Making Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict

by David McKittrick

Even as the IRA escalated its violence in the late 1980s, Sinn Féin was exploring the potential for talking, sending feelers out to church and state and seeking contact with a wide range of opinion. The result was a web of talks over the years, most of which were held in strict secrecy. It was not until April 1993 that the lid was lifted on at least part of the process when, entirely by accident, Gerry Adams was spotted entering John Hume’s home in Londonderry.

On the surface Hume appeared to have breached the general rule that mainstream politicians should not speak to those associated with violence. Yet although few knew it at the time, the Hume–Adams channel was just the tip of an iceberg, since for years many surreptitious contacts had taken place. It was not only Hume who had been in touch with the republicans but also the Catholic Church, the Irish government and, above all, the British government. London’s line to the republicans stretched back not just for years but, intermittently, for decades. Almost all of this was however hidden from public view.

To begin with, none of these produced visible results.

When Brooke made his 1990 statement that Britain had no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland he did so at the private prompting of Hume, who had been arguing this point in his talks with Adams.

A highly significant moment came in October 1991 when Hume wrote a draft declaration which he hoped could form the basis of an agreed position between the British and Irish governments. The idea was to demonstrate, with a joint declaration, that Britain was not standing in the way of Irish unity, in the eventual hope of persuading republicans to halt their attempt to unite Ireland by violence. The intention was to find common ground in everyone’s ideological positions, and to reconcile what had always appeared irreconcilable. It was to prove the first of many such drafts which would, in December 1993, culminate in what became known as the Downing Street Declaration.

The crucial part of Hume’s draft lay in its attempt to address the republican demand for Irish self-determination. This could not be achieved, he wrote, without the agreement of the people of Northern Ireland. This was a subtle concept, for in effect it combined the principles of self-determination and consent. It thus combined, at least in theory, what republicans sought with the Unionist demand that the majority opinion should prevail within Northern Ireland.

The years that followed saw the further development of many secret contacts. Hume, Reynolds and the republicans exchanged documents and kept London informed while the republicans separately, unknown to Hume and Reynolds, also dealt directly with London.

The secret British–republican link in these years, which came to be known as the back-channel, had three distinct phases. In the first, which began in 1990 and lasted for three years, London actively courted the republicans, sending nineteen messages while Sinn Féin replied only once. Occasional meetings took place, sometimes in Northern Ireland and sometimes in London. In the second phase, between February and November 1993, the pace quickened with an average of a message a week passing back and forward as the possibility of a formal meeting between republicans and the government was explored. The third short phase followed before the contacts effectively came to an end in November 1993.

In the end, after dozens of messages and exchanges of documents and a number of face-to-face meetings, the two sides never got together for serious talks.

The more meaningful negotiations throughout this period actually involved Adams, Hume and Dublin through the stream of draft declarations.

Eventually in the autumn of 1993 Hume, impatient at the pace of progress, went public, he and Adams announcing that they had made considerable progress and had agreed to forward a report to Dublin. They declared: ‘We are convinced from our discussions that a process can be designed to lead to agreement among the divided people of this island which will provide a solid basis for peace.’

October 1993 was one of the most awful, yet most crucial, months in the troubles. It began in confusion mixed with hope, then plunged into violence and near despair, almost as dark as any period of the troubles. The death toll was the highest of any month since 1976.

Loyalist killings were running at a particularly high level and had developed a new feature. In addition to the standard pattern of loyalist attacks on random Catholic targets, loyalists had in addition begun to target members of Sinn Féin, together with members of their families and friends.

A senior trade unionist gave a flavour of the atmosphere at the time: I do think they are actually taking us back to the early 1970s. I really don’t come across anyone now who doesn’t talk about how dreadful it is. Everybody is frankly scared to talk to people of the other community or even talk to people of their own community, in case anything they say might be overheard and give offence. You can see the fear everywhere. When I went to mass on Sunday attendance was down by a third, and there were armed RUC officers on guard duty in the car park. The priest said at the end of mass that police advice was for us to leave quickly, not to congregate chatting, just to get into our cars and get going.

It finally came to fruition in the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993, which Major and Reynolds unveiled together. The document contained nothing that could be interpreted as a British declaration of intent to leave. Rather, it had as its heart a serpentine sentence which intertwined the concepts of self-determination and consent on which Hume and Adams had spent so much time. It read: ‘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 self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish.’ It was in effect an ambitious attempt to construct a finely balanced double helix in which self-determination and consent were inseparable.

