When
I arrived in the Culloden Hotel yesterday for the
De Chastelain press conference that would announce
the completion of IRA decommissioning, the thought
occurred that it was an apt setting. While the location
was surely coincidental the venue designated to
declare that the IRA leadership had given up its
guns had only one meaning for me. It was the same
place where the British agent in the IRA, Freddie
Scappaticci, had met members of the Cooke Team in
order to damage some of his colleagues. Presumably,
he felt comfortable in the Culloden having most
likely met his handlers there throughout his agent
career, which spanned three decades. He too was
determined to divest the IRA of its guns. A momentary
thought penetrated my mind. The IICD was gently
ribbing republicans, even subliminally, reminding
them that peace processing and Stakeknifing, while
on different paths, both worked towards the same
thing and ultimately arrived at the one destination.
As
I sat amongst the throng of media people, they failed
to hold my drifting attention. My mind wandered
back over the years to the many exchanges that I
had with IRA members and others who fervently believed
decommissioning would never happen. To them, even
to mention the topic was heresy. I conjured up an
image of an insightfully smiling Micky McMullan
writing in the Observer in 1999, where he argued
that for tactical reasons alone decommissioning
should take place. The common refrain was 'Micky
has lost it.' He had never lost it just as his critics
had never found it. His problem was to have been
right too soon.
I
thought of the people who vowed never to let go
of one ounce of explosives; of their vows to have
their own fingers broken before they would yield
their grip to any leader seeking to remove as much
as a single round from the palm of their hand. There
is the well-circulated story of the IRA leader from
Belfast who told volunteers that he would accompany
them on their mission to shoot any leader who as
much as handed a round over. Foolishly, they believed
him. They told me how they would resign and publicly
criticise the leadership if decommissioning took
place either upfront or in an underhand manner.
My advice to them was not to leave themselves hostages
to fortune. Decommissioning would happen and they
would not resign. No point in inviting a face full
of egg. Still they felt otherwise. I sat with them
in my own home, into the small hours at my kitchen
table, listening while they dismissed my suggestions
that decommissioning was a path the leadership would
ultimately follow. On other occasions people took
to the papers to castigate me for having the temerity
to express a view that the guns would be given up.
Elsewhere I was told that 'for somebody who is supposedly
well educated you don't understand what this process
is all about.' I was dismissed as a fool devoid
of foresight. Often it was done in banter form,
other times not. It never concerned me. I knew that
on this one the chickens would, as always, come
home to roost.
The
same people who believed decommissioning would never
happen invariably were of the belief that the IRA
would never declare its war over until the British
had given a declaration of intent to withdraw. Nor
did they believe that republicans would come to
undermine the raison d'etre for their armed struggle
and embrace the consent principle. A few weeks before
the signing of the Good Friday Agreement I phoned
up a Sinn Fein councillor on cumann business and
while on the phone said to him, 'it's our Stormont
too, you know.' He laughed, and told me I had definitely
called it wrong this time. He is now a MLA. No doubt
they were all marching through Dublin on Saturday
deluding themselves that it was about making partition
history when all that had been achieved, regardless
of what took place at the Culloden, was to make
republicanism history and replace it with the central
tenets of constitutional nationalism.
Not
all were incapable of this appalling lack of foresight.
Other IRA members were more perceptive. Sensing
that the IRA leadership was lying when it thundered
'not a round, not an ounce', these volunteers were
mistaken only in thinking there would be widespread
rebellion within the ranks against the move. It
was not a view I shared. The rank and file would
as easily be weaned off their opposition to decommissioning
as they had been weaned off everything else. Experience
is a great teacher - for some. It showed that at
every juncture, the leadership prevailed and those
who swore to stand up to leadership 'betrayals',
as they termed them, invariably folded. Despite
its potential to teach experience was something
many failed to learn from.
Yet
again as so often happens on these occasions, I
reflected on the gulf that developed between myself
and the movement to which I had given so much of
my life. The sharpest clashes invariably resulted
from trends that I was projecting, not because I
was challenging the leadership or threatening to
go outside the movement. It seemed so obvious to
me that the peace process could only take the movement
to where it is today. There had to be room for discussion
of these concerns. When I wrote about it I found
myself castigated in a manner that roughly paralleled
the experience of Damien Kiberd. I fully expect
that those who hounded me as being a defeatist for
having predicted events will now excoriate me for
describing them as a defeat. C'est le vie.
The
story of the peace process has been one of unmitigated
denial amongst the republican grassroots about the
future. It bemuses me when I hear Martin McGuinness
describe such people as highly politicised. In my
mind politicised people can see ahead to some degree.
Nobody gets it right all the time. But getting it
wrong on every single issue hardly merits the description
politicised.
2005
and there we were learning of the event that would
never happen should the peace process go on another
1000 years. It was Danny Morrison who argued that
there would be no decommissioning by the year 3000.
It would never happen he reassured his readers because
it would be tantamount to IRA surrender; and the
IRA of course would never surrender. At the Culloden
Hotel yesterday I felt Morrison's logic seep into
my consciousness. He was right about the logic of
decommissioning equating with surrender. He was
wrong that it would never come about. What I observed
yesterday was the fourth instalment in a long sequenced
surrender.
Not
that I have any wish to jump on a high horse and
shout 'sell out' because the IRA surrendered. Danny
Morrison probably forgets it but during one of the
lengthy exchanges I had with him in prison I opined
that conditional surrender was an option that the
IRA would have to look at. He balked at the term
but seemed open to suggestion while reserving the
right to disagree.
If
there is any point in fighting a war, it lies not
in fighting one that cannot be won. Sometimes surrender
is the only feasible option. Pride alone should
not stand in the way of lives being spared and misery
avoided. The degree to which surrender is ignominious
is determined by the quality of the conditions won
by the losing side. People must make their up own
minds on the conditions secured by the Adams leadership
in return for its surrender to the British state
objective of an internal Northern Ireland solution.
Yesterday,
in the Culloden Hotel there was nothing in those
conditions that for me would validate one day spent
in jail. How much less validated is the loss of
life.
