidelity to its historical objective of the attainment of an independent, united Ireland. Although its
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tactics were often rudimentary, the republican movement was more dexterous in terms of what constituted principles (Maillot, 2005). For example, IRA members had moved from a position of non-recognition of British and Irish courts during the 1970s, resulting inevitably in conviction, to one in which prosecution evidence was challenged. What was different, post-1998, was the scale of change, which went far beyond tactical manoeuvre and bordered on repudiation of all for which republicans has once stood. The chairman of Sinn Féin, Mitchel McLaughlin, argued that ‘abstention from Westminster is not a fundamental republican principle’, but is instead merely a consequence of there being ‘no strategic value’ in Sinn Féin taking their seats. Conceivably, therefore, a parliament in which no party commanded an overall majority could see republicans accepting places at Westminster, for strategic advantage. The decision to end abstention from Dail Eireann in 1986 was the first major rupture of republicanism’s ideological and policy framework since 1918. Acceptance of the Belfast Agreement which confirmed Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom for the near future represented a much greater compromise. The Agreement was hardly transitional to unity, with addition to the six new cross-border bodies it created being conditional upon the (unlikely) approval of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The St Andrews’ Agreement required support for the police service of a state supposedly opposed by Sinn Féin, with the party attempting to distinguish between civic and state policing. The question begged was whether the peace process had produced the final death of traditional Irish republicanism. That question begs another: were the Provisionals ever ‘true’ Irish republicans? Kevin Bean (Bean, 1995, 2002) and Anthony McIntyre (McIntyre, 1995, 2001) question the Provisional movement’s historical fidelity to republican principles. Instead, the Provisionals were creatures of their own period, 1969–70, not 1916, with sectarian mistreatment by loyalists and then the British Army fuelled a surprising re-birth of the IRA, only a few years after its apparent burial. The lack of commitment to ‘true’ republicanism has eased the rapid changes elicited by the republican leadership and allowed Sinn Féin to develop as a normal political party rather than a supposed exiled government-in-waiting. A more organic view of republican development is offered by Mark Ryan (1994, 1997). Although the Provisional movement’s grassroots contained many non-traditional republicans, there were many more ‘orthodox’ republicans among the leadership. That Sinn Féin continues to insist upon the need for an eventual united Ireland provides reassurance for some republicans of fidelity to traditional values. However, given the absence of a demographic route to unity (Protestant and Catholic birth rates are now virtually identical) the means of transition remain far from clear (Patterson, 1997; Taylor, 1997). There is an apparent belief among republicans that unionists will eventually settle for Irish unity, but successive Northern Ireland Life and Times surveys confirm
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the solidity of unionist preferences for Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. It is apparent that a section of Sinn Féin’s support is content for the Northern consent principle to operate – that is, that Northern Ireland’s constitutional future should be determined by the people within its territorial boundaries. If this is also the tacit acceptance of the leadership, the question begged is whether Irish republicanism, as espoused by Sinn Féin, is in effect an equality project based upon a two-state solution. The willingness to settle for a consent principle long dismissed as a unionist veto also invites the question as to why the IRA’s war was fought (English, 2003). Republican socialism, always unappealing outside the urban proletariats of Belfast and Dublin, has also been a casualty of political change. Sinn Féin’s commitment to socialism demanded ‘ownership of Ireland for the people of Ireland and the subordination of private property to public right and welfare’.9 In an island containing large numbers of small farmers, lacking a large urban working class and with clerical resistance to socialism, the language of revolutionary leftism was anathema to many. Indeed, outside its core urban support, Sinn Féin downplayed its socialism, a trait most evident in respect of the separate literature often produced for American audiences. Moreover, Gerry Adams insisted that he ‘knew of no one in Sinn Féin who is a Marxist or who would be influenced by Marxism’.10 The emergence of Sinn Féin as the dominant arm of the republican movement was an evolutionary process and was accompanied by an IRA campaign which, arguably, was at its most effective during the 1990s in terms of the damage to commercial centres. Movement from armed campaign to permanent ceasefire was, in narrow terms, a consequence of decision-making within the IRA, with normally rare IRA conventions staged three times during the 1990s to debate the continuation of the campaign. It was, however, the current and potential level of political growth of Sinn Féin which informed IRA decisions, a factor exacerbated by overlapping IRA and Sinn Féin memberships. As the need for the development of political strength became all-consuming, Gerry Adams made the position clear at a private republican gathering at Athboy in the Irish Republic in 1996 when he insisted that ‘this Party is not going back to the days when we were mere cheer-leaders for the Army [IRA]’ (O’Brien, 1999, p. 369). Instead, the party needed to develop political strength, the current limits of which meant that republicans had not realized their historical objectives and had looked to build pan-nationalist alliances with the SDLP and Fianna Fail. Many former IRA prisoners moved into organizational roles within Sinn Féin, whilst others assumed roles within groups assisting prisoners’ settlements, such as Coiste, whose relationship with Sinn Féin has been likened to that between the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the British Labour Party, in that there remains formal distance in the association, but nonetheless a link is evident. A political outreach committee continues to allow input from those who ‘fought the war’.
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The ease of transfer from prison into Sinn Féin or sympathetic group has reduced the risk of tension between those containing military ‘stripes’ and the newer breed of Sinn Féin representative bereft of ‘military service’. Most of the policy changes since the 1990s have been leadership driven, notwithstanding a process of consultation and discussion within party cumann (branches) before each major change. The Belfast Agreement provides a stark example of the top-down nature of decision-making, given the previous ‘No Return to Stormont’ slogans used to mobilize the membership. Nonetheless, the republican leadership was sufficiently organized to secure overwhelming support for substantial political change. Those dissenting from the strategy had the grim alternatives of exiting mainstream republicanism and accepting the ‘high risks, little rewards’ world of continuing militarism, or quitting the republican movement (of all shades) entirely.
Conclusion The Northern Ireland peace process has seen a remarkable transformation of the IRA. Amid considerable unionist scepticism, the organization abandoned its armed struggle, decommissioned its weapons and, in effect, was merged into Sinn Féin, its separate life continuing merely as a ‘comrades’ association’. The republican movement’s ongoing commitment to the dismantling of the partition of Ireland and unification of the country have been accompanied – and perhaps diluted – by a willingness work within political institutions rather than attempt their immediate dismemberment. Republicans contested elections, performed well and obliging other political parties, even the DUP, to abandoning their visceral dislike of Sinn Féin and accept the party as coalition partners in a Northern Ireland. To justify numerous political U-turns, republicans have been obliged to reject numerous earlier articles of faith: that Northern Ireland could not be reformed; that entry to a Northern Ireland Assembly was a retrograde step and that the management of the region under British rule was never acceptable. Sinn Féin contains traces of its old conspiratorial militarism in the evolution of policy, which remains leadership-dominated. Echoes of former stances remained, most notably in the refusal until very recently to back the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Nonetheless, the republican emphasis upon the short-term goal of parity of esteem for nationalists within a British state is distant from the uncompromising ‘Brits out’ demands of old. The changes in methodology were prompted by electoral considerations and by the impossibility of republican ‘military’ success. The IRA was largely converted into Sinn Féin, in terms of a transfer of personnel, notwithstanding a concurrent influx of new recruits. Despite the emergence of this new wave of younger representatives, devoid of ‘military stripes’, Sinn Féin remains populated by a sizeable number of former IRA prisoners, providing political input via local cumann and through the party’s informal
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political outreach committee. Although Sinn Féin’s support base has broadened to attract younger voters of all social classes, direct experience of the conflict (personal injury, or friend or relative injured) and sympathy for the IRA remain key variables in explaining the propensity of nationalists to vote for Sinn Féin (McAllister, 2004). As the IRA’s replacement as the vehicle of republican aspirations, Sinn Féin remains predominantly an ethnic ‘catch-us’ rather than ‘catch-all’ party, whose strength – and weakness – is derived from the Catholic communalism which characterizes nationalist politics in Northern Ireland. The party’s growing dominance of the nationalist vote in Northern Ireland reflects its attractiveness as an organization prepared to defend and promote the gains of nationalists arising from the Belfast Agreement. The consociational framework of the deal has further legitimized communal politics, but the movement towards greater moderation and abandonment of support for IRA violence, which had become an albatross, are much more important factors in explaining Sinn Féin’s growth, which has occurred, albeit asymmetrically, across Ireland under two very different political systems. The final rubicon of policing has recently been crossed, so emphasizing the irreversibility of Sinn Féin’s movement towards becoming a fully constitutional party, whose distinctiveness now rests mainly in its dual polity organization rather than its historical whiff of cordite – any lingering republican paramilitary activity will be exercised only by the tiny Real and Continuity IRAs, both of which have struggled to maintain their existence amid political marginalization and infiltration. The assistance of the following is gratefully acknowledged in the construction of this chapter: the Economic and Social Research Council ‘New Nationalism in Northern Ireland’ project, R 000222668; the Leverhulme Trust ‘Abandoning Historical Conflict?’ project, conducted with Professor James McAuley and Dr Peter Shirlow; Mike Ritchie and Michael Culbert at Coiste, Belfast and Yvonne Murphy at the Linenhall Library in Belfast.
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Iris, March 1983, p. 2. An Phoblacht, 17 June 1982. An Phoblacht, 30 May 1975. An Phoblacht, 17 October 1981. An Phoblacht, 20 September 1974. An Phoblacht, 16 May 1996. Padraig Wilson, Financial Times, 17 June 1998; see Tonge, 2000. West Belfast Sinn Féin: Building an Ireland of Equals, Belfast, Sinn Féin, 2005. ‘Nationalism and Socialism’, Republican Lecture Series 3, Dublin, Sinn Féin, 1980. Hibernia, October 1979, p. 2
9 Loyalist Paramilitaries and the Peace Process Ian Wood
The Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), who represented paramilitary loyalism in the talks which led to the Belfast Agreement of April 1998 were, arguably, not decisive in their contribution to that historic outcome. They did, however, as Senator George Mitchell accepted, help to shape a positive and purposeful atmosphere (Mitchell, 1999, p. 136), one into which an element of trust began to filter through. What determined ultimate success was, of course, the Sinn Féin leadership’s readiness to agree to an essentially partitionist settlement, but one which gave them the prospect of some guaranteed power in the northern state and in cross-border bodies to be set up under the Agreement. David Trimble, for his part, had to talk his colleagues into accepting a deal which secured the Union at the price of sharing power with what they had every reason to believe was still the IRA’s political wing. Dr Ian Paisley thought differently and angry scenes followed the endorsement of the Agreement as he and his followers clashed bitterly with members of the UDP and PUP in the precincts of Stormont. Dr Paisley was heckled noisily by members of the Loyalist parties in the media tent the night before the announcement of the Agreement. By the time it was made public the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader had left the scene, for the moment at least, apparently humiliated and isolated. Gary McMichael, who led the UDP delegation in the Stormont talks, knew, as did his PUP counterparts David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson that loyalism was entering uncharted waters. Relations between the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), which the two parties claimed to speak for, had deteriorated dangerously since the October 1994 loyalist ceasefire. The Combined Loyalist Military Command which had brought them uneasily together in 1991 barely functioned any longer and the credibility of that ceasefire had been called into question by the sequence of brutal killings which had taken place in revenge for Billy Wright’s murder by republicans in prison on 27 December 1997. 181
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Within the UDA’s North Antrim and Londonderry brigade the political assumptions central to the peace process and the Stormont talks were openly challenged in the pages of its magazine Warrior where contributors argued increasingly for a return to the policy of an independent and even re-partitioned Ulster.1 McMichael’s feat, and that of his close colleague David Adams, in keeping the UDP in the Stormont talks, was a major one and he had admitted the dangers for the peace process from within loyalism: ‘There is a very severe feeling of alienation and people are starting to question the value of this process,’ he told a newspaper at the end of 1997,2 not long before his party was suspended from the talks because of the UDA’s involvement in the so-called ‘no claim, no blame’ killings in response to Billy Wright’s death. The PUP escaped such retribution though the UVF, to which it provided its political analysis of events, had little reason to mourn Wright. Its executive met on 11 January 1998 and resolved to give the Irish and British governments a further chance to prove their sincerity in the Stormont talks. Combat, the UVF’s magazine, reported this, as well as setting out its own upbeat assessment of the talks’ prospects. In an editorial entitled ‘Endgame’, it predicted correctly that any agreement emerging from the talks would secure Northern Ireland’s place within the Union and would require the repeal of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution which since 1937 had claimed a notional sovereignty over all Ireland. Such an outcome, it argued, would be fully compatible with Sharing Responsibility, a PUP/UVF policy paper dating back to 1985.3 For both the PUP and the UDP, the first priority after the Agreement was to mobilize a loyalist ‘yes’ vote in the referendum which was to be held in May. Both parties played their roles in bringing about the 71 per cent vote in favour, which was delivered on 22 May. However, there were tricky moments, especially for the UDP, when its rally in the Ulster Hall eight days earlier was attended by the Milltown cemetery gunman Michael Stone, who was out of prison on a routine parole. He had not been invited by the rally’s organizers, but he received an uproarious welcome from those present. ‘It was a total screw-up which did us no good,’ Garry McMichael later told the author. ‘Of course, the context in people’s minds was IRA gunmen appearing to a huge welcome at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Dublin. That caused a unionist outcry though they declared their support for the Good Friday Agreement.’ He admitted that Stone’s presence in the Ulster Hall had been an own goal. ‘Inevitably, the media concentrated on it, rather than our support, and his, for a ‘yes’ vote.’4 The PUP avoided traps of this kind, as indeed it also did in the elections to a new legislative Assembly scheduled for late June under the Belfast Agreement. It entered the contest with high hopes, some of its members even predicting it could win six seats. This was over-optimistic, even though the polls saw
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a dramatic fragmentation of unionism. West Belfast’s seats were contested by six different unionist candidates and for the first time ever, all of them went to nationalists but East and North Belfast respectively returned Billy Hutchinson and David Ervine. Over 20,000 voters responded affirmatively to the questions ‘Tired of the same old odious bigotry? Are you interested in Confident, Enlightened and Anti-Sectarian Unionist Politics?’5 In 1985, the PUP had proclaimed itself to be ‘the only Socialist Unionist party in Northern Ireland’6 and after the Assembly elections it increased its membership, even managing to recruit some Catholics as well as gravitating towards left-wing activists in the Women’s Coalition and from voluntary groups within the nationalist community. An element within the UDA, especially its North Antrim and Londonderry Brigade, took a deeply suspicious view of this. Blaming it on Ervine, Hutchinson and Gusty Spence and their prison contacts with marxists in the Official Republican movement, though it argued that within the PUP their support base was confined to Belfast.7 On the issue of weapons decommissioning, which David Trimble was trying to keep at centre stage to pressurize Sinn Féin, the PUP leadership view was that it could wait but that the UVF should certainly retain its firepower while keeping it on hold and being ready to talk, either directly or through the party, to republican representatives. By the time of these elections, Northern Ireland was well into another summer of turbulence because of the Orange Order’s demand to have its Drumcree parade. The UDA and the UVF had tried to create a safe distance between themselves and the Order over the issue and Ervine, in his European election campaign, continued to support the Belfast Agreement, claiming that backing for it was still high in loyalist areas which he had canvassed.8 The UDA and its political wing were beginning to be less certain of this. A community once monolithic in its support for the big house leadership of Lord Craigavon and Lord Brookeborough had in reality divided almost in half over its attitude towards its constitutional future and its relationship to the Irish Republic. The media did not break down, in any detail, the May 1998 referendum vote, neither by area nor by existing Westminster constituencies, something which masked the reality of a split within unionism Such an outcome had been foreseen by republican strategists but the UDP sought to gloss over it in comments on the referendum in what proved to be one of the last issues of the New Ulster Defender: We voted for a new start for our children and our children’s children. We voted ‘yes’ so that our elected representatives could stand up in councils and other meeting places to let our voice be heard. We voted ‘yes’ because we are certainly not running and hiding from the enemy. By voting ‘yes’
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we can bargain from a position of strength rather than from a position of weakness.9 The article went on to pour scorn on Dr Paisley for his capacity to lead from the rear and for his ‘vanishing acts’ when things became dangerous. This was the confident and abrasive voice of a plebeian loyalist politics which had been heard before, during and after the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Council Strike and in debates on UDA policy documents such as Beyond the Religious Divide and Common Sense. Whether the UDP, with its admitted relationship to the UDA and with the vulpine John White, a convicted sadistic killer, as one of its candidates, could find the right voice to activate a working class loyalist electorate was soon put to the test in the June 1998 Assembly elections. These dealt the UDP what proved to be a fatal blow with none of its candidates being elected. In the Lagan Valley constituency, Gary McMichael polled a significantly better vote than White in the Shankill but it was not enough. ‘It was the Ulster Unionists who aborted my chances,’ McMichael later reflected: They stopped Jeffrey Donaldson from standing because he had jumped ship, he walked out of Stormont before the Good Friday Agreement. That upset a lot of unionists and created a protest vote that went to Paddy Roche of the UK Unionist Party. So there was a tactical middle class vote which passed me by as a pro-Agreement candidate.10 The single transferable vote system operating in the elections would only have worked for him if enough transfers had gone to him but the ‘Donaldson factor’ prevented this from happening. An electoral agreement between the UDP and PUP might have averted this outcome but it was never a possibility. Tensions between the two paramilitary organizations precluded it, tensions which had re-surfaced prior to the Belfast Agreement. Another factor was that the PUP, like Sinn Féin had been much better at creating a distance between itself and its paramilitary wing. Marjorie Mowlam’s January 1998 prison talks with leading UDA/UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters) men had reinforced many people’s view of the UDP as a party which could take no serious initiatives without the support of convicted killers. Conversely, Billy Hutchinson had taken care to make it clear that even if UVF prisoners had come out against the peace process it would have made no difference to his party’s stance in the Stormont negotiations.11 The Assembly elections left Northern Ireland’s biggest loyalist organization with no political reward for the extent to which it had supported the peace process and the Belfast Agreement. The UDP still had four elected local councillors, including Gary McMichael in Lisburn but it had no voice in Stormont as the new Assembly tried to find its way. This of itself would not have prevented worsening internecine loyalist tensions but it might
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have been an antidote to a growing alienation from the politics of the peace process in areas where the UDA had support. The breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), formed in and around the Portadown area by supporters of the murdered Billy Wright, had signed up to a cosmetic ceasefire on 8 August 1998, even making some token weapons available for destruction by General de Chastelain’s commission but few doubted their readiness to go on killing. In January 2000, they were widely blamed for the murder of Richard Jamieson, a UVF commander in Portadown. A few weeks later two teenagers accused of LVF links were brutally killed near Tandragee, victims of the mid-Ulster UVF acting under pressure from Belfast to have Jamieson avenged. This, along with the released Johnny Adair’s desire to take over the UDA from his support base in the Lower Shankill as well as to cultivate support within elements of the LVF, brought serious violence back to Belfast’s streets in the summer of 2000. Although most of the UDA’s brigades kept out of it, this feud took a total of nine lives. Among them were Bertie Rice, who had helped run Billy Hutchinson’s constituency office in North Belfast and Tommy English who had a long record in the UDA but had been one of the UDP’s negotiating team in the talks which preceded the Belfast Agreement. Dozens of UVF-supporting families were also terrorized out of their homes in the Lower Shankill area and Hutchinson had to take refuge in East Belfast for a time after his house was attacked. Adair and those who supported him within the LVF had been well warned in the pages of Combat of what their actions might lead to, not least their attempts to exploit the continuing impasse over the claim of the Orange Order’s Portadown district to hold its pre-twelfth July parade down the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road.12 Combat very clearly took its analysis of this issue from Hutchinson and David Ervine. The former, in a press interview, predicted more violence13 but Combat echoed his and Ervine’s view that loyalism would gain little from it. Forcing parades through what were now nationalist areas could become a losing battle, they argued. In its July 1999 issue, it went so far as to argue that the parades issue had implications for the peace process, whatever reservations loyalists had about talking to residents’ associations over contentious routes. The question of consent to disputed parades, it stressed, could not simply be dismissed: ‘Like it or loathe it, the Good Friday Agreement has enshrined the principle of consent within our governmental structures.’14 This judgement of the parades and its relationship to the broader peace process was one, it should be stressed, which the PUP had arrived at long before the Orange Order’s leadership. Combat, in successive issues in 1999 and 2000, stayed close to it while continuing with clear warnings to Loyalist dissidents along with an equally clear rejection of the case for any decommissioning of weapons ahead of the IRA acting to dismantle its own firepower.15
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It also upheld PUP’s continuing support for the essential pluralism of the peace process: The real debate is about whether Northern Ireland should become an exclusively Protestant state or whether the new form of government should reflect diversity of culture, tradition and religion in Northern Ireland, whether government should be for all the people or for a section of the people.16 Ominously less affirmative opinions of the Belfast Agreement were, however, beginning to be voiced. Two years after it was announced, a contributor from the UVF stronghold of East Belfast wrote in Combat of how his views had changed: Now the perception is that this Agreement has been paved with green, white and gold, concession after concession granted to appease the Republican movement with the ultimate aim of achieving decommissioning. Sadly, associates and I, who worked tirelessly in the Yes/No referendum to help create a better society, all now agree that if we were to vote today, it would have to be a no.17 The UVF discipline remained tight under its long-serving overall commander, John ‘Bunter’ Graham, but any hint of scepticism within its ranks about the peace process was always likely to fuel fears that it might return to the killing which it had carried out so relentlessly during the Troubles. Its image remained a ferocious one and there were those who felt this needed to be modified. Lennie Murphy and his sadistic gang of serial killers, the ‘Shankill butchers’ had never been fully under UVF control, though at the time of writing, the organization has brought out a publication which honours Murphy with the words: ‘For his Service to Ulster We Salute Him.’18 One of Murphy’s victims had been a UVF member. Noel, or ‘Nogy’ Shaw, who in 1975 found himself accused of killing a trusted lieutenant of his leader in an internal feud. Murphy beat and tortured the eighteen year old Shaw in front of an audience in the Lawnbrook social club then shot him in the head at close range. As he drank at the club bar he is reported to have ordered witnesses to clean up the mess of blood and brains from the floor. (Dillon, 1989, pp. 83–85; Jordan, 2002, pp. 189–92) Shaw’s body was later found by the security forces, dumped near the club in a laundry basket. In July 2001, Shankill Road UVF members unveiled and dedicated a new mural with Shaw’s name on it among others, honoured for giving their lives for Ulster. ‘A section of the terror group has turned its back on the blood-soaked legacy of the mass killer by honouring one of his victims,’ was how a Belfast Sunday newspaper put it19 but not everyone was convinced as sectarian tension mounted, especially at Belfast’s interface areas.
