23.05.1996

Arms and the IRA

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said that his party was prepared to make concessions to end the deadlock over illegal weapons which has hampered the ‘peace process’ in the north of Ireland.

The Provisional IRA and the republican movement have for some time been under pressure from the British authorities to ‘decommission’ their weapons. It goes without saying that the British state has never considered its own massive weaponry to need decommissioning. It wants a renewed IRA ceasefire before allowing Sinn Fein a place at the negotiating table, but the very issue of the IRA’s weapons has bedevilled the issue of Sinn Fein participation in talks.

Decommissioning its own weapons will close the IRA down in effect, which is obviously what the British state wants. The IRA and the wider republican movement are torn between the desire for a ceasefire bred by war-weariness and the frustrations produced by armed struggle with the British state, and, on the other hand, the need to avoid anything that smacks of surrender.

This is not to say that there have been no ‘helping hands’, in a manner of speaking. For example, the former US senator George Mitchell, who set out a number of principles aimed at breaking the deadlock over weapons held by paramilitaries. These include accepting ‘democratic’ and exclusively peaceful means for resolving issues; the independently verified disarmament of paramilitary organisations and the renunciation of force. It is debatable whether the northern Ireland statelet itself fits the Mitchell requirements: how democratic is an entity deliberately designed to keep republicans in a minority?

Adams indicated Sinn Fein’s willingness to abide by the Mitchell principles provided everyone else does. Since the Republican movement is not the only body of people carrying weapons in the Six Counties, this is a major caveat. What Adams had to say will probably not immediately affect the matter of whether or not the IRA will renew the ceasefire. However, in principle, Sinn Fein has expressed its willingness to disarm.

The British government did not budge from its insistence on a ceasefire even after the remarks by Adams on the Mitchell principles. The next stage in the struggle is going to be fought out with the ballot box rather than the Armalite. This is the election to the Northern Ireland Forum on May 30. Sinn Fein is taking part, reluctantly, on a battleground chosen by its enemies.

The entire ‘peace process’ is an attempt to divert the IRA from revolutionary struggle onto paths acceptable to British and US imperialism. Irish republicans have had to confront the full force of the British state in a way the British left has not had to. However, if advice may be offered from this side of the water, it is: the need to rearm ideologically to take the struggle for self-determination forward. Revolutionaries both sides of the water must not leave the state with a monopoly on the means of waging war, either ideologically or physically.

Andrew MacKay