Reading an article in The Irish Times in which three former members of the IRA spoke on the 30th anniversary of the IRA’s ceasefire, I was reminded of a conversation that I had with one of the three, Michael Culbert, and another member of the IRA.
Both had been convicted of murder, acts that devastated two families. Talking to them, I said that I accepted that the people of Northern Ireland had got into a conflict that should never have happened, that should never be repeated. Culbert said he could not accept that as he felt, “they would not have achieved what they [the Republican movement] had if they had not done what they did”. The other man asked me to repeat my words.
After some reflection, he said he would accept this analysis. For me, he had created a basis for meaningful reconciliation, something that could never happen with those who adopted Culbert’s perspective. I have had similar conversations over the years with others who were senior in the IRA’s ranks, but my argument was always rejected in favour of promoting the narrative that the wider nationalist community owes the republican movement for what it has today.
In a society where too many people in Northern Ireland still lead separate lives and still feed on division, such a narrative can too easily go unchallenged.
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I experienced similar reactions recently when engaging with loyalists about creating “a Northern Ireland for all”, one that encourages the best of relations across this island, and between all parts of it and Britain. This they agreed with. However, they quickly talked about how their communities had been defended by loyalist paramilitaries. I told them I was from a police family, since my father was a RUC chief superintendent, one targeted by the IRA.
The first and last police officers killed in the Troubles were murdered by loyalists, I said. Equally, loyalists had killed 25 to 40 known republicans, with the IRA and other republican groups killing a similar number of known loyalists. Neither republicans nor loyalists defended their communities, despite their claims – then or now. Together they were responsible for 90 per cent of the murders – loyalists 30 per cent and Republicans 60 per cent. We agreed to focus on the future.
Some years ago, I challenged a leading Sinn Féin member at a public meeting because I believed he was going into schools to repeat the narrative that the IRA campaign of brutal violence was necessary and justified. Returning home, I rang the late senator Maurice Hayes. Was I wrong, I asked? He told me, as I knew he would, that “nothing had been achieved by violence that could not otherwise have been achieved peacefully”. Though perhaps not easily.
That is a proper basis for relations between the people of Northern Ireland and with the people of the Republic. We were fortunate to avoid a civil war. We should never take such a risk again. Saying that violence outside the law to promote a particular constitutional demand was wrong, unjustifiable and unnecessary is a small price to pay for better relations, even if it upsets the vanity of those who hold this view of history. It was those in Northern Ireland who kept community ties alive while others tried to destroy them who ultimately won the argument, assisted by the security forces who lost a thousand dead and thousands injured, and by a working legal system. The vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland refused to go where the extremes wished to take us, no matter how others seek to rewrite the history now.
In 1998, the Irish government drew a line under the past. Yet republicans and wider nationalism have kept a focus on the actions of the British state forces, while keeping a veil over their own acts – and insisting on their rights to be involved politically. Yes, there were acts by the British army, the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary that were wrong, particularly in the early years of the Troubles as they struggled to deal with the violence taking place on our streets. No reasonable unionist contests that. However, the insistence of republicans to demand light on one group of acts, but not others, was always going to compromise handling the past. More than 700 murders of NI security forces remain unsolved, out a total of the 1,420 who were killed. Is there a clamour for truth and justice from those families? Yes, there is, but it is quietly made and mostly ignored. The Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery should offer those families an honest opinion on what truth and justice they can hope to get.
It could help to address some of the understandable anger at the imbalanced way legacy has been dealt with. We hear about a small number of cases. So we should. But there are potentially 1,400 outstanding inquests.
Whatever one’s constitutional viewpoint, the majority of people in Northern Ireland in 1998 signed up in a referendum to make our shared home place somewhere for everyone to live.
We agreed to better relations between all parts of the island, and between the island of Ireland and Britain. If some now want to link progress with a demand that a justification of the past must be accepted by others, that bodes ill.
For some, the only meaningful strategy to win constitutional change has been demographics, to outbreed those they oppose, but that requires keeping people in Northern Ireland in trenches alienated from the place they live in. We should constantly remind our young people of the consequences of choosing violence. Yes, genuine civil rights abuses existed, but they were on the road to being dealt with from the early 1970s, if not fast enough.
However, the Provisional IRA’s campaign was not about civil rights. It was about driving people such as me “into the sea”. A million of us remain, and we remain tied to the land that we love, that we call home.
The current constitutional model on the island of “separate but together” is working. The 2023 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey indicates that 78 per cent of people in Northern Ireland are “content”, while only 5 per cent are not.
Politics remains, and will always remain, a work in progress. However, much quiet work is being done to encourage pro-union parties to provide good government, to build on the ties with the Republic and the rest of the UK. We must robustly challenge those who still insist violence was justified.
A former Irish international rugby player, Trevor Ringland is a Belfast-based solicitor and a former member of the Ulster Unionist and Conservative parties. He served on the Northern Ireland Policing Board
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