by Thomas Leahy
Sinn Féin’s lack of support in the Irish Republic contributed to a re-evaluation of republican strategy in the 1980s.107 Without considerable support from Ireland, the Provisionals lacked the negotiating muscle from which to acquire substantial concessions from the British. In the words of McKearney, support in the south mattered because:
Unionism had a majority in Northern Ireland and for as long as the 26-county state [the Republic of Ireland] and its population insisted that unity could only come by consent of a majority in the Six Counties, Britain was under no political pressure to accommodate the IRA demands.108
The IRA faced a political stalemate situation, unlikely to acquire considerable concessions. ‘We had fought the British almost to a standstill’, Eamon Collins observed, but: ‘I had always known that the IRA could only win the war if the people in the Republic of Ireland became involved in the struggle.’109
In various speeches, leading republicans stressed the importance of increasing electoral support in the Irish state. During his presidential address to the Ard Fheis in Dublin in 1984, Adams urged ‘Sinn Féin members throughout the twenty-six counties [that they] must get stuck in … We cannot afford to be elitist. We can only afford to win … There are no shortcuts in the task of making revolution.’110 During the same address in October 1987, Adams again emphasised the need to improve electoral support in the Irish state. He argued that poor results in southern Ireland were ‘a clear indictment of the failure in the past to utilise the many opportunities for immersion in the affairs of ordinary people. This is a legacy we have to shake off.’111 A similar message was repeated during the Ard Fheis in 1990 about the need to make up ‘lost ground’ in southern Irish elections.112 The evidence in this chapter suggests that in order to strengthen republican political support across the island, Adams and other leading republicans were willing to consider re-evaluating the armed campaign as a tactic.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement impacted on Sinn Féin’s and the IRA’s appeal to the nationalist electorate across the island. Essentially, the agreement provided the Dublin government and the SDLP with the ability to consult and influence British government policy in Northern Ireland via the joint Anglo-Irish Secretariat. This factor could partly explain why Sinn Féin’s vote declined in Westminster elections from 13.4 per cent in 1983 to 11.4 per cent in 1987, and to 10 per cent in 1992.113 The agreement convinced many nationalists that the Irish government and the SDLP could remedy their grievances through diplomacy, challenging the rationale for the IRA’s campaign.114 Consequently, the IRA would struggle to undo the ‘unionist’ veto thereafter.115 Admittedly, the agreement did not improve the security situation to any great extent on the border. But it did see the British government enforce the McBride Principles and the Fair Employment Act by 1989, under Dublin’s influence. These measures aimed to regulate the composition of employees within businesses in order to curtail sectarian discrimination. The implementation of such measures meant that constitutional nationalists could point to progress for the nationalist community following the agreement.116
Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin were lagging behind the SDLP in district councils and parliamentary elections. If Sinn Féin and the IRA wanted to maximise concessions in future negotiations, they needed to overtake the SDLP. Alongside deadlock in the armed conflict, republicans faced a stalemate politically in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin had a substantial minority of nationalist support with which to disrupt political settlements. But they did not have enough nationalist support to fundamentally influence the terms of a political settlement towards their primary objectives. Laurence McKeown remembers how:
[e]ven in the jails we noticed that there were contradictions between trying to gain votes and waging a war. It was difficult for people out campaigning to get votes when bombs were doing damage to streets and buildings. And I personally thought the armed struggle was in a stalemate situation. The Brits could not defeat the IRA. But neither could the IRA bring about a British declaration of intent to withdraw.117
McKeown saw the need for a political settlement and for concessions by all sides, partly because of the stalemate situation in the armed conflict. But he also saw the need to politically compromise in order to see if that increased Sinn Féin’s electoral mandate, and advanced the cause of Irish unification. Otherwise, the political and military stalemate situation would continue. Féilim Ó hAdhmaill also commented:
On the one hand, you feel that you must keep the armed struggle going in order to get the British to even consider the situation: but on the other hand, the armed struggle is turning off more and more of your potential support bases.118
It was not just potential supporters that were tired of the constant conflict. Some war-weariness was evident throughout northern republican communities.119 As a veteran Troubles commentator explains:
[republicans] could keep on their ‘Long War’, but there were no signs of it working … Up in Ballymurphy and the Falls Road life was awful … by continuing their campaign they were just condemning their young people to more of the same.120
Tommy McKearney also recalls ‘exhaustion within the Republican community’.121 Michael Culbert, a former republican prisoner from Belfast, found whilst on parole in 1991 that the republican community ‘wanted to have another look at what was going on’. Culbert says that the IRA had to listen because ‘you can’t carry on an armed campaign without support’.122
