Veteran Irish diplomat says Sinn Féin should clarify its position on IRA
'Life's work of SDLP, Civil Rights movement and Campaign for Social Justice wiped out in a sea of blood'
A retired Irish diplomat who played a key role in the Northern Ireland Peace Process over many decades has said that Sinn Fein, as it aspires to take control of government in the Republic of Ireland, should clarify its position on the IRA.
Seán Donlon, the former Irish Ambassador to the United States of America, told a seminar in his native Meath that the structures linking Sinn Fein and the IRA remain in place, and that their ultimate loyalty appears to be to the “sovereign Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916” rather than to the Irish Constitution of 1937.
Mr Donlon told the Meath Archaeological and Historical Society and Meath Peace Group seminar '50 Years of the Northern Ireland Peace Process – Retrospective and Reflections' that a continuing feature of the Troubles in the 1970s, '80s and '90s was the campaign of terror and violence and the major role played in it by the Republican Movement, Sinn Fein and the IRA.
“Sinn Fein is linked to the IRA by labyrinthine administrative structures and to quote its constitution: “Sinn Fein is the political wing of the Republican Movement and supports in principle the legitimate struggle being waged by the IRA”,” he stated.
He said that Martin McGuinness has put it succinctly: “The IRA freedom fighters and the Sinn Fein freedom fighters are one and the same thing”. Gerry Adams has also put it simply when as Sinn Fein President he said “We support the IRA”.
The veteran diplomat stated: “During the 30 years of the Troubles there were 3,636 fatalities. That compares with 504 fatalities during the Easter Rising, 2,346 in the War of Independence and about 2,000 in the Civil War. 1,771 fatalities during the Troubles are directly attributed to the IRA and at least 636 of these were innocent, uninvolved citizens. The IRA killed five times more people than the British Army, the UDR and the RUC combined. Their campaign extended to Britain and the continent of Europe and in this jurisdiction they murdered a member of the Oireachtas, members of An Garda Siochana, of the Army (Oglaigh na hEireann) and of the Prison Service. They robbed our banks and post offices and kidnapped people including Ben Dunne, Don Tidey and Tiede Herrema.
“They washed out in a sea of blood the life’s work of the SDLP, the Civil Rights movement, and the Campaign for Social Justice. As Seamus Mallon has said “the violent republicanism of the IRA has inflicted more lethal damage on the concept of Irish unity than many decades of unionism ever could”. They have left a darkened stain on our nationalist history.
“And there was no moral justification for the campaign. Church leaders asserted this from as early as 1971 and in 1974 a committee set up by the leaders of all the Christian churches on the island of Ireland concluded that “there is no justification in the present situation in Ireland for the existence of any paramilitary organisations and no justification for the use of violence to achieve political objectives”.
“It is, of course, important to acknowledge that in recent times the IRA have discontinued their campaign of violence and they have joined with the other parties to the Good Friday Agreement in reaffirming “total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving differences on political issues”. But the structures linking Sinn Fein and the IRA remain in place,” he stated.
He continued: “As Sinn Fein now aspire to take control of government in this jurisdiction it would be helpful if they further clarified their position:
Will they break their links with the IRA?
Will they use their influence to disband the IRA?
“In almost every decade since the foundation of the State 100 years ago the Republican Movement has been active. It is time that we should definitively clarify for ourselves and for the world that violence has no place in our democracy. One way of achieving this would be to have the new Electoral Commission, which is responsible for registering political parties, require as a condition of registration that all political parties declare their fidelity to the Irish nation and loyalty to the State and undertake to faithfully observe the laws of the State and respect its democratic values. Alternatively or additionally members of the Dail and Seanad might be required to take an oath with similar wording which, incidentally, is the wording new Irish citizens are required to take.
Sean Donlon's full paper:
'From Sunningdale to the Good Friday Agreement'
I have been asked to speak about my recollections of the period from Sunningdale in 1973 to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. (As an Irish diplomat I spent much of the '70s travelling in Northern Ireland, served in Washington from 1978 to 1981 and headed the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1981 to 1987 when I moved to the private sector. I returned to the public sector in 1994 at John Bruton’s invitation and worked with him while he was Taoiseach until 1997.)
My recollections of the '70s in Northern Ireland are dominated by violence. For more than a quarter century the situation was marked by what Bertie Ahern recently described as “the ferocious trauma of the Troubles”. I will return to this aspect of the Troubles later but I’d like to begin by briefly referring to some earlier events.
