Guns And Government: The Management of the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Guns and Government The Management of the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Roger Mac Ginty and John Darby

Guns and Government

Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict series General Editors: Seamus Dunn, Professor of Conflict Studies and Director, Centre for Study of Conflict; and Valerie Morgan, Professor of History and Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. With the end of the Cold war, the hitherto concealed existence of a great many other conflicts, relatively small in scale, long-lived, ethnic in character and intra- rather than inter-state, has been revealed. The dramatic changes in the distribution of world power, along with removal of some previously resolute forms of centralised restraint, have resulted in the re-emergence of older, historical ethnic quarrels, many of which either became violent and warlike or teetered, and continue to teeter, on the brink of violence. For these reasons, ethnic conflicts and consequent violence are likely to have the greatest impact on world affairs during the next period of history. This series examines a range of issues related to ethnic and inter-community conflict. Each book concentrates on a well-defined aspect of ethnic and intercommunity conflict and approaches it from a comparative and international standpoint. Rather than focus on the macro-level, that is, on the grand and substantive matters of states and empires, this series argues that the fundamental causes of ethnic conflict are often to be found in the hidden roots and tangled social infrastructures of the opposing separated groups. It is the understanding of these foundations and the working out of their implications for policy and practical activity that may lead to ameliorative processes and the construction of transforming social mechanisms and programmes calculated to produce long-term peace.

Coming out of Violence Project General Editors: John Darby, University of Notre Dame; and Roger Mac Ginty, University of York. Titles include: John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty (editors) THE MANAGEMENT OF PEACE PROCESSES Pierre du Toit SOUTH AFRICA’S BRITTLE PEACE The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence Roger Mac Ginty and John Darby GUN AND GOVERNMENT: THE MANAGEMENT OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS

Guns and Government The Management of the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Roger Mac Ginty Lecturer in Postwar Recovery Studies University of York

and

John Darby Professor and Scholar in Residence Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies University of Notre Dame Indiana USA

© Roger Mac Ginty and John Darby 2002 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph 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, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. 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 2002 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–77914–2 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mac Ginty, Roger, 1970– Guns and government: the management of the Northern Ireland peace process / Roger Mac Ginty and John Darby. p. cm. – (Ethnic and intercommunity conflict series) Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 0–333–77914–2 1. Northern Ireland – Politics and government – 1969–1994. 2. Peace movements – Northern Ireland – History – 20th century. 3. Political violence – Northern Ireland – History – 20th century. I. Darby, John, 1940– II. Title. III. Ethnic and intercommunity conflict series (Palgrave (Firm)) DA990.U46 M1425 2001 941.60824—dc21 10 9 11 10

8 7 6 09 08 07

5 4 3 2 06 05 04 03

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

2001036881 1 02

Contents List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

viii ix x

Chronology of the Peace Process

xii

Map: Northern Ireland

xvi

Introduction: a New Departure? Peace processes – what are they? Coming out of violence The Northern Ireland peace process

1 3 4 5

Part I: The Peace Process: a Narrative

9

1

2

3

The Background to the Peace Process

11

What’s the trouble anyway? The people of Northern Ireland The historical background The Troubles Building blocks for the peace process First movements: 1990–94

11 12 14 16 20 25

Negotiating the Deal

29

Ceasefires and after, 1994–95 The collapse of the IRA ceasefire, February 1996 Dead-time, spring 1996–spring 1997 Parades The Blair administration – May 1997 The final straight – spring 1998

29 32 33 35 36 39

Good Friday and After

41

The Good Friday Agreement, April 1998 Bedding in the Agreement, 1998–99 The Mitchell review – autumn 1999 Devolution – winter 1999–2001

41 42 49 51

vi Contents

Part II: The Peace Process: an Analysis

55

4 Swinging Door: the Politics and Negotiation of the Peace Process

57

5

6

Introduction Part one: actors Part two: structure and process Discussion: what factors facilitated movement in the Northern Ireland peace process?

84

Guns and Government: Violence and the Peace Process

86

Introduction A habit of violence Violence and the peace process: changing patterns Violence and the peace process: an analysis Violence as a catalyst for peace Discussion: why decommissioning became a problem

86 87 88 90 103 104

Third Parties: External Influences on the Peace Process

106

Introduction Non-governmental influences The United States government The European Union The example of other peace processes Discusssion: what impact did external influences have on the peace process?

106 107 113 117 118

7 Peace Dividends and Peace Deficits: the Economics of the Peace Process

8

57 58 72

120 123

Introduction Economics and the peace process Northern Ireland: the years of violence Direct grants Increased investment The fair employment issue The security factor Discussion: was there a peace dividend?

123 124 125 127 129 132 133 134

On the Ground: Public Opinion and the Peace Process

138

Public opinion and public behaviour Civil society

139 141

Contents vii

9

The media Discussion: top-down or bottom-up?

146 148

Poppies and Lilies: Symbolism and the Peace Process

152

Introduction The role of symbols and symbolism in politics Parades Attacks on symbols Appropriation Anniversaries and victims New opportunities The Good Friday Agreement Symbols of accord Discussion: the continuing potency of symbols

152 153 155 156 156 157 159 162 163 165

Conclusion: a Broader Perspective on Northern Ireland’s Peace Process Introduction What shaped the process? Major and minor influences What’s new? The need to synchronise

167 167 168 174 176 181

Notes

183

Bibliography

210

Index

216

List of Tables and Figures Tables 3.1 1998 Assembly election results 4.1 Northern Ireland elections, 1992–99 6.1 Percentage of the British public identifying Northern Ireland as ‘the most important issue facing Britain today’ 7.1 Visitors to Northern Ireland, 1994–98 8.1 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, Chances of peace

45 69

108 131 141

Figures 7.1 Employee jobs in UK and Northern Ireland, 1994–98 7.2 Claimant unemployment, UK and Northern Ireland 1991–98

viii

135 136

Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge with gratitude the research funding provided by the European Union, UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Programme and the Northern Ireland Community Relations Unit. There are also a number of institutional debts: to INCORE (Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity) at the University of Ulster where the project was based; to the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame University where John Darby worked from 1999; and to the Richardson Institution for Peace and Conflict Research at Lancaster University where Roger Mac Ginty spent the 1999–2000 academic year. John Darby was awarded a fellowship at the United States Institute of Peace that allowed him to concentrate on the study of peace processes during a critical period of the research. A number of key participants in the Northern Ireland peace process – politicians and policy-makers – were interviewed on the basis of anonymity, often on more than one occasion, and we are grateful for their patience and frankness. Finally, a number of colleagues were kind enough to advise on various parts of the book. These include Pierre van der Post du Toit from the University of Stellenbosch; Tamar Hermann, Tami Steinmetz Center, Tel Aviv University; Ludger Mees, Universidad del País VascoEuskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Bilbao; David Newman, Ben Gurion University; Cathy Gormley-Heenan, Mike McCool and Gillian Robinson from INCORE; Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo, Sri Lanka; Kris Brown from the Linenhall Library, Belfast; Paul Gorecki, formerly with the Northern Ireland Economic Council; and Sultan Barakat, Mark Evans and Peter Halls at the University of York. Special thanks are also due to Erin Doyle for her invaluable assistance with the bibliography and proof reading. We would also like to acknowledge Alison Howson from Palgrave Publishers, and Seamus Dunn and Valerie Morgan, general editors of Palgrave’s Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series. The map is based on Bartholomew Digital Database © Bartholomew Ltd 2001.

ix

List of Abbreviations ANC APNI ANIA CAJ CBI CCRU CIRA DUP EMU ETA EU FAIT FSBNI FEC G7 GAA ICTU IDB IIC INLA IRA LVF MP NIEC NILT NIVT NIO NIWC NORAID PIRA PUP PWC RUC SDLP UDA UDP

African National Congress Alliance Party of Northern Ireland Americans for a New Irish Agenda Committee on the Administration of Justice Confederation of British Industry Central Community Relations Unit Continuity Irish Republican Army Democratic Unionist Party Education for Mutual Understanding Euskadi Ta Askatasuna European Union Families Against Intimidation and Terror Federation of Small Businesses Northern Ireland Fair Employment Commission Group of Seven Gaelic Athletic Association Irish Congress of Trade Unions Industrial Development Board Independent International Commission Irish National Liberation Army Irish Republican Army Loyalist Volunteer Force Member of Parliament Northern Ireland Economic Council Northern Ireland Life and Times (survey) Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust Northern Ireland Office Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition Irish Northern Aid Provisional Irish Republican Army Progressive Unionist Party PriceWaterhouseCoopers Royal Ulster Constabulary Social Democratic and Labour Party Ulster Defence Association Ulster Democratic Party x

List of Abbreviations xi

UFF UKUP UN UUC UUP UVF UWC

Ulster Freedom Fighters United Kingdom Unionist Party United Nations Ulster Unionist Council Ulster Unionist Party Ulster Volunteer Force Ulster Worker’s Council

Chronology of the Peace Process 1985 November Anglo-Irish Agreement between Ireland and the UK acknowledges that the Republic of Ireland would have an advisory role on Northern Ireland. 1988 January 1990 November

1991 March

Meetings between John Hume and Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, which continue until August. Secretary of State Peter Brooke says that Britain has ‘no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland’ and would accept Irish unification if consented to by the people of Northern Ireland.

July

Brooke announces a series of talks between Northern Ireland’s main constitutional parties along a three stands format. Meetings of the Anglo-Irish Conference, set up under the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, would be suspended for the duration of the talks. Brooke talks end without agreement.

1992 April

Talks resume at Stormont but collapse by November.

1993 April October December

Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and the SDLP’s John Hume resume talks. An IRA bomb on the Shankill Road, Belfast, kills 11 and sparks a spiral of retaliatory attacks. The British and Irish governments agree on the Downing Street Declaration as a basis for talks.

1994 January

US President Bill Clinton intervenes to allow a limited duration visa to be offered to Gerry Adams. August The IRA announces a ceasefire. September Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds meets with Gerry Adams. John Hume also attends, leading to unionists accusations of a ‘pan-nationalist front’. The UK-wide broadcasting ban on political parties linked to paramilitary organisations is lifted and Secretary of State Patrick Mayhew announces the re-opening of border roads. October Loyalist paramilitaries, operating under the banner of the Combined Loyalist Military Command, announce a ceasefire. The Forum for Peace and Reconciliation opens in Dublin. xii

Chronology of the Peace Process xiii November

December

1995 February

The European Union announces a £240 m package to support the peace process. Albert Reynold’s coalition government collapses. Fine Gael’s John Bruton forms a coalition government in the Irish Republic. The British government lifts a ban on ministerial meetings with Sinn Féin and the loyalist parties.

The Frameworks for the Future document is agreed by the British and Irish governments. March Sir Patrick Mayhew makes his ‘Washington three’ speech on decommissioning. May Gerry Adams and Patrick Mayhew meet on the fringes of an investment conference in the US; then officially in July. July Confrontations during Orange marches, notably at Drumcree and Garvaghy Road. September David Trimble replaces James Molyneaux as leader of the UUP. November International Body on Arms Decommissioning begins work. US President, Bill Clinton, visits Northern Ireland for the first time. 1996 January George Mitchell releases his report on decommissioning, recommending simultaneous decommissioning and inclusive talks. John Major announces elections in Northern Ireland leading to talks. February IRA ends its ceasefire with bomb in Canary Wharf, London. The British and Irish governments end ministerial contact with Sinn Féin. They also establish 10 June as the start date for multiparty talks. March The British and Irish government publish their Ground Rules for Substantive All-party Talks. ‘Proximity talks’ start. May Election to the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue. June Talks begin, with Sinn Féin excluded. July Tension and violence sparked by the Drumcree parade dispute spread throughout Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland political parties agree on procedural rules for talks. 1997 January North Report recommends the establishment of an Independent Parades Commission. May Tony Blair elected as British Prime Minister. June Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam announces that decommissioning would not be a precondition for Sinn Féin’s entry to talks. Bertie Ahern of Fianna Fáil forms a coalition government in the Irish Republic. July The IRA announces another ceasefire. September Sinn Féin enters the talks while the DUP and UKUP leave them. December LVF leader Billy Wright shot dead inside the Maze prison sparking a round of sectarian attacks.

xiv Chronology of the Peace Process 1998 January

UDP voluntarily leave the talks after the UDA/UFF was linked to violence. Gerry Adams meets Tony Blair in Downing Street. February Sinn Féin temporarily expelled from talks after IRA linked with violence. April Good Friday Agreement reached after marathon negotiations and mediation from Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. The Bloomfield Report on Victims is launched. May A referendum on the Good Friday Agreement secures a 71 per cent Yes vote in Northern Ireland and a bare majority among Protestants. In the Republic of Ireland, the Agreement received 94 per cent backing. IRA prisoners released from Portlaoise prison in the Irish Republic. Formation of the ‘Real IRA’ confirmed. June Elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly. July David Trimble of the UUP and Seamus Mallon of the SDLP elected as First Minister designate and Deputy First Minister designate. August A bomb by a splinter republican group kills 29 people in Omagh. ‘Real IRA’ suspend military operations. September David Trimble and Gerry Adams hold their first face-to-face meeting. President Clinton visits Northern Ireland for a second time. First paramilitary prisoners released from Northern Ireland jails under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. December LVF decommissions some of its weapons. David Trimble and John Hume awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. 1999 February Assembly accepts Trimble–Mallon plan on the number of ministries and cross-border implementation bodies. April The Hillsborough Declaration emerges from talks between the British and Irish governments and the Northern Ireland parties that supported the Agreement. It was later rejected by Sinn Féin. June European election endorses candidates from the UUP, SDLP and DUP. July An attempt to form an Executive fails when the UUP fail to attend the Assembly sitting. Seamus Mallon resigns as Deputy First Minister designate. September George Mitchell’s review of the implementation of the Agreement begins. The Patten report on police reform is published. November The RUC is awarded the George Cross for gallantry. The Mitchell Review paves the way for the reinstatement of Seamus Mallon as Deputy First Minister designate, the creation of the power-sharing Executive and an IRA announcement that it is in contact with the Decommissioning Commission. December Power is formally devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the North–South Ministerial Council and the British–Irish Ministerial

Chronology of the Peace Process xv Council take effect, and the Anglo-Irish Agreement is replaced by the British–Irish Agreement. Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution are amended. North–South Ministerial Council meets for the first time. 2000 February

March May June July November December 2001 June

Assembly suspended over the issue of decommissioning and direct rule by Westminster temporarily re-imposed. The North–South Ministerial Council and British–Irish Ministerial Council were also suspended. David Trimble survives a challenge to his leadership of the UUP. IRA says that it will put its arms beyond use. Power re-devolved to Northern Ireland. IRA arms dumps inspected by external third parties. Executive announces its ‘Agenda for Government’. David Trimble refuses to allow Sinn Féin ministers to attend meetings of the North–South Ministerial Council. Assembly approves its first budget. Westminster and Local Government election. Significant swings towards Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party.

Derry Lower Bann

Antrim Omagh Upper Bann Portadown Enniskillen

Armagh

Downpatrick

Map: Northern Ireland Source: Map based on Bartholomew Digital Database © Bartholomew Ltd 2001.

xvi

Introduction: a New Departure?

The Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 marked the most significant rapprochement in Anglo-Irish relations since the partition of the island of Ireland in 1921. Also known as the Belfast Agreement, it was negotiated and endorsed by most of Northern Ireland’s political parties. In a significant break with previous governmental approaches to the Northern Ireland conflict, the main republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations were explicitly included in the negotiations. Referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in 1998 confirmed strong, island-wide, popular support for the Agreement. The Agreement was remarkably comprehensive, covering relations within Northern Ireland, between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and within the British Isles. A sophisticated devolution package was established for Northern Ireland, with significant power resting with an inclusive power-sharing assembly. Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom was reaffirmed and its future constitutional position was linked to the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. Permanent co-operation on a range of functional issues was established between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A British–Irish Council, which would enable co-operation between the British and Irish governments, as well as the Scottish parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies, was also to be established. The Council also located the Good Friday Agreement within the wider framework of devolution in the United Kingdom. The Agreement followed 25 years of violence and eight centuries of conflict. The three geographical dimensions of the Good Friday Agreement reflected the three interlocking historical disputes between Ireland and Britain, between the northern and southern parts of the island of Ireland and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. 1

2 Guns and Government

Depending on one’s political prejudices, these disputes date to the twelfth-century Norman invasion of Ireland, the seventeenth-century Plantation of Ulster, the partition of the island in 1921 or the start of the most recent Troubles in 1969. The Good Friday Agreement did not spring from a vacuum, but neither did it benefit from past successes. There were seven failed attempts to broker an agreement between Northern Ireland’s constitutional parties in the years between 1972 and 1993. Security-led attempts to ‘win’ the conflict had a similarly poor success rate. The peace process itself followed a ‘stop–go’ pattern, with long periods of stasis interrupted by concentrated bursts of political activity. Despite paramilitary ceasefires, it was also punctuated by continuing violence. Nevertheless, the Good Friday Accord was agreed in April 1998. Why did this attempt proceed much further than its predecessors? Is it to be explained by changes in Ireland and Britain, or within a broader international context? The post-1994 process differed from previous initiatives in a number of significant ways. It developed different approaches to the business of making peace, often mirroring peacemaking efforts in other conflict situations. The 1990s witnessed a unique moment in history, when a number of persistent ethnic conflicts lurched along the continuum from violence towards settlement, or at least transformed into a less violent stage. These included some of the world’s most durable conflicts: Northern Ireland itself; South Africa, where the 1994 constitutional settlement significantly shifted the emphasis to the need for fundamental social restructuring and more equitable distribution of resources; the Middle East where the Oslo Accords have provided sufficient momentum for the transfer of territory and a level of autonomy. These are the front-page cases. Behind the headlines the process of making peace has been transformed during the 1990s. In the decade from 1988 to 1998, at least 38 formal peace accords were signed in attempts to resolve internal conflict in 33 states. Twenty-nine of the accords were national pacts, while nine addressed sub-national disputes, usually between the state and an ethnic minority.1 The United Nations was directly involved in 16 of them, but the other 22 had no substantive UN involvement. Within this broad pattern, moreover, there has been a significant shift away from UN involvement. Six of the ten peace agreements signed before 1992 resulted from UN initiatives. Of the 15 agreements reached between 1996 and 1998, all but two were agreed without UN assistance, although there has since been an increase of UN involvement in Europe, Africa and Asia.2

Introduction: a New Departure? 3

The peace processes of the 1990s were marked by the increasing involvement of the parties actively involved in the conflict. They have been more inclined to look to comparative models than to historical ones for guidance and have consciously borrowed approaches, techniques and inspiration from other recent processes on an à la carte basis. The net result has been a novel approach to negotiations and to peace processes in general.

Peace processes – what are they? ‘There is no such thing as a peace process’, Ian Paisley informed the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) conference in 1998. Nor was he the only politician in Northern Ireland to suggest this. Every peace process is accompanied by claims that it has ended or never started, either from frustration or tactical manoeuvring. It is never an easy charge to sustain or refute, because there is no universally agreed definition of a peace process. When does a process start? What constitutes an irretrievable breakdown? It is important to distinguish between the common characteristics of peace processes and their essential characteristics. Ceasefires and secret talks may lead to negotiations, but often do not. The core dispute is often, but not always, about demands for and opposition to greater devolution. Some peace processes are heavily influenced by external actors including the United Nations; others hardly at all. There are no rules about how many internal parties are sufficient to deliver a durable agreement, although most recent negotiations have tended to include as many parties as were willing to abjure violence. Looking at these common features, a peace process may be defined by five essential criteria. 1. The protagonists are willing to negotiate in good faith. An undertaking to negotiate creates a tension between the negotiators’ needs both to co-operate and to compete with each other. The success or failure of a peace process is determined primarily by the management of this tension. Protagonists may not trust each other, but they need to trust the process. 2. The key actors are included in the process. The existing government of the area in question is an essential actor, and most recent successful processes also include those paramilitary groupings that either command significant support or have the power to bring about the downfall of an agreement – the veto-holders.

4 Guns and Government

3. The negotiations address the central issues in dispute. The central issues dividing the participants, usually constitutional, are sometimes deferred until procedural or confidence-building measures have been agreed. But agreement to include the fundamental issues in dispute is an essential requirement for a peace process. 4. The negotiators do not use force to achieve their objectives. Violence precedes peace processes and often continues as an unavoidable background during them, so the willingness to continue negotiations in spite of disruptive violence is a crucial test. A peace process cannot progress if any of the participant parties continues to be systematically involved in political violence. 5. The negotiators are committed to a sustained process. A peace process is distinguished from a truce or a treaty by its duration. Above all else, it is a process. It must be able to withstand pressures, including violence, from without. Indeed peace processes are often suspended, sometimes for a substantial period. Outside these five essential criteria, peace processes often share a number of common characteristics, even if they follow greatly varied directions. Pre-negotiation contacts may be used to test the ground, and may involve external or internal mediators. The official process usually begins with a public announcement and often with a ceasefire. Once started, the rules and sequence of negotiation are determined by negotiators who often have little experience of negotiation. It is not essential to start with a defined constitutional or political outcome for the process, but a peace process cannot be regarded as completed unless a political and constitutional framework has been agreed. Even if it is, the detailed implementation presents other opportunities for failure. Throughout, the process is likely to run into periods, sometimes extensive, of stalemate. The ultimate test of its durability is its ability to retain all of its key characteristics and to leave open the possibility of restoring momentum.

Coming out of violence This book evolved from a comparative study of peace processes conducted between 1995 and 1999. The ‘Coming Out of Violence’ project set out to explore the transformation from violence to agreement in ethnic conflict.3 It monitored peace processes as they evolved in five areas – South Africa, Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, the Basque

Introduction: a New Departure? 5

Country and Sri Lanka. These five areas were not selected at random. They were chosen in 1995 because they had experienced durable ethnic conflicts and because they had embarked on a peace process or seemed likely to do so. The principal aim of the research, and the principal factor determining the selection of the five case studies, was to reach a fuller understanding of how peace processes are initiated, how they evolve and what factors support or frustrate their success. In the event they have experienced widely varying fortunes, from South Africa’s successful transfer of power in 1994 to a series of failed initiatives in Sri Lanka. This research focused on six aspects of peace processes: violence and security issues; economic factors; the role of external actors; popular responses; symbols and ritual; and progress towards political/constitutional agreement. All six factors were to play a part in Northern Ireland’s peace process.

The Northern Ireland peace process All these clever men were prophesying with every variety of ingenuity what would happen soon, and they all did it in the same way, by taking something they saw ‘going strong’, as the saying is, and carrying it as far as their imagination could stretch. This, they said, was the true and simple way of anticipating the future. G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill4 It would have been difficult to prophesy a breakthrough in the Northern Ireland conflict in late 1993. After 25 years of persistent but relatively low levels of violence, the Troubles were again intensifying. There was no sign of an end to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign of violence. More ominously, murders by loyalist organisations were rising sharply. The most recent peace initiative, by the Northern Ireland Secretary of Sir Patrick Mayhew, had failed yet again to reach a political agreement between the constitutional parties. John Major’s Conservative government was grimly hanging on to power in Britain, and increasingly dependent on Unionist support, hardly the best condition for launching a peace process.5 The general gloom was hardly new. Since the late 1960s Northern Ireland had been a reliable reservoir of bad news stories. It harboured entrenched communal divisions, was home to a protracted lowintensity conflict and was characterized by the repeated failure of local politicians to reach agreement on sharing power. The region’s

6 Guns and Government

constitutional status was contested. Its political and economic relations with the neighbouring state, the Republic of Ireland, were strained. The economy had persistent and structural weaknesses. Northern Ireland lagged behind other regions in the United Kingdom on most indicators of social well-being. Those predicting continuing divisions, more political violence and yet more discord between politicians were on seemingly safe ground.6 The Northern Ireland peace process transformed the prospect. Ceasefires in 1994 by the main paramilitary organisations significantly reduced political violence. The political landscape underwent massive change, with the development of new structures and processes of interaction. A qualitatively different phase of political contacts began. Fundamentally, these involved meaningful and productive interaction between the unionist and nationalist blocs. A landmark agreement on new relationships and institutions for Northern Ireland, Britain and the Republic of Ireland was reached and endorsed by a majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens. The constitution of the Irish Republic was amended to remove its territorial claim on Northern Ireland. After 27 years of direct rule from London, substantial powers were devolved to Northern Ireland’s elected representatives. This book is arranged into two main sections. The first three chapters present a narrative of the peace process, and aim to provide a record of events between 1994 and early 2001. The chapters largely follow a chronological format, only breaking from this pattern to expand on certain issues and events. The sheer bulk of political activity connected with the peace process necessitates compression. The second section is an analysis of the factors that influenced its successes and failures. Each of the chapters in this section deals with one of the six main themes studied in the ‘Coming Out of Violence’ project. This approach has three main advantages. First, the book emerged from a systematic study started in 1995 when the process had barely started, and adopts an evolutionary as opposed to a retrospective approach. This dynamic approach created some problems, notably the uncertainty about whether the process would develop or abort, as peace processes are notoriously vulnerable to violence and political extremism. The advantages, however, are considerable. The authors were able to interview a number of the principal actors at various points as the peace process evolved, and to record their unvarnished contemporary views and reactions. Such concepts as ‘ripeness’, for example, are more sensitively assessed contemporaneously than retrospectively.

Introduction: a New Departure? 7

Second, the peace process is approached as more than a study of negotiations and violence. In addition to these two dominant features, the relative influence of other factors – economic developments, popular responses, external influences and symbolism – are given appropriate attention. The success or failure of any emerging peace process depends on the interaction between such a wide range of influences. Third, the Northern Ireland process is located within the broader context of other contemporary peace processes and is informed by comparative insights. Like most other peace processes, Northern Ireland has ignored the advice of Polonius and enthusiastically borrowed from and lent to other peace processes.7 The broader geographical perspective helps place the Northern Ireland process in the context of other contemporary processes, a luxury rarely available to many of the participants caught up in the minutiae of the negotiations.

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Part I The Peace Process: a Narrative

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1 The Background to the Peace Process

What’s the trouble anyway? Northern Ireland’s conflict is a tangle of interrelated questions. What should be the essential political context for the people of Northern Ireland? How can social and economic inequalities, especially in the field of employment, be remedied? How can the state accommodate religious and cultural differences relating to education, the Irish language and the broad spread of cultural expression? How can political disputes be conducted without resorting to violence? How can security and order be justly and inclusively administered in a deeply divided society? It is not easy to weigh the relative importance of these questions. The majority Protestant community and the minority Catholic community place their emphases on different elements of the problem. Protestants are more likely to see the conflict in constitutional and security terms, and are primarily concerned about preserving the union with Britain and resisting the perceived threat of a united Ireland. Catholic views fall generally into two broad categories. Some perceive the issue as a nationalist struggle for self-determination, looking back to what they regard as the historical integrity of the island and the gerrymander of partition. Others approach it as a problem of corruption or unfair practices by successive Unionist governments between the 1920s and the 1970s which, if removed, would create a society in which both Catholics and Protestants could live peacefully together. These two categories are not discrete, and the balance between them has shifted back and forwards since the formation of the state. Amid these interwoven perceptions, four issues have been particularly intractable: politics, violence, community relations and inequality. The 11

12

Guns and Government

political dispute about the existence and nature of Northern Ireland itself lies at the core of the conflict and ensured that elections were dominated by the constitutional issue, and that political allegiances remained petrified. The problem of endemic violence is the manifestation of the Northern Ireland problem best known internationally. No generation since the sixteenth-century Plantation of Ulster has escaped it, and it went on without interruption for 25 years before the 1994 ceasefires. The community relations problem, if less easily quantified, is equally persistent, with high levels of demographic and social segregation and a perception among many Catholics and Protestants that they belonged to distinct groups. Inequality added an additional layer of grievance for Catholics; on many indicators of socio-economic disadvantage – employment, educational and healthcare provision – Catholics experienced higher levels of need or disadvantage than Protestants. Yet majorities in both groups tend to believe that government gives preferential treatment to the other group.

The people of Northern Ireland1 About 1 688 000 people live in Northern Ireland, according to a 1998 official estimate, a rise of about a quarter since the foundation of the state in 1921, but still only 2.8 per cent of the population of the United Kingdom.2 Almost half the population live within 20 miles of the centre of Belfast. The other half live in rural areas or in small towns or villages. About a third of the population live to the west of the River Bann, and this number has been rising since 1971. Catholics account for about 40.6 per cent of the population – and may be as high as 43 per cent according to some commentators – an increase of about 10 per cent since the 1950s. In a 1999/2000 survey, 46 per cent of respondents termed themselves as Protestant, 39 per cent as Catholic and 10 per cent professed no religion.3 According to the same survey, 39 per cent were unionist, 29 per cent nationalist and, reflecting a long history of public circumspection towards opinion pollsters, 30 per cent claimed they were neither. The terms ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ are often used to reflect ethnic identity as well as private religious observance. In Northern Ireland there is nothing incompatible in losing one’s religious faith, yet still identifying oneself as Catholic or Protestant. The prevalence of violence and intimidation after 1969 has certainly increased religious segregation, but less than might have been expected. A study in the early 1990s found that 50 per cent of people

The Background to the Peace Process 13

lived in areas inhabited by 90 per cent or more of their co-religionists. Many other areas of Northern Ireland experienced little residential segregation. Consequently, unlike some other apparently intractable conflicts, contact between members of the two communities is frequent. ‘They mingle’, as J.C. Beckett observed, ‘with a consciousness of the differences between them.’4 Members of both religious groups are represented to some degree in almost every town, village and locality, creating a mosaic of intermingled relationships with greatly varying levels of social, economic and residential segregation and integration. This is one of the key features of the Northern Irish conflict. As A.T.Q. Stewart put it: Most people, if asked to define the chief symptoms of the Northern Ireland troubles, would say it is that the two communities cannot live together. The very essence of the Ulster question, however, is that they do live together and have done for centuries. They share the same homeland and, like it or not, the two diametrically opposed political wills must co-exist on the same narrow ground.5 Many of Northern Ireland’s institutions are also conditioned by religious differences. Shared worship between different Protestant religious denominations is not uncommon, but rarely includes Catholics. Primary and secondary education is strongly segregated by religion for both children and teachers, with less than 4 per cent of children attending integrated schools. The two universities are fully integrated, although an increased preference among Protestant students for British universities is believed by some to have produced a relatively high Catholic presence at the University of Ulster and Queen’s University Belfast. The two morning newspapers, the Irish News and the News Letter, cater for the two religious communities, while the evening Belfast Telegraph has readers from both. Not so with policing. Catholic participation in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was always disproportionately low – a situation exacerbated by the Troubles – and stood at 7.4 per cent in 1994. It is notable that Northern Ireland, despite its abnormal political violence, is relatively law-abiding. In 1969, before the violence started, Northern Ireland had the lowest per capita prison population in Western Europe. The normal crime rate, excluding politically motivated crime, is still low, although it has been rising in recent years. People feel safer walking the streets at night than in Britain and express less concern about crime.6

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The historical background It is a measure of political sensitivities in Northern Ireland that even selection of a date to mark the origin of the conflict is viewed with suspicion. ‘We all have hang-ups or hang-overs from history’, observed a senior member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).7 Those who start with the Norman invasion in 1170, it is implied, interpret the problem as essentially one of British conquest – a core republican stance. A more common choice is the Plantation of Ulster in the early sixteenth century which introduced a community of foreigners who spoke a different language, worshipped apart and followed an alien culture and way of life; but the argument that the hostility between the Planters and the Gaels is the root of the Ulster problem is open to charges of insularity.8 Surely the partition of the island of Ireland in 1921, when Northern Ireland became a separate entity, is a sensible starting point for the discussion? Not if you are republican and believe that an understanding of the conflict must start earlier. If 1969, when the 25 years of the latest Troubles started, is selected, the analysis may be dismissed as mistaking violence for conflict and merely treating the symptoms rather than the disease. The intention in this chapter is to construct a short introduction for readers unfamiliar with the background to the conflict in Northern Ireland and to provide a context for the peace process. The history of the 800 years since the Norman invasion of Ireland is well covered elsewhere.9 Two general points about the historical origins of the conflict are worth making. The first is that the proximity of Britain and Ireland has guaranteed a long history of interaction and linkage. Britain was a developing power with the capacity and ambitions to colonise other territories. Ireland, a divided political entity at the time of the Norman invasion, had limited abilities to resist penetration from external forces. The subsequent histories of the two islands were closely linked. In addition to the military and political history of conquest and resistance, there were exchanges, many of them unequal, of people, cultures, goods, technologies, ideas and language. The second general point relates to the peculiar nature of the settlement of the northern areas of the island of Ireland by English and Scottish settlers from the sixteenth century onwards. The ‘Plantation of Ulster’ attracted settlers from all classes, many of them smallholders or artisans. This pattern of settlement meant that the Protestant settlers lived in close proximity to the Catholic Irish who were cleared to the

The Background to the Peace Process 15

geographical margins but not exterminated. Within several generations the broad outlines of the conflict had been established. The territory contained two groups who differed in political allegiance, religious practice and cultural values. One group believed that their land had been stolen, while the other was in a constant state of apprehension.10 Northern Ireland still suffers from the problems of rival ethnic groups living cheek by jowl and in suspicion of each other. The island was partitioned in 1921, with the southern 26 counties gaining independence from Britain. The other six north-eastern counties remained part of the United Kingdom. The new state of Northern Ireland had an in-built Protestant majority (roughly 65 per cent Protestant and 35 per cent Catholic at the time of partition) and acquired its own parliament and considerable autonomy within the United Kingdom. Sovereignty was retained in Westminster, as was responsibility for defence, foreign policy and other UK concerns. London was content to leave most Northern Ireland matters in the hands of the new Stormont administration.11 From its inception until the return of Direct Rule in 1972, political tension was constant in Northern Ireland, only varying in intensity.12 Sectarian strains were never far from the surface. A chronically insecure Protestant majority, an alienated Catholic minority, electoral malpractice, ethnic bias in the distribution of housing and welfare services, and a declining economy meant that the state could never command full political legitimacy. Both traditions lived in a ‘spirit of indifference’.13 Few observers could see the meltdown around the corner. Division and violence were not Ireland’s only historical inheritances. Three centuries of living together on the same narrow ground has also brought familiarity. Despite the attempts during the Plantation of Ulster to keep the settlers and the native Irish apart, the two communities gradually came into increasing contact. Occasionally, and in growing numbers since the 1970s, they intermarried.14 One of the myths of the ideologues in Ireland is the myth of ethnic purity. The essence of the myth is that the two groups spring from separate loins and married within their own people. Consequently the communities remain ethnically distinct. An extreme version is that Protestants and Catholics have physically different appearances. It is argued that the difference can also be identified by their names: Gaelic first and surnames for Catholics, English and Scottish names for Protestants. Yet the names of political leaders mentioned daily in the political columns of newspapers demonstrate how untenable it is. The Unionist Prime Minister who presided over the start of the Troubles, Terence O’Neill,

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carried the most Gaelic surname in Ulster. Key negotiators from the UUP and Sinn Féin in the political talks leading to the Good Friday Agreement shared the name McGuinness, although they use different spellings. The two nationalist leaders whose talks began the overture to the IRA ceasefire, John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, have lowland Scottish Protestant names, the names of Planters. The myth of purity is indefensible. Northern Ireland, like most places, is a community of mongrels. The common view that the Irish conflict is intractable because it is unchanging is also demonstrably untrue. Until 1921 the political dispute focused on Ireland’s attempt to maintain or secure independence from Britain. From 1921 the emphasis shifted to relationships within the island of Ireland, between what later became the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland’s six counties. Since 1969 relationships between Catholics and Protestants within Northern Ireland have played a much more dominant role in defining the Irish conflict.

The Troubles The civil rights campaign of the late 1960s marked a new phase of the Northern Ireland conflict. It demanded a range of internal reforms, including the removal of discrimination in the allocation of jobs and houses, permanent emergency legislation and electoral abuses. The campaign was modelled on the civil rights campaign in the United States, involving protests, marches, sit-ins and the use of the media to publicise minority grievances. It was followed with increasing interest by the news media, expanded what had been a local issue into an international one, and sparked off the most dynamic years in the history of Northern Ireland.15 The increasing nationalist agitation for a more equitable access to political power, social provision and cultural recognition met with resistance and divisions within unionism. Politics spilled onto the streets. Civil rights demonstrations by Catholic nationalists prompted counter-demonstrations by Protestant unionists and led to growing public disorder, much of it sectarian. In 1969 the London government deployed the British army in an attempt to restore order. Initially many in the Catholic population saw the army as their protectors from the Northern Ireland state and a repressive majority population. For more militant nationalists, however, the introduction of the army restored the traditional republican symbol of oppression – British troops on Irish soil. The campaign for internal reform of the Northern Ireland

The Background to the Peace Process 17

state was subordinated to the need to remove the British presence and unify with the rest of Ireland. A rejuvenated militant republicanism, in the form of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA/IRA), emerged from the increasingly politicised and assertive Catholic minority. This in turn prompted violence from Protestant loyalist militants. By early 1970 the Provisional IRA had started its campaign of violence against the army. By 1972 it was clear that the local Northern Ireland government, having introduced internment in 1971 as a last attempt to impose control, was unable to handle the situation. Invoking its powers under the Government of Ireland Act, the London parliament abolished the Northern Ireland government in March 1972 and replaced it with direct rule from Westminster. A triangular low intensity conflict developed through the 1970s. The protagonists were the British state (represented by its army, locally recruited regiments and a militarised police force), republican paramilitaries (mainly the PIRA, but including smaller violent groups like the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)) and loyalist paramilitaries (the Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters (UDA/UFF) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)). The pattern of violence changed throughout what were colloquially called the Troubles. The intercommunal rioting that characterized the late 1960s was gradually, although not completely, replaced by more direct attacks by republican paramilitaries on the army or police force. Paramilitary organisations became increasingly sophisticated. They acted as proxies for the minorities who supported political violence in the Catholic and Protestant communities.16 As the Troubles continued, the range of paramilitary targets widened. State responses to the violence sometimes contravened basic human rights. By the mid1990s, more than 3500 people had been killed; a low death toll compared to other conflicts, but significant given Northern Ireland’s small area and 1.6 million population.17 Other, more indirect, impacts of the violence were less easily quantified. They included the deepening of community divisions, the perpetuation of old grievances and the creation of new ones. The economy, struggling to keep pace with the restructuring of the British economy in the 1970s and 1980s, was further battered by a backdrop of political violence. Above all the Troubles were a human crisis with thousands of individual, family and community tragedies. Despite the on-going conflict, society did not collapse. The violence in Northern Ireland was very persistent, but of a relatively low level in comparison with other ethnic wars. The conflict in Mindanao

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(population 16 million) in the Philippines claimed 120 000 lives. Approximately 50 000 have been killed in Sri Lanka’s north east since 1983, yet only 2.6 million people live in the region.18 The reasons for the relatively low level of conflict in Northern Ireland were varied. Many of the minority community’s grievances had been addressed by the mid-1970s, thus tempering the demands for reform. Changes were made to electoral boundaries and the administration of elections, inspiring greater, but not total, confidence in the political process. Housing, formerly a major grievance, was virtually removed from the political agenda through changes in government policy and practice. Significant improvements were made in reducing Catholic disadvantage in some categories of employment, notably the professions and the civil service, but Catholics, especially Catholic men, are still more likely to be unemployed than Protestants.19 In 1992 the Catholic church was offered 100 per cent funding for its schools, removing the 15 per cent capital contribution previously required. By the 1990s there was also a greater acknowledgement of the need to make room for pluralism that accommodated and respected differences between Northern Ireland’s traditions. The 1989 Education Reform Order finally accepted integrated schools as an integral part of Northern Ireland’s public education system, and also required that pupils in all schools should be introduced to the concepts of cultural diversity and Education for Mutual Understanding (EMU). By the year 2000, 45 integrated schools had been established, although they catered for only 4 per cent of schoolchildren. A combination of other factors also helped restrain the conflict. Substantial levels of residential segregation and the very presence of the British Army interposed between the two communities helped minimise the opportunities for direct Protestant–Catholic violence. Where they lived together, relationships between the main protagonists were often moderated by familiarity and social custom.20 The operation of sovereignty from London, although a fundamental cause of the conflict, also prevented meltdown. The British state was able to provide a divided and violent Northern Ireland with a political safety net in the form of day-to-day administration, economic subvention and a degree of political stability. Northern Ireland’s government, having lost control of a rapidly deteriorating security situation, was suspended in 1972. Northern Ireland would now be governed from London, with a British Secretary of State responsible for Northern Ireland affairs. The government of the Republic of Ireland consistently encouraged the British government to introduce reforms and to foster a power-sharing settlement between Northern

The Background to the Peace Process 19

Ireland’s communities. In 1974 the British government made an early attempt to devolve power back to Northern Ireland in the powersharing format of a permanent coalition government of unionists and nationalists. To take account of nationalist aspirations towards unity, this system included a Council of Ireland designed to institutionalise co-operation on functional matters between the two parts of Ireland. Sustained opposition from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and many within the Ulster Unionist Party, culminating in a mass strike by Protestant workers, brought down the power-sharing Executive in May 1974. Again Northern Ireland’s parliament was prorogued and power was returned to London. Between 1974 and the ceasefires of 1994 there were seven attempts to reach a political and constitutional settlement.21 All of the initiatives were London-led and included an element of power-sharing between Catholics and Protestants. All foundered in the face of local opposition. For unionists, power-sharing was a bridge too far and subverted their democratic majority. For nationalists, the proposed power-sharing schemes either did not contain adequate safeguards against majority domination or had an underdeveloped all-Ireland dimension. All of the political initiatives were discussed against a backdrop of continuing violence and rested on the principle that those supportive of political violence must be excluded from politics. Security initiatives, some of them with little regard for the due process of law, ran concurrently with political initiatives. In 1985, unable to secure a political settlement between majorities in both communities and unable to do more than simply contain paramilitary violence, the British government went over the heads of the people of Northern Ireland and reached an agreement with the Republic of Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Agreement gave the Irish government a consultative role in Northern Ireland’s affairs. Although this fell short of joint authority, the Agreement institutionalised and made permanent the co-operation between the two governments on the management of the conflict. It was a recognition by the British government that it held limited legitimacy among the nationalist community and could not secure a lasting political settlement on its own. The Irish government was now in the position to act as a formal guarantor for Northern Ireland’s nationalist community. In return, the Irish government recognized the existence of the State of Northern Ireland for the first time. The Agreement also paved the way for increased security co-operation between the two governments and was an important precursor of the post-1994 peace process.

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The Agreement marked unionism’s greatest psychological defeat since the foundation of Northern Ireland. Mass protests and even the resignation of all UUP and DUP MPs failed to bring down the Agreement.22 At the same time Sinn Féin was emerging as a major political force within nationalism. Both the British and Irish governments feared that Sinn Féin could usurp the moderate SDLP as the main representatives of Northern Ireland’s nationalists. If the Anglo-Irish Agreement could help address nationalist grievances on housing or security matters, then politics, rather than violence, could be seen to be working. The SDLP, so the logic ran, would be the chief beneficiaries, while Sinn Féin’s ambitions would run into the sand. A number of pieces fell into place during the late 1980s and early 1990s to make a peace process possible. The working relationship between the British and Irish governments solidified. Through the Anglo-Irish Agreement the British government recognized the validity of both the nationalist and unionist traditions. This was manifested in government policy through the creation of the Central Community Relations Unit (CCRU) in 1987, which brought issues of equity and community relations into all areas of government operation. New legislation was introduced to deal with religious imbalances in education and employment.23 This period also saw further developments in civil society in Northern Ireland, a development that was vital for creating the conditions for wider political change over the subsequent decade. The accumulated effect of these changes, together with the routine input of the Irish government through the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, led to the co-option of many of Northern Ireland’s Catholic middle class into the governance of Northern Ireland.24 At the very least, the incremental effect of the reforms was a legitimisation of politics among moderate nationalists. Many unionists, however, were affronted by the manner in which the Anglo-Irish Agreement had been foisted upon them without local consultations. Political disaffection grew and continued into the peace process itself.

Building blocks for the peace process Wars are much like road accidents. They have a general and a particular cause at the same time. Every road accident is caused in the last resort by the invention of the internal combustion engine … [But] the police and the courts do not weigh profound causes. They seek a

The Background to the Peace Process 21

specific cause for each accident – driver’s error, excessive speed, drunkenness, faulty brakes, bad road service. So it is with wars. A.J.P. Taylor25 The historian A.J.P. Taylor’s comparison between the causes of wars and the causes of road accidents can be extended to the origins of the peace processes. The specific causes may relate to particular statements or events leading up to a ceasefire or process of negotiation, but more general conditions are also necessary to make the development of a peace process possible. In the case of Northern Ireland, a number of political, security, economic and perceptual factors came together over a number of years to form a process and give it a dynamic. There was no ‘Road to Damascus’ conversion among political leaders. Instead, from the mid-1980s onwards, the main protagonists in the conflict began to re-evaluate their various approaches to the conflict. Fundamentally, the Northern Ireland peace process was a transition from unsustainable approaches to more sustainable ones. For the British government, the main change in the lead up to the peace process was simply the development of a more coherent political policy towards Northern Ireland. For much of the 1970s and 1980s, London primarily viewed Northern Ireland as a security problem. Political initiatives were not prioritised or were often pursued without inspiration. As a result, the development of a strategic political approach to Northern Ireland marked a major change. By late 1993, British Prime Minister John Major was convinced of the feasibility to aim for a comprehensive political agreement on the governance of Northern Ireland that could secure popular backing. This task was made easier by the earlier recognition, via the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, of the need for partnership with the Irish government in the management of the Northern Ireland conflict. By the early 1990s the intergovernmental relationship had strengthened to the degree that it could support a peace process and the strains that would entail. Alongside these developments came a major shift on the inclusion issue. The orthodox strategy in earlier peace processes had been based on the exclusion of those political parties with paramilitary associations while attempts were made to broker an accommodation between moderate nationalists and unionists. These attempts had failed. The willingness to contemplate an initiative that included the veto-holders – those with the power to overturn an agreement – in return for an end to violence opened new possibilities. The new approach would attempt to

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draw those on the political extremes towards the centre ground and to exert moderating influences on them. For the Irish government, the major perceptual change had come with the Anglo-Irish Agreement. For the first time it accepted the principle of consent, that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom while a majority there wished it. The retreat from the demand for Irish unity was accepted with equanimity by the people of the Republic of Ireland, reflecting a growing post-nationalist ethos. This became invaluable as the peace process developed and was able to secure cross-party support. The signing of the 1985 Agreement also secured the long-term policy goal of developing a permanent working relationship with the British government on Northern Ireland. The decision to work with, rather than against, paramilitary organisations did not come until the 1990s and marked a significant change. The militant republican movement underwent a number of significant changes from the mid-1980s onwards. An internal debate on the sustainability of the conflict led to a questioning of the ‘long war’ or attrition strategy designed to wear down British government resolve to stay in Northern Ireland.26 The move towards a more political approach was confirmed by the emergence of new leaders, predominantly from the north, and the election of Gerry Adams as President of Sinn Féin in 1983. The ‘long war’ had exacted a heavy toll from the republican community in terms of lives, prison sentences and qualityof-life opportunities. The toll was compounded by a dramatic increase in loyalist assassinations of republicans in the early 1990s. There was also a generational factor: the adult lives of republican leaders had been dominated by the conflict and many feared that unless there was a significant change in the conflict, their children faced more of the same.27 More fundamentally, the ‘long war’ strategy amounted to an implicit recognition that no unilateral action by any violent actor in the conflict (republican, loyalist or British government) could secure victory. While the British government could not win the ‘war’, neither could republicans. The republican use of violence was also becoming increasingly counterproductive. Rather than supplying the cutting edge of an effective movement to drive the British presence from Ireland, casualties from botched operations, such as the Enniskillen bombing on Remembrance Sunday 1987, risked alienating republicans’ core support. Sinn Féin’s support for violence meant that they were excluded from elected chambers and civic functions. From 1988 they were banned from the airwaves in the United Kingdom for six years. It also limited their

The Background to the Peace Process 23

chances of making an electoral breakthrough in the Irish Republic and thus becoming an all-island political force.28 The forces ranged against the use of violence included the British and Irish governments, constitutional political parties, the media, civil society, churches and a majority of public opinion. As more promising political avenues opened, the costs of the continued use of violence came into sharper relief: violence led to exclusion, demonisation and a lack of legitimacy. The benefits of a more constitutional and political approach soon became clear. The development of a dialogue between the SDLP leader John Hume and the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, encouraged the republican leadership to conceptualise a political strategy that could lead to unity. According to one insider, ‘the debate between Sinn Féin and the SDLP was about the efficacy of constitutional politics.’29 The talks helped convince many leading republicans that they had won the intellectual argument for a united Ireland and now needed to mobilise Irish and international goodwill towards that end.30 Signs of movement in other seemingly protracted conflicts provided further encouragement.31 Republicans crystallised their ideas through the ‘Totally Unarmed Strategy’ (TUAS) internal discussion document in 1994. It proposed the development of a coalition of pro-nationalist partners to pursue a united Ireland agenda.32 The coalition would include republicans, constitutional nationalists, the Irish government, the Irish diaspora and the United States government. In unionist eyes, this was a ‘pannationalist front’.33 The coalition depended on an IRA ceasefire and an abandonment of the armed struggle. Crucially, secret talks with the British government revealed that it too was suffering from war fatigue and might react positively to a ceasefire.34 For a peace process to become viable it needed to engage with Northern Ireland’s unionists. Unionist disaffection from politics in the post-Anglo-Irish Agreement period was high. One senior Orangeman’s view of political initiatives reflected a common view: ‘Every time something comes along it is worse than what came before …’35 For many unionists political change necessarily meant loss. Any major agreement was likely to involve a permanent political relationship with the Irish Republic and power-sharing with nationalists within Northern Ireland. As an emergent peace process developed, unionist members of the business sector and civil society, as well as elements within the Ulster Unionist Party, sought a closer engagement with the political process. For some it was a realization that, if change was inevitable, it would be prudent to attempt to shape it. For other unionists it was not easy to accept the admission of the paramilitary parties, and especially

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Sinn Féin, into mainstream politics. The peace process confronted unionism with a series of issues that revealed severe strains between pragmatists and traditionalists. A key figure in steering unionism, in the form of the UUP, through the challenges presented by the peace process was David Trimble, elected party leader in September 1995 on a hawkish ticket. Militant loyalism underwent a critical reassessment of its strategy from the late 1980s onwards. While loyalism acquired a greater military capacity, it also developed a more sophisticated leadership. One senior loyalist noted ‘a growing realisation … that violence was only a very poor substitute for political activity.’ He also noted that ‘… loyalist paramilitaries had to invent their own parties …’ because they felt that the mainstream unionist parties were allowing the unionist case to go by default.36 Loyalism’s entry into constitutional politics was something of a novelty and presented a challenge to the traditional unionist parties. They also surprised observers with the apparent maturity of their political approach. The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) often appeared more pragmatic and willing to compromise than the constitutional unionist parties. Although the loyalist ceasefires of October 1994 were in direct reciprocation of the August 1994 IRA ceasefire, they were rooted in a fundamental understanding that the consent principle would remain inviolable whatever the outcome of the peace process. According to one senior loyalist, ‘what sealed it [the decision to call a ceasefire] for loyalists was the adoption of the principle of consent by the Irish government.’37 In other words, Northern Ireland’s constitutional position could not change without the consent of a majority of its citizens. The peace process demanded less change from the SDLP. The party leader, John Hume, had long favoured a peacemaking model in which all of the participants in the conflict would cease violence, enter into negotiations and agree to share power. In the SDLP vision the peacemaking process would be sponsored by the British and Irish governments, would result in all-Ireland institutions and would be endorsed, by popular vote, by the people of the island. The SDLP was required to take active steps throughout the process, at one moment coaxing the Irish government to become more involved and at another providing moral support for Sinn Féin lest it withdraw from the process altogether. In particular, John Hume’s decision in 1988 to meet with Gerry Adams, at first secretly but more openly after 1993, was a major shift of direction. The Hume–Adams talks were unpopular, not least among SDLP supporters, but helped to assist the republican move towards a political approach.38

The Background to the Peace Process 25

Changes in the United States also contributed towards the start of the peace process. Throughout the cold war years the United States had regarded Northern Ireland as an internal matter for the United Kingdom. Under President Clinton this attitude changed. The White House variously acted as friend, guarantor, arbiter and benefactor to the emerging peace process. The emergence of a small group of IrishAmericans, with key political and corporate links, was instrumental in persuading the Clinton White House to become interested in Northern Ireland.39 They reflected background changes within the Irish–American diaspora. Traditionally sympathetic towards militant republicanism, many moderated their attitude and encouraged Irish republicans to consider the advantages offered by a ceasefire and a peace process. For Clinton, Northern Ireland would be a low-cost, low-risk foreign policy endeavour. He was pushing a door already half open. The party in Northern Ireland most unmoved by the peace process was the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Yet as the peace process transformed the environment in which politics took place, the DUP was forced to react. The Party was implacably opposed to the process from the start, believing that republican paramilitaries were engaged in a confidence trick and that the process would inexorably lead to a weakening of the Union. DUP rhetoric remained robust. They refused point-blank to have direct talks with republicans or the Irish government. They boycotted the inter-party talks from September 1997 onwards in protest at the presence of Sinn Féin. They refused to sit on the power-sharing Executive for similar reasons. However, the process presented the Party with opportunities. The DUP played a full role in the Forum for Political Dialogue, took up two ministerial positions in the Stormont Assembly and made political capital by continually harassing the UUP.

