The Troubles have produced a vast library but this is the first major history of an overlooked but influential movement: the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party, dubbed the Sticks after ditching pin-on Easter Lilies in favour of adhesive backing.

Drawing on many interviews and official archives, it readably narrates this movement’s journey over three bloody decades from the priority of forcibly uniting Ireland to abandoning armed struggle and opposing terrorism but never decommissioning its weapons.

It also moved from opposing “the Communist menace” to embracing class politics with a distinct Stalinist tinge – their bookshops held the Irish franchise for Soviet literature and WP members were allowed free Soviet health treatment.

The authors write that the WP played “a large part in the death of irredentist ideology in the south” and “served as the training ground for much of the leadership of the present-day Labour Party and trade unions in the South. The revolution it struggled for, through violence and political activism, never took place; but the struggle shaped modern Ireland.”

That history was tainted by its military wing – the Official IRA (OIRA) which went from opposing the B Specials to becoming what was known internally as Group B and whose various “special activities” were justified by a “revolutionary morality”. Stalin was a bank robber too.

The book covers the then united IRA’s futile border campaign of 1956-62 to the rise of “the Army of the People” with increased social agitation – fish-ins at aristocratic

estates, attacks on strike-breakers, housing action and exposing corrupt “gombeen Ireland”. It details the emergence of the civil rights movement, the IRA split in 1969 (helped by the Irish establishment which feared the Marxists more than the Provos) and lethal rivalries with the Provos and others. Then to the explosive Hunger Strikes and the growing critique of “Provo- Nazis” and their “black, sullen hatred of Irish Protestants and Protestantism in Ireland”. It ends with the “flight from socialism” – the bitter debate following the collapse of the Soviet bloc on “the necessity of social democracy”.

Passion and bitterness

It is packed with anecdotes and vignettes which bring a sometimes bohemian cast of characters to life in all their camaraderie, passion and bitterness. In May 1972 the OIRA tarred and feathered a Belfast girl for fraternising with British soldiers. Feminist Dr Moira Woods shaved her head and picketed the party in Dublin. Her partner was OIRA leader, Cathal Goulding.

It quotes Gerry Adams, “the thinking man’s Provo”, as saying in Long Kesh, where Provos and Sticks were both interned, that he would “wade up to his knees in Protestant blood” for a united Ireland. Adams strongly disputes this.

The authors incorrectly allege that the New Consensus peace group (in which I was involved) took British funding but promptly gave an unreserved apology. I also worked with WP members in the 1980s and 1990s, and think the book underplays the WP’s influence on the British Labour movement.

The ILP was heavily involved in work on Northern Ireland and sent two delegations to the North as guests of the WP which insisted that we met all relevant parties rather than just taking their word for it. Some of us saw how their intervention, along with our own, helped change the terms of debate in Britain.

In 1985 the Sticks introduced their daily Irish Social Nights at Labour’s annual conference with left-wing songs, patter and a bit of craic. These events became popular with a wide audience, conveyed the complexities of Northern Ireland, challenged the Provisionals and influenced policy-makers. It helps explain why more British left became neutral on the national question, which helped Labour to conclude the Belfast Agreement.

The Sticks had to split in the end. It was increasingly untenable to maintain a Leninist regime and electoral credibility with a “little secret army” in tow. WP parliamentarians tried to purge the party of Stalinism and republicanism but narrowly lost and formed the Democratic Left which finally merged with the Irish Labour Party.

It’s a riveting tale, and resource, but key speeches and articles should have been included, and the index isn’t inclusive. It’s difficult to keep readers interested in the rhythms of a politico-military movement – paper sales, robbery proceeds, funerals, casualties, tit-for-tat murders, characters, splits and intrigues – but this enjoyable history does it well.

The Lost Revolution: the story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party, by Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, is available from Penguin for £20.
www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781844881208,00.html

Gary Kent’s review has sparked a long discussion on the Irish political site, the Cedar Lounge Revolution.

Words are weapons and can also save lives. It’s possible the wise words of a young Danish sociologist could have saved hundreds of lives in Northern Ireland if they had been heeded. Gary Kent explains why

This slim but weighty pamphlet was published by the Independent Labour Party in 1972 and in that year’s Socialist Register. It is titled Who is the Principal Enemy? – contradictions and struggles in Northern Ireland and the author was Anders Boserup. It was written in August 1971, shortly before internment and the escalation of the Troubles which endured until the mid-1990s and whose effects are still being felt.

I read it back in 1979 and it changed the whole trajectory of my thinking on Ireland, as it did I think of others in the ILP. I had previously been typical of British left-wingers on the “Irish question”. To my embarrassment, I recall attending an ILP annual meeting as a callow young man and denouncing the leadership for failing to support self-determination for the Irish people as a whole and for troops out now. This was the orthodoxy of the left and one the ILP came steadily to reject.

I became involved in this work and adopted a revisionist position which entailed, in short, rejecting the notion that Ireland must be united above all else and that the views of the Protestants could be ignored or eradicated by force, but recognising that the key issue was building working class politics based on justice and equality.

I have now been involved for more than 20 years, sometimes very heavily. I have always recognised the debt I owed to Boserup but re-reading the pamphlet, I am overwhelmed by his clarity of analysis and diagnosis.

It is a great achievement that a man of just 21 was able to write a major and enduring analysis, based clearly on Marxism, and his words are still very fresh and informed, although some parts require more careful reading.

He confidently rattles through a brief sketch of Irish history outlining how the two parts of the island of Ireland were shaped by their different economies and the alliances that flowed from them, including a masterful assessment of the cross-class bloc around the Orange Order.

You can read it for yourself at http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5310. I wish to focus on the concise political lessons he draws from this analysis.

It’s vital to remember just how isolated and frustrated he must have felt as the legions of the left adopted a simple-minded anti-partitionism.

