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The Issues of Assent and Consent
Within days of the IRA's declaration of a cessation of activity in 1994 loyalists responded by painting on the walls of the Shankill the boast that the IRA had surrendered. In interviews they claimed that it was their ruthless campaign of assassination of Catholic civilians, Sinn Fein representatives and their relatives that had brought republicans to their knees.
We know, of course, where the weaponry and intelligence for that campaign came from - the British government's secret services.
Sections of the media, if it meant they could divide and undermine republican support for the leadership's peace strategy, were only too glad to propagate the myth that loyalist paramilitaries had saved the union. And who knows how many out there in the unionist chattering classes privately felt the same glow of satisfaction, that 'our boys beat the IRA scum into the ground'?
The hollowness of the claim was never challenged: that is, how come the Republican Movement didn't end its campaign earlier when Catholics were being slaughtered in greater numbers and when active service units were regularly arrested or wiped out? And if the IRA was thus defeated, why are we being told daily and solemnly by unionists and loyalist paramilitary spokespersons that the IRA remains armed to the teeth and could fight on for another thirty years?
That the republican leadership freely (and responsibly) changed tack because of the military stalemate with British forces and decided to go on a major political offensive is an unpalatable truth for loyalists. Loyalists badly needed their claim to fame to cover up for their grubby, un-heroic sectarian campaign (not that the IRA's armed struggle was snow white).
Contrast their boasts of an IRA surrender in1994 with their current constant complaints: the RUC has been destroyed, Sinn Fein/IRA is in government, Ulster has become 'a cold house for unionists', nationalists are getting all the jobs, we can't march our traditional routes, Sinn Fein's politics are offensively 'in your face', the British government is doing side deals with the IRA, there's going to be 'a united Ireland within fifteen years' according to UDA leader Jackie McDonald, etc., etc.
One of us is living on the moon and it can't be me because I am looking up at the sky and there's Cheddar cheese man himself.
Unionists coming to terms with equality (and we are by no means there yet) have been traumatised. To sympathise, try to understand or to offer an analysis is to be rebuffed, accused of cynicism or of strategically increasing unionist division and difficulty. (Incidentally, their war - be it the loyalist paramilitary war or the UUP/DUP propaganda one - against nationalism and republicanism continues unapologetically). Thus, to them, every hand of friendship is suspect, every reassurance is a booby trap, every offer to engage in discussion or debate has to be undermined or distorted.
Moreover, any concession or any agreement is immediately appropriated and often turned against one. The SDLP learnt this to their cost this week when John Taylor was quick to use the unanimity of the Police Board's decision not to singularly back Nuala O'Loan's report into the RUC's handling of the Omagh bomb inquiry as an Ulster Unionist/SDLP rebuff to Nuala O'Loan and support for Ronnie Flanagan.
Look at the unionist campaign to undermine Martin McGuinness as Minister of Education because of his IRA background. Unionists uphold as their heroes former illegal gunrunners who threatened the British government with a civil war, and a premier who presided over pogroms against Catholics in 1921.Unionists have never accepted that their discriminatory practises and state violence were a major factor in the IRA campaign, Fifty years of misrule, the pogroms against Catholics in 1969, the curfew, internment and Bloody Sunday, all took place under the auspices of Ulster Unionist governments.
Gerry Adams' recent speech in New York (that nationalists could not force the unionists into a united Ireland which did not have their 'assent or consent') was seized upon by David Trimble, not in the reconciliatory spirit in which it was offered, but to score cheap points about the alleged futility of the IRA campaign. (There is a basic contradiction here. In the mornings unionists claim that the Belfast Agreement and nationalist gains couldn't have been achieved without the IRA's campaign. In the afternoons they claim that the IRA campaign achieved nothing.)
The IRA campaign was aimed at bringing about a British withdrawal (not a unionist withdrawal) which would lead to the reunification of Ireland. The IRA, clearly, did not physically drive the British out of the North but, equally clearly, the British commitment to unionism is in terminal decline. Republicanism was never defeated nor thwarted, and republicans have successfully kept a united Ireland on the agenda.
In New York Adams said, 'Unionism now needs to begin seriously thinking about, discussing and engaging with nationalists and republicans about the nature and form a new and acceptable united Ireland might take. A united Ireland will not be a cold house for unionists if it guarantees their rights and entitlements, if they have their own place, their own stake in it and a sense of security and ownership.'
No one knows what form a united Ireland will take. If peace and demilitarisation can be consolidated; the PSNI changed; and with ongoing social and economic harmonisation (which will intensify when Britain inevitably joins the Euro); in a few years there will be no palpable border. There will still be two Assemblies, two political cultures, suspicion and resistance to change from many quarters (including from some in the twenty-six counties!) but there will slowly, very slowly be emerging, one people.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison