Such is the avalanche of material now being made available in the National Archives of Ireland covering the peace process and the aftermath of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement that tracing any pattern in Anglo-Irish relations is an awesome challenge.
But some impressions remain central: there is nothing here which would lead one to believe that Britain – after the signing of the Belfast Agreement – had much of an appetite for remaining in Ireland as an indefinite long-term commitment.
Rather, it is all consistent with the then Northern Ireland secretary Peter Brooke’s assertion in 1990 that the British state was neutral on the Union, having “no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”.
It is important to consider what is often referred to as the “Brooke neutrality statement” in context. The Brooke policy could well have alarmed unionists, but it could scarcely have surprised them.
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Rather, it should be seen as a significant recalibration of the British-Irish relationship – a benchmark change in what had been British policy towards Ireland over the previous 70 years.
Such a change was more noticeable in Ireland than in Britain. Much of British opinion had been largely inattentive towards Ireland since the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. The Brooke neutrality speech was less of a surprise in Britain, where it was seen as consistent with a policy in Ireland of what can usefully be summarised as the “least deadly alternative”.
The Belfast Agreement was seen in this same light. As were the lengthy multiparty talks which followed and whose detailed teasing out is now available for perusal in the voluminous files just released.
Decommissioning
So much of the debate was about decommissioning of arms. In one document, Gerry Adams is highly critical of people “banging on” about it. Peter Mandelson, in response, accuses the Sinn Féin president of being “a bit in denial” about the issue.
The British found what followed quite worrying – Adams insisting that were Sinn Féin to go to the IRA Army Council to discuss “actual decommissioning”, he feared that “the present leadership might be lost”.
Adams believed that David Trimble and the Ulster Unionists needed to show more patience. But as Brendan O’Leary has written, the Trimble unionists “were divided over whether to treat the IRA’s cessation of violence as a surrender, a trap, or as a ripe moment for negotiations”.
Bertie Ahern characterised the peace process as essentially managing ‘a transition to legitimate politics’, and repetitively argued that this should be seen as ‘progressive and irreversible’
If Trimble was showing impatience, Adams was content with what others complained of as very slow progress. Decommissioning seemed indefinitely postponable. At one meeting, he stated that the best signals the IRA could send about their intentions were to maintain the ceasefire and keep in direct contact with Gen John de Chastelain, chairman of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.
Meanwhile, Bertie Ahern described his government’s aim as “a genuine all-round demilitarisation of Northern Ireland”. Dermot Gallagher, secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs, summarised the impasse, noting that Paul Bew – historian and adviser to the Ulster Unionists – was predicting that Trimble’s position by February would be quite impossible unless he got what he termed “some product” from the IRA.
Ahern had “long been” and remained of the view that all initiatives “should flow from a belief in the positive benefits” of the constructive working of the Agreement. He especially faulted the unionists for the negativity of their adoption of a “unilateral deadlines” approach.
Ahern characterised the peace process as essentially managing “a transition to legitimate politics”, and repetitively argued that this should be seen as “progressive and irreversible”.
Ahern added that he was convinced there was “a renewed, positive yet very practical mood” in Ireland, North and South, and that this would be further strengthened if only decommissioning could be achieved by May 2000.
The new releases contain minutes of a meeting with the decommissioning body, on January 11th, 2000, in Belfast. The veteran co-ordinator in the taoiseach’s office, Walter Kirwan, in forwarding “a most significant report” to Ahern, reckoned that while it was “not encouraging”, he allowed there were some “intriguing straws of possibilities”.
Kirwan also added a typescript note of US president Bill Clinton’s phone call with British prime minister Tony Blair of January 2000. Dick Norlan in the White House had shared with Kirwan a read-out of Clinton’s phone call with Blair.
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Clinton had been “taken somewhat aback by the sense of alarm that Blair communicated”. Blair had told Clinton that having heard from Adams, and from the de Chastelain camp, that not only would decommissioning not happen by the February deadline, but perhaps not even by May.
Even allowing for the possibility that this was “a negotiating position”, Blair “expressed astonishment” at the notion that the decommissioning issue might be used in this way. His note added that for “all the difficulty that decommissioning involved for republicans, there had to be some development that would enable General de Chastelain to report positively in the next few weeks”.
The national question
Ahern was assiduous in his insistence that embracing the original agreement and working through it was by far the best policy. His surviving popularity with so many of the rival negotiating teams must be testament to his qualities as a negotiator.
It is worth noting that looking back on the tenth anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, Ahern could admit that at the time of signing it in 1998, he could not take for granted that it would enjoy widespread support in the Republic, where it needed to be passed in a referendum.
It is an opportunity better suited not to those with a mere five-day media window to read and report on it, but rather to those with five years to do justice to these voluminous files
He was especially concerned about the public support for the envisaged amendments of Articles 2 and 3 of Éamon de Valera’s 1937 Constitution.
The proposed changes, after all, would entail a fundamental heresy: omitting the description of the island of Ireland as the national territory, and replacing it with an aspiration to unity which would also be subject to unionist consent.
It is undoubtedly the case that the Irish files covering all of the multiparty talks will pose formidable challenges to researchers. They represent a challenge, but also an opportunity.
It is an opportunity better suited not to those with a mere five-day media window to read and report on it, but rather to those with five years to do justice to these voluminous files. They will surely prove a rich source for postgraduate students.
Researchers will need to remember that these files are working papers for discrete specialist subcommittees in complex multiparty talks. Much of the text is an anodyne prose written by civil servants all too aware of the importance of nursing the peace process incrementally forward.
Imagine, for example, a researcher whose focus is the role played by successive Northern Ireland secretaries in the evolution of British policy on Northern Ireland.
This would be a most complex and worthwhile research topic, starting with William Whitelaw, who was insulted by Brian Faulkner within hours of his appointment as a “Coconut commissioner”, akin to a grandee in some outpost of Empire.
The Northern Ireland secretaries retained a pivotal role in the formulation of British policy on the North over the following half century; very many of them penned their memoirs. They were an uneven lot.
It may be said that the first three appointed by Blair were politicians of consequence: the first, Mo Mowlam, avowedly pro-nationalist; her successor, Peter Mandelson, pro-unionist; and the third, John Reid, in any future referendum on Irish unity, declared himself to be “pro-choice”.
They each were formidable figures with minds of their own. This cannot be said of all of their successors, one of whom, when told by a Belfast student that he was a native of Kerry, replied with her recently acquired “little knowledge” by advising: “Or you could say that you’re from Londonkerry as I’m told some people insist on calling it.”
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