The 60s had seen the beginning of what might be described as the winds of change in Northern Ireland. O’Neill and Lemass met twice in 1965 – at the initiative of O’Neill. The Campaign for Social Justice led by the McCloskeys in Dungannon in 1964 began to document and publicise anti-nationalist discrimination in housing, employment and electoral boundaries. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was set up in 1967. John Hume’s seminal articles in the Irish Times setting out a new nationalist agenda appeared in 1964. Instead of the traditional ‘you the Brits created the Irish Problem now solve it’ Hume set out a totally new approach. It was based on three principles viz. a rejection of violence, no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of the majority and a recognition that unionism and nationalism were equally valid political positions. The Hume principles were to be eventually embraced by the main political parties in the Republic and to form the basis of the policies of successive US Administrations. They were also to become the foundation stones for the Sunningdale arrangements and the Good Friday Agreement.
By the end of the 60s the optimism of the earlier part of the decade had been replaced by unrest, street riots and fatalities. British troops were sent in in 1969 and a programme of reform was initiated. It was, however, too little too late. Security policy began to dominate and events such as the one-sided introduction of internment in August 1971 and Bloody Sunday in Derry a few months later eventually led to the abolition of Stormont and Direct Rule from London. In London the view that Dublin had nothing to do with Northern Ireland began to change and the 1972 Green Paper accepted that there was an All-Ireland dimension.
At the meeting in Sunningdale in December 1973 the Irish and British Governments, the Faulkner unionists, Hume’s SDLP and the Alliance Party reached agreement on a power-sharing government for Northern Ireland and a Council of Ireland. Within a matter of months, however, these arrangements, even when watered down to drop the Council of Ireland, were brought down by a combination of unionist opposition, an escalation of IRA violence and a failure of the new British Government led by Harold Wilson to back what Heath’s government had agreed at Sunningdale. One of the lessons we learned from Sunningdale was the importance of that Dublin and London singing from the same hymn sheet.
The fact that Ireland and the UK had joined the Common Market together in 1973 was also helpful. Irish officials and politicians were now meeting regularly in what might be called the neutral climate of Brussels.
A little known fact is that immediately after the fall of Sunningdale Wilson and his inner cabinet decided “to disengage entirely from Northern Ireland, severing all constitutional links between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK”. Officials were instructed to study the implications of this decision but neither the Northern Ireland parties nor the Irish Government were consulted. The report by the officials is now available in the National Archives in Kew and makes scary reading. Fortunately a small but well placed group of London officials persuaded Wilson that unilateral withdrawal would cause chaos which would not be confined to the island of Ireland.
Another unilateral British decision which had implications for Ireland was the decision to initiate and maintain contact with the IRA. The first secret meeting was held in County Donegal on 20 June 1972 and involved Gerry Adams and David O’Connell representing the IRA and Philip Woodfield representing the British Government. It is now known that for the duration of the Troubles direct or occasionally indirect contact between the two sides was always maintained, thereby giving the IRA credibility and grounds for believing the terrorism might eventually be rewarded. All this at a time when London was publicly shouting at Dublin to “do something about the IRA”.
The decade from the mid-70s was politically bleak in Northern Ireland and in Anglo-Irish relations. But far away in America a decision was taken which was to have very significant, long-term consequences for Northern Ireland. In August 1977 President Jimmy Carter issued a statement calling for “the establishment in Northern Ireland of a government which would command widespread acceptance and for a just solution which would involve the support of the Irish Government”. This was a dramatic change of US policy. As far back as 1880 leaders of Irish nationalism had been seeking US support for their objectives. Parnell visited Washington in 1880 and addressed the House of Representatives. Pearse lobbied in 1914 and de Valera spent two years 1919-21 in the US seeking recognition for Irish independence. The US stuck rigidly to its position that because of its special relationship with the UK, it would not intervene in matters they regarded as exclusively internal to the UK. Even President Kennedy could not be moved from this position before his Irish visit in 1963. Jimmy Carter was a surprising instrument of the change. He was one of the few US presidents for whom we could find no Irish roots and he had never been to Ireland before his election. Two things brought about the change: firstly, instead of asking for US support for our position we asked for the US to join with Ireland and the UK - two countries with which the US had special relationships – in finding a way forward in Northern Ireland. Secondly, Irish-American Democrat politicians supportive of Dublin’s position, Tip O’Neill, Ted Kennedy, Pat Moynihan and Hugh Carey, were now in prominent political positions in the US and were prepared to use their influence on the President’s policy on Ireland. Presidents after Carter notably Reagan, Clinton and currently Biden have continued this policy of engagement.
