I was in Belfast two weeks ago speaking to politicians and senior security figures, and I asked rhetorically whether it was premature to declare “the Troubles” over. I said I prayed dissident Republican terrorists would not succeed in killing a member of the security forces.
If they did, I added, it would be a tragedy but of “no political significance” — as long as we didn’t react in the wrong way.
I had no idea that the tragedy I foresaw would unfold so soon. But I stand by what I said: the murders have no political significance and do not mark the “rebirth of the Troubles”. My worry remains, however, that our reaction might make the deaths a turning point they should not be.
Republican leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were determined to carry the Republican movement into peace as intact as possible, and moved slowly to avoid the traditional split. Unusually, the British government agreed with this approach.
Instead of trying to encourage divisions, as in the past, we hoped they would carry the movement with them because we wanted to make peace once, not many times with many different groups. And we wanted to ensure that a capable and credible terrorist movement was not left behind.
The establishment of a new executive by Sinn Fein in May 2007 delivered that outcome. The splinter movements left behind, the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, have no political significance and no political mandate. They speak for no one and for no part of the community.
Their murders are just that — murders, and not political acts. There is no groundswell of support for them and the things they might demand can be argued for politically in Northern Ireland without hindrance. There is no justification whatsoever for physical violence.
The only thing that could change the emptiness of these acts is the way we react.
What turned the Easter Rising in 1916 into a mass movement for independence in Ireland was the British government’s reaction.
The bloody way it was suppressed, the mass imprisonment of innocent people and conscription helped to propel the Irish nation into opposition and spelled the end of constitutional nationalism.
That will not happen this time. These murders will be dealt with by the security forces and by the entire population as a crime, not a political act.
Sinn Fein’s leaders will have a difficult task. They have to keep the Republican movement unified.
They must condemn the murders, as they have done, and call for justice, but Britain should not make their task more difficult by jumping up and down on their historic sensibilities.
In Northern Ireland the Omagh bomb of August 1998 could have killed the peace process and restarted the Troubles. But the majority in Northern Ireland saw it as an act by dissidents bent on disrupting the search for peace, and thwarted their wish.
They would not let the peace process be held hostage by a tiny minority. They were right then. And they will be right again. —