Major had thus achieved the feat of producing a document which kept mainstream Unionism on board while putting maximum pressure on the republicans.

but most of the points the republicans had wished to see were very much diluted. The republicans had wanted the British to ‘join the ranks of the persuaders’ of the value of a united Ireland, and had wanted Northern Ireland’s future status to be decided by a single act of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole. They had also sought a timetable for a British withdrawal, but none of these made it into the declaration’s final form. Yet although the document fell far short of what republicans had sought, Sinn Féin reacted not by rejecting it but by calling for clarification. Major replied by announcing that no clarification was necessary and a stalemate developed, with much of the euphoria which accompanied the declaration draining away as weeks and months passed.

The following month however brought a bizarre incident which represented an attempt by republicans to use a finely orchestrated blend of violence, politics and propaganda. Mortars similar to those used to attack Downing Street in 1991 were fired over a period of days on to runways at Heathrow, causing major security alerts. One of them hit the ground only forty yards from a stationary Jumbo jet and another landed on the roof of Terminal Four, but none of the devices exploded. For a time this appeared to have put paid to hopes that the IRA was slowly moving towards a ceasefire. The IRA campaign in the wake of the declaration had been running at a relatively low level, and this was a dramatic escalation.

Although the mortars contained Semtex plastic explosive, it turned out that a key component had been doctored so that they would not explode: the purpose had been to terrify but not to kill. The whole thing had been an extraordinarily elaborate hoax, designed to pressurise the British government without actually killing anyone.

Pessimism became almost universal when a large-scale Sinn Féin conference in June sent out a message which was interpreted as ruling out a ceasefire. In fact the IRA was heading towards a ceasefire, but in the run-up to it there was a last-minute wave of violence, in which a number of prominent loyalist figures were shot dead.

On 31 August came the ceasefire announcement. Just after 11 a.m. excited journalists and newsreaders read out an IRA statement proclaiming that, as of midnight that night ‘there will be a complete cessation of military operations’.

As the weeks passed and the ceasefire held, another major development came in October when the loyalist paramilitary groups followed the IRA’s lead. They not only declared a ceasefire but set a new tone by including an unexpected note of apology, offering ‘the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years abject and true remorse’.

This change in tone reflected the existence of a new phenomenon within militant loyalism with the emergence, from that violent underworld, of a political element. Groups such as the UVF and UDA remained in being, but now they too went on ceasefire and sprouted new political wings.

In particular the UVF now produced the Progressive Unionist party, with articulate spokesmen such as David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson. They and most of the other new spokesmen were ex-prisoners who had learnt the hard way the cost of violence.

The sight of the previously violent loyalists embracing the peace process with such enthusiasm gave the process a huge boost, for 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.

The government, however, exuded scepticism and suspicion of republican motives, an attitude which was to prevail during the seventeen months which the ceasefire lasted.

Within weeks of the announcement it became obvious that the ‘cessation of military operations’ did not mean that the IRA would be entirely inactive. The practice of carrying out ‘punishments’ of alleged wrongdoers in republican areas continued, and although the practice of shooting them in the legs was temporarily ended, scores of men and youths were savagely beaten. It also emerged in late 1994 that the IRA was still watching members of the security forces, and continued to size up potential targets for attack in both Northern Ireland and Britain.

Negotiations were at first widely expected to start within months of the IRA ceasefire, but those who hoped for this were to be disappointed. Instead, the year that followed was dominated not by political negotiation but by protracted arguments about the IRA’s armaments.

September brought a highly significant development when James Molyneaux was ousted as leader of the Ulster Unionist party after sixteen years and replaced by Trimble, a former law lecturer who had been an MP for only five years. Most of the political spectrum was dismayed by his election in that he was regarded as the most hardline of the five candidates for the post.

The Protestant show of determination at Drumcree, together with Trimble’s election, showed that many Unionists viewed the peace process as a hazard rather than an opportunity.

To the surprise of many, however, Trimble would turn out to be anything but a traditional hardliner.

Reacting to the Mitchell report in the Commons, Major thanked the senator and his colleagues for their efforts, but said the road to talks lay either through prior decommissioning or by the holding of an election in Northern Ireland.

This was the state of the peace process when, on a Friday evening in February, after a confused series of warnings, a huge bomb concealed in a lorry exploded in London, not far from the giant Canary Wharf building in London’s Docklands. The blast claimed two lives, causing immense damage and apparently ending the process.