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A particularly vicious example of this was the Loyalist picketing of the Holy Cross girls’ primary school, situated on the edge of the Protestant Glenbryn area very close to the strongly nationalist Ardoyne. The attempted blockade of the school arose from a series of clashes between the two communities in the early summer of 2001, culminating in what Glenbryn Loyalists claimed was an attack on two men on a ladder who were putting up flags near the school for the July marching season. Serious violence occurred and a major police and army operation was needed to secure safe access to the school for parents and children. Some UDA members had moved from the Shankill into Glenbryn after the feud of the previous year and played a part in raising tension in what became a sickening confrontation, although the organization’s leadership never wanted to be drawn into it. Billy Hutchinson, who had a good record for calming interface tensions, was observed among the Glenbryn protesters and, after a blast bomb was thrown close to the children and their parents, he stated that he was ‘ashamed to be a protestant’.20 The Holy Cross crisis was accompanied by a summer of violence, not so much at Drumcree where a massive police and army operation averted serious trouble, but in Belfast itself and in towns like Antrim, Larne and Carrickfergus. In Belfast on the Twelfth, Ardoyne was again a flashpoint as Orange Lodges and bands from the north side of the city made their homeward journey in the evening past Ardoyne though certainly not through it, as republicans and their well-wishers in the overseas media were quick to claim. The morning ‘feeder parade’ to join the main event at Carlisle Circus passed off peacefully but at night police and soldiers had to face a wellorchestrated and prepared riot in which two blast bombs and 263 petrol bombs were thrown and 113 police officers were injured, along with ten local people. Leading republicans were seen using walkie-talkie radios and mobile phones at the height of the violence and to many it was fresh proof that communal violence was like a tap which could be turned on or off in republican areas. An atmosphere of worsening suspicion was not helped by the arrests in Columbia of three men with known Sinn Féin/IRA connections on suspicion of giving weapons and explosives training to antigovernment guerrillas, in return for cash. The summer saw killings by loyalist gunmen and on 12 October, the Secretary of State, John Reid, announced that, in his view, the UDA’s ceasefire no longer had any credibility because of its role in continuing sectarian violence. His statement did not extend to the UVF, though it too had continued to kill since the Belfast Agreement. In contrast to the UDA, its political wing at least had remained active, retaining its council seats in the 2001 local elections, but Billy Hutchinson’s premonitions about the politics of the peace process increased as the violence continued into the New Year of 2002. In a newspaper interview in late February, Hutchinson claimed, a little implausibly, that any involvement in violence had been a matter of people
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acting ‘not as members of the UVF but as individuals’.21 This sat uneasily with the UVF’s traditional claim to be a disciplined organization though its discipline had not been sufficient to rein in Lennie Murphy and his gang. However, Hutchinson stressed his continuing belief in the Belfast Agreement while arguing that working class loyalists had been frozen out of the process of implementing it and that the government in London and its ministers in Belfast had as their priority keeping the republican movement on board the peace process. He also voiced loyalist concern about what the new census might reveal on the demographic growth of the nationalist community.22 This last fear was a deep-seated one within loyalism, especially when it was linked to the plight of dwindling Protestant communities surrounded by a growing and politically confident nationalist population. In another violent summer in 2002, a small and ageing Protestant community in Cluan Place in East Belfast found itself trapped in a brutal eruption of sectarian violence. It was an easy target for attack from the nationalist Short Strand housing estate which, situated on the periphery of the solidly loyalist east of the city, had always been vulnerable to loyalist onslaughts in times of tension. At the height of a weekend of violence, on the night of Sunday, 2 June, republican marksmen climbed on to the ‘peace line’, well built by the security forces to divide Cluan Place from the Short Strand and opened fire with live rounds. The same happened on the following night and fire was returned by the UVF while angry loyalist crowds blocked the Lower Newtonards Road to deny Short Strand Catholics access to shops there, including a pharmacy. Combat adopted the cause of the embattled Cluan Place residents and brought out a booklet dramatizing their predicament. Gerry Adams, while insisting that it was primarily the Short Strand that was under siege, added in a press statement: ‘I also have to admit that people living in Cluan Place and other small Protestant enclaves have also been subjected to violence of a totally unacceptable kind.’23 East Belfast was one area of the city where the UVF heavily outnumbered the UDA and it was widely accepted locally that they had played a part in the Short Strand violence. David Ervine had said, the previous month, that the UVF ‘may be rearming’24 but few thought that there was any real need for them to do so. Ervine, as a local councillor and Assembly member, knew how dangerously the situation could escalate and used his influence to try to defuse it. He told the press that he would impress on ‘loyalist paramilitaries’ by which he meant the UVF, the vital importance of not being guilty of any first strike and claimed that they were listening to him.25 The Short Strand storm died down without fatalities but interface areas in Belfast and elsewhere remained tense. A helpful role was played by the new Loyalist Commission on which paramilitary representatives sat alongside Protestant clergy. On 15 June, it issued an appeal for calm in flashpoint areas but stressed the importance of ‘republican reciprocation’ to any Loyalist
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initiatives.26 In a fuller statement in early September, the Commission repeated its June message but insisted that ‘loyalist paramilitaries admit to being involved in interface trouble but only in a defensive capacity’.27 The remainder of 2002 was dominated by a brutal power struggle within the UDA and by the government’s decision to suspend the Stormont Executive in response to claims of a republican spy ring operating within it. There were also rumours that the UVF was planning to end its contacts with General de Chastelain’s International Commission on Decommissioning. Billy Hutchinson had acted as the organization’s interlocutor to the Commission but his withdrawal from this role was announced early in 2003. The PUP argued that this was a necessary response to the Stormont suspension as well as continued IRA gunrunning and targeting of loyalists. Combat justified the UVF’s decision in a two-page article entitled ‘Crisis in the Peace Process’ and also ran a statement from the Protestant Community Workers’ Association in which this body announced its withdrawal from all cross-community groups.28 Speculation had also built up regarding structural changes within the UVF and whether its former ‘Provost Marshal’ in charge of organizational discipline, Norman Sayers, was to assume the overall leadership. This, however, was denied at the time of his death in March 2003. His funeral procession on the Shankill Road was a major loyalist event and Combat published many tributes to him. The year as a whole was not a good one for the UVF. A series of newspaper articles made damaging allegations about its criminality, especially within its unit in North Belfast’s Mount Vernon estate and in November’s Assembly elections Billy Hutchinson lost his seat. Although Hutchinson was not involved in any criminality his position had been undermined by reiterated press claims that the Mount Vernon unit was out of control and that its members were locally known as the ‘untouchables’ because of their past relationship with Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch who had run some of them as informers. These men, one Belfast newspaper claimed, had been allowed to kill with impunity because of their value to the Branch and it connected the unit to a series of still unsolved murders, including that of twenty-two-yearold Raymond McCord in 1997.29 At the time of writing, a report into these allegations is still awaited from the office of Nuala O’Loan, Ombudsman to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Two former RUC detectives, Johnston Brown and Trevor McIlwraith, have also supported the allegations.30 In late April of 2004, an International Monitoring Commission (IMC) report made damaging criticisms of the continuing criminality of both the UDA and the UVF and Peter Hain, the Secretary of State, imposed a £25,000 penalty on the PUP. Continued racist attacks, especially in South Belfast, were also blamed on UVF members, though the organization’s leadership disowned them and supported a strongly worded anti-racist leaflet widely distributed by the Loyalist Commission.31 In late May 2005, a further IMC
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report declared that the UVF remained active and violent and was still involved in organized crime.32 It was still possible for people of integrity to join the PUP while making it clear that they wanted no part of its UVF links. Mark Gordon, a respected pastor of the Shiloh Christian fellowship and active in the community in Bangor’s troubled Kilcooley estate, joined the party in the early summer of 2005. He claimed he could act as a force for moral good33 but its imagebuilding efforts were still dogged by the ever-present desire of some UVF units to glorify blatantly sectarian killings carried out by the organization. In August, members in Portadown dedicated a new mural to two of the murderers of the Miami Showband 30 years earlier34 while press allegations continued of UVF murders committed with police protection. For spokesmen like David Ervine who still felt a need to explain, if not always to justify the PUP’s paramilitary links, a new burden was the brutal resurfacing of the UVF’s feud with the LVF. Essentially this was unfinished business dating back to Billy Wright’s defiance of the UVF leadership almost ten years earlier. Claiming that a last warning had been given, Belfast units of the organization embarked on a series of four killings of men they accused of LVF allegiance. One of them, twenty-year-old Craig McCausland had, according to his close relatives, no paramilitary links despite a record of minor crime, but was shot dead in front of his girlfriend and two small children. Eighteen years earlier, his mother Lorraine had been battered to death by the UDA.35 Only hours before McCausland’s murder, another UVF victim, David Hanley, was shot at close range while walking his dog. He survived but was left blind and unable to walk. His attackers later admitted it had been a case of mistaken identity and he had not been the intended target.36 Apart from these killings, the UVF resorted, with minimal police reaction, to some massive shows of strength, notably in Garnerville in East Belfast, to overawe the ‘enemy’. Secretary of State Hain found himself under severe pressure to declare that the UVF ceasefire was over, but his response was to say that he would wait for the next IMC report.37 He did, however, make it known in Parliament that he was considering removing for another year the PUP’s entitlement to its Assembly allowances. David Ervine responded angrily to this, challenging the government to have him arrested and charged over any laws he was alleged to have broken. ‘The reality is, our record speaks for itself,’ he insisted, ‘our desires and wishes for Northern Ireland have been well laid out. It is against all the tenets of natural justice that people who are not responsible for what paramilitaries do are punished in this way.’38 His commitment to the peace process and the Belfast agreement was not an issue but hostile questioners could always target his party’s undoubted links to a still illegal organization. Ervine had more questions to answer in September of 2005 as Belfast experienced the worst violence it had seen in years over a postponed and
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contentious parade by the Whiterock district of the Orange Order. In July, they had reluctantly accepted a Parades Commission ruling re-routeing them away from a section of the Springfield Road which led them on to Workman Avenue. Hundreds of Protestants had been forced out of this street by republican violence earlier in the Troubles but it still held emotive symbolism for them as a parade route.39 In three days of rioting in response to the September parade again being re-routed, police and army units came under sustained attack, with petrol bombs and live rounds being directed against them. Few journalists covering events were in any doubt about UVF involvement in the violence and in Combat there was little attempt to deny this. It devoted much of one issue to a lavishly and luridly illustrated account of the September violence which was harshly critical of police tactics, in response to which it admitted that ‘local paramilitaries took over’.40 There was no need for the UVF to be mentioned by name and some press reports argued that the level of orchestrated street violence was also a tactic designed by it to disrupt police raids and arrests arising from the summer feud with the LVF.41 Some UVF members were fearful of where continued loyalist attacks on the police would lead to, especially as rumours spread that police homes might become a target. ‘That’s what the Provies used to do,’42 one anxious UVF member remarked to the press, but such attacks did not in fact materialize. What did, predictably in late September, was another IMC report which was damning in its comments on the UVF, just a week after the Secretary of State declared that the government no longer recognized the organization’s ceasefire.43 In fact, the September violence and the new IMC report were closely followed by speculation about moves by the UVF to ‘demilitarise itself”.44 This was premature and in late October, Henry McDonald co-author of a definitive book on the UVF was told by a spokesman for the organization that it had not been in contact with General de Chastelain’s commission for over four years and that it was not in any secret talks with the Dublin government. ‘Why should the UVF give up its weapons in order to facilitate Sinn Féin’s entry into government in Northern Ireland?’45 the spokesman asked, adding: ‘What possible gain is there for working class Loyalism in that?’46 Even prior to this, pressure had been mounting on the UVF to renounce its violence and embrace a political road and rumours circulated that the PUP at its annual conference would review its relationship to the UVF.47 The conference was held behind closed doors with the media excluded but in fact it made no decision on the UVF and the party’s links with it. Ervine later told journalists that ‘time and space’ were needed to resolve the matter and a printed statement affirmed the PUP’s commitment ‘to conflict transformation and processes that would empower and build a strong, vibrant and confident Loyalist community’.48
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The year 2006 began for the UVF with yet another IMC report accusing it of still being ‘an active, violent and ruthless organization, a continuing and serious threat to the rule of law’49 and further bloodletting by the organization confirmed this. In late May, while on bail during a trial in which he was the principal defendant, Mark Haddock, former UVF leader in the Mount Vernon estate in North Belfast, was lucky to survive a murder attempt.50 In August, UVF members were widely believed to have been implicated in the murder of a Scottish Orangeman outside a club in Tobermore where many loyalists had been drinking after a local band parade.51 Despite this and perhaps even because of it, the UVF leadership renewed talk of a phased ‘wind down’ of the organization’s military structure. A decision on this was taken in February by the six-member brigade staff leaders at a meeting in premises it owned on the Shankill Road. In a statement to a Belfast newspaper, they voiced their unease about the failure of some units to halt or even condemn drug dealing and they alluded to the Mount Vernon unit as a liability which would have to be disbanded.52 A brigade staff source went further, saying: The UVF is going out of business because there is no need for it any more. The IRA’s war is over, republicans have accepted the principle of consent. It doesn’t make sense to go on.53 The same source was emphatic over the issue of arms decommissioning but he spoke of weapons going ‘into deep freeze as a reassurance for those worried about future events’.54 Members, he told his interviewer, would have three choices: to go into full-time politics with the PUP, into community work in their areas or simply to get on with the rest of their lives. Extraordinarily for an organization with its military ethos, graphic images of which dominated every issue of Combat, he stressed that ‘there will be no more military parades, no firing over bonfires on 11 July, no more displays of arms and militaria’.55 Close observers of the UVF found this promise hard to credit and the marching season of 2006 saw its full complement of parades by the organization. However, at the July parade in memory of Trevor King, killed by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in 1994, there was, for the first time, neither firing party nor armed honour guard.56 Another senior UVF spokesman took up the same themes in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph which Combat reprinted in full in its summer issue. The UVF, he declared, had been the first loyalist organization on the stage and would be the last to leave. Decommissioning was not a word that belonged in its vocabulary. He stressed that there would be no final decisions on its future until after the 24 November deadline set by the government for the reconstitution of the Assembly and Executive created by the Belfast Agreement. He accepted the extent to which the
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republican movement had changed but denied that the IRA no longer existed, adding: At this stage, the threat is not military. It has been said before that war is politics by other means. The republican movement used that in the inverted sense, that politics is war by other means.57 The interview broke new ground, and it was followed by David Ervine’s announcement that he hoped to sit on the UUP’s benches at Stormont when the Assembly was reconvened. This would have created a unionist grouping of 25, larger by one than Sinn Féin and under the Assembly’s d’Hondt rules, would let them claim three ministerial positions with Sinn Féin getting only two. Few thought Ervine would have made this move without reference to the UVF and later in the year he told a journalist that he had never formally resigned from it nor had been asked to do so.58 The reaction from other parties was predictably hostile but if Ervine had been able to go ahead with his decision, it would have aligned him directly with a party which still supported the Belfast Agreement and the institutions so laboriously set up under its authority. His cooption within the unionist ranks, however, required, under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act of 2000, the sanction of the Speaker of the suspended Assembly, Eileen Bell. After taking legal advice, she ruled Ervine’s action and Unionist endorsement out of order on the grounds that a UUP/PUP grouping could not be regarded as a single party under the legislation’s terms.59 With the Blair government’s 24 November deadline for re-activating the Stormont Assembly and Executive drawing closer, some commentators regretted a legal decision that would isolate Ervine. He made it clear, however, that he and his party still wanted to see a full restoration of devolved government and that he would take part in all-party talks in Scotland which were intended to prepare the ground for this. Much of the UDA had been corrupted by its control over sizeable loyalist areas of Belfast before the Agreement and the period after it was signed saw the movement descend into even worse criminality and brutal power struggles. There was little scope for men such as Jackie McDonald, Gary McMichael and Sammy Duddy to make their case for loyalism’s need to respond politically to an altered situation created by the Agreement. McMichael, despite his own and the UDP’s failure in the June 1998 Assembly elections, clung for a time to the hope that the UDA could continue its support for the Agreement. In May 1999, amidst mounting suspicion that UDA members had been involved in some of the ‘flag of convenience’ loyalist killings in response to Billy Wright’s death, he stressed that the leadership was ‘still committed to the peace process, so I don’t see how that can be reconciled with allegations that it is linked to this random violence’. He
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reiterated that the UDA ‘will not have any relationship with people who are engaged in violence to oppose the peace process’.60 There was arguably little more he could do than condemn violence over which he had no control and his credibility as a UDA political spokesman crumbled away once Johnny Adair was released from prison in September 1999 and embarked upon his reckless bid for overall power within the organization. Part of Adair’s strategy for achieving this was to align himself with Portadownbased elements of the LVF in their ongoing feud with the UVF. Yet on his release, John White told disbelieving journalists that Adair would be doing cross-community work and thanked him for ‘his role in the peace process since its inception. Mr Adair has given unvarying support for the peace process’.61 White’s sinister and manipulative relationship to Adair became increasingly apparent yet he also seems to have seen the value in cosmetic political terms of a UDA gesture on arms decommissioning when the IRA was under strong pressure to do just this. The Inner Council responded to his promptings by at least agreeing to talks with General de Chastelain’s International Commission on Decommissioning in December 1999. These were attended by the UDA’s brigadiers, including John ‘Grugg’ Gregg of South-East Antrim. He had never been a real convert to the peace process or the Belfast Agreement, supporting the latter, he subsequently told the author, only so that his friends could get out of prison.62 Adair, however, appeared at this time to accept White’s arguments and later told the author: I did accept the view that loyalists should bring about an act of decommissioning. This was in order to put the republicans under pressure and help to speed up the dragging peace process.63 Even with Adair’s support, White faced trouble talking round the brigadiers on any UDA arms initiative. What really aborted it, however, was the announcement by the Stevens inquiry that it would be passing on to the Director of Public Prosecutions the names of UDA members it believed to have been implicated in the 1989 murder of the lawyer Pat Finucane. Both White and Adair were adamant that this would end any UDA debate on the arms issue. It was their response to the way they, and many more loyalists, felt republicans had invested Finucane with special, even iconic, status at the very moment when Northern Ireland was being urged to shake off the burden of its immediate past.64 The Finucane case, they also felt, was part of a strategy by Sinn Féin and its allies to press for publicly funded inquiries on a selective basis and involving mostly victims from within their own community. Bizarrely, Adair continued to talk to the media of his support for the Belfast Agreement and the peace process, even as he blatantly drove up tension within loyalism by his provocative appearance at Drumcree in July 2000. There was, too, his role in the events which led to a spate of killings
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involving his C Company of the Lower Shankill UDA and the UVF in the summer and autumn of that year. A UDA/UVF truce in November ended the feud but the year 2000 had also seen sustained pipe and firebomb attacks on Catholic homes in Belfast and beyond, in towns like Carrickfergus and Larne where UDA influence had grown significantly. Pastor Jack McKee, a well-known evangelical preacher who had for long worked in the Shankill area, thought the truce would hold and claimed that both the UVF and the UDA were ‘committed to the ceasefire and the peace process. The present feud had nothing to do with the peace process’.65 Not everyone was so sure and Jackie McDonald, in April 2001, made it clear that the Belfast Agreement had lost whatever support it might once have had from the UDA. ‘Most of us were sceptical about this agreement from the start and all six UDA brigades are against it now, but we do want peace’.66 The year 2001 proved to be one of worsening tension with UDA members, especially young ones, involved in much interface violence and attacks on Catholic homes in Belfast and North Antrim. There was also the ugly, and for loyalism deeply damaging, picket of the Holy Cross girls’ primary school in North Belfast which began in June and dragged on into the following year. In the midst of these events, new council elections served to emphasize the political cul de sac which the UDA had reached. The UDP by this time had virtually ceased to exist. It had held no area or branch meetings for nearly two years and it failed to register its few candidates in time for them to stand under the party’s name.67 Gary McMichael and David Adams in Lisburn, as well as Frank McCoubrey and Tommy Kirkham in Belfast had in fact enough support to be re-elected but had to sit as independent loyalists. There was little reaction to this fiasco from the UDA’s membership. The UDP’s demise to leaders like Jackie McDonald was less important than the UDA having a voice on the Loyalist Commission. Formed at the start of 2001, the Commission’s remit was to provide a forum for paramilitary spokesmen, community activists, representatives of the Orange Order and Protestant clergy. There were early indications that the Northern Ireland Office would listen to its views and McDonald took a positive view of the role it might play. Questioned about the commission’s potential he told journalists: They are pooling their views and aims together. Look, everyone wants peace, nobody wants to go back to war. Everybody’s got a family. We want a normal society for our children. And we went to play our part in that, through politics.68 Even the ubiquitous and vulpine John White continued to talk about the merits of peace and on Johnny Adair’s second release from prison in May 2002, he insisted that Adair ‘would make a positive contribution to the
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peace process’.69 Few were convinced. The hero of the hour was then driven in a noisy cavalcade of cars back to his home in Boundary Way on the Lower Shankill for a celebration street party. Cheers greeted Adair’s unscripted remarks to the gathering: In the last couple of years we have started feeling as if we were wrong. We weren’t wrong. Them people [the UVF] started the feud. We defended our people. We need to get it into our heads that we weren’t wrong and we need to get fucking out of this wee square and get into that Shankill Road where we belong.70 Extraordinarily, two weeks later, a smartly suited Adair joined the Loyalist Commission for a special meeting in East Belfast with the Secretary of State, John Reid. He, in a subsequent statement, did not refer to what, if anything, Adair had contributed by his presence at talks intended to lower sectarian tension. In fact, Adair was preparing the ground for a personal takeover of the UDA. Analysed in detail elsewhere71 this ill-fated venture took more lives and brought about his own isolation within the UDA as well as his return to prison in early January 2003. A month later came the expulsion of his family and remaining supporters from both the Lower Shankill and Northern Ireland. It was achieved via a show of strength by mainstream UDA members incensed at the murder of John Gregg, which they blamed on Adair. By this time, police had raided Stormont, claiming confidential documents were being copied and removed by Sinn Féin for its own use. Amidst claims of an IRA spy ring at work within the Executive, unionists called for Sinn Féin’s expulsion from it and the Executive was once again suspended. The political vacuum this created had the potential to be dangerous but at least killings because of the UDA’s power struggle had stopped for the moment. Questions had been put to both John Reid and his successor Paul Murphy about whether any credence should still be accorded to the UDA’s claims to be on ceasefire but on Saturday, 22 February 2003, the organization called a press conference at an East Belfast hotel. Publicized, perhaps inappropriately, as the John Gregg initiative, a statement was read out promising that the UDA ceasefire was still in force and would continue for the next 12 months. Brigadiers stayed in the background and journalists’ questions were handled by Sammy Duddy, Tommy Kirkham, Frank McCoubrey and Frankie Gallagher. They all stressed that they spoke for the Ulster Political Research Group but they ruled out any disarming by the UDA until the IRA had demonstrably disposed of its own firepower. Internal restructuring was promised as well as mechanisms to monitor the ceasefire. The statement also stressed ‘the intention of the Inner Council not to have a public face any more’ as well as the UDA’s intention to work to reduce trouble at interface areas.72 It also offered an apology for the
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involvement of members in drug dealing but it finished by asserting that ‘the Ulster Defence Association will always be the last line of defence’.73 The statement received a guarded welcome from much of the media with many seeing it as proof of Jackie McDonald having some real control of the Inner Council. Sammy Duddy agreed with this view: ‘He’s the main man now, he’s got the seniority and the respect. We need a leading figure and Jackie fits the bill. He’s widely seen as a father figure and the voice of reason.’ He added, on a more personal note: ‘He’s got my support, no question of it. I just want to do a bit of good before I kick off this mortal coil. I’m fifty seven years old and I’ve seen it all. We’ve got to go forward. There’s no other way.’74 Recent events, however, had left unsettled scores. In June of 2003, UDA gunmen killed again, targeting Alan McCullough, a twenty one year old who had paid the price for his hero worship of Adair by having to join his family in exile in Bolton. He was lured back to Belfast and shot dead in midJune. Mo Courtney, once a brutal lieutenant of Adair who had rearranged his loyalties at the end of 2002, is now on trial for this killing, though a senior south-East Antrim UDA member was also involved in it. At least the attempt by the ousted ‘Bacardi brigadier’ Jimbo Simpson, to win back command of the UDA’s North Belfast brigade in October was foiled without bloodshed, thanks to prompt action initiated by McDonald. Even so, incidents like this and the McCullough murder made many people wary of the UDA’s claims to be seeking a purely political role for itself. Neither was the organization’s image helped by an ill-judged boycott of the Sunday World newspaper, embarked upon in March of 2003 because of its allegedly anti-Loyalist bias. In fact, the paper was at least as hostile to the IRA, if not more as it was towards paramilitary loyalism. The issue was resolved after direct contact between the paper and the UDA, but not before death threats were issued against its editor Jim McDowell who had responded defiantly to the boycott.75 In late February of 2004, the organization announced a further extension of its ceasefire and later in the year, the Secretary of State announced his recognition of the leadership’s peaceful intent and readiness to move away from a paramilitary role. This was despite a damaging report by the Independent Monitoring Commission early in the year which declared that: We have no doubt that the UDA remains involved in paramilitary assaults and shooting and in exiling people from Northern Ireland. We are satisfied that many of these activities are known to the UDA at ‘brigadier’ level and so to the Inner Council.76 The Secretary of State’s guarded optimism was in fact much influenced by rumours of a new UDA statement.
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This came at a Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Rathcoole attended by over 2000 people. A paramilitary colour party was present but the announcement was read out by Councillor Tommy Kirkham. While it offered a predictable justification for the UDA/UFF’s part in what it claimed had been the defeat of the IRA, it promised a ‘wait and see’ attitude on republicanism’s intentions. From there the statement broke new ground by its assertion that We have new enemies within the loyalist community: they are poverty, social deprivation, injustice, drugs, crime, inequality and disparity. We intend to redouble our efforts into fighting these issues on a daily basis. From today we are prepared to move into a process, our commitment to it will be to work towards the day that there will no longer be a need for the UDA and the UFF.77 This statement was something less than an endorsement of the Belfast Agreement but it was at least a signal that powerful voices within the UDA felt they could publicly make the case for it to find a political road. One of these was Jackie McDonald. By this time, his seniority on the Inner Council was widely accepted, especially after the events of late 2002 and early 2003 when he had shown himself ready to face down Johnny Adair. The latter was no longer a threat despite his reiterated promises from prison that he would return to lead the UDA and despite a melodramatic but brief reappearance in Belfast and Portadown after his release from prison and arrival in Bolton, under tight security, to join his family and remaining supporters. To bring the UDA back to any sort of political road and even to a restatement of support for the aims of the Belfast Agreement, McDonald had little choice but to move against leading figures within the organization who were increasingly behaving as if they had no accountability to it. One of these was Jim Gray, a preposterous but vicious brigadier in East Belfast who had attained this position almost certainly through complicity in the murder of his predecessor, ‘Ned’ McCreery, in 1992. Nicknamed ‘Doris Day’ because of his permatan, dyed blond hair and taste for jewellery and pastelshaded sportswear, Gray was void of any ability to contribute to political debates on loyalism’s future. He was content to hold court in the Avenue One bar from where he ran East Belfast as a personal fiefdom in which hand-picked thugs acted on his behalf. Their role was widely known to be to maximize the proceeds from drug sales, which served to finance Gray’s addiction as well as his lavish lifestyle. McDonald was criticized for being slow to act against Gray but he bided his time until late March 2005 when he got the decision he needed from the Inner Council to ‘stand down’ the East Belfast brigadier. Ominously, Andre Shoukri, another equally flamboyant and corrupt figure, who had risen by default to command in North Belfast, voted against the Inner Council majority. He
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argued disingenuously that Gray’s future was a matter for his own brigade to decide. Soon afterwards, Gray was arrested on serious money-laundering charges. Pressure grew upon the UDA leadership to act against corruption and to move the organization away from crude paramilitarism, especially after the IRA statement of 28 July, which announced a formal end to the organization’s armed struggle and called upon all members to take part only in political activity in furtherance of the republican cause. Gray, to the surprise of many, was released in September on strict bail conditions. Questions were asked about this, since the UDA clearly had good reasons to silence him before he told the police any more than it was suspected he already had. There was also the belief in the minds of some Inner Council members that he had developed plans to take the East Belfast brigade out of the organization altogether. Barely three weeks after his release, however, Gray was shot dead. His killing was an almost casually brutal business, carried out in the Clarawood estate in East Belfast by a lone gunman as children played in the street in front of his brother’s house.78 Only a handful of people attended his funeral79 and a macabre street party with a bonfire was held in the Tullycarnet estate in East Belfast, to celebrate his death.80 A new IMC report, published on 19 October, had not had time to explore what lay behind Gray’s murder but it stressed the UDA’s continued involvement in sectarian violence and organized crime. Inevitably, the report had much to say about the rioting of the previous month, prompted by the enforced re-routeing of the Orange Order’s Whiterock parade in West Belfast. It laid much of the blame for this violence on the UVF and, indeed, at the height of the trouble there had been press reports of the UDA trying to distance itself from it. Andre Shoukri, who had his own priorities in North Belfast, was even reported to have clashed with UVF representatives at a meeting of the North and West Belfast Parades and Culture Forum when he warned them to use their influence to wind down destructive communal violence.81 Shoukri’s enemies within the UDA often spoke of him behind his back as a ‘ceasefire soldier’. He grew up with his brothers Ihab and Yuk on the fiercely loyalist Ballysillan and Westland estates and was just 17 at the time of the 1994 ceasefires. His swarthy good looks, stylish dress sense and prowess at martial arts earned him almost a cult following but he also had a serious conviction for assault and took enough of a role in localized sectarian violence to earn Johnny Adair’s favour. This was instrumental in his emergence as the UDA’s North Belfast brigadier in May 2002, but he was quick to reorder his loyalties as Adair became isolated in his bid for overall power at the end of that year. A brigade command, it soon became apparent, was for Shoukri a means to finance his addictive gambling and penchant for expensive cars and holidays abroad. A prison sentence arising from his arrest in September 2002
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for illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, removed him from the streets for barely 18 months, with his sentence rescinded by the Appeal Court in November of the following year although he still had time to serve on a lesser charge. On his release in March 2004, Shoukri was allowed to resume his brigade command amidst mounting press allegations of his involvement in protection rackets and intimidation of businesses in North Belfast and even close to the city centre itself. Action against Shoukri was simply a matter of time, since every week longer that he retained his North Belfast command represented an impediment to any Inner Council hopes of moving the UDA on to a political road. July 2005 saw a potentially violent confrontation between Shoukri’s men and McDonald’s South Belfast brigade in Sandy Row after pubs used by the two units had come under attack. Talks between Shoukri and McDonald defused the situation but tension remained. In early November, one Belfast newspaper was claiming that a ‘battle of the brigadiers’ was building up and it illustrated its report with samples of the crude ‘black propaganda’ which those loyal to Shoukri were directing against McDonald, whom it accused of being ‘wined and dined’ by the Irish President, Mary McAleese. This was despite some ill-judged remarks she had made earlier in that year about Ulster Protestants having prejudices analogous to those which had fuelled the rise of the Nazis.82 McDonald again moved cautiously. Like Shoukri’s most bitter opponents within North Belfast, he was wary of having him ‘taken out’ in the way Gray had been and preferred the police to move against him once they had a strong enough case. They finally did so on 8 November 2005. Their success owed a great deal to a courageous young woman who ran the Olde Strathmore Inn, previously known as the Bonaparte, in Belfast’s Cavehill area. She agreed to wear a concealed device to record Shoukri’s demands, backed by threats, for protection money from the bar’s proceeds.83 At the time of writing, she is on a witness protection scheme while Shoukri and his close lieutenant, John ‘Bonzer’ Borland, still await trial. Shoukri’s brother Ihab, already on bail over charges relating to membership of an illegal organization, was rearrested early in March 2006 in a large-scale police raid on the Alexandra Bar in Belfast’s York Road. Men in paramilitary uniform were arrested and a handwritten statement was confiscated by police which they claimed was going to be read out as part of a UDA show of strength. Part of this document declared that We must now take our fight into the political arena. However, this does not spell the end for the UDA. We want to reassure you all that the Ulster Defence Association is here to stay.84 Many of those arrested were held on remand but Ihab Shoukri was released, despite being in apparent breach of his own bail conditions. A trial of
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strength began soon after this between the Inner Council and the Shoukris’ North Belfast power base. Initially the former’s initiative backfired, partly because of Jackie McDonald’s absence through illness, but on Monday 24 April 2006, the Inner Council convened a big meeting in the Rifles’ Club on the Shankill Road. After a debate dominated by McDonald and Billy ‘the Mexican’ McFarland, the North Antrim and South Londonderry brigadier, a motion for the Shoukris’ expulsion was carried. A newspaper was told by a source present at this meeting that McDonald and McFarland had stressed that the Shoukris should not be killed ‘though there is no doubt that if push came to shove their execution could be arranged’.85 The Shoukris’ refusal to accept the decision of the April meeting and of subsequent Inner Council statements reaffirming it drove tensions to a high level in North Belfast. Arms were openly carried in large-scale confrontations on the Westland and Ballysillan estates but the re-arrest of Ihab Shoukri and the superior numbers of men whom the Inner Council could put on the street made good its authority. By early August, the crisis had passed, with the most conspicuous Shoukri supporters fleeing Belfast for safe havens in England, though some of them still have criminal charges to answer. This bloodless victory provided McDonald with an important breathing space. His good contacts with the Northern Ireland Office as well as with the Irish president and her husband prompted press speculation that he would push ahead with moves finally to disband the UDA, a pre-condition for the regeneration of ‘its’ areas through significant funds from both Dublin and the British treasury.86 McDonald and those close to him knew how much republican areas had gained since the IRA’s war had ended and even since its July statement of the previous year. Even so, not all UDA members were ready to see the organization become history. Soon there were reports that disbandment plans were on hold87 but the leadership still went ahead with the publication of a booklet in early October, entitled A New Reality. Put together largely by members of the Ulster Political Research Group in consultation with local people in loyalist areas, it began by setting out the need ‘for peace, reconciliation and the chance for a better future’ and admitting that ‘the UDA too have been part of the problem’.88 The UDA’s powerful South-East Antrim brigade, however, did not support this publication. After breaking away from the organization over the final move against the Shoukri brothers, it has developed its own agenda and produced a policy document, Beyond Conflict, arguably to pre-empt initiatives by the Belfast leadership.89 This brigade is rooted in some uncompromisingly hard-line loyalist areas and its brigadier is a secretive and ruthless figure who has acquired as his spokesman Tommy Kirkham, until recently a reliable supporter of the UDA leadership. The fact that Beyond Conflict sets a five-year timetable for demilitarization as well as an eight-million-pound budget to fund the process, has already alarmed politicians and community groups over how such a sum will be managed and spent.