Back to the island of Ireland. As I said earlier things were politically bleak for the decade beginning in 1975. Thatcher’s handling of the hunger strikes in the early 80s and Haughey’s clumsy handling of the Falklands conflict in 1982 brought Anglo-Irish relations to yet another all-time low.
When Garret FitzGerald became Taoiseach in 1983, he set up the New Ireland Forum which focussed on analysing nationalist identity and defining principles for creating a new Ireland. When the Forum issued its report FitzGerald persuaded Thatcher to join with him in focussing on the Northern Ireland situation. A small group of British and Irish officials was tasked with negotiating an agreement. During the negotiations the IRA attempted to murder Thatcher at her Brighton Tory Party conference and there were public problems for FitzGerald when Thatcher appeared to reject everything in her “out, out, out” remarks. President Reagan was very helpful throughout and when an Anglo-Irish Treaty was finally signed in 1985 the US joined with the EU and other countries in giving it financial backing.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 is different from Sunningdale and the Good Friday Agreement in that it did not involve the Northern Ireland political parties. It did, however, significantly bind the two governments to a broadly common approach. It also gave the Irish Government an “intrusive” role in the processes of government in Northern Ireland and enabled an Irish Government office to be opened in Northern Ireland for the first time.
One last building block for the Good Friday Agreement was the signing of the Joint Framework Document between Dublin and London in 1995. This set out a shared understanding to assist prospective discussions and negotiations involving the two governments and the Northern Ireland parties.
I return now to a continuing feature of the Troubles in the 70s/80s/and 90s , namely the campaign of terror and violence and the major role played in it by the Republican Movement, Sinn Fein and the IRA. Sinn Fein is linked to the IRA by labyrinthine administrative structures and to quote its constitution “Sinn Fein is the political wing of the Republican Movement and supports in principle the legitimate struggle being waged by the IRA”. Martin McGuinness has put it succinctly “The IRA freedom fighters and the Sinn Fein freedom fighters are one and the same thing”. Gerry Adams has also put it simply when as Sinn Fein President he said “We support the IRA”.
During the 30 years of the Troubles there were 3,636 fatalities. That compares with 504 fatalities during the Easter Rising, 2,346 in the War of Independence and about 2,000 in the Civil War. 1,771 fatalities during the Troubles are directly attributed to the IRA and at least 636 of these were innocent, uninvolved citizens. The IRA killed five times more people than the British Army, the UDR and the RUC combined. Their campaign extended to Britain and the continent of Europe and in this jurisdiction they murdered a member of the Oireachtas, members of An Garda Siochana, of the Army (Oglaigh na hEireann) and of the Prison Service. They robbed our banks and post offices and kidnapped people including Ben Dunne, Don Tidey and Tiede Herrema.
They washed out in a sea of blood the life’s work of the SDLP, the Civil Rights movement, and the Campaign for Social Justice. As Seamus Mallon has said “the violent republicanism of the IRA has inflicted more lethal damage on the concept of Irish unity than many decades of unionism ever could”. They have left a darkened stain on our nationalist history.
And there was no moral justification for the campaign. Church leaders asserted this from as early as 1971 and in 1974 a committee set up by the leaders of all the Christian churches on the island of Ireland concluded that “there is no justification in the present situation in Ireland for the existence of any paramilitary organisations and no justification for the use of violence to achieve political objectives”.
It is, of course, important to acknowledge that in recent times the IRA have discontinued their campaign of violence and they have joined with the other parties to the Good Friday Agreement in reaffirming “total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving differences on political issues”. But the structures linking Sinn Fein and the IRA remain in place. And their ultimate loyalty appears to be to the “sovereign Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916” rather than to the Irish Constitution of 1937.
As Sinn Fein now aspire to take control of government in this jurisdiction it would be helpful if they further clarified their position:
Will they break their links with the IRA?
Will they use their influence to disband the IRA?
In almost every decade since the foundation of the State 100 years ago the Republican Movement has been active. It is time that we should definitively clarify for ourselves and for the world that violence has no place in our democracy. One way of achieving this would be to have the new Electoral Commission, which is responsible for registering political parties, require as a condition of registration that all political parties declare their fidelity to the Irish nation and loyalty to the State and undertake to faithfully observe the laws of the State and respect its democratic values. Alternatively or additionally members of the Dail and Seanad might be required to take an oath with similar wording which, incidentally, is the wording new Irish citizens are required to take.
Seán Donlon - October 2023