On the first visit in 1997, the day after Diana"s funeral, I was shown up to see the Queen in the drawing room, which was exactly as Queen Victoria had left it. I was just about to sit down in a rather inviting-looking chair when a strangled cry from the footman and a set of queenly eyebrows raised in horror made me desist. It was explained that it had been Victoria"s chair and that since her day no one had ever sat in it.
There were just the two of us, and after all that had happened, of course the papers were full of "Blair tells Queen", etc. No matter how sensible people are or how high their position and the Queen was very sensible and her position very high it wasn"t going to be easy. Indeed, one of the perpetual embarra.s.sments at Balmoral used to be the Sunday papers laid out on the drawing-room table as you had pre-lunch drinks. Inevitably there would be some screaming headline about me or her, sometimes both of us, which would lie there prominent yet unmentionable. Over time, as the media looked to cause trouble, and without having much scruple about how they did it, there would usually be some "story" timed for those very weekends about me insulting Her Majesty; or missing the Highland Games, the Sat.u.r.day event to which the prime minister is invited (which I fear we did); or going to the Games, where one time the camera caught Cherie yawning ...
To reiterate, I barely knew the Queen at this point. Had it all happened some years later, I would have been at ease and found it perfectly fine, to be frank. At this encounter, with the recent events still raw and the relationship in its infancy, I felt nervous. She did too. I talked, perhaps less sensitively than I should have, about the need to learn lessons. I worried afterwards she would think I was lecturing her or being presumptuous, and at points during the conversation she a.s.sumed a certain hauteur; but in the end she herself said lessons must be learned and I could see her own wisdom at work, reflecting, considering and adjusting.
It was a surreal end to a surreal week. Tragic, fascinating, unforgettable.
For myself, I had come through with general approbation. A poll showed the absurd rating of 93 per cent approval. I had, at least, the sense to know it was unreal; and also the realisation that earth-shattering though in one way the death of Princess Diana was, the tests of achievement for a prime minister and a government were rather different.
SIX.
PEACE IN NORTHERN IRELAND.
Churchill was a leader who never saw a problem without enthusiastically, often adventurously, charging forward in search of the solution; but on Northern Ireland he was bleak. Writing in 1922, with an elegant simplicity that came to define the British political establishment"s view of Ireland, he stated that "The whole map of Europe has changed ... but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few inst.i.tutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world."
There had been centuries of hatred in which religion and disputed territory were mixed in an evil chemistry, followed by a failed attempt at devolution in the nineteenth century, followed by the part.i.tion of North and South in the 1920s, followed by the civil rights uprising of the 1960s that sparked a bitter and brutal conflict lasting decades. Numerous attempts at peace were made with an inconsistent focus but a resolutely consistent outcome: repeated failure. In a sense Churchill can be forgiven his unusual and uncharacteristic defeatism.
When I told John Prescott prior to the 1997 election that I was determined to give peace a go in Northern Ireland, he snorted with derision. The attempt by John Major to put together a peace process had just collapsed in renewed terrorism, but Major had rightly divined that there was indeed a chance for peace. He had begun clandestine negotiations with the IRA and had started to put together some of the elements that could go to make up an agreement. He had brought in Senator George Mitch.e.l.l from the USA, an immensely shrewd and capable wise oldish bird, to help bring people into early negotiations, and a ceasefire had been put together. Though it had not held, it was clear something was stirring in the undergrowth of the Republican movement.
It was about time. One of the most extraordinary aspects of the entire tragedy was that anyone ever seriously thought there was going to be a winner: that the IRA believed that a nation as proud as Britain could be bombed out of Northern Ireland, where a majority regarded themselves as citizens of the United Kingdom; that the British government ever believed Irish nationalism was containable without paradigm change in the treatment of Irish Catholics; that the Unionists ever believed that on an island where a majority supported a united Ireland and were Catholic nationalists, they could ever refuse to share power with them.