It’s interesting to note that the editors of the Socialist Register, Ralph Miliband and John Saville, put a hefty health warning over the essay in their introduction. No-one ever answered his points, although it fundamentally challenges the theory and praxis of their key writers who, to one degree or another, believed that the good guys were those who wanted to impose Irish unity and the bad guys were those who feared this would be calamitous in the circumstances.

Things fall apart

I know they are regularly wheeled out in any discussion on Ireland but the words of WB Yeats in The Second Coming are still the best way of describing this situation.

Yeats wrote, of the 1916 Easter Uprising:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Boserup says:

“The strategy of ‘national liberation’ which the left is presently pursuing, is based on a faulty analysis and leads absolutely nowhere. It portrays the windmills of British imperialism as a mighty army and overlooks the real enemy. In so doing, far from enriching the revolutionary experience of the working class and preparing the ground for the more meaningful struggles of the future, it is trapping the working class ever more firmly in its sectarian ideologies. Suitably romanticised, the bloody and pointless battles of these years will probably one day take their place alongside the trophies of 1690 and 1916 to fulfill their only possible role: to cripple the consciousness of future generations in Ireland.”

Who can dispute this after the decades of Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, Enniskillen, and all the other atrocities which claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 people, and injured, maimed or made mad so many more?

In my view, the prime responsibility for this lies with the Provisional IRA and the loyalist paramilitary groups, although I don’t wish to minimise the awfulness of Bloody Sunday or to exculpate the security forces.

It’s entirely possible, however, that these forces could have been marginalised earlier if more people on the left, chiefly in Ireland but also in Britain, had been able or willing to understand that Ireland consisted of two nations and not just one which deserved unity.

Boserup is so clear in this analysis:

“From every point of view, save those of territoriality and statehood, the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland constitute two distinct national groups. These are usually described as Catholic and Protestant but the difference between them is not only, not even primarily religious. It is two entirely different cultures with little in common apart from language. True, one finds among Protestants as well as among Catholics a feeling of ‘Irishness’, but the similarity stops at the label. Behind it one finds national mythologies, conceptions of Irish history and Irish destiny, and social and political ideologies which have virtually nothing in common.”

Peace has since dropped slowly on Northern Ireland but his picture is still all too true. The depth of division between Catholics and Protestants remains profound with only six per cent attending integrated schools and most living in homogenous areas with little or no contact with each other. There is power-sharing at the top, grudging, inefficient as it sometimes is, but things are slow to change at the grassroots although credit should be accorded to the trade unions, for instance, which have done much to hold back “the blood-dimmed tide”.

Yet, at the beginning of the Troubles, those who sought to find common ground between Protestant and Catholic workers were ruthlessly squeezed out of the equation by those who believed, in Boserup’s words, that “British domination is … seen as the root of all the problems of Ireland. In the socialist ideology British domination becomes British imperialism. In this way everything fits nicely into place in what appears to be a consistent socialist theory. The severing of the links with the British oppressor becomes the precondition for socialism in Ireland.”

It was poppycock, and Boserup was able to identify how to overcome it. He writes: “If it is to engage effectively in the struggle against the Orange system the left must necessarily dissociate itself from 32-county nationalism and accept the existence of the Northern State. As long as the left does not do this but, more or less wholeheartedly, plays the tune of Catholic nationalism, it is in fact shoring up that system by providing it with a badly needed scarecrow to frighten Protestant workers.”

His clear-headedness is also shown here: “The affirmation that Northern Irish Protestants constitute a separate national entity with a right to refuse incorporation in the Republic is usually considered to be divisive of the working class and therefore anti-socialist. On the contrary I think that it is the stubborn affirmation of unity and solidarity where none exists and the extravagant claim of Irish Catholics to the whole island which is divisive.”

He pulls no punches in analysing the advocates of unity without consent: “The Catholic left demands a 32-county Republic and tries to sweeten the pill for Protestants by affirming that this will be a socialist and ipso facto a secular republic. Protestants would be fools if they believed it. Socialism in Ireland is not for tomorrow and, even if it were, deeply entrenched ideologies do not disappear overnight. The Catholic left, by its espousal of the demand for a united Ireland, has demonstrated that even those who claim to constitute the socialist vanguard are trapped in nationalist ideologies.”

He adds: “Ultimately it is to put the cart before the horse to demand a 32-county Republic and hope that it can then develop towards socialism. There is no surer way of perpetuating religious divisions than to impose Irish unity against the will of almost a quarter of its population, and a state so created would be socialist, if at all, only in name.”

Consent

This has since come to pass. The basis of Labour policy, once it was changed in the mid-1990s, the approach of the Major Government, and the Good Friday Agreement was recognition of the consent principle: that Northern Ireland has the right to say yes or no to unification. The Irish have reversed their once-strong irredentism, scrapped the relevant clauses in its constitution, and are now clear that Northern Ireland needs to become a functioning entity. It may well be that this makes it easier to envisage a united Ireland in due course, but my own view is that formal and informal unity may have little between them.

Boserup recognised that the main political and often military battleground was in Ireland but refuses to let the British left and others off the hook: “Well-intentioned people in Britain and elsewhere have had a considerable influence on events in Ireland in the past, and they have a corresponding share of responsibility and leverage as regards future developments.”

He saw that the Provisional IRA would depend on the support it could command, in Britain and abroad, for its aim of forcible reunification of Ireland, and his final sentence is a warning that was lost in the rush to misunderstand and marginalise Protestants and adopt an unbalanced perspective on a complex issue: “It is therefore important that British and other socialists should realise that in responding to the call for ‘solidarity in the struggle against British imperialism’ they are in effect betraying socialist ideals and backing policies of national oppression of the Protestant minority in Ireland.”

Much of what he feared came to pass and it took three blood-drenched decades before the British and Irish states were able to cauterise the poison unleashed, for trade unions and others to maintain and expand the zones of civility, and to reach a deal that could have been achieved without so much tragic suffering.

