Few speeches are truly historic. But the one delivered by Gerry Adams on Wednesday should not be seen any other way. His call for disbandment of the IRA — and that is what it was, despite the artfulness of the Sinn Féin president’s language — was the most momentous event that Ireland has witnessed since the signing of the Good Friday agreement. As was the case when Irish republicans and Ulster unionists settled on that accord in 1998, something that once seemed unimaginable has just happened.
Analysis of Adams’ move has so far highlighted the role played by the McCartney sisters, who have become vociferous critics of the republican movement since their brother Robert was murdered in a Belfast bar brawl late in January. The McCartneys have had some impact, but to suggest that they alone brought the IRA to this point is simplistic.
The sisters may have discomfited Sinn Féin in the halls of Washington and drawn the spotlight of the international media. But their capacity to hurt the IRA in its heartlands was very limited. The McCartneys’ real effect has been to give a sharpness and a human face to an argument that many republicans were already accepting: That the IRA has become a hindrance rather than a help to the achievement of republican objectives.
The IRA’s existence no longer adds to the pressure for a final settlement of the Irish conflict. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said as much in a landmark speech in 2002: “The very thing republicans used to think gave them negotiating leverage doesn’t do it any more,” he insisted. It seems that Gerry Adams has come to agree with him. Disbandment of the IRA is also the logical conclusion to the course Adams and his like-minded comrades began to chart almost a quarter of a century ago — even though no one, including the Sinn Féin leader himself, could have envisioned the end point with any clarity back then.
As time passes it becomes increasingly obvious that the election of the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands as a Westminster MP — a victory that was announced 24 years ago yesterday — was the fulcrum upon which the conflict turned.
At the time, Sinn Féin’s ramshackle nature and lowly standing could be seen in the fact that Sands did not even stand on the party ticket; his official designation was “anti-H Block/Armagh political prisoner”. But his victory proved to Adams and others that there was a broad latent republicanism in Ireland that could be harnessed by the Provisional movement if it acted nimbly enough.
Sands’ triumph also provided a potent refutation of the argument made by the British government of the time, and by Margaret Thatcher in particular, that the IRA was nothing more than a criminal gang, devoid of public sympathy. Adams became Sinn Féin president and was first elected to Westminster two years later.
At first republicans argued that participation in electoral politics strengthened the hand of the IRA. But the duality summed up in the infamous phrase “the Armalite and the ballot box” could not be maintained for ever.
The IRA’s campaign put a cap on Sinn Féin’s growth. The cacophony of bombs and bullets drowned out the arguments made by the movement’s nascent political wing. And among many who did hear that analysis and harbored some sympathy for it there was a reluctance to cast a vote that would be regarded as an unambiguous expression of support for the armed struggle.
Only two years before the IRA cease-fire, Adams, then his party’s only MP, lost his seat to a moderate nationalist, Joe Hendron of the SDLP.
Today Sinn Féin has four MPs and a real chance of wiping out the SDLP in the forthcoming general election. Its progress in the Irish Republic has been no less dramatic — it now has five members in the Parliament there. The lesson is clear: A huge number of Irish people who were unwilling to vote for a republican armed struggle are happy to vote for a republican political agenda.
The critical issue now is how the IRA responds to Adams’ speech. Officially, it has committed only to giving “his appeal due consideration”. But to most observers it is inconceivable that Adams would have asked for de facto disbandment in public if he were not already sure of the answer. Some IRA activists will bridle at the idea of disbandment. A few of them may join the small dissident groups. The traditional republican idea that armed resistance to British rule is a sacred duty will never be totally expunged from Ireland.
But the strength of the modern IRA did not come primarily from old-style nationalist fervor. It was rooted in a sense that Northern Ireland was both egregiously unjust and inherently unreformable. Those who saw the IRA’s campaign as, in essence, an armed struggle for civil rights have been reluctantly convinced that politics is the only way forward.
Irish republicanism has been through a tumultuous journey. It now stands at the last milestone on the road away from militarism.
