How Major stumbled into peace

The IRA ceasefire started despite the Government rather than because of it, reveals David McKittrick

After February's IRA bombing in Docklands which killed two people and caused such widespread damage, John Major made a broadcast to the nation in which he asserted: "In 1991, I began a new search for peace." If by this he meant the path that led to the December 1993 Downing Street declaration and the 1994 IRA cessation of violence, he is on decidedly shaky ground in implying ownership of the process.

The Prime Minister's devotion to seeking peace in Ireland is not in question: he has put more time and effort into that usually thankless task than any other modern prime minister. His personal commitment to the search ranks with that of Gladstone and Lloyd George.

The criticism is not one of lack of commitment but lack of a compass. The outside world may have the impression that Mr Major's has been a sure, determined and resolute hand on the tiller. But this is not borne out by the private documentation: rather, the picture is of a government that has often stumbled along, unsure of its bearings, divided in its counsels and unclear in its aims.

In October 1993, Mr Major was asking the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, to drop the process of drafting the declaration - "After giving it very careful consideration, with all the intelligence at our disposal," he wrote, "we have very reluctantly concluded that it will not run at the present time ... I know how disappointing this will be to you. I look forward to considering other options."

The fact is that during most of the peace process, Mr Major did not actually believe it would end in peace. It was, in essence, an Irish nationalist process revolving around Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein and the IRA, Albert Reynolds and John Hume, the SDLP leader, together with Catholic priests who, acting as catalysts, helped to bring these different elements together for talks.

This hidden network of contacts, particularly those between Gerry Adams and John Hume, helped to produce new thinking among participants. Some of those who met republicans later said they could see, as they looked into the eyes of Adams and the others, a growing appreciation of views from outside the hermetically sealed republican underworld.

The huge conceptual step eventually taken by the republicans was to call a halt to terrorism, and to do so without any promises from the British government. Instead, the cessation would be called on the understanding that an end to violence would mean the beginning of a powerful new nationalist political coalition.

This was followed in August 1994 by the huge practical step of the IRA cessation. While many outside observers have assumed that this can in large measure be attributed to John Major's intricate behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings, there is a case to be made that it all happened despite the Government's stance rather than because of it.

The Government, for a time under Margaret Thatcher and subsequently under John Major, had its own secret lines to the IRA and Sinn Fein between 1990 and 1993. But the striking feature of the voluminous documentation available is that throughout those three years the two sides never actually got down to real business.

They meandered in circles, becoming bogged down in procedural issues, and at no point was there a comprehensive exploration of the issues and the positions of the two sides. This contact with the British first puzzled the IRA, then exasperated them, then left them convinced that London was not serious and was acting in bad faith. The IRA concluded, in fact, that the British were even more perfidious than they had always assumed, a judgement that did nothing to speed the arrival of the cessation.

In August 1994, Mr Major, having listened to the advice of his ministers and his intelligence agencies, did not believe the IRA was about to declare an open-ended ceasefire. Taken by surprise by the cessation announcement, his handling of subsequent events was less than sure-footed: the Government often seemed to regard the whole thing as a greasy ball rather than a golden opportunity.

In the autumn of last year the same people who had advised him that there would be no ceasefire were telling him that there would be no resumption of violence. This catastrophically inaccurate assessment led Mr Major to believe he was free to push and pressurise Sinn Fein as much as he wished.

In this the Government, and the intelligence people, got the republican psychology wrong. The democratic instinct rightly recoils from the notion that terrorists should be rewarded because they decide to stop using murder. But this was an instance where huge benefits could have been gained not by rewarding the republicans but by convincing them that their entry into mainstream politics was assured.

The Government never conveyed any sense of this to the IRA. Instead, the impression was given that Britain was intent on turning the cessation into a surrender. The IRA took the British demand for de-commissioning of weapons to be an insistence on capitulation. The months of stalemate that ensued were followed by the Docklands bomb.

The republican mindset is a complex and often subtle one: they often misread the British but, even more frequently, the British misread them. One Dublin source said with some bitterness that the British "didn't know why the ceasefire started and don't know why it finished".

Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein just yesterday made clear that the chances of an early IRA ceasefire are bleak, but the fact that the peace process so often came to life again when it had seemed defunct means that hope of its revival springs eternal. In the meantime some lessons can be learnt from the past six years.

One is that clandestine talks can sometimes bear fruit. Another is that the Government is unlikely to make the right moves in relation to the republicans until it becomes more successful at getting inside the republican brain, studying how these people think, and working out how best their sensibilities can be managed.

'The Fight for Peace - the Secret Story behind the Irish Peace Process', by Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, was published yesterday by Heinemann.