Boserup shredded illusions when it was extremely difficult to navigate Irish affairs, just as the fog of war descended. His analysis deserves to be more widely studied. It’s a great pity that many who should have known better didn’t catch on a lot earlier. Many lives could have been saved.

The Irish republican leader Gerry Adams is the latest politician to raise the possibility of a truth commission in Northern Ireland, after a generation of conflict still known euphemistically as “the Troubles”. At the same time, however, the Sinn Fein leader denied that he had ever been a member of the IRA. Given that IRA membership is illegal, this wasn’t a great surprise but it does illustrate that truth is a rare and dangerous commodity in Northern Ireland.

The truth about the Troubles is still a battleground, judging from competing House of Commons motions. The first, initiated by the veteran pro-nationalist parliamentarian, Kevin McNamara, calls for an independent inquiry into the assassination of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane, while the second, from the DUP’s Gregory Campbell demands an inquiry into the role of the Irish government in funding the Provisional IRA in 1969/70. Never the twain shall meet.

Various Northern Ireland politicians have toyed with the notion of a truth process. A leading unionist once raised the issue with SDLP leaders who warned against going down such a divisive road, while themselves promoting inquiries into Bloody Sunday and the murders of lawyers Rosemary Nelson and Finucane.

The British government is reported to be following the debate closely and might act if there were general acceptance. Various anti-Provo commentators have also raised the issue out of frustration that the Provos are exploiting one-sided inquiries to smear and incapacitate their old enemies. However, whatever their tactical reasons, the IRA’s recent surprising apologies – for Bloody Friday, and to their “non-combatant victims” – and the 1994 expression of abject remorse by the loyalists for their innocent victims, are steps forward.

More than 20 countries have embarked on some form of truth process, ranging from Uganda to Argentina and South Africa to Germany, the details of which are explored in Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity by Priscilla Hayner (Routledge NY 2001).

Hayner’s work was used by the Healing through Remembering project based in Northern Ireland (www.healingthroughremembering.org), as was a report – All Truth is Bitter – by Alex Boraine, former deputy chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The South African truth process, which looms large in this debate, largely focused on one means – recovering truth through formal hearings at which wrong-doers confessed their crimes in return for immunity from prosecution.

The Healing through Remembering project was independently funded and directed by a broad-based board which included former republican and loyalist activists and victims, as well as key figures in Northern Ireland civil society.

Their key aim was to develop “our own locally-owned solutions” to “remember the events connected with the conflict in and about Northern Ireland so as to individually and collectively contribute to the healing of the wounds of our society”.

Key recommendations

It’s a substantial, sensitive and thoughtful report, which recommends six key actions: establish a network of current initiatives; collect testimonies as part of a story-telling process to form an historic archive; hold an annual Day of Reflection (possibly on a Bank Holiday); establish a permanent living memorial museum; get key actors in the conflict to acknowledge their responsibilities, which could lead to public apologies and be the “first and necessary step” towards truth recovery; and set up a representative initiative to implement the report’s findings.

The report tackles some intensely practical questions about managing truth in a bitterly divided society. Should there be one or more memorials? Would they be vandalised? If they included names, who would be included since, as one of the submissions put it, “there is no clearer way of defining the conflict than through naming the victim”? Some would object to victims and murderers being remembered on the same day.

The candid report recognises the tension between the desire to address the hurt of the past and the wish to ignore them. It says that “the line between risk and opportunity is a tenuous one” since “leaving the past untouched could help a society make an artificial break and truly move into a new order”, but “leaving the past untouched may result in it continuing to surface in the future, particularly during times of political tension”.

Fresh wounds

It is a tempting prospect but two major considerations weigh heavily against a truth process. The first is that the wounds are too fresh and opening them up so soon will make them worse. The second is that Northern Ireland is a very small place where many people have been directly affected, and where victims and victimisers live cheek by jowl. A friend says that he doesn’t want to know who killed his cousin because the murderer could be a near neighbour. Illegal retribution could result in some cases.

Take an illustrative example. Imagine that Eamon Collins, former IRA intelligence officer and supergrass, who was bludgeoned to death by his former comrades, was still alive. Imagine that he was still working for Customs and Excise, and still the trade union representative for his colleagues. Imagine, then, the impact on them of learning that he had used his position to set up other colleagues for murder, and that he had been granted immunity and been allowed to keep his job in return for testifying. Magnify this, and the scale of the potential problem becomes obvious and insuperable, for now.

The Healing through Remembering report sensibly concedes that its recommendations are all some way off, but it makes the crucial point that “engaging in the debate about how to deal with the past is in itself a way of dealing with the past”.

Northern Ireland may one day be able to draw a line under its past and even become a beacon for the rest of the world in how to remember its history and effect reconciliation.

When the IRA announced its ceasefire in September 1994 it was always difficult to see what kind of agreement could be reached between loyalists and republicans. The propaganda war and real (physical) war between unionists and nationalists over the years has created a gulf between people’s expectations and a politically realistic settlement. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement could have been quickly sketched out on the back of a match box in 1994 (it was very similar to the settlement of 1973/74), the problem was bringing parties and people to such a compromise and making it stick.

There had been no shift in public opinion towards moderation before the 1994 ceasefire, either in opinion polls or voting behaviour. In fact there had been some appalling violence, created partly by the uncertainty which accompanied attempts to bring Sinn Fein into the peace process. Loyalist terrorists were killing more than the IRA, fired by the belief that the Union was being betrayed.

During the peace process the leaders of Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party have attempted – with varying degrees of success – to drag their supporters towards an accommodation. The decommissioning issue has been there from the start, even before the first ceasefire in 1994. Contrary to republican claims, the issue was raised by both the British and Irish governments. However, over the years, both governments allowed the issue to slide in the interests of accommodation. Decommissioning was supposed to be a prerequisite for all-party talks. Then the original Mitchell report in 1996 favoured some decommissioning in parallel with all-party talks. In 1998 Tony Blair led unionists to believe that decommissioning would take place before republicans entered government.

