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David
McKittrick, co-author, with Eamonn Mallie, of Endgame
In Ireland, has been at the centre of controversy
recently as a result of his findings published in
the London Independent which suggested that the end
of the unionist majority in Northern Ireland may be
almost upon us. This was a serial rather than a serious
assertion. His evidence was at best scant and suggested
that he had overplayed the extent to which republican
strategy was proving successful. But the turbulence
his article created just prior to a further round
of IRA decommissioning made it a propitious time to
be reading Endgame In Ireland. Was such 'exaggeration'
an aberration or was it a characterisation of his
work on the peace process?
This
is important not least because the reader has barely
turned to page 2 of this book before discovering that
the sense of mutual back-slapping which gave rise
to it begins. Norma Percy of Brook Lapping details
how the production team visits Belfast and the first
thing they do is consult David McKittrick and Eamonn
Mallie as any 'sensible seeker' of the 'inside story
of Northern Ireland's politics must'. In turn Brook
Lapping provide their material to Mallie and McKittrick
who are effusive in their praise for Brook-Lapping
for having produced 'the best TV series on Northern
Ireland we have ever seen'. Perhaps not the blind
leading the blind but in any event another book is
on the assembly line.
This
is a major turn-off with this book - it has the feel
of the assembly line to it. Neat, tidy and packaged;
anything too awkward is cast to the side. Like the
programmes upon which it is based it is primarily
a work germinating from the ruminations of high actors
on the political scene. And they are all here, right
across the range from the pound to the penny in the
currency of public exposure politics - from Bill Clinton
to Johnny Adair. And what do those people ever disclose
so close to the event that does much more than scrape
the surface, or would be damaging to themselves?
The
authors make it clear that in the process leading
up to the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993
republicans were loosing on the key issue of having
a time frame inserted which would allow them to claim
that the British were going and that the campaign
was worth it. Yet they fail to take this to its logical
conclusion. When the Declaration was produced it contained
nothing other than ethereal words and 'was clearly
incompatible with traditional republican theory'.Yet
Mallie and McKittrick on the very same page make the
hollow claim that the Downing Street Declaration had
addressed republican theory 'in a serious and substantive
way'.
More
telling is the little observation on Gerry Adams in
the run up to the Declaration from then Taoiseach
Albert Reynolds after IRA volunteer Thomas Begley
had died with numerous others bombing the Shankill
fish shop. John Major, furious at the Sinn Fein leader
for having carried the IRA coffin, was told by Reynolds
'if this man didn't carry that coffin, he couldn't
deliver that movement. He's no good to you or me if
he didn't carry that coffin'. Prophetic words as Adams
proved 'good' in the end by creating a totalising
republican moral universe in which opposition to accepting
the British alternative to republicanism was muted.
Elsewhere,
the authors remind us of the commitment to Irish unity
enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement if a majority
in the North so decide (necessary only to those who
insist on reading the text with their eyes wide shut),
but fail to remind us that the same offer existed
in 1974. Lacking from the entire work is any sense
that this was the key point Britain had fought the
Provisional IRA on for over two decades. The British
insisted not that they would never leave Ireland but
that they would only leave on the basis of the consent
principle which the Provisional leadership sent legions
of its volunteers out to kill and die in order to
destroy. Despite quoting Danny Morrison 'that we wanted
British withdrawal - that's what we were fighting,
dying and going to jail for', the authors, at no point
seriously pursue this logic and specify that the British
won convincingly on this matter.
Nor
do they display the precision one would expect they
should have given the material they had access to
and which would have led them to conclude the four
and a half year period from the Downing Street Declaration
until the Good Friday Agreement constituted the obliteration
of the core tenets of Provisional republicanism and
saw the once radical and anti-systemic philosophy
slide into reverse thrust.
This
persistent slippage disappoints and leaves the reader
feeling that they have just perused revisionism, an
intellectual exercise in wrapping the wooden spoon
in silver foil in order to allow the Provisional republican
leadership to continue praising itself and calling
its failures historic compromises.
Furthermore,
what place is there in a serious work for persisting
with the legal fiction that Sinn Fein and the IRA
are two separate and totally unrelated bodies? Mo
Mowlam, as British Secretary of State is quoted, but
not critiqued, on her meeting with republican leaders:
'We sat down with Sinn Fein. We sat at one end and
they brought in some people who were obviously members
of the army council'. Is the serious reading public
expected to believe that Mowlam had ever in fact sat
down with any body other than the army council? But
then the peace process is not anything if deprived
of its myths, all too evident this week when the media
slipped into automated frenzy because the IRA said
‘sorry’. That it has been saying ‘sorry’
for years to the innocent it killed only to kill more
proved no barrier to media terms such as ‘unprecedented’
being crafted to greet the announcement.
The
most interesting and novel part of the book is the
lengthy interview from Denis Bradley. The former priest
from Derry provides an invaluable account of his involvement
in 'the link', a conduit between the British and the
IRA which was almost as old as the war itself. One
of 'the link' contacts was Martin McGuinness. A key
republican leader, he is quoted as saying when he
first arrived at Stormont 'we had taken ownership
for the first time of the place'. History may be less
generous, recording that Stormont took ownership of
McGuinness and his colleagues. But you will not find
that low blow suggested in this high altitude book.
Endgame
In Ireland. By Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick.
Hodder & Stoughton. Price £17.99
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