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These developments were overtaken by the approach of the Blair government’s 24 November 2006 deadline for all-party agreement to re-activate the Executive and legislative institutions set up more than eight years earlier as a result of the Stormont talks. At St Andrews on 13 October, Mr Blair and his Dublin counterpart Bertie Ahern agreed to a set of mechanisms which could, just, clear the ground for Sinn Féin and the DUP, led by Ian Paisley, to share power in a reconstituted Executive. The UDA’s political failure since the original Belfast Agreement, as well as its own internal preoccupations, denied it any representation at those talks. The UVF’s political wing has stayed the course better. The PUP was at St Andrews, to back the intergovernment initiative and that long-serving and courageous optimist David Ervine has been supporting it since. At his party’s annual conference, he told delegates that ‘unionism is for the first time doing what is in its own best interests’.90 He claimed the St Andrews Agreement as a vindication of his party’s position since the 1994 ceasefires and urged his audience to ‘get on the streets and make a difference and not be afraid to deal with and talk about the UVF and the Red Hand Commando. Every day that passes is a day closer to the end of their existence’.91 The UDA too has leaders who are now prepared to talk of such a day coming for their organization. Like the UVF, they found political thinkers and activists who could look beyond the gun and worked with others to bring about, in April 1998, an agreement which ended a long war, though it could not totally end the killing which still arose from it or the bitterness which fuelled it. Working class loyalist disenchantment with that agreement became a reality which the UVF and UDA had to live with. The latter, in particular, could have done more to address this but most of its energy was drawn into a power struggle which has neutralized the element within it that had no contribution to make to any political process. If Northern Ireland is on the verge of another chance for real peace, those who came through the ranks of both organizations have every right to participate if they so choose. ‘Constitutional’ unionist parties, as Sir Reg Empey admitted in a commendably honest recent interview,92 used paramilitary loyalism throughout the Troubles. At the very least, they owe it a real political role if it is at last prepared to consign the gun and the balaclava to history.
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.
Warrior, 1996, No. 6. Guardian, 24 December 1997. Combat, February 1998. Gary McMichael, interview with author, 9 February 2000.
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5. Support the Progressive Unionists, Progressive Unionist Party election leaflet, Belfast 1998. 6. Sharing Responsibility, PUP Belfast 1985, p. 8. 7. Warrior, 1998, No. 12. 8. Irish News, 15 June 1999. 9. New Ulster Defender, 1998, Vol. 5, No. 5. 10. G. McMichael, interview with author, 9 February 2000. 11. Fortnight, December 1998–January 1999. 12. Combat, December 1999. 13. Irish News, 17 April 2000. 14. Combat, July 1999. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Combat, April 2000. 18. ‘The Fallen and the Brave: in Memory of Family, Friends and Comrades’, Belfast UVF Regimental Association, 2006, p. 16. 19. Sunday World, 15 July 2001. 20. Irish News, 7 September 2001. 21. Irish News, 26 February 2002. 22. Ibid. 23. Irish News, 6 June 2002. 24. Scotland on Sunday, 9 June 2002. 25. Irish News, 6 June 2006. 26. Irish News, 16 June 2002. 27. Irish News, 3 September 2002. 28. Combat, 2003, No. 11. 29. Sunday World, 29 March 2004. 30. Irish News, 10 August 2006. 31. Ulster Says ‘No’, Loyalist Commission, Belfast 2004. 32. Irish News, 21 July 2005. 33. Fortnight, September 2005. 34. Sunday World, 2 August 2005. 35. Guardian, 15 November 2005. 36. Ibid., also Sunday World, 7 August 2005. 37. Sunday World, 21 August 2005. 38. Irish News, 21 July 2005. 39. Sunday Independent, 18 September 2005. 40. Combat, 2005, No. 31. 41. Sunday World, 18 September 2005. 42. Ibid. 43. Irish News, 23 September 2005. 44. Irish News, 30 September 2005. 45. Observer, 16 October 2005. 46. Ibid. 47. Irish News, 7 October 2005. 48. Irish News, 17 October 2005. 49. Irish News, 2 February 2006. 50. Irish News, 31 May, 1 June 2006, also Sunday World, 4 June 2006. 51. Irish News, 31 July, 3 August 2006, also Sunday World, 6 August 2006. 52. Sunday World, 5 February 2006.
204 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.
The Northern Ireland Question Observer, 12 February 2006. Ibid. Ibid. Combat, 2006, No. 37. Ibid., No. 35. Irish News, 16 September 2006. Ibid. Irish News, 25 May 1999. Irish News, 15 September 1999. J Gregg, interview with author, 16 October 2002. J Adair, letter to author, 10 November 2004. See also Wood, 2006, p. 241. J White, interview with author, 10 February 2001. Irish News, 18 December 2000. Guardian, 3 April 2001. Irish News, 1 June 2001. Sunday World, 27 January 2002. Irish News, 16 May 2002. Magill Magazine, June 2002. Chapters 14 and 15 of Lister and Jordan, 2003, also chapters 21–24 of McDonald and Cusack, 2004 and also chapters 10 and 11 of Wood, 2006. ‘Ulster Political Research Group’, statement, Belfast, 22 February 2003. Ibid. S. Duddy, interview with author, 24 February 2003. Sunday World, 30 March 2003. ‘Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission’, Belfast, 2004, p. 17. Loyalist (Lisburn), 2004, Vol. 5, No. 12. Irish News, 13 October 2005. Irish News, 12 October 2005. Sunday World, 9 October 2005. Sunday World, 18 September 2005. Sunday World, 6 November 2005. Irish News, 9 November 2005, also Sunday World, 13 November 2005. Irish News, 8 March 2006. Sunday World, 30 April 2006. Sunday World, 3 September 2006. Ibid. ‘A New Reality: Loyalism in Transition’, Island Pamphlet Series, Belfast, 2006, also Irish News, 9 October 2006. Sunday World, 8 October 2006, also Irish News, 2 November 2006. Irish News, 16 October 2006. Ibid. Irish News, 12 June 2006.
10 The Belfast Agreement and Southern Irish Politics Catherine O’Donnell
Introduction Both the main political parties in the Republic have declared their interest in the eventual reunification of Ireland. Fine Gael continues to point to the fact that it was a Fine Gael-led government that declared the Irish state a Republic in 1948 and that the Fine Gael party is officially called the ‘United Ireland Party’. Fianna Fáil refer to the 1937 Constitution, for which it was largely responsible and which set out in Articles 2 and 3, the essence of the official constitutional position on Northern Ireland: the Irish nation extended across the entire island and the aspiration was for political unity. The issue of Northern Ireland has been subject to intense debate at different times since the outbreak of the Troubles in 1968 and has periodically been a feature in elections in the Republic. Moreover, it has been generally accepted that the main issue that divided Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael has been their differing positions on Northern Ireland. So the peace process of the 1990s, which, as will be demonstrated, has at its core the development in the Republic of a political and public consensus on Northern Ireland and which has a key role for the Irish government, has had a significant impact on the language, ideology and policy of the political parties in the Republic. In addition, with the relative successes of Sinn Féin at recent elections in the Republic, the peace process has brought a new dynamic to electoral politics in the Republic. This chapter will assess the implications for politics in the Republic on a number of different levels. First, the impact of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 on the ideology of the main political parties in the Republic will be evaluated. Has Fianna Fáil’s ideological standpoints, as expressed in the 1937 Constitution, been substantially altered by the Good Friday Agreement? Do the peace process and the Agreement of 1998 represent an endorsement of Fine Gael’s position on Northern Ireland which since 1969 concentrated on the principle of consent? Is the peace process a policy departure for the political parties in the 205
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Republic? These are some of the questions addressed in the first section of the chapter. Second, the chapter will discuss the language used by the political parties in the Republic in the course of the peace process and demonstrate that a key implication of the peace process has been the level of consensus that now exists between the parties on the issue. There are certain differences of nuances within this that will be addressed. Finally, in the last section, the electoral implications of the peace process for the Republic will be investigated. The extent to which and the manner in which issues relating to Northern Ireland and the peace process are political issues in the Republic will be evaluated.
Ideology and the peace process As already stated, the official position of the Irish state on Northern Ireland was contained in Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 Irish Constitution. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael also articulated the goal of a united Ireland as a party objective. Fianna Fáil: the Republican Party had always been much more vocal in its use of anti-partitionist language than had Fine Gael and it established the view of itself as more devoted to republicanism and to a united Ireland. The language used by the parties in their responses to the Troubles sharpened the positional differences and overshadowed the similar interpretations of the Troubles, Northern Ireland and the shared devotion to the long-term policy goal of unity. Fine Gael’s policy and rhetoric on Northern Ireland have been consistent and more unified than that of Fianna Fáil’s. Inspired by Garret FitzGerald and to a lesser extent Paddy Harte, Fine Gael’s position from the early 1970s onwards became centred on the principle of consent – that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland could not be altered without the consent of a majority of people there.1 This core point for Fine Gael was much scoffed at by Fianna Fáil, particularly under Charles Haughey in the 1980s (O’Donnell, 2003, p. 69). In contrast, Fianna Fáil’s response to the Troubles was to retreat to traditional republican language (despite attempts by Lynch in the early 1970s to encourage debate within the party about how unity might be achieved). The republican wing of Fianna Fáil succeeded in exerting a significant influence on the party’s position on Northern Ireland and the new concentration on unity by John Hume and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in the 1970s saw Jack Lynch articulate unity as the desired ultimate solution (particularly from 1971 onwards). As a result, Fianna Fáil avoided debate and reassessment on Northern Ireland (specifically on the principle of consent) – something embraced by Fine Gael through FitzGerald. In the 1980s, Fine Gael, under FitzGerald, also attempted to argue that the Republic needed to become a more obviously pluralist society if it was going to entice unionists into a united Ireland. This belief informed FitzGerald’s ‘constitutional
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crusade’ which advocated changes to Articles 2 and 3 and the removal of the restriction on divorce. It is important to remember that while acceptance of the principle of consent and the absence of overt republicanism were significant distinguishing factors for Fine Gael, the belief in a united Ireland as the ultimate end goal, a traditional interpretation of the Northern Ireland state and unionism were common to the two main political parties. A policy feature common to both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil since the outbreak of the Troubles has been the belief that a natural affinity existed with Northern nationalists and that the Irish government should act in the interests of the nationalist community in the North. From the early 1970s, Fianna Fáil argued that the key to a solution for Northern Ireland was to remove the reasons for IRA violence. It argued that if progress could be made at a political level towards unity then support for the IRA in Northern Ireland would be diminished (O’Donnell, 2007a, pp. 34–35). Fine Gael, on the other hand, concentrated on securing participation for nationalists at a political level in Northern Ireland together with a strong Irish dimension such as the Council of Ireland in 1973 as the means to undermine support for the IRA. This was the same principle that saw Fine Gael sponsor the New Ireland Forum in 1983–84 and sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. Fianna Fáil, under Charles J. Haughey in the 1980s, offered republican language as a political alternative to the IRA.2 Fianna Fáil’s articulation of traditional republican language, its argument that the reasons for IRA violence needed to be removed, its rejection of the principle of consent and continued preservation of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution meant the republican movement viewed it as the more favourable option when seeking to engage in dialogue with political parties in the Republic in the late 1980s. Fine Gael traditionally emphasized law and order and the protection of the State3 was critical of IRA violence and as such would have been less likely to open dialogue with the republican movement in the late 1980s or early 1990s (although FitzGerald claims he would have done so if he had been power in the 1990s).4 Fine Gael claims the peace process as a continuation of its approach to Northern Ireland since the outbreak of the Troubles. The Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, made this point succinctly in 2002 when he said: Fine Gael, supports the Good Friday Agreement because the principles underpinning it are the same principles that my party has enunciated and defended since its foundation. Quite simply, we have always stood for a settlement based on reconciliation, mutual respect, democracy and power sharing. Fine Gael, has always rejected the use of violence to achieve political objectives. We did so, long before this fundamental principle was universally accepted. We have always believed that unity can only ever be achieved by consent. Therefore, we are pleased that these principles are the bedrock of the Good Friday Agreement.5
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However, the inclusion of Sinn Féin in the political process is more easily attributed to Fianna Fáil policy than to Fine Gael’s. Fine Gael’s support for the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement has disguised the fact that the inclusion of Sinn Féin, the central feature of the peace process, represents a significant policy departure for Fine Gael. The acceptance by Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin of the principle of consent and their compromise agreement on North-South bodies and government in Northern Ireland with a united Ireland resigned to a long-term policy goal lends a lot of credence to the Fine Gael claim that the Good Friday Agreement reflects arguments that had been made by the party for many years. Yet ideologically the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement have endorsed significant elements of Fianna Fáil thought. For Fianna Fáil it was imperative that it be involved in the working out of the ideological principles associated with the peace process so that it could give support to those principles since they reflected the party’s evolving position. Fine Gael has also acknowledged the importance of Fianna Fáil’s involvement in the peace process.6 Fine Gael’s unilateral emphasis on consent was not able to command support from Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Northern nationalists or the public in the Republic. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin’s incorporation of self-determination, arguments relating to sovereignty and acceptance of two states rather than two nations on the island are the key ideological components of the peace process for nationalists and republicans. As such the ideological contribution by Fianna Fáil, in addition to Fine Gael’s championing of the principle of consent, is key to acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement by the Republic and its political parties. Since Fianna Fáil’s foundation in 1926, a priority has been a united Ireland. A number of principles established by the party’s founding leader, Eamon de Valera, remained central to Fianna Fáil’s position on Northern Ireland. Responding to the conclusion of the Boundary Commission in 1925, de Valera outlined his first principle in relation to Northern Ireland when he said ‘We may have to bow our heads for a time to the enforced partition of our country by a foreign power, but the sanction of our consent that partition can never have.’7 Fianna Fáil maintained that while it may recognize the reality of partition it was not responsible for it nor had it given its consent to it. In addition, Fianna Fáil, inspired by de Valera, maintained that the Irish nation extended across the entire nation and as such the people of Ireland were entitled to national self-determination. De Valera claimed that ‘the people of Ireland constitute one distinct and separate nation, ethnically, historically and tested by every standard of political science; entitled, therefore, to self-determination’.8 Another key point of importance for Fianna Fáil was its argument that no section of the Irish nation had a right to opt out of that nation. While de Valera had been willing to countenance a regional body at Stormont devolved from Dublin, he was not prepared to accept the right of unionists to secede from the nation. Thus, the
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integrity of the nation, as encompassing the island was paramount for de Valera and remains paramount for Fianna Fáil. In addition, a final component of Fianna Fáil’s position on Northern Ireland that dates back to the de Valera era is the poor understanding of unionism that the party (like Fine Gael) maintained throughout the Troubles. De Valera believed, in Dwyer’s view, that unionists could be ‘coaxed into a united Ireland by a combination of economic incentives and economic pressure’ (Dwyer, 1983, p. 75). Clare O’Halloran described the way in which de Valera and subsequent Irish leaders continued to hold traditional assumptions about unionism because their view that the British government was responsible for the partition of Ireland precluded any serious consideration of unionism (O’Halloran, 1987). Even Jack Lynch9 and Garret FitzGerald10 who had both encouraged debate within their respective parties on Northern Ireland, viewed economics as the greatest obstacle to unity. To satisfy both Fianna Fáil and Northern republicans these points had to be incorporated in the ideological makeup of any agreement on Northern Ireland. The introduction of self-determination through its amalgamation with the principle of consent was key to this process. For Fianna Fáil the peace process represented ‘a new development’ since ‘self-determination and consent were the twin-pillars’.11 The recognition by the British government of the concept of self-determination to be expressed across the island in simultaneous referenda represented a significant advancement for Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. The Downing Street Declaration of 1993 and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement contain a declaration by the British government that ‘it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish’.12 The exercise of national self-determination is now subject to the principle of consent but more important is the fact that it is exercised on an all-Ireland basis and within the republican and Fianna Fáil interpretation of the nation, the island as a whole. The inclusion of self-determination in this manner ensured the integrity of the nation remained intact and as such maintained a core Fianna Fáil founding principle. The important point for Fianna Fáil as stated by Ahern was that ‘we are entitled to say that the whole of Ireland belongs to the Irish nation in all its diversity’.13 De Valera’s distinction between recognizing and consenting to partition had long since translated into a contradiction between ideology and policy. As a result, the practical recognition of Northern Ireland as a political entity by Fianna Fáil in 1998 was less important for the party so long as an ideological commitment to the integrity of the nation remained. Maintaining a 32-county definition of the Irish nation together with an acceptance of two-states on the island (as opposed to two-nations) is the crucial formula adopted by Fianna Fáil over the course of the peace process
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and incorporated into the Good Friday Agreement and the reformulated Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution. In addition to this advance on self-determination, Fianna Fáil argued that the declaration by the British government had transferred sovereignty over Northern Ireland from the British government to the people. Bertie Ahern referred to the fact that the 1937 Constitution reflected the ideology of the leading 1916 Rising figure, P. H Pearse, who saw the Irish people as sovereign and called for the right of the Irish people to govern themselves without external interference. Ahern argued that the principle of consent was consistent with this because as a result of balanced constitutional change, the ultimate sovereignty on whether to remain in the Union or join a united Ireland will also be rested in the people of the North ... British territorial sovereignty over Northern Ireland will be gone. We will have helped to place sovereignty unequivocally in the hands of the people.14 Extending this reasoning Fianna Fáil also argued that the principle of consent amounted to ‘a self-limitation on the manner in which that right [to self-determination] is to be exercised’ and was in essence the Irish people’s right to decide their own volition.15 The political parties have also stressed the benefits for nationalists contained in the principle of consent because for the first time consent is now ‘a two-way process’ where nationalist consent for any future arrangement for Northern Ireland is required and the population of the Republic are also given a say.16 Relations between the Irish government and unionists have improved immeasurably over the course of the peace process and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader, Dr Ian Paisley, has attended many meetings with Irish government officials since his first meeting with Bertie Ahern in London on 29 January 2004. However, the building of favourable relations with unionists, while having the potential to spawn better understanding in the future, has not yet effected the political parties’ interpretations of unionism. As stated above, the ideological formula employed in the Good Friday Agreement saw nationalists refrain from accepting the existence of a separate nation on the island, they merely recognized two states. Therefore, the political parties in the Republic have concentrated on how the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process enable reconciliation and ‘strengthen the accommodation and co-operation between our two main traditions on this island’ (O’Brien, 2002, p. 202). Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have stressed the potential for economic prosperity in the Republic to entice unionists into a united Ireland at some point in the future.17 Both points illustrate the absence of progression within southern nationalist thought in relation to unionism.
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While we will see in the next section that the language utilized by Fianna Fáil in the aftermath of the Good Friday represents a new body of rhetoric for the party, the party’s key ideological positions have survived without major revision and were in fact incorporated into the Good Friday Agreement.
The language of the peace process In August 1969, the Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, refused a request by the leader of the Opposition, Liam Cosgrave, for a Dáil debate on recent unrest in Northern Ireland, as unwise.18 The 1973 general election also highlighted the absence of bi-partisanship when issues of security and Northern Ireland were central to debates between the parties. In the aftermath of the Sunningdale Communiqué later that year there was much discussion about the implications of Fine Gael’s acceptance of the principle of consent and apparent recognition of Northern Ireland.19 Throughout the 1980s the level of disagreement between the two main political parties on Northern Ireland was obvious at various points including the conclusion of the New Ireland Forum when Haughey departed from the cross-party position to emphasize unity (Arnold, 1994, pp. 220–21) and the Anglo-Irish Agreement when Haughey sent his deputy, Brian Lenihan, to America with the intention of undermining support there for the Agreement (Wilson, 1995, p. 246). In the course of the Brooke-Mayhew discussions in the early 1990s Fine Gael and Progressive Democrats members criticized the government’s lack of movement of Articles 2 and 3.20 These contentions at different points in time illustrate the controversial nature of issues relating to Northern Ireland since the outbreak of the Troubles and the lack of cross-party agreement on Northern Ireland. The peace process and the Good Friday Agreement have altered this. In contrast to the reception received in the Dáil to the two previous attempts at a solution for Northern Ireland, the Sunningdale Communiqué in 1973 and the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, the Good Friday Agreement did receive cross-party support when it was presented to the Dáil in April 1998. Advocating an endorsement of the Agreement, Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, described the constitutional implications for the Republic in a favourable light: The reformulation of Articles 2, 3 and 29 reflects modern, progressive republican thought that is truly pluralist and keeps faith with the inclusive tradition of Irish nationalism stemming from Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen. The nation is defined in terms of people, but people related to a specific territory, the island of Ireland.21 The then Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, endorsed the same interpretation: The nation is now defined in terms of its people rather than its territory. This new definition is in line with the maxim of James Connolly: ‘a nation, without its people, is nothing to me.’22
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Trevor Sargent, leader of the Green Party, hailed a ‘post-nationalist’ era ‘where identity and territory are no longer the defining ideas of state building’ to be evident in the Good Friday Agreement.23 In the period immediately after the Good Friday Agreement, a shared discourse around the theme of reconciliation emerged. For example, Bertie Ahern talked of a new vision of reconciliation for the island: The Good Friday Agreement is based on many of those founding principles. Irish history has provided us with many ideals, with many leaders and many visionaries. They, in their time, applied themselves in many different ways to their ideals, often at great personal cost. Idealism and vision today is also about building a new future. It is about accommodation, equality and partnership, and about new trust and reconciliation. It is about building a prosperous, inclusive Ireland that all of us would want to live in.24 Similarly, John Bruton stressed the important role of provisions within the Agreement in assisting a process of reconciliation. 25 Liz O’Donnell, the Progressive Democrats Minister of State, also emphasized support for practical measures of reconciliation. 26 The Fianna Fáil Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O’Donoghue, also commended the Good Friday Agreement to the Dáil. 27 Thus, the consensus among the political parties around the positive implications of the definition of the nation as encompassed in the Good Friday Agreement was evident straight away. The peace process and the Good Friday Agreement form the first initiative since the outbreak of the Troubles to gain cross-party support in the Republic and this is an important factor in explaining why it remains at the core of Irish government policy nine years later. ‘Post-Agreement Ireland’ has been described as ‘a new dispensation’ 28 and the main consequence of this for the political scene in the Republic has been the level of consensus that has developed on Northern Ireland. All of the parties in the Republic have given their support to the ideological reformulation involving consent and self-determination as enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement, and they continue to support the peace process. The main political parties also believe that the cross-party consensus on Northern Ireland will continue, that Northern Ireland policy will not change in the event of a change of government29 and that the Northern Ireland issue has in fact been settled. 30 This is the case because the political parties are not only in agreement on the ideological implications of the Good Friday Agreement but also in relation to the short-term and long-term goals for Northern Ireland. The Fianna Fáil manifesto in 2002 asserted the party’s priority to ‘secure lasting peace in Ireland through the
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full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement’ without ‘prejudice to the ultimate goal of achieving a united Ireland’.31 Thus while a united Ireland is the stated long-term objective, in the immediate term Fianna Fáil members state that the aim is to fully implement the Good Friday Agreement and since 2002 the goal has been to restore devolved government to Northern Ireland. 32 Fine Gael has given its support to this approach and as such it has cross-party support. Former Fine Gael leader, Michael Noonan, has stated that a united Ireland is not an ‘active’ policy issue for the party but clearly this remains that party’s long-term objective. 33 For the first time since the start of the Troubles, there is now the basis for cross-party agreement on the short-term as well as the long-term goals for Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement has also transformed the role of the Irish government in Northern Ireland politics. Again, there is a shared view among the political parties as to the role that the Irish government now ought to play in relation to Northern Ireland policy. In the aftermath of the AngloIrish Agreement, the Irish government took on the role as representative of the nationalist community in the North with the British government supposedly playing a similar role in relation to the unionist community (O’Duffy, 2000, p. 404). This saw Fianna Fáil-led governments in the 1990s represent nationalist interests in talks with the British government and from 1993 onwards put the conditions in place that made an IRA ceasefire possible (The 1993 Downing Street Declaration and commitments in relation to the removal of the broadcasting ban for example).34 However, in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael view the role of the Irish government to have changed. Both now agree that the Irish government should play a role in conjunction with the British government. Speaking in 2003 on the role of the Irish government in the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen described the ‘two governments as joint guarantors of the Agreement’.35 Former Fine Gael spokesperson on Northern Ireland in the Senate, Brian Hayes, has also referred to the changed role of the Irish government as a ‘guarantor for the Agreement’.36 Added together, the ‘new dispensation’ that has evolved in the Republic since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement has produced what can be termed as the ‘language of the peace process’. This has centred on cross-party support for the ideological alterations made to Articles 2 and 3, the peace process in general, the role of the Irish government as a ‘jointguarantor’ of the Good Friday Agreement and a shared set of short-term and long-term goals for Northern Ireland. For Fianna Fáil then, as the self-professed Republican Party, this new ‘peace process language’ has replaced its traditional anti-partitionist, unity-centric rhetoric but as was set out in the pervious section, the ideological formula set out in the
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Good Friday Agreement offers much comfort and compensating features for the party.
Electoral politics and the peace process Two issues concern us when thinking about what impact the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement has had on electoral politics in the Republic of Ireland. While Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have generally shared the same ideological perspective on Northern Ireland, the parties clearly emphasized contrasting short-term objectives and this was seen most clearly in the 1980s when FitzGerald and Haughey espoused different positions and rhetoric on the subject. The previous section demonstrated that the parties now all share the short-term goal of the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and continued commitment to the peace process. How then do the parties distinguish themselves on this issue and how does Northern Ireland feature in election campaigning? The second and related issue concerns the relative electoral successes by Sinn Féin in the Republic since the Good Friday Agreement. These points are related because the presence of Sinn Féin has impacted on the parties’ references to Northern Ireland at election time. As the previous section demonstrated, a crucial development over the course of the peace process has been the establishment of an almost unanimous political endorsement, by the parties in the Republic, of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. The dynamics of political competition have meant, however, that cross-party support for the peace process or more specifically Sinn Féin’s centrality to it has been challenged from time to time. As a result, the parties have distinguished between rejecting Sinn Féin as suitable for government in the Republic and their continued support for the peace process and Sinn Féin’s right to be part of devolved government in Northern Ireland. It would be wrong to suggest that the issue of Northern Ireland is no longer an electoral one for the Republic. The peace process and the Good Friday Agreement have of course altered the way in which Northern Ireland features in elections. There is one point of continuity, however. As the short references to the 1973 election and political debates relating to Northern Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s at the start of the previous section demonstrated, differences amongst the political parties did not centre on the long-term policy goal of a united Ireland. Rather they disputed the most appropriate short-term policy approach. The application of a suitable short-term approach is still core for the parties and the electorate today. All the political parties agree that a united Ireland is the preferred long-term option. They also agree that the peace process and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement offer the only viable short-term approach. The area in which they compete relates to competency in the application of the
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short-term goal of managing the peace process and implementing the Good Friday Agreement. Sinn Féin has attempted to introduce movement towards a united Ireland into this competition37 but the other political parties have resisted this and have in fact argued that Sinn Féin in government in the Republic would be detrimental to the peace process.38 For example, in 2002 Bertie Ahern explained the problems with Sinn Féin in government in the Republic: ‘Parliamentary dependence on Sinn Féin by government through any formal or informal arrangement in the next Dáil would place an unacceptable burden on North-South and British–Irish relations.’39 Fine Gael has claimed that they are equally capable of managing the peace process and bringing about the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.40 Fianna Fáil, however, has a more obvious success record in this area to point to and the party has highlighted the collapse of the IRA ceasefire in the course of the Fine Gael-led Rainbow Government in 1996. Fine Gael rejects this claim and reaffirms the party’s successes with the Framework Document and in generally bringing Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin on board to their arguments relating to consent and reconciliation.41 However, for Fine Gael, the argument that the peace process and the principles enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement have their origins in its party policy has not accrued any real electoral kudos. In contrast, Fianna Fáil has successfully argued that it should be credited with the peace process and Bertie Ahern’s willingness to commit his time to Northern Ireland is generally recognized. In addition, Sinn Féin has repeatedly endorsed the pivotal role played by Fianna Fáil while, in contrast, highlighting the negative impact of the Bruton administration.42 Consequently, Fianna Fáil has experienced somewhat of an internal rejuvenation and while it is difficult to evaluate whether any electoral advantage has resulted from the party’s involvement in the peace process, the party has enjoyed a positive morale boast. Fianna Fáil Minister of State, Noel Treacy, put is as follows: We put that [Good Friday Agreement] to the people and of course the result was overwhelming and again that was a major boost for us as a party, boost for us as a republican organisation and it is one of the great strengths that we are able to put proposals, justify those proposals and achieve conclusions that really copper fasten the evolution of our country for the period ahead.43 Thus, Fianna Fáil has highlighted its competency in managing the peace process, backed up by this positive image, in distinguishing itself from the opposition parties on the issue of Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Fianna Fáil members have stressed the economy and the peace process as the two main indicators of a party’s suitability for government.44 This was seen in both the 2002 and 2007 general elections. The decision by Fianna Fáil, in particular, to place these two policy areas
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central to its government’s record is easily explained by their successes, with the Progressive Democrats, on these issues since 1997. One of the more obvious implications for the peace process for the Republic has been the arrival of Sinn Féin as a meaningful force in electoral politics there. The political parties have responded by attacking Sinn Féin and its record on criminality, for example, and this has challenged the political consensus in support of the peace process. While the political parties support Sinn Féin in government in Northern Ireland the presence of Sinn Féin in electoral politics in the Republic has seen an agreed rejection of Sinn Féin as a suitable government party there. In doing so the political parties have criticized Sinn Féin and while they have been careful not to attack the peace process, they have highlighted the problems and contradictions of the peace process. John O’Donoghue has dismissed the possibility of a Fianna Fáil/Sinn Féin coalition because if ‘something like that [Northern Bank Robbery] were to occur sure we’d be a banana republic’. He also referred to the continued existence of the IRA as a private army as another reason why Sinn Féin could not be in government in the Republic.45 Fianna Fáil Minster of State, Noel Treacy, has also stressed that there has to be ‘a period of purification, criminality has to be eliminated and not alone to be eliminated but be seen to be eliminated’ before Fianna Fáil would be willing to go into government with Sinn Féin but has argued that Northern Ireland is a ‘different environment, a different situation’ to that in the Republic.46 Fine Gael Senator, Brian Hayes, has also rejected Sinn Féin’s involvement in sovereign government and has said that because Sinn Féin is contesting elections with his party Fine Gael is willing to raise points such as Martin’s Ferris’ conviction in relation to an attempt to import arms in the Republic. Thus the suspicions held by the political parties in the Republic about Sinn Féin’s slow conversion to full democratic principles are clear yet Hayes47 and the former Fine Gael leader, Michael Noonan, like Fianna Fáil, have maintained that the Northern Ireland situation is a ‘special case’48 and as such Sinn Féin’s inclusion in government there should be encouraged.
