I fully endorse the sentiments of Deputy Deasy. While the process has run into difficulty, if people continue to be reminded of that set of principles it will succeed, although there are times when one has to be firm tough and critical.
The Deputies I met in the corridors of Leinster House in the past few days indicated it was unfortunate that no notice was given. Those who have been following the peace process during the past six months were not surprised when it came under pressure. Each time Sinn Féin mentioned this it was accused of threatening violence and using blackmail tactics. It was also accused when something did happen. This goes to show that politicians seldom win. If we make a courageous decision and it succeeds we may get a little thanks, otherwise we are criticised.
I am delighted this debate is taking place. This House unanimously endorsed the Downing Street Declaration, the Framework Document and the statements on the cessation of violence and, perhaps, it should carry out an audit every three months on the progress or otherwise of such matters. The Framework Document appears to have been buried since its publication last February, it has not been heard of since. People North, South and elsewhere, are asking what happened, why the peace process went wrong and how can it be put back together again. This debate must address those questions and come up with answers.
This is not a party political issue, it is a national one. Consequently, there are political brownie points only for those who fully support the peace process, which all Members do. My party expressed its support for the process on a number of occasions. Earlier this week Deputy Bertie Ahern said he would not criticise the Government for moving forward in a positive way and doing whatever needs be done. He said Government members would not have to look over their shoulders as far as he was concerned.
We are all travelling in the same direction on a journey for justice and following a path to peace. Suggestions and contributions designed only to be helpful to the achievement of the final objectives of the peace process should never be criticised, irrespective of their origin. All Members subscribe to the objective of peace, though there are elements elsewhere who do not want to bring about peace and maintain it, but that will not be easy. The physical force tradition has never been converted in the history of the State nor has the wider republican-Nationalist family ever been brought together with one objective in mind, to achieve consensus on peace.
When people talk of a pan-Nationalist consensus they fail to understand what we are following through on. Peace is the first objective, talks will follow and that will take some time. What broke down along the way? During the past 17 months all people on the island enjoyed the benefits of peace. Based on past averages, approximately 140 more people would have been killed and hundreds, if not thousands, maimed or injured in Northern Ireland if the troubles had continued. Many more have been spared all types of injury and have begun to taste what peace can mean to the lives of ordinary people.
Peace made people sit up and think about the black hole to which they were consigned for 25 years. Any one who suggests that there was not peace should ask those on the Shankill Road, the Falls Road or the Ardoyne area whether their lives changed in the past 17 months. Their answers will be direct. A few days ago on a radio programme Joe Duffy telephoned a man from the Shankill Road and asked him for his feelings on what happened. His answer was simple, he welcomed the peace process and the ceasefire and said people were told 18 months ago that talks would take place in the following three or four months. He wondered why those talks did not take place. He said the people wanted talks and they should have taken place 15 months ago. He could not understand what politicians were doing for the past 15 months and made a request to them to get down to business and listen to those whom they represent who do not want a return to violence. They want the peace to last and politicians, irrespective of how many, to sit down and talk, but not undermine the continuance of the peace process. A short time after the ceasefire people began to take peace for granted and they will not let it go easily at this stage. Much as I condemn the bombing in London last Friday, I do not regard the process as a failure.
It was with the Irish Government I led, not the British Government, that the Provisional IRA made a peace accord in August 1994. Whatever legitimate criticisms can be made, the record will show that we fulfilled to the best of our ability the obligations on the Irish Government to the Nationalist and republican communities in the North and sought by and large to act in concert with them. As the person who sealed the peace accord with Gerry Adams and John Hume on 6 September 1994 in Government Buildings I was naturally anxious, and indeed entitled, to meet Gerry Adams and hear him explain why the peace accord had been broken and why those who had taken risks had been let down. I wanted to hear that from him. When I asked him if the bombing in London was the appropriate response to delays, frustrations and so on his reply was unequivocal. He said it would not be his choice or the choice of his party. That is the answer I expected from him. It is easy to criticise people who do not know what others, whether John Hume or Gerry Adams, have gone through. How long will it take Northern society to produce another John Hume or Gerry Adams if we do not make full use of what they can contribute at this stage?