First movements: 1990–94 Although an environment more conducive to the development of a peace process emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was no guarantee that a peace process would follow. Peace processes are artificial creations, requiring specific actions to initiate and sustain them. The Northern Ireland peace process, according to one participant, had no ‘natural glue’.40 Nor could peace process players act according to a predictable master plan. Instead they often found themselves ‘reacting to the squeaky wheel’.41 Someone, initially the British government, had to make the first move and initiate contact between protagonists. The first moves progressed along two parallel routes. Route one sought

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to maintain momentum between the constitutional parties and route two saw the first tentative moves to involve republicans in talks. As time passed the distinction between the routes became less clear. Along route one the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Sir Peter Brooke, initiated another attempt to foster dialogue and possible agreement between the constitutional parties in January 1990. Talks between the UUP, DUP, SDLP and Alliance Party lasted until November 1992 and then collapsed without concrete results. These were essentially ‘talks about talks’, and excluded Sinn Féin because of its support for IRA violence.42 Despite the seemingly circular pattern of the negotiations and convoluted wrangling over agendas and chairmen, the Brooke Initiative helped shape subsequent negotiations in three significant ways. First, the talks were useful in addressing the rift between the SDLP and mainstream unionism opened by the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and helped reconnect many unionists with the political process. The years after the 1985 Hillsborough Agreement had seen unionist politicians boycott meetings with British, let alone Irish government ministers. For unionists, the carrot for becoming involved in the talks was a suspension or replacement of the despised Anglo-Irish Agreement. Second, the Brooke talks demonstrated that the British government, notwithstanding its closer co-operation with the Irish government through the Anglo-Irish Agreement, had retained its interest in the input that local political parties could make to a major political initiative. Third, the Brooke initiative saw the legitimisation of a three strands framework for approaching the conflict and the various relationships in it. Hitherto championed by John Hume, each strand addressed a different relationship within the British Isles. Strand one referred to relationships between the communities in Northern Ireland; strand two referred to the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; and strand three referred to relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The 1990–92 talks about talks adopted this framework as a template for addressing a complex conflict that operated on multiple levels. Explicit in the adoption of the framework was a recognition that any future political settlement for Northern Ireland would have to be comprehensive and encompass a number of relationships, including one with the Republic of Ireland. Once accepted, the three strands approach lent a negotiating framework for subsequent talks processes and ultimately provided the inspiration for the interlocking institutions established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. More furtively, route two was also busy. In 1990, Sir Peter Brooke authorised secret contact with the IRA. The move contravened the

The Background to the Peace Process 27

publicly stated policy of not talking to terrorists and was publicly denied.43 One official characterized the talks as ‘subterranean’.44 The secret exchange of messages was an attempt to find the conditions under which republicans would consider calling a ceasefire and was complemented by more public overtures. For example, key statements were embedded in the text of speeches by government ministers. In his Whitbread speech in November 1990 Brooke declared that the ‘British government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland: our role is to help, enable and encourage’, a position that was sketched out in greater detail in Sir Patrick Mayhew’s Coleraine speech in 1992.45 This statement had been actively sought by John Hume and was designed to portray the British government as a neutral actor with whom republicans could do business, not an easy message for Sinn Féin to accept.46 Its impact may be judged by the claim used by Martin McGuinness to win over republican militants to the peace process that, ‘in the new European and post-Cold War situation, Britain no longer had any strategic interest in Ireland’.47 The secret contacts continued under Brooke’s successor, Sir Patrick Mayhew, although according to one senior republican, ‘… there was a different chemistry, there was a different hand on the tiller and the language used wasn’t quite as engaging.’48 The British government was not the only actor in secret talks with republicans. John Hume was continuing his discussions with Gerry Adams. Hume’s plan was to draw up a position paper that could gain the acceptance of as many participants in the conflict as possible and then form the basis for substantive negotiations between them. The immediate task was to find the basis for an IRA ceasefire and the conditions under which the British government would talk to republicans. By June 1992 Hume and Adams agreed on a version of a ‘paper’ that marked a significant change from the traditional republican position of a British withdrawal or nothing.49 The paper envisaged the British government supporting self-determination, rather than unity, on the island of Ireland. Self-determination acknowledged that unionist consent was necessary. In late 1992, Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds, unaware of the back channel between the IRA and British government, authorised secret contacts between his officials and senior members of Sinn Féin. According to an Irish government representative involved in these talks, the aim was to gauge republican seriousness about entering into a political process in the event of an IRA ceasefire.50 In June 1993 Reynolds calculated that the basis for a peace process existed, and sent an Irish government draft of the Hume–Adams document to the British

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Prime Minister, John Major. The initial British government instinct was to throw the document in the bin.51 Yet the paucity of alternatives was revealed in October 1993 as Northern Ireland’s monthly death toll reached its highest level since 1976. Reynolds who, according to one observer ‘didn’t seem to play by strict political rules’, persevered, confronting John Major with the question, ‘who’s afraid of peace?’52 The British government was aware of the extent of debate within the republican movement, and of the Hume–Adams dialogue. According to one official, these latter talks were deemed ‘too important’ to be left to individuals. The British government decided to ‘hijack’ them.53 On 15 December 1993, after much argument, the British and Irish governments published the Downing Street Declaration. It was an indirect descendant of John Hume’s original idea of a broadly based position paper acceptable to as many parties as possible. The governments hoped that it would provide the basis for negotiations on Northern Ireland’s future and persuade republicans of the need to call a ceasefire. In a key line, the Declaration noted that ‘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 selfdetermination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish.’ In what the British government regarded as a major coup, the Irish government reiterated its support for the principle of consent and promised, in the context of an overall settlement, to amend the Irish Constitution to enshrine the consent principle in law. This was a major shift. The Irish state had subordinated its territory-based view of Irish unity to the wishes of the people of the island, North and South. Debate within the republican movement intensified as its leaders sought further clarification of the Declaration and the British government’s likely response to a ceasefire. In January 1994 President Clinton’s decision to grant Gerry Adams a US entry visa despite a continuing IRA campaign was a further reminder of the rewards on offer should Sinn Féin pursue the path of constitutional politics. Northern Ireland’s unionists, meanwhile, remained acutely suspicious that a secret deal was under way between the British government and republicans. Their anxiety grew after news of the secret back-channel between Sinn Féin and the British government was leaked as the final British–Irish negotiations on the Downing Street Declaration were taking place.

2 Negotiating the Deal

Ceasefires and after, 1994–95 On 31 August 1994 the IRA declared ‘a complete cessation of military operations’. The republican leadership had calculated that the buildingblocks for a pro-nationalist coalition were in place. The republican game-plan was rewarded by swift and public meetings with the Irish Taoiseach and the SDLP. The pan-nationalist front did exist after all. Yet for the nationalist bloc to be effective it needed a unionist bloc to engage with. Republicans called for round table talks with the British government and the Northern Ireland political parties on Northern Ireland’s future. Many unionists saw the ceasefire as a tactical decision by the IRA rather than ‘a moral change of heart’.1 In the words of one DUP Member of Parliament (MP), the ceasefire was ‘more of a comma than a full stop’.2 He interpreted the peace process as nationalist in origin, design and direction. Both the UUP and DUP rejected out of hand the possibility of holding talks with Sinn Féin. The UUP in particular was aggrieved that the SDLP seemed to be ‘a captive of Sinn Féin/IRA’ and more interested in drawing republicans into the political mainstream than ‘building the middle ground with unionists’.3 The British government shared the unionist suspicions of the IRA ceasefire and ruled out face-to-face talks with Sinn Féin until the permanency of the ceasefire could be established. The main loyalist paramilitary organisations declared a ceasefire on 13 October 1994. As in the republican case, this had been encouraged by intensive official and unofficial mediation. The ending of mainstream paramilitary violence led to the relaxation of some security measures and improvements in the quality of life, particularly in those areas 29

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hardest hit by violence. UK-wide media restrictions on politicians linked to paramilitary organisations were lifted. The first signs of a ‘peace dividend’ became apparent as the retail and tourism sectors registered sharp upturns. The European Union also acted with considerable speed, introducing a £270m Special Peace and Reconciliation Programme to help foster cross-community and cross-border peopleto-people activities. There was less movement on core political issues. After a ‘quarantine period’ the British government authorised a meeting between its officials – but not ministers – and Sinn Féin. The government demanded that Sinn Féin describe the IRA ceasefire as ‘permanent’ and movement on decommissioning as a gesture of good faith. Sinn Féin pressed for a meeting with a minister, the release of prisoners and the start of all-party talks. Once articulated, the republican and British government positions, which essentially revolved around the sequencing of negotiations and disarmament, made compromise difficult. The issue of decommissioning emerged within days of the IRA ceasefire and was to dominate the peace process for years to come. Albert Reynolds’ coalition government in the Irish Republic collapsed in November 1994, for reasons unrelated to the peace process. Republicans viewed Reynold’s successor as Taoiseach, Fine Gael’s John Bruton, as having little affinity with their demands.4 John Major’s Conservative government was also experiencing difficulties, as his parliamentary majority ebbed away and a hard-core of Eurosceptic backbenchers became more disruptive. This had a three-fold impact on Major’s handling of the peace process. First, it limited the amount of attention the Prime Minister could devote to Northern Ireland affairs. Second, in an attempt to mollify his ultra-conservative critics, Major’s government lurched to the right, a move that led to a more cautious approach to the peace process. Third, Major was thrown into a greater reliance on the nine UUP MPs to shore up his declining parliamentary majority, although no formal UUP–Conservative pact was struck.5 The increased unionist influence was emphasized when the government pressed ahead with the establishment of a Northern Ireland Grand Committee, further integrating the governance of Northern Ireland with the UK-wide norm. During the uneasy months following the ceasefires the British and Irish governments emerged as the guardians and organisers of the process. In February 1995 they moved to establish the conceptual framework for any political negotiations through the publication of the Frameworks for the Future document. The document stressed that

Negotiating the Deal 31

the two governments wanted to see a ‘comprehensive settlement’ that would return greater ‘power, authority and responsibility to all the Northern Ireland people’.6 It also reaffirmed the three stranded approach and outlined, in detail, the issues that could be discussed in each strand. The Frameworks document marked the limit of early progress. In March 1995 the Secretary of State, Sir Patrick Mayhew, elevated British demands for arms decommissioning into a formal precondition for Sinn Féin’s entry into talks. Speaking in Washington, Mayhew made three demands of republicans: a commitment on the principle of disarmament, agreement on the modalities of disarmament and some actual decommissioning. They became known as ‘Washington Three’. For nationalists and the Irish government, the third demand was an enormous miscalculation: republicans had been set an impossible challenge. Sinn Féin regarded decommissioning as a diversion designed to mask an underlying British reluctance to enter into negotiations with them. Nevertheless, in May 1995, the first official face-to-face talks between a British minister and Sinn Féin were held since the 1921 Treaty negotiations. The Northern Ireland Minister for Political Development, Michael Ancram, made it clear that the talks were ‘exploratory’ rather than substantive and used the occasion to repeat the formulation.7 Sinn Féin repeated its demands for immediate all-party talks, movement on prisoners and ‘a complete end to [British] military operations’.8 The Irish government felt that British insistence on prior decommissioning was allowing a unique opportunity to slide away. They called off a summit with their British counterparts in September 1995. By this time Sinn Féin assessments of the peace process were becoming increasingly gloomy. Gerry Adams described the process as ‘doomed to collapse’.9 In late November the governments announced a new approach to the impasse. Under a ‘twin-track’ scheme, an independent decommissioning body would consider options for paramilitary disarmament while, in parallel, multi-party talks would commence. The International Body on Arms Decommissioning, chaired by former US Senate majority leader George Mitchell, received submissions from both governments and all the Northern Ireland parties except the DUP. Meanwhile, preparatory talks about talks were hosted by the Secretary of State. In the absence of decommissioning, Sinn Féin and the loyalist parties were barred from these talks. The International Body on Arms Decommissioning published its report on 24 January 1996.10 The Mitchell Report’s key recommendation

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was that arms decommissioning and all-party talks should begin in parallel. This was a rejection of the British position on prior decommissioning. The British government chose to ignore the central recommendation and instead concentrated on paragraph 56 of the report which noted, somewhat obliquely, that ‘an elective process could contribute to the building of confidence’. According to an SDLP negotiator, ‘they scrambled Mitchell’, a view shared by the Irish government and Sinn Féin.11 Unionists, who ‘were pushing hard for elections’, welcomed the decision.12 While most of the Mitchell Report was sidelined, it was to have a lasting significance. It established George Mitchell as an authority figure in the peace process. It validated the idea of independent commissions to remove contentious issues temporarily to the sidings, a model to be used repeatedly in the following years in relation to policing, parades and remembrance. In addition, the Report outlined six principles (the Mitchell Principles) of non-violence that were to become a benchmark of a commitment to democratic politics and a minimum requirement for entry into political talks. They made clear that a commitment to ‘democratic and exclusively peaceful means’ and to ‘the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations’ would be an integral part of any talks process.

The collapse of the IRA ceasefire, February 1996 Despite months of warnings from republican leaders, the end of the IRA ceasefire on 9 February 1996 came as a shock to most people in Britain and Ireland. An IRA statement accused John Major and unionists of ‘squandering this unprecedented opportunity to resolve the conflict’.13 It was followed within the hour by a massive bomb in London’s Canary Wharf. Hawks in the republican movement had calculated that the Major government was either unwilling or politically unable to advance the peace process to their satisfaction. It seemed as though the militants had lost patience with the political approach of the Adams’ leadership. After more than 500 days, the ceasefire had brought them few tangible political rewards. The collapse of the ceasefire did not mean an end to the peace process. The governments remained committed to sponsoring multiparty talks. Loyalist paramilitaries, seeing no imminent threat to the Union, maintained their ceasefire. ‘Do we sit around and wait for the next ceasefire?’ asked a senior member of the Ulster Unionist Party. ‘A peace process should not be solely dependent on the activities of

Negotiating the Deal 33

terrorist organisations’.14 David Trimble became increasingly convinced of the determination of the two governments to establish a new political settlement for Northern Ireland and realized that he could best serve the unionist cause by attempting to shape developments from within. Nor did the republican movement walk away from the politics. They were committed to building ‘peace process mark II’.15 The resumed IRA campaign was limited and initially restricted to targets in England. Even the DUP recognized that this was ‘not a simple abandonment of the ceasefire’; instead, it was ‘specific and targeted to apply pressure on the British government to open up all-party talks’.16 IRA violence was subservient to political goals and cognisant of the peace process. For republicans the peace process, not war, had become the chief priority.

Dead-time, spring 1996–spring 1997 The British and Irish governments announced that 10 June 1996 would be the starting date for multi-party talks. Entry to the talks would be via an ‘elective process’ to a Forum for Political Dialogue. Dubbed a ‘Fisher-Price Parliament’ by a member of the SDLP, it would have no legislative or administrative powers.17 Parties would nominate their negotiating teams from members elected to the Forum. Following much squabbling between the parties, a complex electoral system was designed. A key part of the election formula was a ‘top-up’ system to allow the smaller parties, including those linked with loyalist paramilitaries, a place at the negotiating table.18 Despite the debate about the artificial or distorted nature of the electoral system, there was a recognition that the loyalist parties had to be kept on board. In mid-March 1996 both governments issued their Ground Rules for Substantive All-Party Talks.19 They contained two principles that remained central until the Good Friday Agreement was reached. The first noted that ‘any participant will be free to raise any aspect of the three relationships, including constitutional issues.’ In other words, it was legitimate to raise Northern Ireland’s constitutional position within the United Kingdom as a matter for debate. The second was that the negotiations would proceed on the principle that nothing would be agreed until everything was agreed. The implication was that both governments were determined that any agreement would be comprehensive. Electioneering in April and May 1996 precluded any meaningful exchanges between the political parties. Northern Ireland elections are largely intra-community contests. Unionists faced a wider choice than

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usual. The two parties linked with loyalist paramilitaries, the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party and the more mainstream United Kingdom Unionist Party were competing with the two established unionist parties, the UUP and DUP. The poll was the first electoral test for David Trimble as leader of the UUP. It confirmed the UUP as Northern Ireland’s largest party, with 24.2 per cent of the vote returning 30 seats, including two ‘top-up’ seats by courtesy of the small party-friendly electoral system.20 The SDLP secured 21.4 per cent of the vote and 21 seats. The DUP polled well, winning 18.8 per cent and 24 seats, a 5 per cent rise over their 1992 Westminster election figure. The PUP and UDP scored 3.5 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively, not enough to win any seats outright, but earning them two seats each under the top-up rule. Previously the loyalist parties had been dismissed as ‘fringe’, but the Forum election results represented an important step on their journey towards the political mainstream. A newcomer to the electoral fray, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC), with 1.03 per cent of the votes, also secured two top-up seats, as did the tiny Northern Ireland Labour Party. The critical mass of these smaller parties would have a significant impact on the development of the peace process. Sinn Féin’s results drew most of the headlines. They secured 15.5 per cent of the vote, 5 per cent more than in the 1992 Westminster elections, and 17 seats. It was suggested that some nationalists ‘lent’ their votes to Sinn Féin in order to encourage the IRA to reinstate its ceasefire.21 Others may have intended to send a message to the British government that talks should get speedily under way and should include Sinn Féin. Either way, some nationalists seemed willing to tolerate the Sinn Féin strategy of simultaneously pursuing entry into peace talks and an armed campaign by the IRA. In the absence of an IRA ceasefire, Sinn Féin was barred from the talks on 10 June. The IRA announced that a new ceasefire was ‘remote in the extreme’ and continued its campaign in England.22 Nevertheless talks started between nine other political parties and the two governments.23 With the loyalist ceasefire in place, the loyalist political parties were admitted to the talks. The negotiations rapidly became bogged down on procedural issues, particularly over the appointment of George Mitchell as chair. They were suspended in early July 1996 when tension and violence associated with a contentious Orange Order parade at Drumcree near Portadown spread across Northern Ireland. The Irish government quickly formed the view that the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Sir Patrick Mayhew, ‘had run out of steam’.24

Negotiating the Deal 35

For the SDLP, the British government was now merely ‘a spectator’, showing ‘no particular urgency in anything they were doing’.25 The British government itself was hamstrung by a dwindling parliamentary majority, and many nationalists and republicans saw a British general election as the best chance to re-energise the peace process. According to an Irish official, John Major could only ‘tread water’ while Mayhew could do little more than ‘bat his head against the stone wall of Tory backbenchers … the [Michael] Howards … and [Michael] Portillos of this world’.26 An Irish Times headline seemed to sum up a bleak situation: ‘Talks process going nowhere as dying government marks time’.27 Yet, despite a tired British government, and parades-related disturbances across Northern Ireland, the talks process survived. By late July the parties agreed on procedural rules.28 After a summer recess, the two largest parties, the UUP and SDLP, began a series of bilateral meetings, particularly on the issue of where to place decommissioning on the talks agenda.29 The UUP felt that the SDLP was more interested in securing Sinn Féin’s entry into the talks process than reaching a settlement with a fellow constitutional party. Sinn Féin, despite being barred from the talks, ‘cast a very dark shadow on the process’, according to one UUP MP.30 In November 1996, SDLP leader John Hume interceded with John Major on Sinn Féin’s behalf.31 A month earlier the IRA campaign had resumed its campaign of violence in Northern Ireland itself, placing another hurdle in the way of Sinn Féin’s admission to talks. In political terms, the peace process had stalled.

Parades The marching issue, which had been angrily simmering for decades, became particularly inflamed in 1996. Disputes over the parades were seen as a microcosm of the wider conflict. For unionists the parades were an expression of identity. For many nationalists they were intimidatory. Nationalist objections to the Orange Order parade at Drumcree in July 1996 led to the police blocking the route to stop it passing nationalist homes. A tense, four day stand-off developed, with Orangemen and their supporters from across Northern Ireland converging on Drumcree. There was also widespread rioting in loyalist areas. The police eventually backed down and forced the parade through the nationalist area.32 This resulted in rioting in nationalist areas across Northern Ireland.33 It was the worst civil disorder for years; two people were killed and the police fired over 6000 plastic bullets.34 There was widespread civil disorder and sectarian intimidation. A small but vicious loyalist paramilitary

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group broke from the umbrella Combined Loyalist Military Command and embarked on a campaign of sectarian attacks.35 The SDLP left the Forum for Political Dialogue and did not return. A severe rift also developed between the British and Irish governments.36 Two observations are worth making. First, the parades issue was left unresolved. Like an open wound, it was ready to flare up each summer. Second, although damaged, the peace process survived. In July 1996, an independent review body was established to recommend how the parade issue could be handled in the future. Chaired by Peter North, an English academic, the review body sought public submissions and published its report on 29 January 1997. The North Report’s central recommendation was the creation of an Independent Parades Commission, to adjudicate on the route and conduct of contentious parades. The establishment of the Commission met with unionist resentment. Many saw the government’s handling of the parades issue as symptomatic of the anti-unionist direction of the peace process.

The Blair administration – May 1997 Elected in May 1997 with a massive parliamentary majority, the Labour Party leader Tony Blair had more room for manoeuvre than the previous government. The election also benefited Sinn Féin which won two Westminster seats and became Northern Ireland’s third largest party with 16.1 per cent of the vote.37 The UUP returned ten Members of Parliament with 32.7 per cent of the vote, while the DUP’s star seemed to be slipping, winning 13.6 per cent and losing one of its three seats. The SDLP returned three MPs with 24.1 per cent of the vote. Bob McCartney of the United Kingdom Unionist Party took Northern Ireland’s last seat with 1.6 per cent. Blair’s New Labour government quickly set about drawing Sinn Féin into the political process. Sinn Féin laid out its conditions. It wanted a start date for inclusive talks, a commitment that the talks would be substantive and address issues other than decommissioning, a time limit on the talks, and the implementation of confidence-building measures.38 The speed with which new Secretary of State, Marjorie (Mo) Mowlam, set about meeting Sinn Féin’s entry requirements signalled the new political mood.39 The government gave commitments that it would address issues of police reform, equality in employment and contentious parades. Another ‘confidence-building measure’ came in the form of the transfer of long-term republican prisoners in

Negotiating the Deal 37

English prisons to jails in the Republic of Ireland.40 In an attempt to address republican concerns of an open-ended peace process, the government set May 1998 as a deadline for the conclusion of the talks. Crucially, Labour announced that decommissioning – the issue that had effectively held up the peace process for two years and had caused severe rifts between the British and Irish governments – was ‘secondary to actually getting people into talks’.41 By mid-June, the demand for decommissioning prior to Sinn Féin’s entry into talks was dropped. For unionists, Labour had embarked on an extraordinary appeasement process. But Blair was careful to reassure unionists. His first trip outside London as Prime Minister was to Northern Ireland. ‘I value the Union’, he told a Belfast audience, and dampened republican hopes of a united Ireland by saying that ‘none of us in this hall today, even the youngest, is likely to see Northern Ireland as anything but part of the United Kingdom.’42 He also reassured unionists that there was no possibility of change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional status without the consent of the majority of its people. The IRA declared another ceasefire on 20 July 1997. The orchestra unpacked its instruments and the pre-negotiation dance started for the second time. This time it was greeted by wariness rather than euphoria. Phelim McAleer caught the mood: ‘A second ceasefire is a lot like a second marriage. The reception is smaller, there is not the same starryeyed romanticism and gone are the unrealistic hopes and dreams you had first time around.’43 The prospect of round table talks was now real. The two governments announced that they wanted substantive talks to proceed from 15 September, by which time the IRA ceasefire could be verified and Sinn Féin would be admitted to the talks.44 For many unionists, the prospect of talks with Sinn Féin was abhorrent. For the Democratic Unionists, the issue was straightforward. Party leader Ian Paisley described the talks process as ‘madness’ and made his exit.45 The DUP strategy was now to sit back in the hope that the talks would come crashing down around David Trimble. The UUP faced a more difficult choice. On the one hand, a number of senior party members opposed negotiations with Sinn Féin, on the grounds that they would confer an undeserved legitimacy on unreconstructed terrorists. On the other hand, the party was anxious not to be blamed for the collapse of the talks. The UUP, as Northern Ireland’s largest political party, was crucial to any talks process. David Trimble was aware that the election of a strong British government increased the likelihood of a major political agreement. In that event many in

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the UUP wanted to influence events rather than react to them. The Party embarked on a consultation exercise in August 1997 to canvass wider opinion.46 This may support the assessment of one Irish government official that David Trimble was a ‘ditherer’ whose natural reaction in all circumstances was to buy time, but the decision to call into play the broader body of unionism was a shrewd one.47 The consultation was broadly supportive of the UUP taking its place in the talks, and confirmed that most Unionists wanted their leaders to confront Sinn Féin and actively defend the Union.48 Following its own round of consultation meetings, Sinn Féin entered the talks on 9 September. According to Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin’s aim was ‘an end to British rule on this island.’49 Not surprisingly, the UUP saw things differently. Throughout the negotiations they refused to engage directly with Sinn Féin, converting them into Dayton-like proximity talks. The talks continued along the three-stranded approach with few plenary sessions and most of the negotiations carried out in subcommittees and bilateral meetings. Both governments coaxed the participants to reach agreement by May 1998. Such a deadline seemed optimistic in the extreme given the circular and unproductive exchanges between the parties. A NIO official noted gloomily, ‘There is nothing much to leak.’50 If left to the SDLP and UUP, agreement may have been reached relatively quickly.51 Both parties had been engaged in talks for much of the 1990s and had reached broad agreement on a number of core issues. Following a series of bilateral meetings, UUP leader David Trimble also developed a working relationship with the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.52 The Irish government made it clear that it was prepared to amend its constitution and remove its territorial claim on Northern Ireland in the event of an overall settlement. By late autumn 1997, republican and loyalist politicians were becoming disillusioned with the talks process. For loyalists, too many confidence-building measures had been ceded to republicans, particularly in relation to IRA prisoners.53 Republicans still believed that the talks process lacked urgency.54 More ominously, it was becoming increasingly clear that the three-stranded framework was incapable of delivering the united Ireland sought by republicans. The prospect of a Northern Ireland assembly, the dreaded ‘internal settlement’ in the republican lexicon, was becoming unavoidable. Reports of splits and dissension within both the IRA and Sinn Féin underlined growing nervousness among republicans.55 There was also dissatisfaction within David Trimble’s UUP. Four of its ten MPs made a public call for the party to leave the talks.56 While Trimble was popular among the grassroots of his party, he had an

Negotiating the Deal 39

uneasy relationship with a number of his chief lieutenants. A mixture of frustrated leadership ambitions and genuine concern at the implications of the evolving peace accord meant that Trimble was unable to rely on this coterie of influential unionists. Differences within the UUP leadership about the peace process increased as the process developed. They also hampered the task of preparing the unionist constituency for the approaching political changes and the need to accept compromise.

The final straight – spring 1998 On the eve of 1998, Northern Ireland revisited its violent past. Two days after Christmas, a republican paramilitary group shot dead the leader of a splinter loyalist paramilitary group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), inside an apparently ‘top security’ prison.57 By the end of January, a wave of revenge and counter-revenge attacks had left ten people dead. Although not formally announcing an end to their ceasefires, it was clear that some of the mainstream paramilitary organisations had been involved in the violence. According to the Mitchell Principles, any party linked with violence would be excluded from the talks. In late January 1998, the Ulster Democratic Party, associated with the Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Freedom Fighters, voluntarily left the talks before it was expelled.58 Three weeks later, Sinn Féin was expelled from the talks when it became clear that the IRA had been involved in violence. It was also clear that the British and Irish governments were reluctant to expel either party. Both were suspended for relatively short periods and not permanently excluded from the talks. ‘Democrats were merely the window dressing’, a senior member of the DUP suggested; the process was ‘terrorist driven’.59 Sinn Féin’s outrage at their imminent expulsion from the talks was also significant, confirming their desire to remain in the talks process. The operation of the Mitchell Principles attracted strong criticism on other grounds. General paramilitary violence – murders of drug dealers, kneecappings, expulsions – had plagued the entire peace process. If these were interpreted as breaches of the Mitchell Principles, the peace process would have been collapsed. In effect the boundary line marked out and uneasily patrolled by the Secretary of State interpreted crosscommunity killings as breaches of the Principles, while conveniently overlooking persistent intra-community violence. In mid-January, the two governments published the broad outline of an agreement that they thought could command popular support in a referendum in Northern Ireland.60 They felt that the political parties

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had sparred for long enough and now had to get down to substantive negotiations. According to a number of talks’ insiders, George Mitchell’s style as chair was indulgent. The result was long party political monologues but little concrete engagement between the parties.61 The target date for an agreement was set as 9 April in order to facilitate a referendum in May. In late March the negotiations intensified, although many issues were still outstanding. The UUP and SDLP held differing views of how power would be shared between both communities in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin was deeply uneasy at the prospect of any new Northern Ireland assembly and contributed little to negotiations on this matter.62 The remit of cross-border bodies and their relationship with the Northern Ireland Assembly and Irish Parliament were strongly contested. The UUP was anxious to tie the Irish government down on the precise wording of any proposed changes to its constitutional claim on Northern Ireland’s territory. Three days before the 9 April deadline, talks chairman George Mitchell presented the parties with a draft agreement. It had actually been written by the British and Irish governments. Unionist reaction to the document was hostile.63 UUP deputy leader, John Taylor, announced that he wouldn’t touch it with a 40-foot pole. One of Taylor’s colleagues said he was ‘devastated’ by the Mitchell draft.64 British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, arrived in Northern Ireland to mediate the accord. President Clinton supported them with ‘a number of telephone calls to the political leaders.’65 After forty-eight hours of intensive talks, the Good Friday Agreement was reached. There were no symbolic handshakes between unionism and republicanism. The Agreement was not formally signed by the local party leaders. It would be put to the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum. David Trimble left the talks announcing that ‘we rise from this table knowing that the Union is stronger than it was when we first sat down.’66 A noticeably downbeat Gerry Adams left without recommending or rejecting the Agreement. ‘When … we come to a conclusion we will let you know.’67

3 Good Friday and After

The Good Friday Agreement, April 1998 A copy of the Good Friday Agreement was delivered to every home in Northern Ireland in April 1998. At 10 000 words, it was much more comprehensive than many observers expected. It had five main constitutional provisions. First, Northern Ireland’s future constitutional status was to be in the hands of its citizens. Second, if the people of Ireland, north and south, wanted a united Ireland, they could have one by voting for it. Third, Northern Ireland’s current constitutional position would remain within the United Kingdom. Fourth, Northern Ireland’s citizens would have the right to ‘identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both.’ Fifth, the Irish state would drop its territorial claim on Northern Ireland and instead define the Irish nation in terms of people rather than land. The consent principle would also be built into the Irish constitution. The familiar formula of encompassing three sets of relationships was again reflected through the proposed establishment of three new interlocking institutions. Relations within Northern Ireland were to be addressed by a power-sharing assembly that would operate on an inclusive basis. All of the main parties would be members of a permanent coalition government. Key decisions would be taken on a crosscommunity basis. Relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were to be dealt with through the creation of a North–South Ministerial Council which would allow co-operation between the Northern Ireland Assembly and Irish Parliament on certain functional issues. As a safeguard, the Northern Ireland Assembly could only operate if the North–South Ministerial Council was also functioning. Under Strand Three, a British–Irish Council was to be established. This 41

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would draw members from the British and Irish governments, as well as the devolved parliament in Scotland and assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland. Its job was to ‘promote the harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of relationships among peoples on these islands.’ A number of other issues, including civil and religious liberties, were addressed by the Agreement. A Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was to be established. Social, economic and cultural inclusion policies were to be pursued with, for example, provision for a new economic development strategy and the promotion of the Irish language. The needs of victims of violence were also recognized. The British government pledged itself to a normalisation of security arrangements ‘consistent with the level of threat’. Independent commissions were to review the criminal justice system and policing. There was to be ‘an accelerated release programme’ for paramilitary prisoners. The Agreement was reached without the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. According to one UUP negotiator, the issue ‘didn’t get mainstream attention in the talks’.1 A Sinn Féin negotiator concurred, saying that the issue was ‘submerged in the subcommittees – literally parked.’2 Participants in the Agreement confirmed their intention ‘to continue to work constructively and in good faith with the Independent Commission [on Decommissioning], and to use any influence they may have, to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary weapons within two years … in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement.’ This was far removed from a programme of decommissioning agreed as part of a peace accord. The vagueness of the wording would cause severe problems in the post-Agreement period.

Bedding in the Agreement, 1998–99 The Agreement was to be tested by referenda in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps quickly mobilised. Those favouring the Agreement were the British and Irish governments, the SDLP, the parties of the centre including the Women’s Coalition and Alliance, the loyalist parties and almost all international opinion. The principal opponent was the DUP. The Agreement posed severe problems for the UUP and Sinn Féin. Many Ulster Unionists, including some who had played a key role in the negotiations, found substantial sections of the Agreement objectionable.3 On the whole, they found the Agreement’s macro-political provisions

Good Friday and After 43

acceptable. Northern Ireland’s conditional place within the United Kingdom, permanent co-operation with the Irish Republic, and powersharing with nationalists – all of which would have sent the previous generation of unionists into apoplexy – were now acceptable to most unionists. According to one party negotiator, ‘you haven’t heard a word of criticism from me about the structures or constitutional issues … . But there are some democratic and moral principles which can’t be compromised.’4 The deferral of decommissioning, the early release programme for paramilitary prisoners and the prospect of police reform were the real sticking points. David Trimble faced public dissension from within his own party. Eventually the party officially endorsed the Agreement, but many Ulster Unionists remained unconvinced and supported the ‘No’ campaign. A substantial rejectionist rump within the UUP remained vocal beyond the referendum campaign and placed severe constraints on David Trimble’s room for manoeuvre. Sinn Féin also had problems with the Agreement. A Northern Ireland Assembly held little attraction for republicans, many of whom saw it as an internal settlement. The decision by the Irish Republic to drop its territorial claim to Northern Ireland amounted to an official devaluation of the united Ireland concept. A tacit acceptance of the consent principle, (that is, Northern Ireland’s future depended on the will of its people), meant that ‘armed struggle’ could no longer be legitimised as a ‘war’ on behalf of the Irish people. Indeed, the logical extension of the Agreement was that the IRA would ‘go out of business’.5 On the other hand, the Agreement offered prisoner releases, the prospect of ministerial positions for Sinn Féin politicians, and a range of social, economic, cultural and security reforms that would make a real difference to the quality of life in republican communities. For republicans the Agreement was not ‘the basis for a settlement’.6 Instead, they saw it as a staging post. The task ahead was to work the Agreement and its institutions, but at the same time continue the journey towards a united Ireland. In the words of one senior Sinn Féin member, it was ‘a very tall order’.7 After much debate, and even a morale boosting visit by senior African National Congress figures, Sinn Féin endorsed the Agreement. The main opposition to the Agreement came from the Democratic Unionist Party. Ian Paisley’s supporters were not convinced that republicans had changed in anything but the most superficial way. One senior DUP member saw no evidence of a ‘pilgrim’s progress from the violent encampment to the peaceful celestial city’.8 The problem

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for the DUP, however, was that there was no credible alternative. The success of both governments in establishing the orthodoxy of the three-stranded approach was total. One senior DUP member likened the peace process to a train journey: ‘you can quibble about the price of the fare and the type of seats, but you can’t change the direction you’re going in’.9 The referendum campaign had surreal elements, with the UUP and Sinn Féin both campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote. Both held strikingly different interpretations of the Agreement. For one, it secured the Union; for the other, it was an opportunity to weaken it. The campaign within unionism was bitter and tested David Trimble’s leadership skills. On 22 May, 71 per cent of Northern Ireland’s voters supported the Agreement. This represented virtually all nationalist voters, but unionism was evenly split between supporters and opponents of the Agreement. It received 94 per cent backing in the Republic of Ireland. The British and Irish governments’ strategy of engineering an agreement with the involvement of the paramilitaries and then having it endorsed by the people had worked, but much remained to be done. The new institutions had to be established and the provisions on prisoner releases and police reform, among other things, had to be initiated. Continuing post-Agreement violence by republican splinter groups left many unionists convinced that the republican movement was simultaneously playing at peace and war. Elections for the new Northern Ireland Assembly were held in late June 1998 with the four main parties scoring well. For the first time the SDLP won the largest share of the vote, although its 22 per cent of the poll returned 24 seats in the new Assembly, while the UUP’s 21.3 per cent secured 28 seats (see Table 3.1 for full results). Both the DUP and Sinn Féin scored well with 18 per cent and 17.6 per cent of the vote capturing 20 and 18 seats respectively. For Sinn Féin, this was two percentage points more than their May 1996 Forum result. The decline of the Alliance Party continued apace. Post-Agreement the attraction of the centre ground seemed limited. While the Progressive Unionist Party was able to secure two seats in the Assembly, the UDP, with a weaker and more geographically limited political machine, failed to get any of its candidates elected.10 The Assembly met for the first time on 1 July 1998 and elected UUP leader David Trimble and SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon as, respectively, First Minister designate and Deputy First Minister designate. The summer of 1998 was characterized by violence. Tensions from the annual stand-off between the police and the Orange Order at

Good Friday and After 45 Table 3.1 1998 Assembly election results Party

Ulster Unionist Party Social Democratic and Labour Party Democratic Unionist Party Sinn Féin Alliance Party United Kingdom Unionist Party Progressive Unionist Party Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition Ulster Democratic Party

Percentage of 1st preference votes

Seats

21.3 22.0

28 24

18.0 17.6 6.5 4.5

20 18 6 5

2.5 1.6

2 2

1.1

0

Drumcree spread throughout Northern Ireland. They culminated in an arson attack on a house in Ballymoney, County Antrim that killed three Catholic children. This was enough to end most Orange protests, but the issue of Drumcree was left unresolved for another year. In August 1998, a bomb planted by a republican splinter group killed 29 people in the market town of Omagh. It was the largest loss of life from a single incident in Northern Ireland’s history. The scale of the loss, coming as it did after the Agreement and the ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum, and the profile of the victims, both Catholic and Protestant, stunned many in Northern Ireland. In the wake of the bomb, public opinion would countenance no equivocation on support for violence. It allowed political leaders to transcend their disagreements, if only temporarily. Sinn Féin condemned the bombing, thus publicly censuring fellow republicans for the first time. Omagh encouraged David Trimble and Gerry Adams to move from agnosticism on the Agreement to more open support. It was also a reminder that the Good Friday Agreement brought few guarantees for Northern Ireland’s future, least of all a permanent peace. Adams and Trimble held their first face-to-face meeting in September 1998. They did not shake hands. According to Trimble ‘the origin of the handshake is to show that there is no weapon in the person’s hand. He [Adams] doesn’t have an open hand to show to people.’11 Trimble’s reference was to decommissioning, an issue that would continue to dominate the peace process. The Trimble–Adams meeting did signify an important shift in the structure of the peace process. The

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onus to resolve the decommissioning issue had now shifted on to two internal actors, the UUP and Sinn Féin. The two governments continued to mediate, but the hope and expectation was that local protagonists, strengthened by their ability to agree on a complex consociational political accord, would now be able to solve the weapons conundrum. The UUP position, neatly crystallised as ‘no guns, no government’, resisted Sinn Féin’s entry into the new Northern Ireland administration until IRA decommissioning was underway. Sinn Féin insisted that their electoral mandate justified their automatic entry into government, whether or not the IRA decommissioned. It would be over a year before one side decided that it could shift, even marginally, from these positions. Trimble and Adams, having come thus far, risked splitting their parties if they were seen to compromise on the weapons issue. The pace of implementing the Agreement would be the new focus of contention. Broadly, the nationalists adopted a ‘speedy maximalist’ and the unionists a ‘cautious minimalist’ approach. First Minister David Trimble and Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon did show an early understanding of the mutually precarious nature of each other’s position, although their relationship was to sour as the implementation wrangles dragged on. Since power had yet to be devolved from London, the Northern Ireland Assembly only operated in a shadow form. The other institutional pillars of the Agreement, the North–South Ministerial Council and the British–Irish Council, were also placed on hold as the Northern Ireland parties and the two governments remained locked in negotiation on implementation of the Agreement. Despite inter-party paralysis, there was change on other fronts in the autumn and winter of 1998. Troop levels were further reduced and the early releases of paramilitary prisoners continued. An independent commission on police reform, chaired by former British Conservative minister and Hong Kong governor Chris Patten, began an extensive public consultation exercise to assess local opinions on policing. In the absence of a formal truth recovery scheme, the Patten ‘road-show’ came to resemble a proxy truth and reconciliation commission and was host to emotional and cathartic scenes as people defended or opposed the RUC.12 In November 1998 John Hume and David Trimble were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. While it was recognition of the efforts of both men, Hume and Trimble’s parties were at loggerheads on the substantial elements of the Agreement that remained to be implemented. One cynic suggested that David Trimble must feel like a man who ‘wins the lottery even though he hasn’t bought a ticket.’13 While political violence was substantially reduced and a complex

Good Friday and After 47

mechanism to share power had been hammered out, Northern Ireland was still politically rancorous. December saw a start to decommissioning by the splinter Loyalist Volunteer Force. Their handover of nine weapons failed to encourage similar gestures by the mainstream loyalist and republican groups. Following an autumn of intensive talks between the local parties, and much arm twisting by the British and Irish governments, agreement was reached on two critical issues – the number of government departments in the new Northern Ireland administration and the remit of the cross-border bodies. The existing six government departments would be increased to ten: Agriculture and Rural Development; Culture, Arts and Leisure; Education; Enterprise, Trade and Investment; the Environment; Finance and Personnel; Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment; Regional Development; Social Development; and Health, Social Services and Public Safety. The UUP had wanted to restrict the number of ministries, and thus the number of Sinn Féin ministers, but they did succeed in restricting the number of cross-border implementation bodies to six. David Trimble was anxious that the North–South bodies would not be ‘advanced as a strategy for creeping unification’ and that initial cross-border co-operation would be restricted to relatively non-contentious issues such as waterways and food safety.14 The secretary of state would still retain control over security and justice matters. Unionist dissatisfaction remained strong. ‘I like the peace’, as one said, ‘I don’t like the process’.15 An autumn 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey showed that while 72 per cent of Catholics believed that the Good Friday Agreement benefited both communities equally, only 41 per cent of Protestants felt likewise.16 A March 1999 BBC poll indicated that only 41 per cent of unionists would support the Good Friday Agreement in a re-run of the referendum.17 Some unionists who had originally supported the Agreement were having second thoughts. Each side made its own calculation of ‘winners and losers’ according to subjective criteria. The fact that many of the concessions by unionists were visible and on-going, rather than rhetorical and conditional on future circumstances, may have compounded their sense of frustration at the seeming one-way traffic of concessions. Unionists had compromised on prisoner releases, the prospect of major police reform, and the entry of republicans into government. Nationalist, and particularly republican, concessions seemed to be of a different order. The recognition of the consent principle was somewhat academic given the remoteness of a united Ireland in the realm of practical politics. Dissatisfaction was not solely a

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unionist preserve. Republicans accused the UUP of attempting to ‘renegotiate’ the Agreement and ‘hollow out’ the structures established under it.18 They were also impatient at the pace of the implementation of the Agreement. On 16 February 1999, the Assembly voted to accept a Trimble– Mallon plan summarizing agreement on the number of ministries and cross-border implementation bodies. Secretary of State Mo Mowlam set 10 March as the deadline for the establishment of the power-sharing Executive. Unionists were still unhappy at the prospects of Sinn Féin assuming ministerial office in the absence of IRA decommissioning. IRA statements, while reaffirming their ceasefire and support for the peace process, refused even to accept in principle that decommissioning could take place at some time in the future. Gerry Adams predicted that the decommissioning issue would ‘dog the process forever’, but David Trimble, facing pressure from within his own party and the wider unionist family, was determined to force the issue.19 He suggested that the process should be parked rather than suffer a ‘crash-landing’.20 There was now immense moral pressure on republicans to disarm. Even Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, usually sensitive to the need to keep republicans on board, noted that the retention of arms was ‘not compatible with being part of a government and part of an executive.’21 The British government, realizing that the 10 March deadline for the creation of the Executive was unrealistic, postponed devolution day to 2 April, Good Friday. Meetings between Sinn Féin and the UUP, accompanied by sound-bite duels across the airwaves, produced little headway. In late March Prime Ministers Blair and Ahern arrived in Northern Ireland with the intention of mediating a breakthrough on the guns and government issue. The governments were anxious to secure agreement before the start of campaigning for the June 1999 European elections and before the onset of the marching season could further sour political relations. Both governments’ spin-doctors were doubtless attracted by the symmetry of securing another major agreement on a Good Friday. Intensive talks between the governments and the pro-Agreement Northern Ireland parties, urged on by three telephone interventions from President Clinton, produced the ‘Hillsborough Declaration’ proposals on 1 April. The plan called for a choreographed chain of events: the nomination of ministers to the Executive under the d’Hondt electoral procedure, followed, within one month, by the paramilitaries putting some weapons beyond use in a manner verified by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.22 This would be followed by the establishment of the North–South Ministerial

Good Friday and After 49

Council, the North–South implementation bodies, the British–Irish Council and the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference.23 For the UUP, the proposals were ‘realistically the only way forward’. Sinn Féin rejected them, saying that they could not persuade the IRA to decommission prior to the establishment of an inclusive government.24 One Sinn Féin source described the proposals as ‘a precondition dressed up as something else’ and called for the Good Friday Agreement to be implemented in full without further delay.25 The PUP also rejected the proposals. Blair’s New Labour government did not take rejection easily. In mid-May another round of inter-party talks were convened in London. A heavily pressured David Trimble reportedly agreed to accept government before guns, only to have the concession deemed unacceptable by the UUP Assembly Party. Determined to move the process forward, Blair set 30 June 1999 as the ‘absolute deadline’ for the devolution of power to the Northern Ireland Assembly.26 This would keep Northern Ireland in line with devolution to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. With the clock ticking towards Blair’s 30 June deadline, another round of intensive inter-party talks began in Belfast.27 These soon ran into the sand, prompting a frustrated Secretary of State to trigger the voting mechanism for the establishment of the Executive in July 1999. In scenes of high farce, the UUP stayed away from the Assembly as a Ministerial Executive was appointed exclusively from the SDLP and Sinn Féin. As this did not conform to the Agreement’s cross-community criteria, it was immediately deemed invalid. The day’s proceedings ended with the resignation of Seamus Mallon as Deputy First Minister, who concentrated his criticisms on the absent Trimble for repeated delays in the implementation of the Agreement. The political process was gravely damaged. In little more than a year, post-Agreement euphoria and optimism had been sapped by problems of implementation. Having exhausted their energies, and a good deal of patience, the British and Irish governments looked again to Senator George Mitchell to carry out a review of the implementation of the Agreement after a summer break.

The Mitchell review – autumn 1999 Chris Patten’s report on RUC reform was published on 9 September. It’s 175 recommendations included proposals to reduce the force’s size from 11 400 to 7500 while increasing Catholic representation from 8 to 30 per cent within ten years.28 The British and Irish governments and the SDLP welcomed the report. The DUP’s Peter Robinson said it

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paved the way for ‘the emasculation and destruction of the RUC’.29 For David Trimble, proposals to change the force’s name were a ‘gratuitous insult’ to RUC members and the families of dead and injured officers.30 Sinn Féin held its counsel, although it was clear that the proposed reforms fell well short of the republican demand to disband the RUC.31 The British government announced a two-month consultation period on the reforms with the result that debate on the Patten proposals would dog George Mitchell’s review of the implementation of the peace process. Mitchell, who began his review on 6 September, faced an unenviable task. While anxious to avoid ‘an open ended process’ he was being asked to resolve an argument that 16 months of prime ministerial mediation, as well as the on-set of direct Sinn Féin–UUP talks, had failed to overcome.32 For both republicans and unionists the costs of compromise were enormous. DUP criticisms of the UUP remained as trenchant as ever. Ian Paisley met with George Mitchell. ‘We were telling him that he is redundant’, he reported. ‘He should go home.’33 But David Trimble did not need to look beyond his own party for critics. He told the UUP annual conference: ‘I am sick to death of the daily chorus of division and diatribe from some of this party’s headline hunters … this party needs a lot less noise and a lot more loyalty.’34 Within a week former party leader, Lord Molyneaux, and six of the party’s ten MPs released a statement reminding those involved in the Mitchell review that the party would not tolerate any deviation from the guns before government line.35 Deputy leader John Taylor, unhappy with the course of the review, also resigned from the party’s negotiating team. The review began with the usual restatement of entrenched positions by Sinn Féin and the UUP. George Mitchell moved the talks to neutral territory – the US ambassador in London’s residence – and the protagonists admitted that the talks benefited from improved ‘atmospherics’. Meanwhile, in mid-October, Secretary of State Mo Mowlam was replaced by Peter Mandelson in a reshuffle of the Blair Cabinet. Unionists in particular had long been critical of Mowlam. Her approach was reportedly too informal for the ‘unreconstructed Ulster Protestant males’, who also suspected her of being overly sympathetic towards nationalism.36 The constant procession of Northern Ireland politicians to 10 Downing Street, by-passing London’s representative in Belfast, also weakened Mowlam’s position. Mandelson, with a reputation for the ‘coldest calculation’, had the added advantage of being close to the Prime Minister.37

Good Friday and After 51

One month into the Mitchell review, Bill Clinton likened the protagonists in the Northern Ireland conflict to bar-room drunks, who, when on the verge of settling a dispute, would launch into another round of recrimination.38 On 18 November, following repeated extensions to Mitchell’s review, the senator put forward a plan to rescue the peace process. According to Mitchell, ‘devolution should take effect, then the Executive should meet, and then the paramilitary groups should appoint their authorised representatives, all on the same day, in that order.’ He noted that decommissioning should be voluntary, but was ‘an essential element of the agreement’ that could be best achieved in the context of the full implementation of the Agreement.39 In short, the UUP would accede to the establishment of a devolved powersharing government in return for the appointment of an IRA interlocuter to the Independent International Decommissioning Commission. On 27 November the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) – the ruling body of the UUP – backed the Mitchell plan by 480 to 349 votes. This cleared the way for devolution to take place. But the decommissioning issue was by no means resolved. ‘We have done our bit. Mr. Adams, it is over to you’, David Trimble declared after persuading 58 per cent of the Ulster Unionist Council to agree to entering government. ‘We have jumped, you follow.’40 Party colleague Ken Maginnis added that this time there should be ‘no wriggle room’.41 David Trimble lodged a postdated resignation letter with the UUP Secretary, stating that he would resign as First Minister if the IRA had not made a start to decommissioning by early 2000.

Devolution – winter 1999–2001 On 29 November the Assembly voted by 71 to 28 to reinstate Seamus Mallon as Deputy First Minister. This was followed by the selection of the Executive. The UUP and SDLP nominated three ministers each, and the DUP and Sinn Féin two each.42 That evening, the IRA announced that it had appointed a representative to deal with the Decommissioning Commission. With the new Executive in place, power was devolved back to Northern Ireland for the first time in 27 years. Most attention focused on the Sinn Féin ministers and, in particular, Martin McGuinness. The Education Minister’s appointment was greeted with a number of protests by Protestant schoolchildren.43 The DUP made it clear that while their ministers would fulfill their duties, they would not participate in Executive meetings because of the presence of Sinn Féin. Nor did the DUP participate in the first meeting

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of the North–South Ministerial Council on 13 December. The Party became a spoiler at the very heart of government. Yet despite the predictably partisan debates that surrounded the policy remits of the new Ministers, it did seem that Northern Ireland had a working and locally accountable government for the first time in over a generation. Key decisions postponed by the British government were now being made by local politicians on health care, transport and education.44 Yet the decommissioning issue still had the capacity to derail the process. Attention turned to General John de Chastelain, chairman of the Independent International Decommissioning Commission. If he reported satisfactory progress by republican paramilitaries in relation to decommissioning, then he could stave off David Trimble’s threatened resignation as First Minister. Enormous pressure was placed on the Sinn Féin leadership in the hope that the IRA would make a decommissioning gesture. While the IRA reiterated its support for the ceasefire, and was in direct contact with the de Chastelain Commission, it seemed clear that grassroots IRA members could not countenance actual decommissioning. With the sand in David Trimble’s resignation hourglass fast running out, Peter Mandelson stepped in on 11 February and suspended the devolved institutions. Devolution had lasted for 72 days. Mandelson’s intervention meant that power could be re-devolved from London without the need for a re-election to Executive positions. In something approaching pique, the IRA broke off its contacts with the de Chastelain body. The precarious nature of David Trimble’s position became clear in March when the Reverend Martin Smyth challenged him for the UUP leadership. Trimble had suggested, during a trip to Washington, that he could foresee a UUP re-entry into government with Sinn Féin ahead of IRA decommissioning. Coming on top of the prospect of RUC reform, continued prisoner releases and punishment beatings, this proved to be too much for the anti-Agreement wing of the UUP. The strength of Smyth’s challenge, gaining 43 per cent of UUC votes, surprised many commentators and served as a warning to David Trimble. An IRA statement on 7 May 2000 injected fresh momentum into the peace process. The statement contained the breakthrough phrase that the organisation would ‘completely and verifiably’ put arms beyond use.45 Arms dumps would be inspected by third parties, later confirmed as former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and ex-ANC General Secretary Cyril Ramaphosa. It cleared the way for another meeting of the UUC which gave David Trimble the go-ahead, by a slim 53 per cent of delegates, to re-enter the Executive. Two days later power was

Good Friday and After 53

re-devolved to Northern Ireland. The Assembly and related institutions went back to business. This time though the DUP announced that its two ministers would pursue a policy of rolling resignations; periodically resigning only to be replaced by Party colleagues. The strategy was nominally in protest at Sinn Féin’s presence in government but many commentators saw it as the latest sally in the UUP–DUP electoral duel. On 26 June, three IRA arms dumps were inspected by the agreed third parties who ensured that weapons and explosives could not be used without their detection. While David Trimble welcomed this as a confidence-building measure, it was clear that unionists regarded the decommissioning issue as unfinished. Meanwhile elements of normal governance crept into Northern Ireland’s body politic. In early July the Executive announced its ‘Agenda for Government’ in which the outlines of a legislative and policy programme were set out. By December 2000 the Assembly approved a £6bn budget. Policy initiatives on key areas such as health and education, and ministerial photo opportunities at the opening of new business ventures, suggested that Northern Ireland was a mature polity concerned with the usual issues of social provision and economic development. But with the political issues of decommissioning, demilitarization and policing unresolved, the façade of business as usual looked decidedly thin. David Trimble, under immense pressure from within his own party, sought to sanction republicans for failing to take further steps towards decommissioning by refusing to allow Sinn Féin ministers to attend North–South Ministerial Council meetings. In due course, the ban was overturned in the High Court, but the essential UUP–Sinn Féin disagreement remained unresolved. A comprehensive December 2000 plan, chivied along by outgoing President Clinton, would have seen significant demilitarization in return for the agreement by the SDLP and Sinn Féin to nominate members to the new Policing Boards and concrete action by the IRA to demonstrably put its weaponry beyond use. The political will for such an agreement was lacking. Another attempt, this time under the stewardship of new Secretary of State John Reid, and the two Prime Ministers, resulted in roundtable talks between all of the pro-Agreement parties in March 2001. But with a spring British general election thought to be likely, the local parties could not be seen to compromise. The election eventually came in June 2001 and saw Sinn Féin overtake the SDLP as the largest nationalist party, doubling its Westminster representation to four seats. The DUP also made gains on the UUP, with a net gain of two seats. In the local government elections, held at

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the same time as the Westminster elections, the UUP retained its position as Northern Ireland’s largest party, but the overall trend of advances for Sinn Féin and the DUP was confirmed. The trend of the fragmentation of the unionist vote, visible in previous elections, was somewhat reversed with the smaller unionist and loyalist parties performing poorly. The DUP advances signalled growing Protestant dissatisfaction at the implementation of the Agreement and displeasure at Sinn Féin’s continued presence in government in the absence of IRA decommissioning. Sinn Féin’s electoral fortunes were aided by demographics (increasing numbers of young Catholics on the electoral register) and the party’s success in portraying unionist and British government obstinacy as the cause of post-Agreement problems. David Trimble had gone into the election campaigns with a high risk strategy. He had threatened to resign as First Minister by 1 July if the IRA did not go beyond inspections of their arms dumps. The DUP’s electoral advances showed that many unionists felt that Trimble’s strategy was unlikely to bear fruit. Trimble duly resigned on 1 July, plunging Northern Ireland into yet another political crisis. Intensive talks, held on an English country estate, focused on the by now perennial obstacles of decommissioning, demilitarisation and policing. In August, the International Decommissioning Commission announced that the IRA had proposed a plan to put its weapons beyond use. But for David Trimble, only actual decommissioning would suffice. The Good Friday Agreement was over two years old, but the guns and government dispute meant that further progress was conditional on agreement on security-related issues. The constant discord and threats to the political institutions were indicative of continuing political violence, but more fundamentally, they reflected a lack of trust between unionism and nationalism.

Part II The Peace Process: an Analysis

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4 Swinging Door: the Politics and Negotiation of the Peace Process1

Introduction In one sense the peace process was little short of a revolution. The absolute level of political activity in Northern Ireland increased enormously, as did the range and complexity of political contacts. The workload of Northern Ireland Office officials was said to have trebled when paramilitary ceasefires were declared in 1994.2 Huge strains were placed on political actors as political parties and the electorate was confronted with new, and often uncomfortable, challenges. The style and language of politics underwent change. Entirely different political skills were required. According to one British government official, ‘We had been playing badminton for years, and now had to learn lacrosse.’3 Semi-dormant issues, unresolved from previous rounds of the conflict, were reactivated and were augmented by new issues. The peace process went far beyond political and military issues to encompass aspects of the economy, and social and cultural inclusion. Yet, in another sense, the peace process was less than revolutionary. It did not herald a major transfer of sovereignty. The main political actors in the conflict, although under strain and facing competition from new additions on the political scene, retained their dominance. Fundamentally, the peace process did not resolve the conflict; nationalists remained nationalists and unionists remained unionists. This chapter explores the politics of the peace process and pays specific attention to the main actors and the processes of interaction between them. It follows on from the previous narrative chapters and is deliberately analytical. The first part of the chapter concentrates on the chief participants in the process: the British and Irish governments, the political parties, paramilitaries and civil society. It investigates their 57

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significance, the role they played in the process and how the process impacted upon them. The second part of the chapter explores the structures and processes of the peace process.

Part one: actors Governments The most significant actors in the Northern Ireland peace process were the British and Irish governments. It would be impossible to conceive of a comprehensive peace process and accord in their absence. Two initial points risk being overlooked as obvious. The first is that the process was managed by two governments. Since the signature of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, the British and Irish governments had shared the aim of engineering a comprehensive political settlement for Northern Ireland that could be endorsed by a majority of its citizens and undermine the legitimacy for political violence. The permanent engagement of both governments on the issue changed the structure of the conflict. The governments acted as a check and balance on each other, but also offered mutual support. The relationship between the two was asymmetrical, with the British government the more powerful state in absolute terms and holding legal and operational jurisdiction over Northern Ireland. A second seemingly obvious point is that the two were governments, a status that awarded them authority and legitimacy over other peace process participants. Both were sovereign powers and full members of the international community. More than that, both were long-standing Western democracies and members of the world’s leading regional organisation, the European Union. The downside of this authority and legitimacy was that both governments held semi-external positions in relation to Northern Ireland. They had constitutional claims over Northern Ireland, were the focal point of the political aspirations of the Northern Ireland communities and had immense cultural influence over the territory. Yet they were semi-detached. Northern Ireland was regarded as exceptional with its sectarian enmity and unique party system. The locus of power in Britain and Ireland lay outside Northern Ireland. As a result, the conflict occupied a curious no man’s land; it was not quite domestic politics, and not quite foreign policy. The nature of the relationship between the two governments was crucial to the peace process. In a unique feat of co-operation, the two governments became partners in the peace process, working together

Swinging Door: Politics and Negotiations 59

on a permanent and institutionalised basis to engineer a political settlement. The partnership was durable and strong enough to survive mutual suspicion, differing emphases and personality clashes. One insider described a 1993 joint press conference with John Major and Albert Reynolds as having ‘all the strained bonhomie of a shotgun wedding.’4 Indeed, days before the crucial May 2000 breakthrough allowing the re-establishment of devolution, a leaked British government memo noted that Brian Cowen, the Irish Foreign Minister, presented his arguments ‘… with all the subtly and open-mindedness that one would expect from a member of Sinn Féin.’5 Yet a united front was maintained in public as far as was possible. Serious rifts did develop between the two governments, such as one over the setting of a date for multiparty talks that led to the postponement of a summit in November 1995. The main trend though was a transformation in the relationship between the two governments over Northern Ireland, from competition to co-operation. The change did not occur overnight, nor did it ever reach a phase of total co-operation, but it was durable enough to sustain the peace process. The governments acted as joint, but not always equal, guardians of the process. They became chief organisers, gatekeepers and timekeepers. The custody extended to most formal aspects of the peace process and particularly to the negotiations between political parties. While the Northern Ireland parties could act as reasonably free agents within the talks, they operated in an environment largely constructed by the governments. The governments made it clear that they would set minimum standards of behaviour for peace process participants and that they would act as chief organisers of the process. In effect they were the ultimate arbiters of the process. While any agreement would be put to the Northern Ireland electorate in a referendum, people power would only extend to giving or withholding consent on a government-set question.6 The British and Irish governments were able to assume these controlling positions because of their legitimacy as governments. It required significant intergovernmental co-operation and choreography, and the maintenance of a confident front. If it was a confidence trick it worked in that there were no serious challenges to the governments’ guardianship of the process. Even the independent chairmen of the multiparty talks worked within government-set boundaries. In the view of one negotiator, ‘… Mitchell, Holkerri, de Chastelain … there’s nothing they can do as chairs to bring the pack in a particular direction unless the two governments are in harness.’7

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In their role as organisers of the peace process, the governments established and promoted a conceptual and organisational framework for the process. This came in the form of the three-stranded framework, developed in previous inter-party negotiation processes in the early 1990s. It acted as the broad parameter for the process, making sure that the key relationships in the conflict were tackled in a structured manner. The joint publication of landmark documents or statements, such as the 1993 Downing Street Declaration or 1995 Frameworks Document, was another means of stamping the governmental imprimatur on the process. According to an Irish government official, ‘We did not think it would serve a useful purpose for everyone to simply show up on day one [of talks] and that agreement would somehow percolate up from the bottom. Rather we thought that it was up to the two governments to give guidance. That’s the background to the Frameworks Document.’8 The landmark documents acted as signposts for preferred future political development and introduced new concepts and language to the process. Irish Foreign Minister David Andrews described one jointly drafted document as ‘a roadmap for the future.’9 Because the concepts and language were government backed, they tended to be resilient. The governments made it clear repeatedly that there was no Plan B. No nongovernmental actor possessed the legitimacy to introduce an alternative plan. In their role as gatekeepers, the governments were able to restrict access to the formal aspects of the process. The power of exclusion was a key weapon in the intergovernmental armoury, particularly given that there was little space for an alternative peace process. Parties could either work within the confines of the established peace process or face an uncertain future in the political wilderness. The two chief criteria for inclusion were a commitment to exclusively peaceful means and an electoral mandate. Minimum standards of behaviour connected with the use of violence were established and used as a benchmark for inclusion or exclusion. The governments would not hold direct talks with those political parties connected with militant organisations while violence continued. But although the governments were gatekeepers, they carried out their duties with discretion. The rules for inclusion and exclusion were often articulated in tones of high principle but operated in terms of pragmatism. Ceasefire breaches by the IRA and UDA/UFF in late 1997 and early 1998 led to the temporary expulsion of Sinn Féin from the multiparty talks, while the UDP left before they could be expelled. It was, in the words of one UUP negotiator, little

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more than a ‘sin bin’ option.10 As the peace process progressed, it became clear that both governments, while anxious to be seen to be imposing a sanction, did not want the sanction to thwart the chances of securing an agreement which could be backed by the paramilitaries. Another example of arbitrary gatekeeping came in the form of special electoral mechanisms to ensure the representation of the smaller parties. This particularly applied to the loyalist parties who had limited electoral support but who were vital to a viable accommodation. The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) were able to secure two seats each in the Forum for Political Dialogue following the adoption of a party list voting system with top-up seats. The system also gifted the Women’s Coalition and Northern Ireland’s microscopic Labour Party two seats each in the Forum and a place at the multiparty talks right up to Good Friday 1998. As timekeepers, the governments, and particularly the British government, exercised control over the pace of the peace process. Timetabling and the speed of political developments were among the most contentious issues in the peace process. This was especially the case because of the extended periods of deadtime in the process during which there was little political activity or negotiations were unproductive. The ever-present danger was that violence could fill the vacuum. Many time-related factors were at the discretion of the governments. For example, they were able to determine when negotiations would begin and to set deadlines for their conclusion. Given that the peace process was complex, operating on multiple layers with multiple actors, and given that it was an extended process, the governments were able to set a significant number of deadlines to control many aspects of the process. The peace process was also at the mercy of the normal political cycles in Britain and Ireland, particularly electoral calendars. Northern Ireland was never a major issue during election campaigns in either Britain or the Irish Republic. During the lifetime of the peace process Irish governments were prone to distractions from a series of political scandals and tribunals relating to the various sins of beef barons, paedophile priests and planning regulators. John Major’s second term in office was bedevilled by Conservative Party divisions over the pace and extent of European integration. While Tony Blair had a large first term parliamentary majority, he was conscious that he was spending an inordinate amount of time on the Northern Ireland issue. In September 1999, after several months in which the crisis in Kosovo and the delayed implementation of the Good Friday Agreement had consumed much of his attention,

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he let it be known that he wanted to refocus his energies on the domestic agenda. The implication was that Northern Ireland was somehow not a domestic issue and that it was a distraction.11 Certainly involvement in the Northern Ireland issue held few electoral rewards for British or Irish governments. The peace process survived changes of government in both Britain and Ireland, but with each new government and prime minister came a different style and emphasis. John Major was the first British Prime Minister in the modern era to take a detailed interest in Northern Ireland. Both he and Albert Reynolds were prepared to take risks. Tony Blair’s election in May 1997 was vital to re-energising a moribund peace process. Secretary of State Mo Mowlam’s relaxed style opened doors that had stayed shut in the face of Sir Patrick Mayhew’s hauteur, although as her tenure progressed she alienated many unionists. Republicans were alarmed when John Bruton, the leader of Fine Gael, took over as Taoiseach in the Irish Republic. According to one senior Sinn Féin member, ‘To put it mildly, there was just a different chemistry when Bruton replaced Reynolds.’12 Matters were further complicated by the electoral reality that most modern Irish governments were coalitions and liable to internal stresses. The key point is that the peace process was prone to political factors emanating from outside Northern Ireland. The local peace process participants had no control over these events and could only react. But it is worth noting that many of the personnel in the Northern Ireland Office and the Department of Foreign Affairs remained the same throughout all changes in government and offered an element of stability and continuity to the process. While Sinn Féin was critical of the enduring influence of ‘securocrats’ on British policy despite changes in government, long-term working relationships between British and Irish mandarins were to prove vital to the peace process.13 The British and Irish governments performed another role; that of proxy representatives for the Northern Ireland parties. These roles were rarely articulated in an explicit manner. The governments occupied a curious position; on the one hand they presented themselves as neutral facilitators genuinely interested in the best outcome for all of the people of Northern Ireland. On the other hand, and for reasons of traditional sympathy or pragmatism, the government parties often had closer relations with one party than another. The development of a broad common strategy between the Irish government, the SDLP, Sinn Féin and Irish–American interests – attacked by unionists as a ‘pannationalist front’ – was a significant influence during the lead-in to the

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negotiations – significant enough to be explicitly imitated by the Basque parties in Spain in the late 1990s. Relations were close between sections of Fianna Fáil and the SDLP, and between the Conservative Party and the Ulster Unionists. While the governments did not formally represent the Northern Ireland parties in intergovernmental meetings, they were aware of the importance of keeping key parties and constituencies on board the process. For example, after the IRA ceasefire was called in August 1994, the Irish government was anxious that the republican movement remain in the constitutional political process and would not be alienated by British government demands for immediate decommissioning. As a result, it took a more robust position against the British government than may have ordinarily been the case.14 Paramilitaries Northern Ireland’s paramilitary organisations were powerful political actors and possessed a level of political legitimacy that increased as the peace process advanced. They had four main sources of power. First, most of the organisations had tradition on their side. They were longstanding military and semi-political forces with traditional modes of operation and traditional areas of community support. Second, the main paramilitaries had close links with sophisticated and articulate political parties. In the loyalist case these political parties were underdeveloped in the early stages of the peace process but quickly became skilled political operators. Third, the loyalist and republican paramilitaries had a core support among their respective communities that proved resistant to various attempts to persuade them to support more constitutional options. Active support for the paramilitaries was restricted to small minorities in both communities, but at times their causes, if not methods, evoked broader sympathy. Regardless of the actual level of support (always difficult to ascertain),15 the main paramilitaries were able to sustain lengthy military campaigns. This would have been impossible in the absence of a resource base and some measure of legitimacy from their communities.16 Fourth, the paramilitaries had a significant capacity for violence. This was not enough to drive Britain from Ireland in the case of republicans, or to eliminate republican militancy in the case of loyalists. Nor was it enough to destroy Northern Ireland as a working political and economic entity. Yet the paramilitaries were able to grind out a depressingly consistent death toll and were capable of orchestrating high levels of civil disturbance. IRA attacks in Europe and England, and particularly two massive bombs in the City of London in the early

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1990s, illustrated that the conflict could not be contained within Northern Ireland. The violence also exacted high economic and social costs both in the form of an underdeveloped economy and in reinforcing community divisions. Even when violence was not employed by the paramilitaries, the threat of its return loomed over the negotiations. The threat was magnified by the tactic of surprise attacks and the variation of targets. A cottage industry of journalists, terrorism ‘experts’ and security agencies played a similar magnifying role. Despite the ceasefires, the residual violent capacity retained by the still armed paramilitaries awarded them added weight during the peace process. The involvement of those responsible for major political violence has been an essential condition for the peace processes in South Africa, Israel/Palestine and Cambodia among others. By the early 1990s, the British and Irish governments had recognized the need to include those supportive of political violence in any attempt to engineer a long-term accommodation in Northern Ireland. The inclusion of the paramilitaries was a high-risk strategy and involved a recognition that the process would not be exclusively constitutional and that compromises would be necessary between democracy and paramilitarism. The governments did attempt to modify paramilitary behaviour; a central aim of the peace process was to illustrate the benefits of constitutional politics to those supportive of political violence. The calling of paramilitary ceasefires was a minimum condition of direct contact between the governments and the paramilitary related parties. Many remained unconvinced of the merits of drawing those with paramilitary links into the political process. In the assessment of one UUP MP, ‘… once you blur the lines between democracy and terrorism, you undermine democracy and you elevate terrorism; you say that terrorism is somehow legitimate.’17 Dealing with paramilitaries is an inexact science. They were secret and unaccountable organisations and had complex relationships with the political parties associated with them. At times, the durability of the republican and loyalist ceasefires depended on the ability of the leaderships in the paramilitary-linked parties to convince their more militant colleagues of the benefits of the constitutional path.18 One loyalist negotiator admitted to wondering ‘how in hell we were ever going to persuade people to hold their ceasefire’ given what he saw as republican provocation.19 In January 1998, Mo Mowlam, in a move denounced by the DUP as ‘pandering to terrorists’, visited the Maze prison to persuade loyalist prisoners to retain faith in the peace process.20 But the intimate connections between paramilitaries and

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political parties may have prevented the use of violence to influence the multiparty talks. Given that the main paramilitaries were represented inside the negotiating chamber, there were diminishing returns from influencing the direction of talks from outside. The peace process demanded a high level of discipline from the paramilitaries. Calling and maintaining ceasefires, and keeping organisational structures intact, was a difficult task. On top of this, synchronizing statements and actions with the goals of related political parties, and appraising members (many of whom were in prison) of the latest political developments were delicate and time-consuming tasks. In the main however, the ceasefires by the major paramilitary organisations were well policed by the paramilitaries themselves. They retained most of their weaponry and most of their members. While both loyalism and republicanism experienced breakaways, these splinter groups were unable to sustain major campaigns of violence or garner significant popular support. Actual and threatened violence by spoiler groups received massive media attention. If atrocities such as the August 1998 Omagh bombing offered any positive message, it was that Northern Ireland’s republican and loyalist spoiler groups had a limited ability to derail the peace process. Political parties In other peace processes, such as Sri Lanka and Colombia, political parties played a subsidiary role to other actors – governments, armies and insurgents. In the case of Northern Ireland, political parties were the chief medium through which communities were represented. It was the parties who attended the negotiations, had prime ministerial access and were invited to make submissions to the peace processrelated commissions. But while the parties were often sophisticated in handling the media and in mobilising their voters, no Northern Ireland party had recent experience of government. Moreover, the parties were organised according to two crucial issues: their position on the Union and their attitudes to the use of political violence. The existence of a special category of political party – those linked to active paramilitary organisations – made Northern Ireland distinctive in Western European politics. Sinn Féin, the Progressive Unionist Party, and the Ulster Democratic Party had close links with paramilitary organisations, although the precise nature of these links was often unclear. It is probably fair to say that the political party and its linked paramilitary group shared general aims, support bases and had some overlap of personnel. Sinn Féin went to immense lengths to obfuscate

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its precise links with the IRA. Republican protestations that Sinn Féin and the IRA were separate organisations, allowed the former to deflect questions on decommissioning and IRA violence.21 The loyalist parties were less guarded on their links with paramilitaries. Despite the pressures created by the peace process, there were few major splits between political parties and their paramilitary relatives.22 Just as the peace process placed the paramilitary organisations under strain, it also confronted Northern Ireland’s political parties with new challenges, forcing a number to change policy or style of operation. Approaches to the peace process prompted dissent in a number of parties. The primary task for political leaders in a peace process was not to make an historic compromise with the other side. It was to lead and manage their own supporters.23 The pursuit of a peace process strategy is not always compatible with maximising electoral advantage. For example, in the early stages of the peace process there was considerable frustration within the SDLP at the failure of John Hume to consult with party colleagues on strategy.24 Some felt that by helping to facilitate Sinn Féin’s entry into the process they were also raising Sinn Féin’s stock. One of Hume’s kitchen cabinet noted that the party was ‘carrying more cans than a Heinz truck … it’s a role that we have to play … we don’t have any alternative … we could get damaged in electoral terms.’25 Sinn Féin suffered a number of defections, particularly as the compromises inherent in the Good Friday Agreement became apparent. But the party was careful to consult with its members at most stages of the peace process, holding a number of extraordinary conferences at key moments. At times the unity of the republican movement seemed to be republicans’ primary goal. According to one Sinn Féin leader, ‘We’ve stated over and over again that what we intended to do was to bring the movement, in a united way, into this project, through this project and out the other end of it.’26 The Ulster Unionist Party experienced the most severe internal problems. The party was a broad church, containing traditionalists, modernisers, young Turks and a number of sullen senior members whose leadership ambitions had been thwarted. Despite being Northern Ireland’s largest party, the UUP often regarded itself as marginalised from the political process. Many members were deeply suspicious of the peace process, believing it to be nationalist in origin and design. Indeed in his first year as UUP leader, David Trimble still referred to it as a ‘so-called peace process’.27 According to one loyalist observer in 1997, ‘… unionism … in its mainstream form, has never felt any ownership whatsoever of the peace process … . They never sought to play any

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more than a begrudging role.’28 The peace process confronted the party with an unceasing series of dilemmas. Each dilemma posed a threat to party unity: whether or not to enter the same process as Sinn Féin, whether or not to deal directly with republicans, whether or not to back the Good Friday Agreement and its provisions for prisoner releases and delayed decommissioning, and whether or not to enter into government with Sinn Féin. David Trimble was elected leader of the UUP in September 1995 after portraying himself as ready to provide a more vigorous defence of the Union than his predecessor. In reality, he proved to be a good deal more pragmatic than many expected. As a result, he often found himself isolated from his parliamentary colleagues, many of whom publicly disavowed his peace process strategy. Trimble’s repeated attempts to rein in his freelance colleagues had little impact. There was no doubt that the UUP wanted a peaceful Northern Ireland. But many in the party remained unconvinced that co-operation with republicans was the way to achieve this goal. They felt that a centre-ground accommodation with constitutional nationalists was a more prudent approach and were affronted by the SDLP’s seeming preference for including Sinn Féin at every stage of the peace process. One UUP MP could not see the SDLP abandoning Sinn Féin ‘short of Gerry Adams being caught with a smoking gun in his hand’.29 David Trimble eventually crossed the rubicon of acknowledging that republicans, as part of the problem, had to be part of any ‘solution’. Although assiduously avoiding direct contact with republicans during the negotiations leading up the Good Friday Agreement, Trimble met Gerry Adams in September 1998. Yitzhak Rabin’s maxim that ‘you don’t make peace with your friends’ cut little ice with many UUP members, especially as republican violence continued throughout the process.30 While the UUP leader was anxious not to be blamed for the collapse of the peace process, he was acutely aware that the party could only go so far. At times the risk facing Trimble was one of winning the peace or losing his party. Aside from internal pressures, the party faced increasing electoral pressure within unionism. The Ulster Democratic Party, Progressive Unionist Party, United Kingdom Unionist Party, Northern Ireland Unionist Party and Democratic Unionists all offered pro-Union alternatives. The spectre of the DUP in particular had a restraining influence on UUP strategy. The DUP offered absolute answers in an environment characterized by compromises and fudges. For party leader Ian Paisley it was ‘a phoney peace process held in place by concessions to those most capable of

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breaking the peace. It is neither honourable, just, permanent, nor reasonable. It is a surrender process which we must resist.’31 While the UUP attempted to weigh the costs and benefits of the peace process and the Agreement, the DUP traded in certainties. The DUP had the advantage of a direct and often emotive message. It was ‘a time when the faithless are eulogised and the faithful are ostracised; a time when prisoners are consistently released and their victims conveniently forgotten; a time when darkness is called “light” and light “darkness”; a time when hell is called “heaven” and heaven is called “hell”.’32 The DUP anti-Agreement referendum campaign was fought under the slogan ‘It’s right to say “No”’. One election leaflet predicted the following consequences from the Good Friday Agreement: a united Ireland, IRA/Sinn Féin in power, nationalists handed a veto, an embryonic united Ireland government, Ulster’s constitutional status destroyed, no terror weapons required and prisoners go free, the RUC to be decimated and security slashed.33 The UUP, promoting a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum, could offer no such certainties. Its referendum literature noted that ‘… no-one believes that voting “Yes” will of itself guarantee a long and lasting peace …’.34 The DUP’s withdrawal from the multiparty talks in September 1997, lest they come into contact with Sinn Féin, meant that they had no direct input into the framing of the Good Friday Agreement. But its presence on the sidelines served to temper UUP adventurism. While Ian Paisley could accuse David Trimble of ‘doing dirty deals with the Dublin government’, David Trimble had to mount a defence of his position both within his party and within unionism and negotiate with nationalists and the British and Irish governments. The DUP may have slipped from public attention as the other parties negotiated the Agreement, but they were able to make political capital in the post-Agreement period. The party was able to profit from those unionists suffering from post-Agreement buyer’s remorse. The decommissioning stalemate, continued prisoner releases, punishment beatings and police reform all reinforced the view that the peace process and Agreement were part of a pro-nationalist agenda. A May 2000 opinion poll found that a clear majority of unionists (57 per cent) would vote ‘No’ if the Good Friday Agreement referendum was to be re-run.35 The peace process also confronted the DUP with uncomfortable choices. The party won the right to two ministerial positions in the newly devolved government. DUP ministers took up their positions but refrained from sitting in on meetings of the power-sharing Executive. This, they claimed, meant they were not entering into government with Sinn Féin.

Swinging Door: Politics and Negotiations 69 Table 4.1 Northern Ireland elections, 1992–9936

UUP SDLP DUP SF APNI NIWC UDP PUP UKUP

1992

1993

1994

1996

1997a

34.5 23.5 13.1 10.0 8.7 – – – –

29.5 22.0 17.3 12.4 7.6 – – – –

23.8 28.9 29.2 9.9 4.1 – – – –

24.2 21.4 18.8 15.5 6.5 1.0 2.2 3.5 3.7

32.7 24.1 13.6 16.1 8.0 0.4 – – 1.6

1997b

1998

1999

27.9 22.6 15.8 16.9 6.6 – 1.2 2.3 –

21.3 21.9 18.0 17.7 6.5 1.6 1.1 2.5 4.5

17.6 28.0 28.4 17.4 2.1 – – 3.3 3.0

The picture of Northern Ireland’s electoral politics in the 1990s (see Table 4.1) is confused by differing electoral systems and the tendency of European elections to turn into vanity polls. A key point is that the four main parties retained their electoral dominance, although their star was slipping. In the 1992 British general election, the UUP, SDLP, DUP and Sinn Féin amassed 86.1 per cent of the vote between them. The figure was 83.3 per cent in the 1997 general election and 79.9 per cent in the 1998 Assembly election. Despite the series of internal traumas, the UUP remained Northern Ireland’s largest party. A mix of increasing apathy among unionist voters and competition from other pro-Union parties meant that there was some slippage. Sinn Féin made strong electoral advances during the peace process. The vote continued to grow despite the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire in 1996, suggesting that the ‘armalite and ballot box’ strategy retained its popularity with republicans during the peace process. It may also indicate Sinn Féin’s success in disassociating themselves from the IRA. The peace process gave the party the opportunity to broaden its appeal within nationalism and, in the words of one NIO official, to become ‘more respectable’.37 Given that elections in Northern Ireland are mainly intra-community contests, it is worth noting that Sinn Féin’s electoral growth was not at the expense of the SDLP. The 1998 Assembly elections saw the SDLP overtake the UUP in share of vote. The most likely explanation of Sinn Féin’s electoral fortunes lies in its popularity among new Catholic additions to the electoral register and in providing a voice for previously non-voting nationalists.38 The DUP was also able to maintain its electoral position despite resolute opposition to the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. Withdrawal from the talks meant that they were starved of

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media attention for extended periods. A senior DUP member, while defending the strategy of leaving the talks, admitted that, ‘… from a PR [public relations] point of view … a mistake was made’.39 Yet the party remained a major force within unionism and was able to represent the significant unionist constituency who were disaffected by the Good Friday Agreement. The peace process saw a decline in the total unionist vote. This did not translate into an automatic nationalist majority.40 It was, however, an indication of a changing balance of power within Northern Ireland. In the 1998 Assembly election, five unionist parties secured 384 000 votes, as against 389 000 for non-unionist parties.41 Together with a growing Catholic population, a greater confidence in nationalism and stronger cultural and economic influences from the Republic of Ireland, statistics like this contributed to a new political mood in Northern Ireland. In electoral terms, the Alliance Party performed poorly during the peace process. The peace process went far beyond legitimising unionism and nationalism; it actively embraced loyalism and republicanism. Given the new-found legitimacy of the extremes and the rewards that such positions offered, the centre ground held little attraction. The Agreement reinforced the notion that the Northern Ireland conflict was exclusively between two great traditions: Catholic–nationalist–republican on the one side and Protestant–unionist–loyalist on the other. There was little room for those who had been written out of the script. Furthermore, the brokerage role that a centre-ground party could hope to play (and electorally profit from) in a peace process was performed by the governments and the independent chairs of the negotiations. While the loyalist political parties, the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party, were an addition to the Northern Ireland political scene, they were not significant electoral players. Their paramilitary links may have given them influence, but they failed to establish themselves as an electoral force to threaten the larger and more established unionist parties. Both parties had geographically limited support bases. While their leaders received plaudits for their contributions to the peace process, kind words did not translate into votes. The PUP was able to secure two seats in the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, but the UDP failed to secure any seats. There were clear dangers in incorporating paramilitary-linked parties into the political system, only to have those parties rejected by the electorate. The existence of the smaller parties changed the structure and dynamic of the conflict and efforts to manage it. In the early stages of

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the peace process, the loyalist parties were often prefaced with the term ‘fringe’. While they remained electorally limited, their political contribution was significant. Their significance came from their links with loyalist paramilitarism, but also from exasperation with the established unionist parties. According to one senior UDP member, ‘The very fact that loyalist paramilitaries felt that they had to invent parties of their own indicates that they never felt that unionism was being fairly represented by mainstream unionism … they got very lazy.’42 The smaller parties, and the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition in particular, were occasionally able to play a brokerage role in the multiparty negotiations. A key role was in easing communication between the larger actors. Because there were a number of these parties, they were able to attain a ‘critical mass’, and their suggestions were able to carry slightly more weight than those of a lone party.43 Civil society Civil society was instrumental in broadening the base of the peace process beyond the political and governmental elites. This was a key factor in ensuring that the peace process was able to continue despite lapses into violence by militant groups, and periods of political impasse. Civil society also helped broaden the content of the peace process beyond strictly political and security issues. Vocal lobbies on community, cultural, economic and victims’ issues changed the tone and character of the peace process. Given that peace process actors operated at multiple levels and received support and pressure from a variety of sources, it is impossible to connect specific inputs with outcomes. However, some civil society organisations were able to make strategic interventions. These include the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, and the Group of Seven (G7), a forum for Northern Ireland’s leading business and labour organisations. Both deliberately avoided taking positions on Northern Ireland’s constitutional future. Instead they concentrated on process issues, attempting to facilitate exchanges and accommodation between other parties. It is worth noting that civil society was given an enormous fillip by the EU’s Special Programme for Peace and Reconciliation. Numerous cross-community schemes were funded, fostering bottom-up contact and accommodation. But this funding was short-term, and as the extent of community tensions in the wake of the 1996 Drumcree crisis illustrated, divisions were structural. The term ‘civil society’ normally assumes a positive engagement on behalf of informal political actors with the political process. In the

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Northern Ireland case, not all civil society organisations were bipartisan and many were explicitly opposed to the peace process. Exclusively unionist and nationalist civil society organisations – many focused on a single-issue – highlighted the case of victims in a particular community or demonstrated against parades in a particular locality. Issues were manipulated and protest events timed to make connections with wider causes. Accusations that groups were politically motivated or infiltrated were common. A number of organisations, for example the Orange Order and particular residents’ groups, were able to secure repeated ministerial, and even prime ministerial, access. At times, it seemed as though some politically connected communities were overministered to, while others received comparatively little attention. In the case of the marching disputes, key decisions were often devolved to the local level. At one level this was organic democracy. At another, it meant that relatively unskilled local activists, whether in parading organisations or residents’ associations, were charged with important decisions with Northern Ireland wide reverberations. It was often left to the leaders of the main parties to pick up the pieces.

Part two: structure and process This section concentrates on the structural aspects of the peace process and the processes through which it operated. Above all it was a process, involving a series of interactions and cumulative elements. The peace process was not an isolated attempt to resolve the conflict. It did not take the form of one-off political negotiations in the interregnum between a ceasefire and a new political beginning. Instead, the peace process was a complex phenomenon involving multiple actors working at multiple levels on a range of issues. It involved a good deal of trial and error. It extended far beyond politics and constitutional issues to encompass issues of social and cultural change, human rights, economic development and community relations. As a process it had elements of durability and sustainability. It also adopted structural features in the form of inclusivity, the three-stranded framework, the organisation of political negotiations and landmark documents. Structure While much in the peace process was impermanent and ad hoc, key elements were structural. Most of the structural factors received their permanence and legitimacy from their sponsorship by the British and Irish governments. They included the previously mentioned gatekeeping and

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timekeeping functions performed by the governments. Four structural factors are worth highlighting. The first was the inclusive nature of the process, which contrasted with the seven unsuccessful attempts to forge an agreement between 1974 and 1993. It was deliberately designed and organised to include those previously on the political margins. This was not inclusion at any price. The ceasefire proviso and mechanisms such as the Mitchell Principles and temporary exclusion from the talks were introduced in an attempt to moderate paramilitary behaviour. Both the British Conservative and Labour governments stressed that political negotiations would continue without Sinn Féin in the absence of an IRA ceasefire.44 But as one participant noted, ‘the ghost of Sinn Féin’ haunted the talks and limited the chances of securing a lasting agreement until they were included.45 The entire process was informed by the notion that those with a significant capacity for violence could wreck any agreement if not included in it. According to an Irish government official, ‘We really don’t see that you can have a stable settlement unless Sinn Féin and the loyalists are present.’46 The inclusive policy had implications far beyond the setting of tests through which eligibility to join a constitutional political process could be judged. It imposed constraints upon other, more constitutional, actors. The DUP and UKUP, affronted at the notion of being in the same negotiating process as still armed republicans, exited from the multiparty negotiations in September 1997. The UUP remained in the process, but under protest, and were deeply uncomfortable at having to share a political stage with those they regarded as terrorists. The second structural factor came in the form of the three-stranded framework. Originating in the early 1990s talks between Northern Ireland’s constitutional parties, the three-stranded approach became institutionalised in the Frameworks Document and eventually the Good Friday Agreement. Strand one referred to relations within Northern Ireland, strand two to relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and strand three to relations between both islands. In a practical sense, the three strands were a useful means of subdividing a complex set of relationships into manageable blocks for negotiation. They were also analogous with a possible three part institutional structure to manage the three sets of relationships. Moreover, the three-stranded approach was useful for underscoring the interconnectedness of relationships within the British Isles and acted as a broad parameter for approaches to the peace process. It called into play the importance of east–west relations as a counterbalance to nationalist insistence on closer north–south co-operation.

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The organisation of the political negotiations added a third structural characteristic to the peace process. The talks had a high degree of formality. They tended to be categorised or labelled, run in cycles and be concerned with specific issues. So, for example, talks could be termed as ‘exploratory’ or be scheduled to last for a set number of weeks, and their agenda could be restricted to establishing the ground rules for further talks. Negotiations were restricted to defined actors, usually the British and Irish governments and those political parties who met the criteria of a commitment to non-violence and a certain electoral mandate. Most of the meetings took place in a limited number of venues. The most commonly used location, Castle Buildings on the Stormont Estate near Belfast, had the unintended effect of uniting talks participants in a loathing of its dour and uninspiring interior.47 The ground rules, such as the proviso that nothing would be agreed until everything was agreed or limited media restrictions, added further definition to the negotiation process. As the peace process progressed, further norms of behaviour developed. For example, the refusal of the UUP to hold direct talks with Sinn Féin until September 1998 meant that the multiparty talks leading to the Good Friday Agreement moved towards a greater emphasis on shuttle diplomacy. There were few plenary sessions of the multiparty talks (they were unproductive), with sub-committees designated to particular strands and issues. It was common for participants to preface key meetings with hardline statements in the media. Even ‘breakout’ features of the talks became regularised. For example, party leaders, and David Trimble in particular, demanded regular meetings with the British Prime Minister in addition to contacts with the Secretary of State.48 A fourth structural factor in the peace process came in the form of landmark documents. The Hume–Adams ‘document’, the Downing Street Declaration, the Frameworks Document and the Good Friday Agreement stood as signposts in the peace process, establishing parameters for further discussion and contributing new language and ideas to the process. It was hoped that each document would gain the approval of as many parties to the conflict as possible and act as common ground until another document could be agreed. The continuity between these documents was remarkable, with significant elements of the Frameworks for the Future Document surviving into the Good Friday Agreement. The documents became progressively longer and more comprehensive. The aim was to maximise consent. For John Major, the Downing Street Declaration had to be constantly redrafted until the ‘Hume/Adams fingerprints’ were removed.49 In many ways it was a peace process by document, culminating in the 10 000-word Good Friday Agreement.

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Advancing the process Duration and durability While it is possible to assert that the peace process is a long-standing phenomenon, it is impossible to identify its precise starting point. The process is best regarded as a series of evolutionary processes within and between the key protagonists in the conflict. Each was reacting to a changing political, military and cultural environment. Each changed its approach to the conflict, usually over a period of many years, and not without internal dissent. These strategy reassessments are difficult to trace and there is a danger of investing too much retrospective coherence in what were often unsure first steps along an unlit path. The peace process has no endpoint. It is a process of managing rather than of ending a conflict. In a sense, the peace process has become permanent politics in Northern Ireland. The peace process has experienced periods of frenetic political activity, with intensive rounds of meetings and a bewildering pace of events. Yet a more representative picture involves long periods of stasis, circular arguments and occasional bursts of political movement. The peace process has been repeatedly extended, with the imposition of ‘quarantine’ periods for those parties associated with paramilitary violence and the shifting of deadlines. The caution of some political leaders who constantly referred back to their party members, together with interruptions from elections or the marching season, further contributed to this delay. At times, the political squabbles over symbolic issues masked a dearth of substantive political activity. At other times, there was virtually no political activity. According to one peace process participant, the last year of John Major’s premiership was ‘dead-time’.50 The extended timetable had profound implications for the process and politics in general. As the process progressed, the acceptability of slippage became part of the political consciousness. Governments, political parties and the general public took it as given that a consultation or set of negotiations scheduled to last for one month would slide into two. Political horizons and timeframes lengthened and hopes of immediate and radical change were dampened. This was a valuable, if unintended, service to politics in the Northern Ireland. One advantage of the slow pace was that it gave constituencies time to come to terms with what was often unpalatable change. The process was also durable. It survived changes of government in Britain and Ireland, walkouts and boycotts of the negotiations, the collapse and breach of ceasefires, the Omagh bomb and widespread civil disturbances relating to the parades issue. This is not to suggest

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that the process was immune from unscheduled events. In fact the reverse was often the case, with the process lurching from one eventdriven crisis to another. Yet, in large part, the process remained intact. Despite the often stormy conditions, the main actors stuck to a course. The British and Irish governments remained convinced of the utility of their model of attempting to engineer a settlement that could win the backing of a majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens and retain the consent of the main paramilitary organisations. Furthermore, their model was exclusive, leaving no room for alternative processes. The political parties built this factor into their calculations. For the paramilitary linked parties, the alternative was a return to violence, an option guaranteed to incur massive costs. Sinn Féin and the loyalist political parties regarded the peace process as the most efficient vehicle to reach their disparate goals. Even when the IRA ceasefire collapsed in 1996, the republican aim was not to wreck the peace process, but to attempt to shock it into radical concessions to them. While many in the UUP had profound doubts about the peace process, the party leadership, certainly under David Trimble, realized they had better attempt to shape the peace process from within than harp against it from without. According to Reg Empey of the UUP, unionists first learned of the content of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement when a copy was passed to protesters through the gates of Hillsborough Castle.51 Some Ulster Unionists were not prepared to make the same mistake twice. Despite upsets and periods of disjunction, the peace process maintained substantial elements of continuity. The three strands framework and intergovernmental co-operation remained constants. After talks failed to make headway in the early 1990s, it was clear that both governments would remain involved and that the general parameters for any exchanges were already established. This continuity was aided by the slow turnover of staff at the permanent government level. There was also little change at the top of the political parties. Ian Paisley had been leader of the DUP since 1971, John Hume had led the SDLP since 1979 and Gerry Adams had been President of Sinn Féin since 1983. The scale and complexity of the conflict and the peace process contributed to the longevity of the process. There were no quick fixes. The multiple actors, multiple levels of operation, multiple means of communication and multiple issues meant that the process was extraordinarily complicated. The welter of choreography, sequencing, preliminary stages, follow-up meetings, briefings, debriefings, consultations and intermediaries was not easily managed or co-ordinated.

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A success at one level did not guarantee a similar result at another. There were few discrete issues that could be easily compartmentalised and dealt with in isolation. The interdependency of issues meant that addressing one issue (for example, the early release of paramilitary prisoners) risked upsetting attempts to deal with another (for example, victims of paramilitaries). But the complexity also meant that problems on one issue were counterbalanced by opportunities on another. Movement It is possible to sit on a stationary train or bus and feel that you are moving. In actual fact a parallel bus or train is moving, but, momentarily, the mind may be tricked into imagining movement. Momentum was central to the peace process. Travel analogies were commonly used by peace process participants. In a case of Planes, trains and automobiles, David Trimble warned against ‘crash landings’, Tony Blair referred to the ‘settlement train’ leaving the station, and Gerry Adams complained that the peace process had been ‘parked’.52 Pace and direction were the key variables in relation to travel. Nationalists and republicans favoured more rapid movement on more issues than unionists or loyalists. Much of the peace process could be characterized as a contest between nationalist ‘speedy maximalists’ and unionist ‘slow minimalists’. While Gerry Adams complained that the process was ‘going too slowly’ and Martin McGuinness accused the British government of employing ‘a succession of political ploys to delay and obstruct the process’, unionists urged caution.53 John Major reassured the latter that ‘this is a democratic process, and it sometimes does grind along very slowly.’54 The process, and particularly its formal aspects such as the multiparty talks, offered considerable scope for procrastination on procedural matters such as agreeing on a chair, a talks format and an agenda. Sir Patrick Mayhew likened the peace process to a slow bicycle race, the winner of which goes slowest.55 For Gerry Adams, on the other hand, ‘The peace process cannot stand still. If it is not moving forward it is in danger of moving back.’56 At times real political movement could be confused with the perception of movement. The volume of political activity (meetings, statements, media duels) gave the impression of political movement where none existed. Republicans in particular were anxious that people ‘on the ground’ could see real change. The governments seemed to have an understanding of the need to keep the republican constituency satisfied with the pace of change. Yet they were anxious not to force the pace of political change and thereby alienate unionists. The result was

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the creation of a number of moving horizons, designed to keep participants on board the peace process. These took the form of Clinton’s visit to Northern Ireland in 1995, new phases of contacts, or low-cost confidence-building measures on the treatment of prisoners. At times, and particularly during the last year of John Major’s government, the peace process was stationary, but some of its passengers may have felt a perception of movement. According to one SDLP negotiator, ‘people talk a lot about “momentum”; people’s real interest is in direction.’57 While David Trimble, Gerry Adams and John Major may have each used the phrase ‘move the situation forward’, they envisaged movement in different directions. At times the process resembled ‘variable geometry’ with different parts moving in different directions. So, for example, unionists had considerable success in strand one of the multiparty negotiations, securing a new and potentially powerful assembly for Northern Ireland. Republicans gained significant concessions on behalf of their prisoners. However, attempting to assess an overall picture of the direction of movement is more difficult. Nationalists and unionists both claimed that the process was not moving far enough in their respective directions. Generally, its direction was that preferred by the governments. Their timekeeping, gatekeeping and organisational functions provided a powerful aid to navigation. Sequencing Timing, and particularly sequencing, were critical elements in the peace process. Participants were anxious that their actions and gestures would be reciprocated by others. Whether or not any party would or should give way on a particular issue was problematic enough. Matters were further complicated by disputes about how the necessary compromises should be sequenced. To make the first concession could be interpreted as weakness and the process offered few guarantees that movement by one side would be reciprocated by another. With no guarantee of mutuality, and a long history of mistrust, it was not surprising that parties were sensitive to the order in which political movement took place. Sequencing was most prominent during the ‘decommissioning for devolution’ impasse in the post-Good Friday Agreement period, but was an ever-present feature in the peace process. The development of the twin-track approach in late 1995, to investigate options for decommissioning and the organisation of political negotiations, was an attempt to deal with contentious issues in parallel. The ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ proviso meant that final decisions on

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a range of issues could be delayed and then tackled simultaneously in a bargaining situation. Other issues were deliberately delayed for fear that they risked destabilising the peace process. For example, the issue of police reform was not directly addressed in the Good Friday Agreement. Instead it was farmed out to an external body. Later, the publication of the Patten Report on policing reform was delayed until after the 1999 marching season lest it further inflame tensions. Mutuality During the 1980s and early 1990s the Northern Ireland conflict reached a ‘mutually hurting stalemate’ between the paramilitaries and the British government.58 No side held the capacity to win. The result of this negative mutuality was that the paramilitaries and governments engaged with each other in an effort to end the violent phase of the conflict. Mutuality also operated at a tactical level. Even during the worst years of the Troubles, paramilitary attacks on funerals, prisoners’ families and local political leaders were regarded as off-limits. The militant actors calculated that such attacks would be counterproductive and likely to prompt revenge. In the early stages of the peace process mutuality was most evident within nationalism. The Hume–Adams process and, after August 1994, Irish government attempts to draw Sinn Féin into the constitutional political process, rested on the development of reciprocal relationships. At the inter-community level, mutuality came in the calling and maintenance of the loyalist and republican ceasefires.59 But attempts to establish mutually reciprocal relationships between nationalism and unionism met with resistance. UUP attempts to create a centre-ground accommodation with the SDLP and thereby rupture the SDLP–Sinn Féin relationship were constantly rebuffed. When Sinn Féin joined the multiparty talks the UUP attempted to have them removed for contravening the Mitchell Principles and then refused to engage in direct communication with them. Continued violence from a variety of republican sources did little to endear republicans to unionism. The 1997–98 multiparty talks did not achieve the fluidity of a free-flowing bargaining situation in which concessions by one side were reciprocated by the other, in turn prompting another round of concessions. Some elements of mutuality did creep into the talks process. No side wanted to be blamed for the collapse of the negotiations. While nationalist and unionist parties patently did not trust each other, they did develop a trust in the process itself and in the chairmanship of George Mitchell. Even though Sinn Féin and most of the UUP endorsed the

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Good Friday Agreement, they advocated a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum campaign for very different reasons. Yet, with time, a certain degree of mutuality developed between the two parties. Despite deep-seated ideological enmity, Gerry Adams and David Trimble did come to recognize that they needed each other. The fall of either leader would have potentially disastrous results not just for their respective parties, but for the peace process as a whole. By September 1999, Gerry Adams noted, ‘the unionists will have to accept that the Sinn Féin leadership is the best bet that they have, and we will have to accept that the UUP leadership, and the other leaderships, are the best bet that we have.’60 The autumn 1999 Mitchell Review, dominated by the ‘guns and government’ stand-off between the UUP and Sinn Féin, lent itself more easily to mutuality. It was, according to the SDLP’s Seamus Mallon, ‘a bartering exercise’ between the two parties.61 Communication Free communication is a luxury in any violent conflict. It may be hindered by physical threats, legal sanction, or the tendency to approach issues through ideology rather than merit. Serious constraints on communication obstructed the developmental phase of the Northern Ireland peace process. On-going conflict and the British government’s stance of ‘not talking to terrorists’ meant that initial contacts had to be made at a deniable level.62 A British broadcasting ban on those parties linked to paramilitaries persisted until after ceasefires were called in 1994. Direct contact between the main peace process participants was not easily achieved. There were genuine fears about the seriousness with which the other side was engaged in the process. The British government would not meet with Sinn Féin until convinced of the permanency of the IRA ceasefire.63 The UUP negotiated the Good Friday Agreement without direct talks with republicans while the DUP exited from the talks rather than deal with Sinn Féin. Various methods of communication were employed. Messages were conveyed via third parties and secret documents were exchanged. Significant statements were embedded in political speeches or newspaper articles.64 A British government official admitted that they subjected Sinn Féin speeches to careful and ‘Byzantine analysis’.65 Generally the peace process saw a progressive increase in communication between a greater number of political actors. It was marked by a number of first-time meetings between parties or individuals who had previously regarded each other as enemies.66 The volume of communication was little guarantee of meaningful exchange. Many political exchanges were directed

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at the intra-community level. A SDLP negotiator referred to ‘issue flirtation’, through which parties raised certain issues to detract attention from others.67 For example, UUP demands that the Irish government launch an inquiry into allegations that the Irish State supplied republicans with weapons in 1970 were interpreted by nationalists as an attempt to deflect attention away from the Bloody Sunday inquiry. There was a ‘fog of peace’ and it was often difficult to separate meaningful political exchanges from the more ritualistic kind. Constant reference to the past also hindered talks. According to one UUP negotiator, contributions by Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness to the plenary sessions of the multiparty talks were ‘… about fifty years of injustice … [his] mind is stuck in gear at 1972. He hadn’t realised that the world has moved on.’68 Nationalists made similar criticisms of unionism as backward looking. Participants in the talks, including the two governments, sought to gain psychological advantage in support of their negotiating stances. It became common practice for political leaders to stress their limited room for manoeuvre in advance of talks. During the post-Agreement guns and government stalemate, both David Trimble and Gerry Adams repeatedly pointed out how far their respective constituencies were stretched and how unreasonable it was to expect them to give ground. Breakout devices A number of forums were specifically established to facilitate and encourage communication between the negotiators. In the early phases of the peace process, the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in Dublin and the Forum for Political Dialogue in Belfast provided opportunities for parties to engage with each other and broader constituencies. Each became a platform for nationalism and unionism respectively. At certain times and on certain issues the normal talks framework was inadequate. ‘Breakout’ features allowed peace process participants to circumvent the restrictions and limitations of more formal aspects of the talks process. They were also confidence-building measures in the process itself. These breakout features never reached the effectiveness of ‘the channel’ between the ANC’s Mac Maharaj and the National Party’s Fannie van der Merwe in the South African peace process.69 Nevertheless they did provide useful and alternative avenues for dispute resolution. Independent commissions on issues such as decommissioning, parades and policing had the benefit of removing contentious issues from formal political negotiations. The fact that the source of arbitration

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(the commission chair) was external to Northern Ireland was helpful. Given the contentious nature of the issues and the hurly-burly of Northern Ireland politics, the commissions only offered a temporary respite. Another breakout feature came in the form of bilateral meetings between Northern Ireland’s political leaders and the British and Irish Prime Ministers and the US President. The hope was that the direct intercession of the premiers could lend extra weight to their causes and short circuit the ponderous, consensus-based multiparty format. Unionist confidence in Secretary of State Mo Mowlam rapidly declined in the post-Agreement period with the result that unionist leaders placed great emphasis on bilateral meetings with Tony Blair. The reflective glory of show-boating with premiers was an additional attraction. A popular breakout device in other contemporary peace processes has been to stage negotiations either in secret or outside of the conflict area in order to escape the distractions of the media, intra-party dissent and spoiler violence. During the South African process, for example, parties who ran into fundamental stumbling blocks were encouraged to retreat for ‘bush summits’ or bosberade. ‘There, in seclusion, away from the pressure of audiences, in the South African wildlife setting, they could break deadlocks, debate matters of principle, plan strategy and work on new proposals.’70 This pattern was largely avoided in the Northern Ireland case. While the multiparty negotiations were held behind closed doors, the political parties and governments were careful to brief the media about events inside the conference chamber. According to Gerry Adams, ‘deals made in secret can be broken in secret’, a view apparently shared by other political leaders. DUP allegations that the UUP was ready to compromise Northern Ireland’s position encouraged the UUP to favour the negotiations remaining semi-public and in Northern Ireland.71 In the months leading to the Good Friday Agreement, the multiparty talks briefly moved to London and Dublin, but the purpose was largely symbolic. A number of civil society organisations did facilitate contact between the parties away from the hothouse atmosphere of Castle Buildings, but it remained the venue where the real negotiations were carried out. During the Mitchell review of the implementation of the Agreement in September and October 1999, crucial talks between the UUP and Sinn Féin were held in neutral venues in London. The reportedly positive ‘atmospherics’ of such meetings ultimately failed to induce a breakthrough in the devolution for decommissioning impasse. Although legal recourse offered a supplementary approach, the peace process overwhelmingly operated within the political field and there

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were few legal challenges during the process. In February 1998, Sinn Féin failed in an attempt to seek an injunction from Dublin’s High Court to halt the British government’s temporary exclusion of the party from the multiparty talks. An October 1999 legal challenge to Mo Mowlam’s ruling that the IRA ceasefire was still intact also failed; the plaintiff’s parents had been killed in the 1993 Shankill Road bombing.72 Sinn Féin mounted a legal challenge to David Trimble’s refusal to allow its two ministers to attend meetings of the North–South Ministerial Council. Another breakout feature came in the form of reference to other peace processes. There was a strong tendency to cherry-pick those international examples that suited a particular argument, but the reference to cases outside Northern Ireland did stimulate new approaches. Educational trips to other peace process areas were organised for Northern Ireland’s politicians.73 Sufficient consensus, a mechanism to ensure that key decisions were made on the basis of a majority in each community, was imported to Northern Ireland from the South African transition. It was designed to prevent one group having an absolute veto over the process and to ensure cross-community validation on contentious issues. Ultimate agreement from the multiparty talks and in the subsequent Northern Ireland Assembly was dependent on the fulfilment of the sufficient consensus test. The introduction of proximity talks was borrowed, on the suggestion of Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring, from Dayton.74 Attempts to come to terms with a violent past in Latin and Central America and South Africa were also studied by policymakers in Northern Ireland. Language and detail After submitting his report on the decommissioning of paramilitary arms, George Mitchell, paraphrasing the poet John Dryden, noted the tendency of Northern Ireland’s politicians to ‘torture one poor word ten thousand ways’. Words were ‘acceptable or unacceptable based upon who uses them.’75 Peace process participants paid remarkable attention to detail and the language used by others. At times this was a product of the absence of political movement, with the merest hint of slippage in a political position being subject to scrutiny. It also reflected the high stakes, the rigidity of positions and the emphasis on symbolism. It has been suggested that unionists and nationalists possessed different negotiating and bargaining styles, with unionist politicians (many of whom had a legal background), favouring precision and detail and

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nationalists prepared to work in the abstract and generalities.76 David Trimble took up the theme in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, noting that ‘the tradition from which I come … puts a great price on the precise use of words, and uses them with circumspection, so much so that our passion for precision is often confused with an indifference to idealism.’77 John Hume in particular was criticised by unionist opponents for his tendency towards generalisations that were difficult to engage with in negotiations.78 In reality, it is difficult to substantiate the view that nationalists favoured abstractions and unionists favoured legalese. The process rested heavily on key pieces of legislation, texts and phrases; all participants developed skills in interpreting fine detail. Certain words or phrases were deemed to be the property of one party. For Gerry Adams, ‘The equality agenda [in strand one of the negotiations] doesn’t even need negotiations.’79 For one UUP negotiator, it was a ‘so-called equality agenda’ and was the preserve of Sinn Féin.80 The language of the negotiations was English, although Sinn Féin pressed for cultural inclusion or ‘parity of esteem’. The party’s promotion of the Irish language was partly mirrored by the promotion of Ulster-Scots by some unionists. Sinn Féin politicians often addressed the plenary sessions of the multiparty talks in Irish. The language issue became increasingly politicised in the Assembly, where Irish and Ulster-Scots interpreters were provided. Unionists felt that republicans, and some members of the SDLP, used Irish simply to goad them. If that was the case, a charge the Irish-speakers denied, it worked. Many hours were taken up by debate on the language. One DUP member complained that a Sinn Féin minister was asked ‘questions in English and … answers them in the language of the leprechauns, which nobody understands.’81

Discussion: what factors facilitated movement in the Northern Ireland peace process? In May 2000, frustrated after another apparently fruitless round of talks, Secretary of State Peter Mandelson admitted that ‘deadlines don’t work’.82 Deadlines had been repeatedly used during the peace process. They raised media and public expectations of a breakthrough only to pass unmet. At times it seemed as though the deadline was more important than the quality of agreement. As the peace process developed, it appeared that the emphasis on deadlines or premature agreements was damaging to the process. A Sinn Féin Assembly member accused the UUP of deliberately employing the tactic of ‘deadline and demand’,

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while Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon referred to ‘deadline after deadline’ being missed in his July 1999 resignation speech.83 Even when political leaders reached agreement, they often referred back to their party structures before final acceptance, thus introducing more delay into the time frame. Yet the introduction of deadlines did concentrate minds. They were essential to injecting dynamic into the process, and even if not met, did spur the efforts of participants. While specific deadlines were often breached, the notion of a target date was helpful. They contributed to the peculiar nature of political movement in the peace process. This took the form of progress by lurches, (often in the immediate run-up to a deadline), followed either by behind-the-scenes progress or continuing bickering. The lurches were often the result of external intervention, and in the post-Agreement period in particular, there seemed to be a high degree of dependency on external sources of initiative. High-pressure talks formats, located in a single venue, concentrated in a set time period and facilitated by the governments or their proxies, stood the best chance for success. In a concentrated format, the possibility of the positive linkage of issues and mutual concessions became real. It was pressures outside the conference chamber that proved the most significant barrier to political movement though. For party leaders, intra-community competition between the UUP and DUP, and between the SDLP and Sinn Féin, was often given priority ahead of inter-community accord.

