GFA process cannot deliver republican objectives

A speech delivered to an American AOH delegation in Derry on 15 February by John Crawley, a former IRA Volunteer and author of ‘The Yank’. Originally published in the Pensive Quill.

It seems barely a heartbeat ago that Liam Ryan and I were sharing coffee and having a laugh at the corner restaurant near his apartment in the Bronx. It’s hard to believe 41 years have slipped by, and Liam has been dead for nearly 35 of them.

I remember, around that time, being in Liam’s kitchen with a number of Tyrone men. One of them was Lawrence McNally, who would later be killed in action along with Liam’s cousin Pete Ryan and Tony Doris at Coagh. Five ordinary men in an extraordinary time. Within a few short years, every man in that room was dead or in prison. Killed by Crown forces or incarcerated in various prisons throughout Britain and Ireland.

I often think of that moment when I think of Liam. Little did he or those other men know what awaited them - and yet I don’t believe they would have altered their course had they known. When it came to Irish freedom, they clearly had what a British government official during the 1798 rebellion called ‘an enthusiasm defying punishment’.

I liked Liam a lot. He was funny, down to earth and immensely generous and helpful.

He was proud to be an Irishman, proud to be a Tyrone man, and prouder still an East Tyrone man. He had tremendous respect and admiration for the Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army and a special place in his heart for the courageous fight put up by the men and women of his home area. His cousin Pete Ryan, who I would later be in prison with, was a particular hero to him. And rightly so.

Liam was acutely aware that County Tyrone had been at the centre of Irish resistance to English rule for hundreds of years. It was Tyrone man Hugh O’Neill who inflicted the heaviest defeat on an English army in Irish history when he crushed Sir Henry Bagenal’s force at the Battle of the Yellow Ford, killing up to 2,000 English soldiers, including Sir Bagenal himself.

It was precisely because of the intense resistance put up by Tyrone that it was one of the areas chosen by England to be planted by loyalist settlers in an act of ethnic cleansing known as the Plantation of Ulster, which formed a significant part of Elizabethan counter-insurgency strategy.

Liam Ryan took great pride in the knowledge that patriots from Tyrone were prominent throughout the struggle for Irish freedom. A strong Tyrone contingent had been assembled in Coalisland to take part in the 1916 Rising, although, through no fault of their own, they were forced to stand down again due to Eoin MacNeill’s countermanding order. Tom Clarke, one of the principal driving forces of the rebellion, had been reared in Dungannon from an early age.

I first met Jim Lynagh at a wedding in Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, 44 years ago. I had just walked into John Joe McGirl’s pub, where he sat singing Sean South of Garryowen. He would have been about 24 years of age at the time and already a former prisoner of Long Kesh and a highly experienced IRA operative who had been seriously wounded while on active service. Jim was friendly and personable. I got to know him better in Portlaoise Prison, where he was the first man into my cell on the morning the heavy steel door opened to reveal the first of my many days as a Republican prisoner. Jim had been imprisoned again, this time in the South, and was the Unit Intelligence officer who debriefed all new prisoners on issues relating to their capture and other matters. I was delighted Jim remembered me, and he put me immediately at ease with his open and approachable manner. Although one of the IRA’s most dedicated and experienced Volunteers, Jim Lynagh had none of the conceit or arrogance of lesser men. Extremely intelligent, with a cheeky and irreverent sense of humour, he did not suffer the pretentious gladly. He had a deep affinity with the underdog and a sincere social conscience.

Politically, Jim was to the fore in discussions, debate, and education in prison. So much so that after his death, Republican prisoners in Portlaoise inaugurated, in his honour, a yearly ‘Jim Lynagh Week’ consisting of political and historical lectures. He took his politics seriously but viewed political activism exclusively as an instrument for serving the struggle and not, as others were to prove, as a vehicle for servicing a political career.

Militarily, Jim epitomised the concept of tip of the spear leadership, leadership by example. Highly motivated, dedicated, and courageous Jim was constantly to the fore on active service against the foreign forces of occupation and their native hirelings. He was greatly and rightly feared by the enemy, and the British Crown forces kept their spies and informers very busy in unrelenting efforts to track him down.

