by Peter Taylor
By the autumn of 1994, for the first time in a quarter of a century, the future looked bright with the guns on both sides of the paramilitary divide falling silent. But to the Republican Movement, the continuation of their silence depended on the progress made towards the all-party talks they had been led to believe would follow the IRA’s cessation. The optimism was infectious. At about this time I talked to a senior British civil servant who had been intimately involved in the peace process almost from its very beginning. When I asked him how long he thought it would be before a final settlement was reached, he said, ‘About five years.’ It was at least four years more than I had anticipated. His estimate was far better than mine.
The British stuck to their promise of exploratory talks with Sinn Fein when, on 9 December 1994, just over three months after the IRA’s cessation, the Sinn Fein delegation drove up to Stormont’s Parliament Buildings in black taxis. On a cold, bright sunny morning, I stood with dozens of other journalists and watched history being made as Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly, in suits and ties and with briefcases in hand, disappeared through the side entrance of Stormont with the rest of the Sinn Fein delegation. Inside the ‘Brits’ were waiting. This was a very different Martin McGuinness from the young IRA leader I had first met in Derry in 1972. Now he would be eye-balling his old enemies. One of the British officials across the table who had been working on the peace process for a good many years had no doubt about McGuinness’s position. ‘We assumed he was on the Army Council when we talked to him,’ he told me. ‘It wouldn’t say much for the Army Council if he wasn’t.’ In a carefully prepared opening speech, the British official chairing the meeting mentioned arms and the disposing of them and was met with ‘stony faces’ all round. The British appear to have mentioned the word ‘decommissioning’ itself towards the end of the meeting. ‘Initially it was a way of getting off the “permanency” hook,’ one of the officials present told me. ‘We got hung up on it and it came to haunt us. At one stage in our discussions, Martin McGuinness said we could sort out the modalities [of decommissioning] in ten minutes and when I said, “OK, let’s do it,” he danced away.’
Once caught on the decommissioning hook, there was no getting off it. The British claim that although it might not have been specifically mentioned as such, it was always understood that dealing with terrorist weaponry on both sides was one of the issues to be addressed once the cease-fires were in place, and all-party talks were the next step. The loyalist paramilitaries were to be involved in them on the same terms as Sinn Fein through the medium of their own political parties, with the UDA/UFF represented by the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the UVF by the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). The Provisionals insist that the issue of decommissioning was never raised during the secret back-channel exchanges with the British. Michael Oatley believes they are probably right and it was certainly not something he mentioned at his seminal meeting with Martin McGuinness in January 1991. ‘It would have been a ridiculous thing to raise,’ he told me. ‘After all, it was a fundamental tenet that it wouldn’t be on offer.’ I asked him why it was so illogical to ask the IRA to decommission its arsenal if the IRA was genuinely interested in peace.
The argument for decommissioning has been dishonestly presented from the outset and offers a powerful threat to the peace process. There are three reasons why it is not sensible to press the IRA to decommission at this stage.
The first is that it would have little practical effect in reducing the risk of renewed violence. Weapons will always be available to those in Ireland who have support and the means to pay for them. The IRA has both. The issue is not whether guns are held or can be obtained, it is whether they are to be used.
The second is that it is provocative and makes more difficult the task of those who are leading the Republican Movement to abandon terrorism in favour of politics. Republican Volunteers who joined up to pursue a campaign of violence and who have been persuaded to support instead a political and non-violent strategy are not ready to take this further step and do not want to be asked for it. They see it, rightly, as a call to surrender. The provocative effect is gleefully recognized by politicians who wish to destroy the Belfast Agreement without being held responsible for doing so.
The third is that the pressure is selective. Why put pressure on the IRA, which maintains a disciplined cease-fire, while loyalist groups are equally disinclined to give up their weapons and are clearly prepared to use them? The climate for decommissioning, on either side, is simply not there.
The IRA in its modern form developed as a response – like the introduction of British troops – to the loyalist campaign of ethnic cleansing: the eviction from their homes of thousands of Catholic families in 1969. Every step it takes along the political path surrenders a measure of its capacity for violence. That is progress enough. Why insist on meaningless forms – unless political progress is not what you want?
To the IRA, decommissioning was the issue above all others that was most likely to trigger the split that the leadership was so desperate to avoid. What was critical, the Provisionals countered, was that the guns remained silent and not that they were handed in or destroyed. It was the intention to use them that mattered. The IRA had never decommissioned in its entire history and it had no intention of starting now. As it became clear to the Provisionals that, if they were to be party to a final settlement, concessions would have to be made that were hitherto unthinkable in their ideology, the Republican Movement agreed that whatever else the IRA agreed to, it would never hand over its weapons. Nothing could have been more categoric. When I asked one senior Provisional if there would ever come a time when the IRA might do so, he said, ‘Five million years, in the short term.’