5 Guns and Government: Violence and the Peace Process

Introduction Ceasefires never bring an end to violence. The word itself acknowledges that there has been a truce rather than a treaty. By implication neither side has abandoned the option of returning to the use of force. At best a ceasefire may trigger a peace process that, if completed successfully, will allow violence to diminish and return to forms and dimensions which can be handled by normal legal proceedings. The greatest obstacle to this conclusion is violence itself and the effect it may have on the process. This chapter examines the relationship between violence and the peace process in Northern Ireland. Following a brief overview of the main dynamics of violence during the Troubles preceding the peace process, it has two main sections. First is a chronicle of the part played by violence since the start of the peace process. This is followed by an analysis of its forms and effects. The argument advanced is that, even when mainstream political violence is ended by a ceasefire, it reappeared in other forms to threaten the evolving peace process. Four main forms of potential threat are identified: violence by the state; violence by paramilitaries; violence in the community; and the emergence of new violence-related issues during negotiations. Each has a different effect and requires different policy approaches, and each imposed different stresses on the process. During the years following the Good Friday Agreement the most persistent impediment to settlement did not arise from constitutional, legal, political, cultural or economic disagreements, but over the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons.

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A habit of violence The conflict in the north of Ireland has been exceptionally persistent. No generation since the Plantation of Ulster has escaped its heritage of violence. In Belfast alone there were nine periods of serious rioting between 1835 and 1969, and many other years where some disturbances were recorded.1 The recent violence was the longest and most sustained of all. It was uninterrupted, except for variations in form and intensity, from 1969 to 1994.2 During the early 1970s many observers believed that the upsurge of violence in Northern Ireland could lead to only two outcomes: either the belligerents would be shocked into an internal accommodation, or they would be propelled into genocidal massacre. Neither occurred. The initial rioting in August 1969 between Catholics and Protestants, during which eight people were killed, was replaced by more structured violence after the arrival of the British army later in the month and its confrontations with the Catholic community. The emergence of the Provisional IRA, strengthened by the introduction of internment in 1971, converted the violence to a more organised confrontation between the IRA and the British Army. Changes of governments in London only affected security policies marginally: internment was introduced in 1971, but its main effect was to alienate Catholics and encourage recruitment into the IRA; in 1972 the government met secretly with IRA leaders, but to no effect; from 1976 the Labour Secretary of State, Roy Mason, embarked on a more vigorous military campaign; the IRA hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981 stimulated international interest in Northern Ireland and revived the IRA’s campaign. The IRA campaign of violence was conducted mainly in Northern Ireland – more than 93 per cent of all killings took place there – but occasionally spread to Britain and Europe. During the 1990s the pattern shifted again, with loyalist paramilitaries causing more deaths than any other group in the years immediately preceding the ceasefires. The security forces and paramilitaries were both perpetrators and victims of violence. The violence of the Troubles reached a peak in 1972, when 468 people died. In subsequent years, a succession of particularly dramatic events periodically raised the casualty rate: the killing of 13 Catholics by paratroopers on Bloody Sunday 1972; the loyalist Ulster Workers’ Council strike in May 1974; the activities of the ‘Shankill butchers’ in the mid-1970s, and the IRA Hunger strikes in 1981. By the 1990s the violence had gradually declined to an annual average death rate of below 100. Between 1969 and the declaration of the ceasefires

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by republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations in 1994, the Troubles had claimed 3173 deaths in Northern Ireland, and a total of 235 in Britain, the Irish Republic and the rest of Europe. Thousands of people were intimidated from their homes, and thousands more injured.3 Inevitably the prevalence of violence affected legal and policing procedures. There was practically a standing army on the streets after 1969. Public opinion on the state’s handling of these problems was divided and fluctuated during the years of violence. There was concern that the barrage of special powers infringed individual rights, that emergency powers were not exercised impartially, and that the surveillance apparatus installed by the British army collected information not directly related to security concerns.4 Unionists often complained that security policies never amounted to more than ad hoc responses to IRA violence. According to a senior member of the Democratic Unionist Party, British government attempts to defeat the IRA were ‘half-hearted’.5 With the exception of a short period in the late 1970s, security policy had largely been one of containment, maintaining what the British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling called ‘an acceptable level of violence’.6 The result was stalemate. Each set of combatants, the security forces and the paramilitaries, was able to frustrate the other, but unable to secure victory.

Violence and the peace process: changing patterns Just as the pattern of violence constantly altered during the Troubles, the pattern also changed throughout the peace process. Violence was a constant backcloth during the political negotiations, when the Good Friday Agreement was reached and endorsed and after the power-sharing government was up and running. The peace process saw formal and informal breaches of the paramilitary ceasefires, the emergence of spoiler groups, a rise in communal violence and disturbances related to parades, continued criminal fundraising and community ‘policing’ by the paramilitaries, as well as feuding between and within the paramilitary organisations. Much of the violence during the peace process was qualitatively different to the violence of the Troubles. Even when the IRA halted its ceasefire in February 1996, the resumed violence was primarily tactical, with an eye to securing Sinn Féin’s entry into multiparty talks.

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Consequently the 1996–97 campaign was initially restricted to English targets (and an attack in Germany) and when attacks resumed in Northern Ireland they concentrated on military rather than economic or sectarian targets. In the early phase of the ceasefires the paramilitary organisations switched from punishment shootings to beatings lest the former be interpreted as a breach of the ceasefire. A series of unclaimed murders of Catholics were attributed to loyalist paramilitaries. They were accused of operating a ‘no claim, no blame’ strategy. In the republican communities Direct Action Against Drugs, which claimed responsibility for a number of murders, was widely believed to be a crude fig-leaf for the IRA. The key point is that organised violence became more sensitized to political needs during the peace process. The two governments were faced with the task of creating and maintaining a process capable of delivering an accord broadly acceptable to as many parties as possible. The challenge was to maintain law and order bounded by the precepts of liberal democracy while recognizing that fully armed paramilitaries retained both a certain legitimacy and the ability to derail political developments. It was a delicate balance: tough security responses risked driving the paramilitaries to more extreme violence, while a more relaxed approach led to charges that people were left unprotected from criminal violence. The governments had a number of instruments at their disposal to encourage good behaviour from those on the political margins. They insisted on ceasefires as a basic entry requirement to the political process, although the interpretation of what constituted a breach of the ceasefire tended to be political rather than legal. Nor were ceasefires sufficient. They also required verification, a suitable time period without significant violence, after which rewards came in the form of access to the political process. It was made clear, particularly before the Good Friday Agreement, that security reductions were reversible. The demand for decommissioning was another attempt to assess the trustworthiness of the paramilitaries and blunt their military capabilities, but it proved to be a major obstacle to political agreement. The peace process guardians also hoped that paramilitaries would remain in the process for the sake of their prisoners. The prospect of early releases, and more lenient prison regimes, were useful bargaining chips and when the early release programme was instituted it was conditional on the maintenance of the ceasefires. The Mitchell Principles, originally almost an aside in the January 1996 Mitchell Report on decommissioning, had a significant and long-lasting impact on the conduct of peace process.

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Before participants were admitted to multiparty negotiations they were required to agree to six principles, including their commitment:









to democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues; to the total disarmament of all paramilitaries; that such disarmament must be verifiable by an independent commission; to renounce and oppose any effort to use force or the threat of force to influence the course of the outcome of all-party negotiations; to abide by the letter 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; ‘to take effective steps’ to end ‘punishment’ killings and beatings.7

The Principles encouraged responsibility and self-policing among the talks’ participants and were invoked in early 1998 to censure the UDP and Sinn Féin for the sins of the UDA/UFF and IRA. Yet the introduction of artificial rules and regulations to encourage good behaviour were probably of a second order to the main factor motivating the loyalist and republican parties: a voluntary desire to remain in the process. Parties wanted to maximise the returns for their own communities and defend their positions. For most parties the best way to achieve this was to remain within the process.

Violence and the peace process: an analysis In 1997 Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach, suggested that ‘it is an observable phenomenon in Northern Ireland, and elsewhere, that tension and violence tend to rise when compromise is in the air’.8 The greatest political violence in South Africa, for example, occurred during the transition to majority rule between 1990 and 1994, when almost three times as many people were killed as in the previous four years. The use of terror also rose dramatically during the Middle East peace process, and more than two-thirds of victims were killed while the Rabin–Peres negotiations were under way.9 In Northern Ireland too the Downing Street Declaration, which cleared the ground for the peace process in December 1993, was followed by an increase in violence: 50 people were killed during the six months after the Declaration, up from 32 during the equivalent period in the previous year.

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Nevertheless, in the months following the Northern Ireland ceasefires in 1994 political violence declined significantly. It was replaced by other forms of violence, each in its own way a threat to the peace process. These fell into four main, and frequently overlapping, categories: 1. 2. 3. 4.

violence by the state violence by paramilitaries violence in the community the emergence of new violence-related issues during negotiations.

1. Violence by the state The management of security disengagement is one of the most important aspects of any peace process. Thirty years of violence had grafted a complex security apparatus on to Northern Ireland’s social structures. The number of soldiers, police and prison personnel, and civilian guards increased to exceptional levels. The general population in Northern Ireland had become accustomed, however reluctantly, to security searches, constant army patrols and increased surveillance. Normal legal processes had been replaced by emergency legislation and procedures, information gathering and sometimes abuses of power. For those working in the security industry, the ceasefire turned this on its head. Within six months of the August 1994 ceasefires security ramps were removed. One hundred and four border roads with the Irish Republic which had been blocked off by the army were gradually reopened. Five army bases were closed and the Belfast Civilian Search Unit was disbanded. Security gates in town centres were opened. Army levels were reduced.10 The RUC found itself operating what one observer called ‘the third ceasefire’.11 The pace quickened after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Soldiers and police who had spent their lives imprisoning militants watched as they were released under the terms of the Agreement. Between 1995 and 2000, 41 out of a total of 105 army bases and installations had been closed, and the army declared its ‘aspiration’ to reduce the total number to ‘no more than 20’.12 The security forces augmented during the violence were also cut back from around 30 000 in 1970 to 13 500 in 2000, and the army indicated its intention to reduce the number of troops to 5500 overall, ‘if the security situation allowed’.13 The Patten Independent Commission initiated moves to reform the police force that regarded itself as the bastion against terrorism. During the Troubles there was evidence of collusion between members of the RUC and loyalist paramilitary organisations.14 The allegations

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continued during the ceasefires, notably over the murder of the solicitor Rosemary Nelson by loyalists. The arrest of members of the security forces for terrorist offences underlines the threat left after all internal wars: that members of an experienced and well-armed force, threatened by downsizing and unemployment and general demoralisation, have the potential to destabilise a nervous peace process, as demonstrated in East Timor in 1999 and Fiji in 2000.

2. Violence by the paramilitaries Disaffection within paramilitary organisations is an obvious threat to peace processes. Militant groups are rarely the monoliths presented by their opponents. They are complex organisms performing different functions and providing umbrellas for different interests. The diversity allows paramilitary leaders to assume the moral high ground by emphasizing their political and civil roles, while turning a blind eye to punishment beatings and murders. It also helps to explain strategic shifts between war and negotiation, as different elements within the organisations win temporary dominance. During ceasefire periods the varied interests sheltering under the paramilitary umbrella diffused and fragmented. At least four posed separate threats to the peace process: A return to political violence Ceasefires may bring an official end to political violence, but they are never unanimous. The more disaffected members of the militants may desert to splinter groups or perform individual acts of violence. The less affected may go along with the majority view, but their agreement is conditional. Their continuing allegiance depends on measurable rewards from negotiation, most notably prisoner releases and the dismantling of the security apparatus. These rewards are rarely immediate. Consequently the pendulum may swing back towards the militants, as when the London bomb ended the IRA ceasefire in 1996. The journalist Mary Holland pointed to discontent within a number of IRA units as a plausible explanation for that Canary Wharf bombing: On previous occasions since Ireland became independent, every move by the IRA away from violence and into constitutional politics has involved a split between the men of violence and the politicos. The Provisional IRA was itself born from such a development.15

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The renewed IRA campaign differed from the earlier war. First, it was primarily waged in England; and second, the casualty rate was exceptionally low. The IRA killed more people during the 18 months of its first ceasefire than in the 17 months of violence following its breach.16 The return to war was far from easy for the IRA. It meant that the early release of republican prisoners was abruptly ended. A series of security setbacks led to the seizure of tonnes of arms and explosives and dozens of arrests. Funding from the United States diminished.17 Eventually the ceasefire was restored in July 1997, after agreement with the British government that movement towards inclusive talks would be accelerated and that the talks themselves would have a limited time frame.18 The accompanying IRA statement explained why they had ended the first ceasefire: ‘After 17 months of cessation in which the British government and the Unionists blocked any possibility of real or inclusive negotiations, we reluctantly abandoned the cessation.’ The explanation for the renewal of the ceasefire was more vague: ‘Having assessed the current political situation, the leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann (the IRA) are announcing a complete cessation of military operations.’19 The insistence that all participants in multiparty talks sign up to the Mitchell Principles was a useful device for regulating political violence. The suspension of Sinn Féin and the departure of the UDP for breaches of the principles, however temporarily, were necessary to sustain credibility. Their acceptance of the suspension, however truculently, indicated their determination to remain within the peace process.20 Tactical violence The willingness of some negotiators to exploit violence is a common feature during peace negotiations and was not unprecedented in Ireland. When the Irish parliamentary leader Charles Stewart Parnell was jailed during the Home Rule campaign in the 1880s he forecast correctly that ‘Captain Moonlight will take my place’, thus positioning himself as the only alternative to revolutionary violence.21 The paramilitaries’ minimum price for declaring a ceasefire was the inclusion of their political representatives in negotiations. The main apprehension for some constitutional parties was that these political surrogates would use the threat of violence for tactical advantage, and that the pace of negotiation would be determined by the gunmen outside the negotiating rooms. ‘Democrats’, according to a senior DUP politician, ‘were mainly the window dressing’.22 To paraphrase Clausewitz, unionists feared that paramilitary negotiators were approaching politics as the continuation of war by other means.

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Any acts of violence during the process were taken as confirmation of this fear. During the early stages of the peace process, unionists constantly warned that Sinn Féin would use IRA violence to remind other negotiators of their power. Indeed, there were occasions during the ceasefire period when the Sinn Féin leaders appeared to feed unionist fears, as when Gerry Adams drew the attention of a republican rally to the fact that ‘they (the IRA) haven’t gone away, you know’, an implied threat that the IRA would resume its war if Sinn Féin did not profit during the negotiations. The triumphalist appearance of newly released republican prisoners at a Sinn Féin conference before the May 1998 referendum was cited as further evidence of conspiracy. Despite these apprehensions, the unwillingness of Sinn Féin or the loyalist parties to resort to tactical violence was one of the more remarkable aspects of the peace process and a tribute to the mixture of sanctions and rewards which distinguished it from previous efforts. Spoilers: zealots versus dealers The very entry of paramilitary interests into negotiations implies that the purity of their cause has been compromised. It imposes strains on organisations that are essentially military, and it is difficult to find any instances when such a move was not accompanied by a split between two main groups – the zealots and the dealers. The zealots often comprise radical groups who picked up the torch (sometimes literally) they believed had been surrendered by the dealers. Their aim is not to influence the content of a peace agreement. It is to ensure that agreement is not reached or, if reached, is derailed. The emergence of spoiler groups was far from new in Irish politics.23 The Irish writer and IRA member Brendan Behan once said that the first item on the agenda for any republican meeting was ‘the split’. The Provisional IRA itself was formed in 1969 after a split from the Official IRA. The Irish National Liberation Army had also broken away from the Official IRA in 1975, and 13 INLA members were killed during its own internal split in 1987. In 1986 the newly formed Republican IRA and Republican Sinn Féin broke away from the Provisionals in opposition to its alleged softer line.24 A new round of splits followed Sinn Féin’s signing up for the Mitchell Principles in 1997. More than 20 Provisionals resigned in protest at Sinn Féin’s entry to the peace process, and the INLA stepped up its violence. Two new republican paramilitary groups, the Continuity IRA (CIRA) and the ‘Real’ IRA were formed, complete with the usual political fronts, and declared their intention to resume the armed

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struggle. They did not find it easy, partly because of improved security intelligence leading to arms finds and a number of arrests, and partly because of threats from the Provisional IRA, from which some dissidents had defected. The CIRA was unable to sustain an effective campaign. The ‘Real’ IRA was forced to lie low after the public outrage at the killing of 29 civilians in the Omagh bomb in August 1998. It resumed its activities in 2000 with a number of mortar attacks, some of which were intercepted, notably the seizure of a bomb almost twice as powerful as the Omagh bomb, and apparently designed for an Apprentice Boys parade in Derry.25 These challenges to the Provisionals’ authority had some bizarre effects. The Continuity IRA accused the Provisionals of destroying one of their bombs south of the border before it could be transported to Northern Ireland. In another incident in Derry a member of the Provisional IRA punched and kicked a CIRA man in an attempt to stop him planting a bomb in a bank. Later the CIRA, apparently without irony, criticized his action as putting people in danger.26 Spoilers were not confined to the republican family. The growing involvement of the PUP and UDP in the peace process also brought charges of betrayal and defections by loyalist splinter groups. The Loyalist Volunteer Force was formed by dissidents in 1996 and further reinforced during the period of negotiations. Two other maverick loyalist groups, the Orange Volunteers and the Red Hand Defenders, responded to the Agreement by attacking Catholic churches, bars and houses. Described by Ronnie Flanagan, the RUC Chief Constable, as a ‘loose collection of the lowest common denominator of terrorists and criminals on the so-called loyalist side of life’, they adopted a quasi-religious justification for their attacks.27 The Red Hand Defenders’ statement admitting arson attacks on ten Catholic churches described them as ‘the cleansing of ten Roman temples’, and went on to quote Deuteronomy: ‘Ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God.’28 Some of these loyalist attacks were joint operations by the Orange Volunteers and the Red Hand Defenders.29 There was also increased co-operation between the smaller republican spoiler groups. In July 2000, arrests following the seizure of a shipment of arms in Croatia indicated that it had been a joint operation of the CIRA and the ‘Real’ IRA, the former providing the contacts and the latter the funds.30 It was difficult to tell if these alliances reflected the weakness of smaller dissident groups or their increased capacity to undermine the peace process.

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Internal paramilitary violence Punishment beatings by paramilitaries continued throughout the peace process as both loyalists and republicans carried out what they regarded as their policing role in a number of communities. People were expelled from the community and severely beaten for ‘anti-social behaviour’. Alleged drug dealers were attacked in both communities, and at least seven were killed by the IRA during the period of the first ceasefire.31 The number of these ‘paramilitary style attacks’ by loyalists and republicans, to use the RUC classification, amounted to 216 in 1998 and 206 in 1999.32 Punishment beatings ebbed and flowed as the political climate changed. They diminished during President Clinton’s visit in 1995. They were suspended during the Mitchell review in late 1999 and while Sinn Féin was in the power-sharing cabinet.33 Republican beatings rose again during the suspension of the Executive in 2000, indicating an ability to turn them on and off at will. Attacks on targets within one’s own community fulfilled different functions for republicans and loyalists. In the first six months of 2000, republicans carried out 25 beatings and 21 shootings, mainly against young people who challenged the authority of the IRA within their communities through stealing cars and other ‘anti-social’ activities. During the same period loyalists were responsible for 35 beatings and 36 shootings. Most of these were carried out by the UDA to contest control of loyalist areas with the UVF and to remove rivals in criminal enterprises and the drugs trade.34 The internecine feuding within the loyalist communities was potentially the greater threat to the peace process, and spilled over into direct attacks between the UVF and the UDA/UFF, the latter allied to the dissident LVF. At least seven paramilitaries were killed during these wars and almost 200 families were forced to evacuate their homes in an escalating turf war in 2000. Some of the attacks were disowned by paramilitary sources as unauthorised or the actions of mavericks. Mitchel McLaughlin, one of Sinn Féin’s main spokespersons, protested in January 1996 that Sinn Féin was ‘powerless’ to stop the IRA engaging in drug-related beatings and killings, a claim regarded with scepticism by unionists.35 The need to maintain clear water between violence officially condoned by the mainstream paramilitary organisations and the general lawlessness inherited from thirty years of paramilitary violence was a crucial test of the ceasefires. The pervasive vigilantism by loyalist and republican paramilitary groups throughout the period of the peace process not only destabilised the process but also raised fundamental questions about the nature of peace.

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3. Violence in the community The fragmentation of paramilitary organisations was not the only violent accompaniment to the peace process. Two other forms of violence also threatened it – the revival of direct confrontations on the streets, and a rise in the conventional crime rate. Return to the streets In Northern Ireland, as in South Africa, the declaration of the ceasefires led to a return to more direct violence. This often took the form of confrontations between Catholics and Protestants, especially during the marching seasons. The change is not surprising. During the period of organised violence, paramilitaries must be dominant and disciplined to be effective. When a ceasefire is declared the discipline of the military campaign diminishes, but the underlying sectarian hatred remains, taking the form of riots and undisciplined confrontations with ethnic rivals or the police. The paramilitary representatives who entered negotiations were not divorced from the instincts and antagonisms of their communities, and some felt the need to support them. The danger is that such confrontational violence may swing the balance from negotiation back towards a military campaign. ‘Ordinary decent crime’ Was there any relationship between this confusing mixture of paramilitary violence and ‘normal’ non-security crime? When the Troubles started in 1969 Northern Ireland had the lowest per capita prison population in Western Europe. The conventional, as opposed to politically-motivated, crime rate continued to be low during the years of the Troubles. Rates of victimisation for burglary, assaults and thefts were substantially lower than in England and Wales.36 Initially this pattern continued after the ceasefires, in contrast to the dramatic increase in normal crime during the comparable period in South Africa. In 1997 the prison population showed a decrease for the fourth consecutive year and the crime rate was the lowest for nine years. In 1999, however, there was a significant up-turn in the crime rate. Violent crimes increased by 21 per cent over the previous year and attacks on the police by 40 per cent.37 Car theft rose by 20 per cent, and domestic burglary by 8 per cent.38 South Africa presents a sombre warning. By the mid-1990s the high level of conventional crime had far outpaced political violence as a destabilising factor. By 1998 the average daily homicide rate was 68 and still rising. More ominously, the barrier between ordinary crime

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and South Africa’s underlying racial tensions, never sharp, became increasingly blurred. Fifteen hundred white farmers were attacked between 1994 and 1998, resulting in more than 200 murders, and threatening to create a loop back from post-settlement civil violence to the racial violence familiar from the earlier struggle. 4. The emergence of new violence-related issues during negotiations When talks began, a number of new substantive issues emerged, most of them security related. The three most notable among them were early prisoner releases; the decommissioning of illegal weapons; and policing. i. Early prisoner releases It has been estimated that around 20 000 people were incarcerated in Northern Ireland for politically motivated crimes between 1970 and 2000.39 More than 400 paramilitaries were still in prison by 1998, and the potential for negotiating their early release was a strong incentive for loyalist and republican political parties to engage in multiparty talks. There were historical precedents. In 1917 the surviving leaders of the Easter rising were released within a year of their arrest, and all political prisoners from the 1919–21 Anglo-Irish war had been released by the end of 1921. The government’s response to those arguing that mass releases would threaten law and order, was that 438 life sentence prisoners had already been released since the Troubles began; 18 had been recalled to prison for breach of licence and only two convicted. In any case, it was pointed out, many of the prisoners were eligible for release by the end of 1998. By early 1998 it was almost universally accepted that most prisoners would be released as part of an agreement. One Irish government official regarded prisoners as ‘a moderating force’, exerting a positive influence on their political cousins.40 ‘The prisoners are a factor in the overall political situation in Northern Ireland’, said John Taylor, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, after the party’s visit to loyalist prisoners at the Maze prison, ‘whether we like it or not’. The Secretary of State’s visit to the jail recognized the same reality. Republican prisoners from the Irish Republic in British prisons were gradually repatriated from late 1997 onwards. By May the timetable for releases of all Northern Ireland prisoners observing a ceasefire had been settled, and a Sentence Review Body was set up to implement it shortly after the Good Friday Agreement. Despite this progress, the temporary release of both republican and loyalist prisoners to attend party discussions on the Agreement

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provoked such general outrage as almost to jeopardise the Agreement itself. Prisoner releases continued until July 2000, when all remaining prisoners from the paramilitary organisations observing ceasefires were set free. One man sentenced to a total of 435 years in prison was released after serving less than three years.41 The price of compromise on political prisoners was the outrage and distress felt by the families of their victims. The agreed release of prisoners after the 1998 Agreement led to an increased demand that the victims of violence should be accorded a greater priority. The establishment of a Victims’ Commission failed to stem concerns that those who had suffered most had been sidelined in the desire for a political settlement. In June 1999 the IRA revealed where their ‘disappeared’ victims had been disposed, but was embarrassed when police were unable to find most of the missing bodies. The depth of Northern Ireland’s sectarianism was confirmed in July of the same year by the ‘long march’ on behalf of ‘innocent’ victims; the protest was confined to Protestant victims of violence, and the march culminated at Drumcree during the height of the annual Orange demonstration. ii. Decommissioning The decommissioning of paramilitary arms grew into the single most stubborn obstacle during the peace process. The problem was complicated by a lack of accurate information about how many weapons remained under IRA and loyalist control. The RUC and Irish Garda expressed particular concern about the remaining weapons from four shipments to the IRA from Libya in the 1980s, which included grenades, detonators, ammunition, guns and semtex explosives. Decommissioning had been discussed in the secret negotiations prior to the 1994 ceasefire, but largely as a confidence-building gesture. Attitudes began to harden during 1995. The unionists and the British government insisted that guns should be handed over prior to negotiations. Both the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries refused to consider decommissioning their weapons until an overall settlement had been agreed. Sinn Féin argued that it was unrealistic to expect decommissioning from an IRA deeply distrustful of the British. They pointed out that there had been no decommissioning in Ireland after the Troubles in the 1920s, and claimed that the weapons were de facto out of commission, stored in underground caches. ‘Trust in rust’ became the catch phrase. By the end of 1995 the argument about prior decommissioning had effectively stalled progress towards multiparty negotiations.

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Attempts to resolve the issue did not lack ingenuity. An International Body on Decommissioning, chaired by former US senator George Mitchell, was set up to break the impasse. In 1995 a twin-track approach was proposed to advance negotiations and decommissioning simultaneously along parallel paths. It proved increasingly difficult to separate the twins. Sinn Féin claimed that the decommissioning issue was used to exclude them from negotiations and that the government’s rejection of the twin-track compromise was responsible for the IRA’s decision to end its ceasefire in February 1996. The next lurch forward came after the election of a secure Labour government in Britain in May 1997, and the renewal of the IRA ceasefire in July. The new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, bluntly announced that ‘decommissioning is secondary to actually getting people into talks.’42 A threeman Independent International Commission (IIC) was established under Canadian general John de Chastelain and amnesties were promised to anyone handing in terrorist weapons. The Good Friday Agreement required that decommissioning should be implemented within two years of the Agreement. The IRA responded that ‘there will be no decommissioning by the IRA’.43 The inflation of the decommissioning issue did not end when the Agreement was reached. As the release of prisoners accelerated during the autumn of 1998 in accordance with the Agreement, decommissioning precipitated a political crisis. The republicans’ refusal to disarm became the focus for the opposition to David Trimble, now the First Minister of the Executive-in-waiting, within his own Ulster Unionist Party. It became difficult for Trimble to compromise on decommissioning, and he began to delay other elements of the Agreement. Sinn Féin was either unable or unwilling to persuade the IRA to respond. Gerry Adams declared that ‘the violence we have seen must be for all of us now a thing of the past, over, done with and gone’,44 deliberately echoing the exact wording of a demand made by Tony Blair. He also advised a fringe meeting of the Labour Party conference in October 1998: ‘don’t kick the dog to see if it is still sleeping.’45 Nevertheless it was the IRA refusal to decommission that led to the suspension of the power-sharing executive in February 2000. In the end the compromise which allowed the Ulster Unionists to return to government in May was an IRA declaration that they would ‘initiate a process that will completely and verifiably put IRA guns beyond use.’46 The key move was the IRA’s agreement to permit inspection of its arms dumps by two independent inspectors, Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president, and Cyril Ramaphosa, the former African National Congress leader. After their first inspection in June the inspectors

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reported that the armaments they had seen could not be used ‘without our detection’.47 The device they installed was not described in detail, but was described as a dual-key system, similar to a bank deposit box with two keys held by the IRA and the inspectors.48 ‘We have formed the distinct impression that the IRA are serious about the peace process’, Ramaphosa declared after the second inspection in November 2000. This approach bypassed the decommissioning dispute, but did not resolve it. Decommissioning was as much a symbolic as a military issue. For republicans it smacked of surrender. Even the inspection of IRA arms dumps by outsiders contravened the IRA’s General Order No. 11, which declared it ‘treachery punishable by death’.49 For unionists the IRA’s rejection of decommissioning was evidence that republicans were not committed to peaceful negotiations. The refusal of the Unionists to activate the agreed political institutions until the IRA decommissioned, and the IRA’s refusal to decommission, appeared at times to defy logic. The reason, however, was not illogical. The Unionists’ ‘No guns, no government’ stand, and Sinn Féin’s refusal to hand over a single weapon, were different reflections from the same mirror: from each side’s need to keep its primary constituency on board. iii. Policing It is axiomatic that divided societies require a police force which reflects the divisions. Section 195 of the 1996 South African constitution, for example, insisted that the police and defence forces ‘be broadly representative of the South African people’ and by 1996 16 000 former guerrillas had been absorbed into the army. While there was little demand for the integration of ex-militants into Northern Ireland’s police force, policing reform was an important part of the Good Friday Agreement. ‘There are two Royal Ulster Constabularies’, wrote David McKittrick. ‘The first is the force that describes itself as “quite simply the bulwark between anarchy and order” … but it also faces a charge sheet drawn up by republicans, nationalists and human rights groups’.50 Most unionists saw the RUC as the principal defence against terrorism during the Troubles, a defence that cost the death of more than 300 officers. For some nationalists the RUC was a Protestant force, and RUC officers had colluded with loyalists paramilitary groups in targeting Catholics.51 Policing reform was universally accepted as an essential part of any political agreement, but opinions about its extent and timing closely followed sectarian loyalties. Thirty years of unrest had created a police force distorted in a number of important ways. First, it was unusually large. In 1969, when the serious violence began, the RUC establishment stood at 3044. By 1998 it

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had risen to 8450, with a further 3000 full-time and 1358 part-time reservists. Even ignoring the RUC reserve, the force had almost tripled during a period when Northern Ireland’s population increased by less than 2 per cent. To gain some impression of how large the RUC would have been without the violence, the English region of Northumbria, with a population close to Northern Ireland’s at just under 1 500 000, has a police establishment of 3600 officers, well under half the size of the RUC. An additional complication was the continuing low proportion of Catholics in the force. No peace accord is likely to be accepted in a divided community unless the new arrangements for policing reflect the central division in society. This had been recognized in 1922 when a third of the places in the newly-formed RUC were reserved for Catholics. The actual percentage probably never exceeded 12 per cent and stood at around 8 per cent in 1999.52 This posed a mathematical conundrum – how was the police force to be reduced to a more appropriate size while significantly increasing the number of Catholic officers? The problem did not end there. It is a common criticism that police officers are often forced to live in communities cut off from the general public. The prevailing ‘police culture’ takes on additional concerns when it has a sectarian overlay. The Inspector of Constabulary noted an institutional ‘resistance to change’ within the force.53 The RUC culture has been criticized as dominantly Protestant, with a prevalence of Union flags outside stations (unlike the custom in Scotland), portraits of the monarch inside them and an over-protective attitude to the word ‘Royal’ in the force’s name. Not surprisingly, popular attitudes towards the police were similarly divided. Nationalist confidence in the police was further weakened by the events at Drumcree in July 1996. Whatever the operational justification, the failure of the RUC to move against Orange law-breaking and road blocks in the days before the march, its decision to force through the parade despite the earlier decision to re-route it and its willingness to clamp down on nationalist areas, confirmed to many nationalists that the police force, and perhaps the state which directed it, had demonstrated partiality in the enforcement of the law. In 1999, 75 per cent of Catholics wanted the force to be either replaced or reformed, while 70 per cent of Protestants wanted it to remain intact and unchanged.54 Policing reform was promised in the Good Friday Agreement, as were reviews of security arrangements, emergency legislation and the criminal justice system. The Independent Commission on RUC Reform, set up under the leadership of former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten, delivered its report in September 1999. The report’s 175 recommendations

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included a new emphasis on human rights, a reformed approach to accountability and a new training and development strategy. The force should be reduced to 7500 over the next ten years, ‘provided the peace process does not collapse and the security situation does not deteriorate significantly’. The composition of the force ‘should be broadly reflective of the population of Northern Ireland as a whole, particularly in terms of political/religious tradition and gender’. The strongest opposition to the report came from unionists. Their fury was concentrated almost exclusively on the section entitled ‘Culture, Ethos and Symbols’ rather than on the more substantive recommendations. This section recommended that there should be a new badge and symbols and that the Union flag should not be flown outside police stations. It also recommended that ‘while the Royal Ulster Constabulary should not be disbanded, it should henceforth be named the Northern Ireland Police Service.’55 ‘We are transforming the RUC, not disbanding it’, Chris Patten claimed in his statement accompanying the report. Therein lay the basis of the dispute as the resulting bill worked its way through parliament in late 2000. Nationalists argued that the Patten Report was in itself a compromise, and resisted amendments on the grounds that Catholics would not join a force carrying the RUC name. Many unionists insisted that Patten’s recommendations on the name and symbols of the new force were insulting and should be reversed, reflecting a growing unionist perception that the balance of advantage in the peace process was tilting against them. In April 2000 the Ulster Unionist Council passed a motion refusing to re-enter government unless the RUC’s name was retained, yet another illustration of how symbols could outweigh substance when feelings ran high. In early 2001 a recruitment campaign for the Police Service of Northern Ireland met with an encouraging response. New recruits would be appointed on a 50/50 Catholic/Protestant basis, but the policing issue remained contentious with the SDLP and Sinn Féin still refusing to nominate members for the new Policing Boards.

Violence as a catalyst for peace Occasionally, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, certain atrocities provoke universal condemnation and galvanise popular reaction against the perpetrators. After decades of kidnappings and murders, hundreds of thousands of Basque protesters took to the streets to protest against the murder of a Basque town councillor by ETA in 1997. During the

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South African peace process the murder of 28 ANC supporters in Bisho in 1992 was not followed by the same violent reaction which had followed the massacre of 48 people at Boipatong three months earlier; instead it became a stimulus for the negotiations rather than a cause for withdrawal.56 What is the nature of these atrocities that converts them into catalysts for peace? Why did Ballymoney and Omagh have such a powerful effect in Northern Ireland when so many awful actions from the past did not? War-weariness is part of the explanation, but this had been evident for years without stimulating compromise. The reason why certain violent events become catalysts for peace lies not in the nature or severity of the violence, but in its timing. Support for the Good Friday Agreement by both communities enabled public outrage to be harnessed, as opposed to simply vented. It is the harnessing that is important. Outrage without a mechanism to enforce it fades away, as the Peace People had discovered in the 1970s. In 1998 a mechanism was provided, in the Good Friday Agreement, and one created by compromise between local politicians. It was notable that, during 1998 and especially after the Omagh bomb, the parties to the negotiations began to describe violence as attacks, not just on the victims, but on ‘the integrity of the talks process’ itself. The point is this: courage in condemning atrocities is not enough. What converts outrage to action is condemnation within the context, or at least realistic hope, that agreement is possible, and that further violence could threaten it. It is also clear that such moments are transitory. The often-mentioned ‘window of opportunity’ is barely ajar and soon slams shut. The most important effect of the Ballymoney and Omagh atrocities was not that they ended spoiler violence. It was that they enabled the middle grounds of unionism and nationalism to find their voice at a time when the voice of moderation could make a difference.

Discussion: why decommissioning became a problem How did decommissioning escalate into the major obstacle to agreement in Northern Ireland? The need to decommission IRA arms had been raised before the 1994 ceasefires, but as a relatively minor problem. Sinn Féin’s response was initially relaxed. ‘The whole issue of decommissioning of weapons obviously has to be part of finding a political settlement, and there couldn’t be a political settlement without that’, Gerry Adams said in 1994, ‘but I don’t think there’s any point in anyone trying to leap ahead.’57 It was almost casually upgraded to a pre-condition for

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Sinn Féin’s admission into negotiations by the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Patrick Mayhew, in 1995.58 From then it became a virility test for both the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Féin. The point was underlined through Sinn Féin’s bargaining ploy. They proposed to link the decommissioning of IRA weapons with demilitarisation – the removal of British troops and bases – so that they could be introduced in tandem. The suggestion that the state’s defence forces and a paramilitary army should be regarded as equivalent infuriated unionists and was rejected by the British government. This dispute, however, was about different views of state legitimacy, and sits at the core of all guerrilla wars. Each regards its army as legitimate and the other as illegitimate. One can only speculate about what effect it might have had if demilitarisation and decommissioning, both intrinsic in any successful peace process, had been better orchestrated during the earlier stages of negotiation. In many other contemporary peace processes decommissioning was treated as an important but not a central issue. It rarely featured in the many peace processes in Latin America since the 1980s. In Israel, even after the transfer of power to the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat was unable to persuade the leaders in Palestinian refugee camps to hand over their weapons.59 The 1991 South African National Peace Accord did not ask the ANC to hand over their arms caches, but required that firearms should not be displayed at public meetings. The retention of weapons by militants was accepted as an unfortunate reality in many other agreements, including the Anglo-Irish war in 1921. So why did it come to dominate the process in Northern Ireland? In Northern Ireland the decommissioning impasse can best be understood as a symbolic stand-off. ‘The issue became a metaphor for basic positions on the peace process and attitudes towards political opponents.’60 The unionist demand for decommissioning arose from a growing feeling in the unionist community that they had conceded more than they had gained. Decommissioning became their line in the sand. It is likely that, if decommissioning had been resolved, the mutual distrust which really explains the impasse would have expressed itself in other issues – policing reform, demilitarisation, law reform. Decommissioning had become a symbol for the limits of surrender for both sides. Its consequences, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, may be more than symbolic. The likelihood is that Northern Ireland’s legacy to other peace processes is that decommissioning may become a more significant obstacle to progress than it has in the past.

6 Third Parties: External Influences on the Peace Process

Introduction What constitutes an external actor in the Northern Ireland peace process? When asked about external actors in the peace process, one Unionist negotiator was happy to include the Irish government as a ‘foreign government’.1 Republicans often viewed the British government as a foreign or colonial power. Certainly the British and Irish governments held unusual positions with regard to Northern Ireland. Despite occasional protestations to being neutral facilitators, both governments were clearly involved in the conflict and its management as actors. Yet both were sovereign states in their own right and the locus of power in each lay firmly outside Northern Ireland. Both also regarded Northern Ireland as exceptional in terms of constitutional design and culture. For the purposes of this book, the governments of Britain and the Irish Republic are not regarded as external parties. As outlined in Chapter 4, they were joint guardians of the process. The 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement saw the beginning of a remarkable intergovernmental relationship. In many respects, this joint guardianship was the most important ‘external’ influence of all. This chapter aims to place the external influences on the Northern Ireland peace process into perspective. The main motors determining the pace, direction and outcome of the peace process were located in Britain and Ireland. External factors did have a significant input, but in a context largely created by internal forces. The chapter will examine the role of diaspora populations, public opinion and non-governmental activity in Britain, the Republic of Ireland and the United States. It will then examine the role of the US government, by far the most influential external actor in the Northern Ireland peace process. Of particular 106

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interest is the changing nature of the US influence and how, with time, more attention was paid to unionist sensitivities. The role of the European Union and the example of overseas peace processes are also examined.

Non-governmental influences Many conflicts have been influenced by large and proximate diaspora populations. The Tamil population in India, for example, has played a major role in determining Indian government policy towards Sri Lanka. It is an important political constituency, yet Indian governments must walk a tightrope between assuaging this group’s interests and dampening separatist demands which might have implications for India itself. Furthermore, many diasporas stem from catastrophe such as famine or ethnic cleansing and result in trauma and the creation of a collective memory, often infused with anger and myth.2 Ireland has a massive diaspora population, particularly in Britain and the United States. The overwhelming cause of emigration was the desire for economic advancement, although the traumas of the Irish famine and eighteenthcentury religious persecution of Presbyterians were also significant. Britain People of Irish origin comprise the largest ethnic minority in Britain.3 Yet this population has had a minimal impact on British domestic politics. While Wales and Scotland have contributed major figures, past and present, to British domestic politics, Ireland has not. This is notwithstanding Ireland’s, at times disproportionate, contribution to British business, sport and culture. Irish immigrants who did become involved in British politics prospered by dealing with local issues rather than through reference to the ‘Irish Question’.4 Popular resentment following IRA campaigns in England may have also encouraged many Irish people to keep a low profile. During the peace process, the diaspora population played a negligible role. No party in Britain saw the Irish community in Britain, whether pro- or anti-Union, as worth courting. Indeed, it is debatable whether or not an Irish community as a potentially effective political lobby actually exists.5 British public opinion was generally supportive of the peace process. There was a general acceptance that it involved a departure from normal politics and that a number of risks and compromises were necessary for the wider goal of a lasting settlement. But there was no blank cheque towards Northern Ireland. A July 1999 opinion poll found that

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75 per cent of Britons believed that paramilitary prisoner releases should be stopped until paramilitary groups began decommissioning. Fifty-four per cent also said that they distrusted Gerry Adams, even after the republican acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement and his frequent visits to Downing Street.6 Ex-militants are never universally welcomed into the political mainstream. Even five years after the Arafat–Rabin handshake on the White House lawn, 42 per cent of Israelis considered Arafat a terrorist and only 26 per cent a statesman.7 As Table 6.1 shows, the British public was consistent in its lack of interest in the Northern Ireland issue, despite the remarkable events of the peace process. Much of this was the result of a fatigue factor following 30 years of violence and the seemingly interminable wrangles associated with the peace process. Incidents like the 1996 Canary Wharf bombing could grab the public interest, but only in the short term. The bottom line was that the island of Britain was relatively insulated from Northern Ireland and had other pre-occupations such as the economy and public services. According to one British newspaper columnist in 1999: I suspect that the bulk of people feel something like this: Northern Ireland is a primitively sectarian place, where people will always be killing each other in pursuit of some medieval quarrel or other. As long as they don’t bring their differences over to the mainland, and involve us with their tedious quarrel by way of bombs in the West End of London, then we can happily forget all about them, while being duly grateful for Tony [Blair] and Mo [Mowlam] for arranging this happy state of affairs.8 The joint British–Irish custodianship of the process proved to be important in keeping British public opinion, in Blairite parlance, ‘on message’. Summits and intergovernmental conferences provided a regular stage to brief the public and gave the impression of earnest activity, even if the governments were deadlocked. While the British public viewed the French and German governments in a negative light, they

Table 6.1 Percentage of the British public identifying Northern Ireland as ‘the most important issue facing Britain today’9

%

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

1.6

1.0

3.0

1.7

5.3

2.8

2.8

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were inclined to see the Irish government as helpful in the search for peace and placed the blame for problems in the peace process on the Northern Ireland parties. British politics offered few rewards for a deft handling of the Northern Ireland peace process. Despite receiving public and cross-bench acclaim for his efforts with regard to Northern Ireland, John Major’s government was swept from power in May 1997 by a public motivated by a desire for change after 17 years of Tory rule. In all probability, Northern Ireland neither won nor lost votes for Major. The peace process was one of the few issues in British politics on which an effective bipartisan relationship developed between the Conservatives and Labour. Differences did emerge from time to time and neither party was above the occasional temptation to score points. In the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement the Tories were critical of Labour for its failure to halt prisoner releases despite continued punishment beatings and the refusal of paramilitary organisations to disarm. Nevertheless there was a general recognition by the main political parties that the potential offered by the peace process was too important, and delicate, to risk through Westminster antics. The real bonus of this informal bipartisanship was to allow the government to concentrate on the issues of the peace process rather than worry about criticism from the home front. In other contemporary peace processes, including those in Sri Lanka, Spain and Israel, divisions within domestic elites and the majority community were often the critical stumbling block. It is difficult to identify extra-parliamentary and non-security lobbies in Britain that were influential on the Northern Ireland question. The media, in general, supported the bipartisan position. Unionists claimed that the City of London was anxious to avoid further bomb attacks and so pressurised the British government to pursue a peace process strategy, but such claims are impossible to verify. A key change did take place within the Labour Party prior to its election in 1997. Its traditional pro-united Ireland policy was replaced with a recognition of the primacy of the consent principle – a change that allowed Labour to take over navigation of the peace process where the Conservatives left off. Republic of Ireland Opinion in the Irish Republic was more engaged on the Northern Ireland issue than in Britain. The state was proximate to Northern Ireland, the over-spill of the conflict had a greater impact on the political life of the Republic and there were strong emotional and cultural connections between the two parts of the island. From the foundation

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of the state, Irish unity had been a sacred goal. Through time it had become more a rhetorical and declaratory position than a realistic aim; dusted off with due ceremony when the occasion demanded but usually overshadowed by the welter of domestic demands on the state. Public opinion was broadly supportive of the peace process, preferring a durable accommodation and an end to political violence rather than a united Ireland. This was a key factor, freeing Irish governments to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the peace process rather than beating a nationalist drum. Public opinion in the Irish Republic was generally pro-nationalist. Blame for blockages in the peace process was usually directed towards unionists and the British government. Republican violence also attracted heavy criticism and applied additional pressure on the IRA in the months leading up to the 1994 ceasefire, when violence had risen sharply. The Dublin Sunday Tribune voiced a growing condemnation of IRA intransigence by the Dublin media just one week before the ceasefire: ‘the IRA campaign, although not the only obstacle to this (peace) process is now beyond all reasonable doubt the most substantial one. That is why the killing must stop.’10 The breakdown of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996 sparked public demonstrations across the state. Some elements in the Irish media and civil society went against the flow and declared the peace process ‘a vast folly’ and decried the ‘morally coercive’ atmosphere engendered by the two governments in which ‘to dissent is to want war’, but these were generally regarded as lonely and eccentric voices.11 There was no major outcry when the Irish government reaffirmed its commitment to the principle of consent in the 1993 Downing Street Declaration, accepting a united Ireland only if a majority in Northern Ireland supported it. The 62-year-old territorial claim was finally deleted from the Irish Constitution in December 1999 via a simple declaration by the cabinet following a ten-minute meeting.12 Again there was no public outcry. The gradual attitudinal change on partition reflected wider economic, social and cultural changes in the Republic. It had become an enthusiastic member of the European Community and made immense strides to becoming a post-nationalist state. The strong support for the peace process was reinforced by the positions of the two dominant Irish political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Although often differing in tone and nuance, both parties pursued broadly the same approach to the peace process; supporting an inclusive and durable settlement in partnership with the British government of the day.

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While the peace process was often the main news item in the Republic, it did not decide the fate of governments. There was also a considerable ‘switch-off’ factor associated with Northern Ireland. Turnout in the May 1998 referendum on the Good Friday Agreement was 81 per cent in Northern Ireland but 56 per cent south of the border. United States Approximately 40 million people in the United States claim Irish descent, a potentially powerful constituency.13 There is little hard evidence of the modern electoral importance of this community. Only a fraction of the 40 million ‘Irish-Americans’ retained an interest in contemporary Irish affairs. According to an August 1999 poll, 69 per cent of Americans identified a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland situation as either a ‘very important’ or ‘somewhat important’ US foreign policy goal.14 This general aspiration did not indicate an active and mobilised diaspora community. Processes of assimilation and the upward mobility of immigrants had led to a spatial distribution far beyond the few northeastern US cities initially favoured by Irish immigrants. A decline in the number of Irish immigrants throughout the twentieth century had also limited the numbers with first-hand experience of Ireland. Nor can it be taken for granted that Irish-Americans have an automatic preference for the nationalist cause. The first significant waves of emigration to America from Ireland were Ulster Presbyterians.15 The 1990 US census showed that a majority of those acknowledging Irish descent classed themselves as Protestant.16 Yet most Irish-Americans favoured a nationalist outcome. In 1998, 50 per cent of Americans identified a united Ireland as their preferred outcome, with 17 per cent favouring continued union in the United Kingdom. Thirty per cent either expressed no opinion or said the issue did not matter.17 In contrast to Britain, non-governmental actors in the United States had a significant influence on the Northern Ireland peace process. On the day that John F. Kennedy (of Irish Catholic descent) was assassinated, the Speaker of the House of Representatives – the majority leader of the US Senate – and the chairman of the Democratic National Congress were all Irish Catholics.18 Yet this potentially powerful lobby had a negligible impact on British policy in Northern Ireland. The Provisional IRA campaign of violence in the 1970s led to the formation of new republican support groups, among them Irish Northern Aid (NORAID), founded in 1970, and the Irish National Caucus, formed as an umbrella organisation for Irish-American groups in 1974. Some of the groups became involved in fundraising for the IRA and others in

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human rights campaigning and humanitarian aid.19 A 1992 study of the chairpersons of more than 200 Irish-American groups found that nearly half blamed the British government for the conflict, and 2 per cent blamed the IRA, although only 7 per cent believed that Irish-Americans should support the IRA.20 By the 1990s, key figures in the US political, media and business worlds were able to combine and mobilise on the Northern Ireland issue. Americans for a New Irish Agenda (ANIA) was founded in 1991 and targeted major American politicians. The success of this network lay in its connections to the sources of power and influence over US foreign policy rather than in electoral mobilisation. ANIA differed from previous Irish-American lobbies by extending beyond establishment politicians to encompass key figures in corporate America and, crucially, figures close to Bill Clinton, a presidential candidate in the early 1990s. An ANIA delegation met Clinton in 1992 and was instrumental in persuading him to take an interest in Northern Ireland. After Clinton’s election, later in the year, these contacts were maintained. The lobby was proactive, petitioning the President and his advisers, facilitating contact between the White House, State Department, Irish government and Northern Irish politicians, and briefing the media. It was also significant in creating the illusion that an IrishAmerican public actually existed as a coherent and politically powerful unit and was watching Clinton’s every move on the Northern Ireland issue.21 The implication was that a president who was acutely conscious of his approval rating would seek to keep this community satisfied.22 Its access to the President, through senior Democratic Party figures such as Edward Kennedy, Chris Dodd and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, also proved to be crucial. Less high profile figures such as Republican Congressman Peter King, publisher Niall O’Dowd and businessman Charles Feeney played important behind-the-scenes roles in courting Sinn Féin leaders and gaining their confidence. This lobby and others were effective in steering IrishAmerican activism away from support for violence. Audiences who often wanted to hear ‘more bang for their buck’ had to be persuaded of the possibilities offered by a peace process and IRA ceasefire.23 In the months leading to the 1994 IRA ceasefire members of the lobby acted as go-betweens between senior Irish republicans and the Irish government. By meeting with Sinn Féin and IRA figures, at a time when republicans were political outcasts, the lobby attracted criticism for reflecting a pro-nationalist bias. Yet this third party role was an effective way of sounding out paramilitary intentions and conveying messages. The lobby was prepared to take risks that governments could

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not. There can be little doubt that the lobby had a pro-nationalist bias. In the early phase of the peace process in particular, unionists saw it as part of a ‘pan-nationalist front’. The lobby did take steps to shed its pro-nationalist image and was partially successful in this goal. It was firm in its condemnations of republican violence and, as the peace process continued, displayed a greater willingness to consider unionist views.24 Efforts were made to include David Trimble, by invitations to the United States and the award of honorary degrees. The Irish-American lobby sought to engage the Clinton White House in a constructive manner, rather than to challenge or embarrass it over Northern Ireland. They sought to encourage the White House to co-operate with it, a result greatly facilitated by its public condemnation of violence. The gradual internationalisation of the Northern Ireland conflict from the signing of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement onwards made the lobby’s task easier. The British government had become less ‘possessive’ and defensive and more tolerant of overseas interest as long as it was aligned with its broad approach of engineering an accommodation between the two communities. The early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process made the lobby’s task much easier. Previously, Irish-American lobbyists had sought major initiatives by US presidents, often in the form of direct intercessions with the British government. The new lobby made it clear that the main dynamics for a viable Northern Ireland peace process were already in place. The United States would not have to coerce parties into peacemaking or initiate contacts between them. Instead, the US role would be one of soft intervention and facilitation.25

The United States government While the Irish-American lobby could recommend and encourage, real power and influence lay with the US government, and particularly the President. The traditional US policy of non-involvement on the Northern Ireland issue, preferring to regard the conflict as an internal matter for the United Kingdom, was dramatically overturned by the Clinton administration. According to one Sinn Féin negotiator, Clinton ‘is more proactive on … [Northern Ireland] … than he needs to be’.26 A senior Irish government official described the US involvement as ‘unparalleled’.27 Another described it as ‘disproportionate’ and noted that at one stage there was ‘a section of the National Security Council, four or five staff members, whose full time job it is to pursue the Irish issue’.28

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The primary US role was to encourage Northern Ireland’s parties to reach a peaceful and inclusive settlement. In most part, the US administration was careful to mirror the positions of the British and Irish governments. The encouragement was both general and specific. Generally it underlined that the peace process did exist and offered a realistic prospect of a durable accommodation. The specific encouragement came in one-to-one meetings between the President and Northern Ireland’s political leaders, and endorsements of particular talks processes or initiatives. Clinton made a number of key appointments during his tenure that consolidated US influence on the peace process. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was instructed to lead a delegation to a Belfast investment conference in December 1994. The appointment of Jean Kennedy Smith, sister of the late John F. Kennedy, as US ambassador to Dublin (1993–98) also proved significant and helped control the flow and tenor of information reaching the White House. The most influential American in the peace process was George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader. Mitchell was appointed as a special economic adviser on Northern Ireland to the President. This was the beginning of Mitchell’s lengthy and central role in the peace process. Later to become chair of the International Commission on Decommissioning, the multiparty talks and the autumn 1999 review of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, Mitchell represented a direct line from the Oval Office to the heart of the peace process. The New York Times welcomed the Good Friday Agreement on its front page with the headline, ‘Can–do America’s patience paid off with Ulster pact’.29 While this downgraded the importance of the British and Irish governments, and of the politicians who actually reached agreement, the participants in the negotiations were unanimous in praising Mitchell’s ingenuity, neutrality and patience. Mitchell, in his closing remarks, graciously said that he had not had a cross word directed at him during the talks. This probably made him unique among the participants. Massaging the ever-delicate egos of Northern Ireland’s politicians, providing an external stage for events and statements, facilitating meetings and communication, encouraging dialogue and compromise and, crucially, spreading political optimism – these constituted the day-to-day political interventions of the United States. Many of the interventions were of a purely symbolic nature and were unconnected with the essential detail of the peace process. The potential costs of such interventions were low. The same held true for the exit costs, a point picked up by a number of key figures in the peace process. A senior Sinn Féin figure

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echoed the views of others in saying that Clinton ‘could just walk away from the process if it got bogged down’.30 Clinton did seem genuinely interested in the fate of the peace process. He visited Northern Ireland in 1995, 1998 and 2000, instituted a virtual open-door policy at the White House for Northern Ireland politicians and made a number of personal interventions at key moments. Crucially, management of the Northern Ireland issue moved from the traditionally Anglophile State Department to the White House where the President could keep an eye on developments. According to a Sinn Féin leader, ‘he would appear to have become personally engaged in the process, and he did get a very warm response in Ireland and I think that affected him; that reaffirmed his sense that he could become successfully involved.’31 An Irish diplomat reinforced this view, saying that Clinton ‘… was better informed and frankly more committed and interested than any of his predecessors.’32 Another Irish official concurred, believing that it became a matter of ‘personal commitment’ for Clinton.33 Much of Clinton’s wider foreign policy was driven by economics. He was keen to make an overt connection between US foreign policy and mainstreet USA and saw the value – for the US economy – of the promotion of peace and prosperity. A stable and prosperous Ireland, an entry point to the European Union, was included in this vision. The United States was the largest single overseas investor in both parts of Ireland. US firms had invested $1.9 billion in Northern Ireland in the 1993–98 period and accounted for approximately ten per cent of the manufacturing workforce.34 The US role in the Republic was even greater, illustrated by a $2bn investment by a US computer giant in 2000.35 The young, English-speaking workforce made Ireland an attractive location for high-technology investment, as did a low corporation tax rate for manufacturers. By 1999 the Republic was the world’s second largest exporter of computer software, in large part thanks to US investment.36 While the private sector took the lead, the US government contributed $20 million per year to support economic initiatives in Northern Ireland. According to Clinton, ‘a bright future for Northern Ireland requires prosperity as well as peace’.37 It is important not to exaggerate the economic motives for Clinton’s involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process. Yet promoting US economic interests lay at the heart of the Clinton foreign policy catechism, along with low risk interventions, soft facilitation and maximising public relations advantages. Northern Ireland fitted the bill perfectly. It was anticipated that Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, would devote less attention to Northern Ireland. The incoming administration

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made it clear that it ‘remained ready to be engaged when needed’, but also recognized that the Northern Ireland parties were now centre stage and that third party facilitation could have limited effect.38 Reactions to US involvement On a number of occasions in the peace process US policy depended on key decisions made by the President. The most innovative of these was the decision to grant Gerry Adams a temporary US entry visa in 1994, before the IRA had called a ceasefire. Clinton overruled advice from the State Department and the Belfast Consulate, and ignored extensive lobbying from the British government. His decision to invite Gerry Adams to the White House in 1995 also angered the British government, but he was consistent in rewarding those who took ‘risks for peace’.39 The strong impression in the early phase of the peace process was that Clinton was pro-nationalist. Certainly, the Irish government, SDLP and Sinn Féin actively encouraged US involvement and were generally pleased with the results. According to a senior Irish government official, ‘we believe he has called it right throughout the process’.40 A senior Sinn Féin figure noted that ‘this administration will always give the call to Dublin’ when faced with competing views from Dublin and London.41 John Major’s government was uncomfortable with the level of US involvement with the process and many unionists strongly opposed it. UUP Chairman, Jim Nicholson, told his 1995 party conference that, ‘the United States should realise that we are not overawed by its size and strength … . When Mr Clinton comes to our Province, he should prove his impartiality or he would be better to stay at home.’42 The DUP was even more strident in its rejection of ‘interfering busybodies coming across the world seeking to score political points and stir up strife in our Province.’ The advice was clear: ‘Remove the manure from your own backyard’ before taking a stance on the Northern Ireland issue.43 Despite the lack of evidence suggesting that a substantial Irish vote existed, unionists feared that Clinton’s involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process had electoral motivations. In the run-up to his 1996 re-election, one UUP negotiator feared that the lure of IrishAmerican votes ‘will colour his judgement green’.44 As the peace process continued, unionist attitudes towards the US moderated. In large part this reflected a more circumspect policy by the US and its recognition that overbearing interventions could be counterproductive. One Irish government official noted that the US had ‘learned over the years that sometimes it’s better to wait until you’re asked’.45 One UUP negotiator noted that ‘initially the administration’s approach was not

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balanced’ but admitted that it had become ‘more balanced’.46 For one loyalist politician the US influence was ‘definitely becoming more even-handed’.47 Survey evidence consistently showed higher Catholic than Protestant approval for the US involvement in the peace process. In a 1998 survey, 55 per cent of Protestants termed the US government as either ‘very helpful’ or ‘quite helpful’ in the search for peace, as against 93 per cent of Catholics.48 A coolness was often reported between Bill Clinton and John Major. According to one Irish government official, ‘I have met Clinton probably five or six times, and I think on every single occasion his antipathy to British Toryism was mentioned.’49 This factor, if ever significant, certainly ceased to be relevant with Tony Blair’s election as British Prime Minister in May 1997. Clinton and Blair developed a close working relationship through co-operation on foreign policy and the promotion of a ‘third way’ by New Labour and the Democrats.50 The personal link between the two men may have been influential in helping maintain Clinton’s commitment to Northern Ireland. It is worth noting that there was a limit to US influence. Repeated calls by President Clinton for compromise on the ‘guns and government’ issue had little effect. As telephone calls from the Oval Office became more commonplace, they risked losing their mystique. Furthermore, the White House machine found it difficult to connect with the vital decision-making constituencies within political parties and militant organisations. While the President could hold talks with the leaders of political parties and governments, and issue appeals to the people of Northern Ireland, the decision-making councils in the parties and paramilitaries were often left unmoved.

