The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

even a symbolic gesture of de-commissioning IRA weapons in advance of talks would ‘symbolise an IRA surrender’.73 He accused Britain of ‘attempting to gain by stealth what it could not achieve in 25 years of military conflict’. The Sinn Fein position is that ‘de-commissioning’ should take place as a result of an all-party agreement on a total demilitarisation of the Six Counties. At the time of writing there were 130, 000 legally held weapons in Loyalist hands.74 In addition to these there were the countless thousands that either fell off, or did not get put on, lorries, at times such as the abolition of the B-Specials and the UDR, and those smuggled into the country by British intelligence with the help of Brian Nelson. Each of the 32, 000 security force members also carries a personal weapon, apart from those they have access to. The combined British Army/RUC presence means that in 1994/5 there was one security force person to every 3.7 Catholic males between the age of sixteen and forty-four. In addition there are the 1, 000 MI5 personnel whom the MI5 Director, Stella Rimington, estimates75 are engaged in combatting the IRA. The omnipresent security presence was such that, in an area the size of Yorkshire, there were 135 fixed military installations. Even Nationalists who oppose the IRA’s use of force are made uneasy by these statistics at the prospect of Republican guns being handed in while Loyalist ones and the former death squads, remain at large. However, the sheer...