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

by Tim Pat Coogan

But Fitt, like many observers, including the present writer, concluded that the enlargement of the Northern Ireland representation had not been directed at reducing the democratic deficit existing in that area, but at creating more governmental support.

The following day, the Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave was blown up by an INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) bomb under his car in the House of Commons car park. Thus an even sterner law and order figure than Mason was denied to the province and Humphrey Atkins became the new Secretary of State.

Two months after Prior arrived, the Provisional IRA assassinated the Revd William Bradford, a right-wing Unionist MP known for his demands for a tougher security policy and, according to some in Republican and Nationalist circles, for his links to Loyalist paramilitary associations.

The IRA statement on his death said: ‘Armchair generals who whip up anti-nationalist murder gangs… cannot expect to remain forever immune from the effects of their evil work.’

Paisley reacted to the killing by establishing what he called a Third Force to defend Ulster.

The SDLP, because of the hunger strikes, were under increasing threat from Sinn Fein and were forced to pursue vigorously the Sinn Fein policy of abstention.

In the assembly elections on 20 October 1982, the SDLP did lose a number of seats.

Provisional Sinn Fein won five seats, thus adding to Green versus Socialist tensions within the SDLP.

Paddy Devlin had been expelled in 1977 because he argued that the party was moving away from socialism. Austin Currie resigned in 1979 to fight the Fermanagh/South Tyrone Westminster seat as an independent SDLP candidate, but lost.

Several attacks on his home included one in which a UVF raiding party missed him and vented their spleen by carving the initials UVF on his wife’s breasts.

One outcome of the rolling devolution experiment was that it proved that no system of government could hope to succeed if both Dublin and London were not constructively engaged in its operation. Ironically, it was an attempt to rectify the denial of this truth that led ultimately to the demise of the assembly.

In an effort to strengthen his position the Dublin Government, then led by Garret FitzGerald of Fine Gael in coalition with Labour, moved to set up the New Ireland Forum at Dublin Castle.

All the parties in the country, with the exception of the Unionists, who refused to attend, and Sinn Fein, who were excluded, took part in the forum. The result was a report which proposed three options: a confederal Ireland, a united Ireland (unitary state), or joint sovereignty.

Mrs Thatcher completely cut the ground from beneath both Garret FitzGerald and Hume by itemising the three findings of the forum and saying after each one, ‘that is out’.

The out… out… out… speech, as it was known, produced such a crisis in Anglo-Irish relations that even Mrs Thatcher came to realise the damage she had done.

‘If it had only gone properly, it would have been greater than 1916 – the whole British Cabinet would have gone up.’

However, to his credit, FitzGerald continued his efforts to find a political settlement.

Following a lengthy period of negotiation, the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed on 15 November 1985...

It provided in Article 1 that there could be no change in the status of the North without the consent of the majority. Articles 2 and 3 went on to state, however, that ‘determined efforts would be made to resolve any differences’ under the framework of the intergovernmental conference. In Article 3 it was stipulated that it was expected that the co...

while accommodating both the identities and the rights of both traditions in the North.

Article 5 stated that the Irish Government could put forward proposals on behalf of the minority and clearly envisaged that these proposals would deal with questions such as human rights and discrimination. Article 6 went on to accept the Irish Government’s right to make proposals on the role and the composition of public bodies. These included the Police Authority. Security policy generally was deemed a matter for the conference under Article 7, as was the relationship of the security forces to the community and the question of prison administration.

In a sense they did no more than recognise the reality of the Republic’s relationship with both Northern Ireland and England. But when the contents of the agreement were revealed2 they had an enormous psychological effect on the Unionists.

make matters worse, it was a Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Tom King, that had signed this infamous document. Who now could Unionists trust in England?

The Unionists erupted in rage, withdrawing from the assembly and staging every form of riot and demonstration known to political protest in a vain attempt to wreck the agreement.

The military appreciation (by both the Irish Army and their foe, the Provisional IRA) of the prospect of a Loyalist backlash has always centred on fears that it would come from elements within the RUC.

This did not do anything to diminish northern Protestant fears that the Republic was a sort of off-shore Vatican State.

