Stand
Down Or Deliver: A Second Open Letter To The
Leadership Of The Irish Republican Army
Paul A. Fitzsimmons • 8 May 2005
Sirs:
After
still more turbulent events of late in your region,
I've been urged by some Northern Ireland contacts
to return to the fray, which I do here reluctantly.
However,
in that I've long called on others to change their
views substantially on Northern Ireland, I shall
today do so myself. Notwithstanding the numerous,
grievous, and in fact irremediable flaws and inadequacies
of the Good Friday Agreement within this "peace
process," I now join the burgeoning chorus
in hereby registering-for whatever little it might
be worth-my own new first-choice "solution":
the Irish Republican Army's simply standing itself
down peremptorily and fully, come whatever may thereafter.
(See, e.g., Henry McDonald: "Short of
disbanding (a highly unlikely scenario), no IRA
statement, no IRA act of decommissioning, will suffice
for unionists to re-enter government with Sinn Féin
in Belfast. Regardless of whatever slant Tony Blair
and his spin masters put on [a recent IRA] statement
and the likely IRA response [to Gerry Adams' call
to Republicans], there will be no deal on the other
side of the general election, or for that matter
for the next few years." "Peace in their
time," The Guardian (8 April 2005).
See also the 9 April 2005 comments of Republic
of Ireland Minister Michael McDowell: "There
is no new IRA-lite policy that will succeed. It
must go away.")
That
call I make despite concerns regarding the GFA's
apparently dismal prospects, as examined in, among
many other places, Bruce Arnold's "Failing
peace process is turning into a nightmare,"
Irish Independent (26 March 2005). Such concerns
have obviously not been mitigated by Northern Ireland's
2005 Westminster election results.
All
that said, however, I again note that the untried
path of negotiated independence remains a possibility.
In this regard, it was interesting to see that even
Northern Unionist pundit Eric Waugh has, in light
of various election-related events, now come "reluctantly"
to the conclusion
that
the Union may indeed have become a farce, driven
by material considerations only and not any longer
by much emotional loyalty; and that, accordingly,
the logic of our future may be leading us towards
an independent Northern Ireland. [Belfast Telegraph
(6 May 2005).]
Against
this backdrop, if-in order to reach a fair and workable
socio-political middle ground-the IRA would accede
to standing down in an Ireland free of political
and military control from London, to standing down
within a pan-Ireland (albeit two-part) republican-form-of-government
context, to standing down in circumstances where
the North's society might finally choose to move
itself decisively into a 21st century mode where
sectarian distinctions would form no basis for further
destructive social division, your group could still,
towards all those ends, throw down the independence
gauntlet described in the 13 June 2004 "Open
Letter To The Leadership Of The Irish Republican
Army". (Cf. Jim Gibney: "Sometimes
you have to state the obvious to get across an obvious
point - the IRA will be part of the political scene
here until there is a comprehensive peace agreement
which works, which they can support and which deals
with the removal of all armed groups involved in
the conflict." "Fresh scenario needed
for IRA to exit," Irish News (24 March
2005).)
Overarchingly,
it would yet be "tragic, wrong, and foolish
for [anyone] to pass up the chance of a lasting
peace in Northern Ireland," as Mr. Blair himself
seemed to believe, at least some years ago.
Tragically,
wrongly, and foolishly, though, a love of the green-in
the form of greenbacks and their international equivalents-may
be, many fear, a large and real difficulty here,
as suggested by the poignant comment of former IRA
volunteer John Kelly (The Guardian (16 March
2005)): "They're doing what Thatcher couldn't
do - criminalising the republican movement."
However,
if "Rafia" gangsterism is in fact not
a key barrier to the IRA's taking decisive measures,
your group does have options:
(a)
You-all could just stand yourselves down immediately,
even if the breathing, if any, of the GFA "bird-in-the-hand"
is indiscernible.
(b)
If the IRA does not now elect to take that step,
it should at very least reconsider making a public
independence-based challenge to the British government
et al. Rather obviously, the IRA's making such
a challenge would cause many people to begin to
think much more thoroughly about this radical
possibility for moving forward. A first-and-last-ever
formal examination of six county independence
would assuredly be, if nothing else, interesting
… infinitely more so than still another sullen
decade or two of socio-political stagnation.
(c)
If your group rejects immediately standing down
and rejects making that independence challenge,
then it should spend a good eight or ten minutes
examining whether the IRA might finally achieve
a 32-county socialist republic by going back at
this point to vigorous, offensive battle. During
that period of consideration, you-all would likely
still have, in truth, enough time left over for
a smoke or a cup of coffee after concluding that
going back to that "war" would be moronic
at best, whereupon you-all could-bearing in mind
that life involves meager alternatives more often
than sublime superlatives-go on to consider whatever
other strategic proposals, if any, tabled before
your group in this regard should be adopted and
implemented.
But,
for Christ's sake, do something.
Whether
due to thoughtless inertia or gutless inertia, conditions
which seem rare in neither Britain nor Ireland,
simply sitting back and thereby consigning the six
counties to another generation-or even "merely"
years and years more-of political impasse and undemocratic
direct rule would surely be no better if done by
the IRA itself than if done by the British government
itself, as returning to "war" is virtually
beyond the imagination of all involved and especially
as there may be a possibility of moving well beyond
the current state of affairs.
Please
do not run away from making a decision.
Do
something that the politicians are loath to do:
do something.
Sincerely,
Paul
A. Fitzsimmons
PS: Mr. Gibney has sagely observed, as noted above,
that "[s]ometimes you have to state the obvious
to get across an obvious point." Here goes
regarding a few obvious points on six-county independence.
Even
if the IRA took the radical step of calling publicly
for an independence investigation, Mr. Blair would
very likely avoid attempting any such inquiry (thereby
making the IRA look more open than the British government
to the challenges of democracy). As I rather caustically
opined earlier this year in an
open letter to him: "[Y]ou are simply
too British to do anything other than to choose
orthodox, unimaginative, time-tested failure over
a small chance for success through your undertaking
a bold, open, untried course of action."
I have no reason to believe that that condition,
as I see it, has changed or ever will change, but
would it not at least be amusing-in the wake
of an unprecedented IRA call-to witness Mr. Blair
himself electing to say "no" to "the
chance of a lasting peace in Northern Ireland"
by his own choosing to forego even looking into
the possibility of a genuinely comprehensive settlement?
Some "legacy" for Northern Ireland that
would be.
Even
if, however, in response to an IRA challenge, the
British government did the unlikely by actually
initiating a formal inquiry on independence, one
or more of the political parties in the North still
left standing (and one such party comes immediately
to mind) would likely reject outright any independence
approach.
If,
somehow, the matter nonetheless ultimately got as
far as a plebiscite, it seems quite likely an ad
hoc, cross community body of rather more than
30 percent plus one of the voters would, at the
end of the day, be mustered to defeat it.
All
those probabilities notwithstanding, attempting
this historic effort would be markedly better, and
braver, than the "players" in Britain
and Ireland-including not least the leadership of
your group-doing little more than sitting around
for another generation blithely accepting the status
quo.
All
censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging
current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress
is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and
executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently
the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. - George Bernard Shaw
