17.10.1996

IRA propaganda setback for Tories

Last week’s bombing of the British army barracks in Lisburn dealt another blow to John Major’s hopes of forcing an IRA surrender.

In an audacious propaganda coup republican fighters infiltrated what was supposedly the most secure of state locations. Apparently they drove two cars through the main, passholders-only gate of the army headquarters and made their escape in a third vehicle.

This latest successful attack, along with the Canary Wharf and Manchester bombings, signifies that the IRA will not end its campaign permanently until it has wrung out concessions from the British. Any eventual settlement will of course be achieved on terms favourable overall to imperialism, but the fact that the state has not been able to defeat the republican movement means that it is not in a position to impose its ‘peace’ by diktat.

Both the Irish and British governments raged at the latest action. Taoiseach John Bruton likened the IRA to Nazis for daring to resist the British occupation, while John Major, addressing the Tory Party conference, blamed Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for the death of a British soldier in the Lisburn bombing: “Warrant Officer James Bradwell was 43, with a wife and with children, Mr Adams.” Major did not tell his audience of the family connections of unarmed IRA soldier Diarmuid O’Neill, whom state forces had shot dead a couple of weeks earlier.

The Lisburn attack and the killing of the first British soldier since the IRA declared its ceasefire in August 1994 are a setback for the British, but do not represent a change in the overall drive to a settlement. Northern Ireland secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew made clear that the British still wanted to negotiate with the resistance movement: “I’m not going to say ‘never and for ever’, because I don’t believe it’s sensible to close doors for always.”

Loyalist paramilitaries too were thought to be unlikely to end their own ceasefire, and were being wooed intensely by British, Irish and US establishment figures to ensure that they remained onside. None of the players in the Irish conflict want a return to the stalemate of the past 27 years and all have an interest in keeping the imperialist ‘peace process’ alive.

Jim Blackstock