Seismic shift

In the summer of 1999 Tony Blair attempted to spin the parties in Northern Ireland into agreement. In The Way Forward document the two governments wanted the UUP to support the transfer of power and the establishment of the executive in return for assurances that IRA decommissioning would follow shortly after. Blair claimed that there had been shifts within the republican movement which represented an “historic and seismic change in the political landscape”. There would be decommissioning within days of devolution and weapons would be handed over within weeks.

Unionists – suspicious after Blair’s failure to deliver on assurances given at the time of the Good Friday Agreement – felt that Blair had offered no guarantees about decommissioning or evidence of a “seismic shift” in republican thinking. David Trimble offered to “jump together” with Gerry Adams – the UUP would sit in the executive if the IRA simultaneously decommissioned. Power was devolved to the assembly and executive, but the UUP boycotted the procedure and the DUP refused to nominate any members, so there was insufficient cross-community support for the institutions to work.

As The Times commented: “Having felt duped by the referendum promises Unionists were not going to allow themselves to swallow soundbites again.”

In November David Trimble took a leap of faith and entered government with Sinn Fein on the understanding that the IRA would make a start on decommissioning. This was probably the only way he could have won the support of his party for entering government. It was expected that the republicans would decommission after power had been devolved. However, the “seismic shift” in the republican movement that Blair perceived last summer has not resulted in the surrender of any weapons. And Trimble’s leadership of the UUP would probably have been destroyed unless devolution had been suspended.

The SDLP’s Seamus Mallon has asked the vital question: will the IRA decommission and, if so, when?

This is not to underestimate the problems facing the Sinn Fein leadership. Gerry Adams has also had difficulty in sustaining his leadership of a notoriously fractious republican movement. Security sources have in the past reported that it is among the grass roots – and particularly in South Armagh and South Down – that the Sinn Fein leadership have had most difficulty in persuading republicans to pursue the peace process. What is of concern is that recent reports have suggested that even in the Sinn Fein leadership there are those who do not see the need for decommissioning.

Where do we go from here?

There are several options.

• Trimble could jump again into government with Sinn Fein.

However, without a clear timetable on decommissioning the likelihood is that he would lose the support of his party and the prospects for the Good Friday Agreement would deteriorate rapidly.

• The IRA could decommission some weapons or explosives.

This could be done in response to serious British demilitarisation which has already been publicly suggested. The British government would be able to resurrect devolution and the Unionists could re-enter government with Sinn Fein. This may well provoke a substantial split in the IRA with significant numbers of republicans – particularly in hardline areas – picking up the gun and restarting their bombing campaign in Britain and Northern Ireland. The Provisionals would want to minimise any such split. Such a campaign is unlikely to have significant popular support among nationalists but may be able to sustain itself for some time. The Provisional IRA might attempt to police such a breakaway – there is some evidence that they intimidated the Real IRA into ceasefire after the Omagh bombing – and this could result in serious intra-republican violence.

• Sinn Fein could leave the executive and form an opposition to the executive in the assembly.

Eamonn McCann has made this suggestion – the IRA would not have to decommission any weapons but the assembly would be able to continue. The hope would be that over time the question of decommissioning would cease to have political importance. It may be difficult for Sinn Fein to sell this strategy to the grassroots because it leaves republicans without any share of power.

• The ‘pan-nationalist front’ (Sinn Fein, SDLP, Irish government, US government) could dump Sinn Fein.

The SDLP would then enter a cross-community government with the UUP. There is no indication, yet, that the SDLP would be willing to do this (although the SDLP would want every alternative avenue to be seriously pursued before they considered this path). The problem might be that the IRA would re-start the armed struggle but the benefit would be a working executive with support among majorities of both nationalists and unionists. However, a similar power-sharing arrangement in 1974 failed.

• The unionists could be coerced.

The unpopularity of unionism means that this is always an attractive option for British and Irish politicians. The demise of unionism has been regularly predicted throughout ‘the troubles’. This is part of the propaganda war designed to convince the British to stand up to or facing down the unionist veto. Notoriously English politicians have failed in their attempts to coerce unionists. Their threats and ambiguity about Northern Ireland’s constitutional future have regularly undermined moderate unionism and provoked a violent loyalist response. Coercion failed during the first peace process 1972-74 and again after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when unionist mobilisation was far greater than anything British ministers had anticipated.

The violence which has surrounded the marching season, particularly at Drumcree, is a reminder of the danger that Northern Ireland could explode into all-out civil war. After the ‘Seige of Drumcree’ in 1996, the Secretary of State Patrick Mayhew was forced to admit that his assumptions about the moderation of people in Northern Ireland was misplaced. “For my own part, and I think for a great many people, the wish had been father to the thought that on each side ancient fires of hostility and fear had greatly diminished. They had not.”

Paul Dixon is Senior Lecturer in Politics & International Studies at Kingston University, London. He is author of Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (Macmillan, 2001).

Traditionally, the left has shown great sympathy for the nationalist/Catholic, working-class population of Northern Ireland, and with good reason. Their history of poverty, poor housing, unemployment and discrimination, from the founding of the Northern Ireland statelet in 1922 onwards, is well documented and, now, widely recognised. A knowledge of the brutal colonising of Ireland (albeit tinged with a certain pro-Irish romanticism) often reinforced these attachments. For some, an Irish family history also stirred the emotional embers.

Sympathy for the oppressed and belief in a united Ireland as the best outcome for the conflict, engendered among many socialists a deeply-held political attachment to the nationalist cause, even though many did not support the violence of the modern IRA.

On the other hand, when it came to the unionist/Protestant working class, the left was far more ambivalent. The attachment of the unionist working class to intransigent Unionist parties, to the ‘archaic’ Orange Order, to parades celebrating the historical defeats of ‘Catholicism’, plus their intermittent, sectarian violence against Catholics and, indeed, their patriotism, all combined to show what a sorry bunch of political dupes they were. The cure: a united Ireland where their political vices could be transformed into class politics.

