A Secret History of the IRA

by Ed Moloney

  (e) To agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree; and,

  (f) To urge that “punishment” killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps to prevent such actions.

  APPENDIX 7

  Letter from Father Alec Reid to Charles Haughey, May 11, 1987

  11–5–87

  Clonard Monastery

  Dear Mr. Haughey,

  I am writing to ask your advice with the following because it concerns what the Church may be able to do over the coming months to help the cause of peace. I am thinking in particular of what you may be able to do to persuade the IRA to end their military tactics and so to open the way to political dialogue and cooperation between all the nationalist parties, a development which I believe would in turn open the way to new relationships between the nationalist and unionist communities.

  I am writing personally but I know that others who are associated with me including people of standing and influence in politics and the Church would agree in principle with the main points that I shall make.

  To set these points in context I would like first to explain that my interest is not political but pastoral and moral. I know that a priest of the Church itself cannot get involved in party or even nationalist politics nor can he take sides in matters of political opinion and judgement. At the same time however I believe that a priest, again like the Church itself, must respond to the human and moral dimensions of the political situation especially insofar as it involves people whoever they may be in suffering and tragedy.

  It is this tragic dimension of the situation in Northern Ireland that concerns me and also I know concerns those who are associated with me both inside and outside the Redemptorist community. Whatever my private opinions may be I am not as a priest either for or against any particular political form of solution to the conflict whatever that might be provided it is just and acceptable to the people as a whole. My only aim is to help those people who if the present situation continues will be killed, injured or imprisoned over the next few weeks and months and whose personal tragedies will blight not only their own lives but also the lives of those to whom they are near and dear.

  I can bring this explanation of my interest into sharper focus by saying it was the death of a UDR man in South Armagh about three years ago that sparked off the efforts which my colleagues and I have been making since then to end once and for all the violent situation which is causing such tragedies.

  I have been involved in the processes of peace-making since the Troubles began in 1969, sometimes at the level of political and Church leadership; sometimes in the prisons, sometimes across the political divide between loyalist and nationalist but most often at the level of the streets in nationalist areas. Because of illness I gave up this kind of involvement for a number of years and it was only when the UDR man I mentioned was killed that I felt that the Church and priests like myself could and should be playing a more active and effective role in ending these kinds of tragedies that I became involved again.

  I am writing all this to explain not only my own standpoint and interest but also the standpoint and interest of my colleagues and associates. Our approach is based on two principles, one of which comes from our faith, the other from our common sense.

  Our principle of faith is that whenever we are working for peace and reconciliation between people we can be certain that the Lord is with us. His presence is the sure guarantee that we shall succeed if trusting in Him and doing what we can ourselves we keep on keeping on.

  The second principle which comes from our common sense is that the most human and most Christian way to achieve reconciliation and peace between people who are in conflict is the way of dialogue carried out in the spirit of respect and compassion for everyone involved. We believe that if we keep these two principles in mind and follow them out in practice we can confidently hope to succeed.

  The first principle tells us that the Lord is always with us and never more than when we are working for peace. This knowledge gives us the courage we need because it assures us that in Him the power to overcome every obstacle is always available to us. Given this principle in practice means setting our minds and our hearts sincerely on the search for peace and then going forward sustained by our trust in His presence and His power, by the confidence which tells us that if we do what we tell ourselves He will, step by step, light up and open the way.

  The second principle tells us that respectful and compassionate dialogue is the ideal way to settle conflicts. This knowledge gives us the basic guideline that we need in terms of the first steps we have to take when we set about the practicalities of making peace. If our experiences over the past two years or so have confirmed the need for faith and the need for dialogue they have also shown the power of these two principles when they are applied to our divisions and conflicts because as we went along we could see to our great surprise a whole scene opening up in which ways to a true and lasting peace were beginning to define themselves which if they had been followed up effectively as they appeared would by now, I believe, have led us forward to a situation in which the ending of “the armed struggle”, if not actually achieved would at least be within our grasp and where the processes of healing and reconciliation within the nationalist community itself and across the political divide between nationalist and unionist could have been significantly advanced.

  I am saying this in faith but also in the knowledge which has come from our experience during that time when we were dealing with hard-headed and realistic people with influence in both communities.

  I shall now try to summarize the results of our peace-making efforts over the past two years and then in view of them outline some proposals which I would like to put to you for advice and comment.