These factors provide some insight into the reasons for Sinn Féin’s static electoral performance by the late 1980s. The political environment across the island encouraged republican leaders to seek a political settlement from at least 1983. This view challenges accounts by authors who suggest that alongside other political and military factors, republican leaders partly sought an end to the conflict following the electoral setbacks of 1992, when Adams had lost his position as MP for West Belfast.123 The majority of evidence suggests that republican leaders were willing, if necessary, to negotiate politically from at least 1983 and discuss significant concessions. Chapter 7 outlined how Father Alec Reid believed, on the basis of his talks with leading republicans in the early 1980s, that they were ready to consider an alternative. Reid’s letter to Haughey in 1987 also emphasised that the talks between the various nationalist groups aimed to find conditions and common goals that would lead to an end to IRA activity.124 From the moment that Sinn Féin engaged with Fianna Fáil and the SDLP, they knew that an IRA ceasefire in the future was essential. Other nationalists would not tolerate an understanding and consensus in talks with republicans without an end to IRA activity. Albert Reynolds, for instance, says: ‘[b]efore any [peace] talks I wanted the guns silenced … Then and only then could the talks start and inclusion begin’.125 It seems unlikely that the republican leadership ever imagined that Fianna Fáil and the SDLP would back republican demands to any extent whilst conflict continued.126Of course, republican leaders would try to persuade constitutional nationalists to accept republican objectives and strategies, including trying to achieve Irish unity in the short term and accepting that armed activity could be justified to promote this objective. In a draft declaration for the Irish and British governments that republican leaders sent to Dublin and to Hume in February 1992, republicans argued that all democratically mandated parties could engage in peace talks regardless of an IRA ceasefire. Republicans’ view was rejected in a later draft completed by Dublin officials and Hume in June 1992, who wanted the conflict halted before any multiparty talks. The message got through: in the Hume–Adams draft of June 1992, it was decided that only parties that abided ‘exclusively by the democratic process’ could take part in future talks.127 By engaging with constitutional nationalists from 1987, republican leaders knew that they were taking part in a process that would require political compromises and an end to the IRA’s campaign, even if they achieved concessions.
There are various signs that the republican leadership were considering alternatives to armed struggle before Adams lost his West
Belfast seat in 1992.128 In an interview, Morrison recalled:
[w]hen I was in jail … I was coming to the conclusion that we needed to be heading down the road towards a ceasefire, and that was my position in 1992. I didn’t know that that [thinking] was actually happening on the outside too. I remember … [I was in] Crumlin Road jail in December 1990 … [and] there was a Christmas ceasefire … That was the first Christmas ceasefire in sixteen years. Because I knew the ins and outs of the republican movement, I strongly suspected that … the ceasefire did not come out of thin air. So they [the leadership] were thinking about the struggle on the outside as well.129
A Christmas ceasefire in 1990 was a clear indication to Morrison that the movement were considering alternatives to the IRA’s campaign before Adams lost his West Belfast seat in 1992. There are other examples that suggest republican leaders were contemplating a political compromise before 1992. In 1986, Adams stressed the need for talks between nationalists across the island.130 Adams also began to send out signals to republicans from the late 1980s about potentially reconsidering armed tactics to supplement political growth. In an interview with Living Marxism in January 1989, he argued: ‘armed struggle is but an option, there’s no such thing as the primacy of armed struggle. It’s the primacy of politics that’s important’.131 Within these words it is possible to detect that the ‘option’ of armed conflict was subordinate to the ‘primacy of politics’. If political circumstances meant that armed conflict was no longer working to alter the situation, it could be ended.
Earlier, in an internal Sinn Féin speech in 1986, Adams argued that tactics including armed struggle could change if political circumstances dictated it:
What will make a movement like ours revolutionary is not whether it is committed to any particular means of achieving revolution, for example street agitation or physical force, but whether all the means … are conducive to achieving the revolutionary end, which in our case is the achievement of real national unity and independence … the art of politics and political judgement … should determine what work should have priority at any moment of time … If conditions or people’s perspectives change, policies can change accordingly.132
Although Adams supported armed struggle at that time, his remarks demonstrate his growing belief in the late 1980s that an armed campaign was not a principle but a tactic. Similar to other tactics, it could change if ‘people’s perspectives change’. Following this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the republican leadership could review the armed tactic if electoral results demonstrated that it lacked significant support. Adams’s growing acceptance that political compromises were required was displayed again in November 1991, when he told an audience at University College Dublin:
I am quite convinced that the conditions are going to be created where people will sit down. I think we’ll have to compromise. I think we’ll have to give and take. I think we will have to come to an arrangement which won’t necessarily fulfil the republican objectives.133
There are plenty of signs that republican leaders knew that political talks and compromises were needed before the loss of Adams’s West Belfast seat in 1992. The latter event merely vindicated the republican leadership’s chosen strategy of searching for a political settlement that involved concessions by all sides to varying degrees.
Core republican objectives, including promoting Irish unity in the short term, were still advocated by republican leaders before and after the Good Friday Agreement. The fact that republicans were not facing significant political or military decline explains why republican leaders continued to promote their main objectives in talks with other nationalist and British state representatives. The joint declaration drafts in the early 1990s, for example, saw republicans call for the British government to promote Irish unity to unionists.134 The republican leadership had already shown political flexibility here. They had moved from a position of calling for a British withdrawal within a short time frame to arguing (albeit unsuccessfully) that the British government should adopt a position of promoting Irish unity to unionists. In December 1992, Adams also showed republican flexibility over the terms of a settlement, arguing that ‘in the interim’ the pan-nationalists and British government should focus on protecting the rights of nationalists in the North.135 Adams’s words here show a realisation that ‘interim’ settlements may be required prior to unionists being convinced by arguments for Irish unification.
