T5 Northern Ireland

Question 1

Major & Northern Ireland (1987 – 1997)

Answer 1

• Northern Ireland was a bitter chalice that was passed to Major as Prime Minister at the end of
  1990.
• He had been in office for only two months when, in its most audacious attack yet, the IRA lobbed
  mortar shells at 10 Downing Street from a parked van.
• This was a prelude to a sustained IRA bombing campaign in Britain.
• In March 1993, a boy of three and one of twelve year-old were killed and 50 people injured by
  bombs left in litter bins in a shopping mall in Warrington, Cheshire.
• In April 1993, one person was killed and 40 people injured by a bomb planted in a lorry in
  Bishopsgate in the City of London.
• The bomb caused over a billion pounds worth of damage to several bank premises, including the NatWest Tower.

Question 2

Peace Protests

Answer 2

• The anger amongst ordinary people at these brutalities led to large peace rallies in London, Belfast and Dublin.
• Aware how public opinion was turning against them on both sides of the Irish Sea, the IRA put out disclaimers saying that the deaths had not been intended and that it was the fault of the British police who had failed to act on the detailed warnings that the IRA had given them about the location of the bombs.

Question 3

Secret Backchannel Communications

Answer 3

• There was a political breakthrough in Northern Ireland under John Major.
• From 1993, the British government had received secret messages hinting that Sinn Fein was ready
  to discuss a peace agreement.
• There were still big obstacles to overcome. Unionists were fearful of being ‘sold out by the British’.
  On the Republican side there was deep-rooted hostility to the British.
• The fact, however, that the first steps in the peace process were taken by a Conservative prime
  minister was helpful.
• A Labour leader may have found it easier to get

Question 4

International Peace Partners

Answer 4

• Major had a good working relationship with the Irish Taoiseach [prime minister], Albert Reynolds. The new American President, Bill Clinton, also made a positive contribution, encouraging Sinn Fein away from armed struggle

Question 5

The Downing Street Declaration (1993)

Answer 5

• The terms of the Downing Street Declaration
• The British government announced that it had ‘no selfish, strategic interest in Northern Ireland’;
  its sole concern was to accede to the democratically expressed wishes of the people there.
• It also accepted that it was ‘for the people of the island of Ireland alone, north and south, to bring
  about a united Ireland, if that is their wish’.
• Reynold declared that the Irish Republic accepted the right of the majority in Northern Ireland to
  decide its future and that, if a democratic settlement could be achieved there, the south was
  prepared to drop its traditional claim that Northern Ireland was part of the Republic.

Question 6

The 1994 Ceasefire

Answer 6

• Major and Reynolds went public in 1993 with their joint Downing Street Declaration.
• In 1994, the IRA announced a ceasefire.
• Loyalist paramilitaries matched this with a ceasefire of their own.
• There was a strong sense of war weariness on both sides of the conflict.
• A former IRA gunman, Eamon Collins, wrote in his memoirs in 1997: ‘I like to think that both sides
  look down into a Bosnia-style abyss, gulped and then stepped back’.
• Getting a final agreement was difficult. Unionists did not believe in the IRA’s commitment to
  peace.
• The IRA got impatient and went back to violent methods between 1996 and 1998.
• Bomb attacks damaged the financial centre at Canary Warf, London, and destroyed the centre of
  Manchester in 1996. But the peace process continued.

Question 7

The Mitchell Report (January 1996)

Answer 7

• In 1995, President Clinton made rapturously received visits to both Dublin and Belfast.
• In the following year, he appointed Senator George Mitchell to chair an international commission
  to consider how to end ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland.
  Mitchell, in a report he presented in January 1996, laid down a set of principles on which a peace process
  might be developed. The major ones were:
• The total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations and the renunciation [rejection] of force.
• The agreement of all parties concerned to accept as binding any agreement reached in an allparty negotiation.
  Mitchell’s central conclusion was that real progress towards a settlement was ultimately impossible
  without decommissioning [the giving up of weapons].
  Yet, to achieve this, both sides would have to be assured that laying down arms could achieve the same
  results as using them. Peace had to be seen as profitable as violence.