Or something like that. The statistical fact that the Protestant working class formed the majority in the North was either lost sight of or dismissed as a result the border having being rigged in the 1920s (which it certainly was). In the United States, I even met supporters of a united Ireland who were unaware of the existence of the unionist population. For them, it was simply a matter of getting the Brits out.

Those of us on the left, like the ILP, who moved from support for a united Ireland to recognise that it was not that simple, were often summarily dismissed as ‘unionists’. Yet we were trying to tackle a genuine problem: two impoverished communities, with different identities, seeking very different political outcomes. Maybe the communal divisions within the working class had to be tackled before the political division of the border could be resolved.

Of course, events have not waited upon the deliberations of the left. We have seen significant political shifts from many representatives of the two communities in the North, and pro-active politics from Westminster and Dublin, in sharp contrast to decades of neglect.

Courted and patronised

My visit to Belfast (and Dublin) with fellow staff and politics students in March this year came shortly after the Good Friday Agreement had seriously faltered over the decommissioning of the IRA’s arsenal. We met an array of politicians in Stormont and at Belfast City Hall, as well as political activists in west Belfast and on the Shankhill. At Stormont, we were gently courted by Sinn Fein, mildly patronised by one of the leaders of the SDLP, offered an upbeat welcome by the Women’s Coalition, and lectured to by the Progressive Unionists (PUP).

We received further Sinn Fein hospitality at the famous Conway Mill, now transformed into a multi-functional community centre which, we were told, is ‘open to all’. The practical limits of that commitment was a 100 yards away: the huge corrugated metal, ‘peace wall’ that separates the communities. Later, just on the opposite side of the wall, we were given a guided tour of their patch by local Progressive Unionists.

Of all the arguments and experiences (and I cannot do justice to them all here), it was the Progressive Unionists who left the most lasting impression on me. With only three members in the Northern Ireland Assembly, they are not a major electoral force. But on the ground in the Shankhill, with their links to the paramilitaries, they are significant. What struck me most was the formidable, no-nonsense way in which they expressed their politics.

These were tough, working-class men (we met only men) telling their version of how it is. Their disdain for unionist politicians like Ian Paisley, who stir up sectarian divisions but are not around when the going gets rough, was palpable.

In Stormont David Irvine, PUP assembly member, argued that politics is primarily about morality. Unionist politics is a statement about being a citizen of the United Kingdom. In the past, he said, unionist politicians have never had to come to terms with nationalist politics but now we are moving into uncharted waters. There had been discrimination against the Catholic population, he said, something that other unionists are still in denial about. When he was 14, he saw the emergence of a civil rights movement but, as unionists, “we didn’t listen”, he said. “We did not think what it was like to be a young Catholic with a sense of hurt and grievance.”

But he added that there is another dimension that has to be added to the picture – the role of political élites and their relationship to the working class.

Sense of belonging

He argued that working class Protestants have had precious little more than their Catholic counterparts. What they had, he said, was a sense of belonging, that they were needed by the ruling unionist élite as its standing army. Sectarianism was nurtured by them. “We were fed ghosts and shibboleths,” he said, even though most Protestants had only slightly better material circumstances than the Catholics.

Industry was controlled by Protestant industrial élites and “there was nothing wonderful about our incomes and jobs”. Redundancy payments from the shipmakers, Harland and Wolf, of £15,000 for a lifetime’s work reflected this.

His party believes in integrated education. He pointed out that the 11+ still operates in the North and the average pass rate is 27 per cent. For working class Catholics, the pass rate is 12 per cent and for working class Protestants it is only 3 per cent. What they are seeing is the development of what he called an underclass of unemployed, disaffected young men, without confidence.

Irvine expressed scepticism about the real importance of decommissioning. He argued that the peace process involves carefully worked-out and often fragile stages, not instant changes. Dialogue is the key. Without dialogue there can be no peace process.

Alongside the forceful rhetoric of Irvine, came the more quietly spoken, almost chilling, remarks of Billy Hutchinson. He argued that the peace process involved two different sets of negotiations – the wider political process and the one between Sinn Fein and the Progressive Unionists. Each process needs to be allowed to develop, something which in the past has not been permitted.

If you ask any soldier in the trenches what he most wants it would be to go home, said Hutchinson. That is why “in Northern Ireland, the soldiers have to make the peace”. He acknowledged that in the past, the working class has provided “the cannon fodder for the conflicts”. “It is their brains that are spilled out on the pavements when the violence starts,” he said. If the war is to end, we have to stop inventing more victims, but violence makes more victims.

While unionist politicians sent their children to public schools in England, the children of working class unionists and nationalists were suffering violence on the streets, he argued.

History

The Progressive Unionists have studied and learned from their own, and the IRA’s, history. The only universities that working class people had were in Long Kesh. Prison, a “hothouse of discussion and debate”, he said, adding, “we don’t want another generation going through that experience”.

“Not only did we inflict pain on others but we brutalised ourselves,” he said.

Hutchinson warned that there is disillusionment in the communities about the peace process. People are saying that politics does not work and this leaves a void which some seek to exploit by acts of violence. If this happens then the IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force could be drawn into further conflict.

He concluded by saying: “If we can’t change the mind sets of 18 year-olds on both sides, there is no future. The career politicians don’t connect with them. Instead we have to persuade the young that politics works.” If they do not change the minds of the young people in their communities who are prepared to kill – as he and his generation was – there can be no progress, he warned.

This dour but forceful account was reiterated, perhaps more crudely, at street level by PUP activists. Something of the complex meaning of working class unionist identity became apparent when we visited the garden of remembrance for those who died in the two world wars – and for those who have subsequently died defending the union.