The European Union The European Union had little political impact on the peace process. While generally supportive of the British and Irish governments in a typically ‘Euro-bland’ way, political initiatives by the EU were out of the question. The British and Irish government’s common membership of the EU was a key factor in the development of a strong intergovernmental relationship. Prime ministerial meetings on the margins of EU summits became commonplace.51 The EU’s most significant impact was economic and cultural, particularly on the Irish Republic. Substantial structural aid to the Republic resulted in an increased orientation towards Europe. This led to a dilution of narrow nationalism and the development of less partisan attitudes towards Northern Ireland.

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This liberated Irish government policy on Northern Ireland from the mid-1970s onwards and eventually allowed the Republic to move away from its insistence on territorial unity. Generally, Northern Ireland’s nationalists were supportive of further European integration, many viewing it as a vehicle for increased harmonisation between both parts of the island. Many unionists viewed Europe in a more suspicious light, wary of its potential for weakening sovereignty within the United Kingdom. SDLP suggestions that the EU play a direct role in new government structures for Northern Ireland failed to attract unionist support during the talks processes. Suggestions that the EU’s use of consociationalism in its own organisation and decision-making would rub off on Northern Ireland’s political leaders and permeate into new structures similarly failed to materialise.52 The EU did contribute to a number of norms which found their way into the Good Friday Agreement, most notably in the provision that Northern Ireland’s laws would conform to the European Convention on Human Rights.53 The organisation did make a significant financial contribution in support of the peace process. Within weeks of the 1994 ceasefires, a Special Peace and Reconciliation package worth 300 million ECU was put together, illustrating a high degree of confidence in the emerging peace process. A further 100 million ECU followed in 1998, giving a total in excess of £375 million.54 The cash injection had a considerable impact at community-level and boosted Northern Ireland’s already well-developed civil society. In comparison to Northern Ireland’s annual £3.7bn subsidy from the British exchequer, however, the European money was minor. In the words of one senior DUP member, it was ‘only three weeks of the normal subvention’.55

The example of other peace processes Thirty-eight formal peace accords were agreed in 33 states between 1988–98.56 Given their prevalence, it was not surprising that some peace processes had an exemplar effect on each other. The very fact that there was political movement in some long-running conflicts, notably South Africa and Israel–Palestine, had an inspirational effect on Northern Ireland. Nationalist politicians tended to be more open to international comparisons than unionists, with the latter often unconvinced of the merits of comparing the Northern Ireland case with non-United Kingdom examples. According to one DUP politician, ‘I don’t think that the lessons are as useful as nationalists like to make out.’57 Both sides engaged in cherry-picking, selectively using overseas examples to

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reinforce their arguments. For Sinn Féin, the South African transition, which had minimal arms decommissioning requirements, provided a laudable example. For the UUP, the failure to address the arms issue led to ‘civil chaos’.58 Other peace processes not only illustrated that change was possible in seemingly intractable conflict situations, but their scope and allembracing nature extended the Northern Ireland process beyond strictly political or security issues to address cultural and community issues. Overseas peace processes were also useful in pointing towards best case practice of how specific or technical issues were overcome. A sufficient consensus voting mechanism, road-tested in South Africa, was introduced as a safeguard against majority domination in the Northern Ireland Assembly.59 Overseas examples of truth recovery processes also fed into Northern Ireland’s attempts to come to terms with its own past through its Victims Commissioner.60 Politicians from all of the main political parties availed of study visits to the sites of other peace processes and useful linkages were made. The US government and parties made funding and facilities available for political training, especially for the fledgling loyalist parties. For a senior member of the UDP, the main lesson from a visit to South Africa did not come from any of the organised sessions on good governance. The greatest impact came from ‘seeing the two sides behaving towards each other in a civilised way’.61 Sinn Féin was particularly proud of its access to the African National Congress (ANC) and used visiting ANC leaders to endorse the Good Friday Agreement among its supporters in Belfast.62 Key figures from overseas peace processes, and particularly Mandela and de Klerk, were courted as though they knew the ingredients of an elixir that could unlock the latest obstacle between Northern Ireland’s politicians. Others were invited to tackle more specific problems, often after the efforts of the British and Irish governments had been exhausted. It was hoped that they could act as neutral third parties and mediate between local parties. George Mitchell was joined on the original 1995–96 International Body on Arms on Decommissioning by former Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri and Canadian General John de Chastelain. De Chastelain later chaired the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, established under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, and was assisted by a Finn and an American. The Patten Commission on RUC reform had American and South African experts alongside those from Britain and Ireland. In May 2000, former ANC official Cyril Ramaphosa and former Finnish president Martii Ahtisaari

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were drafted in to monitor IRA weapons bunkers. Brian Currin, a South African lawyer with experience of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was invited to act as an independent mediator on the Drumcree parades dispute in June 2000. The ‘neutrality’ of the third parties was regularly contested by local politicians. In order to operate, they had to be approved by the British and Irish governments and yet retain enough distance from the governments to be regarded as truly independent. It was an unenviable task. While Northern Ireland sought to bring in external expertise and learn from other peace processes, its own experiences provided examples for other societies attempting to reach accommodation after sustained conflict. This inter-peace process cross-fertilisation had a greater capacity when limited to specific procedures or practices employed in the negotiations rather than general or broad-brush comparisons. Headlines such as ‘Taoiseach points to NI as model for Tibet’ risked overselling the international lessons that could be gleaned from the Northern Ireland case.63 A large number of conferences examining the transferable lessons from peace processes were held in Northern Ireland, often concentrating on public policy or community issues. Basque nationalists in particular looked to Northern Ireland as a source of comparison and drew conscious parallels with specific issues and landmark documents. One example was the staging of an ‘Ireland Forum’ in the Basque country in 1998 by a coalition of nationalist interests to identify lessons from the Northern Ireland case. Interestingly, one of the most unusual yet successful features of the Northern Ireland peace process has not been replicated in other situations. The model of sustained and structured British–Irish guardianship seems, thus far, to be unique.

Discussion: what impact did external influences have on the peace process? The peace process originated and was primarily sustained by internal sources. On the whole, external sources of influence were sensitive to the need for an internally driven accord. Most were supportive of internal initiatives and took the form of facilitation rather than intervention. The British and Irish governments, in their positions as guardians of the peace process, had significant control over external sources of interventions and the local parties had considerable power to resist or ignore them. Restraints on external influences came in two forms: the external actors themselves and the reactions of political actors in Northern

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Ireland. The status of the British and Irish governments, as established liberal democracies, encouraged self-restraint among potential intervening parties. The permanent involvement of the two governments had the effect of absolving other governments from intervention. When they did intervene, it often took the form of soft facilitation and was known and approved by the British and Irish governments. Conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and central Africa had given the international community its fill of ethnic conflict and humanitarian disaster in the 1990s. Many governments were only too glad to endorse the British and Irish government’s efforts and limit their interventions to rhetorical support. Not all local parties welcomed external influences in the peace process. Nationalists and republicans had an interest in internationalising the conflict, believing that international pressure would encourage the British government along a reformist path. Sinn Féin, for example, briefed foreign embassies in Dublin on a regular basis.64 Many unionists, on the other hand, regarded Northern Ireland as an internal matter for the United Kingdom. This position changed somewhat as the peace process developed. Indeed the UUP and the loyalist political parties actively courted overseas actors, particularly in the United States. According to a senior Ulster Unionist, ‘the key is the nature of the involvement; it ought only be one of encouragement rather than interference.’65 The structure of the peace process further limited the effectiveness of external intervention. As made clear by the British and Irish governments, the outcome of political negotiations would ‘be put to the people of Northern Ireland for their approval in a referendum’.66 Much of the peace process had a strong local flavour, for example parades disputes connected with particular localities, and remained incomprehensible to outsiders. The intra-community nature of much of Northern Ireland’s politics ensured that political parties remained responsive to their grassroots and would be punished for taking external direction. The talks processes themselves were semi-secret, with negotiations carried out in sub-committees or in corridors. The most significant political contribution from external actors, in the main United States, came in the ability to inject momentum into the peace process. George Mitchell’s role as chairman during the negotiations, and as trouble-shooter called back in 1999 to try to resolve the decommissioning impasse, were lauded by all participating parties. President Clinton’s statements on the peace process were overwhelmingly positive; encouraging ‘all those involved to get the peace process back on track’, and offering the prospect of ‘a bright future of peace’.67

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The Washington Post led with the Good Friday Agreement on 11 April 1998, its headline claiming that ‘Clinton’s support played a major part in clinching the deal’.68 Few would dispute the judgement. The opportunity to travel outside Northern Ireland to conferences, state occasions and even the White House served as a useful safety valve for Northern Ireland’s political leaders. Often these opportunities made no essential difference to the peace process. No deals were brokered or ingenious solutions hatched. Yet the meetings proved invaluable in demonstrating to their domestic constituencies that the politicians were engaged in a serious business. To be seen on the world stage, rubbing shoulders with the US President or other luminaries, was often an effective distraction from a lack of political movement at home. The impact on Sinn Féin and the loyalist political parties, marginalised from the sources of power in their recent past, was magnified. The involvement of external parties changed the structure and tone of communication in the peace process. The matrix of contacts between Northern Ireland, London and Dublin was extended outwards to include Washington and other centres. This resulted in the infusion of new ideas, terminology and personnel. Opportunities for Northern Ireland’s politicians to meet each other abroad, or to meet overseas leaders, proved helpful in breaking down barriers to communication. Although often psychological and emotional, these barriers were a real obstacle to the beginning of meaningful negotiations between protagonists. Clinton’s 1994 decision to admit Adams to the United States, and subsequently to meet with him, offended the British government and many unionists. But it was important in establishing new norms of contact and in sending the message that it was possible to hold such meetings without compromising one’s own position. All these external activities contributed to the gradual spread of new ideas and approaches. They came in the form of the example of other peace processes or new approaches to pluralism that moderated the behaviour of militant parties and influenced attitudes towards peacemaking and accommodation. Although intangible and impossible to track from source to outcome, much of the peace process was informed by outside forces. Its principal driving force, however, was internal and the course was primarily charted by the British and Irish governments and Northern Ireland’s politicians.

7 Peace Dividends and Peace Deficits: the Economics of the Peace Process

Introduction The prospect of a peace dividend is constantly presented as an incentive to end hostilities. The economic benefits of peace in Northern Ireland and in other conflicts are clear. It has been estimated that the cost of the war in Sri Lanka, for example, amounted to US$723 000 000 in 1999 alone, 13.26 per cent of the state’s budget.1 It is no coincidence that the first approaches to the ANC in South Africa came from white businessmen. The business community in Northern Ireland was also at the fore in urging an agreement. Delivery is another matter, however, and the expected peace dividends are often disappointing, as they were in the Palestinian Authority and in South Africa.2 Initial hopes of greater prosperity in Israel were raised by a growth in international investment after the Oslo Accords. Indeed the $2 billion in international aid to Gaza and the West Bank were essential to the very existence of the Palestinian Authority.3 The hopes of prosperity were dashed by a severe downturn from 1996 as the process stalled. Gross National Product in the Palestinian Autonomy Areas in particular fell dramatically. The inability of the South African administrations to implement speedy economic improvements and, therefore, to secure more equitable distribution in housing, employment and general prosperity, led to increased levels of social and political unrest. The crime rate soared and has become a major post-settlement problem.4 Despite the disappointments, there is a growing expectation that international economic aid is an essential underpinning for peace processes and that it should have ‘extra-humanitarian goals to mitigate conflicts, promote distributive justice, and support tolerance between various identity groups.’5 123

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This chapter considers the economic consequences of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The economy had suffered during the years of the Troubles, but was showing some signs of recovery immediately before the 1994 ceasefires. It was anticipated then that the extent and quality of any peace dividend would depend on five factors – new direct grants; increased investment; revival of the tourism and retail sectors; an acceptable approach to the fair employment issue; and resolution of the security factor – each of which is discussed in this chapter. It concludes by discussing whether Northern Ireland benefited from a peace dividend in the years following the ceasefires.

Economics and the peace process In February 1995, just six months after the first IRA ceasefire, a conference was held in Belfast to discuss the role of peace dividends in peace processes.6 The 25 invited participants – academics, policy-makers, economists, businessmen and community workers – all had a particular interest in the Northern Irish economy. The conference looked at the experiences of South Africa and Israel, both peace processes judged at the time to be more advanced than the embryonic process in Northern Ireland. On the basis of these comparisons, and on the basis of the current economic climate, the participants were invited to speculate on the likely effects of economic factors on the peace process. The result was a mixture of inducements and warnings, rather typical of the uncertainty always associated with economic forecasting. As Paul Gorecki said, ‘economic models perform well for small changes within a well-defined set of relationships. Peace is a major change that may affect the underlying relationships. Therefore it is difficult to forecast with any precision.’7 The guidance from the South African and Israeli experiences seemed to offer grounds for optimism. In the Middle East it was claimed that progress had been greater on the multilateral track (incorporating working groups on the environment, water, refugees, arms control and regional economic development) than on the more public bilateral talks between Israel and its neighbours. The US had initiated a donors’ conference within a few weeks after the signature of the Declaration of Principles, in September 1993, although concern was expressed about the lack of a central mechanism to co-ordinate economic support and a ‘serious slowdown in the delivery of the assistance’.8 In South Africa the peace dividend seemed even more promising. Sanctions had ended and the immediate results were dramatic. Multinational

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companies that had disinvested, including IBM, Rank Xerox, Mobil and Citibank, returned to South Africa. Tourism increased by 25 per cent between 1993 and 1994. ‘In 1990’, as Morkel pointed out, ‘we sold 1 million bottles of South African wine in the United Kingdom. In 1994, we sold 1 million bottles a month.’9 Security expenditure was down. All seemed set for prosperity. This early optimism was soon dashed. The Middle East process, which could be said to have started with the Madrid Conference in October 1991, is still far from completion. It is debatable whether the multilateral track has delivered more than the bilateral. Palestinian living standards in the ‘Occupied Territories’ actually declined during the Arab–Israeli peace process. The new South African government also set itself high economic targets it was unable to fulfil. In 1997, the standard of living for black South Africans was comparable to the world’s 124th wealthy state, Congo, while for white South Africans it was comparable to the 24th, Spain.10

Northern Ireland: the years of violence Peace dividends never live up to the promises of their advocates. The prospect of a transfer from violence to prosperity is probably the most beguiling of the many arguments presented to belligerents for entering a peace process. This was certainly the case in Northern Ireland. The trade union movement had been among the strongest opponents of violence during the 1970s, although its influence and energy diminished later. In the early 1990s both business and labour played an increasingly important role in urging peace, a role which continued during the peace process itself. Although economists disagree about the extent to which Northern Ireland’s economy was stunted by violence between 1969 and 1994, there is no dispute that the economy suffered severely. The Northern Ireland Economic Council (NIEC) attempted an assessment. Based on comparisons with economic development in the Republic of Ireland and Scotland, the effects were severe. ‘If Northern Ireland had been able to attract foreign direct investment against a background of peace and political stability’, it could have been expected to have promoted between two and four times as many jobs as it actually did. In 1991 ‘pure holiday visitors’ accounted for only 22 per cent of all tourist visitors to Northern Ireland, compared to 55 per cent for the Irish Republic and 43 per cent for Scotland.11 Northern Ireland’s unemployment rate was consistently about 50 per cent higher than the rate for the

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United Kingdom in general (12.2 per cent against 8.5 per cent in 1995, for example), especially for the long-term unemployed. Its manufacturing sector had shrunk by 40 per cent between 1969 and 1994; it was small and biased towards low technology and declining industries, notably shipbuilding and textiles. How much of this decline can be explained by the Troubles? It has been fashionable among economists to play down the importance of the Troubles as a variable in Northern Ireland’s economy. They point to the much greater influence of other factors – international economic trends, the condition of the UK economy, the strength or weakness of sterling, and the dependency culture which accepted high levels of public sector support too readily. All of this suggests that the Troubles should not be exaggerated as a factor determining the direction of Northern Ireland’s economy. Against this almost unanimous view there are counterarguments. Even the strongest advocates of the global argument acknowledge that violence had some measurable consequences. Tourism, for example, had suffered greatly since the late 1960s, during which period it blossomed in Britain and the rest of Ireland. It would be perverse to argue that this decline was unrelated to 30 years of sustained violence. Inward investment too had been deterred by both the violence and political instability, but this was less easily quantifiable. The years of violence had greatly increased Northern Ireland’s dependency on support from the UK exchequer, partly fuelled by the need to redress the economic disadvantages of the Catholic community. They also left an unhealthy dependence on public sector jobs.12 Ironically, when the 1994 ceasefires were declared, Northern Ireland was showing some signs of revival.13 It had ridden the recession of the early 1990s better than most regions of the UK, although from a much lower base, and continued to outperform the UK during the subsequent recovery.14 Northern Ireland’s housing stock had improved dramatically since the 1960s, when it had been one of the major grievances of the civil rights campaign, and house prices had begun to climb out of a sustained trough. Infant mortality rates and life expectancy had moved from the worst position within the United Kingdom into the group of average regions. Even the unemployment rate was falling. These improvements appeared to provide a promising seed bed for an emerging peace dividend, but structural deficiencies persisted. Around 38 per cent of the working population were employed in the public sector and were particularly vulnerable at a time when Thatcherism was targeting such jobs in Britain.15 The peace process actually threatened some sectors of the economy. Many of the public sector

Peace Dividends and Peace Deficits 127

jobs were security-related. A sustained peace would put many of these jobs in jeopardy. Economic growth too was dependent on wider political developments. For example, tourist revenue, which grew spectacularly in the first year after the ceasefire announcement, fell back sharply when violence resumed in 1996. During the 1995 conference it seemed reasonable to speculate about the likely effects of peace on Northern Ireland’s economy. The conference proceedings provide a list of expectations against which subsequent developments might be measured. This list, echoed in other meetings during the mid-1990s, included at least five main factors: direct grants; increased investment; the tourism and retail sectors; the fair employment issue; and the security factor.

Direct grants Northern Ireland is part of the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom; indeed the latter link provided the reason for its violent conflict. Both associations began to pay off almost as soon as the violence had ended. In December 1994, three months after the first ceasefire, the European Union adopted a £231m Special Peace and Reconciliation package to back up the peace process, £40m soon followed from the International Fund for Ireland16 and various private sector support bodies. Even the Millennium Commission, a body quite unrelated to the peace process, granted more money per capita to Northern Ireland than to any other UK region. The EU’s Interreg programme, which was specifically targeted at promoting the development of frontier regions, and other EU programmes delivered substantial sums for cross-border investment in transport and waterways, agriculture, fisheries and small businesses, although these were not directly related to the peace process.17 There was, however, a general feeling that the peace process needed financial buttressing. In 1998 the International Fund for Ireland was provided with an additional £24 million by the European Commission to support projects which ‘have developed the opportunity for countless thousands of people from both sides of the community in Northern Ireland to come together’.18 All of these grants were dwarfed by the money provided by the UK Exchequer towards Northern Ireland’s economy. Northern Ireland, as an economically depressed region, received an annual British government subvention approaching £4bn, which approximated to one-third of its Gross Domestic Product.19 This subvention was supplemented by new government grants channelled to shore up the peace process at critical

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times. One week before the crucial 1998 referendum an additional £315 million economic package was announced by Gordon Brown, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. This comprised £100 million to provide tax relief to small and medium-sized companies for investment in plant and machinery, a £150 million investment fund for infrastructural investment including tourism and £65 million to be put into an Employment and Skills Fund. There were other ‘peace bonuses’ too. In April 1998 the government gave the go-ahead to a £70 million ‘educational village’ for higher and further education which would straddle the ‘peace line’ at Springvale in north-west Belfast, an initiative which based its case as much on its contribution to community relations as on educational needs. A striking feature of these peace bonuses was the strategic manner in which they were introduced. Gordon Brown denied that the 1998 financial package was a bribe aimed at winning acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement, but still laid stress on the relationship between peace and prosperity. ‘For years we have been attempting to build the Northern Ireland economy against a background of violence. From today, 1998, we can begin to build on new foundations’.20 Sometimes the explicit relationship between political stability and economic prosperity was carefully staged, as when significant new orders were announced for Short Brothers and Harland and Wolff, two of Northern Ireland’s largest industrial employers, within days of the Northern Ireland Executive’s restoration in May 2000. Similarly the initial grants, from the EU and private sources, came in the months immediately following the ceasefires, and were directly tied to the peace process. The European grant was even entitled the Peace and Reconciliation Programme. An independent evaluation into the grant in 1997 concentrated on both financial management and its impact on the peace process. One EU source was quoted as saying that ‘Europeans will want to know why the positive forces unleashed by the Peace Programme have not translated into political progress and political accommodation’.21 In June 2000 the first Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment in the Northern Ireland Executive, Sir Reg Empey, reported to his Assembly Committee that ‘quite frankly, we squandered a fair bit of money’.22 Earlier in the same year the European Union Court of Auditors had criticized the management of schemes financed by the European funds and concluded that they provided ‘poor value for money in some instances’. Selection and evaluation procedures were inadequate. Projects found to be no longer viable continued to receive funding. Despite these criticisms, the Court’s conclusion was

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that the schemes were ‘useful and effective tools for the promotion of peace and economic development in the North.’23

Increased investment Delivery of new grants is more easily measured than delivery of new investment. The Industrial Development Board (IDB) had laboured, with mixed success, to attract investment in Northern Ireland during the early years of violence. In the early 1990s, however, Northern Ireland had been surprisingly successful in attracting overseas investment, so it is difficult to isolate post-1994 investment which might legitimately be described as a ‘peace dividend’. A dividend was certainly promised, notably during President Clinton’s visits in 1995 and 1998, when Northern Ireland was assured that the Irish diaspora in North America would swing in behind the peace process. The United States government expressed strong willingness to persuade American companies to invest in Northern Ireland.24 In December 1994 the United States signed an agreement enabling Northern Ireland to tap into technology networks in the US; five months later it sponsored a major conference on trade and investment in Ireland. The commitment was still sufficiently strong four years later for both the American President and the British Prime Minister to highlight Northern Ireland during the 1998 summit of G8 leaders. However difficult it is to calculate precisely the importance of external investment, the general picture is clear enough. By 1999 the United States was already the largest single foreign investor in Northern Ireland and employed about 10 per cent of the people working in manufacturing.25 Between 1994 and 1999 US companies had invested around $1.9 billion and in 1999 alone two-thirds of all investment was made by American companies. These included several electronics firms, the very part of Northern Ireland’s economy where it lagged behind its southern neighbour. By 1999 the increased investment was reflected in exports. In 1998–99, the strength of sterling kept Northern Ireland’s exports of manufactured goods to Europe and the Republic of Ireland static, but they rose by 20 per cent in sales to the rest of the world; overall the rise in exports was 8.5 per cent to £3.4 billion.26 Manufacturing output grew by 6.5 per cent in Northern Ireland for the year ending September 1999, against 1.5 per cent for Britain, and productivity by 8.3 per cent compared to Britain’s performance of 4.6 per cent.27 The conviction that economic regeneration was essential to back up the peace process was shared in Britain. In 1998 Gordon Brown followed

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up his financial package earlier that year by joining the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, on a ten-city tour of the United States to promote Northern Ireland as an area for investment. The decision by British Telecom and Prudential to site new centres in Belfast was also influenced by the peace process, although the director of Prudential singled out ‘the availability of suitably skilled staff’ as the major reason for the investment.28 The receipt of government grants may also have had some influence on their decisions. The desire to underpin the peace process was at least an implicit, and usually explicit, reason for both new grants and new investment. It was certainly perceived as such by opponents of the peace process. The leader of the UK Unionist Party, Robert McCartney, criticized the NI Chamber of Commerce and Industry, claiming that ‘business organisations in Northern Ireland appear to have aligned themselves with a peace process designed to end the Union’.29 McCartney also claimed that the encouragement of an all-island economy as part of the peace process had ‘grossly exaggerated’ its economic significance. ‘Between 1991 and 1996, sales from Northern Ireland to the Republic accounted for 6–7 per cent of total sales … far too small a basis for further significant development.’ In fact, two-way volumes of cross-border trade rose by 80 per cent between 1992 and 1998. By 1997, the Irish Republic was the second largest market for Northern Ireland, after Britain, and crossborder trade had grown at 10 per cent annually during the previous five years, underpinning 13 000 jobs.30 The remarkable growth of the Irish economy during the 1990s, the so-called Celtic Tiger, had another effect on the peace process. The shift from a traditional nationalist sympathy in the Irish Republic towards a more functionalist approach to Northern Ireland made it easier for unionists to accept its involvement in negotiations.

Retail and tourism The retail sector in Northern Ireland suffered severely during the years of the troubles, when bombings, demonstrations and general civil unrest destabilised business. The 1994 ceasefires had an immediate and positive impact on the retail and tourism sectors and helped attract inward investment.31 Pre-Christmas trade rose by 30 per cent between 1993 and 1994, although the claim that retail sales in Belfast shot ‘into the stratosphere’ were exaggerated.32 Tesco, Sainsbury, Safeways and other large UK stores which had steered clear of Northern Ireland during the years of violence decided to locate there for the first time.

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The change from violence to peace was not entirely smooth. Civil unrest, notably over marches and counter-demonstrations, continued. The level of their impact was underlined when, in December 1999, a compromise between the Apprentice Boys and a local protest group allowed a march to proceed. Retail business in Derry rose by 600 per cent over that of previous parade days in the city.33 In 1994 tourism comprised only 2 per cent of the Northern Ireland economy.34 Clearly it would be a major beneficiary of sustained peace and some commentators estimated that its contribution to the economy could reach levels around the 6 per cent enjoyed in Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. The attraction of the Irish Republic as a tourist destination had suffered from the violence in Northern Ireland. It also benefited from peace. In the four years before the ceasefires Ireland had attracted 42 000 conference visitors, a lucrative sector of the tourist industry. In 1995 alone it attracted 82 000 from the same category.35 Within a year of the ceasefires Hilton International Co. of New York and Radisson Hotels International began building their first hotels in Northern Ireland. Citybus put on tours of the battle sites in an ingenious if not immediately successful attempt to capitalise on Northern Ireland’s strongest international image. Tourism rose by more than 20 per cent between 1994 and 1995, but was unable to sustain such a high level of growth in subsequent years. The number of visitors who came for holidays (as distinct from family, business and other reasons) soared up by 67 per cent in the first year, but subsequently returned to figures close to the pre-peace process levels. By 2000, however, there were signs that the joint marketing agreement between tourist boards north and south of the border was starting to produce results. The number of tourists rose by 11 per cent in 1999 over the previous year, reaching an all-time ceiling of 1.64 million.36

Table 7.1 Visitors to Northern Ireland (in thousands), 1994–98 (holiday visitors in brackets)37 From Great Britain Irish Republic Europe N. America Elsewhere Total

1994 708 390 87 77 32

(66) (125) (44) (29) (12)

1294 (276)

1995 810 470 109 118 50

(112) (210) (57) (60) (923)

1557 (461)

1996 825 370 97 100 44

(88) (110) (41) (40) (18)

1997 799 345 105 109 57

(65) (80) (45) (45) (28)

1998 838 360 108 115 56

(81) (90) (34) (49) (23)

1436 (297) 1415 (263) 1477 (277)

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The fair employment issue The Cameron Commission, the 1969 official investigation into the causes of the early riots, had no doubts about their economic roots. ‘Much of the evidence of grievance and complaint which we heard, when analysed, was found, as might be expected, to be concentrated on two major issues – housing and employment.’38 A strong body of evidence is now available that indicate that successive unionist administrations from 1921 to the mid-1960s openly discriminated politically, economically and socially against the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland.39 The result was serious religious imbalances in employment, illustrated in a 1969 study of all full-time council employees in County Fermanagh. Out of a total of 370, and in a county that was approximately equally divided between the two religious communities, only 32 were Catholic.40 The following 30 years saw considerable improvement, spurred along by the Fair Employment Agency (1976), the Fair Employment Commission (FEC) (1989) and the Equality Commission (1999). The FEC’s last report in 1999 reported that ‘there has been a significant and heartening improvement in Roman Catholic participation in the overall monitored workforce’ since the first annual return was published for the year 1990.41 This had risen from 34.9 per cent in 1990 to 39.1 per cent in 1998. The figure was below the Catholic availability percentage (estimated at 42 per cent), and was lower for smaller than larger firms. It still represented an impressive closing of a formidable gap and effectively removed a potentially explosive grievance from the already complicated peace negotiations. There was still a tension between two arguments about the Northern Ireland peace process. One school argued that the priority for any emerging peace dividend should be the building of an economically sound long-term prosperity for Northern Ireland. The other believed that economic stability depended on a primary emphasis on fair employment practices, which would diminish the threat of violence, back up the peace process and, thereby, improve the economy. Although the two approaches are not incompatible, some members of the business community argued that ‘a rigid insistence on implementing the self-community imposed constraints’ imposed by fair employment legislation would deter investment.42 These concerns diminished as the peace process developed and there was no evidence that inward investment was deterred by strict fair employment regulations. The early work of the new Equality Commission was dominated by pressure to address other inequalities – gender, disability, race – and religious imbalances took an unaccustomed, and perhaps temporary, back seat.

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The security factor Peace dividends are usually accompanied by peace deficits. A substantial security industry of police, prison officers, security officers and part-time soldiers grew during the years of the Troubles to play an increasingly significant part in Northern Ireland’s economy. The Northern Ireland security budget for 1994–95, including provision for police, prisons, compensation and other Law and Order services, was close to £1 billion, or 12.7 per cent of public expenditure.43 It has been estimated that around 40 000 jobs were related to the security situation at the time of the ceasefires. A return to sustained peace would inevitably bring redundancies. Economic opinion in Northern Ireland was surprisingly sanguine about the prospect, suggesting that it would be accompanied by well-funded redundancy packages and pensions, which would remain in the local economy.44 In practice, six years after the ceasefires, the expected reductions in the security services had developed more slowly than anticipated, partly due to lack of confidence that violence had ended permanently. In the last two years for which figures are available, 1997 and 1998, the number of people employed in the RUC and prison service fell by only 1.4 per cent from 19 425 to 19 154. The implementation of the Patten Report would certainly accelerate the reduction, but political uncertainty was the main determinant of the speed. The security expenses of the Drumcree protests provoked increased criticism. The additional cost of policing the protests exceeded £28 million over the three summers from 1998. A further £27.5 million had been spent by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive buying the homes of families who had been forced to leave as a result of threats and intimidation. Ministers and business leaders were quick to contrast these sums with the recent grants of £6.2 million for improving school buildings and £5 million to reduce hospital waiting lists.45 The British government was insistent that the costs of such disturbances would come from existing budgets. The linkage between political stability and economic growth was a constant chorus from the British, Irish and American governments, but the issue attracted surprisingly little local political or public debate. The peace process and Good Friday Agreement were rarely discussed in terms of economics. More than 20 years’ experience of direct rule from London had not only removed the economic debate on Northern Ireland to Westminster, but also demonstrated that the UK Exchequer’s shoulders had been broad enough to sustain the cost of the Troubles. Surely it was unlikely to allow the peace process to flounder from lack of financial support?

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When the Northern Ireland Assembly convened in 1999 tax-raising powers remained in London, but the Assembly assumed control over the distribution. When asked in the 1999–2000 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey if the Assembly should have the power to raise or lower income tax, 57 per cent said yes, 30 per cent said no and 13 per cent did not know. Those in favour of tax varying powers broke down as 68 per cent of Catholics and 49 per cent of Protestants.46 The publication of its Programme for Government in June 2000 was the first time since 1971 when Northern Ireland’s economic affairs were substantially determined by local politicians. It was agreed with remarkably little acrimony and with no public sectarian undertones.

Discussion: was there a peace dividend? Was there a peace dividend? If so, in what ways did it contribute to the peace process? Northern Ireland had a number of singular economic advantages over many other contemporary peace processes. It is a small region within a rich nation-state, itself part of a prosperous economic union. Internationally there was almost universal goodwill to make the process work. These advantages had concrete effects. The size of the region meant that the expense of policing reforms, although high on a per capita basis, was not an impossible burden for the UK exchequer. The cost of redundancy pay alone was estimated by the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Peter Mandelson, at ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’, but negotiations with the Treasury were ‘proceeding well’.47 The cost of the Bloody Sunday inquiry set up in 2000 to examine the 1972 killing of 13 men in Derry City by the army was originally estimated at £65 million but soon the estimates grew to over £100 million.48 The cost of these and other institutional reforms was not a major consideration in securing the peace accord, a benefit perhaps too readily accepted as normal. In South Africa, for example, shortage of funding delayed infrastructural and administrative reforms in the years following the 1994 elections, at the cost of considerable unrest. One of the benefits most eagerly anticipated by Northern Ireland’s business community in 1995 was ‘the reduction of uncertainty’.49 Business depends, above everything else, on the prospect of stability, and organisations representing employers and labour were among the strongest advocates of peace. In reality the peace process was more characterized by uncertainty than the routine violence it had succeeded. Indeed the uncertainty had the by-product of diminishing the expected peace deficit: the security-related jobs that would no longer

Peace Dividends and Peace Deficits 135

be necessary during a sustained peace. It soon became clear that substantial reductions in the police and security forces were unlikely to be implemented until the peace process had been completed, or was at least moving towards a conclusion. In 2000 Northern Ireland’s economy continued to suffer from the same constraints as had weakened it at the time of the 1994 ceasefires. Public services still accounted for 36 per cent of employees (compared to 24 per cent for the UK as a whole), thus diminishing the opportunities to redirect public expenditure away from subsidies and towards support for research and development. Banking, finance and business comprised only 9 per cent of jobs (compared to 18 per cent for the UK as a whole). The economy was decidedly ‘low-tech’. More than one in four pupils left school without any qualifications and job-related training was disproportionately low.50 It seems clear that, without the peace dividend, jobs would have been fewer and unemployment rates higher. Indeed the number of employee jobs per capita was higher in Northern Ireland than in the UK in general during the years of the peace process, although the differential was diminishing from the late 1990s. Between 1994 and 1999 the number of people claiming unemployment relief fell from more than 12 per cent to around 7 per cent of the labour force. However, the rate and pattern of the decrease closely mirrored what was happening in the United Kingdom in general. It is of course plausible that the fall in Northern Ireland would have been more steep without the jobs created by the peace dividend, but the greater importance of the broader trends seems indisputable. 110 NI UK 105

100 1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

Figure 7.1 Employee jobs in UK and Northern Ireland, 1994–98 (1994⫽100)51 Source: DED Labour Market Statistics; ONS.

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12

NI

UK

9

6 3 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 Figure 7.2 Claimant unemployment, UK and Northern Ireland 1991–9852 Source: Economic Trends.

All of this suggests that the anticipated peace dividends may have been exaggerated. The annual economic reviews carried out by such companies as PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) consistently stress that inward investment since the 1994 ceasefires was primarily determined by global and national, rather than local, factors such as the peace process. The additional support provided by the UK Exchequer, the European Union and other sources, while obviously beneficial, should be viewed in this broader context. The willingness of the international business community and the Irish diaspora, both encouraged by the United States, are usually determined by cold business calculations rather than altruism. This view finds some support in Northern Ireland’s relative prosperity during the last years of the Troubles, and its continuing economic difficulties during the peace process. Nevertheless, despite the continuing uncertainty, there was an immediate and noticeable peace dividend. Additional support for the process came from government, the European Union and private sources. The declaration of the ceasefires in 1994 and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 were sufficiently encouraging to make Northern Ireland more attractive for investment. The peace process persuaded the large UK grocery stores to locate in Northern Ireland for the first time. Northern Ireland house prices, on the back of a construction boom, began to move up from a long-standing position as the lowest region in the United Kingdom. Anticipation of an increase in tourism was the reason for the multi-national hotel chains to build and acquire hotels in Northern Ireland. Tourism began to grow and, with it, the infrastructural supports it demands – hotels, restaurants and tours. Another indication of the new atmosphere was the transformation of

Peace Dividends and Peace Deficits 137

Northern Ireland’s traditionally high emigration rate. Compared with a net outflow of 130 000 in the 1970s and 60 000 in the 1980s, there was a net inflow of 30 000 in the 1990s.53 There were also some signs for optimism that Northern Ireland was beginning to attract more jobs in high technology industries. In the year ending March 2000 Northern Ireland’s Industrial Development Board announced a 57 per cent increase in investment by companies over the previous year, promising a record 7145 new jobs. The IDB said that 80 per cent of these new jobs were in electronics and other high-tech manufacturing and tradable services, primarily software and network services.54 It seems likely, however difficult to calculate accurately, that these new investments were at least partly attracted by the prospect of political stability. In peaceful times, the economist Paul Gorecki suggests, ‘new investors are much more likely to invest in training and developing sub-supplier networks … . These are essentially sunk costs that cannot be easily recovered. With violence the investor might be reluctant to make such investments.’55 Appreciation of these benefits became more overt when they were threatened by a return to violence and instability. In February 2000, PWC conducted its first survey of service sector companies since the temporary suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, power-sharing executive and cross-border institutions. More than 80 per cent of the companies planned to cut back on investment plans if the Assembly remained suspended for ‘a protracted period’, and 60 per cent planned to increase their investment intentions if it were revived ‘in the near future’. ‘What we see here, perhaps for the first time’, said Stephen Kingon, PWC’s managing partner, ‘is a direct correlation between political performance and private sector investment. We should all listen carefully.’56 The sudden stimulus provided to community and voluntary groups by the peace dividend, despite complaints about mismanagement and wastage, provided a constituency of support within the business community and society in general for the peace process. The new European grants and government programmes like ‘Making Belfast Work’ were geared to encouraging local participation in spending public money. The peace dividend helped to convert civil society from soft support to a more sectional and more committed lobby for the peace process. This in turn helped to underpin the transfer to Northern Ireland of greater responsibility for its own welfare and economic success, perhaps the greatest peace dividend of all.

8 On the Ground: Public Opinion and the Peace Process

‘Mobilising for conflict is much easier than mobilising for peace.’1 Hermann and Newman’s observation lies close to the heart of one of the most contested current questions about peace processes. Are they essentially bottom-up or top-down exercises? Is it possible to stimulate a peace initiative by groundswell pressure, and does a strong civil and democratic infrastructure help to sustain it? Or is peace managed by leadership from the political elites, as appears to have happened in all five peace processes studied in the Coming Out of Violence project? The decision in South Africa to enter into negotiations with the ANC arose from an altered view by National Party leaders rather than their followers. In Israel, ‘when the formal negotiations did not progress smoothly or reached a dead end, no significant pressures from below were exerted on the decision makers to make greater concessions in order to push the process forward.’2 No effective peace movement even got off the ground in Sri Lanka. Only in the Basque Country was there a groundswell desire for peace which pressurised leaders towards compromise. In Northern Ireland a popular desire for peace was not the vehicle which led to the ceasefires. Despite consistent opinion polls favouring peace, the operation of ethnic politics encouraged leaders to take up more intransigent positions. Many peace organisations were formed, most notably the Peace People in August 1976, but it would be difficult to argue that any of them seriously diverted the direction of events. This chapter addresses the role of public opinion during the Northern Ireland peace process. It begins with a discussion of how public attitudes and public behaviour responded to political developments since the 1994 ceasefires. The chapter goes on to describe the emergence of stronger civil society organisations and their increasing involvement in 138

Public Opinion and the Peace Process 139

organised political pressure. One of its most distinctive features was the supportive posture taken by most of the mass media during the period of the peace process. The final section discusses the top-down or bottom-up debate. If the process in Northern Ireland was primarily elite driven, under what circumstances was it influenced by public opinion? It is suggested that public opinion had its greatest effect on the peace process when it was expressed through organisations in civil society when the process has actually begun. Particularly significant was the ensuing contrast between the reluctance of unionist political parties to accept the need for change and the pressure from traditionally unionist social institutions – business, the Protestant churches, the media – towards compromise.

Public opinion and public behaviour Throughout the Troubles public opinion polls showed strong support for peace in both nationalist and unionist communities, but strong differences about the political framework and concessions necessary to attain it. The endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement by 71 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population in the May 1998 referendum was the most significant popular input into the peace process. A number of elections during the peace process offered opportunities for further popular input.3 Much of the peace process was elite-led and insulated from direct popular pressure. The 1993 Downing Street Declaration and 1995 Frameworks for the Future documents were formulated at governmental level, often between prime ministers. Both documents were to form much of the basis of the peace process and subsequent Good Friday Agreement. Neither was offered to the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum. Paramilitary organisations were also largely insulated from popular input. So were most political parties, although the Ulster Unionist Party was something of an exception in holding public consultations in the summer of 1997 on whether or not it should enter into a talks process which included Sinn Féin. The ceasefires seemed to offer new opportunities for popular involvement, and the right of public assembly was freely used by both opponents and advocates of the peace process. Orange Order parades became important vehicles for protest. Both Sinn Féin and the DUP consciously used demonstrations as a tactic at times when they were, respectively, excluded or excluding themselves from the talks. President Clinton’s visits to Northern Ireland, in November 1995, September 1998

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and December 2000 became public celebrations of the peace process. The visits attracted large crowds. The Northern Ireland Office attempted to garner post-ceasefire, and subsequently post-Agreement, goodwill by staging a number of public events.4 The collapse of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996 prompted mass peace rallies throughout Ireland, but they cannot convincingly claim credit for the renewal of the ceasefire in July 1997. The frequency of protests increased during the 1998 negotiations, prompted by fears of their collapse. In towns all over Northern Ireland thousands of people gathered to protest against sectarian murders. These were intended as cross-community rallies, but demonstrated how difficult it was to change a society accustomed to differential reactions to mourning. ‘We had representatives of both communities here’, a community activist said of one protest, ‘but I think they (the Protestants) left when some of the crowd started chanting “SS RUC” at the police.’5 At a large trade union rally outside Belfast’s city hall against all killings, the chairman’s announcement that the display of nationalist slogans was unsuitable was greeted by cheers from one section and boos from another. ‘We are not staying here’, Billy Hutchinson of the PUP told the organisers on his way out. ‘This is a Republican rally.’6 One of the most bizarre reminders of community divisions was simultaneous protest meetings by two marginal groups outside Dublin Castle: Republican Sinn Féin claimed that Gerry Adams was capitulating to unionism by participating in talks, and Pauline Armitage of the Ulster Civil Rights Movement portrayed the initiative as a surrender to nationalism. Demonstration overkill and sectarianism combined to undercut the effectiveness of the public desire for peace. Fewer than 20 people attended a peace rally in Belfast organised by STOP 96 (Solidarity to Organise Peace) in February 1998. While the rallies reflected a heartfelt frustration, they were not linked to a particular political programme and so their impact was negligible. The 1999–2000 Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT ) survey, one of the largest ever carried out in Northern Ireland, indicated that the content and tenor of political debate seemed out of step with public wishes.7 Respondents were asked to identify what they saw as the most important priorities for the new Assembly. Forty per cent chose improving the health service and 37 per cent increasing employment opportunities. More political or partisan issues such as reducing discrimination against Catholics or Protestants scored poorly at 3 per cent each. Protestants and Catholics were united on their priorities. It also showed that, despite the serious obstacles facing the peace process in late 1999, public opinion was surprisingly tenacious in its optimism.

Public Opinion and the Peace Process 141 Table 8.1 Do you think that the chances of peace in Northern Ireland are better now than they were five years ago, worse, or about the same?8

Better Worse About the same Do not know

All

Catholic

Protestant

75 4 20 2

88 1 10 1

64 7 27 1

The survey confirmed that delays in meeting the targets set in the 1998 Accord, especially for the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, were raising anxiety, especially among Protestants. Catholic support for the Good Friday Agreement remained very high, but there were growing doubts that the Accord had the support of a majority of the majority community. Asked whether nationalists or unionists were perceived to have benefited most from the Agreement, 54 per cent thought that both sides had benefited equally, but 34 per cent believed that nationalists had benefited more than unionists. Only 3 per cent felt that unionists had been the main beneficiaries. Protestant dissatisfaction had more than a rhetorical importance. The basis of the Good Friday Agreement was a requirement that government needed the support of both confessional groups in Northern Ireland to continue. According to the 1999–2000 NILT survey, 67 per cent people would vote ‘Yes’ if the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement was to be re-run. This was a slight fall on the 71 per cent who actually did vote ‘Yes’ in the 1998 referendum. While 94 per cent of Catholics were still supportive of the Agreement, the Protestant community was divided down the middle, with 47 per cent saying they would vote ‘Yes’, 48 per cent saying they would vote ‘No’.9

Civil society ‘Public opinion’ as a general amorphous factor may have had little demonstrable effect on the peace process. Civil society as an organised expression of public opinion became a stronger influence as the peace process evolved.10 Most civil society organisations – business and trade unions, religious groups, the media and others – were open to both Catholics and Protestants and took no explicit position on constitutional issues.

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The need to energise the more moderate elements of civil society had been obvious for some time. The Troubles had seen the growth of partisan and often politically-inspired pressure and activist groups. Northern Ireland’s previous experience of power-sharing – the 1974 Executive – collapsed under pressure from a strike by loyalist workers. When the challenge came, the Executive was unable to call upon a strong body of organised support. In 1998 too the anti-Agreement forces were again first into their stride. The eight political parties which had signed up to the Agreement refused to engage in a united campaign for the Accord. Some, especially the Unionists, found it difficult to campaign for a compromise deal. It was left to civil society to inject urgency into the Yes campaign. Civil society had grown significantly in strength and confidence since 1974. By 1979 the activities of voluntary and community groups were sufficiently buoyant to justify the establishment of an umbrella organisation, the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust (NIVT). They were further boosted, and provided with a new role, when the European Union’s Special Peace and Reconciliation grant in 1994 provided £127 million for ‘social integration, inclusion and reconciliation’, much of it administered through local groups. In 1997 more than 130 peace and reconciliation groups were listed by the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council.11 The new peace and human rights organisations were classified by Wilson and Tyrrell in four main categories: intentional communities of reconciliation, local groups formed in the midst of hostility, groups resulting from the experience of bereavement and organisations providing holidays for children.12 Some were particularly effective. The Corrymeela Community, set up in 1965 to promote reconciliation, continued to provide a forum for discussion and contact throughout the Troubles. The Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) has monitored human rights issues and criticized abuses in the administration of justice since its formation in 1980, a role particularly important during such a protracted period of extraordinary legislation. The work of the Community Relations Commission in the early 1970s, and the Community Relations Council in the 1990s – both statutory bodies created and funded by government – helped to promote public debate and asked awkward questions of both government and the paramilitary organisations. They stimulated the emerging civil society to the point where it became mainstream, broadly based and legitimised in the political sphere. By 2000, the total number of people employed in voluntary and community organisations, and on government employment schemes, had reached 33 000, equivalent to 5 per cent of

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the total work force. ‘The sector thus employs more people than agriculture, construction and catering.’13 The Peace People, formed in 1976, generated large cross-community protests against violence during the 1970s. These and other peace groups were able to mobilise public outrage but never were able to sustain it or to translate it into political reaction. The active engagement of Northern Ireland’s churches, business community and media in the post-1994 peace process was a striking contrast to their divisions or neutrality in 1974. During the years of the Troubles the leaders of the four main churches – the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist churches and the Church of Ireland – had occasionally acted in concert to mediate on specific disputes. After the ceasefires they were careful to avoid advocacy of particular political positions, in itself a change from the past when Northern Ireland’s political landscape was littered with clergymen. The Church of Ireland Primate, Bishop Robin Eames, reacted angrily when a British government strategy paper was leaked suggesting that he might be enlisted as an opinion-former to support the Agreement in the 1998 referendum. ‘At no time in the past have I allowed myself to be so used, nor at any time in the future will I do so. I have no knowledge of any church leader adopting such a role.’14 All four main churches – Catholic, Presbyterian, Church of Ireland and Methodist – became increasingly active during the 1998 negotiations. The leaders of all four publicly signed the Book of Peace sponsored by Belfast’s two morning newspapers. In June 2000 the Presbyterian General Assembly welcomed by a large majority the reinstatement of devolved powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly.15 The business community, both labour and management, was less circumspect. Trade unionism in Northern Ireland had consistently campaigned against violence since the early years of the troubles, but it never attained the influence that trade unions exercised in the Basque peace process. The active involvement of the broader business community in the 1998 ‘Yes’ campaign was unprecedented. The Group of Seven (G7) had been formed in January 1996 after the previous year’s Drumcree stand-off and supported dialogue at critical junctures in the peace process. G7 comprised of Northern Ireland’s three leading business organisations – the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the Institute of Directors and the NI Chamber of Commerce and Industry – the NI Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), the NI Hospitality Federation (representing tourism), the NI Growth Challenge and the NI Economic Council. It was later joined by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSBNI), although it retained the G7 name. In other

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words, G7 stood for the entire spectrum of industry and labour in Northern Ireland, and became a powerful catalyst for supporting the peace process. It held meetings with the Orange Order and the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition in an attempt to encourage dialogue between them. In January 1999 it called upon the IRA to decommission its arms to break the impasse at the Northern Ireland Assembly.16 Individual groups within G7, including the CBI, the Hospitality Federation and the FSBNI, went further and came out in favour of a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum, as did a number of individual trade unions such as the Manufacturing Science Finance Union. The emergence of the business community in such an openly political role was unprecedented in Northern Ireland. Encouraged by the ceasefires, it presented itself as both reflecting and leading a popular consensus. Its key contribution was to point out the material benefits that would follow economic and political stability. Alongside existing organisations like business and the churches, a raft of new civil society initiatives emerged with the specific purpose of supporting the peace process. All of them were concerned that the talks process was not confined to political parties. In addition to G7, a number of these organisations became significant actors during the peace process including the following: The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC ) was established in 1996 during the run-up to the May 1996 Forum elections. The party deliberately avoided taking a position on constitutional issues. As a result it was free to perform a brokerage and bridge-building role in the political negotiations, and to bring the ‘more flexible attitudes displayed in discussions outside’ into the talks.17 The NIWC stood for the Assembly elections of 1998, on a strong pro-Agreement platform, and two members were elected. The Northern Ireland Women’s Political Forum was also formed in 1996 as an umbrella group to foster links between women politicians and encourage women to join political parties; at that time about one in six local councillors in Northern Ireland were women. In 1998 its members, from seven political parties, worked to promote a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum. Community Dialogue was formed in 1998 by activists from both the Catholic and Protestant communities to encourage community groups to express their views during the emerging process. New Agenda was an umbrella group from business, trade unions, the churches, academics and the voluntary sector which came together in

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1998 to support the process. They organised seminars and brought politicians into closer contact with civil society. As Quintin Oliver of the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action put it, ‘this is a first for what we call civil society to join together in a common voice’. The Chief Executive’s Forum, a consortium of 140 heads of Northern Ireland’s councils, health units, government agencies and other public bodies, was formed in 1998 to push ideas for ‘invigorating civic society’.18 The Yes Campaign started as a non-party body designed to measure and encourage support for the Agreement in the 1998 referendum. In addition to the general activities implied in its name, it sought to bring victims of violence into the pro-Agreement campaign. The European Union’s 1994 package, which sought to ‘reinforce progress towards a peaceful and stable society and to promote reconciliation’, included a condition that resulting schemes should emphasize social inclusion and community development.19 The partisan behaviour of some local councils ruled them out as acceptable beneficiaries. As a result, 26 District Partnerships were formed in 1996, one for each local government area, to encourage co-operation between representatives from local councils, the community and voluntary sectors and other local interests in spending the grant. A Northern Ireland Partnership Board co-ordinated their work. This enforced exercise in cross-community work became a significant contribution to civil society.20 One activist declared that ‘the main product has been the process’, implying that the experience of co-operation was as important as any substantive outcome.21 An independent review of their activities concluded that ‘the emergence of working relationships at local level and on the Northern Ireland Partnership Board has made a significant contribution to under-girding the on-going peace process and to the recent emergence of new political structures and constitutional arrangements.’ The Good Friday Agreement included provision for the establishment of a Civic Forum. This new structure, drawn from the voluntary, business and trade union sectors, would have consultative rather than ratification powers and would focus on social, economic and cultural matters. Its formal inclusion in Northern Ireland’s new structure was an acknowledgement of how far civil society had developed during the years of the peace process. Delays in the implementation of the Agreement meant that little progress was made in instituting the Civic Forum until well into 2000.