In a conventional army, he would have made an outstanding Special Forces officer. The Brits considered Jim Lynagh to be a dangerous adversary. Brave and intelligent, he couldn’t be frightened, and he couldn’t be bought off — a bad combination.

I remember shaking hands with Jim the night before his release from Portlaoise prison and watching the blonde head of him disappearing down the stairs to his cell on the landing below. I wondered if I would ever see him again, not doubting for a moment that he would again be leading from the front. Sadly, within a week of his release in April 1986, he was attending the funeral of his comrade and fellow Monaghan Volunteer Seamus McElwaine, who had been killed in action in a British Army ambush near Roslea. Just over a year later, Jim himself would be dead, killed in another Crown forces ambush with seven other Volunteers from the East Tyrone Brigade at Loughgall, Co. Armagh. I am proud to have known Jim Lynagh as a friend and comrade.

During the most recent phase in Ireland’s long struggle for freedom, County Tyrone played a key role. East Tyrone, in particular, paid a heavy price for its resistance to British rule and for its loyalty to the aims and ideals of the Irish Republic.

The East Tyrone Brigade suffered the highest rate of Crown force ambushing activity in the North against the IRA during the whole of the Troubles. The Brits pursued a killing strategy as opposed to an arresting strategy in County Tyrone.

The overriding strategic consideration of Crown attacks on Tyrone Republicans was to destroy any potential opposition to an internal settlement on British terms. The British state murdered Liam Ryan, and Jim Lynagh and his comrades were killed in action as part of Britain’s campaign to achieve that objective.

Mourners were told by the Provisional leadership at Jim’s funeral that Loughgall would be the tombstone for British rule in Ireland. Thirty-seven years later, the Brits are going nowhere, and the same leadership now boasts that they have buried the IRA. Nor do they miss an opportunity to announce that from the Good Friday Agreement onwards, Ireland unfree shall be at peace.

British strategic objectives were outlined at the Darlington Conference in 1972 when the British government published what it called some ‘unalterable facts’ about the situation and ‘some fundamental conditions . . . which any settlement must meet’.

These included recognition and legitimisation of the Unionist Veto, nationalist buy-in to the Northern state via a cross-community executive, support for the British security forces (especially the Crown constabulary), and Dublin government endorsement of the settlement, leading to increased security collaboration between the two governments. Since then, in order to disguise its profoundly undemocratic origins, the Unionist Veto has been benignly re-christened ‘the consent principle’. A principle Britain never granted Ireland as a whole. Since partition, Britain has ensured that no electoral mechanism exists to test Ireland’s national will as a single democratic unit.

Don’t let anyone try to convince you IRA volunteers died for the Good Friday Agreement. Between Jim Lynagh’s death in 1987 and Liam Ryan’s death in 1989, the Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said in 1988:

“Since Sunningdale in 1973 the British have repeatedly attempted to establish an internal governmental arrangement involving unionists and nationalists. Our struggle and strategy has been to close down each option open to the British until they have no other option but to withdraw . . . Sinn Fein is totally opposed to a power-sharing Stormont assembly and states that there cannot be a partitionist a solution. Stormont it is not a stepping stone to Irish unity.”

Republicans believed that then, and republicans believe that now.

You will often hear the term Nationalist and Republican used interchangeably. They are not the same thing. Irish nationalists are concerned primarily with local autonomy and can be reconciled to British sovereignty. Their principle opponent is Unionism. Irish republicans are focussed on sovereignty, on the principle that constitutional authority in Ireland lies exclusively with the Irish people. Their enemy is the Union.

One of the greatest crimes in the current political climate is to be perceived as opposing the British pacification strategy known as the Irish Peace Process.

I know of no Republican who opposes peace, but we are entitled, indeed duty bound, to be critical of a process that cannot lead to the objectives Republicans fought for so long and sacrificed so much to achieve.

The Good Friday Agreement is a snare and a delusion. It entangles us in a web of terms and conditions regarding Irish unity that only Britain can interpret and adjudicate. It invites the delusion that British legislation will pave the way to a national democracy within an All-Ireland republic. A political outcome Britain has strenuously rejected and sabotaged at every opportunity.

