Describe the new peace seeking strategies employed by the government between the period of the Anglo-Irish Peace Accord through tot eh development of the IMC and the PSIN

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• In 1985, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland signed a peace accord regarding the governance of Northern Ireland, but the violence continued. The agreement was the beginning of a long-term attempt to stop terrorist violence in Northern Ireland by devising a system of political autonomy and by protecting the rights of all citizens.
• Extremist Republicans rejected the accord because it did not unite Northern Ireland
and the South. Unionists rejected it because it compromised with moderate Republicans.
• While the Anglo-Irish Peace Accord sought to bring an end to terrorism by establishing a joint Irish-British system of government for the troubled area, many Protestant groups felt betrayed and the Republicans continued to view Britain as a colonial power benefiting from the occupation of Northern Ireland (Dunn and Morgan, 1995).
• Republican and Unionist narratives had lasted hundreds of years, and their mystical hold on both sets of extremists was hard to break.
• This discord forced the British government to take a radical step.
• Although the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were in direct negotiations
and had agreed to share power, Unionist and Republican terrorists continued
to fight the settlement and the government.
• In 1990, the British decided to take another step. Realizing that they had no economic or political interest in controlling Northern Ireland, British intelligence contacted Sinn Fein and began negotiations with the political leadership of the IRA.
• Something remarkable happened. The IRA signed a ceasefire, the first in 15 years, in December 1990
• British intelligence units and the IRA kept talking after the ceasefire, and in
1992 Sinn Fein produced a paper calling for peace in Northern Ireland and recognizing
that both Unionists and Republicans had to be included in any future agreement.
• It seemed as if peace would finally develop, but negotiations began to break down.
• Terrorists took up their arms again, but a new British prime minister, Tony Blair,
was determined to end the violence. He formally invited Sinn Fein to the negotiating
table. Despite emphatic rhetorical statements to the contrary, counterterrorists and
terrorists sat down together.
• On Good Friday 1998, Britain and Ireland signed the Belfast Agreement, which
called for independent human rights investigations, compensation for the victims
of violence, and decommissioning of paramilitary groups (Northern Ireland Office,
2007).
• More radical Republicans and Unionists tried to break away. These groups
renewed a campaign of violence in 1998, hoping to destroy the Anglo-Irish peace
initiatives (Bell, 1998); however, the peace talks gained momentum, and radicals on
both sides found that they were losing public support. I
• People who were jailed for terrorism and violent political activity seemed to be more concerned with reintegrating into their families and communities after their incarceration than with carrying on the struggle (Monaghan, 2004; Hughes and Donnelly, 2004; Carmichael and Knox, 2004).
• The few remaining violent radicals resorted to criminal activities, and the leadership of the major terrorist groups began suppressing violent activities within their ranks (McGinn, 2006).
• The peace process resulted in two important new bureaucratic structures, the
Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) and the Police Service of Northern Ireland
(PSIN).
• The IMC investigated claims of both terrorist and governmental abuses,
and its actions have resulted in the arrests of Republican and Loyalist terrorists, as well
as members of the security forces who acted beyond the law (Henderson, 2006).
• In 2005, the IRA officially disbanded and handed over its weapons. Its leader disavowed
terrorism and urged his followers to cooperate with the police (BBC News, 2005a).
• The government followed suit by creating the PSNI to replace the RUC.