John Hume spent half of his life trying to bring peace to Northern society. Gerry Adams has been working behind the scenes for a long time to try to win the argument to leave behind the physical force tradition, to produce an alternative strategy and to show that the 25 years of violence was futile. The bombing in London last Friday was similarly futile. It was not only politically silly and stupid but there was no morality attached to it. One cannot justify the taking away of innocent human life as a response to what should have happened but did not.
A recent statement from UVF prisoners called on the Unionist people not to support those in Unionist leadership who gloated over the deaths of two British citizens. I am sure all Members felt as sick as I when they witnessed the body language and the facial expressions following the death of two innocent British citizens. Nobody is entitled to take human life. It is the saving of human life that is at stake, not political requirements.
We delivered as far as possible during our time in Government. People are asking why the ceasefire broke down. They can make their own judgments on what went wrong, but it was inevitable that the activities or non-activities of the past nine months would bring pressure within the republican movement on those who reluctantly went along with a decision to choose the political route on the road to democracy. That was bound to happen.
We are all political realists in this House. We can understand that when John Major got into trouble and his leadership was undermined, he needed time and space to work out his position. We also recognise that the Unionists were heading into a leadership contest with four candidates in the field, each trying to be more hard-line than the other to secure the leadership. We recognised that for what it was, but it was reasonable to expect that when John Major's position was consolidated, and the Unionist leadership contest was out of the way, things would start to happen. Unfortunately, the process went into reverse.
Some people high up in the Tory Party foolishly advised John Major that the ceasefire would hold, that the IRA would not or could not return to violence and that he need not do anything, but he did worse than doing nothing. He used the decommissioning issue as a delaying tactic. Everybody associated with the Downing Street Declaration knows decomissioning was not a precondition. The Northern Ireland Office accepted on 24 June last year that it was not a precondition before the ceasefires, and in this House the Taoiseach, reporting on his first meeting with John Major, said it was not the policy of the Irish or the British Government to have decommissioning as a precondition to talks.
Those who study and understand the psychology of what we had to deal with will understand that we faced difficulties not only with the IRA but also in the trenchant opposition of the loyalist paramilitaries. People did not seem to understand that this would be the biggest contributing factor to wrecking the peace process.
Speaking on the Dimbleby programme a few days ago a loyalist paramilitary told how he carried his injured wife from a building that had been bombed by the IRA, yet he was man enough to tell John Taylor, who was also on the programme to get on with talks and put the issue of decommissioning on the back boiler or else it would wreck the peace process. We all know what decommissioning represented to both sides. The prospect of decommissioning aroused fear on the Unionist side among loyalist paramilitaries, and on the Nationalist side among the IRA. How were we to square those two circles? Did anybody stand back from this issue and ask why both sides were against it? It was neither acceptable nor obainable at that time. Many spokespersons in the South, including me, frequently pointed that out and that if the peace process was not fed, it would starve and when something drastic happened, we would all sit back and ask how it happened and why we did not see it coming and why we did not do something about it. Everybody was cosy in their own positions. They all thought the ceasefire would hold, not recognising the tensions that had existed for years between those in the republican movement who wanted to go the political route and those who wanted to carry on the physical force tradition. Whatever those of the physical force tradition may think about the success of the operation last Friday, it certainly played into the hands of the people who gloated afterwards and said, "we told you so". This country is full of hindsight decision-makers and cynics, but nobody should put any priority before that of saving human life. Archbishop Robin Eames said to me in my office that the greatest personal satisfaction for anybody in political life should be to be in a position to contribute to saving human life.
People wrote to me and spoke to me on the streets of Northern Ireland, Dublin and elsewhere and asked me how I could support a policy of releasing people from prison sooner than they should be released. There is an analogy between that argument and what happened last Friday. I could only tell them that nobody can change what happened yesterday and that no matter what I or anybody says or does, in Government or elsewhere, it will not restore the life of a father, mother, brother, sister or other relation lost but that if we can bring ourselves to change our mindset, we can ensure that in future no family loses its father, mother, brother or sister. The same applies to where we go from here after the events of last Friday.
Many people can give reasons for the breakdown of the ceasefire. It has happened, can we learn from the problems that occurred in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia or South Africa when difficulties arose in the peace process as in those countries? When difficulties arose, all political and community leaders intensified their efforts to ensure there would not be a further breakdown.