An example of this delusion was articulated by then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who said of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998:

“The key thrust of these changes is to reinforce the principle that in Ireland, North and South, it is the people who are sovereign. There is no longer any question of an absolute or territorial British claim to sovereignty, without reference to the wishes of the people. For the first time, a precise mechanism has been defined - and accepted by the British Government - by which a united Ireland can be put in place, by the consent of Irish people and that alone.”

It seemed to have slipped Bertie’s attention that the supremacy of the United Kingdom Parliament was preserved in the new constitutional arrangements he endorsed in Britain’s 1998 Northern Ireland Act.

“Section 5 (6). This section does not affect the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to make laws for Northern Ireland, but an Act of the Assembly may modify any provision made by or under an Act of Parliament in so far as it is part of the law of Northern Ireland.”

Running through every piece of British legislation is the fundamental principle of British sovereignty and the primacy of British law. At the core is the assertion that Britain will define the parameters of Irish democracy and set the boundaries within which Irish opposition to British rule must operate.

The rule of law is central to British policy. That law must be British law because the Crown claims jurisdiction over this part of Ireland, and the exclusive authority to make laws within a particular territory is the very definition of sovereignty. The supremacy of the Westminster parliament over an Irish electorate has been demonstrated on a number of occasions, including the suspension of Stormont by British government ministers without reference to anyone in Ireland, North or South. In court cases taken over the Brexit issue, both the Belfast High Court in October 2016 and the UK Supreme Court in January 2017 confirmed that it is Westminster parliamentary supremacy and not the will of the Irish people that reigns supreme in the Six Counties.

The claim that there is ‘no longer any question of an absolute or territorial British claim to sovereignty, without reference to the wishes of the people’ couldn’t be more wrong.

Furthermore, the so-called ‘united’ Ireland defined by the Good Friday Agreement is not the republic we fought for. We were the Irish Republican Army. We were fighting to establish a national democracy with an all-Ireland Republic. The Good Friday Agreement is a pacification project based on the principle that the model of Ireland as one nation is a discredited concept. It annuls the republican concept of national unity across the sectarian divide. It strives to ensure that unionists will remain forever in Ireland but not of it. It bakes in the British/Irish cleavage in national loyalties. It enshrines the sectarian dynamic. Thus, it guarantees that the political malignancy through which Britain historically manipulated and controlled Ireland will remain intact. Consequently, many supporters of this strategy propose a continuing and symbolic role for the British royal family as an institutional point of reference for the loyalties of those who, although born and raised in Ireland, would prefer to view themselves as a civic garrison for Britain. That is why you will see nationalist politicians tripping over themselves to meet and greet British royalty on Irish soil. They are sending out an unambiguous message that Ireland is not one nation but two and that the British royal family represents one of them. A message that Britain has a legitimacy in Ireland and a role to play in influencing the political trajectory of our country. A genuine republic recognises and tolerates diversity but should never encourage and embrace conflicting national loyalties within its territory.

What became of the Republican project to break the connection with England and assert the independence of our country? To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter?

When Irish nationalist politicians speak, not of uniting our country, but of ‘Sharing this island,’ they mean sharing in Britain’s analysis of the nature of the conflict as primarily internal, as a tribal dispute between sectarian factions. They mean sharing in the colonial legacy of sectarian apartheid and sharing in the imperial project of divide and rule. They also mean sharing in Britain’s analysis of how to end the conflict by lowering the bar from the secular Republic to some nebulous entity called ‘This Island’ – where the sectarian scaffolding comes pre-assembled by the British government.

In so doing, they internalise the conditions, parameters and political architecture of the united Ireland demanded by Britain, should it ever come to pass – a ‘New’ Ireland that may one day contain no international border but will remain fundamentally partitioned between Planter and Gael, a ‘New’ Ireland predicated on all the old divisions.

The British have a long tradition of shaping Irish democracy in their interests and co-opting the political classes that emerge. They have displayed a remarkable capacity to channel Irish political trajectories in a particular direction, harness Irish leaderships to drive the strategy, and make the Irish believe it was their own idea. James Connolly wrote, ‘Ruling by fooling is a great British art. With great Irish fools to practice on.’