Unionists and the British Government saw the issue through entirely different eyes. If the IRA was serious about its cease-fire and about peace, they argued, why did it need its guns? They remain convinced that the IRA insisted on holding on to them because at some stage it intended to use them again. But to John Major, decommissioning was both a political and a security issue. He really did believe that if the IRA was serious in giving up violence for good, which he doubted, it had no reason to hang on to its guns. He therefore believed it was critical that the IRA should begin to hand over or destroy some of its weapons before it was allowed to take part in all-party talks. This was known as ‘prior decommissioning’. The fact that the IRA refused to do so simply confirmed Major’s scepticism about the Provisionals’ long-term intentions.
You were asking unionists and others to sit down at a table with people who had an Armalite and a bomb underneath the table which, if the talks got to a sticky phase, they would then take out and use. Was that likely to engender an atmosphere at the talks that would lead to a proper settlement? Now they had the option. Some prior decommissioning. We didn’t try and embarrass them. I said at one stage that they could melt down their weapons and build a statue of Eamon de Valera wherever they liked with the product of melting down their weapons. We were trying to get them into talks in a way that other people would talk to them. If ‘the conflict is over’, as the Provisional Army Council said, what was the need for weapons? What was the need to prevent at least a token destruction of weapons to show that they were genuine?
Politically the issue was crucial for Major. His whole strategy was to ensure that unionists became wedded to the peace process and, once involved, stayed with it. They were now led by David Trimble, who had succeeded James Molyneaux as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), following Molyneaux’s resignation on 28 August 1995. Trimble defeated the favourite, John Taylor, not least because of the high-profile, hard-line stance he had taken at Drumcree the previous month.8
If the Prime Minister was doubtful about the IRA’s commitment to a permanent cessation of violence, unionists, whose community had for so long borne the brunt of its campaign, were even more sceptical. Major knew that the chances of getting them into all-party talks involving Sinn Fein were virtually ze
ro unless the IRA moved on ‘prior decommissioning’. But it soon became clear that it was a non-starter: the Provisionals would not accept decommissioning as a prelude to a settlement.
The Government’s resolution to stand firm on the issue was confirmed by intelligence reports that indicated that although the IRA was on cease-fire and military operations had ceased, military activities had not. Sir Patrick Mayhew knew from his intelligence briefings precisely what the IRA was up to during its cease-fire period.
Governments are not blind and it would be very remiss if, after a campaign of that sort against violence for so long, we had been blind. I think that we knew a lot of what the IRA was doing and what we knew was sufficiently disturbing to prevent us regarding this as a total abjuring of violence. As time went on, unfortunately, we came to know that their preparations were continuing: their targeting of future assassination victims, their development of new weapons, their testing of new weapons, their recruiting of more Volunteers and so forth. We knew that that was going on and it appeared to be increasingly incompatible with the belief that a proper cease-fire was what they had in mind.
There were no more bombings and killings but Volunteers were not inactive. ‘Ken’, the ‘Det’ operator who was expert at concealing micro-cameras, confirmed that during the cease-fire period, the ‘Det’ was still in business.
We declared a cessation of aggressive operations although covert surveillance still did carry on. We would never have been able to scale that down to non-existent surveillance, due to the untrustworthiness of the IRA. We found out that they were still targeting people, such as policemen and individuals from opposing [loyalist] organizations, and planning operations for the future. So covert operations still had to go ahead.
Nineteen ninety-five was the first year in Northern Ireland for more than a quarter of a century in which no member of the security forces was killed. This is what the IRA meant when it referred to ‘a complete cessation of military operations’. Violence, however, did not abate completely, as the IRA shot dead six suspected drug dealers, mainly under the flag of convenience Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD). Paramilitary beatings and knee-cappings also increased in the vacuum of so-called ‘peace’. Between the IRA and loyalist cease-fires in 1994 and the end of 1995, the Provisionals carried out 148 ‘punishment’ attacks and the loyalists 75.9
As the first anniversary of the IRA cease-fire came and went, there was still no sign of movement towards all-party talks nor indication that the IRA was going to move on decommissioning. The IRA and its Volunteers on the ground became increasingly restless at the lack of progress towards the inclusive dialogue they had been led to believe would follow their cease-fire. The Government stood firm on decommissioning and so did the IRA. Neither side was going to blink first. I remember meeting two senior Provisionals in Dublin towards the end of 1995 on the eve of President Clinton’s visit to London and Belfast at the end of November and they were clearly extremely worried at how critical the situation had become. They wondered if the British Government had any idea of the narrowness of the ledge on which they were standing and how difficult it was to keep the IRA on-side, given the lack of political progress. They did not make threats but it was quite clear that the threat was there.
By that time, the Army Council had decided enough was enough and it was imperative to hit the ‘Brits’ again and hit them where it hurt the most, as close to the City of London as possible, given the ‘ring of steel’ around the area after the Baltic Exchange and Bishopsgate bombs. Plans were also laid towards the end of 1995 for a series of attacks on the mainland that would follow the after-shock of the ‘big boomer’ that was designed to mark the end of the cease-fire. By December 1995, the huge bomb that would deliver the IRA’s message was already being put together in South Armagh, the area that British intelligence had found most difficult to penetrate. There were no ‘Det’ cameras in place to monitor bomb-making nor Special Branch or MI5 agents to tip off their handlers. The ‘Brits’ were aware that something was afoot but did not know what it was nor when or where the IRA would strike.
