Long Sixties by Tom Hayden

Author:Tom Hayden [Hayden, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317256533
Google: qB3vCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-17T06:00:09+00:00

There were many more dramas and deaths ahead, but the purpose here is to examine the process by which the actors were reconciled in an unusual peace agreement in 1998. Let me first describe the dynamics of the nationalist movement, then the Machiavellian response. The key notion is that the conflicting sides each came to the realization of a stalemate, that is, a strategic recognition that their maximum goals were becoming unreachable. On the nationalist side, Sinn Fein understood the impossibility of its aspiration of forcing the Unionist majority to either convert to Irish nationalism or be forced to emigrate from Ireland. The long war had been waged for two decades, and even though the IRA could not be defeated, a military victory also was out of the question. The reality of unionism would have to be accepted and therefore, some sort of connection with the UK. Reaching the holy grail of the republic would be delayed. President Bill Clinton cynically told Adams at the White House that a united Ireland would have to wait upon the Catholic birthrate, according to someone who was present.

For moderate nationalist leaders such as John Hume, it was equally clear that unity was needed with the republicans, despite principled differences over violence and revolution. The SDLP base, however opposed to violence, was strongly nationalist and shared much of Sinn Fein’s agenda, including radical reform of the RUC. Just as Adams was limited by the IRA’s military campaign, Hume was limited by having no leverage over the IRA. In January 1988, therefore, Adams and Hume sat down for secret open-ended discussions in search of a pan-nationalist strategy for power. The talks were strongly supported by an ally of Adams, Father Alec Reid, a priest at the Clonard monastery in West Belfast. The Adams-Hume approach at the time was deeply unpopular with large segments of their followings. For a social movement in particular to shift fundamental direction without convulsing into deadly factions is a testimony to the skills of Adams and the republican leadership, particularly their decision to continually convene lengthy, participatory, often confusing meetings of the membership at each decisive moment. There were defections, to be sure, but the memory of devastating splits in past republican campaigns might have influenced the character of internal debates during the peace process.16

On the British side, key strategists realized that the military war against the IRA could not be won. Two further developments permitted a modification of their worldview. First, the cold war came to an end, which meant that the IRA could never again be demonized as a communist threat, like Cuba, across the channel. Second, new pressure from an ad hoc network of Irish Americans had influenced the thinking and political calculus of Bill Clinton. Perhaps because he himself was a child of the sixties, perhaps because he had been impressed with Bernadette Devlin’s speeches while he was a student at Oxford (in 1969, while Clinton was a graduate student, Devlin, then twenty-one, had been elected a

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