It
is almost two weeks since the IRA announced a conclusion
to its failed campaign to achieve a British declaration
of intent to withdraw from Ireland. Despite a resistance
that was both robust and ruthless Sinn Fein's cutting
edge was confronted by forces way too superior and
was ultimately compelled to settle for a British
declaration of intent to stay. The terms offered
mirrored those upon which Britain for decades had
premised its intent to remain - until a majority
in the North of Ireland would consent to the British
going. It is some time since the British state harboured
any opposition in principle to the reunification
of Ireland. It opposed the terms stipulated by Provisional
republicanism - by-passing the consent principle.
The
Provisionals ended their campaign in return for
what was on offer in 1974. Arguably, what was agreed
at Sunningdale in November the previous year had
more dynamic - even if ultimately every nationalist
advance against partition is predetermined to flounder
on the rock of the consent principle - to move towards
a united Ireland than the Good Friday Agreement.
When stripped of its customary alarmism, unionism's
battle cry of 1974 - 'Dublin is just a Sunningdale
away' - indicated that unionism saw within the Sunningdale
Agreement mechanisms that could threaten the union.
Its venom in the first five months of 1974 was animated
much less by the power-sharing executive than by
the proposed Council of Ireland.
Second
time round, 1998, things were different. A growing
nationalist population has been acknowledged by
John Taylor as the basis upon which the North could
no longer be governed as before. This did not, however,
result in political bangs for bucks when the Good
Friday Agreement was negotiated. David Trimble secured
what was in essence an internal solution in which
he had to make substantive concessions. What he
ceded internally he compensated for on the external
Irish dimension. According to Deaglán de
Bréadún, writing two years after that
agreement, Trimble scored a major victory on North-South
bodies: 'the final list was anodyne and unthreatening.'
Garret Fitzgerald in recent days has flagged up
the lack of concern within unionism over such bodies.
For
its acceptance of Sunningdale, the SDLP earned for
itself the put down from Gerry Adams that the November
1973 agreement had produced for the first time a
Catholic partitionist party. If so, it is hard to
argue that the Good Friday Agreement did not produce
a second.
Consequently,
in making the case for concessions to republicans
Eoghan Harris in 1999 highlighted the extent to
which the IRA campaign had failed: 'Look, Sinn Féin
fought for 30 years. It's like a kid wanting a bike
for Christmas. The bike they wanted was a united
Ireland. They didn't get the bike. Please give them
a few stickers.'
There
is no need to look exclusively at advocates of the
unionist cause for evidence of the futility of the
Provisional IRA's Long War. In their unguarded moments
Sinn Fein spokesmen - either upfront or undercover
- can be very revealing. Those tuned in to Tom McGurk's
Sunday show on RTE last week may have taken cognisance
of Danny Morrison's response to a McGurk probe as
to when the former publicity director realised the
armed campaign was on the road to nowhere. Rather
than dispute the explicit assumption in the question
Morrison stated that it was around 1991 - ten years
after his armalite and ballot box comment - when
the IRA failed to up the ante despite having access
to a massive arsenal, courtesy of the Libyans. If
he is being genuine, Morrison has certainly been
a slow learner or a late convert. Others more senior
had almost certainly arrived at the same conclusion
almost a decade earlier. However, for present purposes
it is more important to make the point than score
it - the armed struggle had proved futile long before
last week's IRA statement announcing its conclusion.
As
this sentiment becomes more voluble in public discourse,
Sinn Fein has stretched itself to pretend that 'the
struggle' still continues and that the task is to
bring more people into that struggle. This is just
the same waffle that was muttered by the Worker's
Party, and Fianna Fail before them, when they decided
to disguise their retreat from the field and accept
a partitionist outcome.
Charlie
Haughey once described the Northern state as a failed
political entity and as such was irreformable. The
campaign of the Provisional IRA was firmly rooted
in that logic. Perhaps the Provisional IRA's most
notable achievement lies in having proved itself
wrong. Provisional republicanism has emerged as
the failed entity and the Northern State is now
a permanent feature of our political landscape.