At the Glasgow Rangers Supporters’ Club, the PUP youth officer told us that, for him, unionism means loyalty to Queen and country. He added that the PUP was a socialist party, believing in a decent health service for everyone and a good education for all young people.

As working class unionists, he said, they are proud of their history and the way that they have fought for Britain. In the first world war, the Ulster Regiment was an élite brigade of the British army. The Drumcree march is to commemorate those who died in the Battle of the Somme, he claimed.

Ambivalence

His remarks brought home to me how this collective memory of the world wars is stronger in the North than in the rest of the UK, and important for understanding the working class unionist version of being British. As such, it encapsulates something of the ambivalence of working class unionism: a pride in one’s country and the efforts of those who have defended it, coupled with a critique of the ruling classes who sent young men to their deaths.

The PUP reflects the crisis and contradictions within modern unionism as it tries to adjust to changing circumstances. We may not like all of their messages but they are deadly serious and they display an impressive honesty. Far more than many career-oriented politicians they speak for their constituency; they recognise and live daily with the reality on the streets.

They also recognise the importance of politics – not for carving out political careers – but for making a difference to young people’s lives. It will be a loss if, in ‘normalising’ politics in the North, growing distance develops between the people and those who represent them.

The Progressive Unionists want peace and social justice but, my impression is, they will also defend their communities and their identities. After all, as one of them said, they have nowhere else to go.

The peace process is back on track but still precariously balanced. The Good Friday Agreement is far from safe and probably won’t be for the next few years. The IRA have agreed to put some weapons ‘beyond use’ and the first inspection of arms dumps has already taken place. For many unionists this is not decommissioning and the weapons are there to be brought out again when the peace process fails to produce further gains for republicanism. By contrast, dissident republicans (of the violent and non-violent variety) claim that this latest move is proof that the IRA have lost the war and surrendered.

Both republican and unionist leaders are settling for more or less what was on offer at Sunningdale 25 years ago. Seamus Mallon of the SDLP has called the peace process, “Sunningdale for slow-learners”. So how has the Sinn Fein leadership managed to sell the peace process?

There is a group of republican dissidents who, while opposing the return to armed struggle, are highly critical of the Sinn Fein leaders. They cluster around Fourthwrite: The Journal of the Irish Republican Writers Group which provides a platform for debates within republicanism. These republicans argue that the Sinn Fein leaders should admit that the IRA has failed to achieve its ideological objectives and therefore has lost the war.

Echoing Seamus Mallon, some are bitter at the leadership for all the people who were sent out to kill and be killed for something that was on offer in 1973. What did all these people die for? Why didn’t the leadership read the script in 1973 and end the violence then? The struggle has been abandoned and only a few Sinn Fein politicians have benefited while most republicans, along with their social radicalism, have been left behind.

These republican dissidents criticise the Sinn Fein leaders for their lying and manipulation and call on them to be honest about the defeat of the IRA. They protest at the iron grip that the leadership has over the republican movement and the lack of debate. They claim the leadership has used its power to manipulate and deceive the republican movement, saying one thing to people outside and another internally.

Tommy McKearney, a former member of the IRA and a hunger striker, argued that the IRA’s statement on 6 May this year, proclaiming it had “completely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use”, signalled to the external world that the IRA was being wound up. Yet, he says, “This is not what the organisation will tells its members, of course. Provo staff officers will now tour the country, meeting the troops and explaining to them what the statement means, or more accurately perhaps, what they want them to believe that it means… It may be some time before the reality of the situation dawns on the Provos’ ever trusting, ever credulous membership.”

Inoculation

Ciara Ni Tuama criticised the way in which the Sinn Fein leaders garnered support for the peace process, using the last five years to wean people off their memories of loss and of living with armed struggle.

“It has been a process of inoculation, conducted through a choreographed ballet of leaks and denials. Sinn Fein has always been famous for its doublespeak; it used to be the British and unionists who complained loudly about their deftness with words… Few Republicans thought the day would come when it would be republicans themselves at the receiving end of that doublespeak.” Similarly, Brendan Hughes laments that the “political process has created a class of professional liars and, unfortunately, it contains many republicans”.

How could the Sinn Fein leadership defend itself against the republican dissidents?

First, the leadership’s failure to settle for Sunningdale in 1973 is understandable (if not excusable) because there was a widespread belief among republicans and nationalists that they were winning. They believed that the tide of anti-imperialist history was with them and that the British were preparing to withdraw. This belief helped to inspire the IRA ceasefire of 1975/76. It was only after this failed that the IRA settled down for the ‘long war’ and established closer central control of the organisation.

Secondly, you cannot judge the success of the republican movement against its ideological aspirations. Such aspirations – particularly in time of ‘war’ – are often maximalist, designed to encourage people to fight and sustain the struggle against the ‘enemy’. Complete victory and vindication is promised in order to fortify the movement and undermine the will of the enemy to resist.

The republican movement’s success is more appropriately judged against a ‘realistic’ assessment of what is politically possible. In this sense both David Trimble and Gerry Adams can be judged successful in ending a stalemated ‘war’ which was hurting all sides and was never likely to result in either side’s complete victory. The Sinn Fein leadership claims victory to maximise its ability to deliver a united republican movement to a settlement.

Thirdly, could the republican leadership (or a faction of it) have persuaded the republican movement to enter a peace process at any time before 1994? During the IRA ceasefire of 1975/76 the leaders had considerable problems in enforcing the policy and controlling dissidents. The recovery of the IRA in the late 1970s, and the electoral gains made by Sinn Fein in the early to mid-1980s, may have renewed hope that the British could be defeated. In the late 1980s an attempt was made to escalate the military campaign and “sicken the Brits” into withdrawing. The failure of this tactic may have given impetus to those who were exploring an alternative, unarmed strategy for the republican movement.

