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October 3 - October 14, 2019
he challenged the traditional nationalist assertion that the root of the problem was the British presence. The historic mission of nationalism, he argued, was to convince Unionism that its concerns could be accommodated in a new agreed Ireland.
much of the back-channel concerned the arrangements for talks, and no substantive negotiations took place. The more meaningful negotiations throughout this period actually involved Adams, Hume and Dublin
In the five years leading up to the Shankill bombing, eighteen people with Sinn Féin connections were killed by Protestant extremists. Three of the dead were Sinn Féin councillors while another councillor lost a brother and a son in separate attacks. Republicans alleged collusion by the authorities in many of the killings, while the IRA retaliated by killing many alleged loyalist extremists.
‘Look, John, you have to understand that if the guy didn’t carry the coffin he wouldn’t be able to maintain his credibility with that organisation and bring people with him.’
Major was to suggest in his memoirs that the violence actually gave fresh impetus to a process which was about to expire: ‘The process was on a knife-edge. I think it would have broken down had not the Shankill and Greysteel tragedies intervened.’
Former priest Denis Bradley, one of those involved in the contacts, admitted that he, not the IRA, was the author of the ‘conflict is over’ message, sent on his own initiative to break the logjam.
many had assumed the loyalist groups would continue to pose an active threat. Instead they became at many points a force for moderation, eager for dialogue and presenting a very different approach from that of mainstream Unionist politicians.
Within weeks of the cessation, in fact, the British government had made a private assessment that the start of all-inclusive round-table negotiations was probably two years away.
Major noted that Unionists were ‘deeply troubled’ by the ceasefire.
November 1994 brought a moment of crisis when a postal worker was shot dead during an IRA robbery in Newry, County Down. The ceasefire seemed in doubt, but the IRA leadership quickly issued a statement saying it had not sanctioned the robbery and had granted no one permission to use arms.
the demand for prior decommissioning was unworkable, not least because he had been briefed to that effect by both the RUC and the Gardaí.
Sinn Féin was pleased with the framework document of February 1995. But from then on they claimed Major’s approach was intended to maintain pressure on Adams and Sinn Féin, and not to pressurise Unionist politicians.
Sinn Féin opposed the exercise and boycotted the forum, but contested the election, and when the ballot boxes were opened it turned out that they were the main beneficiaries. The party vote surged to an unprecedented 15.5 per cent.
A number of loyalists appeared with a bulldozer fitted with makeshift armour, threatening to drive it through the police lines.
After the election, five of Northern Ireland’s eighteen seats in the Westminster parliament were held by nationalists, with Martin McGuinness joining Gerry Adams as an MP.
‘She is blunt and outspoken and she swears a lot. She is also intelligent, decisive, daring and unpretentious. The combination is irresistible. The people love her, though many politicians in Northern Ireland do not.’
re: Mo Mowlem
if Sinn Féin were allowed in, Trimble might lead his Ulster Unionists out. Paisley and other hardliners had already made it clear that if republicans entered the talks they would immediately leave.
When Trimble led the way into the Stormont talks he took some other macho credentials with him, walking into the building flanked not just by his own party but also by members of the parties associated with loyalist paramilitary groups. Those who accompanied him included a number of loyalist ex-prisoners who had served life sentences for murder.
Double standards re: Sinn Féin/IRA?
At twenty-one, the death toll in 1997 was just one down from the previous year. The pattern of killings had reversed, with loyalists responsible for two-thirds of the deaths whereas republicans had killed roughly two-thirds of those who died in 1996.
The shooting of Wright was followed by a stream of killings, particularly in Belfast, as loyalists took revenge by shooting Catholic civilians.
Respond to killing of paramilitary by killing civilians: escalation by loyalists
controversially, prisoners from subscribing paramilitary groups could expect release within two years.
a ‘tacit double protection’ which meant that all the protections of rights afforded to nationalists would also be available to Unionists in a future united Ireland.
The republican community did not take long to give its general endorsement, but the agreement produced deep divisions within the Ulster Unionist party and, unsurprisingly, outright hostility from Paisley.
a large proportion of the Unionist community was clearly against making a deal with nationalists or republicans.
The final outcome was an overwhelming endorsement in the south and a 71 per cent Yes vote in the north. This was more than many of the agreement’s supporters had dared hope for, and amounted to a solid vote for the accord. Yet at the same time the outcome contained an imbalance in that the 71 per cent was made up of virtually 100 per cent of nationalist voters but only half of Unionism.
Mowlam was recalled to London by Blair, evidently against her will and possibly partly because Trimble and other Unionists made public complaints that she leaned towards the nationalists. Her replacement was Peter Mandelson,
Loyalists were responsible for 22 of the 29 deaths between January 2000 and July 2001, while the IRA was held responsible for the killings of a number of alleged drug dealers.
by the assembly elections of 2007 the constitutional nationalists took only 15 per cent of the vote while republicans amassed 26 per cent.
Paisley, with a touch of biblical melodrama, called on the IRA to ‘wear sackcloth and ashes’. Since Paisley had always been regarded as anti-republican, anti-nationalist and anti-Catholic, many took his remarks as confirmation that his goal was victory rather than accommodation.
(Republican and nationalist opinion noted acidly that the prolonged focus on IRA disarmament displaced comment on loyalist violence. Of the dozen deaths in 2004 and 2005 nine were the work of loyalists.)
Those settlers were bound to develop a siege mentality given that they experienced actual sieges, most famously Londonderry in 1688–9.
Seems unfair to blame this on Irish Catholics, given that the besieging force was under the command of the King.
Northern Ireland, which was conceived, designed and set up as a Unionist-controlled entity. The unwanted part of this for Unionists, the fly in the political ointment, came with the Catholic third of the population who considered themselves trapped in an artificial, unwelcoming and even hostile state.
Little or no thought was given by Dublin to the views and interests of Unionists who regarded themselves as British and saw absolutely no attraction in forsaking their nationality to join a southern state which they regarded as anti-British and dominated by the Catholic church.
Would a secular Irish republic have been more attractive to northern Protestants?
few if any at Westminster found anything to commend in the Paisley record.
What is striking, from a series of comments in various memoirs and elsewhere, is the nervousness and even fear displayed by British politicians about Unionism.
The security forces were manifestly geared to containing disorder from the republican side. Any British policy-maker had to recognise that if serious disorder came from the Unionist community there was, during the 1970s at least, no reliable instrument with which to contain it.
a few were prettified and artfully camouflaged with shrubs and climbing plants: these were sometimes sardonically referred to as ‘designer peacelines’.
