Articles from the North

No need for Tammany tactics this time

(by Ed Moloney, Irish Times)

It is now nearly twenty-five years since the IRA in South Armagh forcibly abducted a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment and, in an extraordinary irony, set in motion events that will in all likelihood culminate tomorrow in a decision by Sinn Féin's ard-fheis to accept and recognise the policing, criminal justice and prison systems of Northern Ireland.

The soldier's unthinkably terrifying ordeal at the hands of the IRA's most ruthless unit on the island sent the Belfast-based Redemptorist priest, Fr Alec Reid hotfoot to the door of the Provisional movement's de facto leader, Gerry Adams in what proved to be a vain effort to save his life. Whether Fr Reid arrived too late or his intercession was always doomed, we will never know; the unfortunate soldier, Sgt Thomas Cochrane was interrogated, shot dead and his corpse dumped a few days later beside a hedgerow near the Border.

Although the Redemptorist priest failed to save Sgt Cochrane's life the dialogue with Gerry Adams that followed, starting in November 1982, marks the beginning of what became the peace process. Fr Reid knocked at Mr Adams's door at a distinctly opportune moment. In its first, non-hunger strike electoral outing under the Sinn Féin label, the IRA's political wing had just days before won five seats to the now forgotten Prior Assembly at Stormont, to the great – but as it turned out, misplaced – dismay of constitutional Ireland.

The true signifance and potential of that Assembly poll was scarcely noticed at the time: a viable, and potentially more advantageous political alternative to violence had opened up for the Provo leadership. Within a short time Gerry Adams and Fr Reid had designed the building blocks for what would become the IRA's ceasefire, the Good Friday Agreement and all that has followed.

It has been a long and twisting journey between that tragic event in South Armagh and the gathering of Sinn Féin members at the RDS tomorrow but with the benefit of hindsight a number of conclusions can be drawn from that trek about the way the Provisional movement under the Adams leadership conducted and conducts its business.

One is that virtually every policy initiative and strategem, both military and political, proposed by that leadership and adopted by both wings of the movement since the early 1980's was conceived and implemented in order to ensure that, eventually, tomorrow's meeting could happen.

Another is that it has always been much easier to manoeuvre, cajole and otherwise propel the IRA down the desired road than Sinn Féin. The reasons are simple. The IRA during the period of the peace process was much smaller than Sinn Féin, never more than 400 to 500 members, all of them known to the leadership, many promoted by it and their status and wellbeing dependent upon unfaltering loyalty to that leadership. It was and is a disciplined, military outfit whose orders come from an Army Council that Gerry Adams and his allies had dominated since the late 1970's. Shaped and formed by that leadership, the IRA of the peace process was one with little patience for internal democracy, where debate was minimal or staged, and dissent stamped out ruthlessly.

One way or another the IRA was always easier to control and, apart from one short-lived rebellious bout in 1996, was invariably amenable to the will of the Adams' leadership. The failure of Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, British premier Tony Blair and their various advisers to understand this, and to realise that IRA decommissioning could, had they insisted, have been delivered much earlier than it was, led directly to the collapse of such middle ground as there was in the North, to the eclipse of the SDLP and Ulster Unionists by Sinn Féin and the DUP. If the Irish and British prime ministers are showered with plaudits on Monday for their handling of the peace process it would do no harm to keep that in mind.

By no means untainted by authoritarianism, Sinn Féin was nonetheless a different creature. Larger and more diverse than the IRA, it was a place where debate and dissent could and did exist, where political ideas were challenged, often by people who saw themselves as the guardians of the republican consience and ideology. Bending Sinn Féin to the leadership's will was often much more difficult.

No better example of this can be found than in the Provisionals' rejection of the federal Ireland programme of the Ruari O Bradaigh/ Daithi O Connail leadership. A prerequisite to winkling the two men out of leadership positions, and eventually out of the Provisionals altogether, Eire Nua was binned by the Army Council in 1979 but it wasn't until 1982, just before Gerry Adams succeeded O Bradaigh as president of the party, that Sinn Féin was persuaded to ditch the policy.

Sinn Féin's stubborn resistance to the IRA's diktat at times meant that when it came to ensuring that the party towed the line unconventional methods were adopted.

A startling example of this came with the passing of a key milestone on the peace journey, the 1986 ard-fheis decision to drop abstentionism in the 26 counties, a vote that forced Ruari O Bradaigh's departure and gave the infant peace process credibility in government circles.

None of us in the media noticed at the time but mysteriously the number of delegates suddenly doubled for that one meeting. The previous year the ard-fheis had defeated a dry run motion proposed by the Adams' leadership saying that abstentionism was not a principle but a tactic by 181 votes to 161, a total of 342 votes. Any attempt to change Sinn Féin policy on the issue seemed doomed. But the next year, 1986, the vote went dramatically the other way. A leadership motion to drop abstentionism in the Dail was won by 429 to 161 with some 38 abstaining, shading the required two-thirds majority by just 11 votes. That was a total of 628 votes, nearly twice the number voting twelve months before. The following year, however, the number of delegates voting settled back to its normal 350 mark and even in 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was endorsed it was the same total, with 331 for and 19 against.

So where had the extra 300 or so votes come from in 1986? The passage of time eventually loosened enough republican tongues for the truth to emerge. The IRA had arranged for the creation of over 100 ghost cumainn that were all duly registered at Sinn Féin's headquarters, whose bureaucracy was by then safely under the Army Council's control. Although none of the new branches had any members they were entitled to send two delegates each to the 1986 conference, which they duly did. According to republican sources these were really Army Council delegates, loyal IRA members committed to dropping abstentionism no matter what Sinn Féin thought. In such a way was history made and the peace process made possible.

There was similar sharp footwork at the May 1998 ard-fheis which approved the Good Friday Agreement, but this time it was the British and Irish governments, not the IRA, which choreographed the steps. A first ard-fheis was held in mid-April but the mood of the grassroots was decidedly hostile to the accord and its unexpected centrepiece, a new Assembly at Stormont. One sample of delegate views showed that only 44% favoured the deal, well below the two-thirds needed. Wisely the Adams leadership stayed its hand that day.

A second ard-fheis was held three weeks later but this time delegates arrived to discover that 27 well known IRA prisoners held in Irish and British jails, including the notorious Balcombe Street gang, had been specially released for the event. The effect of their presence was to remind delegates that if they failed to endorse the deal these prisoners would return to jail and spend many more years behind bars. Not surprisingly the Good Friday Agreement was approved by 94.5% of the ard-fheis.

It would be surprising if the Sinn Féin leadership resorted to such Tammany Hall-style tactics tomorrow. For one thing they are probably unnecessary. After all the Sinn Féin of 2007 is the Sinn Féin of Mary Lou McDonald and her ilk, not Ruari O Bradaigh. This track record of chicanery is nonetheless one reason why some view the prospect of the Sinn Féin leadership entering government and gaining access to the levers of power in either part of Ireland with less than unalloyed enthusiasm. But it also shows that Gerry Adams and his colleagues never go to an ard-fheis on a matter of importance unless they are pretty sure what the result will be.

January 27, 2007
________________
Ed Moloney is author of A Secret History of the IRA.