Conclusion This chapter has highlighted three main implications of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement for the political scene in the Republic of Ireland. First, on an ideological basis, the chapter demonstrated the manner in which the positions of the main political parties in the Republic have merged. The influence of Fine Gael in advocating the principle of consent is important in understanding the reformulation of Articles 2 and 3 but the ideological input by Fianna Fáil which incorporated self-determination and the protection of the integrity of the nation is central to the final formula. This was also key to the endorsement of the Agreement by republicans and the public in the Republic. Similarly, Fianna Fáil’s concentration from the
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early 1970s on removing the reasons for IRA violence through movement towards unity via constitutional politics provide a policy link with the peace process which prioritizes Sinn Féin’s inclusion. Thus, while the Fine Gael narrative of the peace process places the party as central, some members admit that that the party would have been less enthusiastic about responding to the changes within the republican movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s than Fianna Fáil was.49 Others refer to the party’s suspicions about Sinn Féin, which are only recently beginning to subside.50 The ideological consensus that has emerged as a result of the Good Friday Agreement has been matched by shared short-term and long-term goals for Northern Ireland among the parties. In addition, a new language centred on these shared positions and almost unconditional support for the peace process is now common to all the political parties in the Republic. The issue of Northern Ireland is now believed to be settled and to have been made redundant as a political issue. Despite this contention, Northern Ireland is still central to politics in the Republic with members of both Fine Gael51 and Fianna Fáil52 stressing its high ranking in party priorities. It remains an important issue in electoral campaigns but in an altered way. The parties now compete over competency in the management of the peace process with Fianna Fáil having most success in arguing that it is the best party to continue with the peace process. The bigger political parties have rejected Sinn Féin as suitable for government in the Republic since it would have adverse effects on the peace process as well as British–Irish and US–Irish relations. Given the level of agreement about the peace process, it is not surprising that the main political parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, concur on the distinction between North and South in terms of justifying Sinn Féin’s inclusion in government in Northern Ireland but not in the Republic. They argue that the Northern Ireland Executive is not a sovereign government and does not have jurisdiction over defence and therefore Sinn Féin can be included in government there but not in the Republic where it would not be suitable for Sinn Féin to have access to decisions relating to security and defence. In addition, the Northern Ireland situation, as an exercise in conflict resolution, is a special case and therefore extraordinary measures may be employed. Despite the levels of agreement in favour of the peace process among the political parties in the Republic the presence of Sinn Féin as a viable electoral threat has meant that they have resorted to attacking Sinn Féin’s association with the IRA, criminality, punishment attacks, personation at elections and unusual fundraising activities. In turn, the parties have highlighted the shortcomings of the peace process which they continue to full-heartedly support but they resort to the above arguments to justify doing so. As well as demonstrating the impact which the peace process and the ratification of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 have had on the ideological
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positions of the parties in the Republic, their language relating to Northern Ireland, and Irish electoral politics, this chapter makes two further general points about the peace process and the Republic of Ireland. The first is to highlight the need to understand the peace process within an all-Ireland context. The first section of this chapter stressed the contributions by both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to the eventual ideological reformulation endorsed by the electorate in the Republic and in Northern Ireland in the Good Friday Agreement. Thus, the key function by the Republic’s political parties is clear here. In addition, the central role assumed by Fianna Fáil in bringing Sinn Féin along the road to democratic politics and negotiation is crucial to understanding the origins and direction of the peace process. The fact that the political parties in the Republic continued to give their support to the peace process enabled the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats coalition to continue to pursue the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Also, statements by the opposition parties that their policy on Northern Ireland, if in government in the future, would not be different to that in place now ensures that the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement remain the only policy option for Northern Ireland. The fact that the opposition parties in the Republic have not been advocating an alternative to the Good Friday Agreement in the way in which Charles Haughey argued for a process to transcend the Anglo-Irish Agreement, for example, has closed off support and space for a different approach. This has ensured that the Irish government, along with the British government, continues to stress a policy of fully implementing the Good Friday Agreement despite the problems that this policy has faced in recent years. Therefore, the support of the political administration in the Republic is crucial to the continuation of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process in general. The second general point made here relates to the importance of Northern Ireland as an issue in the Republic of Ireland. It is true that Northern Ireland has not generally featured in electoral politics in the Republic and this is even more evident since the Good Friday Agreement but this is not the full story when understanding how Northern Ireland remains central to politics in the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland and related issues feature prominently in news bulletins, current affairs radio and television programmes, tabloid and broadsheet news and commentary columns in the Republic of Ireland on a daily and weekly basis. While the political parties have prioritized the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process over the immediate achievement of a united Ireland, the commitment to a united Ireland remains alive for all the political parties in the Republic. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael remain ideologically committed to a united Ireland, something they believe can emerge in the long term from the Good Friday Agreement aided by growing economic strength in the Republic. Both parties are also clear about the importance of the issue of Northern Ireland as fundamental to their
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raison d’etre. While the electorate do not generally see Northern Ireland as an electoral issue, they demand a coherent and competent policy in dealing with and responding to day-to-day events in Northern Ireland. For example, some opinion poll data suggests that the public in the Republic were not satisfied with John Bruton’s record on Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the collapse of the IRA ceasefire in 1996 and the murder of Garda Gerry McCabe by IRA members in Limerick and Fianna Fáil used this to attack Fine Gael.53 This chapter demonstrates the way in which the peace process has impacted on electoral dynamics in the Republic. The historical distinguishing feature for the parties has been removed now that agreement on Northern Ireland has emerged. However, the entrance of Sinn Féin into mainstream politics in the Republic as a result of the peace process has added a new dimension to electoral competition. Thus despite the new ‘language of the peace process’ and an agreed ideological reformulation, Northern Ireland remains fundamental to party ideological and policy positions and central to electoral politics in the Republic.
Notes 1. Interview with Michael Noonan, 5 October 2006. See 1969 Fine Gael Document on Northern Ireland reproduced in Harte, 2005. See also Fine Gael Document by Dr Garret FitzGerald and Paddy Harte, ‘Ireland: Our Future Together’, Dublin: Fine Gael, March 1979, p. 4. 2. See response (to a submission by Robert McCartney, ‘The Unionist Case’) by Charles J. Haughey quoted in Mansergh, 1986, p.574. Former Fine Gael Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, has also talked about the different languages used by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil with the common aim to undermine IRA support, Interview with Dr Garret FitzGerald, 16 November 2006. 3. Interview with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. 4. Interview with Dr Garret FitzGerald, 16 November 2006. 5. Speech by Enda Kenny at the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, 27 November 2002, available at www.FineGael.ie, accessed on 8 November 2006. 6. A point made by a number of Fine Gael interviewees including Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. 7. De Valera, 6 December 1925 in Moynihan, 1980, p. 123. 8. As quoted in Fitzpatrick, 1998, p. 28. 9. See O’Donnell, 2007a, p. 42. 10. See FitzGerald, 1972. 11. Bertie Ahern, Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 449, Col. 1353, 22 February 1995. 12. As printed in Mallie and McKittrick, 1996, p. 381. 13. The Sunday Business Post 26 February 1995. 14. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 449, Col. 1355–56, 22 February 1995. 15. Irish Times 28 February 1995. 16. Bertie Ahern, Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 489, Col. 1029, 21 April 1998. 17. Interview with Jimmy Deenihan, TD Fine Gael, 25 October 2006; Interview with Tom Kitt, TD Fianna Fáil, 12 January 2006.
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18. See ‘National Archives of Ireland’, Department of the Taoiseach, File No. 2001/6/515. 19. O’Donnell, C. (2007) ‘The Sunningdale Communiqué 1973 and Bi-partisanship in the Republic of Ireland’, Working Papers in British-Irish Studies, No. 81, Institute for British-Irish Studies, University College Dublin, 2007. 20. See comments by Progressive Democrats member, Michael McDowell, in Irish Times 18 October 1990 and Fine Gael TD, John Bruton, in Irish Times 12, 14 December 1990. 21. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 489, Col. 1029, 21 April 1998. 22. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 489, Col. 1038, 21 April 1998. 23. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 489, Col. 1060, 21 April 1998. 24. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 494, Col. 8, 2 September 1998. 25. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 494, Col. 1036, 2 September 1998. 26. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 489, Col. 1092, 21 April 1998. 27. Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 489, Col. 1081, 21 April 1998. 28. Interview with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. 29. Interviews with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006; Michael Noonan, TD Fine Gael, 5 October 2006. 30. Interviews with former Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, 8 August 2003; Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006; Michael Noonan, TD Fine Gael, 5 October 2006. 31. Irish Times, 26 April 2002. 32. Interview with John O’Donoghue, TD Fianna Fáil, 7 February 2006. 33. Interview with Jimmy Deenihan, TD Fine Gael, 25 October 2006, Interview with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. See also speech by Simon Coveney, Fine Gael TD, MEP, at the Béal na mBláth Commemoration, 22 August 2004, available at www.FineGael.ie, accessed 8 on November 2006. 34. See chapter three of O’Donnell, 2007a. 35. Brian Cowen speaking on Hearts and Minds BBC1 Northern Ireland 12 June 2003. 36. Interview with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. 37. Sinn Féin has been attempting to initiate debate on Irish unity by, for example, bringing a motion on the topic before the Dáil in November 2005, See Dáil Éireann Debates Vol. 609, 2–3 October 2005. 38. Interview with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. 39. Sunday Independent 20 January 2002. 40. Interviews with Michael Noonan, TD Fine Gael, 5 October 2006; Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006, Jimmy Deenihan, TD Fine Gael, 25 October 2006. 41. Interviews with Michael Noonan, TD Fine Gael, 5 October 2006; Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. 42. Gerry Adams, Irish Times, 15 May 1997, see also Adams, 2003, p. 197. 43. Interview with Noel Treacy, TD Fianna Fáil, 1 December 2005. 44. Interview with Tom Kitt, TD Fianna Fáil, 12 January 2006; Interview with Conor Lenihan, TD Fianna Fáil, 16 November 2005. 45. Interview with John O’Donoghue, TD Fianna Fáil, 7 February 2006. 46. Interview with Noel Treacy, TD Fianna Fáil, 1 December 2005. 47. Interview with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006. 48. Interview with Michael Noonan, TD Fine Gael, 5 October 2006. 49. Interviews with Senator Brian Hayes, Fine Gael, 21 September 2006.
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50. Interview with Michael Noonan, TD Fine Gael, 5 October 2006. 51. Michael Noonan has claimed that ‘anyone interested in national politics (in the Republic) would have to have it (Northern Ireland) right up there at the top of their agenda’. Interview with Michael Noonan, TD Fine Gael, 5 October 2006. 52. For example, Interviews with John O’Donoghue, TD Fianna Fáil, 7 January 2006; Noel Treacy, TD Fianna Fáil, 1 December 2005. 53. In an opinion poll in September 1995, 58 per cent of those questioned approved of Bruton’s handling of Northern Ireland, however, in June the following year an opinion poll showed that 40 per cent thought that the Irish government did not reflect nationalist opinion strongly enough. See Marsh and Mitchell, 1999, pp. 19–21.
11 The United States and the Peace Process Adrian Guelke
No previous President of the United States of America devoted as much attention to Northern Ireland as President Clinton and, as was expected at the time of the 2000 election, his successor has not treated the future of Northern Ireland as a matter of the same measure of international importance. Nonetheless, there are good grounds for arguing that President Clinton’s engagement with the issue was more than simply a reflection of the personal interest in the problem of Northern Ireland that he had acquired while he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. Political circumstances during his two terms as President facilitated American involvement in a way that had not happened before and has not happened since. But this is not to discount the role that the American connection played in politics in Northern Ireland before Clinton came to power or, for that matter, after he left office. President Carter’s statement on Northern Ireland in 1977 was a watershed in ending America’s stance of non-intervention, while Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, played a part in bringing about the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985. Further, President George W. Bush has assiduously maintained his predecessor’s policy of assisting negotiations on the implementation of the Belfast Agreement. Thus, from the perspective of 2007, the most striking aspect of American policy towards the peace process in Northern Ireland has been its continuity, despite changing international circumstances. How is this continuity to be explained? And what light does it cast on the prominent role played by the Clinton administration in the early years of the peace process? Further, what are the implications of the story of the American connection for the wider debate over whether the uncertain course of the peace process has been affected at all fundamentally by events outside of Northern Ireland? To answer these questions, it is necessary to set out briefly the evolution of the American connection from an influence at the sub-state level to a factor at the intergovernmental level. American involvement at a societal level in the Irish question goes back to well before partition. Support for the Irish nationalist cause in the United States can be 222
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dated back to the 1860s when a group called the Fenians briefly occupied a portion of Canada to this end. Their scheme failed because of action against them by the American authorities who had initially turned a blind eye to their activities. However, consideration of the likely impact on America’s relations with Britain prompted the US government to ensure that these adventurers were arrested (Tansill, 1957, pp. 34–38). This established a pattern that broadly held up until the Clinton presidency, which was that no American government was willing to place in relations with Britain over the Irish question. Consequently, Irish-Americans were frequently to be disappointed by the stance that their government took on Irish issues. What no American government was able to stop was the flow of money from the United States to Ireland in support of political causes. And, later, in addition to money, arms were sent across the Atlantic. IrishAmerican support for the Irish nationalist quest for independence from Britain reached a peak immediately after the First World War. The AngloIrish Treaty of December 1921 caused divisions among Irish-Americans as it did among nationalists in Ireland. However, most of the prominent figures in the Irish-American community gave their support to the new government in the Irish Free State and consequently interest in the Irish question in the United States subsided. There was a brief flurry of interest in de Valera’s anti-partitionist campaign in the late 1940s. However, outside of Irish-America, the political impact of the campaign was slight. Irish neutrality during the Second World War was a factor in the lack of popularity of Irish causes for at least a decade after the war, especially as it could be argued that Ireland’s stance in the war, however comprehensible from the perspective of the security of the 26 Counties, had contributed to the deaths of American sailors in the Atlantic. By the time of the outbreak of the troubles in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, the memory of Ireland’s wartime neutrality had faded to the point that it was no longer a factor in the response of Americans to Irish issues. A wide network of organizations sprung up across the United States in response to the onset of violence in Northern Ireland. The most important was Irish Northern Aid or NORAID. It was founded at the start of 1970 by Michael Flannery. Flannery had been a member of the IRA during the 1920s. After a period of imprisonment, he had emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1927. NORAID quickly became the principal support group for the Provisional republican movement in the United States. Indeed, Flannery’s conception from the very outset was that NORAID would provide support for the Provisional IRA which had been formed in December 1969. He believed that the IRA’s border campaign between 1956 and 1962 had failed in part because of a lack of support for the families of those imprisoned for their IRA activities and he saw NORAID’s role as ensuring that funds would be available to the Provisional movement for this purpose. Though the sums of money that NORAID raised to send to Ireland were tiny in relation to a
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country the size of the United States, in the context of Northern Ireland they made a substantial contribution to the money available to support the families of prisoners. Another organization founded in the early years of the troubles that was influential through the course of the troubles and beyond was the Irish National Caucus (INC). The INC was formed in September 1974 by a number of Irish-American organizations to lobby in Washington. Initially, it was strongly influenced by NORAID. However, by the time of the 1976 presidential election campaign, it had developed an identity of its own. Under the leadership of Father Sean McManus, the INC became a forceful advocate of American diplomatic intervention in the conflict. It wanted the US government to put pressure on the British government to change its policies in Northern Ireland, policies the INC sharply attacked on the grounds that they violated basic human rights. Though the constant emphasis on wrongs done to the Catholic community in Northern Ireland underscored the INC’s nationalist sympathies, the couching of its arguments in universal terms contributed to the effectiveness of its message and its wide appeal. Nonetheless, formidable obstacles existed to the INC’s ambition to change American foreign policy on the Irish question. Britain was an important ally in the context of the Cold War. While the existence of a special relationship between the two countries tended to be emphasized more strongly in London than in Washington, few in the American foreign policy establishment questioned the centrality of the alliance to America’s security as long as the Soviet Union existed. The obvious objection to any American diplomatic initiative on Northern Ireland was that it would be bound to upset the British government, given its view that the problem was an internal matter for the United Kingdom, and thus damage an alliance that it was clearly in the American national interest to sustain. What is surprising in the light of these considerations is not that the INC made relatively little headway in achieving its primary objective of using the American government to force the British government to change course in Northern Ireland, but that it made any at all in the years before the end of the Cold War. The INC’s first major success was persuading the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Jimmy Carter, to issue a statement in support of Irish unity and expressing concern over violations of human rights in Northern Ireland a week before polling day. When Carter became President, he did not immediately follow up on this declaration and the content of the statement he eventually made on Northern Ireland in August 1977 was very different from what he had said as a candidate. Further, it did not reflect the influence of the INC. On the contrary, it stemmed from a grouping of prominent Irish-American politicians opposed to both NORAID and the INC. On St Patrick’s Day 1977, Senator Edward Kennedy, Speaker Tip O’Neill, Senator Daniel Moynihan and Governor Hugh Carey – collectively known as the Four Horsemen – issued a statement condemning the Provisional IRA
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and calling on Americans not to give money to the Provisional Republican movement. Following this initiative, the Four Horsemen had a meeting in June with Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, at which they pressed for a presidential statement on Northern Ireland. The actions of the Four Horsemen were part of a strategy of the forces of constitutional nationalism in Ireland represented by the major parties in the Republic and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Ireland for seeking American help in pressing a change of course on the British government in Northern Ireland. As well as simply representing the views of constitutional nationalists on the use of violence in Northern Ireland, the campaign against support for the Provisional IRA in the United States was designed both to make such an initiative more palatable to the British government and to help overcome inevitable opposition to America’s departure from a stance of non-intervention in the internal affairs of another country. Prolonged negotiations involving both the British and Irish governments followed Vance’s meeting with the Four Horsemen on the content of Carter’s statement. What emerged was a relatively pious and innocuous declaration. The statement condemned violence, expressed support for a political settlement involving the Irish government and promised American help with investment in the event of such a settlement. At the time, the statement had little effect on the British government’s policy in Northern Ireland, which was one of maintaining direct rule as the least unacceptable option for the government of the province. Nevertheless, merely the fact that the statement treated the situation in Northern Ireland as a legitimate subject of American foreign policy constituted a significant development, with potentially alarming implications for the British government of the further internationalization of the Northern Ireland conflict. From the British government’s perspective, worse was to follow that was to confirm the erosion of the non-intervention norm in relation to Northern Ireland, as well as the potency of the ethnic factor in American domestic politics. At the beginning of August 1979, the State Department announced that the sale of handguns to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC ) was being suspended in accordance with American policy of restricting the supply of arms in cases of the violation of human rights. A scandal over police interrogation methods in holding centres such as Castlereagh formed part of the background to the decision. But it also had much to do with American domestic politics and jockeying for position among different factions of the Irish-American lobby. This move was taken in part to pre-empt the holding of Congressional hearings on violations of human rights in Northern Ireland. Such a prospect loomed as a result of a deal done to persuade Mario Biaggi to withdraw an amendment to a State Department funding bill that targeted the sale of American guns to the RUC. Until he was forced to resign his seat in 1988 over convictions in the courts, Mario Biaggi, a Democrat from New York representing the Bronx in
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the House of Representatives, was the chair of the Ad Hoc Congressional Committee for Irish Affairs. This had been formed in 1977 at the initiative of the INC. Because of this association, the Committee was regarded with suspicion by the Irish government which viewed the INC as too prone to the influence of extreme elements, including supporters of the Provisional IRA. Its attempts to get official Congressional hearings on Northern Ireland were also opposed by major Irish-American political figures for the same reason. At the same time, the Four Horsemen were seeking to put pressure on the incoming Conservative government to adopt a different approach to the conflict in Northern Ireland from policy of continuing direct rule which the party had committed itself to in its manifesto for the British general election in May 1979. To the dismay of unionist political leaders who had expected the new government to adhere to the commitments in its manifesto, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, announced the launching of a fresh political initiative aimed at the restoration of devolved government in October 1979. As the entry of Bew and Gillespie in their chronology of the troubles underlines, this volte-face was widely attributed to the government’s concern over the American connection: 25 October [1979] In a move primarily designed to ease American pressure, and despite there being no political support for a new political initiative, Atkins announces that he will be calling a conference of interested parties to discuss possible paths to devolution. (Bew and Gillespie, 1999, p. 137) The attention given by government ministers to the American media during the course of the initiative was a further indication of the importance of the relationship with the United States. A particular concern was that the contest for the Democratic nomination between Carter and Senator Edward Kennedy would encourage further American intervention in Northern Ireland. However, the American connection was not the sole reason for a change of course by the government of Margaret Thatcher. Also significant was military dissatisfaction over the security situation in the wake of an ambush at Warrenpoint in August 1979 in which 18 British soldiers had been killed by the Provisional IRA. In the event, the 1980 elections in the United States did not have the consequences the British government feared. On the contrary, their outcome brought about a reduction of the influence of the Irish-American lobby in all its forms, while ideological affinity between President Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher gave fresh impetus to the special relationship. However, this did not mean a return to the conditions that had prevailed before Carter’s election in respect of the Northern Ireland problem. In particular, despite the urging of the British Prime Minister, Reagan did not disavow the State Department’s suspension of arms sales to the RUC.
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While Reagan was unmoved by the mobilization of Irish-American opinion in the United States as a result of the deaths of hunger-strikers in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland in 1981, he was responsive to the pleas of the Irish government to support their efforts to shore up the position of constitutional nationalism. Thus, President Reagan declared his support for the conclusions of the New Ireland Forum in fulsome terms. There was consequently a hostile reaction in the United States to the British Prime Minister’s apparently perfunctory rejection of the options set out in the report of the New Ireland Forum. This was in a press conference in November 1984. Thatcher’s concern over the American reaction to the press conference was reflected in the fact that she used the occasion of an address to Congress in February 1985 to backtrack and underline her commitment to working with the Irish government.1 The failure both of the Atkins initiative and of the subsequent effort to achieve rolling devolution when James Prior was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland compounded the pressures on the British government. The result was the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985. By accepting that another state had a legitimate interest in influencing the way Northern Ireland was governed, the British government effectively put paid itself to the notion that the affairs of Northern Ireland were an internal matter for the government of the United Kingdom alone. This acceptance by the British government of the internationalization of the conflict in Northern Ireland was a major blow to unionists who believed that their best interests were served by the exclusion of any external influences. From the perspective of the government in London, however, it was simply a realistic recognition that the claim that Northern Ireland was an internal matter for the United Kingdom no longer constituted an effective defence of British policy, where it matter most, in the United States. It also reflected the appreciation that the Irish government wielded very considerable influence in the United States and that the Irish government’s input into policy in Northern Ireland provided it with a stake in supporting British efforts to resolve the conflict. A further factor was the impact of Britain’s membership of the European Community. In particular, the elected European Parliament had taken up the issue of Northern Ireland and this was putting additional pressure on the British government to abandon its policy of the simple containment of the conflict under direct rule. British acceptance of a role for the Irish government substantially reduced the danger of further intervention from the American government over the conflict in Northern Ireland, especially given the Irish government’s influence over a significant section of the Irish-American lobby. However, it did not insulate the British government from the impact of campaigning by the Irish-American lobby altogether. Indeed, what turned out to be the INC’s most effective campaign was launched during the 1980s on the issue of discrimination in employment. It began with hearings on the issue by the
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Ad Hoc Congressional Committee in 1981. But the campaign only took off fully in November 1984 when a code of practice for American firms operating in Northern Ireland was announced. The code was dubbed the MacBride principles after the code’s most illustrious signatory, Sean MacBride, the former Irish Minister of External Affairs. America’s own affirmation action programmes provided part of the inspiration for the principles, but even more significant was the precedent of the Sullivan principles. This was a voluntary code of conduct adopted by American companies operating in South Africa. This connection enabled the INC to link the issues of apartheid and discrimination in Northern Ireland in the public mind by dwelling on similarities between the two sets of principles. A huge advantage from the perspective of the INC was that the MacBride principles campaign did not depend on federal legislation for its success and so could bypass the opposition that could be mustered to its activities at the national level. Progress in the implementation of the code could be made by the adoption of the principles at state and city level. In November 1985, Massachusetts became the first state to pass legislation requiring compliance with the principles from companies the state had dealings with. It was followed by New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1986 and 1987. Initially, the British government based its opposition to the campaign on the ground that the principles conflicted with Northern Ireland’s existing employment laws. But when this approach failed to scupper the campaign, the government introduced tough new anti-discrimination legislation, the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act of 1989 that went a considerable way towards incorporating the approach of the principles into employment law. And the argument that the MacBride principles were largely redundant proved much more effective in slowing the headway made by the campaign. Kevin McNamara, who was the Labour opposition’s principal spokesman on Northern Ireland between 1987 and 1994, has summarized the success of the campaign as follows: The importance of the campaign lay in breaching the cosy relationship between the British and American establishments and preparing the ground for the future President Clinton’s active interference in Northern Ireland affairs. Nevertheless, it threatened to hit Britain where it hurt – financially, threatening future investment in Northern Ireland. It enabled Irish-Americans to mobilize their own economic strength, and that of the organizations to which they belonged and the industries of which they were a part, to force a change in policy by the British government. (McNamara, 2002, p. 82) The issue of discrimination in employment and prescriptions to tackle it had nothing per se to do with the Provisional IRA’s long war against British rule in Northern Ireland. Nonetheless, the INC’s tolerance of supporters of
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the Provisional Republican movement placed it beyond the pale as far as the Irish government and most constitutional nationalists were concerned and, largely for this reason, Sinn Féin alone of Irish political parties supported the MacBride principles campaign. However, attempts by spokespersons for parties such as the SDLP to explain that they were opposed to the MacBride principles campaign but not to the principles themselves understandably failed to make any impression on American opinion. Their task was made more difficult by the fact that it was very far from being the case that the campaign was being used to provide cover for Irish-American supporters of the Provisional IRA’s campaign of violence. Indeed, increasingly, IrishAmericans with an interest in the conflict in Northern Ireland were themselves moving away from a belief in the efficacy of violence as a means to achieve a united Ireland. The conviction had faded that partition lay at the root of the violence and that British withdrawal followed by Irish unity would provide a panacea for all of Ireland’s political ills, a view that had been commonplace at the start of the troubles. It was being replaced by a belief that inclusive negotiations to achieve a political settlement were the most important step that was needed to end the conflict in Northern Ireland. This was the background to the formation in 1991 of a new grouping among Irish-Americans, later to acquire the name, Americans for a New Irish Agenda (ANIA). The grouping was centred on the publisher of the Irish Voice, Niall O’Dowd. An immediate objective of the new grouping was to campaign for a fresh occupant in the White House in the 1992 elections, as the incumbent, George W. Bush, was regarded by the grouping as entirely unsympathetic to the concerns of the Irish-American community on Northern Ireland. This was despite the fact that at the time, ousting Bush ‘looked a very long shot’ (O’Dowd, 2002, p. 69), as O’Dowd later put it. At an early stage the O’Dowd grouping lighted on Bill Clinton as the Democratic candidate best placed to achieve this objective and also to deliver on commitments he made to the Irish-American lobby, if elected. A key moment in the campaign for the Democratic nomination was the primary in New York in April 1992. It followed Clinton’s defeat in the Connecticut primary by Jerry Brown. At a forum on Irish issues at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan a few days before voting in the primary, Clinton had set out his position, responding positively on a series of policy proposals being championed by the Irish-American lobby, including the appointment of a Northern Ireland peace envoy, the granting of a visa to Gerry Adams, support for the MacBride principles and a willingness to put diplomatic pressure on Britain over Northern Ireland. Clinton won the primary and the nomination, while O’Dowd’s grouping provided the core of a campaigning organization, IrishAmericans for Clinton/Gore. However, once elected, President Clinton initially did disappoint the Irish-American lobby. On the advice of the Irish government that such a
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step would unnecessarily antagonize the British government, he declined to appoint a peace envoy. Further, the State Department persisted in refusing Gerry Adams a visa to visit the United States. Instead of simply denouncing the new President, ANIA concluded that Clinton would need to be persuaded by actions that the inclusive negotiations that brought Sinn Féin in from the cold held out the prospect of an end to the conflict. To this end, ANIA arranged two visits to Northern Ireland in the course of 1993, one in May and the second in September led by a former Congressman, Bruce Morrison. During both visits, the Provisional IRA observed undeclared ceasefires, thereby underlining the case ANIA was making to the White House and also the organization’s influence on Sinn Féin. In parallel with these developments, the pieces were gradually being put together in Northern Ireland itself for the launch of a peace process by the British and Irish governments. A series of contacts had been taking place involving the leadership of Sinn Féin with representatives of the British, those of the Irish government, other intermediaries and the leader of the SDLP, John Hume. As a consequence of these soundings, on 15 December 1993 the British and Irish governments issued a joint declaration envisaging Sinn Féin’s participation in negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland after the Provisional IRA had publicly announced a permanent ceasefire. It was at this point that President Clinton acted in a manner that led Niall O’Dowd to claim that ‘a 50-year hegemony over Irish policy that the British government had exercised through the State Department’ (Coogan, 1995, p. 350) had been overturned. This was President Clinton’s decision to grant Gerry Adams a 48-hour visa to attend a conference organized by a close associate of O’Dowd in New York in February 1994, notwithstanding considerable opposition within the government itself from both the State Department and a number of federal agencies. The British government’s position was that it was premature to grant Adams a visa ahead of a positive response from Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA to the joint declaration. However, it is worth underlining that in this instance the Irish government, which in the past had often opposed initiatives emanating from the Irish-American lobby, supported the decision on the visa as likely to be helpful rather than harmful to the peace process. It was also supported by the leader of the SDLP, John Hume. Further, it is arguable that the British government’s intense fury over the decision owed as much to its perceived implications for Britain’s influence in post-Cold War Washington as any anticipated impact of the decision in Northern Ireland. In fact, the row that the visa decision gave rise to was out of all proportion to what it represented, which was no more than a tactical difference among the governments about how best to advance the peace process. For different reasons, partisans on both sides of the argument tended to exaggerate its significance. A case in point among the decision’s opponents was the American Ambassador at the Court of St James at the time of the decision, Raymond Seitz.
