Northern Ireland Peace Process and the International Context

Benjamin Williams

Description

Northern Ireland is currently enjoying a period of relative peace and stability unprecedented for much of the past half century. Such stability is the product of a variety of factors that has created conditions whereby Northern Ireland now runs its own political institutions for the first time since the early 1970s. International relations and developments since the early 1980s have had a key influence on the Northern Ireland process, and such external influences require renewed attention in assessing the evolution of the Northern Ireland conflict and the recent progress towards long-term peace. Since the abrupt end of the Cold War in the early 1990s in particular, the Northern Ireland dispute, along with many other inter-ethnic conflicts, has felt the repercussions of such geo-political changes, both positive and negative. In this context, many external states, forces and individuals have wielded significant influence over Northern Ireland's development. The world's only remaining superpower, the USA, has particularly taken a renewed interest in Northern Ireland, an interest bolstered by a President with a genuine interest in the province. Other long-term external disputes such as the Middle East conflict and South Africa's advance from apartheid have also been inter-linked with the Northern Ireland dispute. The European Union has continued to evolve as a trans-national organisation, and has also sought to influence the easing of sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland. This book seeks to assess the overall impact that such global developments have undoubtedly had on the Northern Ireland peace process, and attempts to offer fresh interpretations of a complex element within that process. Ben Williams, B.A (Hons.), M.A PhD student, University of Liverpool.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

Sujets

• Irlanda del Norte
• Northern Ireland
• Irlande du Nord

Informations

• Publié par: Pneuma Springs Publishing
• Date de parution: 08 avril 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782281979
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The
Northern Ireland
Peace Process
and the
International Context



Benjamin Williams
Copyright
First Published in 2010 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
The Northern Ireland Peace Process and the International Context Copyright © 2010 Benjamin Williams
Kindle eISBN: 9781907728778 ePub eISBN: 9781782281979 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782280613 Paperback ISBN: 9781905809844
Pneuma Springs Publishing E: [e-mail] W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
Dedication

For Katie and my parents
Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: How international diplomacy, events and foreign statesmen have influenced the Northern Ireland conflict since 1985
Chapter Two: How did the active participants in the Northern Ireland conflict view such external, international influences?
Chapter Three: How significant were such external factors in establishing and maintaining the 1998 peace settlement?
Conclusion and Overview
Bibliography and Further Reading
Introduction
The creation of Northern Ireland in 1921 represented an uneasy compromise between Britain and the burgeoning semi-independent state of Ireland. Such a development occurred amidst a surge of nationalism and sectarian violence, and for the British governing classes, it was hoped that partition would eradicate the province’s troubled image in both domestic and international terms. Following such sustained socio-political unrest, prominent contemporary politicians such as Britain’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George took the viewpoint that a degree of political autonomy would allow Ireland, particularly its divided northern sector, to fade into relative obscurity and off the radar for the foreseeable future. Subsequently for over 50 years between 1921 and 1972, Northern Ireland existed in a sphere of sectarian-orientated self-government, apparently oblivious to external socio-political pressures and influence. Britain’s role appeared detached and aloof, and the wider international community had bigger issues to focus on, particularly a Second World War in the 1940s and the all-consuming ideological and psychological Cold War from 1945 onwards. Yet in an increasingly globalised world, no nation or province can indefinitely survive in international isolation, immune from the influence and pressure of external affairs. This is particularly the case in relation to a polarised population like Northern Ireland’s, existing within a fragile tinder-box environment and divided along ethno-religious lines. Its constitutional status had merely been put in cold storage in 1921, due to the fact that despite 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties gaining effective freedom from Britain:

‘six counties, Northern Ireland, stayed British at the insistence of their large Protestant and unionist majority..... (leaving) a significant Catholic and nationalist minority, a third of Northern Ireland’s one and a half million people’. 1