The bomb galvanised political activity. During Reynolds’s period of office the cessation had gone reasonably well from a republican point of view, and 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. The decommissioning impasse, the absence of all-party talks, and the lack of movement on issues such as prisoner releases, all combined to increase republican disillusion.

Those who believed in the cessation by contrast contended that it was faulty intelligence and analysis, married to excessive caution and delay, which helped bring about its breakdown.

There were further bombings, though it gradually became clear that the IRA was opting not for a return to a full-scale campaign of terrorism but was rather establishing a pattern of sporadic attacks in Britain. Northern Ireland was left largely untouched.

June brought a wave of IRA violence. In that single month an Irish policeman was shot dead in the Republic, a large bomb devastated much of Manchester’s city centre and injured more than 200 people, and a mortar attack was staged on a British army base in Germany. The killing of the Irish detective Jerry McCabe, who was shot dead during a robbery, sent shock waves through the south.

Next came what was known as Drumcree 1996. The Orange Order had been so proud of its success in pushing the 1995 march through that it had struck ‘Siege of Drumcree’ medals to commemorate the occasion. Unionist party members had been so pleased with Trimble’s part in the exercise that they had elected him leader. When the occasion came round again in July 1996 there was much apprehension that another clash was on the cards, yet no one foresaw how grave a confrontation it would become. The Protestant marchers were determined to get through; the Catholic residents were equally determined that they should not.

Tens of thousands of Orangemen were poised to march in processions all over Northern Ireland, and there were not enough RUC members and troops to police them all. Faced with the prospect of widespread and uncontrolled disorder Annesley backed down, reversed his original decision, and let the marchers through.

The political talks went on, with George Mitchell moving from his role in decommissioning to chair proceedings which proved to be long-drawn-out, tedious and initially unproductive.

The 1996 death toll was twenty-two, an increase on the 1995 figure of nine. The IRA killed eight people, the INLA six and loyalists five. In private meanwhile Hume presented Major with a document known as ‘Hume–Adams Mark 2’ which was said to be a formula for a renewed ceasefire. There was little surprise when Major rebuffed the initiative. In doing so he described the 1994–96 ceasefire as fake and said he did not want another phoney cessation.

This year was to bring a continuation of violence but also, eventually, a restoration of the IRA ceasefire. Both republicans and loyalists remained active, an IRA sniper in south Armagh killing the last soldier to die in the 1990s, Bombardier Stephen Restorick. In the run-up to the Westminster general election in May, the IRA used small bombs and hoaxes to cause major disruption which included a last-minute abandonment of the Grand National steeplechase.

1997

The May general election transformed the peace process, with the departure of John Major and the arrival in Downing Street of Tony Blair.

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. The combined SDLP–Sinn Féin vote, which in 1983 had totalled 240,000, rose to almost 320,000.

The new contacts between the government and Sinn Féin went well, raising hopes for a renewed ceasefire. Such hopes received a setback, however, with the IRA killing of two policemen on foot patrol in the County Armagh town of Lurgan.

Blair, though clearly shaken by the killings, persevered with the process and attempted to maintain its momentum. Crucially, London and Dublin together laid down that IRA decommissioning was not a precondition for Sinn Féin entry to talks. In what was seen as a calculated gamble by Blair and Mowlam it was announced that political talks would begin in earnest in September, and that Sinn Féin would be allowed in six weeks after a new IRA ceasefire. Part of the gamble lay in the possibility that, if Sinn Féin were allowed in, Trimble might lead his Ulster Unionists out.

the IRA announced a second cessation later in July, doing so this time in a low-key fashion. The general reaction too was low-key, for the Canary Wharf bombing had demonstrated that ceasefires could be broken as easily as they were called.

The spotlight thus fell on Trimble, who spent many weeks consulting widely on whether he should remain in the talks with republicans. It was clearly an agonising decision, and a critical one, but in the end his Ulster Unionist party decided to remain.

Although the major republican and loyalist groups were on ceasefire a collection of minor paramilitary organisations were not, actively opposing the peace process and seeking to sabotage it. On the republican side such elements included the INLA, while on the loyalist side those still active included the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), which was based mostly in Portadown and had broken away from the much larger UVF. The LVF’s leader Billy Wright, King Rat, had become a larger-than-life public figure of considerable notoriety.

Apart from the mainstream IRA, a group styling itself the Continuity IRA was also active. Consisting mainly of former IRA members who disapproved of the peace process, it was responsible for bombings which caused considerable damage to a number of towns.