A different take on the pre-peace process

WorldbyStorm

Oct 31

Anyone read the review of Stephen Walker's biography of John Hume in the Business Post at the weekend? Andrew Lynch praises it, but he makes a couple of points that stood out a bit:

Although Walker's admiration for Hume is never in doubt, he also gives the man's critics a fair hearing. Strikingly, many of them come from within the SDLP. They accuse him of being a bad party leader who neglected its organisation, ignored the electoral threat posed by Sinn Féin and operated as a one-man band. His long-suffering deputy Seamus Mallon considered him "a remarkable genius" but also "egocentric and very resistant to criticism".

I do wonder about that framing of this in respect of 'ignoring the electoral threat posed by Sinn Féin'. Surely convincing Sinn Féin to move away from support of armed struggle was a far far greater prize than what party was the leading voice of Northern nationalism.

Anyhow, be that as it may. Then there's this which is not unrelated:

Specifically, the SDLP jury is still out on Hume's seismic decision to start a dialogue with Gerry Adams during the late 1980s. By bringing the IRA in from the cold, he threw republicans a lifeline at a time when they had allegedly become riddled with informers. "I thought [Hume] could have given me more information," says the SDLP West Belfast representative Joe Hendron, who took Adams' Westminster seat off him in 1992 but lost it again five years later. "I felt a wee bit hurt."

This seems a very novel line about 'throwing Republicans a lifeline at a time when they had become riddled with informers'. Is the implication is that somehow the IRA and SF were on the point of collapse, that the armed struggle was impossible to continue and would have been halted without Hume's interventions? Does this make much sense even on its own terms? But how to square such an analysis with the fact that the conflict continued through until the first ceasefire in 1994 though the talks had been on-going since the late 1980s. Moreover that the Irish government knew of and backed the talks. Or that the British government was itself in talks with the IRA.

None of those latter facts sound as if those involved believed the conflict was about to run out of steam. Why bother pushing for engagement and negotiation if it was?