In this divided context of rival identities and loyalties, by the late 1960s events in Northern Ireland almost inevitably stirred again, with global implications. The majority unionist community were pitched against the sizeable nationalist Catholic minority in seeking control of the province, and the Provisional IRA’s emergence in this period was a reaction to the combined pressures of Protestant hegemonic rule, American black civil rights marches and the deployment of the British army in the province. This set the tone for a new troubled passage in the province’s relatively short history. This fusion of domestic factors with external forces would shape Northern Ireland’s evolution in later years, and it has subsequently been argued that ‘ from the outset, the conflict in Northern Ireland has had an international dimension’ 2 , due to the way that political developments within the province were moulded by various external forces over the years, whether from the USA, Europe or the wider international community.
By 1985, Northern Ireland stood at a violent crossroads in its development as a geo-political entity. The ‘Troubles’ had endured for over 15 years and there appeared little end in sight to the triangular war of attrition between the IRA, unionist paramilitaries and British military and security forces. While some elements of the IRA continued to believe that ultimate victory over the British army was possible, others feared that a prolonged military campaign showed little sign of ending. Republican optimism of the late 1960s, inspired by the successes of global events such as the North Vietnamese ‘Tet Offensive’ against the mighty USA in 1968, had dissolved into a progressive realisation that Britain’s professional army would not necessarily submit to an insurgent force as had occurred with American conscripts in Vietnam 3 , and a brutal stalemate ensued. In this context, guerrilla successes in Vietnam did not set an international precedent as far as Northern Ireland was concerned, and therefore ‘the “long war” became IRA policy’ 4 from the mid-1970s onwards.
Yet this focus on sustained ‘war’ belied a dual purpose. Even at the height of IRA terrorism, a phase that included the audacious 1984 Brighton bombing which sought to assassinate the entire British Cabinet, the preliminary stages of a peace process were germinating. Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political wing, had achieved relative electoral success in the 1982 assembly elections, buoyed by the significant international publicity of the 1981 hunger strikes 5 , during which leading hunger-striker Bobby Sands was elected as a Westminster MP. This was followed by the election of Gerry Adams to Westminster as abstentionist MP for Belfast West in 1983. Such events increased Sinn Féin’s profile as a political force, and once abstentionism, at least for the Irish Dáil, was formally abandoned in 1986 6 , such constitutional developments ‘ had opened up intriguing possibilities’ 7 , that ‘the ballot box was beginning to curb the Armalite’ 8 .
The subsequent 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement was therefore a somewhat quixotic reaction to both domestic and international developments, representing a coherent attempt by the British and Irish governments to formally address the Northern Ireland question, suppress Sinn Féin’s steady political growth, while also embracing international input and support. This Agreement was supplemented with enhanced security measures designed to restrict IRA operations, yet this Anglo-Irish anti-terrorist agenda was a development that conveniently aligned with significant grassroots republican feeling in the mid-1980s of ‘popular disenchantment with the IRA’s violence’ 9 . Many nationalists and republicans, worn down by the unremitting sectarian hostility and bloodshed of the ‘long war’ , saw potential in diplomacy and promising demographic trends that indicated prospects of enhanced Catholic influence in Northern Ireland, with the province’s Catholic population exceeding 40% by the mid-1980s. This mood correlated with specific global developments, particularly relating to peace initiatives in the similarly intractable Middle East conflict in the early 1980s and the concluding stages of the enduring Cold War in the latter part of the same decade. This post-Cold War scenario created new challenges for the IRA and ‘made it far more difficult to continue with its military campaign’ 10 , as such apparent anti-imperialism was more difficult to justify. This was particularly so when Britain appeared less willing to maintain strategic control of Northern Ireland in the context of reviewing its Cold War and NATO security agenda. Such a post-Cold War re-assessment of Britain’s strategic and security interests in the province became dramatically evident in November 1990, when British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Brooke made a ‘remarkable speech’ in London, stating that Britain had ‘no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland’ 11 . Some republicans interpreted this as evidence that Britain could not defeat the IRA outright 12 , as the ‘IRA had the capacity to continue until whatever period was required’ 13 . However, this universal re-assessment of the province’s position in the post-Cold War era was broadly aligned with global developments and renewed international interest in Northern Ireland from the 1980s onwards, particularly and most significantly among Irish-American opinion.

----------
1 Ed Moloney, ‘A Secret History of the IRA’ , (2002), Ch.1, p.37
2 Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, ‘The dynamics of conflict in Northern Ireland’, (1996), Ch.10, p.266
3 See Ed Moloney, ‘A Secret History of the IRA’, (2002), Ch.12, p.338
4 Ed Moloney, ‘A Secret History of the IRA’, (2002), Ch.4, p.150. The author dates the ‘Long War’s’ origins to 1975.
5 In the 1982 Northern Ireland assembly elections Sinn Fein achieved 64,000 votes, representing 10.1% of the overall vote and resulting in the election of 5 (abstentionist) seats out of the total of 78. For further details see Moloney, ‘A Secret History of the IRA’, (2002), Ch.7, p.219, also: http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/fa82.htm
6 For further details of resolution at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, 1-2 November 1986, see: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/sf/resolution162.htm
7 Ed Moloney, ‘A Secret History of the IRA’, (2002), Ch.7, p.245
8 Ibid., Ch.11, p.317. See also Kevin Bean, ‘The New Politics of Sinn Fein’ , (2007), Ch.2, p.63 for the origins of the phrase ‘the ballot paper and the Armalite’ as a new development in Sinn Fein strategy, cited by Danny Morrison at the 1981 Sinn Fein Ard Fheis.
9 Ed Moloney, ‘A Secret History of the IRA’, (2002),Ch.7, p.245
10 Paul Dixon, ‘Rethinking the internati