My Articles to the Newspapers

IRA needs to rethink its position (Derry News, 10^th February 2005)

Rather than threatening the people of Ireland with a return to violence, the republican movement must rise above the clamour from within, I presume, its organisation, for there has been little in the way of raised voices from without for going down that road.

The thrust of their thinking must relate to the future of this island and how it may be time simply to leave behind the gun and the bomb forever rather than threatening to return to those dark days of the past.

The question that republicans must ask is what effect violence had on the conflict over the course of their campaign?

They must also ask the general questions: who gained from violence during the conflict? What did they gain? And were those gains real or imaginary?

Republicans told us that their campaign was a response to loyalist and British violence. By threatening a return to violence they are telling us all that that was nonsense and they were really the instigators of the violence.

The truth is that no-one truly benefited from violence in this conflict. There were no winners in combat and that it ended the way it began – as a draw. If the IRA feel that they can change that, then it is for them to justify the violence and take responsibility for every death in the ensuing conflict.

That they cannot do that in any meaningful sense would of course point to them taking the course of action of simply holding their hands up and accepting that their day has gone just as swiftly as it came.

For if they are to do otherwise, it would be to prove SDLP leader Mark Durkan right – that they are just acting like spoiled children in a huff that everything didn’t go their way.

*John O’Connell is Derry-based author.

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