The IRA Stands Down
The "armed struggle" that devastated Northern Ireland for 36 years screeched to a halt yesterday when the Irish Republican Army ordered all of its units to dump their arms and announced an end to their fighting. Their huge arsenal is to be "verifiably put beyond use," according to an IRA statement that also invited Protestant and Catholic clergy to witness the decommissioning.
The question many are asking is why is it happening so suddenly? They wonder if it is tied to the bombings in London. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, leaders of the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein, both expressed regret over the July 7 London bombings, a regret they might not have expressed before 9/11. Perhaps now the terrorist attacks taking place around the world are hardening people's minds and hearts to causes that were previously viewed as "romantic". The freedom fighters could be understood by many for their resort to violence to make it known how much they wanted peace (?) in their land, before Bin Laden. The bloom is well and truly off that rose now.
This past spring Adams made his yearly pilgrimage to the U.S. where he had previously been welcomed by high standing public figures, such as Senator Edward Kennedy. This year he was denied his usual tete-a-tete with Kennedy and the doors of the White House, usually open to him, were slammed in his face. Kennedy declared "the IRA's criminality is undermining the peace process, and it's time for Sinn Fein and the IRA to hear this message clearly from the U.S." A very short time ago, Kennedy had no problems at all with supporting men who were directly involved in a "struggle" that has claimed more than 3,500 Catholic and Protestant victims.
The world evinces a growing weariness of violence, and a revulsion for those who espouse it. Perhaps the very means supposed to achieve their aim of expelling the Brits from Ireland has instead turned on them. While Adams was being snubbed so publicly in March, the McCartneys, five sisters of a Belfast victim of the IRA were being welcomed by Kennedy and feted at the White House while the media listened to their protest against the "freedom fighting" that has plagued their land for so long. "We are now dealing with criminal gangs who are using the cloak of romanticism around the IRA to murder people on the streets and walk away from it," Catherine McCartney said.
The IRA have lost so much of the status they had previously enjoyed. They are now viewed as much as bank heist artists as they are a political movement, especially since a $55 million armed robbery of a Belfast bank last December was laid on their doorstep by both the British and the Irish Prime Ministers. "Romantic freedom-fighting was one thing, squalid criminality quite another," wrote Andrew Stephen, U.S. editor of the New Statesman.
The call to stand down will be accepted by many of the members, of course, but there will also be those who will refuse to heed it. You can not preach murder for so long and not have your words finally acquire a life of their own. Anything that is alive will fight long and hard to stay alive. "A lot of good men who died would be turning in their graves, just like my stomach is turning over listening to this," says Harry McClafferty, a man interviewed when the news broke in Ardoyne, an acknowledged IRA power base. The struggle will indeed diminish, but I'm thinking that the terrorists who have enjoyed taking part in it will not so easily be denied their pleasure in killing. We can only wait and see.
The question many are asking is why is it happening so suddenly? They wonder if it is tied to the bombings in London. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, leaders of the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein, both expressed regret over the July 7 London bombings, a regret they might not have expressed before 9/11. Perhaps now the terrorist attacks taking place around the world are hardening people's minds and hearts to causes that were previously viewed as "romantic". The freedom fighters could be understood by many for their resort to violence to make it known how much they wanted peace (?) in their land, before Bin Laden. The bloom is well and truly off that rose now.
This past spring Adams made his yearly pilgrimage to the U.S. where he had previously been welcomed by high standing public figures, such as Senator Edward Kennedy. This year he was denied his usual tete-a-tete with Kennedy and the doors of the White House, usually open to him, were slammed in his face. Kennedy declared "the IRA's criminality is undermining the peace process, and it's time for Sinn Fein and the IRA to hear this message clearly from the U.S." A very short time ago, Kennedy had no problems at all with supporting men who were directly involved in a "struggle" that has claimed more than 3,500 Catholic and Protestant victims.