What happened in those circ.u.mstances is in essence what happens in countless such disputes: the unreasonable drives out reason, by the use of unreason. The way this happens is very simple: those who do not hate, who want peace, who are prepared to countenance "forgive and forget" (or at least "forget") become slowly whittled down in number, seeming unrealistic, even unpatriotic to other members of their group. What starts as an unreasonable minority ends up consuming the reasonable in its snares and delusions.
Terrorism causes chaos and death, but also hatred of the perpetrators among the group targeted by them; human nature being what it is, the victim group regards the perpetrator group, not just the perpetrators, as responsible; the perpetrator group becomes the victim, and so the ghastly spiral continues. Then "the authorities" intervene, and such intervention is also b.l.o.o.d.y. Once the soldiers and the police feel the force of terrorism, they too become first victims, then perpetrators themselves. People often forget that British soldiers were originally dispatched to Northern Ireland in the 1960s not to take on the Nationalists, but to protect them.
The hatred had become entrenched and horribly vicious over the centuries. Old victories were celebrated with contemporary relevance, and the savagery of one side"s actions in history was remembered as defining their present and future character. During one of the interminable sessions in Downing Street, I remember David Trimble, then leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, waiting in the Cabinet Room as I saw Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein in the den. When Gerry and I ended our meeting and came through to the Cabinet Room, David was leafing through a book from the shelves. It was a biography of Cromwell, which he took great delight in flourishing under Gerry"s nose. To the Brits, Cromwell is an important historical figure; to the Irish he was a bigot and a butcher. I recall one meeting I had with Gerry and Martin McGuinness at Chequers. Cromwell"s daughter had married the owner of Chequers, and the place is stuffed with Cromwell memorabilia. Showing Martin round, we came across Cromwell"s death mask. "So you see," I said, "he really is dead."
"I wouldn"t bet on it," he replied.
A culture had grown up around the dispute. The Unionists didn"t simply have a political disagreement with the Nationalists, nor simply a religious difference; they had different music, a different way of speaking, a different att.i.tude, a different nature. Naturally there was the Protestant/Catholic divide, and that too had cultural as well as religious connotations, but any theological dispute had long since been subsumed in the tribal one. Ulstermen (and it was all very male) were men of few words, literal, strongly spoken but polite, with a humour all their own and a tendency, not always unfounded, to distrust the world. The Irish were gregarious, flamboyant, of many colourful words, preferring to talk in generalities rather than particulars, with a keen sense not only of their status as victims but also of the wider world being more in tune with them than with their victimisers.
On one visit to Northern Ireland, I saw a remarkable demonstration of how the culture of opposition is enforced. Sinn Fein had invited the Palestinians to town. As I landed to stay overnight, I saw the Palestinian flag displayed along the Republican roads of Belfast, to welcome their guests. Next day I drove through the town to leave, and I saw arrayed along Unionist enclaves the white-and-blue flags of Israel. How they had got them, and how they had put them up overnight, I"ll never know, but the moment those Palestinian flags went up, Unionist solidarity with Israel was total.
Ireland was also in my blood. My mother was from Donegal. Though living in the South, her family were Protestant farmers fiercely Protestant. Her father had been a Grand Master of one of the Orange lodges. An extraordinary example of the enduring nature of sectarianism was to be found in my maternal grandmother. She was a lovely woman, but was very much of her time and tribe, and in those days bigotry was unfortunately accepted as the norm. Later in life she had Alzheimer"s, but one day as I visited her at her sickbed she had a startling moment of lucidity. I had just begun to date Cherie. Obviously my grandmother had no knowledge of this, and indeed she did not really recognise me any more. As I patted her hand, she suddenly grabbed mine, opened her eyes wide and said: "Whatever else you do, son, never marry a Catholic." Everything else had disappeared from her mind, but left at the bottom was the residue of sectarian aversion.
We used to go to Ireland each year for our holidays to visit Mum"s relatives. I loved those holidays. We would usually go to the Sandhouse Hotel at the resort of Rossnowlagh, near Ballyshannon. At that beach I learned to swim in the freezing Atlantic Ocean. I had my first go at chasing girls, aged about eleven. I was taught my first chords on the guitar. I drank my first Guinness.