  We began by seeking advice of people in the nationalist and unionist communities whose judgement we knew we could trust because of their political knowledge and experience and also because of their closeness to the actual political situation in these communities. We asked them specifically how they thought the Church could help in the search for peace.

  Generally speaking they told us that in their view the Church could give invaluable help because of her resources, her influence, her independence and authority and the lines of communication that were open to her. They said that for the sake of the people of both communities she should use these assets to define, organize and develop her pastoral responses to the causes and the effects of the conflict and that in keeping with her pastoral role in reconciling and peace-keeping in the community she should encourage, foster and where necessary even initiate dialogue between the various parties and groupings who are in conflict or at odds with each other especially where positive communication has broken down between them.

  Since our main concern is to end the use of violent tactics on the nationalist side we spoke first to representatives of Sinn Fein including their present leader because we felt they could best advise us on this issue. They told us that in their view the Church could play a vital role not only in the general search for peace but also in the creation of ways and means for ending “the armed struggle”.

  Their general opinion of the situation at that time was that there would be no substantial progress towards a just and lasting peace and, especially, no hope of persuading the IRA to end their campaign unless the processes of dialogue were set up and maintained between all the parties concerned. In these they included the Church herself because as they saw the situation she was in a unique position to help.

  Here they referred to Pope John Paul’s speech at Drogheda and said that while everyone could recall his statement on violence few seemed to remember what he said about the responsibilities of political and community leaders in Ireland to create the peaceful and effective means for overcoming injustices so that those who were suffering from them would not be driven
back on their own resources and as a result be tempted to justify resort to violence.

  Taking their cue from this part of the Pope’s speech they said that the only way to persuade the IRA to end their campaign was to show them that the use of force was no longer necessary to achieve justice for the nationalist community because of the availability of a peaceful strategy which in terms of the political forces involved could be reasonably regarded as a realistic alternative.

  This was the gist of the advice which the Sinn Fein representatives gave the Church representatives at the various meetings which took place between them. It was clear therefore to the Church representatives that in view of this advice the only way to achieve their aim of ending “the armed struggle” and the tragedies that went with it was to create a dialogue through which a powerful political alternative could be formulated, initiated in concrete terms and then proposed to the IRA as a viable and going concern.

  The representatives of the Church were naturally depressed by the implications of all this but at the same time heartened by the evident willingness of the Sinn Fein leadership to cooperate with them. Whatever our personal opinions might be we realized that to make progress we would have to work on the possibilities that the Sinn Fein leadership had presented to us.

  We therefore held discussions on the questions of “an alternative method” with a number of people who we felt were in a position to advise us because of their knowledge of both the nationalist and unionist communities. As a result we decided that the following proposal for “an alternative method” should at least be explored because it was favoured by the consensus of opinion amongst those whom we consulted.

  The essence of this proposal is that the nationalist parties, North and South, would agree through dialogue amongst themselves to formulate and then to cooperate in a common nationalist policy of aims and methods for resolving the conflict and establishing a just and lasting peace. This would mean that while retaining their own separate identities the nationalist parties would make an ad hoc agreement to combine their political forces and to act in unison in a common campaign for reconciliation and peace.

  This is the theory of this particular proposal for “an alternative method”: the creation of a powerful combined political force on the nationalist side to which the IRA would respond by ending “the armed struggle” and with which they would begin to cooperate once the first serious steps to set it up were taken.

  I believe that as a theory this proposal has a lot to recommend it. It would for example end the violent and tragic dimensions of the conflict which would be a blessing beyond words and which I have said is the main concern of the Church.

  The common nationalist policy envisaged in this proposal would provide the nationalist people with a powerful but peaceful basis for achieving their aims, aims which would be defined and expressed in terms of a broad nationalist consensus and which for that reason would be moderate, reasonable and just. This in turn would win respect, sympathy and support for their cause throughout the world.

  Such a common nationalist policy would also be of great benefit to the unionist community because in the first place it would end the use of arms in the nationalist community, a tactic which must be a nightmare to them and which they so often see as sectarian in intent and motivation. It would also convince them of the need to develop new political attitudes because in the face of a nationalist community so powerfully and yet so peacefully united it would be clear beyond any doubt that real peace would never come until they came to terms, realistically and positively, with nationalist rights and aspirations. I also believe that such a common nationalist policy would be welcomed in the unionist community by the realists among them and also by those whose political attitudes are inspired by wisdom and compassion, people who are more numerous and at the end more influential than the “not an inch” image of their community often suggests.

  I am not saying this off the top of my head but because of soundings I have made among unionists and loyalists who are sensitive to political possibilities within their own community and who responded positively and favourably to the idea of a common nationalist policy.

  This then is the theory of the proposal which we decided to put forward for examination and discussion. All the time however it was clear that more important than any proposal for “an alternative method”, however appealing in theory it might be, the crucial exercise in the whole enterprise would be ongoing, open-ended dialogue between all the parties concerned, that is between the representatives of the Church and the initiators and coordinators of the discussions, the representatives of constitutional nationalist parties as the holders of the main political authority in the situation, the representatives of Sinn Fein as the party directly related to “the armed struggle”.

  The discussions we have held to date including those with the representatives of Sinn Fein had emphasized the primacy of open-ended dialogue as the key to the whole problem and as the sine qua non of progress. Without it theories about “alternative methods” would remain forever in the air because it would be only through the processes of dialogue involving hard and realistic discussion and a compassionate willingness to give and take that “an alternative method” to the armed struggle acceptable to every party concerned could be worked out and set in motion.

  Its formal structure therefore would emerge from the dialogue itself and not from any preconceived notions and theories. At the same time however the representatives of the Church decided that to get the dialogue going they should proceed on the basis of the proposal for a common nationalist policy outlined above because in theory at least this offered the best hope for progress and also because it would serve to focus the main purpose of the dialogue, the ending of “the armed struggle” through the creation of “an alternative method”.

  This decision however did not mean that other proposals would be excluded from discussion because from the beginning and in accordance with the principle of open-ended dialogue the actual agenda for any meeting would be a matter for all the participants to decide.

  To sum up then on this part of the letter our basic concern is to do all we can to remove the tragic and violent dimensions of the conflict insofar as the nationalist community at least is involved.

  Our reading of the possibilities of doing this at the present time is definitely positive provided that the Sinn Fein movement in general and the IRA in particular could be shown that a powerful political strategy is available as an alternative to the use of force. Indeed my own conviction is that if the processes of dialogue which would be necessary to create such a common policy were even initiated on a serious basis among the nationalist parties everyone concerned including the representatives of the Church, the representatives of the constitutional parties and the political leadership of Sinn Fein would be in a much stronger position than they are at the moment to influence the course of “the armed struggle” and the attitudes of those who are committed to it. I also believe that once this dialogue were under way the IRA would begin to respond to it and to cooperate with those involved especially the representatives of the Church.

  I am also convinced that the opportunities for making peace were never greater than they are at the present. I say this because of close contact with the situation and also because of past experience. These opportunities relate both to the IRA and to the unionist community and to fail to recognize and grasp them would I believe be a tragedy beyond words. I am sure therefore that the resources of the Church should be mobilized to help in the creation of “an alternative method”. I am also sure they can be mobilized provided the constitutional parties on the nationalist side agree to cooperate.

  I should say here that the representatives of the Sinn Fein movement have consistently told me over the past two years that they will cooperate fully with the Church and her representatives in any effort they may make to promote the creation of an alternative method to “the armed struggle” and to substitute political methods for military ones.
They have also said that they will give the whole matter the highest priority, devote all the necessary resources and energies to it and engage positively and constructively in discussions and negotiations with any party or group representative, nationalist or unionist and indeed with any individual from either side who is willing to cooperate with the Church and whose influence on the political scene places them in a position to help. They will do this at any time, without preconditions either officially or unofficially and in the strictest confidence.

  As I have already said I do not believe that it normally belongs to the pastoral role of the Church to get directly involved in the creation of political policies although in a situation like that under consideration here where it is a case of creating policies which will serve as an alternative to the use of force I believe that she should get involved in facilitating their creation. In borderline areas between political responsibility and pastoral responsibility the nature and degree of her involvement will depend on circumstances and judgement.

  Circumstances in Northern Ireland must I believe be judged in the light of the fact that since 1969 a lot of the real power to influence the course of events has been on the streets. With the breakdown of normal law and order this has also meant the breakdown in lines of trust, access and communication which normally help to hold a peaceful society together.

  In this kind of situation the Church has, I believe, a pastoral responsibility to intervene where she can and where others who normally would, cannot, in order to bridge the gaps in these lines otherwise the breakdowns will continue and grow worse and only soldiers and police with guns will be able to contain the situation. This is one of the reasons why the Church has a pastoral role to play in the initiation at least of the kind of enterprise I have been discussing and also in the creation of the kind of supportive and neutral setting that would be necessary to make it viable and successful.