Ireland

IRA: glorification of failure

Ronan Fanning

We know that the spirit of Irish freedom is not dead. We know it didn't die either as a result of oppression from without or treachery from within. We, who with Pearse glory in being fools that have loved their folly, also believe with him that the voice of freedom is the voice of one of the ancient indestructible things of the earth.

These words were recently spoken not by any member of the IRA but by Mr Kevin Boland, leader of Aontacht Eireann, during the Cork by-election campaign. Such remarks coming from such a politician — a man who had been for many years a Cabinet Minister in successive Fianna Fail administrations until his departure from government office as a result of the sensational events which led to the Dublin arms trial of 1970 — testify to the endurance of what has always been one of the most fundamental characteristics of the radical, Republican tradition in Irish politics, indifference to political success and the glorification of political failure. This phenomenon is so alien to British habits of thought about politics and, at the same time, so basic to an understanding of the current political attitudes of the IRA as to merit closer examination.

The Irish political tradition as it has developed since the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland in 1800 consists of two separate, although not always distinct, traditions. First, the constitutionalist tradition which sought to redress Irish grievances by peaceful, parliamentary methods. Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party belong to this tradition. The second tradition is frequently described as the physical force tradition; it is based upon the cardinal principle that Irish wrongs could be righted only by Irish independence won by force of arms. Wolfe Tone (the leader of the United Irish rebellion of 1798), John Mitchel (one of the revolutionary nationalists of 1848), the Fenians of the 1860s, Patrick Pearse and the other leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising belong to this tradition. And this, of course, is the tradition which the IRA have inherited.

In its most extreme or, for its adherents, purest and most orthodox form, the Irish radical, republican tradition admits only one legitimate political aspiration: the winning of a united, thirty-two county Irish Republic. It is an aspiration which neither at the present nor at any time in the past has fallen within the realm of practical politics. From the 1860s until 1920-21 it was inconceivable that the British would agree to an Irish Republic; since an Irish Republic has been established it has been equally inconceivable that the Ulster Unionists would agree that Ireland should be united. That its one political aim should be so purely utopian is at once the greatest political strength and the greatest political weakness of the IRA.

Take, for example, three figures from the pantheon of traditional heroes of Irish Republicanism: Wolfe Tone, John Mitchel, Patrick Pearse. Tone died by his own hand in the wake of the 1798 rebellion which was as unsuccessful as it was untrue to his non-sectarian ideals of cooperation between Protestant and Catholic. Mitchel was arrested and transported from Ireland even before the 1848 rebellion which he had helped inspire and which was to peter out almost as soon as it began. Pearse was executed by the British when his rebellion proved a military fiasco and when he had not yet achieved any of the public acclaim which was to be his posthumous reward. What they and the many other figures venerated by Republicans have in common is that they never achieved political success let alone held political office. The uncommitted, objective observer sees them as singularly unsuccessful men in their own lifetime, as losers — interesting losers, perhaps even glorious losers, but losers nevertheless.

What is not so readily apparent to the objective observer is that it is precisely their lack of material success which has so endeared them to subsequent generations of Republicans. Here, of course, we are confronted by the necessity to distinguish between revolutionaries and politicians, a distinction of universal validity but which takes on special connotations in the Irish context. Revolutionaries tend by definition to be fanatical, irrational, careless of human life, anarchic — all qualities which are anathema to successful politicians, in the western democracies at least. No less vigorously, however, do revolutionaries anathematise such traditional political virtues as debating ability, diplomatic or negotiating skill, and, above all, the capacity to see an opponent's point of view and to compromise. For the true Republican, declares one eulogist of Austin Stack (one of the most prominent of the extreme Republicans in the 1916-23 period), "compromise, submission, the slave marks, did not and could not exist . . . as touching himself or the Cause for which he worked and fought, lived and died." But while revolutionaries all over the world are and always have been suspicious of politicians, in the case of the IRA these suspicions take the form of a kind of political paranoia which causes them to hold their revolutionary predecessors in an esteem which is in inverse ratio to their political achievement.