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To the delight of the critics of President Clinton, Seitz savaged those he blamed for the decision in a book on his stint as an envoy in London. For example, he described the American Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith, as ‘an ardent IRA apologist’; Senator Edward Kennedy as ‘an anxious man in the market for favours’; and Clinton’s National Security Adviser, Tony Lake, as someone who believed that ‘no country was more imperial than Britain, and no place more colonized than Ireland’ (Seitz, 1998, pp. 289–90). But Seitz’s views on the Irish question were far from profound or well-informed. His view of the joint declaration was that it meant ‘the British wanted out’. He added in brackets, ‘it did seem odd to an American that the Declaration implied London’s principal interest in a part of its own Kingdom was a matter of arithmetic’ (p. 287). At the same time, he offered the opinion that ‘the only durable solution to the division of the Ireland is to unite the island’ (p. 292). Notwithstanding his crude understanding of the Northern Ireland problem, Seitz did pose a telling question in asking why the Clinton administration should have disregarded British interests ‘on a matter of deep importance to Her Majesty’s Government and minor importance to the United States’ (Seitz, 1998). This issue is discussed further below. The Provisional IRA’s declaration of a ceasefire on 31 August 1994 was widely held to vindicate President Clinton’s decision on Adams’s visa in January. That was strongly reinforced by the role that the media attributed to American influence in the period immediately before the announcement of the cessation.2 In particular, a visit to Belfast by an Irish-American delegation including Niall O’Dowd and Bruce Morrison just before the IRA statement was credited with persuading the leadership of the Provisional republican movement to take this step. In fact, the decision to call a ceasefire had already been made and the delegation had been put in the picture that it was about to be announced. The misunderstanding arose in part because of Sinn Féin’s rejection of the joint declaration the previous month, which had been misinterpreted as meaning that the Provisional republican movement had decided to continue the campaign of violence. What it signalled rather was that the leaders of Sinn Féin intended to follow the peace process on their own terms, though admittedly this foreshadowed some of the difficulties that the peace process was to encounter in the years ahead. The proponents of the visa decision did not have the last word. The breakdown of the ceasefire on 9 February 1996 when the Provisional IRA bombed Canary Wharf put Clinton’s decision back in question once again. And there remains to this day a wide spectrum of opinion as to whether the peace process in total is best seen as, at one extreme, a case of the highly skilful neutering of one of the world’s oldest and most durable insurgencies, or, at the other, misconceived appeasement of a terrorist organization, with many positions between these two. The row of Adams’s 48-hour visa was not the only disagreement between the Clinton administration and John Major’s
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government over its dealings with the Provisional republican movement. Thus, the British had also strongly opposed the grant of a visa to the veteran Republican, Joe Cahill, shortly before the announcement of the IRA ceasefire. President Clinton had been persuaded that this was a vital concession if the ceasefire was to go ahead by the Irish Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds. Major was even more furious when Clinton granted Adams a visa in March 1995 that included giving permission to the Sinn Féin leader to raise funds. On this occasion, President Clinton’s action was not based on pleading from the Irish government. The row prompted overheated commentary in the British press, with the Sunday Times describing the reception given to Adams by the White House as ‘the lowest point in a special relationship sustained for half a century by ten presidents’ (O’Clery, 1996, p. 195). However, none of the differences that arose between Major and Clinton over the handling of the peace process prevented effective cooperation between the two governments or an American input into the process. In particular, the former majority leader in the United States Senate, George Mitchell, played a notable role as chair of the International Body on Decommissioning, which was given the task by the British and Irish governments of charting a way out of the impasse over decommissioning. The former Democratic Senator’s involvement in the peace process had begun when he had been appointed a special advisor to the President and Secretary of State on economic initiatives in Ireland in January 1995, a title that was clearly designed not to evoke the notion of a peace envoy and thereby offend the British government. The other two members of the International Body were a former Finnish Prime Minister, Harri Holkeri, and a Canadian general, John de Chastelain, the choice respectively of the British and Irish governments. Its report in January 1996 provided a formula for talks among the parties without prior decommissioning, though at the price that the issue of decommissioning continued to pose a threat to the subsequent political settlement until the Provisional IRA completed decommissioning in September 2005. The impasse over the issue of decommissioning during the course of 1995 had threatened to overshadow the visit President Clinton planned to make to Northern Ireland in November 1995 to lend his personal support to the peace process. Indeed, the stalemate as a result of the Provisional IRA’s rejection of the condition that there should be some decommissioning before there could be any formal negotiations among the political parties on a settlement was prompting concern about the survival of the peace process itself. According to Mitchell, the British were ‘most worried about offending President Clinton’ and ‘consented to the international commission with grave reservations and only at the last minute’ (Mitchell, 1999, p. 26). Mitchell went on to play an even more important role in the process as chair of the negotiations among the parties that began in June 1996. He was chosen for this role by the Major government, an indication of how
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much Major valued the skill Mitchell had shown in providing a face-saving formula for the dropping of the condition of prior decommissioning that had become an obstacle to any substantive negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland. Of importance in this context was the effort that Mitchell had made to make the dropping of the condition sufficiently palatable to unionists that their continuing participation in the process was assured. The government’s confidence in Mitchell did not prove misplaced, though it was only after changes in government in both Britain and the Republic of Ireland and a new IRA ceasefire that negotiations began in earnest on a political settlement. Mitchell played a prominent role in helping to steer the negotiations to a successful conclusion, setting the deadline of 9 April 1998 for the completion of the process. As in the case of the 1994 ceasefire, much was made in the media of the American role in the achievement of the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday, 10 April. For example, the Financial Times front page report on the Agreement highlighted a telephone conversation between President Clinton and David Trimble that preceded the Ulster Unionist Party leader’s acceptance of the settlement.3 American involvement in the peace process did not end there. President Clinton made a second visit to Northern Ireland in September 1998. This was far from being simply a victory lap and/or a distraction from his domestic difficulties, as it tended to be portrayed in the media. The crisis in the implementation of the Belfast Agreement on the formation of the Executive gave President Clinton a substantial political role. His presence elicited a commitment from Adams on violence that moved the process forward slightly, enabling agreement to be reached on the shape of devolved government when it happened, as well as on the responsibilities of the cross-border bodies. It did not end the stalemate on forming the Executive. This was only resolved, and then only temporarily, after the further involvement of George Mitchell who undertook a review of the Agreement in September 1999. After 11 weeks, a basis for the formation of the Executive was agreed among the parties. However, the process broke down when the Provisional IRA failed to initiate decommissioning within the expected timeframe following devolution. Consequently, the British government suspended the institutions and re-imposed direct rule in February 2000. A confidence-building initiative by the Provisional IRA to allow international inspection of a number of its arms dumps provided sufficient progress to permit the restoration of devolution. However, the issue of decommissioning remained unresolved and still threatened to bring about the collapse of the Executive. This was still the case in December 2000 when President Clinton made his third and least successful trip to Northern Ireland. That reinforced opinion that his successor, who was still to be finally determined but likely to be George W. Bush, would not seek to extend American involvement in Northern Ireland’s contentious political process. In the event, involvement in the peace process was the one aspect of Clinton’s foreign
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policy that George W. Bush did not seek to change. At the same time, the handling of the peace process was moved from the White House to the State Department, where the new director of policy planning, Richard Haass, was given overall responsibility for overseeing American engagement. Haass held this position until he left the government in December 2003. His successor as director of policy planning as well as the Bush Administration’s point-man on Northern Ireland was Mitchell Reiss. Both Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss participated in many of the efforts that were made by the British and Irish governments to resolve the ongoing difficulties in the implementation of the Belfast Agreement. The stance they took on these difficulties belied simplistic assumptions that American Republicans would be generally inclined to be hostile to Irish republicans or that they might prove indifferent to a problem with little global geo-strategic significance. For example, Mitchell Reiss was present at the Leeds Castle talks among the parties in September 2004 and reported very positively on the attitude of Sinn Féin in a speech in New York.4 On this occasion both Haass and Reiss did challenge the positions taken by Sinn Féin, especially on policing. And in the aftermath of the Northern Bank robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney, Sinn Féin was shunned by the White House. It was rehabilitated following full decommissioning in September 2005. But neither Haass nor Reiss ever sought Sinn Féin’s exclusion from the process and despite controversy over such issues as the refusal to allow Adams to engage in fund-raising under his 2006 visa, their work was valued by the different elements in the Irish-American lobby. The engagement of the Bush administration in the peace process was all the more remarkable in view of the major change in the international context that occurred early in the life of the administration as a result of the events of 11 September 2001. The inauguration of a global war on terror as a response to al-Qaeda’s assault on America opened up the possibility that the Northern Ireland problem might be interpreted in an entirely different light that did not suggest the need for political accommodation or conflict resolution. Gun-running from Florida by the IRA early in 2001 and even more significantly, the arrest of three members of the Provisional republican movement in Colombia in August 2001 provided obvious grounds for viewing the movement not as a difficult and demanding partner in a peace process but as part of the problem of international terrorism, to be treated accordingly. Individual politicians in the United States did adopt this perspective. There were also warnings from others, including some American supporters of Sinn Féin, that this perspective might gain general acceptance if Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA did not mend their ways. The fact that the Provisional IRA carried out its first act of decommissioning in October 2001 showed that the Sinn Féin leadership was cognisant of this danger. Another source of the Bush administration’s continuing support for the peace process was the strength of the British government’s attachment to
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the Belfast Agreement, so that Bush’s policy on the Irish question was a matter of showing solidarity with a British government that had stood by the United States after 9/11. That was further cemented by British support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And this was the context in which President Bush visited Northern Ireland in April 2003 for a war summit with the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. It coincided with another effort by the British and Irish governments to arrive at a comprehensive settlement of the issues plaguing implementation of the Belfast Agreement. The institutions had been suspended once again in October 2002 and direct rule re-imposed. Though Iraq was the principal reason for the summit, President Bush found the time to endorse the efforts of the two governments on the peace process. Indeed, he joined Ahern and Blair in a statement that somewhat bizarrely appealed to civil society to support the terms of a deal that had not yet been published and depended on acceptance by the Provisional IRA, which in the event was not forthcoming. Adding to the general sense of confusion was that the parties most supportive of American engagement in the peace process opposed the Iraq war, while the war’s supporters tended to be found in the parties that were most hostile to American mediation in Northern Ireland. While President Bush’s sojourn in Northern Ireland did not compare with any of President Clinton’s visits, it did underline the reality of continuity in American policy towards Northern Ireland, notwithstanding the changes in the world since Clinton had left office. However, it does not make the task of explaining American engagement in the peace process any easier. One of the most common explanations of President Clinton’s intervention in the conflict was that he was driven by electoral considerations.5 There is some evidence that Clinton’s stance on Irish issues during the 1992 elections was motivated at least in part by calculations of the potential electoral benefits. This argument can also be linked to a more general thesis of the ethnicization of the policies of both major parties in the United States, one indication of which was the growing susceptibility of members of the Republican Party to the Irish-American lobby. In particular, during the 1990s the wooing of Republican members of Congress by the INC had resulted in the first official Congressional hearings on Northern Ireland in 1995, when a Republican member of the Ad Hoc Congressional Committee, Ben Gilman, had become chair of the House International Relations Committee after the Republicans had taken control of Congress in 1994 mid-term elections. This explanation has the advantage that it might also be used to explain Bush’s circumspection on the issue of the peace process. However, as Andrew Wilson has pointed out, the electoral explanation does not hold up when the behaviour of American voters is examined (Wilson, 1997, pp. 23–39). In particular, there is no evidence that politically significant numbers of voters cast their votes in American elections at any level on the basis of a candidate’s stance on Irish issues. Another widely canvassed explanation of
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Clinton’s intervention was that it was a product of the end of the Cold War that freed the United States from the need to avoid offending the British government over Northern Ireland. On this basis, part of the answer to the question posed by Seitz was that the Clinton Administration acted in the manner it did simply because it could afford to do so, a point that would seem to be underlined by Seitz’s reference to the end of the Cold War as a factor in the controversial visa decisions. But what Seitz fails or is unwilling to acknowledge is that Clinton’s intervention in Northern Ireland also made sense in the context of the Clinton Administration’s wider reformulation of American foreign policy after the end of the Cold War and that President Clinton’s Irish initiatives enabled him to build domestic support in the United States for an outward-looking policy towards the world’s conflicts. However, this clearly does not hold for Bush, since support for the peace process has run against the grain of the Bush Administration’s policies elsewhere in the world. Further, the global war on terror and the Iraq war have re-established the importance of the special relationship so that an explanation in terms of the decline of Britain’s importance in America does not fit the Bush era. But the most obvious weakness of the post-Cold War explanation, as it has generally been formulated, is that it overstates the extent to which American interference in Northern Ireland ran counter to British interests. In fact, through much of the peace process, successive British governments positively invited the American contribution as beneficial to the process, even if there were occasional differences of view. An interesting question is what motivated the exaggeration of the differences that did occur. A possible reason is regret in sections of British society at the necessity for a peace process in Northern Ireland as a consequence of the problem’s internationalization. Andrew Wilson has argued that the most persuasive basis for the Clinton administration’s intervention in Northern Ireland was as a reaction to events in Northern Ireland (Wilson, 1997, p. 38). In other words, President Clinton responded to opportunities created by political developments in Northern Ireland and that the elements for successful American mediation simply had not been present any earlier. This explanation fits in very well with the primarily internalist explanation of the peace process that has been put forward by Jonathan Tonge and Paul Dixon in criticism of Michael Cox’s internationalization thesis emphasizing the role played by international events in shaping the peace process.6 Dixon based his case in part on the fact that a number of key developments in the evolution of the peace process preceded the end of the Cold War (Dixon, 2006, p. 410). However, this scarcely invalidates the argument that the international context, including the end of the Cold War and 9/11, has had a very significant effect on the course of the peace process. Further, the general proposition that politics in Northern Ireland has been insulated from trends in the rest of the world and follows a course that has basically been determined by internal events
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is not persuasive, considering Northern Ireland’s ties with the world beyond Britain and Ireland. What this brief survey of interpretations of American interventions in Northern Ireland underscores is that there is no single overriding explanation of American engagement in the peace process. A variety of factors has contributed and the mix has varied significantly over time. That also suggests that it may be imprudent to make predictions about its future course. There are thus no simple answers to the questions posed at the start of this chapter on continuity of American policy or on the particular case of President Clinton’s high-profile involvement. However, putting American engagement in the peace process in its historical context underlines that it did not occur out of the blue. In particular, the interest of a tiny number of the 40 million or so Irish-Americans on the Irish Question was very far from being the only or the main source of internationalization of the conflict. And the American connection was simply one strand among many in influencing the course of British policy on Northern Ireland.
Notes 1. For an account of her speech to Congress, see Malcolm Rutherford, ‘Dr Fitzgerald and I’, Financial Times, 22 February 1985. 2. See, for example, Stephen Castle, Leonard Doyle, Alan Murdoch and Paul Routledge, ‘Was it Washington that won the peace in Ulster?’, Independent on Sunday, 4 September 1994 and Conor O’Clery, ‘Seismic change in the role of Irish Americans paves the way to ceasefire’, Irish Times, 1 September 1994. 3. Financial Times, 11 April 1998. 4. The full text of his speech in which he said that the Leeds Castle talks had demonstrated that ‘the republican movement is now on the verge of an historic transformation’ is available at http://www.state.gov/s/p/rem/36749.htm. 5. See, for example, O’Grady, 1996, p. 3. 6. On this debate see Tonge, 2005a, pp. 243–44 and Dixon, 2006. For Michael Cox’s reply to his critics, see Cox, 2006 in the same volume as Dixon’s chapter.
12 The Triumph of the Belfast Agreement Paul Bew
It is with some nostalgia that I now recall the week of Good Friday, 1998. At the beginning of Easter week, I was optimistic that there would be a negotiated historic compromise for Northern Ireland. Why, it might be asked? Polls showed that while the people of Northern Ireland wanted their politicians to talk, they did not expect an agreement. By an overwhelming majority, my own students studying Irish politics at Queen’s University Belfast did not expect an agreement. Much of the reason for my optimism lay in my assessment of the possibility of negotiating a North-South dimension into any agreement. Nationalists demanded an Irish dimension as a sign they would not accept any purely internal power-sharing settlement for Northern Ireland. Unionists at the time of the Framework Document controversy of 1995 had reacted in a way which suggested that their community would have great difficulty in accepting a model of North–South relations proposed by the two governments. I have never accepted the mainstream unionist analysis of the Framework Document. When the Framework Document was published in February 1995, I prepared an article for The Times entitled, ‘Modest Realities Lurk behind All-Embracing Rhetoric of Document’: The Framework Document proposes a new North-South body that would have executive functions at the outset in, for example, the areas of EC programmes and initiatives, marketing and promotion abroad and culture and heritage ... But behind these executive functions are a range of functions subject to harmonisation, defined as ‘both sides using their best endeavours to reach agreement on a common policy’. These include aspects of agriculture and fisheries, industrial development, consumer affairs, transport, energy, trade, health, social welfare, education and economic policy – sensitive matters for middle-class and working-class unionist opinion. In addition, further functions are subject to consultation.
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This looks like a bureaucratic fantasia designed to appeal to the Sinn Féin leadership anxious to begin a long march through the institutions towards a united Ireland. Yet, it may well be that some very modest realities lurk behind the apparently all-embracing scenario outlined in the text. The harmonisation of social welfare was seriously suggested was in 1984, when Clive Soley MP, then a Labour party spokesman on Ulster, called for pensions and other social welfare entitlements for Northern Ireland citizens to be mailed from Dublin, but paid for by the British Exchequer. The Dublin postmark was seen as a means to break down unionist working-class prejudice against the southern neighbour. Are we entitled to believe that anything like this is intended this time? Certainly not. After the leak to The Times, it became clear that abstract concepts like ‘harmonisation’ needed to be clarified. In a very significant late presentational change, paragraph 33 offers a vitally important translation of that frightening term. Harmonisation in education, for example, reduces to ‘mutual recognition of teacher qualifications, co-operative venture in higher education, in teacher training, in education for mutual understanding and in education for specialised needs’. That is all perfectly sensible but hardly exciting. There is less to some of this framework rhetoric than meets the eye.1 Nevertheless, in the multiparty talks at Lancaster House in early 1998, the unionists had revolted against what many saw as the return of the Framework Document. They insisted that once again they were being presented with an intolerably green model. I was again more impressed by the low-key nature of the envisaged projects of the proposed Irish dimension. This was the theme for an article of mine the Irish Independent carried in February 1998: As far as the SDLP is concerned, this time – unlike the Council of Ireland in 1974 – a new North-South body must start with significant functions, not a blank sheet. So long as the principle of democratic responsibility is accepted – as it already is by both governments – it ought to be possible now to produce a compromise acceptable to a majority in both major traditions. The main obstacle on the unionist side is a fear vigorously articulated by Robert McCartney of the UKUP and Peter Robinson of the DUP that cross-border co-operation, even that apparently focused on low-key matters (animal health, fish health etc), is eventually intended gradually to strip away the British identity of the unionist community. Mr McCartney, in particular, sets this in the context of British Labour support, until recently, of the policy of Irish unity by consent, but this is to ignore the iconoclasm of New Labour – Tony Blair now gives consent as the reason why there will not be Irish unity in his lifetime. The
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document on north-south co-operation, submitted by both governments at Lancaster House, is particularly revealing of this change.2 In fact, dramatic notions of harmonizing social security on an all-Ireland basis to tackle cross-border fraud became explicitly reduced at Lancaster House. By the last week of the negotiations, I was confident that a deal was on the agenda. It was clear that David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, believed that a viable model of North-South cooperation was possible. But it was clear also that the British government was prepared to dilute terms like ‘dynamic’, ‘harmonization’ and ‘executive’, provisions which unionism found so problematic in the Framework Document. It became essential to persuade the Prime Minister that there was a need for a substantial change in strategy. To his credit, Tony Blair grasped the nettle. He even went as far as to put great pressure on the Irish Prime Minister to shift his position. As Alastair Campbell has explained in his published diaries, Bertie Ahern was told that the world would not understand if he did not show some flexibility (Campbell, 2007, p. 291). Essentially the same picture is confirmed in Jonathan Powell’s recent memoir, Great Hatred, Little Room (Powell, 2008, pp. 95–97). It is worth stressing – amidst all the currently fashionable talk of the need to do deals with the extremes – that the Good Friday Agreement in the first instance represented a calculated decision by Tony Blair to give priority to the centre parties (the Ulster Unionist Party [UUP] and Social Democratic and Labour Party [SDLP]) to cut their own deal. As this prospect emerged, Sinn Féin was rather miffed. In the early hours of the morning of Good Friday, 1998, I received a telephone call from Stormont inviting me to come to Castle Buildings to witness the formal conclusion of the Belfast Agreement negotiations. At that point, it was widely believed that the negotiations had effectively been concluded the previous evening, and that the formal public declaration of an agreement was imminent. I remember well the mood among the SDLP and Ulster Unionist delegations: it was one of quiet satisfaction about a job well done, and a shared pleasure at the marginalization of Sinn Féin. There was an assumption in both parties that the electorate would reward them for the hard-won compromise. This mood did not surprise me: covering the events on television the previous night, it had been clear that Sinn Féin was markedly unhappy about the form of the incoming settlement. In particular, the party had been dismayed at Tony Blair’s willingness to dilute the ‘Irish dimension’ proposals his government had originally accepted the previous week. Tony Blair made the correct decision that was essential to gain David Trimble’s support for a deal, and that the SDLP would go along with it. On the Thursday night, Sinn Féin spokespeople appeared on television looking increasingly exasperated. Up to the last hours of the negotiations, prominent Sinn Féin figures hoped that pan-nationalist unity with the SDLP would prevail and that they would not do a deal with Trimble.
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However, already in the early hours of Good Friday morning, we were moving into a different world. In fact, the negotiations were not over, but still ongoing and did not end until the late afternoon. Senior officials muttered nervously about a Sinn Féin agenda, as Gerry Adams’ colleagues bustled in and out of the offices of the Prime Minister. The concerns they raised, though, did not touch the political-constitutional settlement, which had effectively been negotiated and concluded, but the side-bar issues of decommissioning, prisoner release and police reform, all politics-of-the-gun issues of great interest to Sinn Féin. Here the Prime Minister made the decision that, having disappointed republicans on the big constitutional issues, he ought to offer them concessions on these particularly sensitive topics. These were, of course, to be precisely the sensitive topics which fuelled a political struggle of wills over the next five years, which undermined the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists, leaving Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in a dominant position in Northern Irish politics. Today, it requires an effort of will to recall the optimism of the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP in the early hours of Good Friday morning, 1998. Outside the building, Ian Paisley was conducting a bitter and unavailing protest against the deal. Sinn Féin, while inside the building, were deeply unhappy, and even with new concessions won, remained publicly agnostic when George Mitchell announced his verdict at the concluding session of the negotiations. The Agreement was brought into existence by the political will of the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists, who were both able to deliver a majority of their communities in 1998. The brilliance of Sinn Féin was in moving so rapidly to declare ownership of the Agreement, which had been created by others. The brilliance of the DUP was in exploiting the inevitable Protestant resentment over the politics-of-the-gun issues. At St Andrews at the autumn of 2006, both Sinn Féin and the DUP embraced what became known as the Good Friday Agreement ‘in a kilt’. The SDLP and the UUP have a degree of solace. The structure they negotiated has survived, but as parties they both, in fact, have been marginalized. Was this inevitable? There were both demographic and class factors working against the SDLP and the UUP in the late 1990s. Both parties were likely to find the new century difficult, no matter what the political context. Nevertheless, there is a question mark about government policy. Jonathan Powell is quite right to insist in his new book, Great Hatred, Little Room, that Tony Blair was very reluctant to lose David Trimble, and he continued to support Trimble until well into 2004, even though important voices in the Northern Ireland office, the Dublin government and, indeed, the US government, had been urging a gamble on Peter Robinson – not Ian Paisley – since 2001 (Powell, 2008, pp. 209–10). Powell offers a vigorous defence of Downing Street policy in this period. It is far to say, however, that he will not convince those who believe that the IRA could not go back to war after the Omagh bomb of August 1998 and certainly not after 9/11. In short, such
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critics argue that there was no need to sweeten Sinn Féin so much in the subsequent negotiations. The same critics also argued that the visible bribery of Sinn Féin helped to weaken both the moderate SDLP within the Catholic community and the Ulster Unionists within the Protestant community. Where are we now? On Tuesday 25 March 2008, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, chose to publish an article on the theme of Britishness in the Daily Telegraph. What is remarkable about the article is that it defined Britishness as a Welsh, Scottish or English quality, but completely omitted any mention of Northern Ireland. Ironically, in the same week, Tony Blair’s old chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, had just published his memoir, Great Hatred, Little Room. Powell insists that at the core of Blair’s strategy for peace in Northern Ireland was his speech given in Balmoral in 1997 – much disliked by the Irish government – in which he insisted that he valued the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Powell, 2008, pp. 9–13). Somewhere along the way in the transition from one prime minister to another, that insight seems to have been lost. The inevitable result was much unionist anger in the House of Commons and a less than convincing attempt of palliation by Gordon Brown. A question is thus raised: how safe is the working of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland in the face of such prime ministerial absent-mindedness. There are those who also argue that Gordon Brown’s decision not to take new radical steps to fund the new dispensation in Belfast is risky and shortsighted. In fact, there was no reasonable prospect of the Prime Minister reaching for his chequebook this time. The fact remains that Northern Ireland has just experienced several months of uncanny quiet, and it would be unreasonable to expect things to continue in quite the same way. The origin of the looming crisis is clear enough. Within days of the Good Friday Agreement, which was created essentially by the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists, Sinn Féin had adapted and turned party policy on its head, in the words of Gerry Adams, and claimed ownership. It took the DUP somewhat longer to perform the same trick. Now the two parties dominate Northern Ireland politics, at the price of accepting the political philosophy of others. The trouble is that not all their supporters fully grasped what was going on inside the beltway. Jonathan Powell’s new book shows that Tony Blair explained early on to Adams and McGuinness that a united Ireland was not on the agenda. They offered to bring their people along in this new context. Powell’s book claims that the DUP was maintaining a backchannel contact with the Provisional IRA at a time when their supporters were publicly assured that no such thing was happening. Unsurprisingly now, both parties face a degree of disillusionment within their support base. The Dromore by-election of 13 February 2008 showed a defection of perhaps a third of the DUP’s natural election base. For Sinn Féin, the matter is further complicated by the party’s disastrous election result in the Republic of Ireland in 2007. The all-Ireland political strategy,
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which had replaced the IRA’s armed campaign, died in the killing fields of the ballot boxes in the Irish Republic. There is even a sign in Belfast that the personality cult which surrounds Gerry Adams is becoming somewhat tarnished, as previously loyal organs such as the Andersonstown News now pop up with independent criticisms. The great outstanding issue is the issue of the devolution of policing and justice. Sinn Féin argued that they were promised it would happen by May 2008. In fact, the DUP was determined that this so-called deadline should be broken. But here is the paradox: why if, as the DUP claim, their great victory has been to force republicans to accept policing and law and order, is there a problem with devolving policing and justice powers to a Northern Ireland Executive? But this inconsistency is likely to be brushed aside by the DUP. The stage is set for a traditional test of wills, with Gerry Adams leaning on the British and Irish governments to help deliver the final stage of the deal; the DUP leadership are circumspect, but determined still to protect their jobs in the new Stormont. This time, of course, the republicans negotiate without any latent threat of force, real or imagined. These are new rules which make it very difficult to predict the outcome of the pending crisis. What is not in doubt is that the unnatural amity of Northern Ireland politics of the past few months is coming to an end, and that a test of the new institutions is just round the corner – even though it would be exceptionally pessimistic to believe that those institutions will not survive. Jonathan Powell’s decision to borrow a line from W. B. Yeats for the title for his new book, reminds us of another theme articulated by that great poet: Yeats noted that the Irish Revolution had a habit of eating its children. The same might be said of the Good Friday Agreement process. David Trimble and Seamus Mallon both created and embraced it; both have been out of Northern Ireland politics since 2005. Dr Paisley was the next in line, and to the surprise of many, late in life, he too embraced the deal. Within months, his party, worried about a nervous mood in the county, ruthlessly cast him aside. Mr Adams is in a stronger position, and calls on greater reserves of discipline and emotional support. The Andersonstown News, after its attack of independent critical spirit, had to publish an apology for its ‘inappropriate and untimely’ article. Nonetheless, there is something rather worrying about the price imposed on those who go down the path of political compromise in Northern Ireland, and disappoint the ethnic passions they have played such a part in arousing. This is the difficulty with the type of settlement that we have. An operating deal based on moderate leadership would have enhanced the politics of cooperation and mutual understanding. A deal based on the erstwhile ‘extremes’ of the political spectrum has no such operating logic. The leading parties have the position they have because they are seen to have stood up more effectively to the political ‘other’. This sour reality does not mean that
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devolution in Northern Ireland will necessarily fail, but it does mean that the ability of the new institutions to tackle the problems of the Province is not quite what they would have been. Ten years ago, the Sunday Times published an article of mine under the provocative title, ‘The Unionists Have Won, They Just Don’t Know It’. It is worthwhile to recall the essential argument of the article: So what is the underlying principle of the Stormont agreement? For five years, at least, Britain has been attempting to secure nationalist and republican acceptance of the legitimacy of British sovereignty in the north. This agreement, which explicitly re-enacts that sovereignty, while at the same time securing the removal of the Irish Republic’s territorial claim, marks the triumph of that policy. As one of the principle British negotiators dryly observed: ‘Do the unionists not see that this is about reconciling northern nationalists to British rule? Are they not interested in that?’ The Stormont agreement is not an ambiguous document. It has a carefully defined logic. The Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is to continue for as long as it has majority support – and that, according to the Prime Minister, is likely to remain the case well beyond his own lifetime. There is, however, a price to be paid by unionists that includes the acceptance of power-sharing and cross-border co-operation. Above all – and this is the really difficult part for them – unionists have to be willing to allow Sinn Féin a soft landing. After an IRA campaign of appalling violence, many unionists cannot yet find it in their hearts to do so, even though it means the collapse of the republican goal to bully and manipulate Ulster Protestants into a united Ireland. The unionist majority is being asked to go a long way to meet the concerns of the nationalist minority. It does not necessarily follow that it is not in the interests of the unionists to do so.3 I see absolutely no reason to review this argument: it has come to be widely accepted by unionism. The institutional structures in place in Northern Ireland today are not different in any meaningful sense to those established under the Belfast Agreement and are accepted by a majority both of unionists and nationalists. It is a necessary DUP fiction to say that the St Andrews Agreement is a new agreement.4 However, even the party leadership does not seriously believe this: for example, when the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced that he was stepping down in May 2008, he was praised by Ian Paisley for diluting Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution, which made a territorial claim over Northern Ireland: that this was achieved through the Good Friday Agreement was an awkward truth not mentioned. More sensitively,
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the decommissioning and winding down of the IRA was a process which began under David Trimble’s watch over unionism, despite being concluded under Paisley’s. The passage of time has allowed a greater Protestant acceptance of Sinn Féin in government – not any particular DUP negotiating strategy. The only mystery is why the DUP chose to make the deal when they did. The international and domestic pressure on David Trimble in the late 1990s was massive; by 2007, such pressure on the DUP leadership was minimal.5 This fact, little remarked upon in the province, is the greatest testimony to the Agreement’s success. Even though there was no pan-nationalist consensus emitting from the White House in 2007 and no New Labour majority chomping at the bit to put pressure on the ‘Orangemen’, the DUP still wanted to go into government with Sinn Féin. There is no greater tribute to the Good Friday Agreement.
