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Times, 13 March 1995, 18 March 1995).
Other responses included calling on
the Irish government to “face up to”
the British on the issue (Irish Times, 28
August 1995), appealing to the international
community to pressurise Britain
and kick start the process (Irish Times, 2
October 1995), calling for widespread
street protests (Irish Times, 17 April
1995), writing off the present British
government and waiting for a Labour
administration (Irish Times, 26 July
1995), and hinting that calls for
decommissioning were jeopardising the
ceasefire (Irish Times, 17 April 1995).
Republicans also mirrored the British
tactic of stressing the immutability of
their position on decommissioning.
Sinn Fein stated that the
decommissioning question was
“pointless” and that they had “no
room to manoeuvre” on the issue;
moreover, as Martin McGuinness
claimed, even if the IRA surrendered
only a tiny percentage of its weaponry,
“Believe me when I tell you the
communities where we come from
would see the IRA as a laughing stock”
(Irish Times, 17 October 1995, 5
September 1995; Sunday Independent, 10
September 1995). The IRA was even
more succinct: “The new and
unreasonable demand for a hand over
of IRA weapons” was “ludicrous”
(Irish Times, 30 September 1995).
Republican response to the proposed
international commission to examine
the question of arms was less than
exultant. Reaction varied from lukewarm
commitments to seriously
consider the proposal (Irish Times, 28
August 1995) to suspicion that the
commission might be used as a device
to achieve the surrender of IRA
weapons (Irish Times, 1 September
1995). Similarly a statement from the
IRA after the proposal was formally
launched by the two governments
stated that “British bad faith and
Unionist intransigence have raised a
huge question mark over the potential
of the twin track approach”; following
from this there was to be no “surrender
of IRA weapons either through the
front or back door” (Irish Times, 8
December 1995).
This reflected a rapidly growing unease
within the Republican rank and file,
that the peace process was a “sham”
and going nowhere (Irish Times, 29
August 1995, 28 September 1995). All
through the ceasefire, the IRA had
maintained its organisational integrity
and underlined the fact that it had not
left the ‘battlefield’ by conducting
‘punishment’ attacks against alleged
criminal elements; in fact the number
of ‘punishment’ attacks by Republicans
had doubled in the fourteen months
after the ceasefire (Irish Times, 7
December 1995). Such displays of
enduring militancy were no longer
sufficient in themselves in a period of
decaying Republican confidence, and
between April 1995 and January 1996,
six alleged drug dealers were killed by
the IRA. These actions, it is suggested,
resulted from a changing balance of
forces within Republicanism (Bew and
Gillespie, 1996, pp. 145–146), one
which had never been entirely sold on
the peace, and which was particularly
incensed by the ever-present question
of decommissioning.
On the spotlight’s
edge: Ulster Loyalism
and decommissioning
In contrast, Loyalists carried out fewer
‘punishment’ attacks in the period after
the ceasefire than before it. Although
they were as insistent as Republicans
that it was “naïve” to consider the
disposal of weaponry at this stage of
the process (Irish Times, 14 March
1995), the issue was not such a vexing
one for them. Certainly, less pressure
seems to have been exerted on them to
decommission. In part, this was due to
the nature of their own ceasefire,
which differed from the IRA’s in a
number of ways. Loyalists had publicly
expressed “abject and true remorse” to
the families of its innocent victims and
had also underlined that they would
“not initiate a return to war. There
B·I·C·C
origin of the issue
[would] be no first strike” (Bew and
Gillespie, 1996, pp. 72–73, 114).
These moves served to deflect criticism
and inspire a good degree of
confidence in their ceasefire, despite
the fact that they had killed more
people than Republican groups in the
years 1993 and 1994. Loyalists were
self-consciously portraying themselves
as a strategically reactive force that
would only be activated if Republicans
returned to war or if there was a sell
out by the British government. Given
that the upbeat prognosis of Loyalist
groups was that the union was safe,
this meant that their ceasefire would
last as long as the IRA wanted it to.
Another Loyalist response to the
demand for decommissioning was to
simply point the finger at the IRA and
state that it was “inconceivable” for
Loyalists to decommission whilst there
existed a “fully operational, heavily
armed Republican war machine intact
and refusing to relinquish their
arsenals” (Belfast Telegraph, 25 August
1995); thus there could be “no
movement until Republicans address
the fears which exist within [the
Loyalist] community” (Belfast Telegraph,
3 November 1995).
In one analysis, Loyalists felt less
pressured on matters like
decommissioning because they were
treated differently by the British, who
reserved an “evolutionary” and
“clinical” approach towards Loyalism
that was lacking in their more
“emotional” attitude to Republicans
(Mallie and McKittrick, 1997, p. 384).
Furthermore, Loyalists never
subscribed to the Republican view that
the Washington 3 test represented
diplomatic warfare or Unionist
intransigence, but rather understood
Unionist concerns about IRA
intentions; decommissioning was not
seen as political bludgeon but rather a
natural, if naïve, reflex. Ultimately,
Loyalism preferred to watch the
disarmament wrangling from the
shadows of the political stage,
confident that it was the Republicans,
with their superior arsenal, who were
caught in the spotlight.
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