Early on in the peace process the Government faced that dilemma and a difficult choice had to be made, but it made that decision on its best judgment. Nobody would deny a Government, British or Irish, the right and the responsibility to protect its citizens as its first priority. I do not subscribe to the view that paramilitary organisations can ever defeat a Government.
Shortly after the peace process was up and running, we had a raid on a post office in Newry during which a postman was tragically shot. That was a difficult call for our Government. My colleagues in Government, who were aware how tough I had been at different stages with the republican movement, knew it was not easy for me to send for Gerry Adams to hear from him the reason the peace process had gone off the rails so soon. When I heard his explanations about discipline not being imposed in various units, I made it quite clear that if we had a repeat of such violence, I would not listen to that excuse again and the door would not be open to him to explain what had occurred, recognising that in managing organisations and units whose mindsets have been closed for the past 25 years and who followed only the physical force tradition, difficulties will inevitably arise.
We cannot throw away the success we have achieved. We cannot waste the great historic opportunity being handed to us. Physical force has been our tradition for centuries but, if we keep our nerve, we now have an historic opportunity to leave that behind us. I made it clear to Gerry Adams that I wanted him to tell the IRA that I felt as let down as everybody else and that I did not relish the idea of hearing on a foreign television station about a bomb blast in London. It was politically stupid and totally morally wrong. One cannot excuse taking human life, whatever the cost.
For people, particularly those with militant minds in the IRA, to regard the efforts and the successes of people like Gerry Adams and his colleagues as a failure, is nonsense. They have made remarkable strides in promoting the republican and the Nationalist cause. Their honourable efforts should not be regarded as a failure. The Sinn Féin leadership has brought the republican community in the North into the political mainstream for the first time. It gave dignity to the communities it represented. Its achievement was recognised and respected throughout the world. It helped to forge as powerful a political instrument for change as any in our history, that is the Nationalist consensus for peace. They won powerful friends in the United States, including President Clinton. All this is now in danger of being lost. I want to send a clear message to those in the militant wing of the IRA that there is no cause greater in any society than peace and the sooner it recognises this the better.
We needed people like Gerry Adams, Pat Doherty, Martin McGuinness, Rita O'Hare, Mitchel McLaughlin, Tom Hartley and their colleagues to get to where we were. We need them now and we will need them again if we want to get to where the people on the street want us to be. The peace process does not belong to any individual, Government or party. It belongs to the people who have a very clear message for the politicians. To them the issue was simple — the violence had to stop and it had to be replaced by talks. Up to last Friday the violence had stopped for almost 18 months but we are now as far away from the talks as we were before we started.
There are four proposals on the table and the Governments must sit down and work them out. Under the Downing Street Declaration — at times one wonders if Britain would like to discard this document and the Framework Document — both Governments have solemnly declared they will set a definite date for all-party talks. This is what is required to bring about a rapid restoration of the peace process. We all subscribe to the Taoiseach's call to the IRA to stop the violence, hand up their arms and come into the political process. That call has been made repeatedly since the troubles broke out in 1969 and it has never been answered. That is why we need the people who had the influence to bring the process this far. Some of these people openly admit that over the past four or five months they have been losing the argument within the republican movement because of non-political activity.
I said on many occasions that if the peace process was not fed the pressures would return to undermine it. I am not going to say "I told you so" because as a politician I recognise that at times certain situations cannot be resolved. However, I do not accept that there were not issues and policies which could have been dealt with. For example, the British Government's policy in regard to prisoners hardened after the ceasefire and no care was shown for prisoners, although we all know the great influence they had in bringing about the ceasefire. Yet they got a rougher deal after the ceasefire than before it. What is the mentality of a government which refuses to give medical care to a man who has been diagnosed with cancer? Why did it take a consultant from Canada to point out that if he was not looked after he could die before action was taken? I hope this man receives care in time. What effect did this have on the people who spent 25 years cocooned in a military mind-set and who always believed that the only way one could get anything from Britain was through the barrel of a gun? In addition, one obstacle after another was put in the way.