There was, however, considerable unease in liberal Irish circles about two aspects of this policy: the activities of an anti-IRA Garda ‘heavy gang’ and efforts to introduce political censorship to the Republic’s newspapers.

In what would appear to outsiders to be a contradictory attitude, given his anti-republicanism, Cosgrave shared his father’s generation’s approach to England of sturdy independence.

Although he regarded de Valera’s 1937 constitution as a sectarian document, he did not agree with British and Unionist suggestions that it should be changed to take note of the sensibilities of the Unionists.

In fact he reflected a section of old-school, southern opinion which held that, no matter what changes were made, ‘That crowd up there still wouldn’t come in!’

and had no difficulty with the Sunningdale provision that there should be no change in the status of Northern Ireland unless a majority in the north so desired.

and was cautious about agreeing to extradition of IRA fugitives to either Britain or Northern Ireland.

idea that unity or close association with a people so deeply imbued with violence and its effects is not what they want. Violence… is killing the desire for unity.’

Two subsequent developments confirmed him in his belief that London could not be trusted.

Cosgrave was defeated in 1977 by Fianna Fail, led by Jack Lynch. The election was fought largely on the economy, but partly also on the Government’s handling of the censorship issue, its attitude to the IRA prisoners in Portlaoise, and the Heavy Gang.

Haughey, whose father had been a prominent northern IRA commander during the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21, was widely expected to take a tougher line with the British than had Lynch.

Thereafter, he frequently sought to portray his relationship with Thatcher as being very satisfactory.

These were not helped by Haughey’s assertion, on BBC’s Panorama of 9 June 1980, shortly after he had met Thatcher, that a British withdrawal was the best solution for the problems of Northern Ireland.

The communiqué did agree to joint studies and recognised the ‘totality of relationships’ between the two islands. It also set up an Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council which subsequently became the keystone of the arch on which the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 was built.

It was clearly a Foreign Office concept, possibly intended to point Dublin towards some linkage along the lines of either commonwealth or shared European membership, but hardly towards unity.

She chose to refer to it on television or in public speeches as the ‘Dublin bilateral’, whereas Haughey continued to refer to it as a ‘summit’.

Thatcher took an uncompromising stand against another hunger strike which had broken out in Long Kesh (see Chapter 9). This resulted in some of the strikers standing as ‘H Block’ candidates in a southern election on 11 June 1981. Overall they took votes from Fianna Fail’s Republican rump, and two were actually elected (Kieran Doherty, who subsequently died on the strike, and Patrick Agnew).

I described him in my first book, Ireland Since the Rising, as the epitome of ‘the men in the mohaired suits’ who by then were taking over in public life from the revolutionary generation.

FitzGerald, an economist and journalist, by contrast looked like an unmade bed, the epitome of the absent-minded professor.

However, whereas FitzGerald’s father, Desmond, had been the principal IRA apologist of Michael Collins’ day, the son was an implacable foe of all things Republican. He said repeatedly that one of his principal political motivations was a desire to crush the IRA.

After being elected taoiseach in 1981, FitzGerald announced that he favoured ‘a constitutional crusade’ to make the Irish constitution more acceptable to the Unionists. Three years earlier (in 1978) he had revealed that in 1974 (the year of the Loyalist strike) he had told Unionists that they would be ‘bloody fools’ to join the Republic under the existing constitution.

Haughey’s approach, which he spelled out at the Fianna Fail annual conference in 1980 (the first he addressed as leader after ousting Lynch), was that the six-county state was a ‘failed entity’, a constant source of strife both on the island of Ireland and between Dublin and London. He saw the solution as lying in a negotiated settlement between Dublin and London.

They agreed to put the Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council into operation. However, it was a period of intense political volatility, brought on by economic as much as Northern Ireland conditions, and FitzGerald went out of office again on 18 February 1982.

From this unpromising base Haughey appeared at least to take a tough line with London. He had refrained from criticising publicly Thatcher’s handling of the hunger strikes, much to Provisional Sinn Fein’s disgust.

On St Patrick’s Day he publicly asked the American Government to pressurise Britain to further Irish unity. Reagan, however, replied that a solution would have to be found from within the ranks of Northern Ireland politicians.