Michael Collins is a case in point: by far the most successful of Irish revolutionaries in military terms, he almost alone among Irish republicans had sufficient interest in and grasp of the realities of political power immediately to make the transition from being a successful revolutionary to being a successful, albeit short-lived, politician and statesman. His crime in Republican eyes was a particularly heinous one in that he knew the cause and betrayed it, in consequence of which his reputation has been excoriated in language far more scurrilous than was ever used against Lloyd George. President de Valera's earlier career is equally instructive. The most venerated'Of living Republicans during the War of Independence and, subsequently, because Of his leadership of the Republican side in the civil war which followed, he split with the IRA in the mid'-twenties wrnen he founded the Fianna Fail party and brought his followers back to the Dail from which they had seceded in 1922; in 1932 he won his first general election, since when his party has only twice been out of office. So phenomenally successful a political career more than redressed the balance and has denied President de Valera a place in the hagiography of the true believers. To hold one's place at the shrine of what has been described as the ' Phoenix Flame' of Irish nationalism, it is clearly a profound disadvantage to have exercised effective and democratic political power. Pure Republicans like their heroes to be martyrs who are required to light the torch rather than to carry it; better still for the odour of sanctity if they are consumed in the initial conflagration.

Never have such considerations been so relevant as they are today, and it is only in the ghastly light they cast that we can begin to understand Mr Whitelaw's present dilemma. The core of this dilemma is that the Provisional IRA are, in accordance with their traditions, resolutely refusing to behave politically as opposed to militarily. The dilemma is all the more acute because of the split between Provisionals and Officials in the ranks of the IRA. That split sprang initially from the disenchantment of many, predominantly Northern Republicans with the policies of the Dublin leadership; policies, the Provisionals asserted, which compromised the orthodoxy of the Republican ideal; socialist policies which were " unCatholic and unIrish." The last of the more truce-minded, politicallyminded Officials has been • released from Long Kesh; but unfortunately for Mr Whitelaw, it is the Provisionals who wield the power; they have more men, more guns, more bombs and — most important of all — much more popular Catholic support.

The present attitude of the most militant Republicans to the possibility of a political solution can be best examined with reference to the events surrounding the Provisional ceasefire of June 26 to July 9 and, in particular, with reference to the secret talks between the Provisionals' leaders and Mr Whitelaw and his aides which took place on July 7. Although these talks are still shrouded in mystery and confusion, even the garbled and mudd

led information which has so far emerged reveals much about the nature of the impasse which now exists between Mr Whitelaw and the Provisionals.

At first sight the talks of July 7 would appear to mark a tremendous triumph for the Provisionals. They had succeeded in doing just what the Northern Ireland and 3ritish governments 'had so frequently in the past declare4 they would not be al

lowed to do; they had bombed and shot their way to a conference table with Mr Whitelaw on the other side. Certainly Mr Whitelaw on his part, mindful of the antipathy within the Cabinet and on the Tory backbenches for "shaking hands with murderers," seems to have been aware of what a hazardous gamble he was taking. Indeed when he flew back to London for the critical Commons debate after the ceasefire had broken down he sensed that he was on the verge of his own political destruction. The marked intemperance of his speech on that occasion, in singular contrast with all his other utterances since he took office as Secretary for Northern Ireland, was that of a man who had invited into his home guests about whom he had first overcome weighty misgivings only to have those guests spit in his face on their way out.

But what Mr Whitelaw quite failed to understand was that the Provisionals felt under no sense of obligation to him for his invitation to talks. Irish Republicans feel precisely the same kind of distrust and appreliension about talking to British politicians as British politicians feel for talking to Irish gunmen. Both sides fear contamination. Hence the extraordinary pains to which IRA spokesman have gone to insist that no drinks were served at the secret talks. To drink under such circumstances and in such company is, in Republican mythology, to invite political seduction. In that same mythology, being ready to talk is all too often equated with being ready to compromise. It is not so Much that the Provisionals failed to recognise the importance of the talks with Mr Whitelaw as that they denied that the talks had any relevance for their own particular purpose.

What the Provisionals did fail to recognise, however, was that it was not what Mr Whitelaw said so much as the mere fact of his being ready to talk to them Which was really important. Nor do they seem to have appreciated the significance of the British reaction to the three major demands which they put forward at the talks a public commitment on the part of the British government to the principle, of a united Ireland; a British pledge to Withdraw all armed forces by a date to be appointed; and an amnesty for all political Prisoners, Although no agreement was reached on these demands, they were not rejected out of hand. In effect, however, unversed in, and suspicious of, the most elementary principles of political negotiation, all the evidence suggests that the Provisionals chose to interpret the absence Of an immediate agreement as flat rejec tion.