A relentless campaign is being waged to encourage the Irish people to accept and legitimise a British constitutional component as an essential ingredient of a united Ireland. To inculcate in the Irish people a herd immunity against the Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916 and democratically endorsed and ratified by the First Dáil Eireann in 1919. Debates and discussions are taking place on changing the Irish national flag, discarding the Irish national anthem, and re-joining the British Commonwealth. Instead of breaking the connection with England, we are being conditioned into becoming more closely incorporated into a British sphere of influence on a national level.

For a Republican, reaching out to unionists does not mean reaching out to them as foreigners who happen to live here. Foreigners are born in another country. The vast majority of Ulster Unionists were born in Ireland and live their entire lives here. They must not be treated as the civil garrison of an alien state. That is not pluralism; that is submitting to the social and political modelling of colonial conquest. Robert Emmet did not request his epitaph be withheld until his country had taken its place as two nations among the nations of the earth.

Ulster Unionists vow they will not be forced into a united Ireland. Yet, they lived in a united Ireland for hundreds of years. A united Ireland they were not forced into, but their ancestors forced themselves upon during the plantation of Ulster. An Ireland united in the sense that until the early 20th century England treated our country as one political unit. Unionists never had an issue with a united Ireland per se. The Orange Order is an all-Ireland institution. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches are all-Ireland ministries. And, of course, the Church of Ireland is not the Church of Northern Ireland. Their real objection is becoming subject to the majority decision-making of an Irish national electorate.

The issue of policing has been the cornerstone of Britain’s counter-insurgency strategy - a strategy designed to legitimise the British state in Ireland and keep the British gun at the heart of Irish politics. The Brits know that if they can’t police us, they can’t govern us.

So, what does it mean to be an Irish republican? Although we may have articulated it in different ways, most IRA volunteers who fought during the armed struggle understood what was meant by ‘the Republic’. It was Ireland unfettered by foreign control or domestic divisions cultivated by the foreigner. It did not defer to Britain for terms and conditions regarding its unity and independence. The Republic was a thirty-two-county sovereign and secular state to which Irish citizens of all traditions gave allegiance. It stood for freedom, civic unity, and social justice.

Does wanting to see a united Ireland mean you are republican? Not necessarily. England struggled to unite Ireland as a single polity under their control and jurisdiction for centuries. England governed a united Ireland for hundreds of years.

If the struggle for Irish freedom was merely about ending partition, then what was the 1916 Rising about? There was no partition in 1916. What were Wolfe Tone and the 27 other Protestant founding fathers of Irish republicanism determined to achieve when they formed the United Irishmen in 1791? What did they mean by a united Ireland? There was no partition in 1791. Their objective was to break the connection with England and to embrace national unity across the sectarian divide.

That objective was echoed over a century later by the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation who called for us to be . . . ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.’ The signatories were not claiming these differences did not exist, nor were they saying they could be dismissed as irrelevant. They were saying that these differences should never be used to shape the political architecture of Ireland.

In contrast, those who support the Good Friday Agreement are determined that these differences will be permanently embedded in our national fabric.

Thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, the future of the Northern state rests securely in a political and legal framework of terms and conditions comprehensively safeguarded within an intricate web of constitutional constraints controlled exclusively by the British government. No Irish citizen, elected or otherwise, can call an Irish unity poll in Ireland. That decision lies firmly in the hands of an English politician who doesn’t have a single vote in Ireland.

Why is it that the United States, a nation of nations with a population of over 300 million, can be a united national republic, India, with a population of 1.2 billion containing two thousand ethnic groups and 15 official languages, can be a united national republic. But Ireland, with a population half the size of metropolitan London, containing two principal traditions cannot. Is there an intrinsic defect in the Irish national character, or could it be that those other republics don’t have a more powerful foreign government in the mix politically, militarily, and economically, underwriting a particular minority interest over those of the majority? Should we pander to these contrived divisions for the sake of peace or continue the struggle to end them for the sake of peace?

The men and women of the Fenian tradition would have only one answer to that question.

Urgent Appeal