Meanwhile, John Major and John Bruton, who had succeeded Albert Reynolds as Taoiseach on 15 November 1994, were still trying to break the political deadlock over decommissioning and open the path to all-party talks. They came up with the idea of a ‘twin-track’ approach in which decommissioning might take place in parallel with talks. To that end an International Body on Arms was established to investigate what might and might not be possible. It consisted of three eminent international statesmen: former US Senator George Mitchell, who was Chairman; General John de Chastelain, a former Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff and former Ambassador to Washington; and Harri Holkeri, a former Finnish Prime Minister who was the epitome of neutrality. Their contracts were for six months. Mitchell had no idea he would be there for four years and de Chastelain into the next century.
Major asked the three wise men to report if possible by the end of January 1996 in the hope of commencing all-party talks by the end of February. Major and Bruton kept their fingers crossed that their distinguished foreign visitors would sever the Irish Gordian knot. Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party, which was instinctively deeply hostile to foreign ‘meddling’ in the province’s affairs, in particular when it involved Clinton’s friends, was muted in its response because Senator Mitchell had impressed its members in his former role as the President’s Special Adviser for Economic Initiatives in Ireland.10 Mitchell knew his task would not be easy.
The Unionists quite rightly wanted some reassurance. They did not want to have talks occur in a setting in which the threat of violence or the use of violence influenced the negotiations. That’s the reason for the request for prior decommissioning. It soon became obvious to us, very soon into our consultation, that prior decommissioning, however desirable, was simply not a practical approach. It wasn’t going to happen. The British Government wanted prior decommissioning and they wanted inclusive negotiations and it became clear that they could not have both.11
As a compromise, Senator Mitchell and his colleagues worked out a set of principles to which all participants in all-party talks had to sign up, hoping that unionists would accept agreement to these ‘Mitchell Principles’ in place of actual decommissioning, at least at this stage. They included a commitment to ‘democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues’; the total disarmament of all paramilitary organizations; a renunciation of the use of force to influence the outcome of all-party negotiations, and an end to ‘punishment’ beatings and killings. Sinn Fein said it accepted them all, thus securing admission to all-party talks without the IRA making any move on decommissioning. But the International Body did not rule out decommissioning further down the line. Its report, delivered on 24 January 1996, concluded:
… there is a clear commitment on the part of those in possession of such arms to work constructively to achieve full and verifiable decommissioning as part of the process of all-party negotiations [author’s emphasis]; but that commitment does not include decommissioning prior to such negotiations …12
Major was surprised at Mitchell’s optimism, which appeared to bear no relation to any indication that the British Government had received. The Senator later confided in him that he had stretched the point ‘for tactical reasons’ and privately suspected that the IRA was on the point of breaking its cease-fire.13 This coincided with the intelligence that Major himself was receiving and on which he had privately briefed President Clinton at Downing Street. Mitchell’s report helped but it was not a magic wand. Major then decided that the only way to get the parties together was to call an election for a Northern Ireland Assembly, which would at least be a starting point for the process of negotiations. Unionists welcomed the prospect but Sinn Fein and the SDLP were bitterly opposed to the idea which they dismissed as a unionist ploy and an attempt to reinstate the Stormont of old.
To the Republican Movement, the Government’s decision to go for elections was the
last straw. At 6.59 p.m. on Friday 9 February 1996, the huge bomb the IRA had been secretly preparing in South Armagh exploded at South Quay in London’s Docklands, in the car park of a building near Canary Wharf. The scene of devastation was shocking, like something out of the Blitz. A coded telephone warning had been given but the evacuation of the area was not complete. Two men, Inan Ul-haq Bashir (29) and John Jeffries (31), who worked in a nearby newspaper kiosk, were killed in the blast. They had been warned by a police officer to leave but they never made it.14 Shortly before the bomb went off, the IRA issued a statement. ‘Instead of embracing the peace process, the British government acted in bad faith with Mr Major and the unionist leaders squandering this unprecedented opportunity to resolve the conflict,’ it said. ‘The blame for the failure thus far of the Irish peace process lies squarely with John Major and his government.’15
The ‘Brits’ now had to pick up the pieces.
Chapter Thirty-One
Back to the ‘War’
February 1996–July 2000
Commander John Grieve, the Metropolitan Police’s Director of Intelligence, was looking forward to Friday evening, 9 February 1996. The following Monday, after a weekend of taking it easy, he would take over the hottest job in the ‘Met’ as Head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (SO 13). He was busy clearing out his filing cabinets and getting ready to move out of his office when one of his colleagues invited him to a wine bar for a farewell drink. He did not have long to savour it. Suddenly his pager went off and there was a message from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s PA, to call her boss, Sir Paul Condon. At first, Grieve thought his mates were playing a valedictory practical joke but he decided he had better make the call.1 It was no joke. ‘The cease-fire’s over and there’s a bomb in Docklands,’ the Commissioner said. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ The IRA had given over an hour’s warning, not wishing to repeat the tragedies of Enniskillen and La Mon.
