Alex Kane argues that transparency was needed to bring the two sides on to a level playing pitch. He also believes that the reluctance of the IRA to disclose the extent of of its decommissioning of arms, may be to do with anembarassment over the extent to which the Belfast Agreement is effectively an internal agreement that keeps Northern Ireland within the UK.
By Alex. Kane
Last Sunday morning I spent about an hour with Sinn Fein chairman, Mitchel McLaughlin, at the BBC. Naturally, the conversation turned to the series of meetings between the UUP and Sinn Fein and to the content of David Trimble’s speech at his party conference. I told Mr. McLaughlin that I was broadly supportive of Mr. Trimble’s willingness not to insist that “…every jot and tittle must be complete before we would proceed.” But I also told him that the UUP, indeed the whole unionist electorate, would require something “palpable and substantial” on the decommissioning front. Mr. McLaughlin nodded.
I have no doubt whatsoever that this latest act of decommissioning amounted to something pretty substantial. Indeed, it is the very nature and scale of the act which may have made the IRA so reluctant to go public on the details. But the fact of the matter is that at such a crucial moment in the process, evidence of trust cannot be invisible. This is not just about satisfying the needs of David Trimble and his UUC dissidents. Rather, it should have amounted to final and public proof that the IRA would proceed with the ballot box in one hand and a democratic manifesto in the other.
Everything that the UUP has done since the autumn of 1997 has been visible. The willingness to remain in the process before decommissioning had started. The willingness to share Executive office with Sinn Fein. The willingness to take the argument to UUC delegates and ask them to endorse a series of leaps of faith. The willingness to continue to meet with Sinn Fein against a background of Colombia, Castlereagh and Stormontgate. Every single move made by David Trimble was made openly, and often in the face of relentless and brutal criticism from his own side.
The IRA, on the other hand, was only ever asked for one thing—a resolution to the matter of its arsenals and the status of the campaign. And these would not have remained ongoing issues if there hadn’t been evidence that the organization was continuing to recruit, train, target and purchase. Whatever Gerry Adams and P. O’Neill may have hinted at in a series of statements over the past decade, the public perception within unionism was that the IRA was doing everything required to ensure that a return to “the war” remained a viable option.
I wasn’t anticipating a home video of weapons being destroyed. But I was expecting a much clearer statement from General de Chastelain, along with an inventory of what had been put beyond use, and a timetable for the final act of completion. I don’t think that was an unreasonable expectation, particularly in light of what Gerry Adams said on Tuesday morning.
And what Adams said was of huge significance: “Sinn Fein is a united Ireland party. But being an Irish republican means more than paying lip service to the 1916 Proclamation or to the ideal of The Republic…The Good Friday Agreement was democratically endorsed by the vast majority of the people of both states on the island of Ireland…republicans and unionists will as equals pursue their objectives peacefully, thus providing full and final closure of the conflict.”
In essence, the war is over. There has been an internal settlement and Northern Ireland remains, solidly and unambiguously, within the United Kingdom. Sinn Fein has signed up to a pan-United Kingdom settlement and the IRA has been manoeuvred into acknowledging that the tradition of the armed struggle approach to politics is over. Those twin realities are a measure of David Trimble’s lasting achievements. No-one should underestimate the distance he has managed to drag, push or cajole republicanism from its blood splattered, politically delusional roots.
So maybe, just maybe, that is the real reason the IRA want to acknowledge these realities in secret. They knew that they had to deliver, just as Adams knew that he had to admit, “I know activists will have reservations about much of this.” Republicans have reached their own endgame and they are now experiencing the pain that pro-Agreement unionists have had to endure for so long. They are having to explain to their own grassroots that unification is a very, very long way down the track, that the Brits are here to stay, and that a return to Stormont is as good as it gets for republicanism.
And that is why David Trimble put the sequence on hold on Tuesday afternoon. There would not have been a Belfast Agreement had he not persuaded a majority of unionists to face up to some unpleasant political realities. That Agreement will not survive if Gerry Adams cannot, within the next few days, persuade the IRA to face up to its own unpleasant realities.
I believe that the war is over and that the leadership of Sinn Fein knows that it has no choice other than that of long term co-operation with unionism. But Sinn Fein cannot expect unionists to accept linguistic convolutions and unspecified decommissioning as an alternative to the visible evidence that things really have changed within republicanism. David Trimble provided visible evidence for Sinn Fein and the IRA, and he expects nothing less from them in return.
First published in the Newsletter on Saturday 25th October 2003
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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