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

by Tim Pat Coogan

THE IRA THAT Chichester-Clark declared war on could be described in two ways, either in terms of statistics and materiel, or in the sense of the Irish phrase uisce fe talamh, literally, ‘water under the ground’. In practice it means secret doings, matters not to be discussed publicly. A consciousness of race and place, formed by history and circumstance, whereby one grows up knowing things without realising where one learnt them. Knowing how to fight, how to kill. Inclining instinctively to guerrilla warfare, because in the Irish physical force tradition the Catholic and Gaelic side of the conflict hid in, and struck from, fog and bog. They might not be able to spell the term ‘status of belligerents’. But they understood what not having it meant. If caught, they were more likely to face a rope than a cell. This tradition, its legacies of infliction and endurance, was probably the IRA’s greatest weapon on the day Chichester-Clark spoke.