Deep impression

There is some evidence that the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 made a deep impression on a faction of the Sinn Fein leadership. The strength of unionist resistance to the Agreement, and Thatcher’s determination to stand up to unionism, suggested once again (as had the Ulster workers’ council strike in 1974) that unionists were not the dupes of British imperialism that republican dogma had suggested.

Just suppose, for a moment, that by 1985 Adams and Martin McGuinness had finally realised that the primary obstacle to Irish unity was not British imperialism but the approximately one million unionists who would fight (probably with a considerable degree of success) to stay out of a united Ireland. Suppose they also realised that the IRA’s struggle against the British government was at a stalemate, that lives were being lost on both sides with no prospect of anything that could be called success.

In this case, how do Adams and McGuinness persuade the republican movement, whose expectations have been fed by 16 years of propaganda war, and their suffering in the real war, to settle for, more or less, what was on offer in 1973? How do you persuade them that the sacrifice and the suffering was worth it?

Republican dissidents might argue that you tell the republican movement ‘the truth’ and persuade them to support a new, unarmed strategy. But how realistic is it to expect that such a strategy to succeed in simply turning republican opinion around? Wouldn’t a sudden about turn be seen as surrendering and provoke allegations of treachery for demoralising republicanism and undermining the ‘war effort’ in the face of the enemy?

Republican dissidents and anti-Agreement unionists have justifiably attacked the pro-Agreement parties for employing deceit and manipulation. Such secrecy and deception undermines the accountability of politicians and democratic debate. The choreography and lies of the peace process has led to increased public cynicism as the various ruses and manipulations have been revealed to the public. You can fool some of the people some of the time…

The lack of democracy, accountability and openness has resulted in a political atmosphere of distrust and resentment in which it is argued that only manipulation can produce an historic accommodation. A more open, democratic debate might lead to a peace process which is popularly reinforced rather than balanced precariously on still seething reservoirs of communal hatred.

Doubtless, pro-agreement republicans would justify their behaviour on the grounds that ‘the ends justify the means’. Telling ‘the truth’ is unlikely to meet with a positive response from a population which is so strongly rooted to conflicting ideologies.

Given the polarised ideological environment of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it is not surprising that republican leaders thought a sudden about turn on key ideological issues would be difficult to sell and could seriously divide republicans. The janus-faced manner in which the Sinn Fein leaders have managed the movement’s entry into the democratic process is not without precedent in the republican movement. A comparably artful approach was taken by the anti-Treaty IRA’s entry into democratic politics in the 1920s.

You don’t have to be a republican to appreciate the strategic dilemmas facing the Sinn Fein leadership. To maximise the chances of the Good Friday Agreement succeeding, an appreciation of the constraints operating on all (unionist and nationalist) pro-Agreement parties is necessary. As Adams argued: “Peace-making… is different from, and it is more difficult than, conventional politics. It means trying to put yourself in the shoes of your opponents.”

Paul Dixon is Senior Lecturer in Politics & International Studies at KIngston University, London. He is author of Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (Macmillan, 2001).

On 8 May 2007 devolution was restored to Northern Ireland as Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein were sworn in as First and Deputy First Minister. The lion has lain down with the lamb.

After 3,722 deaths the Northern Ireland conflict had been ‘solved’. Tony Blair’s greatest achievement as prime minister came to fruition shortly before his departure from office, yet scepticism was not allowed to intrude on the hype that surrounded the celebrations marking the return to devolution.

The British prime minister characterised the Northern Ireland conflict as an ‘irrational’ one in the ‘modern world’. Yet he has also sought to portray it as a model for conflict management everywhere, particularly the Middle East. The key lesson is, ‘to persevere, never to give up, never to accept that the true will of the people is conflict when they are given the chance to live in peace.

‘The leaders played their part,’ he said. ‘But, ultimately, the people gave the leadership. They set the terms. They held us all to them. They gave the final imprimatur. And in doing so, they did a power of good for optimists everywhere. So, on this historic day, my final thanks is to them.’

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, argued that the deal on devolution would be stable: ‘It’s going to stick, I believe, because the DUP and Sinn Fein are the two most polarised forces in Northern Ireland’s politics, they have done the deal and that’s why I believe it’s here to stay for good.’

Moderates

There are two types of sceptics of the DUP/SF deal – the ‘ultras’ and the ‘moderates’. Moderate sceptics argue that an ‘imperfect peace’, to coin Mo Mowlam’s phrase, is better than no peace at all. But there are at least three lines of criticism.

First, questions should be asked about whether the Labour government – and other partners in the peace process – such as the Irish government and the US president – did enough to support the moderate SDLP and UUP during the peace process? It became obvious soon after the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998 that David Trimble and pro-Agreement unionism faced severe difficulties, but he was asked to stretch again and again to keep ‘the bicycle’ moving forward.

Secondly, the dominance of the DUP and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland represents the triumph of the most sectarian and antagonistic elements in Northern Irish society. This is hardly a cause for celebration. Both parties have significantly moderated their positions but are still the parties that are most detested in the ‘other’ community. This is not surprising given the IRA’s record of violence against unionists and the DUP’s reputation for hostility and sectarianism towards nationalists. As leader of the SDLP Mark Durkan asked, can those who have ‘given us the worst of our past’ provide ‘the best of our future’?

Finally, while there is political agreement between the leadership of Sinn Fein and the DUP, there is not much sign of reconciliation at the popular level. Tony Blair is wrong. Voting behaviour and opinion polls do not suggest that the people of Northern Ireland have driven the peace process forward. The last ten years have seen repeated eruptions of sectarian tension during the marching season, the ‘sieges of Drumcree’, the Holy Cross dispute and rioting in north Belfast. The ‘troubles’ have seen growing residential segregation and there are now nearly 60 ‘peace walls’, a number which has increased during the peace process.

The trials and tribulations of the DUP/SF government are likely to throw up many issues that could be used to exploit communal antagonism, as they were during previous periods of devolution. The latest is the Sinn Fein demand that there be statues of republican heroes placed in the Stormont parliament building. The restoration of power-sharing devolution in Northern Ireland holds out the prospect of stable devolved government, although, at the moment, it stands on shaky foundations.