Notes 1. The Times, 23 February 1995. This article, with many others originally published between 1994 and 2007, is reprinted in (Bew, 2007b, pp. 14–16). 2. Irish Independent, 3 February 1998; Bew, 2007b, pp. 24–25. 3. Sunday Times, 17 May 1998; Bew, 2007b, pp. 28–29. 4. See Peter Robinson’s article in the Irish Times, 7 April 2008, which claims that ‘the Belfast Agreement has gone and Northern Ireland is the better for it’. 5. On these points see the important section on Paisley in (Millar, 2004), and the same author’s thought-provoking essay, ‘Tony Blair’s Irish Peace’ (Millar, 2007).
13 The Case against the Belfast Agreement Dennis Kennedy
Has the Belfast Agreement, at last, delivered the final resolution of the most intractable source of political conflict in Europe, as Peter Hain assured the House of Commons in May 2007?1 Has it provided a basis for consolidation of the comparative peace seen in Northern Ireland since 1998? Does it offer the promise of an end to violence and paramilitarism in Irish politics? Many people have already given a resoundingly affirmative answer to those questions. The fact that Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams found themselves able, in March 2007, to endorse an arrangement that involved, for both, an abandonment of long-held principles in a manner that was as brazen as it was astonishing, but still had the obvious endorsement of clear majorities of both sides of the divided Northern Ireland community, justified, for once, the adjective historic. However, not everything termed historic is necessarily to be welcomed. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was, beyond dispute, historic. But while few in 1939 thought that that particular piece of history was going to save Europe from war, a great many inside both Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the spring of 2007 welcomed Paisley-Adams, followed by the PaisleyMcGuinness Executive as, in Mr Hain’s words, the final resolution. All must share the hope that their optimism is well founded, but for some it is a hope stemming more from war-weariness and despair, than from unshakeable Blair-like faith in the Belfast Agreement. The detailed provisions of the Agreement, the process by which it was reached and the manner in which it has been implemented all raise serious questions about it, and erode the grounds for optimism. The Northern Ireland conflict, like most in today’s world, has two basic dimensions. One is a fundamental political problem bringing groups of people into dispute with each other – over territory, language, identity, religion. The second element is the use of violence in such a situation to secure a political end. Since Cain and Abel, mankind has used violence to settle arguments; tribes fought each other, then feudal lords, then kings and emperors, then 246
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alliances. It was only after 1945 that we began to see, particularly in Europe and the United States, a generalized rejection of violence as a legitimate means of achieving political objectives. A characteristic of many of today’s ‘problems’ is a departure from that consensus within broadly democratic societies and a resort to violence by politically motivated groups. While such violence, in any modern democracy, can rarely be victorious in itself, that is, win something approaching a military eclipse of its opponents, or the overthrow of legal authority, it can serve to fast-forward, reverse, thwart or distort the resolution of differences by discussion, negotiation and democratic decision-making. It can, and often does, precipitate new negotiation on the fundamental problem as defined and articulated by the perpetrators of violence, with their involvement as principal actors in the negotiation. It can also make the short-term goal of ending the violence the top priority in any negotiation, rather than the resolution of the underlying political issue. We might usefully ask, then, was the Belfast Agreement an all-party negotiation led by the two governments to find a lasting settlement to the fundamental political problem of partition in Ireland, or, to use a more accurate formulation, of Irish nationalism’s continued rejection of the 1921–22 settlement? Or was it, essentially, an armistice negotiated between London and the Provisional IRA? One answer, not entirely glib, could be that it was both – that it was an armistice with the IRA made possible only by significant progress on the underlying political problem. That prompts the question as to whether real progress has been made on the underlying problem, or whether, rather, the underlying problem has been made yet more intractable by positions adopted and concessions made in pursuit of the primary goal – an agreement to end the violence. If the Blair government, like its predecessors under Major and even, to an extent, Thatcher, made its overriding policy objective a deal with the IRA to end the terrorist campaign, it would be hard to blame it. By the date of the Belfast Agreement, 10 April 1998, more than three and a half thousand people had been killed in the violent conflict that had engulfed Northern Ireland for almost thirty years. Sixty per cent of the deaths had resulted from Irish Republican terrorist violence, about 30 per cent from retaliatory loyalist terrorism, and the remainder from the actions of the security forces (about 10 per cent).2 As those figures indicate, this latter day Thirty Years War was primarily the result of an armed campaign by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The IRA switch in tactics to bombing targets in Britain, rather than, or in addition to, Northern Ireland, underlined the perception of the struggle as one between the IRA and the British state, and also meant that London could no longer take an unhurried distant view of a conflict in a remote corner of the kingdom.
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Change of strategy What made the negotiations preceding the Belfast Agreement, and the Agreement itself, distinct from previous ‘historic’ landmarks, such as Sunningdale in 1973, the Downing Street Declaration of 1983 and the AngloIrish Agreement or 1985, was a strategic change in the policy pursued by London and Dublin. The chief objective was no longer the isolation of the instigators of violence, republicanism and Sinn Féin, but their inclusion as the principal interlocutors. Hitherto the concern of the British and Irish governments had been to accommodate moderate non-violent nationalism in the hope of minimizing public support for Sinn Féin – something seen as vital if the long war against terrorism was to be won. The fundamental plank in the Anglo-Irish approach had been this nurturing of the middleground, both as a bulwark against extremism, particularly republicanism and as the only possible way of cultivating soil that might prove fertile to the growth of mutual trust and understanding between the divided communities within Northern Ireland. After the opening of the ‘peace process’, dating from John Hume’s initial contacts with republicans in the late 1980s, that strategy was radically changed, and the primary goal became a deal with Sinn Féin that would end the IRA campaign. This was a change that was warmly backed and promoted by the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds. While it was more painful for a British government, particularly a Tory one, to consign to history repeated promises never to negotiate with terrorists, never to relent in its war against terrorism, the pain was greatly eased by the fact that John Hume, the leader of the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), could claim authorship and ownership of the peace process. The continued prominence of Hume, and the energetic role played by his party, in the negotiating and drafting of the Belfast Agreement helped blind the public, and many observers, to the true nature of what was in progress – a delicate negotiation between republicanism, with the IRA represented by the Sinn Féin leadership, and the British government, aided and abetted by Dublin, with the key objective of finding just what republicanism would settle for as the price for ending violence. Almost certainly the British government realized that a major risk of this change of strategy, if not an inevitable result, would be the ‘legitimising’ of Sinn Féin, a rise in its public support and the eclipse of the SDLP, provoking a similar move from the centre to the extreme on the unionist side. John Hume must also have been aware of this possibility, but he may have been so convinced of his own standing that he believed the SDLP could retain its grip on the nationalist vote. In any event, it was a change which was crucial to the electoral supremacy of Sinn Féin, and one which led directly to the Belfast Agreement, and beyond that to the eclipse of moderate Trimble unionism and the triumph of Paisley.
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The switch from a policy of exclusion of Sinn Féin to its inclusion did not mean that London altered direction entirely. Its policy towards the problem of Northern Ireland had been, certainly since the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and arguably since the 1972 discussion paper ‘The Future of Northern Ireland’, an Anglo-Irish one, characterized by greatly increased sensitivity towards the claims of Irish nationalism, and one in which the Dublin government would not just be consulted on any major issue regarding the province but would be a partner as of right. The 1985 Agreement formally recognized the role of Dublin as the guarantor of minority rights in Northern Ireland, and gave the Irish government a treaty-based function to advise on the internal administration of Northern Ireland, and a set of institutions to enable it to do so.3 While Sinn Féin, in theory at least, regarded the Dublin government as having no more legitimate authority to rule over any part of the island than the British did over the North, it was an enthusiastic advocate of expanded, institutionalized, cross-border links in addition to the intergovernmental and parliamentary ones already in existence. The issue of these cross-border bodies and their powers became a central point of controversy during the negotiation of the Belfast Agreement. The threat that, if the talks failed, London and Dublin would go ahead with expanding this sector in circumstances outside the control or even influence of anyone within Northern Ireland was a factor in persuading unionists to accept the Agreement. In the event, the cross-border bodies proved the least controversial, and, to unionists, among the least obnoxious elements of the Agreement when it came to be implemented. As we shall see, there were much-more far-reaching and disquieting elements to the Anglo-Irish approach than institutionalized cooperation on practical matters, and the degree to which these other elements were incorporated and developed in the Belfast Agreement are factors to be weighed in any assessment of the Agreement as a basis for peace and stability in Northern Ireland. Hennessey, Godson and others have given detailed accounts of the long negotiations that went into the framing of the Belfast Agreement (Hennessey, 2000; Godson, 2004), from which the core objective of making a deal with Sinn Féin can be discerned. It is not necessary to cover the same ground; analysis of the Agreement itself, and of the way it was implemented can establish the same conclusion – that the overriding objective of the exercise was a deal between the British and Irish Governments and the representatives of those whom they had long condemned as terrorists seeking to subvert the democratic process, with the key object of securing an end to terrorist violence.
Paying the Dane Supporters of the Agreement, including now the latest converts led by Mr Paisley, can and do claim that, nine years on, it has delivered a very
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substantial measure of peace, it has enabled the IRA to put its arms, or most of them, beyond use, it has persuaded republicans to accept and support the police in Northern Ireland and to take their seats in a provincial British administration, publicly denying any aspiration to overthrow it by force. At the same time the hitherto most determined opponents of the Agreement, led by Mr Paisley, can now work it by sitting down in government with Sinn Féin/IRA (abandoning their promise never to do so while the IRA remained in existence) and endorse North-South cooperation with apparent enthusiasm. Therefore, despite its many faults, and its series of false starts, has the Belfast Agreement at last delivered peace and the promise of reconciliation and stability in Northern Ireland? Or is it another false dawn, not a settlement but an accommodation between a British government desperate to rid itself of the problem of IRA terrorism, and an Irish republicanism determined to avoid public admission that its ‘armed struggle’ had failed at enormous cost to everyone in Northern Ireland, and eager to seize upon concessions that would enable it to present the outcome as a victory and a step on the path towards the ultimate objective of Irish unity? Years ago, when the two governments first showed signs of wanting to deal with Sinn Féin and the IRA, Conor Cruise O’Brien liked to quote Kipling ‘... once you have paid him the Dane-geld/You never get rid of the Dane’, to remind them of the dangers of such a path. Does the price paid for the Belfast Agreement represent a Dane-geld which has, largely, brought a halt to violence, but which has left the problem more firmly entrenched than ever? No one can deny that a price has been paid; people convicted of the most heinous murders and other terrorist crimes have been freed from jail. Many others will never be brought to justice for crimes committed. The police force which bore the brunt of the terrorist violence has been disbanded at the behest of its enemies. People inextricably linked to terrorism have been welcomed into government within the United Kingdom. For a true settlement and a stable future such a price might, willingly or reluctantly, be paid by many, but there have been other, more fundamental costs which may yet make a real settlement less, not more, achievable. One of these is the substantial rewriting of the history of the 30 years of the Troubles, which has transformed a terrorist campaign intended to subvert the legally constituted order into a struggle to win justice and fair treatment for an ill-used, if not oppressed, minority. This can be seen in the Agreement itself, and in its carefully chosen wording.4 Its almost 12,000 words include only one mention of terrorists or terrorism, and that comes in a reference to the future, not the past, under new arrangements for policing and justice. The outrages of 30 years of terrorism are described as ‘the tragedies of the past’ (paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Support) or simply ‘violence’ as in discussion of the victims of violence
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(paragraph 11 onwards, of Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity, in Strand Three) or as ‘communal conflict’ (paragraph 1 of the same section). Terrorist groups are referred to only as ‘paramilitary organisations’, and while there is a commitment to the total disarmament of these, there is no call, at any point, for their disbandment, nor any indication that they are proscribed, illegal bodies. The Agreement may have been hailed as the end of a terrorist war that had lasted 30 years, and which the two governments had consistently vowed to defeat, yet nowhere in the Agreement is the word ‘surrender’ used. It is conspicuously absent from those sections dealing with weapons illegally held by terrorist (‘paramilitary’) organizations. Instead, the Agreement seizes upon a word already in vogue – ‘decommissioning’. It includes a separate section headed ‘Decommissioning’, it gives a role to the existing, and ludicrously named, Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, and in what must be the most woefully weak passage in the entire Agreement, says all participants reaffirm their commitment ‘... to use any influence they may have to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years ...’ As the Blair government was still asserting that Sinn Féin and the IRA were inextricably linked, that passage gives some indication of the degree to which the Agreement was slanted to take account of republican sensitivities, and to leave unchallenged the Sinn Féin presentation of the Troubles as a struggle for fairness and justice, not as a terrorist war against legitimate authority. Three year’s earlier, after the IRA’s 1994 ceasefire, a Secretary of State had publicly reaffirmed London’s commitment to crushing the evils of republican terrorism. In his Comber speech of September 1994 Sir Patrick Mayhew said: The security forces are utterly resolute in their determination to uphold the rule of law against the evil of terrorism. Their will to win is in no way diminished. There has been no diminution of the police and army’s determination relentlessly to pursue terrorists and all those involved in criminal activity. Yet by the spring of 1998, the IRA was no longer described as ‘terrorist’ and there was going to be no relentless pursuit of those engaged in the criminal activity of possessing illegal weaponry. The very term ‘decommissioning’, which had been coined very early in the ‘peace process’, suggests an action by an official body exercising its legitimate authority over its own property, not an illegal group reducing, if not entirely ending, its criminal activity. Subsequently, the actual manner of the decommissioning – the secrecy, the selection of witnesses, the timing – was dictated by the IRA and all designed to maintain the pretence of a legitimate army voluntarily dismantling its
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arms as part of a political negotiation, like an undefeated army agreeing armistice terms to end an inconclusive war. The Agreement’s reaffirmations of total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving political disputes, and opposition to the use of force, all refer to future conduct. There is no acknowledgement that the use of violence for such ends in the previous three decades had been terrorism, or was unjustified, let alone morally reprehensible. No one is asked to apologize for acts of terrorism, or even admit them. Since then the IRA has indeed (July 2005) instructed its ‘ volunteers’ to assist in ‘the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means’,5 and more recently, at Easter 2007, declared its ‘firm belief’ that the republican goal of a united Ireland ‘is achievable through purely peaceful and democratic means’.6 This is certainly further than the IRA has ever gone towards forswearing the use of violence to win unification, but there is still an element of conditionality in it; what happens if this firm belief proves unfounded, and a united Ireland cannot be won through peaceful means? That same Easter message concluded with the following: We remain fully committed to the establishment of the ideals and principles enshrined in the Proclamation of 1916. The Proclamation declared the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be ‘sovereign and indefeasible’, and added that that right ‘can never be extinguished’, except by the destruction of the Irish people. The Rising itself was, as the Proclamation claimed, an assertion ‘in arms’ of that sovereignty, and the defining principle enshrined in the Proclamation – and in the fact of the Rising – was the right of Irishmen to assert Irish sovereignty ‘in arms’, as succeeding generations had done. A cynical view of the republican position since the Belfast Agreement might be that republicans have forsworn violence, but only for so long as the process set in train by the Agreement is leading towards a united Ireland.
What was it all about? A future generation reading the Agreement and deducing from its content what had been happening in Northern Ireland for the 30 years preceding 1998 would almost certainly jump to the conclusion that the province had been under the control of some corrupt oligarchy, and that a period of civil unrest and violence had resulted from widespread violations of human rights, partial government, maltreatment of a minority in terms of respect for its civil, political, cultural and social rights, and that there had
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been widespread discrimination, and no parity of esteem or just and equal treatment. Underlying this, the careful reader might just detect, was the desire of a minority, not only to secede from the United Kingdom, but also to take Northern Ireland, and its majority population, with it. He would be unlikely to glean that, for almost the entire period of violence, the province had been under the direct rule of the democratically elected governments of the United Kingdom, working in ever-closer cooperation with the government of the Irish Republic, and according that government an increasing role as guardian of minority interests in Northern Ireland. Nor would he learn that legislative measures, practices and institutions to protect and forward the rights and interests of any and all minority groups had proliferated. Instead, the text of the Agreement is replete with new affirmations of mutual esteem and parity of all political aspirations and identities, with new guarantees of human rights and laws and institutions to safeguard all such rights and equality of opportunity. It is as if the reform programme of 1969–70 had never happened, and the province was only now, belatedly, starting to introduce legislative and other measures against discrimination and deal with the wider problem of disadvantage. Given the long history of mutual distrust between the two communities, evidence of past unionist misrule and the widespread nationalist belief that the minority were treated as second-class citizens, some such new measures and reassurances would not be inappropriate in the context of a general settlement. But their pre-eminence in the Agreement, taken together with its failure to identify the terrorist reality of the past three decades, serves to assist in the sanitizing of that violence, to support the republican propaganda that it was a struggle for justice, against oppression, which, while causing regrettable hurt to individuals was, nevertheless, justified. The British government, particularly Mr Blair himself and successive Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, has come dangerously close to endorsing this. Welcoming the Paisley-Adams agreement to nominate a new executive in March 2007, Peter Hain declared that this opened an entirely new door for Northern Ireland; conflict, bigotry and bitterness, he said, would be replaced by peace and democracy, implying that democracy would be something entirely new to Northern Ireland.7 Whatever the imperfections of direct rule from London, or of the Stormont administration before it, both were democratic. What the IRA had been doing for three decades was an attempt to subvert democracy.
A better class of terrorist Mr Blair has gone to considerable and tortuous lengths to defend his policy of negotiating with Irish terrorists, while declaring total war on Moslem terrorists. At a press conference in 2005, while admitting that ‘sometimes’
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he thought it invidious to compare one type of terrorism with another (‘terrorism is wrong, full stop’) he went on to outline two main differences he saw between IRA terrorism and that now faced from Moslem terrorists. Republican terrorism was different ‘in its political demands and most essentially it is different in the way that it operates and in the numbers of people it is prepared to kill’. The political demands of republicanism, he argued, were demands that would be shared by law-abiding nationalists in Ireland North and South, while the demands of Moslem terrorists were none that any serious person could ever negotiate on. In a convoluted passage, prefaced by the hope that he would not be misunderstood, Mr Blair went on to say that he did not think the IRA would ever have set out to kill 3000 people. Killing even one person was wrong, but a willingness to kill ‘without limit’ meant you had a different kind of terrorism. Just how Mr Blair came to the conclusion that the IRA had deliberately limited the numbers killed by its bombs in Enniskillen, Brighton, Birmingham or anywhere else, he did not share with his listeners, nor why he thought it reasonable to negotiate with terrorists demanding the dissolution – or at least the redrawing of the boundaries – of the state of which he was Prime Minister, but totally unthinkable to do so with Moslem terrorists demanding the dissolution of the state of Israel.8 Mr Blair might have argued a case for negotiating with the IRA on the grounds that while its campaign had run out of steam he did not believe it was possible to defeat it militarily, but that some concessions far short of its core demand would secure an end to violence. Instead he chose to ignore both logic and morality, and tried to define a better class of terrorist – one who would murder fewer people, and one whose demands, however outrageous, could be deemed negotiable. It was a graphic illustration of how far Downing Street had moved to accommodate the IRA’s own version of its armed campaign. The cult of violence has been left intact.
Elusive grail Left intact, too, is the fundamental demand of Irish nationalism, and the focus of nationalist politics within Northern Ireland – the unification of the island as an independent republic. In its handling of this, the underlying political problem, the Belfast Agreement is, at best, a holding document, an acknowledgement that the constitutional issue remains unresolved. In one sense, this is no more than a recognition of reality – so long as a significant minority insist that the constitutional settlement of 1921 was unjust, and therefore illegitimate, and so long as that minority continues to make constitutional change the focus of its politics, then the issue remains alive. However, it is also a reality that the constitutional issue was legally settled by the Treaty of 1921 and related legislation, and was universally recognized
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as legitimate when the Government of Ireland Act was registered at the League of Nations in 1925. It was formally accepted by the Irish Free State at the same time. A rational definition of the Irish, or Northern Irish, problem might be that it is essentially one of persuading the nationalist minority within the province to accept the reality of the United Kingdom, and make the best of life within it, rather than pursuing the holy and unobtainable grail of an independent united Ireland. The 1921 settlement gave the decision on partition to the people of Northern Ireland, by means of the ‘opting out’ clause exercised by the Belfast Parliament. That was confirmed in the Ireland Act of 1949 when Westminster legislated that Northern Ireland, or any part of it, would never cease to be part of the United Kingdom without the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland. In essence, the Belfast Agreement incorporates that position, with the power of decision resting with the people rather than the parliament of Northern Ireland, as already established by the 1973 Constitution Act. But the emphasis is entirely different. Now the guarantee is for Irish unity, if the two parts of the island vote for it. The Agreement is couched in language to give such assurance to nationalists aspiring to unity that it might be read as implying that such an event is not just possible, but probable. In 1921, the guarantee was one against change – that the constitutional position would not be altered without majority consent; this time it is a much-more radical guarantee of fundamental constitutional change as soon as a majority, however small, expresses a desire for it. As the Agreement formulates it, the issue is an entirely Irish one, with the British state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, remaining strictly neutral – ‘... it is for the people of the island alone ... to exercise their right of self-determination ... to bring about a united Ireland’.9 It is surely remarkable for a sovereign state to have no view on the dismantling of its territory, and to accept, in the words of the Agreement, ‘a binding obligation’ to legislate for the transfer of Northern Ireland into an Irish republic once – if ever – a majority so desire, thereby, expelling almost certainly a million of its citizens from the United Kingdom against their wishes. It is, of course, true that if a clear majority in the province voted for unity with the south, at some future date, it would almost certainly happen. Similarly, if a majority in Scotland, at some future date, vote for independence, then it will almost certainly happen. But the government of the United Kingdom is far from neutral on this latter issue; both Tony Blair and the Gordon Brown have championed the unity, and the virtues, of the Union, and derided independence. There is no ‘parity of esteem’ for Scots nationalists’ aspirations. In 1990, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, had stated that the British government had ‘no selfish strategic or economic
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interests in Northern Ireland’.10 The Belfast Agreement implied that it had little or no interest, selfish or otherwise, in retaining Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.
A place apart The degree to which Northern Ireland has disappeared off the radar of political debate at United Kingdom level is seen, as already remarked, in the context of the ‘war against terrorism’. Even more remarkably, it does not feature at all in the growing preoccupation with minorities, multiculturalism, devolution and the future stability of the Union and the nature of Britishness. Mr Blair and his ministers have tackled these issues in public at length. If we take major pronouncements by the Prime Minister and two of his most senior Ministers in the recent past – Mr Blair in his Runnymede Trust speech of December 2006,11 Mr Brown in his Fabian Society speech of January 2006 and Mr Straw in his May 2007 article in The World Today – we find that in extended discussion of the nature of Britishness and related problems of assimilating reluctant minorities, identity and citizenship, Northern Ireland does not feature. Mr Blair, in his speech on ‘Our Nation’s Future – multiculturalism and integration’ could, while lauding the shared heritage and equal treatment for all within the United Kingdom, declare that no distinctive culture or religion superseded the duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom. ‘Integrating people, whilst preserving their distinctive culture is not impossible,’ he said. ‘It is the norm.’ But at no point does he discuss Northern Ireland, where the refusal of a minority to integrate was the root political cause behind a 30-year terrorist campaign. Mr Brown, in a 5000-word speech, dealt with the unity of the United Kingdom and its component parts, of different nationalities and plural identities. He mentioned the Welsh, the Cornish, Pakistanis, AfroCaribbeans, but not the Irish or Northern Irish; discussing devolution he talked of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Mayor of London, but not of the Belfast Assembly. He urged people to fly the Union Jack and said all the United Kingdom should honour it, but did not mention that the Government had restricted the flying of it in Northern Ireland.12 Mr Straw, writing on ‘Identity and Democracy’, could talk of the problem of increasing segregation in British cities without once mentioning the one British city where communities are divided by peace walls. They had, he said, to convince those who felt detached from the national community that they were part of it. ‘It is crucial for us to establish a sense of identity and citizenship to which all can subscribe’.13 Except, of course, in Northern Ireland. In his article, Mr Straw does not refer to Northern Ireland, though
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it would have been interesting to see how he would have reconciled the vastly different principles embodied in the Belfast Agreement with those he – and Blair and Brown – were espousing so evangelically. The Agreement downgrades integration or any common sense of identity in this part of the United Kingdom. It specifically recognizes the ‘birthright’ of people here to deny their British identity and opt for an Irish one instead; it confirms their right to Irish rather than British citizenship. These interventions by senior ministers all reflected a growing concern that ‘multiculturalism’ had proved a wrong option for dealing with ethnic, religious and other minorities in the United Kingdom, or at least that respect and protection for minority values and concerns must be accompanied by far greater efforts to encourage integration and to promote a shared sense of Britishness. In August 2006, Ruth Kelly, the Minister for Communities, announcing the creation of a Commission on Multiculturalism, questioned the value of multiculturalism, and asked whether it was encouraging separateness.14 ‘In our attempt to avoid imposing a single British identity and culture, have we ended up with some communities living in isolation of each other?’ she asked. In no corner of the United Kingdom do communities live more in isolation from each other than Northern Ireland, but Miss Kelly, despite her own origins in the province, was not thinking of here; in fact, she made no mention of it in her speech launching the Commission. None of the 14 members appointed to the new Commission was from Northern Ireland nor had any obvious connection with or knowledge of it. Yet multiculturalism is at the very heart of the Belfast Agreement. Not only is parity of esteem promised for every aspect of diversity, including national identity and citizenship, but also the rules governing the Assembly and its procedures are the most extreme institutionalizing of multiculturalism seen since South Africa’s apartheid system collapsed. The requirement on MLAs to declare themselves nationalist, unionist or ‘other’ inevitably invites comparison with the National Party’s odious race classification legislation on which apartheid was based. In July 2007, the government, under Gordon Brown’s leadership, issued a discussion document reflecting much of the new thinking on multiculturalism and British identity.15 Its title, The Governance of Britain, was in itself an indication of how little account was taken of Northern Ireland. For instance, in discussing the importance of symbols, and particularly the Union flag, as embodiments of national culture and citizenship, it specifically excludes Northern Ireland – there, it says, there are ‘particular sensitivities’. (In Northern Ireland, the Royal Arms, symbol of monarchy, are excluded by law from new courtrooms; judges do not swear allegiance to the Crown; flying the Union Jack is restricted; members of the Belfast Assembly, or Executive, take no oath of allegiance.)
