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no room in the Republican belly for
the swallowing of pre-conditions.
Republicans felt themselves to be
“victims of [their own] success”; the
fact that they had sold their base on
matters such as the ceasefire, the
removal of Ireland’s constitutional
claim to the North, and participation in
a ‘partitionist’ Assembly had lulled the
British and Irish governments into
thinking that progress on
decommissioning would be just as easy
(Irish Times, 7 April 1999). In actual fact
it looked as if the retention of
weapons was the hinge on which all
other compromise turned.
The PUP also rejected the Declaration,
although its given reason was that in
the collective “act of reconciliation”
the illegally held weapons of the IRA
would be equated with those of the
RUC and British army, a situation
intolerable to Loyalists (Irish Times, 14
April 1999). This undoubtedly
deflected some of the criticism away
from Sinn Fein, not something the
PUP would have liked, but there may
have been deeper reasons for their
rejection. In March 1999, the UVF
leadership had indicated that, in the
absence of Republican
decommissioning, their bottom line
was that the IRA should declare their
war to be over. This was the only
means of instilling confidence and
trust. If the IRA refused, then Sinn
Fein should not be permitted to hold
Ministerial positions in any executive
(Combat, March 1999). However, the
IRA was clearly of no mind to make
such a statement or to decommission
and so, to the UVF, the Declaration
was dead in the water. The UVF were
also averse to any decommissioning on
their part at this stage. As its leadership
stated: “You can rest assured that the
UVF and Red Hand Commando will
not hand over guns to get Sinn Fein
into office” (Irish Times, 9 April 1999).
The thought of Martin McGuinness
ascending to office on a ladder partially
built of Loyalist rifles, set their teeth
on edge.
David Trimble may have believed that
the Declaration offered “realistically
the only way forward” (Irish Times, 16
April 1999), but to those who held the
illegal weapons, it resembled only a culde-sac.
The Way Forward?
June/July 1999
Sinn Fein maintained a firm stance on
the Unionist demand for guns up
front. In their view, Unionism was
engaged in the politics of exclusion
with decommissioning merely acting as
a fig leaf; non-implementation of the
Agreement suited the Unionist interest,
they simply did not want change. As
Martin McGuinness argued, “Don’t
fool yourself that it is about the issue
of decommissioning. It’s about more
than that. It’s because they don’t want
to see a Fenian in government” (Irish
Times, 21 June 1999). McGuinness felt
that a serious flaw in the negotiations
had been the failure of the IICD to
“effectively stamp” its authority on the
process, which had led to Unionism
seizing the issue and using it as a
“weapon to beat Sinn Fein over the
head”. The solution was simple; the
removal of the causes of conflict via
the collective implementation of the
Agreement by all parties. Once that
process was “unstoppable”, the “issue
of how you remove the guns becomes
very straightforward” (Irish Times, 24
June 1999).
Unionists of course saw the matter
differently. Trimble accused
paramilitaries of engaging in a
“confidence trick”, of talking peace
and benefiting from prisoner releases
whilst continuing to surreptitiously use
violence. Consequently, mere
declarations of intent regarding
36 B·I·C·C
decommissioning were “unacceptable”,
what was needed was “recognisable,
quantifiable” disarmament. This
remained the only way of proving that
the war was over (We must all stand firm
on decommissioning, 28 June 1999,
www.uup.org.)
Although Unionist and Republican
remained poles apart, there did appear
to be some movement from Sinn Fein
in early July. Whilst they underlined
that prior decommissioning was “not
within the gift of Sinn Fein to deliver”
and not part of the Agreement in any
case (Irish Times, 1 July 1999), they did
acknowledge the need to “create
space” for pro-Agreement Unionism;
consequently Sinn Fein declared their
belief that all the participants “could
succeed in persuading those with arms
to decommission them in accordance
with the Agreement” (Irish Times, 2 July
1999).
This decommissioning was to be in the
manner set down by the IICD.
Although this statement appeared
rather woolly, the British and Irish
governments were eager to seize upon
it as a coded assurance that
Republicanism would disarm given the
implementation of the Agreement. As
Blair put it, the Sinn Fein declaration
represented “historic seismic shifts in
the political landscape in Northern
Ireland” (Irish Times, 2 July 1999). A
report from the IICD was similarly
upbeat, and the latter body expected
that “Sinn Fein’s proposal [would] be
endorsed by the IRA and reciprocated
by Loyalist and other Republican
groups” (Irish Times, 3 July 1999). The
IICD also stated that the “process of
decommissioning should begin as soon
as possible” and defined the beginning
of this “process” as firstly the giving
of an “unambiguous commitment” by
a paramilitary group that it would
complete decommissioning by May
2000, followed by the commencement
of discussions with that group on the
modalities and methods of