Ultras

The ‘ultras’ are the republican dissidents and the anti-powersharing loyalists. Republican dissidents believe that ‘armed struggle’ should continue to achieve Irish unity, but they have been marginalised. There is still a threat of violence from the Continuity and Real IRAs but, by contesting the March assembly elections, Republican Sinn Fein demonstrated their lack of popular support. In west Belfast, for example, the Republican Sinn Fein candidate won just 427 votes or 1.2 per cent of the vote.

The ‘ultra’, anti-powersharing loyalists probably pose a more significant threat to the DUP than republican ultras do to Sinn Fein. While Sinn Fein has transformed itself over a long period, the DUP’s shift in attitude towards power-sharing has been much more recent and dramatic. The DUP has emerged as the dominant party in the unionist community by opposing compromise with ‘IRA/Sinn Fein’.

The failed bid for power-sharing in December 2004 was clear evidence that the DUP might take the plunge and go for a deal with Sinn Fein. But as late as the assembly elections in March 2007, it was still not clear to the electorate that a vote for the DUP was a vote for power-sharing with Sinn Fein. The DUP trounced their moderate rivals with 30 per cent of the first preference vote to 15 per cent for the UUP.

Opinion polls, which notoriously underestimate hardline opinion, have indicated significant degrees of unionist opposition to power-sharing with Sinn Fein. Last November a poll suggested that while 47 per cent of DUP supporters favoured the St Andrews Agreement, 32 per cent opposed it and 22 per cent didn’t know. There have been severe tensions within the DUP. Jim Allister MEP, a leading figure in the DUP, has resigned from the party over power-sharing, as have several DUP councillors.

The emergence of the DUP as the dominant party within unionism, however, may have revived confidence among unionists that the Union is secure and that peace may last. As yet, there is no strong electoral challenge to Paisley from his ‘ultra’ flank.

Paul Dixon is Senior Lecturer in Politics & International Studies at Kingston University, London. He is author of Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (Macmillan, 2001).

Peter Hain is the most partisan secretary of state for Northern Ireland ever appointed. He has a documented record of activism in the movement for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland since at least the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s, and there is no reason to think his sympathies have changed since.

As late as 1994, the magazine of the Troops Out Movement quoted Hain as saying: ‘I am a longstanding supporter of British disengagement from Ireland and the Irish people’s right to national self-determination.’ In his 1995 book Ayes to the Left, he argued in favour of Irish unity and claimed that it was ‘… for the people of Ireland [not Northern Ireland] to determine their own future.’

Hain – longstanding supporter of British disengagement

Anti-Unionist views

Peter Hain’s record of activism in support of withdrawal and his anti-unionist views have been eclipsed by more high profile supporters of withdrawal – Ken Livingstone, Tony Benn and Clare Short. In the mid-1970s Hain supported the Troops Out Movement and the demonstrations for withdrawal on both the 10th and 20th anniversary of the deployment of British troops in 1979 and 1989. He spoke in favour of withdrawal at the Labour Party conference in 1981 – the high tide of the withdrawal movement in Britain. In 1988 Hain became vice-chair of the Time To Go! campaign that was designed to culminate on the 20th anniversary of the deployment of British troops in August 1989.

Hain was actively campaigning for British withdrawal into the 1990s. The pro-Sinn Fein Labour Committee on Ireland was the key group within the British Labour Party arguing for withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Peter Hain was on the editorial board of their magazine, Labour and Ireland, until it ceased publication in 1990. In 1991 and 1992 Hain was a speaker at the Labour Committee on Ireland’s fringe meetings at Labour party conference.

In 1991, Peter Hain was also involved with the Trade Unionists for a United Ireland Forum. He actively opposed the movement within the trade unions that was campaigning to allow people in Northern Ireland to join the British Labour Party.

In October 1991, writing in An Ireland Agenda, the newsletter of the Labour Committee on Ireland, he argued that ‘the issue ultimately comes down to whether you see the North of Ireland as inalienably a part of Britain, or you recognise that partition in 1921 was undemocratic, oppressive, denied the Irish their own history and right to self-determination, and is the root cause of generations of conflict.’

He concluded that ‘… a strategic withdrawal which finally called the Unionist bluff and convened a constitutional conference to negotiate a new future for the North could provide the only serious basis for justice, stability and democracy.’

During the 1990s Irish republicans began to shift their emphasis away from the demand for British withdrawal and towards joint British-Irish authority, and then the compromise settlement in the 1998 Belfast Agreement. Peter Hain also supported the peace process and the Belfast Agreement – few wanted to be more republican than Sinn Fein.

Since 1997 Hain has been constrained in his ability to frankly express his personal views on Northern Ireland by the series of positions he has held within the Labour government. Nevertheless, some commentators have detected Hain’s pro-nationalism in speeches made on the lessons to be learned from Northern Ireland when he was Foreign Office minister in 2000.

Open secret

Peter Hain claims that Tony Blair knew all about his past history when he appointed him. He has also refused invitations to renounce his previous views on Northern Ireland saying that all this was 30 years ago.

The appointment of Peter Hain, who has a clear record of anti-unionism, is either conspiracy or blunder. The appointment of a pro-republican secretary of state could be part of the pay-off to the IRA to get them to finally give up the guns and disband. But Hain’s past is an open secret that could have been revealed at any time to destabilise on-going negotiations.

If Hain’s appointment is a blunder then it does not bode well for the peace process. If you want to negotiate a peace deal between republicans and unionists you don’t appoint an ‘honest broker’ who has a long and active history of anti-unionism. Perhaps it is already time for Peter Hain to go.

This article was written before the IRA announcement on 28 July of an end to the armed campaign.

Paul Dixon is author of Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (2001) and a politics lecturer at the University of Ulster