The world evinces a growing weariness of violence, and a revulsion for those who espouse it. Perhaps the very means supposed to achieve their aim of expelling the Brits from Ireland has instead turned on them. While Adams was being snubbed so publicly in March, the McCartneys, five sisters of a Belfast victim of the IRA were being welcomed by Kennedy and feted at the White House while the media listened to their protest against the "freedom fighting" that has plagued their land for so long. "We are now dealing with criminal gangs who are using the cloak of romanticism around the IRA to murder people on the streets and walk away from it," Catherine McCartney said.
The IRA have lost so much of the status they had previously enjoyed. They are now viewed as much as bank heist artists as they are a political movement, especially since a $55 million armed robbery of a Belfast bank last December was laid on their doorstep by both the British and the Irish Prime Ministers. "Romantic freedom-fighting was one thing, squalid criminality quite another," wrote Andrew Stephen, U.S. editor of the New Statesman.
The call to stand down will be accepted by many of the members, of course, but there will also be those who will refuse to heed it. You can not preach murder for so long and not have your words finally acquire a life of their own. Anything that is alive will fight long and hard to stay alive. "A lot of good men who died would be turning in their graves, just like my stomach is turning over listening to this," says Harry McClafferty, a man interviewed when the news broke in Ardoyne, an acknowledged IRA power base. The struggle will indeed diminish, but I'm thinking that the terrorists who have enjoyed taking part in it will not so easily be denied their pleasure in killing. We can only wait and see.
7 Comments:
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this statement means nothing.
i grew up hearing and seeing violence from the ordinary men on the street, who claimed no affiliation. that's the people that need to be watched - the boys and young men rioting every time there's a parade.
they don't riot for the I.R.A or for Ireland - they riot out of inbred hatred that has no point in today's world.
Ireland will never have peace as long as there's hatred, and the I.R.A were never the only proponent of that.
This is good news... I have grown up with IRA violence and it is a good thing that the IRA have finally admitted defeat.
The problem is that the dreadful price paid, is not in dead bodies but is in the permenent division of communities, I cite Londonderry/Derry as an example.
Of course the ultimate irony of all this is that the British government have been trying to offload Ireland since Gladstone's Home Rule Bill of 1870, and had the Irish not revolted in the middle of WWI, none of this need have happened, in the way that it did.... and of course the idea of a united Ireland is a complete nonsense in terms of the EU.... not to foregt that the Unionists go round saying they are fighting for the right to be British, when in fact it is Great Britain and Northern Ireland.... i.e The United Kingdom.... the British being England and Wales and Scotland plus various islands off the coast.... but not Ireland either North or South.
Still it is nice that Americans have stopped funding random acts of violence in the UK.... but then Senator Kennedy's ancestors were urging abandonment of Britain at the height of the Blitz....
How nice it will be if this really gives respite from sectarian violence for a century or two.
Kiri Te Kanawa, huh? I'll look for it.
Sorry, it was a nice attempt by an outsider to understand the situation but although it was a great attempt you failed miserably.
I also don't believe for a second that the two other commentators genuinely lived through Northern Ireland's Troubles. Otherwise they would have a lot more to say than they did. I'm not even going to try and explain it on a comment on a blog, but if those tossers above me think they can they're probably either English students or English students. One or the other. And yes, I do know I repeated myself.
There is a solution though. If everyone was a Confusionist
The human capacity for violence never ceases to surprise. From Ireland, Africa and to now muslim fanatics taking it to the world in general. Here's hoping that the latest gesture for a little respite takes hold.
i should probably address Pope, since he addressed me (being one of the people he incorrectly read as saying that we lived through the N.I Troubles).
1. i never said that i lived through the troubles. i said that i saw and heard violence and hate on the streets. not living in northern ireland does not take one's right to share their experiences, or their opinion (however briefly they choose to voice it) on the matter, away. if it did, then the irish news stations in the republic would have nothing to report on.
2. for such a touchy subject for you, you turned the comment thread into nothing more than another playground fight by insulting anyone with a differing viewpoint than your own.
someone didn't write a thesis on their experiences with the ira. oh no! they're "tossers." wah. please.
sorry for clogging your comment thread, aka. i just had to address that comment. : )
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