What immediately followed (the ceasefire had broken down within fortyeight hours of the Provisional leaders returning to Ireland) indicates that the IRA believed what the whole history of Irish Republicanism, as they understood it, had always taught them to believe: that they had not and could not gain what they Wanted by talking to British politicians. To argue thus is not to argue at all, or even the better part of the responsibility for the actual breakdown of the ceasefire rests with the IRA. It is to suggest, however, that it is in the highest degree improbable that the alleged British violations of the truce in Lenadoon and in Portadown would have led to an irrevocable breakdown had the IRA wanted to go on talking. Mr Whitelaw's advisers who had to deal with the situation on the ground made the fatal mistake of assuming they would want to do so on the assumption that if a man is ' reaSonable enough to start talking to you, he is going to want to go on talking and he is not going to want the talks to fail. Such an assumption, however reasonable in the normal context of British politics, had little relevance for a situation where even if the two sides had begun to talk they had not begun to communicate.

The real, and it should be emphasised, traditional IRA attitude to the failure of the talks was epitomised by a statement attributed to Mr Daithi O'Connell, one of the Provisional leaders who participated in them. "No longer," Mr O'Connell said, "can politicians like John Hume plead that violence would stop as soon as we ceased fire. No longer can they say that progress would be made. The gunfire stopped and there was no British response." Mr O'Connell's words are nothing less than an updated reiteration of the stark and ancient Fenian answer to the problem of Anglo-Irish relations: a solution can be found only by guns and not by words.

Mr O'Connell, moreover, as Miss Maria McGuire's sensational revelations have confirmed, is a mere moderate in comparison with the Provisionals' Chief of Staff, Mr Sean Mac Stiofain. Not that anything Miss McGuire says will influence the Provisionals' ideology. While the majority of Observer readers may think her action admirable and courageous, the Provisionals see her as guilty of treason, an offence punishable by the death sentence which may well have been already passed in her absence by their Army Council. Paradoxically, Miss McGuire has probably hurt the alleged moderates by her praise more than she has hurt Mr MacStiofain by her accusations. In Provisional eyes her description of O'Connell as "the man Mr Whitelaw's office and the British Press built up as the 'only politician the Provisionals have got,'" to say nothing of her description of how O'Connell "was elated with the understanding he had with Whitelaw, whom he admired and respected," is the kiss of Judas. However infuriated Mr Mac Stiofain may be by her personal attacks upon him he may well console himself with the thought that she is less embarrassing as an enemy than as a friend.

To British eyes, then, the Provisional IRA have displayed and continue to dis play an astonishing lack of political so phistication, a political immaturity, a political weakness. This, of course, makes them not easier but much more difficult to deal with than a more politically aware organisation, if only because it is impossible to finish, let alone to win a game when your opponent refuses to learn the rules. This political irresponsibility coupled with their remaining military capacity is why the Provisional IRA remain much the largest thorn in Mr Whitelaw's flesh. The paucity of the military gains consequent upon Operation Motorman has now been clearly revealed. Since the operation, in several seperate incidents in Belfast, a number of British soldiers have been shot dead by Provisional snipers who in each case fired only a single shot and who escaped unscathed. Small beer, perhaps in comparison with the carnage in Belfast on many other days in recent months, but a development which testifies to a lethal and newly-acquired military skill on the part of the Provisionals which makes nonsense of Mr Whitelaw's ambition to destroy their capacity to injure the life of the community.

No less significant in this respect was the Provisionals' success in bombing a pub in the heart of the Protestant Shankill. The political implications of this explosion were worth a dozen major explosions in the city centre in that it provoked an immediate response from the Ulster Defence Association who went back on to the streets again for the first time since the fall of the no-go areas. For as long as the extremists are on the streets the moderates will find it that much more difficult to confer.

But the Provisionals' immediate aim seems to be to sabotage the proposed. allparty conference which Mr Whitelaw intends to hold "somewhere near London" at the end of September. The greatest single obstacle to participation in these talks by the SDLP is the fact that there are still internees in Long Kesh. Mr Whitelaw is fully aware of how strongly the SDLP feel on this point and he is also aware that if the SDLP stop talking to him he will be back to square one in as much as he will be having no meaningful talks with any representatives of the Catholic community. But the Provisionals too are well aware of the significance of Long Kesh and know that if they can keep up their present high level of military activity it will be very difficult for Mr Whitelaw to end internment by Mid-September (as he had hoped to do) without inflaming that Protestant opinion about which he and his advisers have already shown themselves exceptionally sensitive. It may well be, indeed, that the Protestants will attempt to make a symbolic issue of the importance of keeping Long Kesh open in much the same way as they succeeded in making a symbolic issue of the 'no-go ' areas. What ever way one looks at it, it is not among the easier of Mr Whitelaw's Irish equations; but if he does not succeed in solving it, he is liable to find the fruits of autumn even less palatable than the fruits of summer.