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The media Northern Ireland does not lack media outlets. A population of 1.6 million is served by two Belfast-based television stations, a growing number of local radio stations, three Northern Ireland-wide daily newspapers and more than 40 local newspapers. During the Troubles their attitude to violence had veered to the side of caution in distinguishing between propaganda and news. In 1994 David McKittrick of the London Independent pointed out that, ‘from the republican point of view, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, provides a useful political and propaganda adjunct to the terrorist campaign.’22 Ed Maloney of the Dublin Sunday Tribune believed that some journalists were too ready to undermine Sinn Féin’s political sincerity: ‘Legitimate journalistic interest in the conflicts between Sinn Féin politics and the IRA’s violence developed into something of a preoccupation, not to say obsession for some.’23 After the ceasefires were declared all journalists had problems adjusting to the speed of change. In 1993 Gerry Adams and the other paramilitary-linked party leaders were refused access to even junior ministers and civil servants, and were repeatedly refused visas to the United States. A broadcasting ban made it illegal to broadcast their voices on political matters. One year later, the ban had been lifted, the same leaders were in communication with government, were welcomed to the White House and courted by American television. They had become ‘woven into the tapestry of daily news’.24 The media played a crucial and eager part in this transformation. Their eagerness carried both dangers and advantages for the negotiators. When the BBC uncovered secret talks between the constitutional parties in Duisburg, West Germany in 1988, its decision to broadcast the news was a major reason for the collapse of the talks, and a warning that the early stages of any negotiations were delicate and demanded secrecy. The secrecy of the talks between the British government and Sinn Féin during the early 1990s was remarkably well preserved before the 1994 ceasefires. The resulting talks were semi-confidential. Politicians gave regular media briefings outside of the talks venue but rarely went into detail on the text of a possible agreement. The Good Friday Agreement was not reached until the last moment, in fact after the final deadline had passed, leaving the pro-Agreement parties with the difficult task of moving immediately from semi-secrecy to transparency in order to secure support for the referendum. The media were transformed from potential enemies of the process to essential allies. For the media the 1994 ceasefires and peace process replaced the old ambiguities with apparent clarity. No significant media outlet opposed

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the peace process and subsequent Agreement. None of the people interviewed by the Israeli academic Gadi Wolfsfeld during his 1999 research could name a single journalist opposed to the process.25 The evening Belfast Telegraph, a liberal unionist newspaper, was pro-Agreement. The News Letter and the Irish News, the two morning papers serving respectively the unionist and nationalist communities, campaigned for the Agreement, even to the unprecedented point of publishing joint editorials. ‘We are leading the unionist community because we do not think it is our job to sit on the fence’, the News Letter’s editor Geoff Martin said just before the 1998 referendum.26 ‘We have looked at the thing and decided to support it. A lot of our readers have not made that decision.’ The views of Tom Collins, editor of the Irish News, were similar: ‘the newspaper has two roles. One is to speak to its readership and the other to speak for it. Over the period of the peace process we have shifted from one to the other.’27 A variety of reasons explain the media’s support for the peace process. A ceasefire had been declared and the republican movement had moved, for the most part, from the armalite to the ballot box. The electoral success of Sinn Féin and, to a lesser degree the PUP and UDP, provided them with electoral legitimacy. The violence of more extreme loyalist and republican spoiler groups underlined the significance of the move from violence by the mainstream ex-militants. Not least, the press, radio and television were attracted by the emergence of media-friendly celebrities like Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and David Ervine, all of them preaching peace.28 A senior DUP politician felt aggrieved that the loyalist parties ‘with one per cent of the vote can get sixty per cent of airtime.’29 The media support for the peace process did not escape the attention of its opponents. Robert McCartney, leader of the small United Kingdom Unionist Party, cited a survey showing that supporters of the Agreement received 70 per cent of newspaper and broadcasting coverage in the months before the referendum. The media, he argued, was ‘operating a clear political agenda in favour of the agreement and is attempting to marginalise and isolate those who are against the deal.’30 Whatever the motive, there was no denying the media support for a ‘Yes’ vote. Even the advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi designed the yes campaign posters free of charge. Contrast this phenomenon with the peace process in Israel. Comparing the roles of the news media during the Israeli and Northern Ireland peace processes, Gadi Wolfsfeld found that ‘the Israeli media played a mostly destructive role in the Oslo peace process, while the news media in Northern Ireland was more positive.’31 The reason, he suggests, can be attributed to differences in the two political environments. Israel was

148 Guns and Government

deeply divided over Oslo and many held Arafat responsible for all terrorism, in contrast to the high level of consensus in Northern Ireland before the referendum. This unionist shift from conspiracy to involvement in the peace process allowed the media to promote it, thus in turn helping to reinforce the changes in unionism. The resulting ‘peace frame’ in Northern Ireland allowed the media to unite in outrage against the Omagh bomb in 1998. Every violent act in Israel, including the terrorist attack in Beit Lid in 1995, automatically evoked a ‘security frame’ in the Israeli media with attacks on the Palestinian leadership.32 The media, Wolfsfeld concluded, were ‘fair weather friends’.33 ‘The greater the levels of consensus surrounding a policy the more likely the news media are to play a supportive role in implementing it.’34 The new unity within the mass media was not without new ambiguities. These arose from how the media should treat the paramilitary violence within communities which continued throughout the peace process. Organisations like FAIT (Families Against Intimidation and Terror) continued to draw public attention to the persistence of paramilitary punishment shootings and intimidation, swimming against the tide of opinion desperately willing to overlook the atrocities in the interest of maintaining momentum towards political talks. One reporter, Malachi O’Doherty, found little sympathy for covering this sort of violence. O’Doherty was criticized by Sinn Féin’s press officer for writing about the punishment beatings carried out by the IRA during the process. He was told: ‘You have to keep your eye on the big picture; the prize here is a comprehensive peace.’ Republicans, O’Doherty claimed, put journalists under strong moral pressure to concede that their violence arose from historical circumstances. ‘The perpetrator of the deed is never to blame. He, usually he, is caught up in history and circumstance. “You made me do this. It’s your fault.”’35 Consequently, as long as paramilitaries continued to claim that the ceasefire had not been breached, their punishment beatings and murders were too often excused in a conspiracy to achieve the higher reward of securing an agreement. The future price to be paid to public respect for law and order can only be guessed.

Discussion: top-down or bottom-up? Public opinion is an amorphous concept. The generality of a population may flounder ineffectually in the face of political violence, but elements within it sometimes find it possible to make more strategic interventions. The strength of civil society in Northern Ireland encouraged the implementation of reforms in the fair allocation of housing, employment

Public Opinion and the Peace Process 149

and education during the years of violence, prevented a bad situation from becoming worse and reduced the roster of problems to be tackled during the peace process. In South Africa the business community made the first informal approaches to the ANC in the 1980s. Other mediators – church leaders, academics and trade unionists – helped to establish the first informal meetings between political opponents in South Africa, the Basque country and Israel, as well as in Northern Ireland. These at least allowed them to pursue ‘what-if’ scenarios within relatively risk-free settings. Most political activists saw the Northern Ireland peace process as top-down rather than bottom-up, dictated by political elites rather than by popular opinion. The lines between the two were sometimes blurred. A senior republican believed that ‘this process has been leadership-led and leadership-driven, but consultation took place. People were prepared for change. Discussions and dialogue were taking place all the time.’36 This view of leaders leading and followers being educated to follow implies that the general public played a subordinate role in the peace process. At first sight there is substantial support for this position. Public opinion polls consistently indicated more tolerant attitudes and greater support for peace than were suggested by election results, but politicians representing harder lines were returned with equal regularity. As the peace process developed, however, those elements in civil society supporting it became increasingly influential at three strategic phases – the run-up to negotiations, the referendum campaign and the post-accord threats to the process. Barbara McCabe of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition argues that civil society played a major role as a vehicle for aligning public opinion during the run up to the peace process, when there were few signs of conventional political dialogue. ‘This role was crucial but, perhaps because it was not performed by politicians, has been largely written out of Northern Ireland’s most successful – to date – peace process.’37 Until 1995 the process was at its most opaque phase, during which secret and public negotiations were conducted by closed political groups. The influence of public opinion was largely confined to elections, which were conducted along traditional sectarian lines, but the almost universal relief following the 1994 ceasefires was perhaps the first indication of a greater willingness for agreement among the public than among their representatives. Whatever disagreements there are about the role of civil society before the peace process, it came into its own during the pro-Agreement referendum campaign. The failure of the pro-Agreement political

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parties to campaign collectively, and the initially lacklustre nature of the UUP campaign, alarmed supporters of the Agreement. Social institutions such as business and trade unionism, the media and the churches were generally pro-Agreement, and some of them became involved in the campaign. They were joined by new groups formed specifically to support the Agreement. Added to this, much of the EU funds which followed the autumn 1994 ceasefires had been channelled towards local and community groups and think-tanks. This contrasted with 1974 when the absence of civil society activists supporting the Power-sharing Executive led to its collapse. The civil society groups which did emerge in 1974, notably the Ulster Workers’ Council which co-ordinated the campaign against power-sharing, had been almost universally hostile to compromise. Similarly, in the 1998 campaign, opponents of the Agreement were first off the mark. The difference was that they were rapidly overtaken by pro-Agreement activists. As unionist opposition to the Good Friday Agreement grew after 1999, the ground between pro- and anti-Agreement civil society became more closely contested. This was a result of greater civil society activity in the political rather than the civic and economic field. One of the most distinctive features of Northern Ireland’s peace process has been the emergence of new political groupings closely associated with the broader civil society. Some favoured and some opposed the Good Friday Agreement. The most significant was the emergence of new political parties during the peace process. These included the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, as much a civil society organisation as a political party. The UDP and the PUP, both loyalist parties closely connected to the main paramilitary organisations, were among the strongest advocates of the process. While Sinn Féin had existed prior to the peace process, it now embraced conventional politics for the first time. It supported the process with enthusiasm and helped to divert Irish–American financial support from IRA violence to Sinn Féin politics – in 1999 alone this amounted to $700 000, seven times more than the sum raised by the largest Irish party, Fianna Fáil.38 A new anti-Agreement party, the United Kingdom Unionist Party, also emerged, soon to split amid rancour into two tiny groups. This political cornucopia was partly the result of a new electoral system designed to broaden the political debate, but was also a reflection of the burgeoning civil society. Indeed, most of them had close links with other civil society groups – community and activist groups, ex-prisoners, women’s organisations and others – and helped to increase the traffic between the different elements which comprise public opinion and mainstream politics.

Public Opinion and the Peace Process 151

The segmentation of both civic and political life had particular significance for the unionist community. It has been estimated that just under 50 per cent of Protestants voted against the Agreement in May 1998, but discontent increased as the process faltered over the following years. At the same time elements that had traditionally supported unionism – the business community, newspapers like the News Letter and the Belfast Telegraph, the Protestant churches – were taking more supportive, or at least neutral, positions on the Agreement. The Democratic Unionist Party and a substantial section of the Ulster Unionist Party saw the process as a sell-out, and the Unionist leader David Trimble increasingly sought to draw the pro-Agreement segments into action. In 1997 Unionist leaders embarked on an unprecedented ‘consultative process’ with civil society groups as well as the local party groups to test opinion on negotiating with Sinn Féin; they repeated the experiment in 1998 after they were persuaded of the need to campaign for the Agreement, and secured a sufficient level of support. In April 2000 David Trimble sought to alter the composition of the Ulster Unionist Council by abolishing the blocs of members appointed to represent the Orange Order and the Young Unionists, both groups among his most extreme critics. At the same time the proAgreement unionists were attempting to broaden the Party’s support by attracting previously uninvolved people into politics. Implicitly this raised the risk of losing more intransigent supporters in return for the possibility of attracting new social constituencies, not excluding Catholics. Somewhat ironically the urge to broaden the Council membership in order to draw in more pro-Agreement support involved the removal of two anti-Agreement lobbies which might justifiably claim to represent important groups in civil society. The potential of civil society to transform politics remains to be seen. As the fear of the pre-1994 violence receded, the sense of urgency among the general public to restore the suspended institutions diminished. Mary Holland, writing during the annual tensions of the marching season in 1999, pointed out the obstacles to energising civil society in Northern Ireland: Mr. Blair has put much emphasis on appealing to ‘civil society’ in Northern Ireland over the heads of its politicians. It’s a tactic which has worked in the past and could again in the future but not, alas, just now. Civil society – the moderate, comfortably off majority in both communities – has largely decamped to the Dordogne in France and Donegal to avoid the marching season.39

9 Poppies and Lilies: Symbolism and the Peace Process

Introduction The first member of the new Northern Ireland Assembly to speak from the floor of the chamber was from Sinn Féin. He used the occasion to protest at the location of the chamber, Stormont, which held bitter memories for republicans and to call for the provision of Irish language translation facilities.1 The Sinn Féin President, Gerry Adams, then called for the Irish Tricolour to be given parity with the British Union flag. This led to a number of furious responses from unionist members of the Assembly.2 Over two years later, at Easter 2001, the Assembly was recalled to debate whether or not Easter lilies, commemorating the republican dead, should be displayed in the building. The arguments rehearsed mirrored the almost ritualistic rows each November about the wearing of the poppy to commemorate Britain’s war dead, including members of the security forces. Aside from the depressing familiarity of the debate, such spats reveal the potency of symbolism in the Northern Ireland conflict. This chapter underscores the centrality of symbolism and symbolic politics to the peace process. Symbolism manifested itself in many forms, from the parades and decommissioning disputes to the deliberate targeting of Protestant and Catholic homes, schools and halls. The chapter concludes by noting that the partisan symbols of nationalism and unionism have retained their relevance since the Good Friday Agreement. Several overseas peace accords were accompanied by programmes of national unity or assimilation. In Northern Ireland, unionism, nationalism, loyalism and republicanism – and their attendant symbolic baggage – were re-legitimised.

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The role of symbols and symbolism in politics Symbolism is often regarded as peripheral to real politics. It is often dismissed as ‘the effluvia of political life’ or as ‘various sops to the credulous’ in the form of ‘symbols, ceremonies, flag-waving and baby-kissing’.3 But even in stable polities, symbolism plays two substantial roles. The first is allegorical, with particular issues or events, such as a single instance of harassment, taken to represent a wider political, social or cultural reality. The second is the deliberate use of symbolism as a political technique. Each group, community, political party or state has its own inventory of symbols, colours, historical references and key phrases that hold a particular resonance and can be manipulated to suit the occasion. Symbolism is at the very root of nationalism in Ireland. Differences are expressed in the songs sung, the flags flown, the attraction towards (separate) quotations, the marches and celebrations, the language and use of the past. Historical dates became a shorthand for real disputes – 1170, 1641, 1690, 1798, 1912, 1921, 1969 and now 1998. They trip off the tongue like the latest football results and are recorded for posterity on gable walls. In Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, symbols perform a bridging function, linking the past with the present. While not always historically accurate, these symbolic linkages often make some reference to a real past or ‘symbolic capital’.4 The potency of a symbol often lies in its ability to evoke the past and connect with the present.5 It has the advantage of compactness, the ability to condense many appeals into a single symbolic message that connects with certain emotions and sentiments.6 At times of political tension or upheaval, during which identity may be challenged, symbols may be a source of comfort and offer a reference to a more stable past. Their role is often inflated in situations of uncertainty such as peace processes.7 These are perceived as once-in-a-generation chances to secure a new, more advantageous, political accommodation. One unionist observer of the Northern Ireland peace process summed up this all-or-nothing frustration: every new political initiative was ‘… worse than what came before … look at the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), look at the Frameworks Document (1995) … let’s get something before we’re sunk.’8 Protagonists tend to regard peace processes as conflict by other means. To be seen to give way on one issue, however minor or symbolic, may indicate a weakness with regard to other, more substantive, issues. A second factor signifying the inflation of symbolism in peace processes is the attention paid to language and detail. Statements by governments and political actors were subject to minute scrutiny.

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One senior loyalist politician admitted to being aware of changes in republicanism through a close study of Gerry Adams’ writings and speeches.9 A leading member of the Democratic Unionist Party admitted to being aware of a similar shift in republicanism from a single sentence uttered by senior Sinn Féin member Martin McGuinness in a 1985 television interview.10 Even the word ‘peace’ became contested. According to Gerry Adams, ‘The word “peace” had been hi-jacked and was used as a stick to beat us.’11 Another senior Sinn Féin member went further, ‘… the word “peace” and the agenda around it became a minor battlefield. We … in 1986, made a conscious decision that we were going to take the word back. It was almost used as a weapon in counter-insurgency.’12 The structure and organisation of the peace process helped magnify the significance of symbols and symbolism. The absence of formal talks for extended periods, together with the expectations and fears raised by the process, meant that many issues were raised, partially discussed in the media, and then overtaken by other issues. The result was the development of an anarchic agenda in which many issues were discussed at the symbolic rather than substantive level. The issue of policing reform, for example, was often discussed in terms of proposed changes to the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the colour of its uniform.13 Prisoner releases were discussed in terms of individuals guilty of notorious incidents.14 The prospect of political talks was discussed in terms of venue and participant lists.15 The overall impact of such symbolic discussion resulted in their sensitisation in advance of political negotiations. Symbolic politics was often a low cost and low risk political activity. The message could be conveyed at the emotional level, requiring a minimum of articulation and intellectual engagement. It was deflective, switching attention away from substantive issues, and was able to act simultaneously as a rallying cry for group affirmation and as an offensive political project. The ‘ambiguity of a symbol’ was also important.16 A gulf of understanding between cultural blocs meant that seemingly innocent symbols of group identity were easily interpreted as offensive by nonmembers of that group. In May 1998, prominent Irish Republican Army prisoners were temporarily released from jail to attend a Sinn Féin conference. They were greeted enthusiastically by the conference delegates. For unionists though, the television pictures depicted a gloating celebration of the IRA member’s deeds. One Ulster Unionist Party Member of Parliament commented that ‘… republicans have no idea of the undertones that come from those kind of scenes and the signals they send out to unionists.’17

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Symbols also played a significant intra-community role, tapping into a folk memory bank of existing cultural references. The summer of 2000 saw the erection of large numbers of paramilitary flags in loyalist areas of Belfast.18 While they may have caused offence to nationalists, the primary target audience for the flags and wall murals were rival loyalist paramilitaries; it was a way of quite literally marking territory.

Parades The parades issue came to represent something more than the right to march along a particular stretch of road. For the Orange Order and other parading institutions, the right to march was a fundamental freedom, and an indicator of how they would be treated in any new political arrangement that might arise from the peace process. According to Jeffrey Donaldson MP, Assistant Grand Master of the Orange Order, ‘if nationalists cannot tolerate the culture and tradition of the Orange Order for 15 minutes in one year then I think we are entitled to ask what hope there is for the future?’19 Equally, many nationalist protesters saw a direct linkage between the willingness of the British government to ‘tackle’ the marching issue and its willingness to treat nationalists fairly on broader political issues. They also saw it as a key test of the impartiality of the RUC.20 The parades presented new opportunities for face-to-face sectarian confrontation, particularly in periods in which there were no formal political talks. It was played out on streets and in villages rather than in conference rooms. As a result, climb-downs also would be highly visible. The parades issue was participative, with marching organisations and residents’ groups often relying on sheer force of numbers. Also it was heavily ritualised. A ‘marching season’, with most marches concentrated in the summer months in which they followed traditional routes on certain dates, injected an element of predictability into the issue. Furthermore, the televisual impact of parades and protests was not lost on either the marching organisations or the residents’ groups. Both employed strong visual images in an attempt to raise support for their causes. Protesting residents’ groups, for example, used Ku Klux Klan and Nazi imagery to represent the Orange Order.21 It was often elderly, sober-suited Orangemen who handed over letters of protest at the lines of riot police when marches were being re-routed. Both sides sought to emphasize their victimhood and communicate their fears to their supporters in other areas within Northern Ireland and the wider media.

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When faced with complex political phenomena, the media, and particularly the electronic media, often attempted to condense, summarise and simplify an event or message.22 There was also a symbiotic relationship between political actors and the media. When, for example, the IRA ceasefire collapsed in February 1996, white doves cut from card and white ribbons were used in pro-peace demonstrations across Ireland.23 For both the media and the campaigners, it was a simple and evocative way to convey the message.

Attacks on symbols The peace process saw a noticeable increase in arson and vandalism attacks on identifiably Catholic or Protestant properties. Schools, homes, businesses, churches, church halls, Orange halls and Gaelic Athletic Association clubhouses were all targeted.24 Many of these attacks were concentrated in the marching season or other times of extreme tension.25 They constituted soft targets and were chosen to maximise offence. The attacks were often the work of individuals or groups of individuals rather than the main paramilitary organisations. Such attacks were deliberately expressive and calculated to convey a message more significant than the razing of buildings. At a minimum they signalled a lack of respect for the culture and heritage of one community or another. More seriously, they conveyed messages of dominance and subordination. The attacks had a political significance and acted as an indicator on the prospects of sharing territory and political space. Nationalists and unionists invested immense energy into maximising the import of their own symbolic inventories and denying the legitimacy of the other’s symbols.26 The result was a crowded agenda with nationalists locking onto ‘nationalist issues’, and unionists locking onto ‘unionist issues’. These issues were rarely discussed in the same paradigm. Thus for example, the promotion of the Irish language by nationalists and the Ulster-Scots dialect by unionists was rarely seen as different ends of the same argument.

Appropriation The appropriation of symbols associated with political opponents was an indicator of increased political confidence.27 In the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement, republican sympathisers, in mockery of the state, distributed fake banknotes bearing Gerry Adams’ face rather than the Queen.28 Sinn Féin held a rally in the Ulster Hall, a site historically

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associated with the unionist cause. According to a Sinn Féin councillor, ‘it’s symbolic. For many years, the hall and city centre were blocked to nationalists … not only is this our city but it’s our hall as well.’ As one unionist opponent put it, ‘This is a deliberate attempt to rub unionist noses in the dirt.’29 For their part, loyalists evoked the spirit of Theobald Wolfe Tone, the father of modern republicanism and incorporated Cuchulain, a figure from Irish mythology, into their wall murals.30 In one of the most bizarre examples of symbolic appropriation, two regiments of the British Army played a game of Gaelic football in 1995.31 The event was only significant because the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) expressly forbade members of the British Army and RUC to join it. In a similar vein, peace process participants attempted to appropriate people who were normally perceived as their political opponents. The United Kingdom Unionist Party made political capital from the support of Conor Cruise-O’Brien, a former cabinet minister in the Irish Republic, while the Ulster Unionist Party paraded several highprofile Catholic members.32 Significantly, cases of symbolic appropriation usually involved a public act or were deliberately publicised. States and institutions were keen to appropriate sensitive anniversaries lest they became the political property of nationalism or unionism. The two most prominent were the 150th anniversary of the Irish Famine and the 200th anniversary of the 1798 rising. British Prime Minister Tony Blair broke with tradition and made a statement of regret, though not a formal apology, for the Famine.33 For the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, the best commemoration of the 1798 rising would be ‘the consolidation of a stable, inclusive settlement’ in Northern Ireland.34 Museums and those statutory bodies charged with the guardianship of heritage and culture in Northern Ireland also attempted to promote neutral or balanced versions of a fraught past.35 The result was often poor history, but astute politics. Indeed, this neutral approach to cultural heritage was institutionalised in Northern Ireland from the early 1990s following the introduction of the Policy Appraisals and Fair Treatment (PAFT) guidelines.36 Under PAFT, all government departments and new policy initiatives were reviewed in the light of equality of opportunity for both communities.

Anniversaries and victims Anniversaries play a central role in Northern Ireland. They provide ritualistic vehicles to remind communities of the depths to which the other side was prepared to sink. For some, the campaign for an

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independent investigation into the events of the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre was a litmus test of the British government’s willingness to address the whole issue of nationalist rights.37 Consequently, New Labour’s January 1998 decision to establish another Bloody Sunday inquiry came at a critical phase during the peace process and was seen as a confidence building measure for nationalists. Acknowledgement of the victims of violence emerged relatively late in the peace process. The 13 October 1994 ceasefire statement by the Combined Loyalist Military Command, offered ‘the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years, abject and true remorse.’38 While not reciprocated by formal statements by other antagonists, whether state or paramilitary, it did become more common for political leaders to acknowledge pain and suffering inflicted by their own side.39 Prior to the ceasefires, there had been little public debate on the issue of victims and their families. The state, and to a certain extent communities, had developed technical mechanisms for dealing with victims and survivors. As the peace process gathered pace, the victims issue grew steadily in prominence and complexity. The issue was immediately sensitive. It was, variously, a personal issue for the families of the bereaved, an intra-communal issue in which each community saw its victimhood as prior to that of others, and an issue for Northern Ireland society as a whole to come to terms with. In November 1997, the Labour government commissioned a study by the former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to assess possible ways to recognize the victims of violence in Northern Ireland. Sir Kenneth Bloomfield’s report, We Will Remember Them, followed a public consultation process, and considered issues of practical help for victims, the timeliness of remembrance, and memorial schemes and monuments.40 The report attempted to be inclusive of all victims of violence, and placed most emphasis on efficient and adequate social and welfare provision for victims of violence. Although not prioritised, a truth recovery process was not ruled out. The issue of victims also featured in the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It was, however, a belated insertion. It noted that: The tragedies of the past have left a deep and profoundly regrettable legacy of suffering. We must never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families. But we can best honour them through a fresh start, in which we firmly dedicate ourselves to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust, and to the protection and vindication of the human rights of all.41

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A core component of the Agreement was an accelerated release programme for paramilitary prisoners. Many victims of paramilitary violence found this unacceptable and opposition to prisoner releases played a prominent role in the anti-Agreement campaign.42 The already divisive victims issue became further sectionalised and politicised.43 A number of single-community victims’ lobbying organisations were formed to speak for the families of victims of republican, loyalist and state violence. Their campaigns attracted a high media profile.44 Twenty-nine people died in the Omagh bombing in 1998. The victims included Catholics and Protestants, and the blast came after the popular endorsement of the Agreement. The bombing allowed political leaders to make gestures that, ordinarily, would have been difficult for them to make. Sinn Féin broke with tradition and ‘condemned’ the bombing. Previously, it had been disdainful of what it termed the ‘politics of condemnation’.45 Popular reaction among republicans, and others, made such a position untenable. The atmosphere following the bomb also contributed to Gerry Adams’ decision to make a statement that violence was ‘a thing of the past’.46 Days before the bombing, Adams had rejected speculation that he would make such a statement.47 In the aftermath of the bomb, First Minister David Trimble travelled to Dublin to discuss security responses with the Irish government.48 While in the Irish Republic, he attended the funerals of three Catholic victims of the bombing.49 All of these were significant gestures. All were, to a certain extent, made more acceptable by the aftermath of the Omagh bombing.

New opportunities Peace processes provide the participants in a conflict with opportunities for new beginnings, many of them symbolic. Among the most significant in Northern Ireland were a series of unprecedented meetings between political or military opponents. During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a strict demarcation between those who supported political violence and those who did not. This was mainly the result of the policies of the British and Irish governments to marginalise those on the political extremes who supported the use of political violence. It was reinforced by the prevailing international orthodoxy of ‘not talking to terrorists’ and by a compliant broadcast media in Britain and Ireland. The peace process, which was predicated on drawing those on the political extremes into the centre, presented a challenge to the accepted norms of political behaviour. Parties and individuals who had spent much time villainising their political opponents now came face to face with these villains.50

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When the story broke in 1993 that John Hume, the leader of the SDLP, had been holding secret talks with Gerry Adams, Hume was castigated by the media and many others.51 According to the British and Irish governments and the unionists, talks with supporters of paramilitary violence should be prohibited while violence continued. Such meetings, it was argued, merely gave legitimacy and publicity to those who were beyond the boundary of democratic politics. The next halfdecade, however, was punctuated by the spectacle of Adams meeting figures who had previously been his fiercest critics or outright enemies. In effect, the course of the Northern Ireland peace process can be traced by Adams’ diary. In June 1993, Irish President Mary Robinson shook hands with Adams while on a visit to Belfast. In January 1994, to the fury of the British government, US President Bill Clinton authorised the issue of a ‘limited duration’ visa to Adams to enable him to address the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York. In September 1994, ten days after the IRA ceasefire announcement, Adams stood with Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds and John Hume on the steps of Government Buildings in Dublin. Shortly afterwards, the US administration announced that it was lifting its ban on contact with Sinn Féin. In December 1994, a Sinn Féin delegation met Northern Ireland Office officials at Stormont. Adams was invited to the White House for St Patrick’s Day in 1995. In May 1995, Northern Ireland Office minister Michael Ancram met Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator Martin McGuinness for bilateral talks. Two weeks later Northern Ireland Secretary of State Sir Patrick Mayhew and Adams met on the fringes of a Washington conference. A month later, Adams met Nelson Mandela during a visit to South Africa.52 In November 1995, President Clinton visited Adam’s West Belfast heartland for a choreographed handshake. The collapse of the IRA ceasefire, February 1996–July 1997, resulted in a hiatus in Adam’s busy schedule.53 By the end of the year it was back on course. In December 1997, Adams was invited to 10 Downing Street by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Finally, in September 1998, after the Good Friday Agreement had been reached, Adams and the new First Minister held their first face-to-face meeting.54 Each of these meetings was accompanied by a storm of criticism. For Ulster Unionist MP Ken Maginnis, Adams’s invitation to 10 Downing Street was ‘an insult for families of IRA victims.’55 Intense media attention, much of it concentrating on histrionics and symbolism, surrounded each meeting. When Adams visited Downing Street, parallels were drawn with Michael Collins’ visit to London for treaty negotiations in 1921.

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No detail was too trivial to escape media attention; for example, the issue of whether or not Adams and Trimble would shake hands at the first face-to-face meeting, received much attention.56 These meetings performed four functions: political facilitation, desensitisation, self-empowerment and reward. First, they had a serious political purpose in allowing key players in the peace process to deal directly with each other. Meetings between senior political figures were mirrored by a series of similar contacts at more junior levels.57 Over a number of years, a critical mass of contacts developed to ease political communication. Second, the meetings served to desensitise a series of political relationships. While a first symbolic meeting between political opponents may have attracted intense media attention, it cleared the way for subsequent working meetings. On a single day in September 1998, Gerry Adams had telephone conversations with Prime Minister Blair and President Clinton.58 While previously this may have attracted a storm of publicity, it passed virtually unreported, underlying the important regularising function that such meetings and contacts performed. A third function of high profile meetings was self-empowerment. For those on the political fringes, meetings with powerful leaders were vital in conveying the message to their own supporters that the peace process strategy was the correct one. The loyalist and republican negotiators used images of their leaders as statesmen addressing prestigious gatherings as a validation of their decisions to call ceasefires. Finally, governments recognized the importance of such meetings for peace process participants and carefully staged them as a reward for involvement in the process. President Clinton was explicit in saying that the White House door would always be open for those who follow the road to peace.59 Reward meetings were used by the British and Irish governments at different stages during the peace process to mask a lack of substantive political movement. The peace process created huge expectations, especially among supporters of those political parties linked to paramilitary groups. Their absence from formal talks, especially in the early years of the process, was compensated by reward meetings with government figures. According to one media commentator, ‘… it was almost as if various dramatic events were structured in time sequence to draw the process out as far as possible. Targets just beyond the horizon were offered.’60 While, in reality, many of these meetings had little political importance, they had the effect of temporarily satiating the demand for political movement among supporters of fringe parties. Furthermore, the lack of political movement encouraged some participants to utilize other, often symbolic, avenues of political activity. Sinn Féin in particular

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organised a number of street demonstrations in 1995 to protest at what they regarded as a lack of political movement.61 Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists made a point of turning up to several talks initiatives in order to be turned away. Careful stage management presented classic images of a party being barred from peace talks by an unflinching government. The sheer variety of talks formats illustrates the range of new opportunities presented by the peace process. Exploratory talks with civil servants, bilateral talks with government ministers, trilateral talks with ministers from the British and Irish governments, the Dublin-based Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, the Belfast-based Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue, proximity talks, the talks process itself (variously based in London, Dublin and Castle Buildings in Belfast), and the Mitchell Review were all opportunities for the use of symbolic politics. The working partnership between the British and Irish governments was central to the entire peace process. They acted as guardians of the process, particularly on matters such as access to talks initiatives and timetabling. It was crucial to both governments that they retained a moral authority. Since neither had a blemish-free record, both governments had to work hard to maintain their credibility. A facade of intergovernmental unity was developed in the years after the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. During the peace process, this symbolic unity became ever more important, with both governments attempting to act in unison whenever possible. There were regular intergovernmental conferences and summits, and almost all significant statements were joint ones. This symbolic unity stretched to the point of the British and Irish Prime Ministers going to the pub together for a photo-opportunity.62

The Good Friday Agreement The Good Friday Agreement included a substantial section entitled, ‘Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity’.63 This recognized the importance of linguistic diversity and pledged the British government to promote the Irish language. Many of the issues in this section were part of the ‘equality agenda’ pushed by Sinn Féin. It was not discussed in the plenary session of the talks and was introduced in the final few days of negotiations.64 One paragraph of the Agreement directly addressed issues of symbolism: All participants acknowledge the sensitivity of the use of symbols and emblems for public purposes, and the need in particular in creating

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the new institutions to ensure that such symbols and emblems are used in a manner which promotes mutual respect rather than division. Arrangements will be made to monitor this issue and consider what action might be required.65 The unseemly row over flags at the first full meeting of the Northern Ireland Assembly augured poorly for the future. Perhaps the most symbolic part of the Agreement was the fact that an Agreement was reached at all. A loyalist negotiator reflected the opinion of many in stating that, ‘right up to the last fortnight [of the talks], the consensus of opinion throughout Northern Ireland … was that there was little or no possibility of the parties reaching agreement.’66 Yet an Agreement was reached.

Symbols of accord Throughout the Troubles, British governments, through the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), sought to promote an image of normality and a rejection of political violence. This was complemented by attempts to create and promote a symbolism of accord and consensus. During the peace process, the government also sought to promote a ‘feel-good factor’, in the hope of copper-fastening the new more peaceful form of politics and illustrating the potential benefits that it could offer. During the six-week referendum campaign there was an enormous concentration of government inspired efforts to encourage the people of Northern Ireland to vote ‘Yes’. Many of these efforts took the well-established route of economic incentives, but some of them took a highly symbolic form.67 Prime Minister Tony Blair made repeated visits to Northern Ireland in an attempt to persuade wavering unionist voters of the merits of the Agreement.68 High profile figures such as President Clinton and entrepreneur Richard Branson were enlisted to help promote the ‘Yes’ cause.69 In an unprecedented move, Tony Blair and former prime minister John Major, campaigned together and the leaders of the British Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties also made visits to Northern Ireland.70 One sceptical unionist MP asked, ‘If the Agreement is such a good bargain for unionists, why do they need the intervention of a President, Prime Ministers and other do-gooders to convince the electorate?’71 Indeed, a leaked NIO document revealed a strategy to enlist the help of opinion formers, such as church leaders, to help promote a Yes vote.72 Local Yes and No campaigners also resorted to emotive and symbolic tools. Introducing a new symbol to the already crowded stage of

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Northern Ireland political iconography, the No campaign used a heart shaped Union flag, along with the message ‘Have a heart for Ulster’.73 In the most widely publicised piece of pro-Agreement symbolism, David Trimble and John Hume joined rock group U2 on stage.74 The British government continued its promotion of a feel-good atmosphere as June 1998 elections for the new Northern Ireland power-sharing Assembly loomed. At Secretary of State Mo Mowlam’s instigation, an Elton John concert was held in the grounds of the Stormont estate. One letter writer to the Irish Times complained: ‘Sir, – Two weeks ago it was U2 playing at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. Last week it was Elton John playing at Stormont. Haven’t the people of Northern Ireland suffered enough?’75 On taking up their posts, First Minister David Trimble and Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon made conscious efforts to project an image of unity of purpose and bonhomie. This involved the heavy use of symbolism. There were joint photo-calls, they appeared together on a chat show, jointly welcomed visiting dignitaries, addressed school children and made joint visits to Brussels, Bonn and Washington to promote further investment in the Northern Ireland economy.76 They also attempted to mediate problems surrounding a disputed parade and held joint talks with the British and Irish governments and other political leaders over the increasingly problematic implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.77 Seamus Mallon sat in on David Trimble’s first meeting with Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, thus making it appear more of a roundtable consultation than a confrontation between the leaders of unionism and republicanism.78 There was also a conscious effort to elevate the roles held by Trimble and Mallon above party politics. Frequent references to the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers suggested that the new office had assumed a status immune from party political and partisan pressures. The stresses on the Trimble–Mallon relationship were enormous. The UUP and SDLP differed profoundly on the pace and extent of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. The first powersharing Assembly collapsed in a matter of weeks, with Seamus Mallon flaying David Trimble in his resignation speech. The symbolism of accord, transmitted through the Trimble–Mallon partnership was unable to withstand the party political pressures. When the Assembly was re-established in May 2000 the relationship between the First and Deputy First Ministers remained strained. No amount of symbolism could disguise the fact that this was a forced coalition.

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Discussion: the continuing potency of symbols No single symbolic image captures the Northern Ireland peace process. In the case of the South African peace process it is possible to point to Nelson Mandela’s attendance at the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a defining moment in that country’s transition. The Rabin–Arafat handshake on the White House lawn may be taken to symbolise a high-point of the peace process in Israel/Palestine. There was no all-party signing ceremony for the Good Friday Agreement. UUP leader, David Trimble, told the closing plenary session of the multi-party talks that the Agreement strengthened the Union. A sombre Gerry Adams told the plenary that ‘we remain committed to our Irish republican objectives. We will continue to pursue these objectives in the months and years ahead.’79 The need to sell the Agreement to divergent audiences left little room for symbolic shows of unity. The post-Agreement period saw a continued emphasis on the politics of symbolism. Rejectionist unionists in particular framed their opposition to the Good Friday Agreement in symbolic and emotive terms, juxtaposing the early release of paramilitary prisoners with a lack of provision for the victims of paramilitary violence. Their opposition to the Patten Commission’s proposals on police reform focused on ‘the culture, ethos and symbols’ of the RUC, and on the regalia and the name of the force rather than on proposals to reduce the size of the force while increasing Catholic participation.80 The decommissioning issue again illustrated how symbolic issues could petrify an issue. Clearly an issue of trust more than a serious attempt to secure a surrender of arms which could easily be replaced, it became a major obstacle to the peace process. According to Sir Reg Empey of the UUP, ‘the days of waving a flag for votes are long gone’.81 The implication was that Northern Ireland was destined for an era of more sophisticated politics in which the simple connection between symbols and identity would no longer suffice. A senior member of the SDLP noted that his party did not ‘derive or express our politics either from flags or maps’.82 But even a cursory glance at party political election literature in the post-Agreement period revealed that symbolic politics persisted.83 Attempts to promote symbols of accord, such as cross-community projects among school children and the designation of a ‘memorial Sunday’ for victims of the Troubles made little connection with the existing symbolic inventories of the communities in Northern Ireland. Indeed, they reflected a debate which had persisted for years between

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two approaches to community relations. Those who favoured assimilation had argued for the need to support moderate opinion and to encourage a common enterprise for all who lived in Northern Ireland. Others advocated the need to accept that Northern Ireland had two cultural traditions, with equally legitimate aspirations and that both should be encouraged to express the cultural separateness without embarrassment. When the peace process started, the cultural diversity approach was dominant. It ratified respect for de facto exclusive cultural expressions such as the Irish language and, in an attempt to strike a balance, Ullans as spoken by Ulster-Scots. Indeed the permanence of diversity was enshrined in the power-sharing administration set up after the Agreement, in which ministers were selected on the basis of largely sectional voting returns. The central emphasis of the Good Friday Agreement was to include and accommodate both nationalisms in a single political dispensation. There was no attempt to create a ‘third way’ or new entity based on neither nationalism. Nor was a national integration programme agreed. Instead, both nationalisms were deemed legitimate. The intention was to create a single political entity that could accommodate both identities, giving both access to power and managing their interaction through consociational institutions. At one level the inclusivity made for a mature peace process and did much to temper notions of a final victory through the subordination of one side by the other. But the approach frustrated symbolic attempts to promote an image of post-settlement unity. The Agreement actually encouraged both sides to maintain their exclusive worldviews and entrenched the divisions. Moreover, the extremes on both sides, loyalism and republicanism, were legitimised and included in the new politics. Although the Agreement termed itself as a ‘truly historic opportunity for a new beginning’, the unionist and nationalist projects emerged largely intact.84 While there can be an element of finality in disputes over material issues, the amorphous nature of symbols and symbolism mean that disputes on these issues are difficult to negotiate and rarely reach an endpoint. Disputes over poppies and lilies seem likely to continue.

Conclusion: a Broader Perspective on Northern Ireland’s Peace Process

Introduction The Northern Ireland peace process does not operate in a vacuum. Thirty-eight peace accords were reached between 1988 and 1998, many of which broke with past practice and explored new ways of negotiating a peace deal.1 There was a significant degree of lending and borrowing between contemporary peace processes. South Africa became the main template for many modern peace processes, with the ‘sufficient consensus’ idea being copied in Northern Ireland. The Basques in turn looked to Northern Ireland as a model. Herri Batasuna’s leader Arnaldo Otegi confessed that ‘Ireland was a mirror for us, and so was the republican movement’.2 In 1998 Herri Batasuna invited all political parties and other movements to participate in an ‘Ireland Forum’, explicitly to explore the relevance of the Northern Ireland process to the Basque country; the Lizarra Agreement which followed borrowed heavily from the Irish example. So contemporary peace processes can be viewed as a cascade of new approaches, borrowing from earlier lessons and mistakes, and lending new experiences to the corpus of knowledge. The conscious interrelationship between peace-making initiatives in different parts of the world was underlined by the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in December 2000. In the midst of the mounting crisis in Israel he had time to reflect that, ‘if we don’t make an agreement and drift, God forbid, into a situation of deterioration, there will be cracks in other peace deals’.3 This final chapter sets out to assess Northern Ireland’s peace process within this broader context. First, within the context of previous unsuccessful attempts to reach an agreement since Sunningdale 1973; why did the post-1994 peace process deliver so much more than its predecessors? 167

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Second, within the context of contemporary peace processes; how does the Northern Ireland process stand in comparison with the others? Third, within the spectrum of elements necessary for the success of all peace processes, is it true, as it sometimes appears, that success is determined exclusively by the management of negotiations and disruptive violence, or have other elements – the economy, popular opinion, external actors, symbols – a role to play? The chapter is presented in three parts. ‘What shaped the process?’ assesses Northern Ireland’s experience along the six major themes of this study. ‘What’s new?’ explores what is novel or significant about the process. And the final part argues that Northern Ireland’s lesson for other peace processes is the need to synchronise more effectively the deals and concessions necessary for a just and permanent peace.

What shaped the process? Negotiations The lesson from Northern Ireland and other locations seems to be the impossibility of developing a sustained peace process without the inclusion of (violent) veto-holders. Yet total inclusion is impossible and presents peace process participants with practical and moral problems.4 A strategy of ‘sufficient inclusion’ seems to be the optimal option, although exactly how much inclusion is enough must always be a subjective judgement. Most contemporary peace processes are based on an unstated but quite conscious premiss: the need for leaders to reach agreement before they seek the support of their followers. The reasons are understandable. Negotiations require compromise, but the partial revelation of concessions to one’s enemies before the entire deal of reciprocal concessions has been finalised leaves leaders vulnerable to more extreme opponents within their own communities. Hence preliminary ‘talks about talks’ are usually held in an atmosphere of secrecy, or at least privacy, before the public process begins. Such talks were held in South Africa before Mandela’s release, and the Oslo agreement was kick-started, indeed largely settled, in secret talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials in 1993. There was no shortage of secret talks in Northern Ireland. They ensured that a number of sensitive issues, including the early release of prisoners and the admission of Sinn Féin to negotiations, had been agreed in principle before the 1994 ceasefires were declared. Secret talks

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though run the risk of springing an agreement reached by party leaders on an unprepared public. At some point leaders are faced with a choice of rejecting an accord or becoming an advocate for it. In April 1998, all parties to the Agreement switched from stressing their differences to campaigning for it, a transition that caused particular difficulties for unionists.5 The ease with which parties can make this switch often depends on the extent to which they have briefed their constituency on developments within talks. Why was the Agreement reached in April 1998? The process had been in existence, in various states of health, for almost four years. Much of that time had been unproductive. Certainly the peace process guardians made conscious efforts to secure an agreement in Spring 1998. George Mitchell believed that the multi-party negotiations were in danger of collapsing unless a speedy accord was reached and set as a deadline midnight on Thursday 9 April.6 The rush to reach an agreement carried risks. Some issues deemed too divisive to be dealt with in the main body of the talks were set aside only to loom large over post-Agreement Northern Ireland. But the intense activity in the days immediately preceding the Good Friday Agreement underline the need for timetables and deadlines during the peace process. Strictly speaking, Mitchell’s deadline was not met, and the Agreement was concluded on the following day, but the discipline of his deadline, rather than formal adherence to its details, proved enough. As Deaglán de Bréadún put it, ‘Deadlines in the peace process are like those spots on the wall that paramilitaries focused on when they were arrested: nothing more than an aid to concentration’.7 The joint custody of the process by the British and Irish governments set it apart from other processes and only became possible after years of delicate and patient diplomacy. Each custodian had its own interests, preferred outcome and favoured clients. At the same time, they had to act with a degree of responsibility, ensuring that the process remained viable. It was a relationship of restrained competition within a mutual and reciprocal framework. Many other peace processes are marked by an asymmetry of power through which one government, reinforced by a security apparatus, is the primary veto-holder. In these circumstances, as the failure of the peace process in Sri Lanka demonstrates, the internal politics of the main power will often decide the fate of peace initiatives. The formation of an intra-community bloc to attempt to overcome the effect of asymmetries of power has been used in Northern Ireland and the Basque country. The creation of a ‘pan-nationalist front’ in Northern Ireland was valuable in establishing identifiable negotiating

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positions and helping to moderate those on the political extremes. Attempts to create a Basque nationalist front have only been partially successful. Strong conservative governments in Spain have little incentive in pursuing inclusive peace initiatives. Northern Ireland’s post-accord problems illustrate that a peace accord, regardless of how comprehensive it is, does not mark an end to a conflict. The tendency of parties to attempt to ignore or revise parts of the Agreement was not unique to Northern Ireland. While the idea of an in-built review mechanism seems sensible there is a danger that it will be used as part of the rolling revision process. Much rests on how the agreement was originally promoted and the degree of expectation among communities. Violence A key lesson borne out in Northern Ireland, and other locations, is that violence changes in form and content following ceasefires. Political violence frustrated negotiations in Sri Lanka, the Basque country and Israel–Palestine. It was a constant threat during the South African transition. In Northern Ireland too, the return of political violence in 1996 effectively suspended the peace process for 17 months and the phenomenon of neo-political violence provided a gloomy backcloth to the entire peace process. It came in the form of parades-related disputes, spoiler violence, internecine feuds, carefully controlled punishment beatings and increased crime rates. The willingness of the peace negotiators to turn a blind eye to atrocities and abuses of the rule of law in order to maintain the peace process sat uneasily amid the rhetoric of peace and stored up potential future difficulties. The ceasefires introduced a series of violence-related issues, including early prisoner releases, decommissioning and policing reform. None of these could be discussed while the war continued. All of them became immediate priorities when it ended. All were highly contentious and divisive. They dominated the months and years after the Good Friday Agreement, illustrating that the Agreement by no means marked the successful completion of the process. Despite these persistent problems, the peace process could point to two major and rare achievements. First, despite the IRA’s return to violence between February 1996 and July 1997, the ceasefires held remarkably well during the rest of the peace process; there was little tactical violence, despite the worst fears of many. Second, the Northern Ireland peace process evolved an ingenious approach to the tricky problem of how to neutralise violence while negotiating with ex-militants.

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The device was the Mitchell Principles, which set conditions for entry to talks, and enforced them. Despite the contemptuous dismissal (‘a spell in the sin bin’) of Sinn Fein’s suspension for two weeks after the use of violence by the IRA, the Mitchell Principles succeeded in imposing unwelcome norms during the critical negotiations period. They are likely to find imitators in other peace processes. Popular influences The importance of the secret negotiations preceding the 1994 ceasefires underlined the relatively unimportant role played by public opinion in initiating the peace process. Public opinion polls had consistently showed cross-sectarian support for ending violence during the entire period of the Troubles.8 This public desire for peace was reinforced by occasional attempts to organise cross-sectarian peace movements. These were demonstrably protest movements, more effective for venting public outrage than for applying pressure on paramilitary organisations. The IRA was prepared to batten down the hatches and wait for the protests to rise, attract media attention and eventually ebb. The experience of the Peace People in the late 1970s demonstrated the difficulty of sustaining a peace movement outside of local political structures. The examples of other violent societies also demonstrate that it is easier to mobilise for violence than peace. Peace movements in South Africa and Israel were similarly ineffectual. In the Basque country the co-ordinating peace body Gesto was able to sustain large protests against ETA from 1995, but these provoked counter-demonstrations and had little observable influence in stimulating an effective peace process in Spain.9 Part of the problem is the difficulty of altering political structures where political allegiances are determined by ethnic affiliation. When major changes are threatened it is easy to beat the sectarian drum and to resist changes, at least when the demand for change is general and unstructured. When it is channelled through a well-developed civil society, the picture may change dramatically. Contrast Northern Ireland’s two experiences of power-sharing; the Executives of 1974 and 1998 attracted different responses from civil society. The former power-sharing experiment was challenged by a political strike by loyalist workers. They closed down the main industries, disrupted water and power supplies, and eventually forced the resignation of the Executive. Civil society had expressed itself as sectarian, uncompromising and negative. By 1998 it had shifted almost full circle into a strategically focused and effective force for peace. When the split Ulster

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Unionist Party was slow to campaign in favour of the Good Friday Agreement, civil society took on the role. The four main churches, the media (in contrast to its negative role in Israel) and all sides of the business community came out strongly in support of the Agreement, and their support continued during the difficult post-Accord years. Civil society, including traditionally unionist elements within it, had broken ranks with political orthodoxy and provided significant support for David Trimble when his Party’s support began to waver. Whether this is the main lesson for peace lobbyists from Northern Ireland’s experience will become clearer as the Civic Forum – the sounding board institution set up under the Good Friday Agreement – develops its role. External factors What effect had external actors on the Northern Ireland peace process? Stedman and others have argued that custodians – ‘international actors whose task is to oversee the implementation of peace agreements’ – have an essential role.10 External actors indisputably played a significant part in the Northern Ireland process. The European Union provided substantial economic support. Irish-American politicians and organisations helped to swing American support behind the process. President Clinton and George Mitchell provided strategic support at critical times. In contrast to other contemporary peace processes, all the external actors were benign and sought to make the process succeed. However, these factors must be considered within a broader perspective, and within that perspective, two judgements stand out. First, the process was primarily driven by the British and Irish governments and the political parties within Northern Ireland, not from outside. External third parties rarely acted unilaterally. Second, the significance of external actors – the three visits by Clinton, Mitchell’s role as chairman, and the international decommissioning body – while supportive, was strategic and occasional rather than a dominant force. The lessons for other cases are unclear. In some situations, local elites had no choice but to submit to the wishes of third parties. In Northern Ireland, third parties acted with moderation, affording local parties space to work out their own compromises. This was probably a reflection of the international esteem for the efforts of the British and Irish governments. But it also reflected Northern Ireland’s strategic insignificance and the low body count in a post-cold war era marked by repeated calls for international intervention. Economic influences Northern Ireland is a small region within a rich state, itself part of a prosperous economic union; it enjoys special links with the United

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States. Parallel peace processes were less fortunate. In South Africa disillusion and the increased crime rate fed on the failure to deliver a measurable peace dividend to those most in need. According to a World Bank briefing paper in August 2000, economic output from the West Bank and Gaza declined by between 2 and 3 per cent a year between 1994 and 1999, even before the renewed violence of 2000 sent it plummeting further.11 By contrast, there was a measurable peace dividend in Northern Ireland. Substantial grants were awarded by the UK Exchequer, the European Union and international agencies like the International Fund for Ireland, explicitly to support the peace process. Tourism soared with the announcement of the 1994 ceasefires, fell when they were breached in 1996 and cautiously rose during the following years. External investment and exports both increased, especially in the high technology sector after the Good Friday Agreement was reached. The economy, already showing signs of recovery, continued to grow throughout the peace process. External investment and tourism increased, the latter somewhat erratically. The emergence of the business community as an aggressive campaigner for the Agreement was another form of peace dividend. For business, certainty was everything. One general observation on the role of economic factors stands out when the Northern Ireland peace process is viewed against parallel processes. It is perhaps not possible to claim on the evidence that a prosperous economy is a major stimulus for success, but in Northern Ireland at least it played a very significant strategic role in urging political compromise. What seems incontestable, at least from the examples of South Africa and Israel–Palestine, is that a struggling economy is a major barrier to success. Symbols and symbolism Symbols can play powerful roles in peace processes, either mobilising people for or against the process or reducing complex political arguments to the level of myth and emotion. They often have an organic connection with non-elites and resist conscious and precise manipulation to aid or disrupt a process. Attempts to end conflict often conform to two models: integration or separation. With integration the antagonists recognize the need to co-exist within the same entity. Basic differences, although maintained, are often managed through power-sharing mechanisms. Initiatives based on separation recognize that conflicting communities are mutually exclusive and that it is rational that they remain apart. The model pursued has profound influences on the use of symbolism in the peace process. Processes based on separation make the promotion

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and use of exclusive symbols entirely rational. Thus Israelis and Palestinians use their separate symbolic inventories to demonise each other and promote their own causes. The South African transition, on the other hand, aimed at the creation of a shared South Africa. This was reinforced by the conscious use of symbols and symbolism in a national integration campaign. The idea of a ‘Rainbow nation’ together with a new flag, national anthem, banknotes and place names formed part of a deliberate mobilisation of symbolic capital in aid of the transition. Northern Ireland sat uneasily between the integration and separation models. The territory would remain unified and would have a single government. Yet there were few common symbols to encapsulate the creation of the new, shared institutions. The Agreement validated separate traditions, making it entirely rational for nationalists and unionists to continue to promote rival identities and the symbolism that accompanied them.

