New Statesman & Society leader, 2 September 1994
"The potential now exists to move the situation towards a democratic and peaceful settlement. I am satisfied that Irish nationalism, if properly mobilised and focused at home and abroad, now has sufficient political confidence, weight and support to bring about the changes which are essential to a just and lasting peace. This is the considered position I put to the IRA."
It was with these words on Monday that Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, gave notice that the Provisional IRA was about to declare a permanent ceasefire. And on Wednesday, the IRA announced a complete cessation of violence. Twenty-five years of bombings and shootings are coming to an end.
Of course, the ceasefire is a good thing. If Northern Ireland's problem isn't simply one of violence, stopping the violence is undoubtedly a precondition for any attempt to come up with a political solution. More than 3,100 people have died violent deaths since the beginning of the Troubles in 1969 – and more than half of them were killed by the IRA and other republican paramilitaries. The welcome for the IRA's decision to end its repugnant campaign of murder has to be tempered by the observation that it should never have been started in the first place.
The big question is what happens next. In the short term, it's relatively easy to predict. Already, Adams is being hailed in some quarters – particularly in the United States – as a great man of peace: the next few weeks will see a great deal of Sinn Fein triumphalism. On the other side of the sectarian divide, many of Northern Ireland's Protestants are already starting to panic about the IRA's coming in from the cold and what it means for them.
How all this pans out in the medium term, however, depends on how it is handled, particularly by the Irish and British governments. There is undoubtedly a real opportunity for bringing about a lasting peaceful political settlement – but there is equally a real danger of the simmering Northern Ireland conflict erupting into full scale civil war, complete with ethnic pogroms..
The crucial thing is to reassure the unionists that the IRA really has given up on violence and that there has been no shady deal stitched up behind their backs. This means that Sinn Fein should not be allowed into negotiations until the ceasefire has been in force for several months and that the ceasefire must be followed as soon as possible by the total disarming of the IRA.
Given that it is difficult to imagine the Proves unilaterally giving up their rifles and Semtex (although they should be challenged to do so), the most realistic way to disarm them is to get their agreement to a schedule for disarming both republican and loyalist paramilitaries and to a credible system for verifying the process. This makes it crucial that every effort is made in the next few weeks to persuade the loyalist paramilitaries that they, too, are welcome participants in multi¬lateral negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland if they, too, commit themselves to a permanent cease fire.
On the other hand, it has to be made clear by both Dublin and London that there is no way that constitutional change will be forced on the unionists against their wishes. The key here is to reiterate the principle behind the Downing Street declaration, that the only way to find a lasting solution to the Northern Ireland problem is for everyone involved to lay down their arms forever and talk until they can come up with a constitutional settlement that is acceptable to all, with all options open for discussion and neither Dublin nor London attempting to "persuade" other players of the desirability of any particular outcome. (As NSS argued earlier this year, this principle means that Labour should abandon its advocacy of "unity by consent" at the first possible opportunity.)
What such a constitutional settlement might be like is currently impossible to say – and there is certainly no quick fix. Republican dreams of an immediate withdrawal of British troops or of a rapid move towards joint British-Irish sovereignty over Northern Ireland are as much recipes for disaster as unionist schemes for some sort of repartition or for maintenance of an unreformed status quo. Of course, the upshot of the absence of quick fixes is that there is a real danger of patience snapping and the talks breaking down – and if that were to happen, the scenario would be bleak indeed.
But there are many ways in which the likelihood of securing agreement could be enhanced. As last year's Opsahl Commission report argued, there's plenty of room for all sorts of small confidence-building initiatives that, taken together, could have a major impact on the ways that the two communities in Northern Ireland relate to each other. The Opsahl recommendations – a mixture of de-volving power to the people, beefing up anti-discrimination legislation, developing North-South co-operation and introducing measures to stimulate economic and social regeneration – remain the best way forward.
