By Sean Healy The massive bomb blast in the East End of London on February 9, attributed to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), has cast doubt over the Northern Irish peace process and the 18-month-old cease-fire between the IRA, loyalist paramilitary groups and the British government. The bombing is the first serious breach of the cease-fire by the Republican side. It comes after months of stalled all-party talks on the future of the troubled six northern counties of Ireland. Frustration has grown in the north in response to the slow pace of the so-called peace process, which officially began with the IRA's cease-fire announcement in August 1994 and the Downing Street Declaration by the British and Irish governments several months later. The intransigence of the British government is the main reason for the breakdown.
All-party talks stalled
All-party talks involving Dublin and London, as well as all the main nationalist and loyalist parties, were to have begun within four months of the cease-fire. However, almost since the beginning, the John Major government has been insisting that the IRA surrender its arms as a precursor for republican entry into the talks. Rejected by the IRA and by Sinn Féin, the republican political party, as unreasonable and unworkable, this has been the single most important reason why no real progress towards peace has been made. In an effort to break the deadlock, all parties agreed to an international commission led by US Senator George Mitchell to investigate the question of the decommissioning of arms. The Mitchell commission's report recommended a two-track solution, whereby negotiations would continue towards a total decommissioning of weapons but that such negotiations would not stall substantive all-party talks. Major rejected the recommendations, once again throwing the peace process into doubt. Over the last month, the Major government has called for elections in the north. This has been largely rejected by republicans and the mainly Catholic nationalist community there. Pointing to the gerrymander of the northern Irish statelet, they argue that such elections would pre-empt the results of all-party talks on what northern Ireland's future should be. Northern Ireland, consisting of six of Ulster's nine counties, is divided between a Catholic nationalist community (40%) and the Protestant loyalist community (60%). This has guaranteed loyalist domination historically, and it continues today despite the fact that the loyalists in the north only represent a small minority within the whole island.
Britain's intransigence
Britain's intransigence is a result of a number of factors. One is the increasingly precarious position of the Major government which, because of a number of defections by conservative MPs in recent months, now has to rely on right-wing Ulster Unionist Party MPs for support. In return, Major has given these MPs, who oppose talks with the republican movement, veto power over the progress of the talks. The British government is also attempting to use the cease-fire to weaken the IRA, marginalise the republican movement within the peace process and demoralise its base in the nationalist community. Britain wants the decommissioning of weapons in order to force an unconditional surrender by the IRA — a wish which the latest bombing has made seem even more unreal. The cease-fire came only after it was generally accepted that the war in the north had reached a stalemate. The nationalist community was exhausted by years of killings and random army raids, and the republican movement saw little hope of militarily forcing Britain from Ireland. From the British side, the occupation of the north had cost billions of pounds. However, it seems that Britain never gave up its hope of winning the unwinnable war. It has treated the peace process as a continuation of the war by other means, and its policy has had some success. Downing Street has largely cut the nationalist community out of the peace process by conducting it as a complex deal between itself and the Irish government in Dublin. The resulting disillusionment in the north affected large sections of the republican movement. While the cease-fire had a positive impact, it was only slight. The British army were confined to barracks, the checkpoints have been dismantled in the centre of Belfast and there has been a reduction in sectarian killings. However, the hated Royal Ulster Constabulary remains in place, highly militarised and still with deep links to the loyalist death squads. The surveillance towers in the towns and countryside remain standing, as does the border which separates the six counties from the rest of Ireland. Nor has the underlying situation fuelling nationalist discontent for 30 years changed much. Unemployment remains very high, both for Catholics and Protestants, poverty is still endemic and housing is still a major problem for the nationalist community. It was in this context that the IRA, with seemingly little or no consultation with Sinn Féin and its president Gerry Adams, broke the cease-fire. The immediate response was predictable: hypocritical condemnations of violence by the British, Irish and US governments, and the threat to cut Sinn Féin out of the peace process unless they renounced violence and reactivated the cease-fire. Adams didn't hesitate to place responsibility for the bombing on Downing Street: "I regret that an unprecedented opportunity for peace has foundered on the refusal of the British government and the Unionist leaders to enter into honest dialogue and substantive negotiations". Such criticism by Sinn Féin and others has had its effect on the British government. In the days since the blast, there have been many calls to accelerate progress towards all-party talks, particularly from the Dublin government. Such pressure may force Major's hand: it looks increasingly likely that talks will take place in next few months. At the same time, the British government has tried to use the bombing to further marginalise Sinn Féin by branding the republican movement as lovers of violence who feel threatened by the peace process. Added to this, Dublin's latest conciliatory statements on elections in the north only serve to strengthen Britain's hand in negotiations.