Major and minor influences All the six main themes examined played some part in the peace process, but they did not carry equal weight. Northern Ireland had considerable advantages over other contemporary peace processes in its relative economic strength and the support of all external actors. These were helpful rather than key factors in the process, so the advantages were strategic and occasional rather than constant. Their timely deployment, however, was far from insignificant. External support from Irish America and the United States government was especially helpful in the period leading up to the ceasefires and at specific points during negotiations, notably the first Clinton visit and George Mitchell’s chairing and trouble-shooting. Grants from the European Union followed speedily after the ceasefires and additional British aid was given before the referendum. The emergence of a strong civil society was essential in the campaign to win and maintain the Good Friday Agreement. These inputs were specific and important, but the main direction of the process was dominated by two factors – the need to deal with the various threats posed by violence and the need to negotiate an agreement. Even when symbolic issues surfaced, such as the tensions surrounding Orange marches and the debate over RUC reform, they were sub-segments of these two main factors. The variegated threat of violence during the process, was navigated with notable success by maintaining an uneasy distinction between political violence and other forms of violence. The

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former would have constituted a breach of the ceasefire and the removal of loyalists or republicans from talks, a process facilitated by the Mitchell Principles. The latter, even if the same groups were involved, were severely criticized, but effectively treated as crimes to be handled by due process of the law. The negotiations were less skilfully managed. They were dominantly elite-driven. Indeed the main heads of dispute, and ultimately of agreement, had been known for years. The problem lay in the process as much as the content. A peace process is not like a race, with a guaranteed result at the end. It is more like a sheepdog trial without time limits, when the sheep must be steered through obstacles by whatever means are available. The essential skills are perseverance and ingenuity rather than speed. At best, the drama and tension will ease into a condition where normal politics can deal with the disputes previously contested through violence. For that reason it is difficult to assess the Northern Ireland peace process. The trial is certainly not over. The judges have moved to the sidelines, and the players are themselves increasingly in control. Everyone knows that, if agreement cannot be reached on the rules of the game, the event will be suspended and the third umpire, in the shape of the two governments, will wearily assume their previous parts. Comparison with other contemporary peace processes, however, presents a picture not widely shared within Northern Ireland. The distrust and fear that accompanied and even grew since 1994, far from being distinctive to Northern Ireland, is a norm during peace processes. Trust is not a pre-condition for negotiation, but may become a consequence. Given this observation, consider the achievements of the Northern Ireland peace process. Despite the failure to erode mutual suspicion, an effective modus vivendi emerged in the two years following the Good Friday Agreement, and substantial advances were made in implementing the Accord. Prisoners were released, to the disapproval but general acceptance of the public. North–South institutions, traditionally a tinder bed between unionists and nationalists, were established with surprising ease. Less surprising, so were the east–west institutions and institutional reforms such as the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. The Assembly and multi-party Executive were up and running by 2000. The Civic Forum met in the same year. Other substantial obstacles proved more persistent than might have been expected, notably decommissioning and policing reform. Viewed comparatively, however, by the end of 2000 the Northern Ireland peace process had journeyed further along the mountain range than all the other contemporary peace processes except South Africa. That in

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itself provides no guarantee of future success, but it is no mean achievement.

What’s new? The 1994 peace process followed a succession of seven aborted peace initiatives, and dozens of informal and unofficial attempts, since the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973. These failed to produce agreement, but were far from worthless. The parties had learned a lot about the conditions and constraints facing their opponents, and had gained experience in negotiation. The main provisions of the Good Friday Agreement – in particular the need to satisfy the three strands of discord: British–Irish, North–South and unionist–nationalist – had been tacitly accepted years, even decades, before they were confirmed in 1998. But the sustained nature of the post-1994 process, and the context in which it operated, was a new phenomenon. The following section highlights some of its most salient political features. Inclusion A core component of the peace process was inclusion. Previous processes had foundered because of the exclusion of veto-holders, or players significant enough to bring about the collapse of the process if excluded. The inclusion of ex-militants caused massive offence to those who regarded themselves as peaceful defenders of, or stakeholders in, Northern Ireland. The guardians of the process, the British and Irish governments, were engaged in the constant balancing act of trying to include the vetoholders while respecting the norms of liberal democracy. At times it appeared as though it was inclusion at any price. When Sinn Féin were expelled from the talks in early 1998 a senior Party member noted graphically, that ‘people were going up their backsides to find ways of getting us back in again.’12 At other times it seemed as though the custodians were intent on presenting the paramilitaries with conditions they could not possibly meet. It was not a straightforward battle between principle (exclusion) and pragmatism (inclusion). The composition of the ‘outcasts’ changed at various times during the process. At different times, the British government, the UUP, and loyalists and republicans all walked away from the process or took a step back. Ultimately the process was unable to include everyone, although to have the British and Irish governments, the SDLP, most of the UUP, republican and loyalist paramilitaries and their political cousins, most of the churches and civil society on board

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the settlement train was a remarkable achievement. Even the ‘No’ camp was not entirely excluded from the feast. Inclusion lived on in the newly devolved institutions allowing the DUP, vociferous opponents of the Agreement, to be part of the government. Consent The peace process saw the elevation of the consent principle from a remote constitutional device into a relevant political mechanism to decide Northern Ireland’s constitutional status.13 Consent played a major role in the process itself. The two governments made it clear that any agreement would be put to the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum, thus reassuring those who felt threatened by the peace process. In other words, there would be no sudden deals by the governments. The principle of consent formed a cornerstone of the Agreement: Northern Ireland’s constitutional status would only change if the people of the territory voted for it. While this had been a long-standing tenet of British government policy, its tacit acceptance by republicans effectively undercut the rationale for political violence. As with many other items in Northern Ireland, the consent principle was open to multiple interpretations. For some unionists it was the best safeguard available for the continued maintenance of the Union, particularly given the unionist majority. For other unionists it was a meaningless guarantee when placed in the wider context of a peace process leading towards Irish unity. Republicans saw it as another avenue to pursue their struggle. They reminded their constituency that the Agreement was a transitional phase in the struggle and that, with time, demographics would work in their favour. New forms of communication The process of political dialogue was revolutionised by the peace process. In the early 1990s the UUP refused to talk to the SDLP, let alone consider contact with Sinn Féin. Media restrictions led to the farce of broadcasting organisations using an actor’s voice to lip-sync with footage of Gerry Adams. The peace process opened up political communication, at first in the form of secret intra-nationalist contacts but ultimately in the form of face-to-face meetings between David Trimble and Gerry Adams. While the Democratic Unionists clung to the mantra of ‘not talking to terrorists’, the new political dispensation meant that they shared the Assembly and its committees with Sinn Féin. The peace process was not simply a matter of convening negotiations between the protagonists in the hope that agreement could be reached.

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Instead it required repeated and careful intervention, mainly by the British and Irish governments, to encourage momentum, inclusion and moderation. In the words of a senior Fianna Fáil politician, ‘this thing needs pushing’.14 The ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ proviso was a safeguard against the premature collapse of the talks, and stimulated a broadening of the talks agenda. The introduction of ‘top-up’ seats in the 1996 Forum and 1998 Assembly elections ensured the inclusion of smaller parties. Farming-out contentious issues to expert consultative commissions reduced the risk of these issues derailing the main negotiations. Plenary sessions of the 1997–98 talks were virtually put on hold when it became clear that they were unproductive. The real business of the talks was conducted in committees and facilitated by the shuttling of civil servants and NIO ministers. The New Labour ministerial team even made an effort to eat in the cafeteria along with the party negotiators. This contrasted with Sir Patrick Mayhew’s team who ‘always had their food brought upstairs’.15 George Mitchell attempted to create the ‘atmospherics’ conducive to agreement during his autumn 1999 review of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. This extended to encouraging the Sinn Féin and UUP delegations to mix during mealtimes and refrain from talking ‘shop’. Repeated promises of a referendum, letters of reassurance from the British Prime Minister, and regular access to 10 Downing Street and Government Buildings in Dublin were all used to steady nerves. Democratic validation The peace process began with secret contacts and coded messages. It culminated in simultaneous referendums on both sides of the border. At that moment the conflict was crystallised into a single question: to support or reject a comprehensive peace accord. The resort to majoritarianism (in a process dominated by inclusion and sufficient consensus) was a high-risk strategy. Victory for the ‘No’ camp would have left the process irretrievably damaged. But the democratic validation of the Agreement conferred an important legitimacy on it and prompted a sense of ownership that helped sustain the process in the difficult implementation period. Whether or not a majority of unionists supported the Agreement in May 1998 was hotly contested. Yet the referendum result represented an unprecedented popular consensus in a deeply divided society. It had a double impact. First, it vastly expanded the guardianship of the peace process beyond the British and Irish governments to encompass the ‘Yes’ political parties, civil society and even

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the main paramilitary groups. Second, it injected a moral authority into the Agreement that its opponents found difficult to counter. Democratic validation meant that to be against the Agreement risked being interpreted as being against peace. A background of near normality In many ways Northern Ireland was radically different from other on-going peace processes and transitions. Other cases witnessed mass movements of refugees, the wholesale disarmament and demobilisation of large guerrilla armies, the introduction of democracy (or its reintroduction after an absence), and the deployment of large multilateral peacekeeping forces. In Northern Ireland, the semblance of liberal democratic order continued alongside the peace process. There was virtually no politics in the month of August because politicians, obeying the parliamentary calendar, were on holiday. Social welfare services were uninterrupted by political machinations. Ceteris paribus, businesses returned profits. Northern Ireland’s multiplexes screened the same movies as those in Coventry and Cork. Large swathes of Northern Ireland society continued as normal, as inured to the peace process as they had been to the political violence that preceded it. A very peculiar government Measures to encourage movement, inclusion and moderation were also incorporated into the new Northern Ireland government. Not without understatement, one SDLP negotiator noted that ‘it’s not the classic parliamentary coalition’.16 In fact it was a marriage of both convenience and extreme inconvenience. At this wedding the shotguns were for real and the occasion came complete with strained photographs of the wedding party. There was a patent lack of trust between coalition members at Executive level. David Trimble suggested that Sinn Féin needed to be ‘housetrained’ in the ways of democracy.17 Relations between the First and Deputy First Ministers were frosty. Not only did spoilers lie outside of government in the form of dissident paramilitaries; DUP cabinet members were committed to the disruption and collapse of the administration. The Good Friday Agreement outlined a number of measures to ensure that the new government would be representative of all sections of society. The idea of co-premiers had been implemented in Cambodia in the mid-1990s, but with disastrous results. Demography and the composition of the Assembly ensured that Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Ministers would come from the unionist and nationalist

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traditions. As a further safeguard against single group domination, key decisions in the Assembly required cross-community support either via parallel consent or a weighted majority.18 Ministers were appointed by the d’Hondt system, ensuring that the four largest parties were represented in the Executive. Assembly Committees, with powers of ‘scrutiny, policy development and consultation’, oversaw each ministry. The chairs and deputy chairs of the Committees were allocated proportionately using the d’Hondt system. The operation of the Assembly was linked to that of the North–South Ministerial Council and the British–Irish Council, thus locking the parties into the full working of all three strands of the Agreement. A pledge of office committed officeholders ‘to serve all the people of Northern Ireland equally’19 while a Civic Forum would give civil society a structured consultative role. On paper at least, Northern Ireland was well governed. Indeed, perhaps it was over-governed given simultaneous representation in Westminster and local councils, as well as the new Assembly. It also had a very peculiar form of coalition government. There were no common whips, no voting pacts or pre-arranged agreements on a programme for government. Nor was there an effective opposition, often taken as an indicator of the health of democracy in developing states. DUP ministers who pledged themselves to fulfil their tasks with ‘total professionalism and dedication’ refused to attend Executive meetings because of the presence of Sinn Féin and then resigned to be replaced by party colleagues.20 Sinn Féin’s ministers took on the high profile departments of Education and Health and operated them according to strictures set out in London. Yet for them the Agreement and Assembly were merely transitional stages in a long-term struggle. Ambiguities and contradictions Post-Agreement Northern Ireland seemed to be awash with contradictions, especially when viewed through the lenses of middle England and Ireland. What would have been regarded as transgressions of the norms of democratic politics in other societies were repeatedly subjugated to the greater good of the peace process by deliberate ambiguity. Northern Ireland’s citizens could be British and Irish. Sinn Féin’s Bairbre de Brun was in charge of the health service, yet the IRA continued to break limbs through punishment attacks. Paramilitary prisoners, in some cases mass murderers, were released from prison while victims of violence continued to feel aggrieved and marginalised. Perhaps the greatest contradiction of all was that despite a comprehensive peace accord, the conflict continued. The ending of the main loyalist

Conclusion: a Broader Perspective 181

and republican campaigns meant that several hundred people were spared violent deaths, but violence continued from dissident loyalists and republicans, as did public order disturbances related to the parading dispute. More fundamentally, the Agreement and peace process left the core dispute unresolved. Two sets of exclusive nationalism were still locked in competition. This conflict, with an added spin of sectarianism, remained capable of infecting nearly all aspects of life in Northern Ireland. Assembly debates on seemingly non-contentious issues regularly strayed into more political fields.21 Yet the peace process and resulting structures allowed the conflict to be regulated and managed in new, more peaceful, ways.

The need to synchronise Peace processes always involve transfer from one participant to another. It may be the cession of land, the sharing of power, the redistribution of resources or institutional reforms, but it involves a net gain and a net loss. Indeed that is the very essence of the exercise. A peace process by definition follows a war, and wars are about grievances; if they end in any other way than victory for either side, the solution involves concessions. Transfer is only part of the story. The other part is that it must also involve a deal, with concessions and gains on both sides. Stripped to its essentials, the deal is usually the ending of violence by paramilitaries in return for their entry into negotiations. The negotiations will then determine how the different issues in dispute are settled. It is essential that both sides come away with a deal they can sell to their supporters. In Northern Ireland both sides believed that they had made major concessions. Republicans’ concession on the principle of consent, essentially a guarantee not to seek Irish unity by force, amounted to a reversal of their essential political philosophy; they believed that unionists showed little understanding of its significance. From the Good Friday Agreement, indeed during the negotiations for it, unionist discontent grew into a general perception that the settlement was unbalanced, that unionists had conceded much but received little in return. The IRA refusal to decommission was seen as both an indication that it reserved the option of returning to war and the final symbolic straw for many unionists. How did this perception grow? Was it accurate? The answer lies not in the balance of the concessions made by those engaged in the

182 Guns and Government

process, but in their nature and timing. The concessions made by unionists, by their nature, were immediate and material – early release of prisoners, admission of Sinn Fein into cabinet, north–south institutions, reform of the RUC. The concessions made by republicans, by their nature, were theoretical and deferred – the principle of consent, the revision of the Irish constitution to remove the territorial claim to Northern Ireland. Each side knew that its own concessions were difficult and significant. Each side dismissed its opponents’ concessions as, if not insignificant, the reversal of past inequities. The heart-rending and divisive journey made within each community to reach agreement did not increase understanding of the difficulties facing its opponents in completing the same journey. The mutual misunderstanding finds a precise echo in the formulae used in the Middle East: ‘tangible territory for intangible security’. In retrospect, how might this have been avoided? Are there lessons for future peace processes? The principal lesson is that the entire agenda of disputes, at least those known at the time of negotiations, must be on the table and treated as a whole. The entire map needs to be charted from the start, even if some detail must be deferred. One of the earliest principles of the peace process, almost a mantra, was that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’. The reality fell well short of this admirable sentiment, for understandable reasons. The Good Friday Agreement left a great deal of unsettled business to be dealt with within specified time frames, setting most of the post-Accord agenda. The second lesson is that concessions need to be orchestrated rather than determined separately. This opens up the possibility for reciprocation, where concessions in one area may be used to ease settlement in another. Of course there is a danger in opening the entire roster of disputes to cross-trading, the principal one that it may mire the process in a complex stalemate. But the case for limited and specific cross-trading is strong. It seems probable, in the atmosphere of the 1998 negotiations, that a graduated and synchronised programme of decommissioning and demilitarisation could have been agreed, and prevented the wasteful dispute over IRA decommissioning. Another mutual programme might have co-ordinated the early release of prisoners with measures to compensate and acknowledge the feelings of their victims. If either reciprocation had been possible, a great deal of post-Accord confrontation would have been averted.

Notes Introduction: a New Departure 1. Analysis of these peace processes is provided in John Darby and James Rae, ‘Peace Processes from 1988–1998: Changing Patterns’, Ethnic Studies Report, XLII, 1 (January 1999). 2. The renewed UN involvement in peacekeeping is associated with the need to deal with severe violence before proceeding to a settlement, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and East Timor. 3. In each area under study a distinguished academic or team monitored the peace process as it evolved or collapsed over a two-year period. All were working to an agreed methodology, which made allowances for local differences. The partners participating in the study with John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty were Pierre van der Post du Toit, University of Stellenbosch; Tamar Hermann, Tami Steinmetz Centre, Tel Aviv University and David Newman, Ben Gurion University; Ludger Mees, Universidad del País Vasco-Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Bilbao; and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo. 4. G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (London: The Bodley Head, 1904), p.4. 5. Following the conservative/Conservative convention, unionist will be taken to mean unionism and unionists in general, while Unionist will refer to the largest unionist political party, the Ulster Unionist Party. 6. The front cover of Fortnight magazine (September 1989) shows a picture of a child holding a replica gun accompanied by the headline ‘And now for the next thirty years’. 7. Neither a borrower or a lender be for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, line 75

1

The background to the peace process

1. This section draws from two chapters in John Darby, Scorpions in a Bottle: Conflicting cultures in Northern Ireland (London: Minority Rights Group Press, 1997). 2. These figures are taken from the CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet) website: http://www.cain.ac.uk/ni/popul.htm (2000). 3. Taken from the political attitudes module of the 1999/2000 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, full details of which can be found at: http://www.qub. ac.uk/nilt/. The survey was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (L327253045) and Roger Mac Ginty was the principal researcher. 4. J.C. Beckett and R. Glasscock, Belfast: The Origin and Growth of an Industrial City (London: BBC, 1967), p.188. 183

184 Notes 5. A.T.Q. Stewart, The Narrow Ground: Aspects of Ulster, 1609–1969 (London: Faber & Faber, 1977), p.36. 6. According to the 1998 ‘Crime and fear of crime’ module of the NILT survey, 78 per cent of people in Northern Ireland believe there is either ‘a bit less’ or ‘a lot less’ crime in Northern Ireland than in Britain. NILT op. cit. 7. Author interview (10 October 1997). 8. The term ‘Ulster’ is popularly used in Ireland to describe two different areas. One is the nine counties of the traditional province – Antrim, Down, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan. The other is the administrative and political unit which since 1921 has formed the state of Northern Ireland; it comprises the first six counties detailed above. In this book the term ‘Northern Ireland’ will be preferred, as the best in a long list of contested alternatives, when describing the latter area. 9. See, for example, M. Cronin, History of Ireland (London: Macmillan, 1999); R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London: Allen Lane, 1988) and The Oxford History of Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); J.J. Lee, Ireland 1921–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; C.O. Gráda, Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). For Northern Ireland, Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1995) is recommended. 10. John Darby, ‘Conflict in Northern Ireland: A background essay’, in S. Dunn (ed.), Facets of the Conflict in Northern Ireland (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp.15–23 at 15–16. 11. See Peter Rose, How the Troubles Came to Northern Ireland (London: Palgrave, 2000), pp.1–10. 12. See the ‘Five stages of conflict and two crisis thresholds’ model set out by A.P. Schmid and A.J. Jongman. Stage one is a Peaceful Stable Situation, Stage two is a Political Tension Situation, Stage three is a Violent Political Conflict, Stage four is a Low-Intensity Conflict and Stage five is a High-Intensity Conflict. ‘Violent Conflicts and Human Rights Violations in the mid-1990s’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 9, 4 (Winter 1997), pp.166–92 at p.167. 13. Quotation from R.J. Lawrence, The Government of Northern Ireland: Public Finance and Public Services 1921–1964 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p.167. 14. The 1999/2000 NILT survey (op. cit.) found that 11 per cent of respondents said that their husband/wife/partner was of a different religion than themselves. 15. Overviews of the modern phase of the conflict include: John Darby, (1997) op. cit.; Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland (London: The Athlone Press, 1996); Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of the Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 16. A more detailed overview of the dynamics of violence in Northern Ireland can be found in R. Mac Ginty, ‘Hate Crime in Deeply Divided Societies’, New Political Science, 22, 1 (March 2000), pp.49–60. 17. A detailed analysis of the death and injury toll can be found in MarieTherese Fay, Mike Morrissey and Marie Smyth, Northern Ireland’s Troubles: The Human Costs (London: Pluto Press, 1999).

Notes 185 18. Details of both conflicts and efforts to manage them can be found in J. Armon and L. Philipson (eds), ‘Demanding Sacrifice: War and Negotiation in Sri Lanka’, ACCORD: An international review of peace initiatives, 4 (1998) and M. Stankovitch (ed.), ‘Compromising on Autonomy in Mindanao in Transition’, ACCORD: An international review of peace initiatives, 6 (1999). 19. The ratio of male Catholic unemployed to male Protestant unemployed has stood at 1:2.5 over the last 30 years, falling to 1:2.2 in 1991; the figure for women was around 1:1.5.Whatever the reasons for this – and they are furiously disputed – there is no doubting its political importance. 20. Controls on violence are discussed in John Darby, What’s Wrong with Conflict? Occasional Paper 3, (Coleraine: Centre for the Study of Conflict, 1995). 21. Details can be found in P. Catterall and S. McDougall (eds), The Northern Ireland Question in British Politics (London: Macmillan, 1996) and Brendan O’Leary, ‘The Conservative Stewardship of Northern Ireland, 1979–97: Sound-bottomed Contradictions or Slow Learning?’ Political Studies, xlv (1997), pp.663–76. 22. One of the Agreement’s signatories, Garret FitzGerald, noted that ‘… unionist political reaction was both more intense and longer lasting than we had thought likely.’ From All in a Life: An Autobiography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1992), p.565. For details of unionist protests against the Agreement see F. Cochrane, Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo-Irish Agreement (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997), pp.122–83. 23. Anthony M. Gallagher, ‘The Approach of Government: Community Relations and Equity’, in S. Dunn (ed.), op. cit., pp.27–42. 24. See John Morison and Stephen Livingstone, Reshaping Public Power: Northern Ireland and the British Constitutional Crisis (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1995), pp.137–43 and 158–68, and R.J. McCormack and R.D. Osborne, ‘The Evolution of the Catholic Middle Class’, in A. Guelke (ed.), New Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Conflict (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994), pp.65–85 at 70. 25. Quoted in H. Miall, O. Ramsbotham and T. Woodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p.96. 26. For more detailed reviews of the changes within republicanism see Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Irish Peace Process (London, Heinemann: 1996) and Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin (London: Bloomsbury, 1997). 27. This is the assessment of a senior official from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. Author interview (13 March 1996). 28. Author interview with a senior member of Fianna Fáil (6 June 1996). 29. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (23 July 1997). 30. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (25 February 1997). 31. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (23 July 1996). 32. The document is reprinted in appendix 3 of E. Mallie and D. McKittrick, op. cit., pp.381–4. 33. Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (26 March 1996). 34. E. Mallie and D. McKittrick, op. cit., pp.99–107. 35. Author interview (31 January 1998). 36. Author interview with a senior member of the Ulster Democratic Party (26 March 1996).

186 Notes

53.

The Ulster Democratic Party is linked with the Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Freedom Fighters paramilitary groups. The Progressive Unionist Party is linked with the Ulster Volunteer Force. Author interview with a senior member of the UDP (26 March 1996). Peter Taylor, op. cit., pp.304–8. See, ‘Chasing the Yankee Dollar: The Americans behind the peace process’, Business and Finance, 35, 4, (26 November 1998), pp.20–1; A. Guelke, ‘The United States, Irish-Americans and the Northern Ireland Peace Process’, International Affairs, 72, 3 ( July 1996), pp.521–36; and R. Mac Ginty, ‘American Influences on the Northern Ireland Peace Process’, The Journal of Conflict Studies, 17, 2, (Fall 1997), pp.31–50. Author interview with a senior adviser to the Irish government (31 July 1996). Ibid. Details of the Brooke initiative can be found in O’Leary and McGarry, op. cit., pp.312–26. Mallie and McKittrick, op. cit., pp.104–7. Author interview with a senior NIO official (21 May 1997). Mallie and McKittrick, op. cit., p.107. In 1989, for example, Sinn Féin announced that it was ‘somewhat perplexed that the SDLP continues to maintain that the British Government is now a neutral party to the conflict in Ireland’. See Sinn Féin Publicity Department, The Sinn Féin/SDLP Talks. January–September 1988, (Dublin: Sinn Féin, 1989). B. O’Brien, The Long War (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 1992), p.305. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (23 July 1996). The Hume–Adams document did not exist in paper form and took shape from oral briefings given by John Hume to Irish Government officials. Author interview (6 June 1996). Mallie and McKittrick, op. cit., p.192. The first quotation comes from an author interview with a senior member of the UDP (26 March 1996), the second is from Seán Duignan, One Spin on the Merry-go-round (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1995), p.99. Author interview with a senior NIO official (21 May 1997).

2

Negotiating the deal

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (26 March 1996). Peter Robinson quoted in ‘Security Pledges’, News Letter (5 September 1994). Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (26 March 1996). Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (23 July 1996). ‘PM warned of unionist terms for UU support’, News Letter (31 October 1994). Frameworks for the Future, (Belfast: HMSO, 1995), p.v. ‘Talks part of larger process – Ancram’, Irish Times (10 May 1995). ‘Sinn Féin calls on British to end “political discrimination”’, Irish Times (11 May 1995). 9. ‘Adams at odds with Dublin, London on doom remarks’, Irish Times (6 September 1995). 10. The full text of the ‘Mitchell Report’ is available at http://www.nio. gov.uk/mitchrpt.htm, 1996.

Notes 187 11. Author interview (12 March 1997). 12. Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (26 March 1996). 13. IRA statement contained in ‘Truce lies in tatters’, Belfast Telegraph (10 February 1996). 14. Author interview (26 February 1996). 15. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (23 July 1996). 16. Author interview (23 February 1996). 17. Mark Durkan quoted in Kate Fearon, Women’s Work: The Story of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999), p.20. 18. F. Millar, ‘Election Bill for North makes history amid fear of unreality’, Irish Times (24 April 1996). 19. Text published in Irish Times (18 March 1996). 20. Two extra seats would be awarded to the ten political parties that secured the highest vote, thus ensuring the representation on the smaller parties. A table of Northern Ireland election results from 1968 can be found on the CAIN website: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/election/electsum. htm, 2000. 21. J. Stephenson, Chairman of the SDLP, used the term ‘lend’. Cited in ‘Sinn Féin describes SDLP claim of five to seven seats as arrogant’, Irish Times (2 April 1997). D. Coughlan, ‘IRA left with fewer and fewer options as pressure for ceasefire builds up’, Irish Times (8 June 1996). 22. ‘IRA statement dismisses possibility of ceasefire and rules out decommissioning’ (6 June 1996). 23. The parties were: UUP, DUP, SDLP, PUP, UDP, Alliance, UKUP, Women’s Coalition and Northern Ireland Labour. 24. Author interview with a senior adviser to the Bruton/Spring coalition government in the Irish Republic (31 July 1996). 25. Author interview (10 October 1997). 26. Author interview with adviser to Bruton/Spring government (31 July 1996). 27. F. Millar (2 August 1996). 28. ‘Mitchell plan may propel talks out of procedural deadlock’ and ‘NI parties adjourn to September with parties agreeing rules of procedure’, Irish Times (24 and 30 July 1996). 29. ‘SDLP, UUP set to deal with impasse over arms’, Irish Times (9 September 1996). 30. Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (26 February 1996). 31. ‘Search for formula to allow SF into talks intensifies’ and ‘Hume to step up his efforts to persuade Major on IRA ceasefire’, Irish Times (4 and 18 November 1996). 32. ‘Fury lined the route as 1300 marched along Garvaghy Road’, Irish Times (12 July 1996). 33. ‘Violence spreads in northern nationalist areas’, Irish Times (13 July 1996). 34. ‘6000 plastic bullets fired since Drumcree stand-off’, Irish Times (16 July 1996). 35. ‘Brutal murder raises question of whether loyalist paramilitary ceasefire has any chance of holding’, Irish Times (9 July 1996). 36. ‘Taoiseach tells Major of anger, deep concern over march’, Irish Times (12 July 1996).

188 Notes 37. Sinn Féin was actually surprised by the strength of its vote in May 1996 and did not expect to do as well in the May 1997 General Election. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (25 February 1997). The SDLP remained the largest nationalist party with 24.1 per cent of the vote, and the UUP the largest party overall with 32.7 per cent. Sinn Féin reached 16.1 per cent and the DUP 13.6 per cent. Full election results can be found in Irish News (3 May 1997). 38. See Martin McGuinness’ comments in ‘Sinn Féin calls for British to authorise talks with officials’, Irish Times (10 May 1997). 39. According to a senior member of the SDLP, much of the preparation work had been completed in the run-up to the British general election before Labour were in power. Blair dispatched Paul Murphy (subsequently political development minister in N. Ireland) to meet the parties and discuss decommissioning and Sinn Féin’s entry into the talks. Author interview (10 October 1997). 40. ‘Straw agrees transfer of IRA prisoners’, Irish Times (21 May 1997). 41. ‘Decommissioning is secondary to inclusive talks – Mowlam’, Irish Times (10 May 1997). 42. ‘Blair insists time is right to forget past and find peace’, Irish Times (21 May 1997). 43. ‘Two ceasefires and nobody brought the champagne’, Irish News (21 July 1997). 44. ‘Governments stand firm on talks deadline’, Irish Times (24 July 1997). 45. ‘Talks process is madness, Paisley tells Mowlam’, Irish Times (8 August 1997). 46. See, ‘Take your seat Trimble urged’, News Letter (3 September 1997). 47. Author interview (15 December 1997). 48. ‘UUP body backs Trimble approach to Stormont talks’, and ‘A win for silent majority as Trimble walks into talks’, Irish Times (15 and 20 September 1997 respectively). 49. G. Moriarty, ‘Adams, Mowlam pave way for talks’, Irish Times (7 August 1997). 50. Author interview (12 December 1997). 51. This was in the assessment of an NIO official, author interview (15 December 1997). 52. ‘Ahern, Trimble agree on usefulness of talks’, Irish Times (21 November 1997). 53. ‘PUP waiting for British response on talks issue’, Irish Times (23 December 1997). 54. ‘Britain must show greater urgency on NI – Adams’, Irish Times (28 November 1997). 55. S. Breen, ‘Conflicting claims on defections cause confusion for IRA’, Irish Times (15 November 1997). 56. In the words of UUP MP William Thompson, ‘The talks are going nowhere …’. Cited in ‘Four UUP MPs tell Trimble that party should withdraw from Stormont talks’, Irish Times (23 December 1997). 57. ‘Security stepped up in North after Wright funeral for fear of backlash’, Irish Times (31 December 1997). 58. According to one senior member of the UDP, ‘We obviously knew what the probable repercussions would be as far as a political party was concerned. We were prepared to face up to that.’ Author interview (28 April 1998).

Notes 189

59.

60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

3

See also ‘UDP walks as governments agonise and shuffle’, Irish Times (27 January 1998). Author interview (1 May 1998). A senior member of the UUP was dismissively referred to the government censure of Sinn Féin as ‘two weeks in the sin bin’. Author interview (18 May 1998). ‘Sinn Fein expresses unease at NI talks proposals’, Irish Times (15 January 1998). Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (18 May 1998). Author interview with a senior member of the SDLP (23 April 1998). This view was disputed by a senior member of Sinn Féin, author interview (27 April 1998). ‘UUP rejects “unacceptable” draft paper’, Irish Times (8 April 1998). Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (18 May 1998). ‘Mitchell tells of drama before deal was struck’, Irish News (4 May 1998). ‘Trimble says “great opportunity” to start healing process promises stability for all in North’, Irish Times (11 April 1998). ‘Time to draw breath, assess the agreement and decide if it answers the questions, says Adams’, Irish Times (11 April 1998).

Good Friday and after

1. Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (18 May 1998). 2. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (27 April 1998). 3. According to one key UUP negotiator, ‘I didn’t go into the talks process and labour for two years just so that I could say “no” …’. Author interview (18 May 1998). 4. Ibid. 5. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (27 April 1998). 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Author interview (1 May 1998). 9. Author interview with a senior member of the DUP (1 May 1998). 10. The full election results can be found on the CAIN website: http://cain.ulst. ac.uk/issues/politics/election/ra1998.htm (1998). 11. UUP leader, David Trimble cited in G. Younge, ‘Whole world in their hands’, Guardian (8 September 1998). 12. See, for example, ‘Patten hears RUC blasted for “brutality”’, Irish News (2 December 1998) and ‘East Belfast voices RUC backing’, Irish Times (9 December 1998). 13. Eamonn McCann quoted in Magill (January 1999), p.62. 14. ‘Agreement on “at least six” North–South bodies likely’, Irish Times (21 November 1998). 15. Geoffrey Wheatcroft, ‘The Undiscovered Plan B for Northern Ireland’, New York Times (6 September 1999). 16. The complete survey results are available at: www.qub.ac.uk/ss/csr/nilt (1998). 17. ‘Poll shows majority of unionists opposed to Belfast Agreement’, Irish Times (4 April 1999).

190 Notes 18. The first quotation is from Gerry Adams, ‘Trimble and Adams clash in deepening arms crisis’, Irish Times (24 September 1998) and the second is from Mitchel McLaughlin, ‘Pressure mounts for talks breakthrough’, Irish News (2 December 1998). 19. ‘Arms issue likely to dog process forever, Adams says’, Irish Times (29 January 1999). 20. ‘Adams angry at Trimble suggestion that North process may be “parked”’, Irish Times (25 January 1999). 21. ‘Ahern on the retreat’, News Letter (15 February 1999). 22. According to Sydney Elliot, ‘Under the d’Hondt system, a party’s vote total is divided by a certain figure which increases as it wins more seats. As the divisor becomes bigger, the party’s total in succeeding rounds gets smaller allowing parties with lower initial totals to win seats.’ ‘The d’Hondt system explained’, BBC Northern Ireland website (28 November 1999). In other words, the system favours the smaller parties. 23. ‘Leaders say proposal best way forward’, Irish Times and ‘Declaration will force IRA’s hand’, Independent (2 April 1999). 24. ‘Hillsborough “only way forward” claims Trimble’, Irish Times (16 April 1999). 25. ‘SF warns it cannot deliver on Hillsborough talks’, Irish Times (10 April 1999). 26. ‘Parties in North assess June 30th ultimatum’, Irish Times (17 May 1999). 27. Matters were not helped by campaigning for the mid-June 1999 European elections. Anti-Agreement Ian Paisley topped the poll with 28.4 per cent of the vote. John Hume received 28 per cent, the UUP’s Jim Nicholson 17.6 per cent and Sinn Féin’s Mitchel McLaughlin 17.4 per cent. The Alliance Party vote collapsed to 2.1 per cent. The full election results can be found on the CAIN website at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/election/ re1999.htm (1999). 28. The full Patten Report is available at: http://www.belfast.org.uk/report. htm (1999). 29. ‘Mixed reaction to historic blueprint’, Irish News (10 September 2000). 30. ‘Trimble dismisses report as insult to the RUC’, Irish Times (9 September 1999). 31. The formal Sinn Féin response did not come until 30 November when it said it ‘still has to be convinced that the Patten Report goes far enough’. An Phoblacht/Republican News (2 December 1999). 32. ‘Leaders insist Belfast accord is still viable’, Irish Times (22 September 1999). 33. Ibid. 34. ‘This party needs a lot less noise and a lot more loyalty’, Irish Times (10 October 1999). 35. ‘Doubt cast on Mitchell review’, Irish Times (19 October 1999). 36. ‘Mr Mandelson arrives in Ulster to find a land of opportunities’, Independent (13 October 1999). 37. Hugo Young, ‘Mandelson moves Ulster to the heart of government’, Guardian (12 October 1999). 38. ‘Clinton sorry for Irish peace “drunks” joke’, Guardian (9 October 1999). 39. ‘Mitchell issues his concluding report’, Irish Times (19 November 1999). 40. ‘Unionists back deal and warn Adams: we’ve jumped, you follow’, Irish Times (27 November 1999). 41. Belfast Telegraph (3 December 1999).

Notes 191 42. The new ministerial line up was: Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Brid Rodgers (SDLP); Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Michael McGimpsey (UUP); Minister of Education, Martin McGuinness (Sinn Féin); Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Sir Reg Empey (UUP); Minister of the Environment, Sam Foster (UUP); Minister of Finance and Personnel, Mark Durkan (SDLP); Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Bairbre de Brún (Sinn Féin); Minister of Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment, Dr Sean Farren (SDLP); Minister for Regional Development, Peter Robinson (DUP); and Minister for Social Development, Nigel Dodds (DUP). 43. ‘Student protest’, Tyrone Courier (8 December 1999). 44. See, for example, ‘De Brún accused over Royal decision’ and ‘Peter principle travels well on border issues’ both from Irish News (1 and 2 February 2000 respectively). 45. IRA statement, Irish Times (8 May 2000).

4 Swinging door: the politics and negotiations of the peace process 1. During an October 1999 speech in Ottawa, President Bill Clinton drew a parallel between drunks and the participants in the Northern Ireland peace process. Just as drunks resolve to leave the bar, but turn around upon reaching the swing doors, Northern Ireland’s politicians repeatedly seemed to be on the cusp of reaching an agreement only to resume recriminations. 2. Author interview with a senior NIO official (21 May 1997). 3. Ibid. 4. Seán Duignan, One Spin on the Merry-go-round (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1995), p.126. 5. ‘Tension revealed by leak, say UUP’, Irish News (5 May 2000). 6. See paragraph 3 in the introduction of Frameworks for the Future (Belfast: HMSO, 1995), p.v. 7. Author interview with a senior member of the SDLP (12 March 1997). 8. Author interview (13 March 1996). 9. ‘Andrews and Mowlam hail document as promising breakthrough in talks’, Irish Times (13 January 1998). 10. Author interview (18 May 1998). 11. Frank Millar, ‘Blair returns from holiday – through the back gate’, Irish Times (2 September 1999). 12. Author interview (23 July 1996). 13. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (27 April 1998). 14. Author interview with a senior member of the SDLP (12 March 1997). Fergus Finlay, an adviser to Dick Spring noted ‘… an identity of interest between the Irish government – and all who want to develop the peace – and Gerry Adams …’ in Snakes and Ladders (Dublin: New Island Books, 1998), p.291. 15. According to the 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, 14 per cent of people said that they had ‘a lot of sympathy’ or ‘a little sympathy’ with the reasons for republican violence (24 per cent of Catholics and 8 per cent of Protestants). Eighteen per cent said that they had ‘a lot of sympathy’ or

192 Notes

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

‘a little sympathy’ with the reasons for loyalist violence (13 per cent of Catholics and 23 per cent of Protestants). Indeed a key reason for the failure of spoiler groups to sustain lengthy and large-scale campaigns was the absence of community support. Author interview (18 May 1998). This was the cause of immense media speculation during the peace process, much of which was wide off the mark. Author interview (28 April 1998). Quotation from DUP MP, Peter Robinson, ‘Mowlam takes level-headed view of high-wire act’, Irish Times (8 January 1998). One Sinn Féin interviewee noted trenchantly that ‘Sinn Féin–IRA doesn’t exist as an organisation.’ Author interview (30 September 1997). The breakdown of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996 was the most serious split between the ‘political’ and ‘military’ wings. By 2000 many UDA commanders were believed to be against the Belfast Agreement, although the UDP remained pro-Agreement in its statements. According to Gerry Adams, ‘If I am to be of any service to this process … it is my ability to bring republicans to the negotiating table’, quoted in ‘Adams pledges SF to peace even if process collapses’, Irish Times (18 November 1995). Duignan, op. cit., pp.138–9. Author interview (12 March 1997). Author interview (27 April 1998). Quotation taken from Trimble’s first address to the UUP annual conference as party leader, ‘Secretary of State warned to “stick to his guns”’, Irish Times (23 October 1995). Author interview with a senior UDP member (27 February 1997). Author interview (18 May 1998). David Trimble warned John Hume that ‘rather than democratise Sinn Féin’ he had in fact ‘republicanised the SDLP’. ‘Loyalists warned of talks exclusion’, Irish Times (4 September 1996). Quoted in George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education (London: Hutchinson, 1999), p.190. ‘Paisley predicts that a unionist majority assembly will meet again at Stormont’, Irish Times (27 September 1995). Ian Paisley quoted in ‘Paisley says North facing its gravest crisis’, Irish Times (1 December 1997). DUP ‘It’s right to say “No”’ Referendum Communication, May 1998. Quoted from ‘A message from the Rt Hon David Trimble MP Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party’ on Referendum Communication from the Ulster Unionist Party (May 1998). BBC Hearts and Minds poll, BBC website (11 May 2000). All figures taken from the CAIN website (1999): http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/ issues/politics/election/elect.htm. All figures in percentages. UUP (Ulster Unionist Party), SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party), DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), SF (Sinn Féin), APNI (Alliance Party of Northern Ireland), NIWC (Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition), UDP (Ulster Democratic Party), PUP (Progressive Unionist Party), UKUP (United Kingdom Unionist Party). 1992 (general election/first past the post system), 1993 (local government/proportional representation), 1994 (European/proportional

Notes 193

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

representation with NI treated as a single constituency), 1996 (Forum for Political Dialogue), 1997a (general election/first past the post), 1997b (local government/proportional representation), 1998 (Assembly/proportional representation using the single transferable vote system), 1999 (European/ proportional representation with NI treated as a single constituency). Author interview (21 May 1997). The 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey found that Sinn Féin was the most popular Northern Ireland party among 18–24 year olds. Author interview (1 May 1998). Brendan O’Leary and Geoffrey Evans, ‘Northern Ireland: La Fin de Siècle, The Twilight of the Second Protestant Ascendancy and Sinn Féin’s Second Coming’, Parliamentary Affairs, 50, 4 (October 1997), pp.672–80. Figures calculated from the CAIN website (1999), op. cit. Author interview (27 February 1997). Author interview with a member of the NIWC (26 June 1998). See comments of Sir Patrick Mayhew ‘Loyalists warned of talks exclusion’ and Tony Blair ‘Blair insists time is right to forget the past and find peace’, both from Irish Times (4 September 1996 and 21 May 1998). Quotation from M. McWilliams of the NIWC, ‘Soundbites are last rites at talks’, Irish Times (6 March 1997). Author interview (13 March 1996). ‘Dour exterior disguises plush venue for talks’, Irish Times (4 March 1996). According to UUP MP John Taylor, ‘… David Trimble and myself have been having private meetings on a regular basis over the past six months with the Secretary of State and with the Prime Minister.’ ‘Unionist leaders expected to meet in effort to agree election pact’, Irish Times (3 March 1997). Finlay, op. cit., p.196. Author interview with senior member of Sinn Féin (27 April 1998). Empey told this story at a ‘Yes’ campaign meeting in Enniskillen in April 1998. The authors are grateful to Peter Semple for this reminiscence. ‘Nobody is backing off insists Blair spokesman’ (17 July 1999), ‘Blair insists time is right to find peace’ (21 May 1997) and ‘Adams angry at Trimble’s suggestion of “parking”’ (21 January 1999), all from Irish Times. ‘Adams pledges SF to peace even if process collapses’ and ‘One year on’, both from Irish Times (18 and 31 August 1995). ‘Major warns on terms for new ceasefire’, Irish Times (24 October 1996). Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind The Irish Peace Process (London: Heinemann, 1996), p.355. Gerry Adams, ‘Fudging by British and unionists is real obstacle to political settlement’, Irish Times (14 July 1995). Author interview (12 March 1996). The phrase ‘hurting stalemate’ is usually attributed to William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and intervention in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). The October 1994 ceasefire statement by the Combined Loyalist Military Command made it clear that ‘The permanence of our ceasefire will be completely dependent upon the continued cessation of all nationalist/republican violence, the sole responsibility for a return to War lies with them.’ CMLC Ceasefire Statement (13 October 1994).

194 Notes 60. ‘Trimble and Adams talks are termed businesslike’, Irish Times (22 September 1999). 61. ‘Mallon still in search of key to deadlock’, Irish Times (13 April 2000). 62. The political sensitivity of such contacts was clear. According to Martin McGuinness, ‘… within 48 hours of a bomb explosion which killed two English schoolchildren, I was personally involved in discussions with an emissary of the British government.’ ‘McGuinness urges Major to resume dialogue’, Irish Times (18 February 1997). 63. An NIO official stressed that this was a genuine concern and not a tactical ploy. Author interview (21 May 1997). 64. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (23 July 1996). 65. Author interview (21 May 1997). Unionist and loyalist interviewees also admitted paying detailed attention to the speeches and writings of their political adversaries. 66. The following first-time meetings were held in a six week period in August/September 1997: a UUP–Sinn Féin television debate, a meeting between Gerry Adams and Mo Mowlam, a meeting between Sinn Féin and the UDP, a meeting between the UUP and the Catholic Primate, and the start of multiparty talks that included both Sinn Féin and the UUP. 67. Author interview (12 March 1997). 68. Author interview (18 May 1998). 69. P. du Toit, ‘South Africa – in search of post-settlement peace’, in J. Darby and R. Mac Ginty (eds), The management of peace processes (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp.16–60 at 29. 70. Ibid., p.29. 71. ‘Parties attack London review talks’, Belfast Telegraph (14 October 1999). 72. See, for example, ‘SF plans legal challenge to likely expulsion from talks’, Irish Times (18 February 1998) and ‘NIO will fight bid to reverse Mo ruling’, Irish News (21 September 1999). 73. ‘High note for Irish talks in South Africa’, Cape Times (2 June 1997). 74. E. Mallie and D. McKittrick, op. cit., p.363. 75. Both quotations from ‘Whatever you say, say nothing clearly’, Irish Times (14 February 1996). 76. For example, John Major described John Hume as emotional and holding non-rational views, while UUP leader Jim Molyneaux was described as wise and canny. John Major, The Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 1999), pp.450 and 487. 77. The full text of Trimble’s speech can be found in the Irish Times (11 December 1998). 78. One of Hume’s long-standing critics, Gregory Campbell of the DUP, listed a number of phrases used repeatedly by John Hume in speeches and media interviews: ‘We are a divided people, An eye for an eye leaves every body blind. We must spill our sweat and not our blood. You can’t eat a flag.’ The implication was that ‘Humespeak’ was a series of impenetrable blandishments. G. Campbell, ‘Come home John, it’s supper time’, DUP Website, http://www.dup.org.uk (1 May 2000). 79. Author’s notes, address in the Guildhall, Derry (3 November 1997). 80. Author interview (18 May 1998). 81. S. Wilson, Northern Ireland Assembly, Official Report (31 January 2000), line 1148.

Notes 195 82. ‘Breakfast with Frost’, BBC 1 television (7 May 2000). 83. Quotations taken from the Official Report of the Northern Ireland Assembly, line 548 (17 January 2000) and line 319 (15 July 1999) respectively.

5

Guns and government: violence and the peace process

1. A. Boyd, Holy War in Belfast, (Tralee: Anvil Press, 1969). 2. The years of violence are well chronicled. One of the closest insights to republican violence is by a journalist, Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin (London: Bloomsbury Press, 1997). Two excellent academic sources on paramilitary violence are Adrian Guelke, ‘Paramilitaries, republicans and loyalists’ in S. Dunn (ed.), Facets of the Conflict in Northern Ireland (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp.114–30, and M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican movement (London: Routledge, 1995). The context of violence is treated in John Darby, ‘What’s wrong with Conflict?’ (Coleraine: Centre for the Study of Conflict, 1991). 3. M.T. Fay, M. Morrissey and M. Smyth, Mapping Troubles-related deaths in Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland: INCORE, 1997). 4. P. Hillyard, ‘Law and order’ in J. Darby (ed.), Northern Ireland: The background to the conflict (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1983). 5. Author interview (1 May 1998). 6. ‘Politicians like the ludicrous Reginald Maudling’, Roy Foster observed, ‘contributed nothing more than the notorious concept of “an acceptable level of violence”’. Modern Ireland (London: Penguin, 1988), p.591. 7. ‘The Mitchell Principles’ in Report of the International Body on Decommissioning, Irish Times (18 February 1996). 8. Observer (22 September 1997). 9. T. Hermann and D. Newman, ‘A Path Strewn with Thorns: Along the Difficult Road of Israeli–Palestinian Peacemaking’, in J. Darby and R. Mac Ginty (eds), The management of peace processes (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp.107–53 at 126. 10. Steps along the Road to Normality, Northern Ireland Information Service, 28 November 1997. 11. Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, The Fight for Peace (London: Heinemann, 1996), p.356. 12. ‘Key army post and IRA target dismantled’, Guardian (1 August 2000). 13. Irish Times (1 August 2000). 14. See, for example, Peter Taylor’s television series, Brits: Shoot to Kill, BBC television, (17, 24 and 31 May 2000). 15. Observer (22 June 1996). 16. Jim Cusack, ‘IRA killed more during ceasefire than since its ending’, Irish Times (19 July 1997). 17. Jim Cusack, ‘Resumption of armed struggle has not been a success from the IRA’s point of view’, Irish Times (19 July 1997). 18. Mary Holland and Patrick Wintour, ‘How the peace door opened’, Observer (20 July 1997). 19. IRA statement printed in the Observer (20 July 1997). 20. Kate Fearon pointed out that ‘the degree of seriousness with which Sinn Féin treated the indictment indicated precisely how serious they were about

196 Notes

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

the talks process and their desire to be part of it’. See Kate Fearon, Women’s Work: The Story of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999), p.100. Parnell’s imprisonment in Dublin’s Kilmainham Jail in 1881 was accompanied by increased agrarian and political violence. He was released the following year after the ‘Kilmainham treaty’ was signed with the British Prime Minister Gladstone. Author interview (1 May 1998). For a fuller discussion of spoiler groups see S.J. Stedman, ‘Spoiler problems in Peace Processes’, International Security, 22, 2 (Fall 1997). For a fuller treatment of these splits see M.L.R. Smith and Peter Taylor, op. cit. ‘Army defuses 500 lb bomb after RUC car chase to Border’, Irish Times (12 August 2000). ‘Bank robber attacked, Continuity group claims’, Irish Times (27 March 1998). ‘Extremist few strive to keep the hatred alive’, Times (10 February 1999). Ibid. ‘Eight months of loyalist terror’, The Times (19 February 1999). Jim Cusack, ‘Dissident republicans pool resources’, Irish Times (28 July 2000). Belfast Telegraph (6 January 1996). Royal Ulster Constabulary web page (23 May 2000). The RUC added that ‘descriptions such as punishment beatings, assaults or shootings are a misnomer: in reality they are criminal attacks carried out, in the majority of cases, by paramilitaries who are often guilty of far greater crimes than those alleged against their victims’. Harry Barnes, John Grogan and Gary Kent, ‘The Beatings must stop’, Observer (22 May 2000). ‘IRA, UDA and UVF behind most beatings’, Irish Times (23 June 2000). Irish Times (8 January 1996). R. Geary and J. Morrison, ‘The perception of crime’ in P. Stringer and G. Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1992). ‘The Policing Plan, 1998–99’, Irish Times on the web (30 September 1999). Ibid. ‘Paramilitary ex-prisoners struggle to find employment and a normal life’, Irish Times (5 August 2000). Author interview (13 March 1996). ‘Short walk to freedom for the last of the Maze inmates’, Irish Times (27 July 2000). Irish Times (23 May 1996). Irish Independent (30 April 1998). Irish Times (18 August 1998). ‘Quotes of the Week’, Irish Times (10 October 1998). The IRA statement and the joint statement by the two governments in response are printed in the Irish Times (8 May 2000). ‘Unionists divided over arms dump visit’, The Times (27 June 2000). ‘Foolproof “dual keys” used to seal IRA arsenals’, Observer (2 July 2000). Ibid. Irish Independent (19 June 1998). A view which gained some vindication in Peter Taylor’s television series, op. cit.

Notes 197 52. A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland, The Report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (Belfast: HMSO, 1999) (The Patten Report), 14.5. 53. Irish Times (5 February 1998). 54. The Economist (11 September 1999), p.24. 55. The Patten Report, 17.6. 56. Pierre du Toit, ‘South Africa: In search of post-settlement peace’, in Darby and Mac Ginty (eds), op. cit., pp.16–60. 57. Mallie and McKittrick, op. cit., p.348. 58. In Washington in March 1995 Mayhew laid out three new conditions before Sinn Fein could be admitted to talks: a willingness in principle to disarm; agreeing on the practicalities of decommissioning; and ‘the actual decommissioning of some arms as a tangible confidence-building measure’ (Mallie and McKittrick, ibid, p.349). It was the third, ‘Washington Three’ that provoked republican anger, provided unionists with a benchmark and created the long impasse. 59. New York Times (29 September 1999). 60. R. Mac Ginty, ‘Issue hierarchies in Peace Processes: the decommissioning of paramilitary arms and the Northern Ireland Peace Process’, Civil Wars, 1, 3 (Autumn 1998), pp.24–55 at p.38.

6

Third parties: external influences on the peace process

1. Author interview with a senior member of the UUP (26 March 1996). 2. Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1997), pp.26–7. 3. Approximately 850 000 people born on the island of Ireland (600 000 from the Irish Republic) live in Britain. About 2.5 million British born people have at least one Irish born parent. Fintan O’Toole, ‘Amends are needed to forgotten Irish in UK’, Irish Times (21 March 2001). 4. Kevin O’Connor, The Irish in Britain (London: Sedgewick & Jackson, 1972) pp.96–120. 5. This point was made during an author interview with a British MP (2 April 1996). 6. Taken from a July 1999 Gallup poll, http:www.gallup.com/poll/releases/ pr990729int.asp (1999). 7. T. Hermann and D. Newman, ‘ A Path Strewn with Thorns: Along the Difficult Road of Israeli–Palestinian Peacemaking’, in J. Darby and R. Mac Ginty (eds), The Management of Peace Processes, (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp.107–53 at p.127. 8. Dominic Lawson, ‘The don’t cares are for Blair’, Sunday Telegraph (5 September 1999). 9. Figures taken from the MORI poll archive: http://www.mori.com/ (2000). The figures for 2000 apply to January–May only. 10. ‘IRA is cause, not symptom’, Sunday Tribune (24 August 1994). 11. K. Myers, ‘Irishman’s diary’, Irish Times (30 June 1999). 12. ‘Articles 2 and 3 of Constitution are replaced’, Irish Times (3 December 1999).