In the 1990s, republican leaders continued to maintain a mixture of traditional republican objectives alongside expressing flexibility as to when these aims could be implemented. In February 1995, Martin McGuinness told republicans that ‘partition has failed and there can be no return to a Stormont regime … [as it] denies the right of the people of this island to national self-determination’. But McGuinness also said that if multiparty talks began, republicans ‘are prepared to be flexible and are willing to be generous’.136 Republicans saw talks with other nationalists, unionists and the British government as a negotiating process. They would state their case and move their position according to the political pressures and opportunities that arose. Adams made it clear that republican leaders wanted ‘to get the optimum position’ towards fulfilling their ultimate objectives.137 But as Adams informed the Ard Fheis in 1991, republican leaders wanted ‘negotiations’, at which they pledged to ‘take political risks’, and were ‘prepared to give and take’.138 At the Ard Fheis in February 1994, Adams further explained that political compromises were potentially needed because:
Irish republicans, by ourselves, simply do not possess the political strength to bring about [all-Ireland self-determination and British withdrawal]. While that situation obtains, it must continue to influence the political and strategic thinking of Irish republicans. However … we have the power to prevent another settlement on British government terms, which would subvert Irish national and democratic rights.139
Here was a clear admission that whilst republicans were arguing for the maximum concessions towards Irish unity, their political mandate prevented the immediate accomplishment of these objectives. In the meantime, they would try to prevent settlements being reached that did not recognise Irish self-determination in some form. The Good Friday Agreement did recognise self-determination on the basis of separate but concurrent referendums on Irish unification in Ireland and Northern Ireland being possible in the future. But this exercise of self-determination was not to be on the single all-island basis that Sinn Féin wanted.
The question of a continuation of IRA attacks can be viewed as part of the bargaining process. As Chapter 7 emphasised, republican leaders feared that if the IRA called a cessation before a political pathway and concessions had been mapped out, the British would repeat the ‘trick’ of 1975.140 Brendan Duddy, for instance, records a meeting in May 1993 between the British intermediary and republicans. ‘Walter’ (Martin McGuinness) is recorded as feeling that the failure to engage in face-to-face dialogue showed that the British were attempting another ‘stretching out exercise … this is … dangerously unsustainable as it follows the tactics of the 74/75 ceasefire … a very bitter … experience’.141 Hard-line statements and IRA activity continued until republicans believed that a viable political alternative was really on offer. In parallel, republican leaders hinted that they were willing to compromise so that the British government did not neglect opportunities to intensify dialogue. Whilst warning that there would be no permanent ceasefires, for instance, leading republicans Jim Gibney and McGuinness told republicans at Bodenstown in 1992 and 1993 that they needed to accept interim settlements before British withdrawal.142
Ó Dochartaigh suggests: ‘it is simply bad negotiating practice to let it be known how much you are willing to concede’.143 From his experience with negotiating with republicans, Jonathan Powell supports this assessment. He found that ‘Republicans were addicted to over-negotiating … hoping that they could squeeze out one final thing.’ This tactic meant that ‘we had to make a best guess
as to the real bottom line’ of republicans.144 The republican leadership only called a prolonged ceasefire in August 1994 once they felt that they had achieved maximum concessions before ending the armed campaign.145 The Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 represented the ‘bottom line’ of the British government: the status of Northern Ireland could only change with the consent of the Northern Irish people.146 Sinn Féin, the Irish government and the SDLP agreed in their final draft of a Joint Declaration in May 1993 to try to get the ‘British Government [to] use all their influence and energy to win the consent of a majority in Northern Ireland’ for Irish unity.147 Factors including the fear of a violent unionist rebellion, a determination not to bow to IRA pressure and the fact that the Conservative party was (and remains) a pro-union party148 made the British government reject this idea. Since the Irish government and the SDLP agreed with the Downing Street Declaration, the IRA was under pressure to call a ceasefire.149
Equally important was that the republican leadership recognised the achievements and potential of the ‘pan-nationalist alliance’ by 1994.150 The May 1993 draft of the Joint Declaration proved that different nationalist groups could reach a consensus on aims on the basis of which to negotiate with the British government. A consensus even emerged on trying to get British government to convince unionists towards Irish unity in the long term.151 Adams argued that, whilst he was disappointed that self-determination was not accepted by the British on an all-Ireland basis in the Downing Street Declaration in 1993, ‘[t]hat the declaration addresses the issue of Irish national self-determination at all is a significant departure’ in British policy, which he praised the pan-nationalist alliance for achieving.152 In addition, the constitutional nationalists had ensured by the 1990s that no political settlement could go ahead without Sinn Féin. For the republican leadership, the prospect of acquiring further concessions via pressure on the British government from the pan-nationalist alliance and indirect pressure from Irish America seemed greater than what could be achieved by continuing the IRA’s campaign by 1994.
