Northern Ireland can never return to its past
A July 1995 Celtic Mirror editorial weighed claims that the IRA was ready to go back to war, counted the dividends of peace, and bet on the ceasefire.
As printed in the Celtic Mirror, July 1995
Is the IRA threatening to resume a campaign of violence after 10 months of peace, albeit a shaky peace, without giving the peace talks a chance?
Sinn Fein, Ireland's republican party, emphatically denies the claim; the British and Irish officials have done the same.
Mitchel McLaughlin, Sinn Fein's northern chairman, scorned the allegation by Ulster Unionist Party MP Ken Maginnis that the IRA had ordered a rolling resumption of violence.
Maginnis claimed he had received intelligence reports that the IRA was just looking for an excuse to restart a campaign of terror.
But, as McLaughlin said, Maginnis has been "routinely and consistently" wrong in the past.
He said he is convinced the guns will remain silent and that "no one will willingly return to the armed struggle."
It would be foolhardy at this point in time to return Northern Ireland to the fear and devastation it experienced prior to the cease fire.
Things are looking up in that war-torn section of the Emerald Isle.
For example, since the cease fire:
- The number of potential foreign investors who visited in Northern Ireland has increased by almost 70 percent.
- The European Union, the United States and Australian governments have or have proposed increasing their level of support for the International Fund for Ireland.
- Business confidence is up by 31 percent.
- Employment is at an all time high, while unemployment rates are falling.
- Tourism to Northern Ireland has pumped about $300 million into the economy.
- Established foreign industries are expanding, creating more jobs.
So with all these positive aspects, it is hard to believe that anyone, especially the IRA, would put the peace process in jeopardy.
Even if, as Ulster Unionist legal spokesman David Trimble said, "there are elements within the IRA who are not happy with the Gerry Adams/Martin McGuinness leadership," we have to believe cooler heads will prevail.
British Prime Minister John Major may be right when, in an interview with the British Press Association, he said "If the IRA ever chose to go back to violence they would find that circumstances have changed dramatically.
"They're not going to have the same financial backing they had from abroad, they are not going to have the same backing as they had in the past. They are not going to have the same backing from the people on the streets and the Irish government and the churches and elsewhere that they once claimed they had. That has changed."
We can only hope that circumstances will not warrant the testing of that statement.
After the ceasefire
The editorial's hope held for seven more months. On 9 February 1996 the IRA announced the end of the ceasefire it had declared on 31 August 1994, and that evening a bomb exploded at South Quay in London's Docklands. Two men were killed, newsagent Inam Bashir and his employee John Jeffries, and more than 100 people were hurt. Damage was put at about £150 million. Ken Maginnis's warning, which this page set aside, read differently after that night.
The IRA restored its ceasefire in July 1997. The Good Friday Agreement was signed in Belfast on 10 April 1998 and endorsed by referendum on 22 May, with 71.11 percent voting yes in Northern Ireland and 94.39 percent in the Republic. In July 2005 the IRA formally ended its campaign, and on 26 September 2005 it said its arsenal had been put beyond use.
The people quoted here went on to bigger roles. David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist legal spokesman in this piece, was elected party leader on 8 September 1995, became Northern Ireland's First Minister in 1998 and shared that year's Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume. He died in 2022. Mitchel McLaughlin became Sinn Féin's chairperson in 1996 and, in January 2015, the first nationalist Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
John Major, quoted at the end, did not see the settlement through. His government lost office on 1 May 1997, less than a year before the agreement was signed.
A housekeeping note: the archived page repeated its first three paragraphs as a teaser before the editorial proper. We have printed them once.
Questions readers ask
When did the IRA ceasefire end in 1996?
The IRA ended the ceasefire it had declared on 31 August 1994 on 9 February 1996, announcing the decision shortly before a large bomb exploded at South Quay in London's Docklands. The blast killed two men, injured more than 100 people and caused an estimated £150 million in damage. A new IRA ceasefire was declared in July 1997.
When was the Good Friday Agreement signed?
The Good Friday Agreement was signed in Belfast on 10 April 1998. Voters in both parts of Ireland approved it in referendums held on 22 May 1998: 71.11 percent said yes in Northern Ireland on an 81.1 percent turnout, and 94.39 percent backed the related constitutional amendment in the Republic of Ireland.
When did the IRA decommission its weapons?
The IRA carried out decommissioning rounds in October 2001, April 2002 and October 2003, announced the formal end of its armed campaign in July 2005, and declared on 26 September 2005 that its arsenal had been put beyond use under international supervision. A May 2000 target for full disarmament, set after the Good Friday Agreement, had been missed.
Who was Mitchel McLaughlin?
Mitchel McLaughlin is a Sinn Féin politician who was the party's northern chairman in 1995, its chairperson from 1996 to 2005 and its general secretary from 2003 to 2007. He sat in the Northern Ireland Assembly for Foyle and later South Antrim, and in January 2015 became the first nationalist Speaker of the Assembly, serving until May 2016.
