McGuinness reminds us that the IRA have failed
"There is no doubt whatsoever that, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, there was a renewed determination to oppose the British Army and the RUC. If I had had the ability to kill every single British soldier that was on the streets of Derry I would have killed every single one of them without any difficulty whatsoever."
Let's be honest, that's not the sort of sentiment you expect to hear from your Deputy First Minister during a Sunday morning interview, is it?
But it does raise another couple of questions in my mind: namely, at what point did Mr McGuinness realise that the IRA would never have the ability to kill every British soldier across Northern Ireland, let alone in Londonderry, and at what point did Sinn Fein accept that it was going to have to settle for an accommodation with the British and with unionists?
It was to be almost a quarter of a century after Bloody Sunday, on September 6, 1994 (and a week after the IRA had declared a "complete cessation of military operations"), that Gerry Adams, John Hume and Taoiseach Albert Reynolds issued a joint statement: "We are at the beginning of a new era in which we are totally and absolutely committed to democratic and peaceful methods of resolving our political problems. We reiterate that our objective is an equitable and lasting agreement that can command the allegiance of all".
On the same day that that statement was issued, Prime Minister John Major ejected Ian Paisley and a DUP delegation from his Downing Street office when they refused to accept his assurance that no secret deal had been already concluded with the IRA. Unionists were right to be concerned with this latest development in pan-nationalism.
The IRA was not, at that stage, interested in any internal settlement.
Adams had convinced them that a combination of consensus between the Irish government, the SDLP and Sinn Fein, based around a common nationalist negotiation position and backed up by support from President Clinton and the European Union, would put enough pressure on John Major to tilt the balance in favour of an all-Ireland solution.
In other words, the IRA was willing to offer guns for government; but the government they wanted was for a newly united Ireland.
At that stage circumstances must have seemed very favourable for Sinn Fein.
All of nationalism was singing the same refrain and the IRA was basking in the positive publicity which surrounded the ceasefire.
John Major was hanging on by a thread in Westminster with Labour (usually regarded as well disposed to an all-Ireland settlement) waiting in the wings.
The hugely popular President Clinton was openly embracing Sinn Fein leaders. The DUP looked like truculent obstructionists and the UUP – with James Molyneaux in his fifteenth year of leadership – looked outdated and impotent.
The catalyst for change within unionism was the unexpected election of David Trimble as UUP leader in September 1995.
In effect, he tore up the rule book and recognised that unionism had to play a much more sophisticated hand if it was to out-play pan-nationalism. He opened up a series of fronts, talking to John Major, Tony Blair, the SDLP, a variety of Irish parties and the Americans.
He looked positive, he sounded positive and he made an intellectual, philosophical and political case for the Union which came across as both reasonable and inclusive. He was, to put it bluntly, Sinn Fein's worst nightmare; a unionist who looked as though he belonged to the modern world.
The bombing of Canary Wharf on February 9, 1996, which ended the IRA's supposedly "complete cessation" of violence, was the first very clear sign that the Sinn Fein/IRA strategy was no longer going to plan.
A couple of months later Sinn Fein's manifesto for the Forum election was insisting that there would be no return to Stormont, no internal settlement, no removal of Articles 2 and 3 and no de facto unionist Prime Minister.
And they had to say all of that, along with reintroducing their terrorism, because national and international pressure was now on them rather than on unionists.
That February 9 bomb was, arguably, the single most serious mistake the IRA had made in tactical terms.
It proved that the 1994 ceasefire was, as unionists had been insisting, a tactical ploy rather than a genuine commitment to non-violence.
It put the decommissioning issue at the very centre of the political debate and ensured that it would have to be finally addressed as part of the overall solution. It gave a huge political advantage to David Trimble in subsequent negotiations, allowing the balance to shift to the UUP/SDLP axis.
Finally and most important of all, it shifted the debate away from an all-Ireland nationalist agenda and shored up the British and unionist dimensions – entrenching Northern Ireland more firmly within the Union and the United Kingdom than at any time since the original government of Ireland created the country.
The most ironic aspect of the whole process, of course, has been the fact that the IRA had to make the final gesture on decommissioning, while Sinn Fein had to sign up to policing and justice structures in Northern Ireland, just to keep Ian Paisley happy! In September 1994 his ejection from Downing Street had been trumpeted by Sinn Fein as a sign that unionism was in final retreat.
Yet by 2007 they needed his personal imprimatur to keep them in business!
So, when Martin McGuinness admits that there was a time when he would have willingly killed as many soldiers and police officers as he could have, perhaps it's also an indication of regret that he hadn't done so.
For had the IRA been able to take on and defeat the British between 1970 and 1993; or had Sinn Fein been able to politically outmanoeuvre them between 1994 and 1997; then Martin McGuinness wouldn't now be a cosmetic puppet in a British government in this part of the United Kingdom.
The 2016 project of A Nation Once Again has been reduced to dust.
The IRA campaign achieved nothing whatsoever of value to republicanism. But the presence of a former chief-of-staff as Deputy First Minister is a handy reminder to all unionists that the IRA lost. We must never forget that very simple fact.
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Weather for Belfast
Tuesday 29 May 2012
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