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As for identity, The Governance of Britain says we must be clearer about what it means to be British, and insists that while there is room for multiple identities, none of these should take precedence over ‘the core values that define what it means to be British’. But not in Northern Ireland, where the Belfast Agreement specifically recognizes the right of anyone to identify himself as not British. Supporters of the Agreement would argue that Northern Ireland is unique, totally unlike the rest of the United Kingdom, that special rules apply and that great risks had to be taken to unblock the log-jam and find a way to end violence. If a rigid application of principle meant no progress was made, then principle had to be modified, bent or temporarily set aside. However, every problem is different, and principles exist as valuable guides to conduct whatever the immediate circumstances. Ignoring them, or deeming them inappropriate for a particular case, is an indication that priority is being given to short-term expediency, not long-term strategy.
Shifting focus This pattern of omitting Northern Ireland from most discussion of the key issues in UK politics complements the constant shifting of the location of Northern Irish issues away from a UK context into an island of Ireland one, away from being a British problem to being an Anglo-Irish one. The standing involvement of the Dublin government in the handling of matters relating to Northern Ireland has been a permanent fixture at least since 1985, and has its institutionalized expression in the secretariats in Armagh, and in the North-South Ministerial Council, the British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. The centrality of the Irish role is acknowledged by the fact that the chairing of these bodies is shared equally between British and Irish Ministers. Where matters touching on both jurisdictions such as cross-border cooperation are concerned this is a sensible enough arrangement, but it has expanded to include joint Irish-British chairmanship of almost every meeting, conference or negotiation relating to the Northern Ireland problem. This is particularly visible at summit level, where Mr Blair has brought Mr Ahern into apparent equal partnership on every occasion when an attempt has been made to re-launch the Stormont Executive, which is, patently, an internal Northern Irish affair, in which Dublin certainly has an interest, but no formal role. Mr Blair, it appears, has taken every opportunity to demonstrate joint British-Irish responsibility for the Northern Ireland problem, almost to the point where what was a British matter requiring Irish involvement, has become an Irish matter requiring British involvement. London also seems to have no problem with the de facto extension of the role of President McAleese to cover the whole of the island. The President of the Republic of Ireland now pays regular official visits to places and
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organizations within Northern Ireland. Sometimes the invitations sent out to guests at such events have simply said ‘On the occasion of the visit of the President, Mrs McAleese ...’. In the calendar year 2005 alone, she made seven such visits to the province. In the same year the UK’s Head of State, Queen Elizabeth, paid one visit – it was only her thirteenth in 52 years. Mrs McAleese’s visits generally pass off without controversy and can be seen as indicative of, and contributing to, the increasing good relations between north and south. To some the President is a non-political personification of ‘Irishness’, and her visits north enable nationalists and, to an extent, unionists to declare their own non-political Irishness. However, the President is head of a state which still aspires to the unification of the island as an independent unit. The Republic’s explicit claim to ownership of the whole island was dropped from the Irish constitution as part of the Belfast Agreement, but the aspiration remains, and the assertion of ownership is implicit in retention of the name ‘Ireland’ as that of the state, thereby equating it with the whole island. The President may be above party politics, but in several of her speeches Mrs McAleese has voiced extreme nationalist sentiments regarding Northern Ireland, and her visits there are powerfully symbolic of nationalism’s primary goal of a united Ireland.16
Forced marriage In the euphoria surrounding the 2007 restoration of devolution under a DUP-Sinn Féin Executive headed by a jovial Ian Paisley and a smiling Martin McGuinness, such reservations about the rewriting of the history of the Troubles or some massaging of nationalist hopes and grievances could be dismissed as sour grapes, as nit-picking by long-term critics of the Agreement unable, or unwilling, to accept that, for all its murky areas and cumbersome mechanisms, it had worked. But they are the background to a restoration brought about under extreme pressure from London, and much influenced by immediate party interests, rather than by any rapprochement between the two main partners – a forced marriage rather than a sudden discovery of mutual trust. Both the continued veneration of violent men and violent acts on the nationalist side, and the marginalization of Northern Ireland, almost to the point of exclusion from the UK political debate, could prove highly destabilizing factors to an unnatural and extremely fragile coalition. There is real danger in leaving intact the cult of violence in pursuit of Irish unity – the ethos of 1916. It may have been set aside as inappropriate in current circumstances, but Sinn Féin, with the approval of London and Dublin, clearly intend taking every opportunity to honour publicly, even to glorify, the violent actions of the IRA during the Troubles. The history of physical force nationalism – of actually asserting Irish sovereignty ‘in arms’ as the 1916 Proclamation has it – has always been episodic. In modern times, it can
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be traced from 1798, to Young Ireland in 1848, to the Fenians in 1867, to 1916 and 1919–21, and more recently to the IRA campaigns of the 1950s and the latest Troubles. The actual use of force has been intermittent, though rarely skipping a generation, but the cult of arms has continuously pervaded Irish nationalism’s romantic view of itself. Its heroes have been those who rose in arms – Tone, Emmett, Young Ireland, the Fenians, Pearse, De Valera, Collins. Since the founding of the Irish state in 1921–22, the nineteenthcentury giants of non-violent nationalism, O’Connell and Parnell, have faded into the background, leaving the men of 1916, plus Michael Collins, the embodiment of all that is heroic in Irish nationalism. History has shown how the apparently mummified and revered corpse of armed-force nationalism can be brought back to menacing life. After the collapse of the 1950s campaign the IRA had all but disappeared, but events and circumstances in the 1960s, not least the widespread celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of 1916 and the reappearance of loyalist violence, combined to prepare the ground for an unimagined rebirth and growth of republicanism in the 1970s. A return to armed force by today’s mainstream republicans is generally deemed impossible. But what if it becomes clear that there is no progress towards Irish unity, particularly as the centenary of 1916 approaches?
Off-loading The off-loading of the Northern Irish question from a British to an Irish context, and the total absence of any consideration of the province in the growing debate in Britain on the problem of multiculturalism versus integration, pose serious questions about the province’s place within a changing United Kingdom. They are also the context in which the constitutional aspects of the Agreement must be read. David Trimble has argued that its constitutional provisions were, on balance, favourable (to unionists): ‘We settled the basic constitutional issue in the only way possible for us, namely leaving it to be determined by the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum.’17 In essence, this guarantee had existed from 1921, when it was the Parliament of Northern Ireland that was given the final say in the constitutional status of the province. The Free State’s acceptance of the settlement at that time, and subsequently in the formal agreement of 1925, meant formal endorsement of the consent principle by the Irish state. This was made even more explicit in the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. So while unionists rightly welcomed the endorsement of ‘consent’ by all shades of nationalism, including republicans, in the 1998 Agreement, it added little, if anything, to the guarantee. The alterations to Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic’s constitution may have seemed a major concession to dedicated nationalists, but unionists had long regarded the original articles
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as nationalist daydreams. Terence O’Neill had dismissed them as such more than four decades earlier when he said that when Lemass drove into Stormont in 1955 ‘... the empty claims of Eire’s constitution were exposed for the vanity they are’.18 Against what Mr Trimble saw as gains on the constitutional question must be set the transparent neutrality of the British government on the issue which shines through the Agreement, plus the equally transparent distancing of that government, and indeed of the British body politic, from Northern Ireland, and its omission from all discussion of the future shape of the United Kingdom. The net impact of the Agreement on the constitutional issue may well have been to make it clear that unionists are on their own, as the only people actively wishing to preserve the Union. That in turn serves only to enhance nationalist expectations and unionist fears – no recipe for stability.
Structural weakness In the euphoria of watching the unbelievable happen when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, all smiles and bonhomie, established the Executive in May 2007, it was easy to forget that their coming together was the direct result of the bizarre mechanisms of the Belfast Agreement, not of common interest or enlightened dealing. The votes their parties had received in the Assembly election automatically made them the chief partners in the Executive as decreed under the terms of the Agreement – they had no choice of partners. There was, therefore, no pre-nuptial agreement on the many divisive issues that would fall to be handled by the new Executive, and no agreement on the fundamental question that divided them and defined them – the ultimate constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Indeed, both parties had become the main vote-winners because of the perceived strength of their unionism and nationalism – the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP )had seen off moderate unionism because the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) had failed to champion that cause with sufficient muscle, while Sinn Féin’s nationalism, profiting from association with the heroics of an undefeated IRA and from its ability to turn off the violence, had made the SDLP and its version of nationalism look tired and ineffective. As a result, the eccentric mechanism laid down in the Belfast Agreement decreed that the two parties with least in common, utterly opposed to each other on almost all major issues, should form the core of the governing coalition. To some this is the sophisticated beauty of the Agreement – trapping unionism and nationalism within the straitjacket of enforced coalition having left them to face up to the stark reality that there was no option. In the short term, it has ensured an end to violence, full involvement in government of the two political communities, and, of course, restored
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devolution. The hope in the long term is that the rewards of office, a continuing peace dividend for the economy and consolidation of electoral support, coupled with the likely cost to either side of pulling out and collapsing the Executive, will keep the arrangement going indefinitely. In time the experience of working together in governing Northern Ireland, it is hoped, may make less relevant the ideologies of territorial nationalism and rigid unionism, allowing a slow evolution away from bi-polar politics. However, for today’s arrangement to survive, the supporters of each side will have to remain convinced of their own contradictory perceptions of what is really happening. Unionists will have to believe that Mr Paisley has outsmarted Sinn Féin by helping it to surrender without realizing it, or at least without admitting it, thus leaving the Union intact at the cost of power-sharing and a polite nod in the direction of Irishness. Nationalists will have to go on believing that the Agreement really is a stage on the road to a united Ireland in the near future. This must have been made much more difficult by Sinn Féin’s poor showing in the Republic’s general election of May 2007, which, in the view of one commentator, was disastrous, and left in ruins the strategy crafted and implemented by Gerry Adams to underpin the IRA’s move from war to peace.19 Such circumstances could be more conducive to strident reassertions of nationalist and unionist purity from the two major parties, rather than the fundamental reappraisal of the meanings of both nationalism and unionism needed if a real settlement is to be found. The threat to the Agreement could come both from irreconcilable disputes at the centre, between Sinn Féin and the DUP, and from disintegration in either or both parties as their respective hopes are disappointed and their fears realized. At a practical level the complex system of an executive based on an involuntary coalition monitored by Assembly Committees, all working on the basis of sectarian cross-community voting requirements, would make effective government extremely difficult under the most favourable circumstances. It will be even more so if, as predicted, public spending will be tight. Divisions on some key social and other policies follow closely the main sectarian divide – selection for secondary education, local government reform, modernization of hospital and health services, Irish language, for example – and could make it difficult for either side to offer the necessary give and take concessions essential to make any coalition work effectively, thereby putting the DUP-Sinn Féin partnership under severe strain. The making of such concessions could in turn threaten the solidity of electoral support for either party. The settlement has other fundamental weaknesses. It has long been taken for granted that power-sharing between unionist and nationalist is not just a necessary element, but that it is ideally suited for a divided community such as Northern Ireland. But arguably the reverse is the case; most political
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theorists assert that an essential pre-requisite for power-sharing is agreement on the status of the region to be governed and a commitment to act in the best interests of that area.20 With Sinn Féin continuing to make Irish unity and the withdrawal of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom its prime political objective, one of the fundamental bases of power-sharing is removed. Even if this goal is more rhetorical than real, the constant reiteration of it by Sinn Féin Ministers, and their participation in public acts of commemoration and celebration of IRA heroes and exploits must put considerable strain on relations within the Executive. While Paisley’s retirement from office in 2008 should make it easier for the DUP to move away from its origins in the robustly anti-Catholic Free Presbyterian Church he founded, it is unlikely to lead to modification of its ultra-unionism, or its total rejection of the ideals and aims of Irish nationalism. The laughter and guffaws of Mr Paisley and the tight-lipped smiles of Mr McGuinness at Stormont in May 2007 must have betokened, to many watching, the triumph of cynicism and hypocrisy rather than of reconciliation and understanding. The Belfast Agreement had been born out of a desperate wish to end IRA violence, was moulded to accommodate the IRA, drafted with maximum ambiguity and forced upon the people of Northern Ireland by cajoling, bullying, bribing and endless threats of worse to come. The nine years between the conclusion of the Agreement and the restoration of devolution in 2007 saw its essential character as a deal to end IRA terrorism confirmed by continued concessions to Sinn Féin, and provided evidence of its capacity for exacerbating community division and rendering the fundamental political problem more intractable. By 2007, it had delivered Northern Ireland into the hands of the DUP and Sinn Féin, and had given it, as its First Minister and Deputy First Minister, an anti-Catholic demagogue and a leader of the IRA terrorism. Both professed their readiness to work together for the good of Northern Ireland – neither acknowledged any past wrongdoings nor indicated any modification of their own deeply held certainties. A few days earlier Mark Durkan had recounted on BBC television how Mr Blair had dismissed his remonstrations, post-1998, about concessions to Sinn Féin: ‘You guys,’ Blair told the SDLP leader, ‘Your problem is you don’t have guns.’21 It would be hard to find a more telling encapsulation of the cynicism underlying the Agreement and pervading its implementation.
Notes 1. House of Commons, 9 May 2007, as reported in Irish Times, 10 May 2007. 2. Figures quoted in Hayes and McAllister, 2004. 3. Article 2(b) of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. UK-Ir Cmnd 9657.
264 The Northern Ireland Question 4. The text, entitled ‘The Agreement: Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations’ was published by Government as a pamphlet in 1998 and distributed to all households in Northern Ireland. 5. Statement issued by the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin, 28 July 2005. See Cain web service,
[email protected]. 6. Statement issued by Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin, 5 April 2007. Ibid. 7. Interview on BBC News 24, 26 March 2007. 8. Press conference, July 26 2005. Transcript on Downing Street website www. number-10.gov.uk. 9. Belfast Agreement, Constitutional Issues, 1 (ii). 10. Speech to Westminster constituency, reported in Irish Times, 10 November 1990. 11. ‘Our nation’s future – multiculturalism and integration’, Speech to Runnymede Trust, 8 December 2006. www.number-10.gov.uk. 12. Speech to Fabian Society conference, 14 January 2006. www.fabiansociety.org 13. ‘Identity and democracy; the way we are’ in The World Today, May 2007. Chatham House, London. 14. 24 August 2006. news.bbc.co.uk. 15. Command Paper The Governance of Britain (CM7170) presented to Parliament, July 2007. 16. See Dennis Kennedy, ‘Attitude of state to nationhood ...’ in Irish Times, 19 March 2006. 17. Anthony Alcock Memorial Lecture, University of Ulster, 24 April 2007. 18. NIHC Vol. 71, Col. 413–14. 29 January 1969. 19. Ed. Moloney, ‘SF leaders too slick for party’s own good’. Irish Times, 31 May 2007. 20. For a discussion of political theories of power-sharing in relation to Northern Ireland see ‘Can Power Sharing Work in Northern Ireland?’ by Bill Smith. www. cadogan.org. 21. BBC, NI Spotlight, 1 May 2007.
Conclusion Brian Barton and Patrick J. Roche
The assessment of the peace process and the Belfast Agreement may be considered to move between diametrically opposed views. At one extreme, proponents of a critical view have argued that the peace process and the Belfast Agreement were made possible significantly because of the counter-terrorist professionalism and, in particular, the efficiency of the intelligence gathering undertaken by the security forces. Proponents of this view argue that the IRA had been brought close to the point of defeat by the early 1990s. The human cost to the security forces was very considerable. Between 1969 and 2001, 302 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers died in the Troubles. In 1983, Interpol concluded that Northern Ireland was then the most dangerous place in the world to serve as a police officer, the risk of personal injury being more than twice that of El Salvador, the second most hazardous location. The RUC was presented with the George Cross on 12 April 2000 and the citation referred to ‘the brave and resolute stand’ its members had taken against paramilitary violence. The impact on the families of local members of the security forces killed or injured over thirty years in north and south Armagh is graphically recorded in Legacy of Tears (Patterson, 2006). From this viewpoint, the IRA faced the prospect of an effective defeat by the late 1980s had a resolute security policy been sustained and if there had been no attempt at political compromise. The case for the pursuit of this course (as an alternative to the peace process) was made by the Conservative MP and Times columnist, Michael Gove. He writes that, had this course been adopted it would certainly have further eroded the republican military threat and lowered the morale of the Provisionals, though he adds that ‘we cannot know if the IRA could have been defeated’ (Gove, 2000, pp. 12–13). The consequential marginalization of Sinn Féin would have facilitated the establishment of stable, democratic institutions in Northern Ireland. These would have had considerable popular support. Opinion surveys in 1986 and 1989 indicate that almost 80 per cent of northern Catholics and 60 per cent of Protestants found power-sharing devolution within the United Kingdom acceptable (for Catholics, it was by far their most popular first preference 265
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option). In the Republic, polls conducted in 1990 suggest that a substantial majority regarded an internal settlement in the North as the first priority, rather than unity, and considered that the 1937 Constitution should be amended (Barton, 1999, p. 193). However, in Gove’s phrase, this ‘road was not taken’. Instead, he states that the British government, post-Thatcher, ‘for political reasons’, changed policy, reined in the security forces and focused its energies on attaining a negotiated settlement (Gove, 2000, p. 13) In 1988, John Hume had instigated the peace process by engaging in talks with Gerry Adams so ending Sinn Féin isolation and marginalization. His actions were influenced by his perception of continuing unionist reluctance to share power, the legacy of nationalist-unionist distrust (which had been reinforced by the fall of the Sunningdale executive), and his awareness that any future Northern Ireland assembly would have a built-in unionist majority. In addition, he wished to end the violence, and shared with the Sinn Féin leader the goal of establishing a pan-nationalist front and using its combined pressure, together with the lure of a ceasefire, to extract further concessions from Britain – possibly joint authority. At the same time, Hume was criticized by some within the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP); Eddie McGrady, MP for South Down, reportedly complained that his leader was ‘elevating Sinn Féin/PIRA to a position of respectability they do not deserve. More than once he [McGrady] described them as the “scum of the earth”’ (Bew, 2007a, p. 544). Arguably, Hume did miscalculate – in the long term his own party was to be one of the prime casualties of the peace process. The failure to defeat the IRA obscured its failure to achieve its principle objective, the unification of Ireland. Despite this, the peace process and the Agreement, in effect, legitimized the republican campaign. The Belfast Agreement required the mass release of prisoners and contained the terms of reference for the Patten Report which, in 2000, recommended the radical restructuring of the RUC. Moreover, a consequence of the terms agreed in 1998 was that Sinn Féin acquired the right to executive posts without any explicit imperative for the IRA to decommission its arms. Overall, the US political commentator, Rich Lowry, concluded that the Agreement had ‘fuzzed the differences between civilisation and barbarism and granted thugs support and power’ (Lowry, 2003, p. 236). It can also be argued that the Belfast Agreement exacerbated the polarization of Northern Ireland politics. The expectation on the part of its enthusiasts was that it would consolidate the ‘middle ground’ in Northern Ireland politics. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Sinn Féin’s political elevation served to enhance further its electoral credibility – to the extent that since the 2001 Westminster election it has been the major nationalist party, displacing the SDLP. Moreover, the political accommodation of the IRA and Sinn Féin, combined with the reform of the RUC, helped alienate and radicalize opinion within the unionist community. A result of this was
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a significant shift in unionist electoral support from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which, since the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election, has been the dominant unionist party. This was a consequence of the DUP’s initial opposition to the implementation of the Belfast Agreement. The latter might thus be regarded as having been, in effect, a blueprint for the basis of political instability in Northern Ireland and as having institutionalized sectarianism. Although a DUP-Sinn Féin executive has been formed, there is a real question about its long-term survival – because of the increased political polarization generated by the peace process itself, the inherent and historic incompatibility between unionism and nationalism and the significant socio-economic policy differences between the DUP and Sinn Féin. Writing in 2005 (before the St Andrews Agreement), Arthur Aughey argued that Northern Ireland was then entrapped politically between the ‘not possible’ and the ‘impossible’. The ‘not possible’ refers to the apparently insurmountable difficulties in establishing stable devolved institutions owing to the contraction of the more moderate parties; the ‘very building blocks of accommodation had been knocked down’, he writes. The ‘impossible’ refers to the legitimate grounds for considering that, for the near future at least, it is not an option for the IRA ‘to return to their systematic campaign of widespread violence’. This is related to its having sustained a virtual defeat, the erosion of minority support for physical force, and the impact of 9/11 on US politics. Aughey’s most optimistic prediction for Northern Ireland was the ‘politics of simmering ... Even though it is unlikely to prove as violent as the years 1969–96, or as politically dramatic as the years after 1998, the more distant journey that beckons ... is also unlikely to be a comfortable one’ (Aughey, 2005, p. 181). Proponents of the Belfast Agreement offer a different analysis. Many argue that IRA defeat in the early 1990s was far from being imminent. In 1989, Brooke had spoken of the ‘military stalemate’ (Bew, 2007a, p. 539). in Northern Ireland and, in the following year, conceded, that he could not envisage the IRA being defeated (Hennessey, 1997, p. 285). Between 1990 and ’94, the intensity of the IRA campaign escalated sharply, and was conducted competently, though without being observably effective. Moloney has suggested, however, that with the massive car bombs exploded in London, the Provisionals had unleashed ‘possibly the most successful military tactic since the start of the troubles’ (Moloney, 2002, p. 411). Overall, Danny Morrison probably summed up the republican position accurately in 1991, when he stated: ‘we can fight on forever, and can’t be defeated. But of course that isn’t the same as winning or showing something for all the sacrifice’ (Alonso, 2006, p. 152) – hence the attraction to the IRA and Sinn Féin of a political initiative. Just as in the spring of 1921, by the early 1990s, the urgent need for inclusive talks to find a way out of the military stalemate, and attempt to devise
268 The Northern Ireland Question
an agreed settlement, was increasingly recognized on all sides. Seen in this light, the changing emphasis of British policy might be regarded as having been justified. Likewise, Hume arguably performed a vital role in helping to provide the republican movement with a legitimate alternative to physical force and in encouraging them to pursue it. The subsequent peace process might be said to have succeeded primarily because, almost imperceptibly, during the preceding decades of violence and failed initiatives, an increased sense of realism had come to characterize the positions of each of its key participants. Broadly, Sinn Féin recognized the need to compromise (the limits of what violence could achieve having been exposed) and the desirability at least of gaining unionist agreement to constitutional change. The SDLP came to acknowledge the sense of British identity shared by members of the Northern Ireland majority. Unionists were prepared to share power and accept a meaningful Irish dimension – their attitudes perhaps ameliorated in part by the Republic’s accelerating economic growth and the reality that it had become a less confessional state. They were also influenced by the fact that the Southern parties, including Fianna Fail, were prepared to endorse the consent principle, and the need to amend the 1937 Constitution, whilst not compromising their commitment to the principle of Ireland’s national integrity and its right to self-determination. The changing views of Irish nationalists and unionists were related to their growing appreciation of the consensus that had been reached by the two main British parties regarding the conflict. Both favoured a neutral stance, with Britain acting merely as an ‘honest broker’, facilitating discussion to achieve a compromise agreement which respected the wishes of the Northern majority. Whilst the peace process was associated with the growth of the more extreme parties (Sinn Féin and the DUP), their rise pre-dated it and had additional causes. In any case, from past experience it was considered imperative that the discussions leading to the Belfast Agreement were inclusive – to help ensure the support of more militant elements within the electorate for the political changes being negotiated, and so enhance the long-term prospects of stability. Such an approach was, arguably, vindicated; underpinning the eventual formation of an executive in 2007 composed of ‘the two most obdurate forms of unionism and nationalism ... is an implicit recognition that the future of Northern Ireland cannot be settled on their own terms’ (Patterson, 2006, p. 358). Ian Paisley’s greatest advantage as First Minister was that there was no figure equivalent to himself voicing vitriolic criticism of the inevitable compromises that had to be made. In the short term, the fact that the IRA has not resumed its campaign, and the apparent security of the Union under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, has provided the political space for the development of something approaching ‘normal’ politics in Northern Ireland. If these circumstances persist, political division may increasingly focus on socio-economic issues (such as selection in education) rather than on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, and
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the atavistic hatreds that sustained three decades of the Troubles may in the longer term dissolve. Arguably, the devolved structures, rooted in the Belfast Agreement, can survive for the near future. The political parties have already shown a capacity to work together within their circumscribed devolved powers, have found the exercise of executive authority satisfying and are conscious of the electoral benefits of being seen to make the institutions work. Moreover, the most divisive political issues within Northern Ireland (apart from the contentious issue of the devolution of justice and security powers) have now been resolved (power-sharing, consent, the Irish dimension, police reform, arms decommissioning, the release of prisoners, etc.) and both traditions not only share government responsibility, but are now fully recognized and equally esteemed within the structures of the state. However, Aughey’s ‘politics of simmering’ may well prove to be an accurate depiction of Northern Ireland’s ‘more distant journey’. Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, the essential demands of unionists were satisfied – the establishment of a Northern Ireland Assembly, consultative North-South bodies, recognition of the principle of consent and the replacement of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. The republican movement also made solid gains – given its level of electoral support Sinn Féin acquired the right to executive posts (without prior arms decommissioning), republican prisoners have been released and policing in Northern Ireland has been reformed. But, as Alonso writes, the comparative ‘weakness of the IRA and Sinn Féin, prevented them from republicanising the peace process’, and from achieving their primary objectives; he therefore concludes: ‘because the IRA failed to attain its political aims, military action must also be seen to have failed’ (Alonso, 2006, pp. 119, 152). The threat must, however, remain that despite a less favourable political context – within Ireland and beyond it – elements within the republican movement may at some future time resume the armed struggle, inspired to do so by the ‘ancestral voices’ (O’Brien, 1994) and the still unfinished business of the Easter Rising Proclamation.
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272 Bibliography Horowitz, D. (2001) ‘The Northern Ireland Agreement: Clear, Consociational and Risky’, in McGarry, J (ed.) Northern Ireland and the Divided World: Post Agreement Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Horowitz, D. (2002) ‘Explaining the Northern Ireland Agreement: the sources of an unlikely constitutional consensus’, British Journal of Political Science, 32(2), 193–220. Hume, J. (1996) Personal Views: Politics, Peace, and Reconciliation in Ireland (Dublin: Town House). Ivory, G. (1999) ‘Revisions in nationalist discourse among Irish political parties, Irish Political Studies, 14, 84–103. Jordan, H. (2002) Milestones in Murder (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing). Licklider, R. (1995) ‘The consequences of negotiated settlements in civil wars, 1945–1993’, American Political Science Review, 89(3), 686–698. Lister, D. and H. Jordan (2003) Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and C Company (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing). Lowry, R. (2003) Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years (Washington: Regnery Publishing Inc). MacGinty, R. (2004) ‘Unionist political attitudes after the Belfast Agreement’, Irish Political Studies, 19(1), 98. MacGinty, R. (2006) ‘Irish Republicanism and the peace process: from revolution to reform’, in M. Cox, A. Guelke and F. Stephen, A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Maillot, A. (2005) Sinn Féin (Dublin: Routledge). Mallie, E. and D. McKittrick (1996) The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Irish Peace Process (London: Heinemann). Mallie, E. and D. McKittrick (1997) The Fight for Peace: The Inside Story of the Irish Peace Process (London: Mandarin). Mallie, E. and D. McKittrick (2001) Endgame in Ireland (London: Hodder and Stoughton). Mansergh, M. (ed.) (1986) The Spirit of the Nation: Speeches by Charles J. Haughey 1957–1986 (Cork and Dublin: Mercier Press). Marsh, M. and P. Mitchell (1999) How Ireland Voted 1997 (Oxford: Westview Press and PSAI Press). McAllister, I. (2004) ‘The armalite and the ballot box: Sinn Féin’s electoral strategy in Northern Ireland’, Electoral Studies, 21(1), 123–42. McCartney, R. (2001) Reflections on Liberty, Democracy and the Union (Dublin: Maunsel and Company). McDonald, H. and J. Cusack (2004) UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror (Dublin: Penguin Ireland). McGladdery, G. (2006) The Provisional IRA in England: The Bombing Campaign 1973–1997 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press). McGovern, M. (1997) ‘Unity in diversity? The SDLP and the peace process’, in C. Gilligan and J. Tonge, Peace or War? Understanding the Peace Process in Northern Ireland (Aldershot: Ashgate). McGovern, M. (2004) ‘The old days are over: Irish republicanism, the peace process, and the discourse of equality’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 16(3), 622–45. McGrattan, C. (2007) ‘Paisley for President? The Constitutional Convention and the institutionalisation of policymaking’, Paper presented at the Political Studies Association of Ireland, Annual Conference, Dublin City University, October 2007.