198 Notes 13. A. Guelke, Northern Ireland: The international perspective (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988), p.128. 14. Taken from an August 1999 Gallup poll: http://www.gallup.com/poll/ releases/pr990802.asp (1999). 15. L. Dinnerstein and D. Reimers, Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp.2–3. 16. A. Wilson, ‘The Billy Boys Meet Slick Willy: The Ulster Unionist Party and the American dimension to the Northern Ireland peace process, 1993–1998’ paper presented at the American Conference for Irish Studies, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, (April 1998), p.3. 17. Taken from a July 1998 Gallup poll: http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/ pr980718.asp (1998). 18. Dinnerstein and Reimers, op. cit., p.155. 19. For an excellent review of the role of Irish-American groups in the peace process see Adrian Guelke, ‘The United States, Irish-Americans and the Northern Ireland Peace Process,’ International Affairs, 72, 3 ( July 1996), pp.521–36. 20. P. Yates, ‘Irish US survey finds only 2 per cent blame IRA for North conflict’, Irish Times (20 October 1992). 21. C. O’Cleary, The Greening of the White House: The Inside Story of How America Tried to Bring Peace to Northern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), p.169. 22. Clinton aide, George Stephanopoulos, shows how the Clinton administration had a near obsession with opinion polls: All Too Human: A Political Education (London: Hutchinson, 1999). 23. Quotation from D. Walsh, ‘Polls show our desire to share the island’, Irish Times (22 January 2000). 24. Author interviews with a senior member of the UUP (26 March 1996) and a leading Belfast-based media commentator (21 October 1997). 25. As it turned out, the Irish-American lobby was frequently over-optimistic in the briefings it gave to the White House. Cf O’Cleary, op. cit., pp.140–1. 26. Author interview (23 July 1996). 27. Author interview (31 July 1996). 28. Author interview (31 July 1996). 29. New York Times (11 April 1998). 30. Author interview (27 July 1996). The point was repeated in a number of interviews with non-nationalists. 31. Author interview (23 July 1996). 32. Author interview (13 March 1996). 33. Author interview (31 July 1996). 34 ‘Visiting US, British cabinet minister urges investment in Ulster’, New York Times (7 December 1999). 35. ‘Intel’s $2bn investment leads to 1,000 new jobs’, Irish Times, ‘breaking news’ web service: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2000/ 0619/index.htm, (19 June 2000). 36. ‘Hobson’s choice’, Independent on Sunday (18 July 1999). 37. ‘Clinton hopes talks will be underway by the time of his visit’, Irish Times (3 August 1995). 38. ‘Blair, Bush have get-to-know-you dinner date’, Irish Times (24 February 2001).

Notes 199 39. ‘Speech by the President of the United States, Mr Bill Clinton to the Houses of Parliament, London’, 29 November 1995. 40. Author interview (13 March 1996). 41. Author interview (23 July 1996). 42. ‘Party chairman warns Clinton to be impartial or stay at home’, Irish Times (23 October 1995). 43. Statement by Dr William McCrea, ‘Senator Hayden should “clean up his own backyard”’, DUP website,
200 Notes 67. ‘Statement by the President, 15 July 1999’; and ‘Clinton Fetes Ireland’s President’, Boston Globe (14 June 1996). 68. Washington Post (11 April 1998).

7

Peace dividends and peace deficits

1. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, ‘Sri Lanka: The Intractability of Ethnic Conflict’, in J. Darby and R. Mac Ginty (eds), The management of peace processes, (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp.195–227 at p.226. 2. John Darby, Coming Out of Violence: Peace Dividends (Northern Ireland: INCORE, 1995). 3. Rex Brynen, A very political economy (Washington DC: USIP Press, 2000), p.84. 4. Pierre du Toit, ‘South Africa: In search of post-settlement peace’, in Darby and Mac Ginty (eds), op. cit., pp.16–60 at p.34. 5. Raimo Vayrynen, ‘Preventing Deadly Conflicts: Failures in Iraq and Yugoslavia’, Global Security, 14, 1 (2000), p.16. 6. The conference ‘Coming out of Violence: Peace Dividends’ was organised by the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity (INCORE) in Belfast. The proceedings were published by INCORE, John Darby, op. cit. 7. P. Gorecki, ‘A peace dividend for Northern Ireland? The Reality’, in Darby, op. cit., pp.33–46 at p.33. 8. O. Eran, ‘Regional economic co-operation and international assistance – the Middle East’, in Darby, ibid., pp.6–11 at p.8. 9. S. Morkel, ‘Peace dividends: The South African Experience’, in Darby, ibid., pp.12–21 at p.16. 10. Figures cited in B. Hamber, ‘Who Pays for Peace?’ paper presented at the Catholic Institute for International Relations, London (30 October 1998). The South African government aimed to achieve 6 per cent growth rates per year, but growth in 1996 was below 3 per cent. ‘S Africa: Mandela confident on economic strategy’, Financial Times, (8 February 1997). 11. Northern Ireland Economic Council, The implications for peace and political stability in Northern Ireland for selected sectors: Inward investment, tourism and security (Belfast: NIEC, 1995), pp.3–5. 12. Gorecki, op. cit., p.17. 13. Growth rates in the 1990–96 period averaged at 2.4 per cent per annum in Northern Ireland, compared with the United Kingdom average of 1.5 per cent. From ‘Economic Uncertainties’, Business and Finance, 34, 31, (11 June 1998), p.20. 14. P. Gorecki, ‘Economic Implications of Peace’ in Northern Ireland Economic Council, Through Peace to Prosperity? Occasional paper 3, (Belfast: NIEC, 1995), p.13. 15. P. Gorecki, ibid, p.17. The figure for the next highest UK region was 29.2 per cent. 16. The International Fund for Ireland was set up in 1986 to support reconciliation and has channelled money from other governments into economic and social projects in Ireland. 17. For a thoughtful analysis of the EU’s role in the peace process, see Etain Tannam, ‘The European Commission and the conflict in Northern Ireland: A

Notes 201

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

supranational role’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, xi, i (Summer/ Fall 1997), pp.8–27. ‘EU promises £24 m for fund for Ireland’, Irish Times (5 March 1998). Business and Finance, op. cit. ‘£315m package to boost North’s economy’, Irish Times (13 May 1998). N. McAdam, ‘The cash for peace’, Belfast Telegraph (24 June 1997). ‘North’s schemes “squandered” aid’, Irish Times (8 June 2000). ‘Audit finds “weaknesses” in two peace funds’, Irish Times (12 April 2000). See as an example, Charles Ford’s ‘View from the United States’ in NIEC Through peace to prosperity? op. cit. Philip Shenon, ‘British Cabinet Minister Urges Investment in Ulster’, New York Times (7 December 1999). BBC Northern Ireland website (11 May 2000). John Murray Brown, ‘Local issues provide forum for Agreement’, Financial Times (21 March 2000). Belfast Telegraph (29 April 1998). Irish Times (21 March 1998). Belfast Telegraph (21 March 1998). J. Michie and M. Sheehan, ‘The Political Economy of a Divided Ireland’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 22 (1998), pp.243–59; ‘City store tills ring to the ceasefire’, News Letter (21 September 1994). A. Giarelli, ‘Peace dividends’, World Press Review, 42, 8 (August 1995). ‘Derry sets example of parade success’, Belfast Telegraph (6 December 1999). NIEC, Through peace to prosperity? op. cit. ‘Six million welcomes’, Irish Times (12 May 1998). Kieran Cooke, ‘Battle for visitors is being won’, Financial Times (21 March 2000). Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Annual Report, 1995. Cameron Report: Disturbances in Northern Ireland, (Belfast: HMSO, 1969), paragraph 129. For an objective summary of the debate on discrimination during the Stormont years, see J. Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). Fermanagh Civil Rights Association, Fermanagh Facts (Fermanagh, Northern Ireland: Fermanagh Civil Rights Association, 1969). Fair Employment Commission, Annual Report (Belfast: FEC, 1999). Darby, op. cit., p.49. NIEC, The implications for peace and political stability in Northern Ireland for selected sectors, op. cit., p.9. Author interview with senior economist (30 March 1999). Eddie O’Gorman, ‘Drumcree factor costing Northern economy millions in lost business’, Irish Times (11 July 2000). The full results from the NILT survey can be found at: http://www.qub. ac.uk/nilt/index.html (2000). Times (12 April 2000). Irish Times (20 April 2000). For a discussion of the upwardly revised estimates see Henry McDonald, ‘Bill soars for Bloody Sunday’, Observer (8 April 2001). R. O’Donnell, ‘Comment’ in NIEC, Through peace to prosperity?, op. cit., pp.35–47.

202 Notes 50. PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Northern Ireland Economic Review and Prospects (Belfast: PWC, March 1999), p.59. 51. Ibid, p.37. 52. Ibid, p.53. 53. John Murray Brown, ‘Brain drain turning into brain gain’, Financial Times (21 March 2000). 54. ‘Eighty per cent of new NI jobs in technology’, Irish Times (19 May 2000). 55. Correspondence with the author (20 June 2000). 56. Statement accompanying PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Northern Ireland Economic Review and Prospects (Belfast: PWC, March 1999).

8

On the ground: public opinion and the peace process

1. Tamar Hermann and David Newman, ‘A Path strewn with Thorns: Along the Difficult Road of Israel–Palestinian Peacemaking’, in John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty (eds), The Management of Peace Processes (London: Macmillan, 2000), p.142. 2. Tamar Hermann and David Newman, op. cit., p.143. 3. The elections included: Forum for Political Dialogue (May 1996), British General Election (May 1997), Northern Ireland Local Government Elections (May 1997), Referendum on Good Friday Agreement (May 1998), Northern Ireland Assembly ( June 1998) and the European Elections ( June 1999). 4. For example, a pop concert held in the grounds of the Stormont Estate in May 1998. 5. Belfast Telegraph (13 January 1998). 6. Belfast Telegraph (20 January 1998). 7. The Northern Ireland Life and Times survey is carried out annually and documents public opinion on a wide range of social issues. Their results are publicly available and can be downloaded from www.qub.ac.uk/ss/csr/nilt. 8. Northern Ireland Life and Times, NILT Research Update, Number 3, (February 2000). 9. Ibid. A May 2000 Queen’s University of Belfast/Rowntree Trust poll found that 55 per cent of Protestants said they would vote ‘Yes’ in a re-run of the referendum. ‘Unionism at the crossroads: What the people say’, Belfast Telegraph (25 May 2000). 10. Civil society is a rather imprecise term used to describe non-political organisations in a society. It includes both statutory and semi-statutory organisations as well as such bodies as the business community (both trade unions and management), the media, churches, voluntary and community groups and other organisations that indicate a healthy and participating community. Although not primarily political, they have political interests that may become more actively engaged during times of change. There is a growing view that the strength of civil society is a key variable in determining the success of peace processes. 11. Community Relations Council, Dealing with difference: A directory of peace, reconciliation and community relations projects in Northern Ireland (Belfast: CRC, 1997).

Notes 203 12. See Derrick Wilson and Jerry Tyrrell, ‘Institutions for Conciliation and Mediation’ in S. Dunn (ed.), Facets of the conflict in Northern Ireland (London: Macmillan – now Palgrave, 1995), pp.230–50, for an excellent review of reconciliation and associated groups. 13. Jimmy Burns, ‘Community peacemakers’, Financial Times (21 March 2000). 14. Irish Times (31 March 1998). 15. Patsy McGarry, ‘Restored Northern Ireland Executive welcomed’, Irish Times (8 June 2000). 16. Louise Flanagan, ‘Northern Business’, Irish Times (16 February 1999). 17. B. McCabe, ‘Civil society and the Northern Ireland peace process’, Cantilevers: Building bridges for peace 6 (Spring 2000), pp.13–14 at p.13. 18. Belfast Telegraph (13 March 1998). 19. European Commission, Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of Ireland – European Structural Funds (Brussels: EC, 1995), p.8. 20. For a good discussion of civil society and the District Partnership programme see A. Williamson, D. Scott and P. Halfpenny, ‘Rebuilding civil society in Northern Ireland: The community and voluntary sector’s contribution to the European Union’s Peace and Reconciliation District Partnership Programme’, Policy and Politics, 28, 1 (2000), pp.49–66. 21. The observation was made by Seamus McAleavey, director of the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, and is quoted ibid, at p.62. 22. D. McKittrick, Endgame (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1994), p.23. 23. E. Maloney, ‘Closing down the airwaves: The story of the broadcasting ban’, in B. Rolston (ed.), The Media and Northern Ireland (London: Macmillan, 1991), p.156. 24. T. Cooke, Prepared for war, ready for peace: Paramilitaries, politics and the press in Northern Ireland, Discussion paper D-13, Joan Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, (August 1998), p.8. 25. A number of columnists based in the Irish Republic, including Kevin Myers and Eoghan Harris, were critical of the process, and the Dublin-based Sunday Independent adopted a generally sceptical attitude to developments. 26. ‘NI media face big challenge over referendum’, Irish Times (5 May 1998). 27. Ibid. 28. Cooke, op. cit., p.11. 29. Author interview (23 February 1996). 30. ‘McCartney says media favour yes vote’, Irish Times (4 May 1998). 31. G. Wolfsfeld, The news media and peace: From the Middle East to Northern Ireland (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2000), p.2. 32. Ibid, p.31. 33. Ibid, p.8. 34. Ibid, p.4. 35. M. O’Doherty, ‘The development of a post-ceasefire news agenda’, paper presented to conference on the role and impact of the media on the peace process (Derry: Calgach Centre, 1996). 36. Quoted in E. Mallie and D. McKittrick, The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Irish Peace Process (London: Heinemann, 1996), p.316. 37. McCabe, op. cit., p.13.

204 Notes 38. Observer (16 April 2000). 39. Irish Times (2 July 1999).

9

Poppies and lilies: symbolism and the peace process

1. For republicans, Stormont was synonymous with an exclusively unionist government. See David Officer, ‘In search of Order, Permanence and Stability: Building Stormont, 1921–32’ in R. English and G. Walker (eds), Unionism in Modern Ireland (London: Macmillan – now Palgrave, 1996), pp.130–47 and ‘We dread a tarted-up Stormont, says Adams’, Irish News (22 September 1998). 2. ‘Session opens with venue protest’, Irish Times (15 September 1998). 3. Quotations from David I. Kertzer, Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp.4–5. 4. Kertzer, ibid, p.153. 5. Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols (London: Harvill Press, 1962), p.12. 6. Barry A. Turner (ed.), Organisational Symbolism (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), p.4. 7. Simon Harrison offers an illuminating conceptualisation of the role of symbols in conflict in, ‘Four types of symbolic conflict’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institution, 1, 2 (1995), pp.255–72. 8. Author interview with senior Orangeman (31 January 1998). 9. Author interview with a senior member of the UDP (26 March 1996). 10. Author interview (1 May 1998). 11. Author’s notes, address in Guildhall, Derry City (3 November 1997). 12. Author interview with a senior member of Sinn Féin (23 July 1996). 13. ‘RUC recruits no longer to swear oath to the queen’, Irish Times (2 December 1997). It is also significant that the British government’s attempts to appease unionist concerns about policing reforms also took a symbolic form – the award in 1999 of the George Cross to the RUC as an institution. 14. See, for example, ‘Magee is freed for Christmas’, Daily Telegraph (24 December 1997); ‘Man convicted of murder of Mounbatten in 1979 is freed’ or ‘Last Shankill Butchers freed’ (7 and 11 August 1998) both from Irish Times. 15. See, for example, ‘Mayhew denies return to Stormont’, Irish Times (29 January 1996). 16. Raymond Firth, Symbols Public and Private (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), p.427. Donald L. Horowitz also makes this point, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkley: University of California Press, 1985), p.218. 17. Emphasis added. Author interview (18 May 1998). 18. ‘Loyalist paramilitary flags explosion’, BBC Northern Ireland Online (21 June 2000). 19. Irish Times (4 July 1996). 20. Author interview with the leader of a residents’ group (2 June 1997). 21. See photographs accompanying ‘RUC may seal roads before Drumcree march’, Irish Times (23 June 1997); ‘Ulster stares into abyss’, Guardian (5 July 1997) and ‘Street theatre with a cutting edge’, Irish Times (18 July 1997). See also the photograph of Orange protesters holding placards reading ‘Stop Talking, Start Walking’ and ‘Ulster’s Protestants Demand Civil Rights’

Notes 205

22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

37.

accompanying ‘Orangemen reject brokered compromise on Dunloy marches’, Irish Times (10 April 1998). Charles D. Elder and Roger W. Cobb, The Political Uses of Symbols (New York: Longman, 1983), p.12. See, for example, ‘Spring launches peace ribbon’, ‘Weekend peace rallies planned’ and ‘100,000 people send message of peace to IRA’ all from Irish Times (17, 21 and 26 February 1996). See, for example, ‘Church escapes with scorch damage’ and ‘Arson attack is condemned’, both from Irish News (8 July 2000). On a single night in 1998, ten Catholic churches were damaged or destroyed by fire. It followed the British government decision to ban an Orange Order parade along a mainly nationalist road and the appointment of David Trimble and Seamus Mallon as the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly. ‘Blair rushes to Ulster after 10 church fires’, International Herald Tribune (3 July 1998). The term ‘symbolic inventory’ is quoted by S. Harrison, op. cit., at p.255 from I. Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization in process’ in A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p.73. Harrison, op. cit., p.258. ‘New face of northern cash’, Irish News (27 March 1998). Both quotations from ‘Unionists to resist Sinn Fein plans for rally in Ulster Hall’, Irish Times (21 October 1995). ‘Tone is spinning in his grave, says loyalist’, Irish Times (9 October 1996). On wall murals, see Harrison, op. cit., pp.258–9; Jeffrey A. Sluka, ‘The Writing’s on the Wall: Peace Process Images, Symbols and Murals in Northern Ireland’, Critique of Anthropology, 16, 4 (1996), pp.381–94 and Bill Rolston, ‘Culture as a Battlefield: Political identity and the State in the North of Ireland’, Race and Class, 39, 4 (1998), pp.23–35. ‘Soldiers beat GAA ban’, Irish Times (24 February 1995). ‘O’Brien to stand for UK unionist party’, Irish Times (3 May 1996). See also, ‘Catholic unionist loyal to his own tradition’, and ‘UUP appoints Catholic’, both from Irish Times (27 May and 20 July 1996). Mary Holland, ‘Why Blair deserves bouquets for famine apology’, Irish Times (5 June 1997). ‘Republicans and FF criticized by Quinn as house remembers 1798’, Irish Times (4 July 1998). See, for example, ‘Fears to speak of 98 recede as Orangemen seek bicentennial role’ (4 March 1997); ‘Orange Order plans to re-enact battles of 1798’ (5 December 1997); ‘Best celebration of 98 Rising would be to end North conflict, says Ahern’ (21 January 1998); ‘Down to mark 1798 rebellion’ (23 February 1998) all from Irish Times. John Morison and Stephen Livingstone, Reshaping Public Power: Northern Ireland and the British Constitutional Crisis, (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1995), pp.142–3. Amid widespread unrest, British paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed civilians in Derry/Londonderry. According to former Irish Prime Minister, Albert Reynolds, the British government could ‘rebuild confidence’ in the peace process by holding a fresh inquiry into Bloody Sunday. ‘Reynolds calls for

206 Notes

38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

initiatives from Major to revive North peace process’, Irish Times (10 March 1997). Emphasis added. ‘Statement by the Combined Loyalist Military Command, 13 October 1994’, http://www.unite.net/customers/alliance/loyalist.html (1995). See, for example, comments by Gerry Adams in ‘Adams writes to murdered soldier’s family’, Irish Times (12 March 1997). Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, We Will Remember Them, Report of the Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner, April 1998 (Belfast: The Stationery Office Northern Ireland, 1998). The Agreement, 10 April 1998, p.1, paragraph 2. See also ‘Reconciliation and Victims of Violence’ p.18. A May 1998 United Kingdom Unionist Party election leaflet, for example, notes that ‘We recoil with moral contempt from an Agreement which releases back into the community those who have murdered and maimed the innocent…’. See, for example, the comments of Mrs Sandra Peacock in ‘IRA leaders get temporary release to attend meeting’, Irish Times (8 August 1998). ‘Victims group to address Tories’, News Letter (5 October 1998). Deaglán de Bréadún, ‘Bomb makes problems seem petty’, Irish Times (22 August 1998). Quoted in ‘Trimble invites Sinn Fein leader to meeting’, Irish Times (2 September 1998). ‘Adams rejects calls to say “war is over”’, Irish News (10 August 1998). ‘UK must step up security – Trimble’, Irish Times (20 August 1998). ‘Applause as Trimble is welcomed to Buncrana’, Irish Times (20 August 1998). Bertram I. Spector, ‘Deciding to Negotiate with Villains’, Negotiation Journal, 14, 1 (January 1998), pp.43–59. Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Irish Peace Process (London: Heinemann, 1996), pp.5–7. ‘Mandela greets Adams at ANC headquarters’ and ‘Adams visit and Mandela handshake have enhanced Sinn Fein’s standing’ both from Irish Times (20 and 22 June 1995). Adams and UUP leader, David Trimble attended the same dinner in Washington in March 1996, but the event organisers went to strenuous efforts to ensure that the pair did not meet. ‘Adams and Trimble dine at a distance’, Irish Times (15 March 1996). ‘Trimble invites Sinn Fein leader to meeting’, Irish Times (2 September 1998). ‘Blair invites Gerry Adams to meeting at Number 10’, Independent on Sunday (30 November 1997). UUP leader, David Trimble cited in Gary Younge, ‘Whole world in their hands’, Guardian (8 September 1998). See, for example, ‘Loyalist, SF man on platform’, and ‘McMichael to debate with SF on TV’, both from Irish Times (3 October 1995 and 8 February 1996). ‘Adams wants executive without delay’, Irish Times (7 September 1998). ‘President’s Address to White House Investment Conference’, Irish Times (25 May 1995). Author interview with leading media commentator (13 March 1996).

Notes 207 61. ‘Dublin dismayed at prospect of Sinn Fein street demonstrations’, ‘Talks fail to stop protests’, and ‘SF series of North/South demonstrations “are not intended to be confrontational”’ all from Irish Times (21 and 22 July and 25 August 1995). 62. ‘Major and Bruton slip away to sample the life of Reilly’s’, Irish Times (22 December 1995). 63. The Agreement, op. cit., pp.19–20. 64. Author interview with senior member of the UUP (18 May 1998). 65. The Agreement, op. cit., p.20, paragraph 5. 66. Author interview with a senior member of the Ulster Democratic Party (28 April 1998). 67. Economic ‘sweeteners’ included ‘Brown plans new drive to create new jobs in Northern Ireland’ (18 April 1998); ‘New university to be built for the poor and deprived of Belfast’ (18 April 1998); ‘Catholic schools get bulk of £33 m funding package’ (21 April 1998); ‘£315 m package to boost North’s economy unveiled’ (13 May 1998), all from Irish Times. See also, ‘Brown to unveil cash package’, News Letter (11 May 1998). 68. See, for example, ‘Blair returns to sway waverers’, News Letter (20 May 1998); ‘Blair flies in to rescue “Yes” vote as Protestants waver’, Independent (14 May 1998). 69. See personal message from President Clinton, ‘Put children first’, News Letter (20 May 1998). See also, ‘North’s business leaders call for Yes vote in referendum’ (8 May 1998) and ‘Branson and Mowlam go out for yes’ (21 May 1998), both from Irish Times. 70. ‘Blair invites Major to aid drive for a Yes vote’ (14 April 1998); ‘British party leaders plan joint visit for a Yes vote’ (21 April 1998); ‘Blair and Major arrive to secure massive Yes vote’ (7 May 1998); ‘Hague finds deal easy to sell’ (21 May 1998), all from Irish Times. 71. Roy Beggs quoted in ‘Blair returns to sway waverers’, News Letter (20 May 1998). Another unionist MP, Peter Robinson of the DUP dismissed the Yes campaign as ‘froth and tinsel’, see ‘Belfast deal just pushes problems further down the track’, Irish Times (12 June 1996). 72. ‘Mowlam apologises over leak’, Irish Times (31 March 1998). 73. The symbol appears prominently on the DUP election leaflet for the May 1998 referendum. 74. See photograph of Trimble, Hume and ageing rock star Bono accompanying ‘Yes, Yes, Yes’, News Letter (20 May 1998). 75. Letter from John Devlin, Irish Times (2 June 1998). 76. See, for example, photograph accompanying ‘Blair is ready to visit North for talks with Assembly’s new leaders’ (2 July 1998); ‘Trimble and Mallon to make joint pitch for EU development funding’ (16 September 1998); ‘Geography, history rhyme for Seamus and David’ (11 November 1998) all from Irish Times. 77. ‘Trimble and Mallon seeking a settlement’, News Letter (8 July 1998) and ‘Trimble and Mallon try to keep up political momentum’, Irish Times (27 October 1998). 78. ‘Trimble and Adams cross the Rubicon’, Irish Times (11 September 1998). 79. ‘Time to draw breath, assess the agreement and decide if it answers the questions, says Adams’, Irish Times (11 April 1998).

208 Notes 80. ‘Unionist rally around the symbols of the RUC’, Irish Times (20 September 1999). 81. Sir Reg Empey quoted in ‘UUP changing, says Empey’, Irish Times (14 September 1995). 82. Author interview (12 March 1997). 83. An exception might be the SDLP who have not used the word ‘nationalist’ in their election literature for a number of years. Nor do they employ obviously nationalist colours on their leaflets or posters. 84. The Agreement: Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations, 10 April 1998, p.1.

Conclusion 1. J. Darby and J. Rae, ‘Peace Processes from 1988–1998: Changing Patterns’, Ethnic Studies Report, XLII, 1, (January 1999). 2. L. Mees, ‘The Basque Peace Process, Nationalism and Political Violence’ in J. Darby and R. Mac Ginty (eds). The Management of Peace Processes (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp.154–94 at p.180. 3. Independent (26 December 2000). 4. See John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty (eds), op. cit., pp.254–5. 5. For an account of what Seamus Mallon described as ‘a white heat of pressure’ for unionists, see Deaglán De Bréadún, The Far Side of Revenge: Making peace in Northern Ireland (Cork: The Collins Press, 2001). 6. ‘The Long Good Friday’, Channel 4 News Special (2 April 1999). 7. ‘Trimble gives himself another week to woo UUC’, Irish Times (19 May 2000). 8. John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp.84–5. 9. See Ludger Mees, op. cit., 154–94, for a review of the Basque peace movement; also the editors’ comments in Darby and Mac Ginty The Management of the Peace Process, op. cit., pp.239–40. 10. Steven Stedman, ‘Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes’, International Security, 22, 2 (Fall 1997), pp.5–53. 11. World Bank, Briefing paper on Gaza and West Bank (August 2000). The paper also showed that gross domestic product per capita stood at US$1500, against a figure closer to $17 000 in Israel. 12. Author interview (27 April 1998). 13. A fuller discussion of the issue can be found in, R. Mac Ginty, R. Wilford, L. Dowds and G. Robinson ‘Consenting adults: the principle of consent and Northern Ireland’s constitutional future’, Government and Opposition (forthcoming). 14. Author interview (9 June 1996). 15. Author interview with a senior member of the SDLP (10 October 1997). 16. Author interview (23 April 1998). 17. Mary Holland, ‘Threat of a challenge to Trimble will not go away’, Irish Times (1 June 2000). 18. According to the Agreement, parallel consent is ‘a majority of those members present and voting, including a majority of unionist and nationalist

Notes 209 designations present and voting’, while a weighted majority is ‘60% of members present and voting, including at least 40% of each of the nationalist and unionist designations present and voting’. The Agreement (1998), p.5. 19. Ibid, p.10. 20. Quotation from DUP statement (27 July 2000). 21. See, for example, the debate on whether or not St Patrick’s Day should be declared a public holiday in Northern Ireland. http://www.ni-assembly.gov. uk/record/000207.htm (7 February 2000).

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Index accelerated release programme for paramilitary prisoners 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 67, 98–9, 158–9, 165, 175, 182 Adams, Gerry and decommissioning 45–6, 48 and Good Friday Agreement 40, 45 and the IRA 94 condemns Omagh bombing 159 dialogue with John Hume 23, 24, 27–8, 74, 79, 160 elected president of Sinn Féin (1983) 22 granted visa to the USA 28, 116, 122, 160 invited to Downing Street by Tony Blair 160–1 media ban on 146, 177 meetings with David Trimble 45–6, 67, 80, 160–1, 164, 177 origin of name 16 view of peace process 48, 77, 154 see also Sinn Féin Africa, Central 121 African National Congress (ANC) 43, 81, 104, 105, 119–20, 123, 138, 149 Ahern, Bertie 38, 48, 90 Ahtisaari, Martti 52, 100–1, 119–20 Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and Good Friday Agreement 42 elections 44–5, 69–70, 190 n talks with other parties 26 Americans for a New Irish Agenda (ANIA) 112 Ancram, Michael 31, 160 Andrews, David 60 Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) 19–22, 58, 76, 106 Apprentice Boys Parade (Derry) 95, 131 Arafat, Yasser 105, 108, 148, 165 Armitage, Pauline 140

Ballymoney arson attack 45, 104 Barak, Ehud 167 Basque Country 4–5, 103, 120, 138, 143, 149, 167, 169–71 Behan, Brendan 94 Belfast Civilian Search Unit 91 Belfast Telegraph 13, 147, 151 Blair, Tony and decommissioning 36–7, 48, 49 and Good Friday Agreement 49, 61–2, 163 and peace process 36–9, 61–2, 77, 160 and Sinn Féin 36–9 election 36 invites Adams to Downing Street (Dec. 1997) 160–1 relations with Clinton 117 Unionists and 82 Bloody Sunday 87, 205–6 n Bloody Sunday Inquiry 81, 134, 157–8, 205–6 n Bloomfield, Sir Kenneth 158 Bosnia 183 n British Army 16–18, 87, 91 British Government actor in Northern Ireland peace process 58–63, 74, 76, 80, 82 aid to Northern Ireland 127–8, 136 see also specific people British Irish Council 1, 41–2, 46, 49, 180 British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference 20, 49 Brooke, Sir Peter 26–7 Brown, Gordon 128, 129–30 Brown, Ron 114 Bruton, John 30, 62 Bush, President George W. 115–16 Cambodia 64, 65 Cameron Commission 132 Canary Wharf bomb 32, 92–3

216

Index Castle Buildings 74, 82, 162 Catholics employment 11–12, 16, 20, 132, 185 n and Good Friday Agreement 47, 141 growing population 70 inequalities 11–12, 16, 18, 20, 132, 140, 185 n participation in RUC 13, 49, 102–3, 165 riots 87, 97 ceasefires aftermath of 29–32, 130–1, 136, 138, 139–41 and Downing Street Declaration 28 IRA 23, 24, 27, 29–35, 37, 48, 60–1, 63, 73, 80, 100 collapse of 32–5, 69, 76, 88–9, 92–3, 110, 140, 156, 170–1 loyalist 24, 29, 32–3, 34, 60–1, 64, 193 n public opinion after 138, 139–41 Trimble and 33 UDA/UFF 60–1 UUP and 32–3 violence and 6, 86, 88–9, 91–8 Central Community Relations Unit (CCRU) 20 Chief Executive’s Forum 145 Church of Ireland 143 City of London bombs 32, 63–4, 92–3, 109 Civic Forum 145, 175, 180 civil society as actor in peace process 71–2, 171–2, 174, 202 n development of 20 EU aid and 118 public opinion and 138–9, 141–5, 148–51 Unionists and 23 Clinton, President Bill and peace process 25, 51, 53, 82, 112, 113–17, 121–2, 161, 163, 191 n grants Adams a visa 28, 116, 122, 160

217

support for Good Friday Agreement 40, 48, 122 visits to Northern Ireland 78, 96, 117, 129, 139–40, 160, 172, 174 Combined Loyalist Military Command 36, 158, 193 n Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) 142 Community Dialogue 144 Community Relations Commission 142 Community Relations Council 142 Congo, Republic of 103 n Continuity IRA (CIRA) 94–5 Corrymeela Community 142 Council of Ireland 19 crime, normal 13, 97–8, 184 n Cruise-O’Brien, Conor 157 Currin, Brian 120 de Brun, Bairbre 180 de Chastelain, General John 52, 100, 119 de Klerk, F.W. 119 decommissioning Gerry Adams and 45–6, 48 Good Friday Agreement and 42–3, 45, 78–9, 86, 100 IRA and 46, 48, 49, 51, 52–4, 99–100, 104–5, 182 LVF and 47 Mitchell Report on 31–2, 83, 89–90 SDLP and 35 Sinn Féin and 31–2, 36–7, 42, 45–6, 49, 66, 100, 104–5 Trimble and 45–6, 48, 49, 51, 53–4, 100 UUP and 35, 42, 45–6, 51, 67 see also International Body on Decommissioning Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Anglo-Irish Agreement 20 and ceasefires 33 and EU 118 and Good Friday Agreement 42, 43–4, 68, 69–70, 151

218 Index Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – continued and involvement of USA 116 and Northern Ireland Assembly 51–3, 179 and Power-Sharing Executive 19, 25, 51–2, 68 and Sinn Féin 29, 68, 73, 80, 84–5, 177, 180 and UUP 25, 50, 67, 82, 85 elections 34, 36, 44–5, 53–4, 68–70, 188 n excluded from talks 37, 69–70, 80, 162 opposition to peace process 25, 67–70 referendum campaign 68 view of IRA 88 devolved powers 6, 46, 48, 49–54 Direct Action Against Drugs 89 direct grants to Northern Ireland 127–9, 130, 136, 173 Direct Rule (1972) 15, 17, 18–19 Donaldson, Jeffrey 155 Downing Street Declaration (1993) 28, 60, 74, 90, 110, 139 Drumcree Parade 35–6, 44–5, 133, 143 Eames, Bishop Robin 143 East Timor 92, 183 n economy and peace dividend 123–4, 126–32, 135–7, 173 and peace process 124–5, 129–30, 172–3 declining 15, 17, 123–6 lags behind rest of UK 6, 125–6, 136 education 11, 12, 13, 18, 20, 148–9 Education Reform Order (1989) 18 electoral abuses 15, 16, 18 emigration 137 Empey, Sir Reg 76, 128, 165 employment, inequalities in 11–12, 16, 18, 20, 36, 132, 140, 148–9, 185 n Enniskillen bombing 22 European Commission 127

European Convention on Human Rights 118 European Union aid to the Irish Republic 117–18 and the peace process 58, 117–18 SDLP and 118 Special Peace and Reconciliation Programme 30, 71, 118, 122, 136, 142, 145, 150, 173 USA and 115 Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT) 148 Fianna Fáil 63, 110, 150 Fiji 92 Fine Gael 62, 110 flags 152, 153, 155, 163, 164 Flanagan, Ronnie 95 Forum for Peace and Reconciliation 81, 162 Forum for Political Dialogue 25, 36, 81, 162 elections to 33–5, 61, 178 Frameworks for the Future 30–1, 60, 73, 74, 139 Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) 156, 157 Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition 144 general election (1992) 69 general election (1997) 35, 36, 53–4, 69, 106, 109 Germany 89 Good Friday Agreement Adams and 40, 45 Alliance Party and 42 and victims 158–9 bedding in the Agreement (1998–99) 42–9 Blair and 49, 61–2, 163 Catholics’ view of 47, 141 Clinton and 40, 48, 122 constitutional provisions 1, 41–3, 176, 177 decommissioning and 42–3, 45, 78–9, 86, 100 Draft Agreement 40 DUP and 42, 43–4, 68, 69–70, 151

Index Good Friday Agreement – continued EU and 118 Hume and 164 IRA and 43 Major and 163 Mitchell Review (Autumn 1999) 49–51, 80, 82, 114, 178 Protestant view of 47, 151 PUP and 49 referenda on 1, 42–4, 47, 111, 139, 141, 145, 149–50, 151, 163, 178–9 rush to complete 169 SDLP and 42, 164 Sinn Féin and 42–4, 47, 49, 66, 89–90 symbolism and 162–3, 165–6 Trimble and 40, 45, 49, 151, 164, 165 UUP and 40, 42–4, 47–9, 67–8, 150, 151, 156, 157, 164, 171–2 Government of Ireland Act (1972) 17 Ground Rules for Substantive All-Party Talks (1996) 33 Group of Eight 129 Group of Seven 71, 143–4 healthcare 12, 140, 180 Hillsborough Agreement (1985) 26 Hillsborough Castle 76 Hillsborough Declaration (1999) 48–9 Holkeri, Harri 119 Home Rule Campaign (1880s) 94 housing inequalities 15, 16, 18, 120, 132, 148–9 human rights 17, 42, 112, 118, 142, 158, 175 Hume, John and Good Friday Agreement 164 and Sinn Féin 66 awarded Nobel Peace Prize 46 criticized by Unionists 84 dialogue with Gerry Adams 23, 24, 27–8, 74, 79, 160 elections 190 n origin of name 16 peacemaking 24

219

relations with colleagues 66 see also Social Democratic and Labour Party hunger strikes 87 Hutchinson, Billy 140 Independent Commission on Police Reform 32, 46, 81–2, 91, 102–3 see also Patten Report Independent Parades Commission 32, 36, 81–2 see also parades India 107 Industrial Development Board (IDB) 129, 137 inequality education 12, 18, 20 employment 11–12, 16, 18, 20, 36, 132, 140, 148–9, 185 n healthcare 12 housing 15, 16, 18, 120, 132, 148–9 welfare 15 International Body on Arms Decommissioning 31–2, 42, 48, 51, 81–2, 83, 89–90, 100, 114, 119 IRA and 51, 52, 54, 100 International Fund for Ireland 127 internment 17, 87 investment 115, 129–31, 136–7 Ireland, Republic of and Northern Ireland Assembly 40, 41 and Sinn Féin 79 and USA 115, 116 Anglo-Irish Agreement and 19–22 as actor in peace process 18–19, 58–63, 74, 76, 82 EU aid to 117–18 growth of economy (1990s) 130 referenda on Good Friday Agreement 44, 111 territorial claims to Northern Ireland 6, 28, 38, 40, 41, 43, 110, 182 tourism 131 Irish diaspora 107–13, 129, 136, 174

220 Index Irish language 11, 42, 84, 156, 162, 166 Irish National Caucus 111–12 Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) 17, 94 Irish News 13, 147 Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) 111–12 Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Direct Action Against Drugs 89 and Good Friday Agreement 43 and Sinn Féin 26, 30, 39, 66, 90, 94, 148 arms from Libya 99 ceasefires (1994) 23, 24, 27, 29–35, 37, 48, 60–1, 63, 73, 80, 100 collapse of 32–5, 69, 76, 88–9, 92–3, 110, 156, 170–1 decommissioning 46, 48, 49, 51, 52–4, 99–101, 104–5, 182 DUP and 88 Gerry Adams and 94 hunger strikes 87 recruitment 87 splits in 38, 94 USA and 93, 111–13, 150 Irish Times 35, 164 Israel/Palestine economy of 173 Palestinian Authority 105, 123 peace dividend 123–5 peace process 4–5, 64, 109, 118, 138, 149, 165, 167, 168, 171 public opinion 147–8 symbols in 165, 174 violence 64, 148, 170 Kennedy, John F. 111, 114 Kosovo 61, 183 n Loyalist organisations and RUC 91–2, 101 ceasefires 24, 29, 32–3, 34, 60–1, 64, 193 n splinter paramilitary groups 39, 95 strike by workers 19, 87, 142, 150 violence 5, 87, 89, 95–6 see also specific groups

Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) 47, 95, 96

39,

Maginnis, Ken 51, 160 Major, John and Albert Reynolds 59, 62 and Downing Street Declaration 74 and European integration 61 and Good Friday Agreement 163 and USA 116–17 dependent on Unionist support 5, 30 Irish Republic and 35 political approach to peace process 21, 28, 30, 62, 75, 77, 78 ‘Making Belfast Work’ 137 Mallon, Seamus and Mitchell Review 80 and Northern Ireland Assembly 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 80, 85, 164, 179–80 relations with Trimble 46, 48, 49, 164 Mandela, Nelson 119, 160, 165, 168 see also South Africa Mandelson, Peter 50, 52, 84, 134 marching season 48, 97, 131, 151, 155–6 Mason, Roy 87 Maudling, Reginald 88 Mayhew, Sir Patrick 5, 27, 31, 35, 62, 77, 160, 178, 197 n Maze Prison 64, 98 McCabe, Barbara 149 McCartney, Robert 36, 130, 147 McGuinness, Martin 51, 77, 81, 154, 160, 194 n McKittrick, David 101, 146 McLaughlin, Mitchel 96, 190 n media 139, 143, 146–8, 150 bans on paramilitary organisations 22–3, 80, 146, 159, 177 Middle East 2, 90, 124–5, 182 see also specific countries Millennium Commission 127 Mindanao (Philippines) 17–18 Mitchell, George as chairman of talks 34, 40

Index Mitchell, George – continued Report on Decommissioning 31–2, 83, 89–90 Review of Good Friday Agreement (Autumn 1999) 49–51, 80, 82, 114, 178 Mitchell Principles 39, 73, 79, 89–90, 93, 94, 171, 174 Molyneaux, Lord 50 Mowlam, Marjorie (Mo) 36, 48, 50, 62, 64, 82, 83, 98, 100, 130, 164 Murphy, Paul 188 n Nelson, Rosemary 92 New Agenda 144–5 News Letter 13, 147, 151 Nicholson, Jim 116, 190 n No Campaign 42, 163–4 Nobel Peace Prize 46, 84 Norman Invasion 2, 14 North, Peter 36 North Report (1997) 36 North–South Ministerial Council 41–2, 46, 48–9, 52, 53, 83, 180 Northern Ireland Assembly and Irish Republic 40, 41 David Trimble and 44, 47, 48, 54, 164, 179–80 DUP and 51–3, 179 elections for 44–5, 69–70, 119, 164, 178 interpreters in 84 ministers in 47–8, 49, 51–3, 152, 191 n SDLP and 49 Seamus Mallon and 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 80, 85, 164, 179–80 Sinn Féin 47–9, 51–3, 152, 180, 182 UUP and 40, 49 Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action 145 Northern Ireland Economic Council (NIEC) 125 Northern Ireland Grand Committee 30 Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission 42, 175

221

Northern Ireland Labour Party 34, 61 Northern Ireland Life and Times 47, 134, 140–1, 184 n., 191–2 n, 202 n Northern Ireland Office 57, 62, 69, 140, 163, 178 Northern Ireland Partnership Board 145 Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust (NIVT) 142 Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) and Good Friday Agreement 42 and peace process 71, 144, 149, 150 elections 34, 45, 61, 69–70, 144 Northern Ireland Women’s Political Forum 144 O’Doherty, Malachi 148 Omagh bombing 45, 65, 75, 95, 148, 159 O’Neill, Terence 15–16 Orange Order 23, 72, 144, 151 parades 35–6, 44–5, 99, 133, 139, 143, 155, 174, 205 n Orange Volunteers 95 Oslo Accords 2, 123, 147–8, 168 Paisley, Ian 3, 37, 50, 67–8, 190 n see also Democratic Unionist Party Palestinian Authority 105, 123 parades Apprentice Boys (Derry) 95, 131 disturbances at 35–6, 75, 170 Drumcree 35–6, 44–5, 133, 143 Independent Parades Commission 32, 36, 81–2 Orange Order and 35–6, 44–5, 99, 133, 139, 143, 155, 174, 205 n symbols of 152, 155–6 paramilitaries accelerated release programme for prisoners 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 67, 98–9, 158–9, 165, 175, 182 as actors in peace process 63–5 concessions for Republican prisoners 78

222 Index paramilitaries – continued internal paramilitary violence and peace process 95 links to political parties 65–6, 76 repatriation of Republican prisoners 36–7, 38, 98 violence and peace process 92–6 see also specific organisations Parnell, Charles Stewart 94, 196 n partition (1921) 2, 11, 14, 15–16 Patten, Chris 46 see also Patten Report Patten Report 49–50, 79, 102–3, 119, 133, 165 peace deficits 123–4, 133–4 peace dividend and peace process 134–7 Conference on (Feb. 1995) 124, 127 direct grants 127–9, 130, 136, 173 economic benefits 123–4, 126–32, 135–7, 173 employment 132, 135–7 EU Peace and Reconciliation Programme 30, 71, 118, 127–8, 136, 142, 145, 150, 173 incentive to end hostilities 123 investment 115, 129–31, 136–7 Israel 123–5 reduction of uncertainty 134–7 South Africa 123, 124–5, 173 Peace People 138, 143, 171 peace process actors in 3–4, 58–72, 106–22, 171–2, 174, 202 n Blair administration and 36–9, 49, 61–2, 77, 160 British Government and 58–63, 74, 76, 80, 82 building blocks for 20–5 ceasefires and 29–35 civil society as actor in 71–2, 171–2, 174, 202 n concessions in 181–2 consent principle 177, 182, 208–9 n criteria for 3–4 David Trimble’s view of 66–8, 76, 77

devolution 49–51 durability 75–7 economics and 124–5, 129–30, 172–3 EU and 58, 117–18 examples of other peace processes 118–20 external actors and 106–22, 172, 174 external influences on 120–2 final straight (Spring 1998) 39–40 first movements towards (1990–94) 25–8 governments and 18–19, 58–63, 74, 76, 80, 82, 113–17, 172, 178 historical background 14–16 inclusions 168, 176–7, 179 influences on 171–6 investment and 115, 129–31, 136–7 Irish Government and 18–19, 58–63, 74, 76, 82 negotiations 168–70 new forms of communication 177–8 parades and 35–6 paramilitaries as actors in 63–5 peace dividend and 134–7 political parties as actors in 65–71, 76 President Clinton and 25, 51, 53, 82, 112, 113–17, 121–2, 161, 163, 191 n public opinion and 138–51, 171 shaping of 168–74 structure and process of 72–84 symbolism and 152–66, 173–4 the Troubles and 16–20 UUP and 66–8, 76 USA and 25, 113–17, 119, 121–2 violence and 88–105, 170–1 permament emergency legislation 16 Plantation of Ulster 2, 12, 14–15, 16, 87 police reform 36, 42, 43, 44, 47, 79, 134 Independent Commission on 32, 46, 81–2, 91, 102–3

Index police reform – continued reform of RUC 46, 49–50, 79, 101–3, 119, 133, 154, 165, 174, 182 Policing Boards 53 political parties as actors in peace process 65–71, 76 links to active paramilitary organisations 65–6, 76 see also specific political parties population of Northern Ireland 12–13, 115 power sharing 5–6, 18–19, 23, 25, 47, 51 Power Sharing Executive 18–19, 25, 48, 49, 51–3, 65, 100 prisoners accelerated release programme for paramilitaries 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 67, 98–9, 158–9, 165, 175, 182 concessions for Republicans 78 repatriation for Republicans 36–7, 38, 98 Programme for Government (June 2000) 134 Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and Good Friday Agreement 49 elections 34, 44–5, 61, 69–70, 147 links with paramilitary organisations 65 pragmatism 24 Protestants confrontation with Catholics 87, 97 shared worship 13 strikes by workers 19, 87, 142, 150 unemployment 185 n view of conflict 11–12 view of Good Friday Agreement 47, 151 see also specific organisations Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA/IRA) campaign of violence against British Army 17 emergence of (1960s) 17, 87, 92, 94 splits in 94–5

223

public opinion after ceasefires 138, 139–41 and peace process 138–51, 171 and public behaviour 139–41 Britain 107–9 civil society and 138–9, 141–5, 148–51 media 139, 143, 146–8, 150 Republic of Ireland 109–11 Unionist political parties and 139, 150–1 Unionist social institutions and 139, 150–1 USA 111–13 quality of life

29–30

Rabin, Yitzhak 67, 90, 165 Ramaphosa, Cyril 52, 100–1, 119–20 ‘Real’ IRA 94–5 Red Hand Defenders 95 redundancies 133, 134 referenda on Good Friday Agreement 42–4, 47, 139, 141, 145, 149–50, 151, 163, 178–9 Reid, John 53 religious segregation 11–13, 18 residents’ groups 71, 144 retail sector 30, 130–1 Reynolds, Albert 27–8, 30, 59, 62, 160 Robinson, Mary 160 Robinson, Peter 49–50 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and Loyalist paramilitary organisations 91–2, 101 Catholic participation 13, 49, 102–3, 165 DUP and 49–50 Patten Report 49–50, 79, 102–3, 119, 133, 165 reform 46, 49–50, 79, 101–3, 119, 133, 154, 165, 174, 182 Republicans and 50 SDLP and 49–50 Trimble and 50 Scottish Parliament 131

42, 49, 107, 125,

224 Index security industry 133, 135 self-determination 11, 27 Shankill butchers 87 Shankill Road bombing 83 Sierra Leone 183 n Sinn Féin and ANC 119 and Blair administration 36–9 and DUP 29, 68, 73, 80, 84–5, 177, 180 and IRA 26, 30, 39, 66, 90, 94, 148 and SDLP 29, 67, 79, 85 and USA 112–16, 160 and UUP 29, 37–8, 50, 60–1, 67, 73, 74, 79–80, 82, 84, 139, 178 Anglo-Irish Agreement and 20 arms decommissioning and 31–2, 36–7, 42, 45–6, 49, 66, 100, 104–5 condemns Omagh bombing 45 elections 34, 36, 44–5, 53–4, 69–70, 147, 188 n enter talks 37, 38, 197 n equality agenda 162–3 excluded from talks 22, 39, 60–1, 83, 93, 162, 171, 76 external influences and 121 Gerry Adams elected president of (1983) 22 Good Friday Agreement and 42–4, 47, 49, 66, 89–90 links with paramilitary organisations 65–6 media bans 22–3, 80, 146, 159 Northern Ireland Assembly 47–9, 51–3, 152, 180, 182 symbolism and 156–7 see also Adams, Gerry Smith, Joan Kennedy 114 Smyth, Reverend Martin 52 Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and decommissioning 35 and Fianna Fáil 63 and Good Friday Agreement 42, 164 and Northern Ireland Assembly 49 and Power Sharing Executive 51 and Sinn Féin 20, 29, 67, 79, 85

and USA 116 elections 34, 36, 44–5, 53–4, 69–70 leaves Forum for Political Dialogue 36 moderation of 20 talks with UUP 38, 79 see also Hume, John South Africa ANC 43, 81, 104, 105, 119–20, 123, 138, 149 constitutional settlement (1994) 2 cost of reforms 134 crime 97–8, 123, 173 negotiations 82 Nelson Mandela 119, 160, 165, 168 peace dividend 123, 124–5, 173 peace movements 171 police force 10 ‘Rainbow Nation’ 174 symbols 165, 174 tourism 125 transfer of powers 5, 83, 118–19 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 120 violence 64, 90, 103–4, 170 sovereignty 18, 57, 118 Spain 109, 171 Special Peace and Reconciliation Programme (EU) 30, 71, 118, 127–8, 136, 142, 145, 150, 173 Spring, Dick 83 Sri Lanka 5, 18, 65, 107, 109, 123, 138, 170 STOP 96 (Solidarity to Organise Peace) 140 Stormont Assembly 25 symbolism and Good Friday Agreement 162–3 and the peace process 152–66, 173–4 anniversaries and victims 153, 157–9 appropriation 156 attack on symbols 156–7 continuing potency of 165–6

Index symbolism – continued flags 152, 153, 155, 163, 164 Good Friday Agreement 162–3, 165–6 lilies 152, 166 new opportunities 159–62 parades 152, 155–6 poppies 152, 166 role of symbols and symbolism in politics 153–5 Sinn Féin and 156–7 symbols of accord 163–4 Taylor, John 40, 50, 98 territorial claims by Irish Republic 6, 28, 38, 40, 41, 43, 110, 182 Totally Unarmed Strategy (1994 TUAS) 23 tourism Irish Republic 131 Northern Ireland 30, 125–6, 127, 128, 130–1, 136, 143–4, 173 South Africa 125 trade unions 140, 143–4, 150 Trimble, David and ceasefires 33 and decommissioning 45–6, 48, 49, 51, 53–4, 100 and elections 34 and Good Friday Agreement 40, 45, 49, 151, 164, 165 and Northern Ireland Assembly 44, 47, 48, 54, 164, 179–80 and Omagh bombing 159 awarded Nobel Peace Prize 46, 84 elected First Minister 44, 164 elected leader of UUP 24 meeting with Adams 45–6, 67, 80, 160–1, 164, 177 popularity and leadership skills in UUP 24, 38–9, 43, 44, 50, 51, 52, 67–8 relations with Bertie Ahern 38 resigns as First Minister 54 view of peace process 66–8, 76, 77 see also Ulster Unionist Party Troubles, the 2, 14, 16–20, 86–8

225

Ulster Civil Rights Movement 140 Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters (UDA/UFF) 17, 39, 60–1, 90, 96 Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and USA 119 association with UDA and UFF 39, 90 elections 34, 44–5, 61, 69–70, 147 leaves talks 39, 93 links with peace organisations 65 pragmatism 24 Ulster Scots language 84, 156, 166 Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) 51–2, 151 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and decommissioning 35, 42, 45–6, 51, 67 and DUP 25, 50, 67, 82, 85 and Good Friday Agreement 40, 42–4, 47–9, 67–8, 150, 151, 156, 157, 164, 171–2 and peace process 66–8, 76 and Power Sharing Executive 19, 51–2 and Sinn Féin 29, 37–8, 50, 60–1, 67, 73, 74, 79–80, 82, 84, 139, 178 and talks 37–8 and USA 116–17 Anglo-Irish Agreement and 20, 76 ceasefires and 32–3 example of South Africa and 119 external influences 121 Northern Ireland Assembly and 40, 49 public consultations (Summer 1997) 139 referendum campaign 68 SDLP and 38, 79 Trimble’s popularity and leadership skills 24, 38–9, 43, 44, 50, 51, 52, 67–8 see also Trimble, David Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) 17, 96 Ulster Workers’ Council 87, 150 unemployment 18, 125–6, 135–6, 185 n

226 Index United Ireland 4, 41, 43 United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP) and peace process 130 elections 34, 36, 45, 69–70, 206 n emergence of 150 leave talks (Sept. 1997) 73 United Nations 2, 3, 183 n United States and peace process 25, 113–17, 119, 121–2 and Sinn Féin 112–16, 160 and UUP 116–17 civil rights campaign 16 funding for IRA 93, 111–13, 150 investment in Northern Ireland 115, 129–30 investment in Republic of Ireland 115 lobbying in 112–13 Major and 116–17 National Security Council 113 public opinion in 109–11 SDLP and 116

Totally Unarmed Strategy (1994) and 23 see also Clinton, President Bill universities 13 Victims’ Commission 99, 119 violence and ceasefires 6, 86, 88–9, 91–8 and the peace process 88–105, 170–1 as a catalyst for peace 103–4 by the paramilitaries 92–6 by the state 91–2 in the community 97–8 new violence related issues in the negotiations 98–103 of the troubles 86–8 We Will Remember Them (Bloomfield) 158 Welsh Assembly 1, 42, 49, 107 Wolfsfeld, Gadi 147–8 Yes Campaign 42, 145, 163–4 Yugoslavia 121