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Editorial A farewell to arms

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The decision of the IRA to open some of its arms dumps to outside inspection and to renew its contacts with the International Decommissioning Body is far-reaching in its consequences both for the organization and for the peace process.

For the IRA, it is perhaps the most definite step away from the physical-force tradition of which it has been for several generations the chief exponent.

For the peace process it is, without doubt, the most dramatic development since the IRA cease-fire of 1994.

The fate of the IRA and the fate of the peace process are intimately linked. It could not be otherwise, given that the conflict in the North was sustained by the belief of republicans in physical force as the chief means of bringing about the political changes that they sought. As long as the IRA maintained that position, no peace process had a realistic hope of succeeding.

The inspection of the dumps is the most dramatic sign that the IRA has abandoned that belief. The reason why it has done so is obvious. For 25 years, it used physical force against the North and failed to achieve its objective.

The reasons why it failed are not so obvious and will doubtless be argued about for years to come. But fail it did.

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The physical-force tradition had passed its sell-by date in 1994. That was obvious to the more astute of the IRA’s leaders. The result was the movement’s engagement in the peace process. The inspection of the arms dumps is confirmation that that engagement is deep and almost certainly irreversible.

The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, rightly described the IRA’s decision to allow the inspection to proceed as "one of the most significant in 200 years of armed struggle." In this case, there was no overstatement. The Ireland of the Year 2000 is not the Ireland of 1798. It is not the Ireland of 1919. Nor is it even the Ireland of 1969, though there are still a few who wish that it was. Unfortunately, it often takes time for politics to catch up with reality, especially in the North.

That is, there are those who are unhappy, for one reason or another, with the recent events. They comprise the usual sorry crowd of rejectionists from the extremes of Unionism and republicanism.

Peter Robinson, the deputy leader of the Paisleyite Democratic Unionist Party, denounced the inspection as a "gimmick." The DUP is hardly in a position to accuse others of using gimmicks — it boasts the greatest gimmick of all, its leader, a rabble-rousing anti-Catholic masquerading as a clergyman. The DUP depends for its very survival on the prospect of doomsday. With every move forward in the peace process, that prospect recedes a little. No wonder its leaders are furious.

From the republican fringe groups comes the usual cries of "treachery" and "betrayal" of the cause, which they maintain has happened with the opening of the arms dumps. But what exactly is their cause? It sometimes sounds as if their cause is the "right" (as they claim it) to use violence. The goal that the violence was supposed to bring about — a united Ireland — often seems of secondary importance.

The truth is that Ireland cannot be united through the use of violence and intimidation. It is the lesson taught by the last 30 years of bloody conflict in the North. It is to be hoped that it will take no further bloodshed to drive it home.

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