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Index Adair, J., 185, 194, 195, 196, 198, 199 Adams, D., 182, 195 Adams, G., 60, 100, 137, 139, 160, 161, 163, 167, 168, 188, 241, 243, 246 Anglo-Irish Agreement and, 156–9 Belfast Agreement and, 172 Bill Clinton and, 32, 50, 229, 230, 231 Downing Street Declaration and, 31 and John Hume, talk between, 2, 6, 26–7, 266 leadership of republican movement, 20, 149, 171 Propositions on Heads of Agreement and, 40 as revisionist, 6 and revolutionary rules, 168 St Andrews Agreement and, 99 Tony Blair and, 44–5, 46, 48–9, 50 see also Hume–Adams document Ad Hoc Congressional Committee, 226, 228 Ahern, B., 34, 35, 41, 43–4, 45, 46, 47, 54, 55, 211, 215, 240, 244, 258 British-Irish Agreement and, 4, 100 reconciliation, discourse on, 212 Tony Blair and, 2, 36, 48, 50, 85, 97, 202 Ahern, D. on North–South institutional arrangements, 140 Alderdice, Lord., 43, 109, 142 Alliance Party, 100, 102, 110, 111, 116 Allister, J. H., 135 Alonso, R., 269 Americans for a New Irish Agenda (ANIA), 229, 230 A New Reality, 201 Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), 6, 21–6, 89, 150, 227, 248, 249 London/Dublin security cooperation, impact on, 22–5 nationalism and, 156–9 principle of consent, 86 unionism and, 132, 133, 134–7
unionist protest campaign against, 25, 133, 135 Anglo-Irish Framework Document (22 February 1995), 2, 32–5, 139, 238 Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921), 223 armalite and ballot box strategy, 21, 26, 145, 156, 168 Armitage, P., 82 A Scenario for Peace (policy document), 157 Assembly, see Northern Ireland Assembly Atkins, H., 22, 226, 227 Aughey, A., 151, 267, 269 Bean, K., 177 Belfast Agreement (10 April 1998), 84–5 British-Irish Agreement, Article 1: citizenship, 86–7; consent principle, 86; Northern Ireland as part of United Kingdom, 86; selfdetermination, 86 British-Irish Agreement, preamble to, 85–6 case against, see case against Belfast Agreement case for, see case for Belfast Agreement decline in unionist support for, 123–5 decommissioning, of paramilitary weapons, 94–5 electoral dynamics, see electoral dynamics, of Belfast Agreement historical background, see historical background to Belfast Agreement implementation of, 141–2 loyalist paramilitaries, impact on, 7–8 Multi-Party Agreement, 85; Constitutional Issues, 88–91; North–South Ministerial Council, 91–2
277
278
Index
Belfast Agreement (10 April 1998) – continued negotiating, 38–56; Mitchell Document (9 April 1998), 41–3, 51; prisoners, 48–51; on Strand One, 47–8; unionists opposition to, 51–4 new beginning and, 85–6, 87 Northern nationalism and, see Northern nationalism and Belfast Agreement policing and criminal justice, 95–6 principle of consent in, 4, 9 referendum on, 106–7 republicans, impact on, 6–7 Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity section, 92–4 self-determination principle in, 8–9 selling of, 143–5 and Southern Irish politics, see Southern Irish politics and Belfast Agreement taxonomy of unionist responses to, 138 triumph of, 238–45 unionism and, see unionism and Belfast Agreement Bell, E., 193 Bell, I., 168 Bew, P., 58, 146, 226, 245 Beyond conflict (policy document), 201 Beyond the Religious Divide (policy document), 184 Biaggi, M., 225 Birnie, E., 68, 78 Blair, Tony, 33, 34, 38, 41, 43–7, 59, 66, 96, 100, 106, 115, 162 Belfast Agreement and, 106, 235, 240, 255, 256, 258 Bertie Ahern and, 2, 36, 48, 50, 85, 97, 202 British-Irish Agreement and, 4, 100 on decommissioning, 51–2 Gerry Adams and, 44–5, 46, 48–9, 50 Mitchell Document and, 42–3 Sinn Féin and, 34, 48 Bloody Friday (21 July 1972), 15 Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972), 1, 13 Boundary Commission, 208 Breen, S., 173
British Department of Education, 174 British identity, of unionist community, 5, 36, 132, 133, 257 British-Irish Agreement, 38–9, 85–7, 94 Article 1, 4; citizenship, 86–7; consent principle, 86; Northern Ireland as part of United Kingdom, 86; selfdetermination, 86 Article 4, 88 preamble to, 85–6 see also Belfast Agreement British-Irish Council, 41, 56, 79–80, 91, 258 British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, 258 Britishness, 242, 256, 257 Brooke, P., 160, 255–6, 267 and Brooke-Mayhew talks (1990–92), 27–9, 31, 135–6 Northern-Irish parties, talks with, 159 Brookeborough, Lord, 183 Brown, G., 93, 106, 255, 256, 257 on Britishness, 242 Brown, Johnston, 189 Bruton, J., 33, 211, 212, 215, 219 Burnside, D., 143 Bush, G. W., 222, 229, 233 peace process and, 234–6 Cahill, J., 232 Callaghan, J., 18 Cameron, D., 93 Campbell, A., 42, 43, 45, 49, 53–4, 240 Campbell, G., 72 Canary Wharf bombing, 34, 57, 231 Carey, Hugh, 224 Carter, Jimmy, 222, 224, 226 case against Belfast Agreement, 246–64 case for Belfast Agreement, 238–45 ceasefire IRA, 15, 18, 34–5, 131, 149, 161, 230, 231 UDA, 196 Chichester-Clark, James Dawson, 12, 13, 14 Clann na Phoblachta, 167
Index 279 Clinton, B., 49–50, 52, 106, 160 Gerry Adams and, 32, 50, 229, 230, 231 Joe Cahill and, 232 peace process and, 222, 223, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 235, 236, 237 visit to Northern Ireland, 233 Collins, M., 260 Commission on Multiculturalism, 257 Committee on the Administration of Justice, 92, 93 Common Sense (policy document), 26, 184 Comprehensive Agreement, see Proposals by the British and Irish Governments for a Comprehensive Agreement (8 December 2004) Conservative Party Ulster Unionist Party, relationship with, 25 Constitutional Convention (1975), 18 constitutional status, of Northern Ireland Belfast Agreement and, 84 constructive ambiguity, 151 Continuity IRA, 35, 175 Coogan, T. P., 103 Cosgrave, L., 211 Council of Ireland, 15, 16, 17, 18, 39, 40, 79, 139, 141, 207, 239 Council of the Isles, see British-Irish Council Cowen, B., 213 Cox, M., 236, 237 Craig, W., 17 Craigavon, Lord, 183 criminal justice, 54, 95–6, 243 Cusack, J., 204 de Brun, B., 66, 114 de Chastelain, J., 185, 189, 191, 194, 232 decommissioning, 34, 60, 65–6, 94–5, 101, 232–3, 251 as confidence-building, 233 debate on, 51 IRA, 59, 66, 97, 119, 124, 171, 174, 234 loyalist, 183, 185, 186, 192–3 unionist concerns, 141, 144–5 demilitarization, 119, 191
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), 4, 17, 21, 22, 58, 85, 106, 131, 175, 181 Anglo-Irish Agreement, campaign against, 135 Belfast Agreement and, 96, 100–2 peace process and, 134 St Andrews Agreement and, 97, 98, 99, 100, 244–5 Sinn Féin and, 139, 259, 267 Towards a New Agreement (policy document), 85 UUP and, 25, 135 Your Verdict: What is it to be?, 99 Department of Trade and Industry, 65 Strategy 2010, 76 de Valera, E., 208–9, 223 Devlin, P., 22 devolution, 14, 18, 22, 58, 76, 100, 119, 158, 233, 256, 259 architecture of, 3, 10, 62–6, 98, 243 of policing and justice, 10, 98, 99, 243 and power-sharing, 25, 26, 78, 265 devolved government 1998–2002, implementation of, 57 Assembly committees, 77–8 Assembly legislation, 75–7 devolution, architecture of, 62–6 economic context, 61–2 Northern Ireland Executive, 66–73 North–South cooperation, 78–80 Office of First and Deputy First Minister, 73–5 political context, 58–61 d’Hondt rule, 3, 11, 63, 64, 82, 96, 102, 122, 139, 193 direct rule, 1, 12–14, 18, 22, 25, 53, 77, 225, 226, 227, 233, 253 district council election (1997), 125–6 communal voting, 125 preferential ballot transfer, 125–6 district council election (7 June 2001), 110–12 district council election (5 May 2005), 117–20 Dixon, P., 144, 151, 236, 237 Dodds, N., 59, 71 Donaldson, D., 173 Donaldson, J., 48, 53, 61, 96, 143, 184
280 Index Downing Street Declaration (15 December 1993), 2, 31–2, 105, 132, 160–1, 170, 213 Duddy, S., 193, 196, 197 Durkan, M., 63, 67, 74, 77, 78, 96, 263 Dwyer, T. R., 209 Éire Nua, 157, 166 electoral dynamics, of Belfast Agreement, 105 district council election (7 June 2001), 110–12 district council election (5 May 2005), 117–20 European Parliament election (10 June 1999), 109–10 European Parliament election (10 June 2004), 114–15 Good Friday Agreement (1998–2003), decline in unionist support for, 123–5 Northern Ireland Assembly election (25 June 1998), 107–9, 126 Northern Ireland Assembly election (2 November 2003), 112–14, 126–9 Northern Ireland Assembly election (7 March 2007), 120–3, 129–30 referendum on Belfast Agreement, 106–7 UK General election (7 June 2001), in Northern Ireland, 110, 111 UK General election (5 May 2005), in Northern Ireland, 115–17 Elizabeth, Queen, 259 Elliott, S., 5, 105 Empey, Sir R., 44, 53, 59, 63, 64, 72, 76, 96, 103, 202 English, R., 134 Ervine, D., 8, 43, 48, 181, 183, 185, 188, 190–1, 193, 202 European Convention on Human Rights, 92, 93 European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003, 93 European Parliament election (10 June 1999), 109–10 European Parliament election (10 June 2004), 114–15 European Union, 75, 76, 79, 81 Peace I funding, 175
Peace II funding, 175 extradition, 24 Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1989, 228 Falklands War (1982), 23 Farren, S., 48, 77, 78 Faulkner, B., 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 60, 61, 155, 162 Feeney, B., 103 Fianna Fáil, 20, 21, 27, 28, 30, 34, 36, 167, 178, 205, 268 electoral politics and peace process, 214–16 ideology and peace process, 206–11 language of peace process, 211–14 self-determination principle, 8–9 Finance Committee, 78 Fine Gael, 8, 20, 167, 205 electoral politics and peace process, 214–16 ideology and peace process, 206–11 language of peace process, 211–14 Finucane, P., 194 FitzGerald, G., 23, 24, 103, 155, 206, 207, 209, 214, 219 Fitzpatrick, D., 219 Flannery, M., 223 Foster, S., 78 The Future of Northern Ireland (policy document), 249 Gibney, J., 170 Gillespie, G., 226 Gilman, B., 235 Godson, D., 57, 58, 249 Good Friday Agreement, see Belfast Agreement Gove, M., 265, 266 The Governance of Britain, 257 Government of Ireland Act 1920, 2, 4, 41, 88, 140, 255 Haass, R., 234 Hain, P., 98, 189, 190, 246, 253 harmonisation, 238 in education, 239 of social security, 240 of social welfare, 239 Harte, P., 206, 219
Index 281 Hartley, T., 158 Haughey, C. J., 23, 159, 206, 211, 214 Haughey, D., 74–5 Hayes, B. C., 213, 216, 219, 220, 263 Heath, E., 13 Hendron, J., 78 Hennessey, T., 249 Higher Education Committee, 78 historical background to Belfast Agreement Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), 21–6 Anglo-Irish Framework Document (22 February 1995), 32–5 Brooke–Mayhew talks (1990–92), 27–9 direct rule, 12–14 Downing Street Declaration (15 December 1993), 31–2 Hume–Adams document (June 1992), 29–31 Hume–Adams talks (1988), 26–7 interparty talks (1996–97), 35–6 ‘long war’, 18–21 Sunningdale, 14–18 Hoey, D., 143 Holkeri, H., 232 Horowitz, D., 141 Hume, J., 44, 47, 96, 106, 109, 110, 114, 132, 137, 149, 155, 167, 230, 246 Anglo-Irish Agreement and, 156–9 Belfast Agreement and, 47, 48 Eddie McGrady’s criticism of, 150, 266 and Gerry Adams, talks between, 2, 6, 160, 26–7, 266 leadership of republican movement and, 22 as revisionist, 6 Tony Blair and, 43, 46, 48 see also Hume–Adams document Hume–Adams document (June 1992), 29–31 hunger strike, 1, 7, 19, 20, 156, 167, 227 Hutchinson, Billy, 181, 183, 184, 187–8, 189 Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD), 35, 95, 97, 119, 145, 189, 194, 251 Independent Monitoring Commission, 95, 173, 197 Industrial Development Act 2002, 76
International Monitoring Commission (IMC), 189 interparty talks (1996–97), 35–6 InvestNI, 72, 76 Ireland Act 1949, 89, 255 Irish-Americans for Clinton/Gore, 229 Irish Free State, 223, 255, 260 Irish identity, 133 Irish National Caucus (INC), 224 MacBride principles campaign, 227–9 Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 87 Irish Northern Aid, see NORAID Irish Republic, 17, 167, 169, 170, 172, 178, 183, 243, 244, 253, 255 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34–5, 40, 51, 106 activity after Belfast Agreement, 173–5 ceasefire, 15, 18, 34–5, 131, 149, 161, 230, 231 conflict resolution and 1998 Belfast Agreement, 172–3 and decommissioning, 59, 66, 97, 119, 124, 171, 174, 234 and disbandment, 60, 175 Four Horseman actions and, 224–5 and Leinster House, 168–9 and 1994 cessation of violence, 169–72 Propositions on Heads of Agreement, criticism of, 40 purely political and democratic means and, 251–2 and Sinn Féin, 166–8 unionism and, 132, 134, 145 Irish unity, 6, 8, 9, 11, 24, 29, 34, 145, 155, 157, 159, 173, 177, 224, 229, 239, 255, 259 Israel, 66 Ivory, G., 155 John Paul II, Pope, 19 Joint Ministerial Committees (United Kingdom), 79 Jordan, H., 204 Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002, 95 Kelly, G., 49, 172 Kennedy, Danny, 68
282
Index
Kennedy, E., 116, 224, 226, 231 Kenny, E., 207 Kipling, R., 10, 250 Kirkham, T., 195, 196, 198 Labour Party, 14, 33, 178 Lake, T., 231 Lenihan, B., 211 Leslie, J., 68 Loughran, G., 76 Lowry, R., 266 Loyalist Commission, 189, 195 loyalist paramilitaries and peace process, 181 Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) murder of Richard Jamieson, 185 Lynch, J., 13, 206, 209, 211 MacBride, S., 228 Maginnis, K., 50, 51, 53, 136, 140 Maguire, F., 20 Major, J., 7, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 106, 231–2, 233, 247 Mallie, E., 164, 219 Mallon, S., 40, 47, 48, 59, 63, 64, 67, 68, 72, 74, 96, 243 Mansergh, M., 40, 41, 48, 176, 219 Mason, Roy, 18–19 Mayhew, Sir P., 33, 251 and Brooke-Mayhew talks (1990–92), 27–9, 31, 135–6 McAleese, M., 200, 258–9 McAllister, I., 263 McCartney, R., 115, 173, 234 McCartney,R.L., 109, 110, 116, 122, 135, 137, 145, 239 McCord, R., 189 McCrea, W., 75, 78 McDonald, H., 191, 204 McDowell, M., 115 McGovern, M., 150 McGrady, E., 64, 96, 150, 266 McGrattan, C., 6, 147 McGuinness, M., 15, 36, 48–9, 60, 64–5, 66, 67, 71, 72–3, 94, 98, 99, 100, 101, 105, 122, 130, 259, 261, 263 Tony Blair and, 45–6, 49, 55 McIntyre, A., 152, 177 McKie Review of Industrial Strategy, 76 McKittrick, D., 164, 219
McLaughlin, M., 109, 161, 177 McLoughlin, P., 153 McManus, S., 224 McMichael, G., 136, 181, 182, 184, 193–4, 195 McNamara, K., 228 Mitchell, C., 150 Mitchell, G., 2, 33–4, 35, 41, 53, 101, 171, 181, 232–3, 241 Mitchell Document (9 April 1998), 41–3, 51 Mitchell Report (January 1996), 33–4 Molloy, F., 78 Moloney, E., 60, 156, 264, 267 Molyneaux, J., 31, 33, 144, 160 Morgan, A., 40 Morgan, M., 114 Morrison, B., 231 visit to Northern Ireland, 230 Morrison, D., 20, 168, 267 Mowlam, M. M., 47, 49, 184 Moynihan, D., 224 Multi-Party Agreement, 4, 85, 86 Constitutional Issues section, 88–91 declaration of support in, 87–8 North–South Ministerial Council, 91–2 see also Belfast Agreement Murphy, P., 196 Murray, G., 150, 153 Neave, A., 22 Nesbitt, D., 68, 74–5 New Ireland Forum (1983–84), 22, 155, 207, 211, 227 Ronald Reagan support for, 227 Nicholson, J., 109, 114 Noonan, M., 213, 216 NORAID, 223–4 Northern Ireland Act 1998, 4, 58, 82, 88, 89, 101 Northern Ireland Act 2006, 99, 101, 102 Northern Ireland Assembly, 2, 28, 38, 40, 42, 43, 45, 56, 60, 94, 177, 179, 266, 267, 269 committees, 77–8 election (25 June 1998), 107–9; preferential ballot transfer, 126 election (2 November 2003), 112–14; preferential ballot transfer, 126–9
Index 283 Northern Ireland Assembly – continued election (7 March 2007), 120–3; preferential ballot transfer, 129–30 legislation, 75–7 suspensions, 57, 73, 92, 95, 96, 109, 124–5 Northern Ireland Civil Service, 76 Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973, 89 Northern Ireland Executive, 66, 130 divergences of view within, 67–8 ministerial achievements, 71–3 Programme for Government: Office of the First and Deputy First Minister, 69–71 worked-out programmes, lack of, 68–9 Northern Ireland Forum, 142 Northern Ireland Growth Challenge, 76 Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, 92, 93, 94, 103 Northern Ireland Office, 20, 42, 61, 93, 144, 195, 201, 241 Northern Ireland Referendum and Election Study, 123 Northern nationalism and Belfast Agreement, 147 Britain’s no selfish strategic or economic interest, 159–61 historical perspective, 152–3 Hume–Adams talks and Anglo-Irish Agreement, 156–9 political development, 161–3 SDLP, greening of, 153–6 North–South cooperation, 78–80, 91 Ministerial Council (NSMC), 2, 39, 42, 45, 55, 56, 65, 79, 91–2, 258 O’Bradaigh, R., 169 O’Brien, C. C., 250 O’Clery, C., 237 O’Donnell, C., 159 O’Donnell, L., 212 O’Donoghue, J., 212, 216 O’Dowd, N., 229, 230, 231 Office of First and Deputy First Minister, 73–5 O’Grady, J., 237 O’Halloran, C., 209
Oliver, R., 143 O’Neill, Terence, 12, 13, 74, 261 O’Neill, Tip, 224 Orange Order, 106, 118, 143, 183, 185, 195, 199 Paisley, Ian, 12, 17, 64, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 114, 122, 130, 144, 149, 202, 210, 241, 244, 245 Belfast Agreement and, 85, 96, 246, 249, 250, 259, 261, 263 as First Minister, 268 Parades Commission, 191 Patten Commission, 173 Patterson, D., 265 Patterson, H., 150 Peace I, see European Union Peace II, see European Union peace process electoral politics and, 214–16 ideology and, 131–4, 206–11 language of, 211–14 question of strategy, 134–7 republican paramilitaries, see republican paramilitaries and peace process United States and, see United States and peace process Pearse, P. H., 210 Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, 95 Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), 97, 100, 145 policing, 54, 55, 95–6, 100, 141, 145, 175, 177, 234, 243 Patten Commission on, 173 Policing Board, 95 Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act 2000, 193 Powell, Jonathan, 35, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 240, 241, 242, 243 power-sharing, 16, 17, 25, 28, 78, 97, 137, 151, 158, 162, 262–3 debate on, 138–9 dismissal of, 163 unionist opposition and, 23, 26 principle of consent, 5, 8, 9, 24, 36, 40, 44, 106, 132, 133, 161, 178, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 216, 260, 268
284
Index
principle of consent – continued Belfast Agreement, 4, 47, 86, 89, 90, 172 Downing Street Declaration, 31 Ireland Act 1949, 89 Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973, 89 principle of legality, 94 Prior, J., 22, 227 prisoners, 20 loyalist, 184 release of, 44, 48–51, 266 republican, 15, 19, 106, 172, 174, 178 Product Liability (Amendment) Act 2002, 75 Programme for Government: Making a Difference, Office of the First and Deputy First Minister, 69–71 Executive Programme Funds, 70 Public Service Agreement targets, 70 Progressive Democrats, 211, 216, 218 Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), 7, 21, 181, 182–3, 186 decommissioning and, 183 labelled as Socialist Unionist Party, 183 Sharing Responsibility (policy document), 182 and UDP, electoral agreement between, 184 Proposals by the British and Irish Governments for a Comprehensive Agreement (8 December 2004), 97 Propositions on Heads of Agreement (policy document), 2, 38–9, 54, 55, 139 Protestant Community Workers’ Association, 189 Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), see Irish Republican Army Purdy, M., 58, 67, 82, 83 Pym, F., 17 Reagan, R., 222, 226 support for New Ireland Forum, 227 Real IRA, 35, 175–6 Rees, M., 17 Reid, A., 157 Reid, J., 187, 196 Reiss, M., 234
republican paramilitaries and peace process, 165 dissident IRAs, 175–6 IRA: activity after Belfast Agreement, 173–5; conflict resolution and 1998 Belfast Agreement, 172–3; and Leinster House, 168–9; and 1994 cessation of violence, 169–72 pre-peace process republican orthodoxy, 166 Sinn Féin and IRA, 166–8 Republican Sinn Féin, 175, 176 Reynolds, A., 28, 30–1, 32, 232, 248 Rice, B., 185 Robinson, P., 59, 71, 72, 97, 239, 241 Roche, P. J., 184 Rodgers, B., 73 rolling devolution, 22, 227 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), 51, 162, 189, 265 Patten report, 173 United States suspension of arms sales to, 225 Ruane, J., 133 St Andrews Agreement (13 October 2006), 8, 97–100 DUP and, 244–5 Sands, B., 19, 20, 167, 168 Sargent, T., 212 Seitz, R., 230, 231, 236 self-determination, 4, 8–9, 27, 30, 31, 36, 86, 140, 170, 208, 209, 210 Sharing Responsibility (policy document), 182 Shirlow, P., 180 Sinn Féin, 14, 19, 20, 28, 165, 268 Anglo-Irish Agreement and, 157 armalite and ballot box strategy, 21, 26, 145, 156, 168 devolution proposals and, 10, 63, 64, 65, 98, 243 DUP and, 139, 259, 267 elections and, 26–7 exclusion of, 249 Fianna Fáil and, 27 and IRA, 166–8 Irish unity, debate on, 215 new republicanism and, 168–9
Index 285 Sinn Féin – continued Policing Board, 95, 100 Propositions on Heads of Agreement and, 40 PSNI and criminal justice system, support for, 97, 100 St Andrews Agreement and, 98, 99, 100 A Scenario for Peace (policy document), 157 SDLP and, 27, 59, 60, 167–8 support for MacBride principles campaign, 228 Towards a Lasting Peace (policy document), 170 TUAS and, 55 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, 20, 100, 106, 120, 143, 168, 169, 172, 175, 182 Smith, J. K., 231 Smyth, M., 61, 143 Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), 3, 13, 18, 22, 25, 77, 268 Belfast Agreement and, 153–6 lack of empathy with David Trimble, 67 power-sharing and, 139 Propositions on Heads of Agreement and, 40 Sinn Féin and, 59, 60, 167–8 UUP and, 67 Soley, C., 239 South Africa, 66, 228, 257 Southern Irish politics and Belfast Agreement, 205–19 electoral politics and peace process, 214–16 ideology and peace process, 206–11 language of peace process, 211–14 Spellar, J., 115 Spence, G., 183 Stadlen, N., 163 Starr, K., 50 Straw, J., 256 Steele, J., 52 Stone, M., 99, 182 Stormont Executive, 258 Strategy 2010, 76 Sunningdale, 14–18 Agreement (1973), 9, 39, 59, 91 Communiqué (1973), 211
Sunningdale Executive, 15, 16, 17, 266 Tactical Use of Armed Struggle (TUAS), 32, 33, 55 Taylor, J., 42, 44, 47–8, 51, 53, 139 Teahon, P., 44, 45, 50 Thatcher, M., 21–4, 25, 226, 227, 247 and Anglo-Irish Agreement, 21, 22 1800 Acts of Union, 4, 86, 89 Todd, J., 50, 133, 150 Tonge, J., 149, 180, 236, 237 Towards a Lasting Peace (policy document), 170 Towards a New Agreement (policy document), 85 Treacy, N., 215, 216 Treaty (Anglo-Irish) 1921, 254 Trimble, D., 35, 42–3, 48, 49, 51, 52, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 96, 106, 108, 109, 124, 149, 181, 243, 245 Anglo-Irish Agreement and, 136 and Belfast Agreement, 39, 41, 79, 136, 143, 144, 260 Bill Clinton and, 233 and decommissioning, 65–6, 96, 183 on harmonizing social security, 240 on North–South institutional arrangements, 139, 140 and Propositions on Heads of Agreement, 38, 39–40 SDLP’s lack of empathy with, 67 and Seamus Mallon, policy clashes with, 68, 74, 80 Tony Blair and, 42, 44, 45, 46, 50, 53, 54, 55, 240, 241 unionists voting against, 101 UUP–SDLP talks, 67 UK General election (7 June 2001), in Northern Ireland, 110, 111 UK General election (5 May 2005), in Northern Ireland, 115–17 Ulster Defence Association (UDA), 15, 21, 181, 187 Beyond conflict (policy document), 201 Beyond the Religious Divide (policy document), 184 ceasefire, 196 Common Sense (policy document), 26
286
Index
Ulster Defence Association (UDA) – continued on decommissioning, 194 North Antrim and Londonderry Brigade, 182, 183 power struggle within, 8, 189, 196 response to Billy Wright’s murder, 182 UDP and, 184 Ulster Democratic Party (UDP), 7, 181, 182 and PUP, electoral agreement between, 184 UDA and, 184 Ulster Unionist Council, 143 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), 3, 22, 60, 77, 106, 131, 261 Anglo-Irish Agreement, campaign against, 135 Conservative Party, relationship with, 25 Democrtic Unionist Party and, 25, 135 and elections, 61 and Propositions on Heads of Agreement, 40–1 and SDLP, 67 worked-out programmes, lack of, 68–8 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), 17, 181, 186, 188 campaign of violence, 189–91, 192 on decommissioning, 192–3 Sharing Responsibility (policy document), 182 weapons decommissioning and, 183 Ulster Workers’ Council Strike (15 May 1974), 17, 21, 184 unionism and Belfast Agreement analysis of Agreement, 137–41 implementation of Agreement, 141–2 institutions, 142–3
peace process: question of ideology, 131–4; question of strategy, 134–7 selling the Agreement, 143–5 unionist(s) British identity and, 5, 36, 132, 133, 257 decline in support for Good Friday Agreement (1998–2003), 123–5 Framewok Document, analysis of, 238 opposition to Belfast Agreement, 51–4 United Ireland Party, see Fine Gael United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP), 58, 106, 107, 131 United States and peace process, 222–37 British acceptance of a role for Irish government, 227 campaign against support for Provisional IRA, 224–5 Clinton’s decision on Adams’s visa to United States, 229, 230, 231; British government’s attitude to, 230 Clinton’s decision on Cahill’s visa to United States, 232 and discrimination issues in employment, 227–8 and suspension of arms sales to RUC, 225 Weir, P., 82, 117 West Belfast Forum, 174 Westminster Committees, 77 White, J., 194, 195 Whitelaw, W., 14, 15, 16, 18 Wilson, A. J., 235, 236 Wilson, H., 17, 18 Workers Party, 167 The World Today, 256 Yeats, W. B., 243 Your Verdict: What is it to be?, 99