What is wrong is that too few people understand the mind-sets with which we must deal. I have given illustrations of the mind-sets of the IRA and the leaders who are in favour of physical force. I also looked at the mind-sets of the loyalist paramilitaries who made the exact same points as republican paramilitaries about the British Government's prison policy — they did not get a hearing either. They will say why they do not trust the British Government. It is common-sense to sit down with people and to try to work out a new accommodation. If one does this they will outline their principles and what they stand for. As they told me in recent days, the bombing of London will not go unreplied to if it is repeated. Good people on that side are holding the lid on it but they say a bomb in London is an attack on their British ethos and is the same as if it was planted in Belfast. Those are the sort of dangers which must be averted. "Must" is a great master as it has to be done, and we all know what has to be done.
I spent hours working out their mind-set and they can sit down and work out in a practical way a new accommodation which will enable people to live together. They say that when a Catholic looks across a wall or down the road at a Protestant they do not see him as a problem but as a victory to be achieved. The Nationalist community say:
Be very careful about decommissioning. We have been exposed too often. It is easy for people to lecture us from abroad but we have spent 25 years trying to defend ourselves when we were burned out. If you visit Bombay Street or any other small street you will see bullet holes in the walls over children's cots. Until there is confidence in the process watch what you are doing.
These are not the views of militant people who advocate taking a person's life.
These are the mind-sets which have to be changed and Senator George Mitchell put his finger on this faster than anybody I know. He made two statements, the first was about the decommissioning of arms — the British Government did not want to accept this — and the second related to the decommissioning of mind-sets. A spokesperson for the loyalist paramilitaries recently said to me that the Mitchell report would be extremely difficult for Sinn Féin and the IRA to accept and deliver on and equally difficult for the loyalist paramilitaries to accept but that if everyone had rowed in behind it it would have been a blueprint for the end of the war for all time.
That opportunity was thrown aside when the British Prime Minister sidelined the excellent report and replaced it with full support for a Unionist proposal. What effect was this expected to have on the mind-sets of people who do not see things as we see them? It was the straw which broke the camel's back. The decision to back a Unionist proposal to the exclusion of the Irish Government which was a partner with it in peace was the clearest indication yet that Britain was going back to where it had come from, that is to seek a military solution. Having regard to the decision to send more troops to the North, I hope the British Government does not expect the Irish Government to be partners at war. The mentality and mind-sets to which George Mitchell referred have also to be changed in Britain.
The problem is that the British Government sought, and still seek, a military solution although we all know that violence has not paid on either side over the past 25 years. How many times did we hear it said that the IRA is finished and gone for all time? It was this challenge which goaded it into proving it was still in existence. The Mitchell report was a blueprint for the end of the war and no three people grasped the complexities of the problem faster than the men given that responsibility. I am not pointing a finger in any direction but I want a commitment to a date for all-party talks so that we can get back to where we were. Some members of the IRA Army Council have not fully appreciated the progress that has been made by the people I mentioned earlier. I too worked with John Major, and I praised him on many occasions. I will be fair to everybody. He had conviction and courage. On the first night we sat down he said that he and I together would never condemn society in Northern Ireland to another 25 years of violence and that we would do whatever we had to do to avoid that. I say to him today: "you know what you have to do; go and do it". I believe he will get a far better response from the British if he does it than if he does not, because British people equally have an interest in peace. Would anybody seriously suggest that people in east London want to see another bomb there, in Warrington or Guildford or anywhere? Of course they do not. However, we all know the reality of politics.
We are entering the last year before an election. Somebody suggested to me on the day before John Major spoke in the House of Commons that there was a grave likelihood that the 11 Unionists and the 30 Euro sceptics, the right wingers, the hard-liners, would have to be kept on board, because they, not the Unionists, were the greatest danger to the continuance of the Government. Gordon Browne, the shadow Chancellor, more or less confirmed to me a couple of weeks ago in Dublin that there was a real danger that John Major would throw the Mitchell report back at the Americans to satisfy 30 of the hard-line members of parliament from his own party because they would love to hear the British Prime Minister tell the Americans that this was their business, that they make their decisions, and that the Americans should stay out of it.
If such political considerations are to determine the future of the peace process, there is greater need for all of us to speak with one voice. We have won respect around the world for our peace process. I do not expect anybody to accept my assessment of why it broke down. People can make up their own minds on that.