The relatives were slightly strange, truth be told. There was Aunt Mabel, with one tooth. For some bizarre reason I a.s.sociate her with Fox"s Glacier Mints, but heaven knows why. Then there was the even odder Great-Aunt Lizzie, who lived in a house at the top of the hill and was a miser. She wasn"t just tight-fisted, she was an authentic miser who was apparently rich beyond the dreams of avarice but kept it all h.o.a.rded away. A large part of the extended family"s time and energy was engaged in devising ways to part Great-Aunt Lizzie from her fabulous wealth. The chances of doing so while she was alive were plainly remote, but the family had high hopes of the will and testament. Great-Aunt Lizzie was regularly visited to be checked out for signs of imminent demise.
I remember Mum taking my brother and me to see her. She had expressed a desire to see "the boys", which Mum took as a good sign. I had never met her, but her fame was huge and I was overcome with excitement at meeting a real-life miser. Just as we went in the house, Mum said to us both: "Now look, Aunt Lizzie"s house smells a bit." She paused. "Actually, a lot. YOU ARE NOT TO COMMENT ON IT. What"s more," she went on, "Aunt Lizzie is giving us tea. If there are cakes, you eat them. YOU EAT THEM," she repeated.
"That"s all right, Mum, I like cakes," I said.
She shot me a look. "Hmm," she said.
To this day, I mean honestly to this day, I can get neither the pong nor the cake out of my mind. The smell was a sickly, sweet, rancid odour that overwhelmed the senses, illuminating the true meaning of the word decay. The cake was obviously a relic of Great-Aunt Lizzie"s last generous tea gathering, or possibly the one before. The combination of the smell and the cake made my stomach heave every so often as I sat there, until Great-Aunt Lizzie told my mother I was evidently not a well child. Even now as I write these words, I feel sick.
As we left the house a little earlier than intended, since Mum began to worry that I really would throw up I said to her: "But surely if she"s a miser, she won"t want to leave her money to anyone", an opinion that, as my mother remarked after Great-Aunt Lizzie died leaving us precisely nothing, was perceptive beyond my years.
Ireland was not just in my blood, but part of my experience growing up. We had friends there we saw every year. Then in 1969 we suddenly stopped going. It was not safe, Mum decided. The Troubles had begun.
I kept in correspondence with the friends, and their letters told me of how the bitterness was entering the stream of public sentiment. They were Protestant, of course. They described with increasing venom the gradual deterioration of their relations with, and then their view of, their Catholic neighbours, so I had some small but nevertheless direct understanding of the dispute.
Over the years, Britain would wake many mornings to the news of the latest terrorist attack or sectarian killing or a soldier"s death or the further disintegration of community intercourse between Unionists and Nationalists. Ian Paisley whom my grandmother revered became a household name. As the 1970s rolled on into the 80s and 90s, the names of the failed peace attempts became imprinted on our consciousness. The reputations of the key players with whom I was to find peace were hammered out on the anvil of sectarian strife in this period: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, John Hume, David Trimble, John Taylor, Peter Robinson and Paisley himself, naturally. They were part of it all, helped shape it all and created much of its history and its mythology.
Sometimes we forget the brutality of it: the torture; the maiming; the sheer, unadulterated vastness of the hatred. I thought of the hunger strikers often, particularly Bobby Sands, starving himself to death. I think of the pain, the unendurable horror, the blind courage required for such an act of self-destruction, realised not in a moment but over days and weeks of agony. People did things to each other and to themselves that now we can only look on with a sense of astonishment. For decades, such barbaric atavism defined Northern Ireland.
Why on earth did I think it could be settled? Jonathan Powell always used to put it down to what he referred to (I think jokingly) as my Messiah complex, i.e. I thought I could do what no one else could. In fact, it wasn"t that. Or, at least, it may have been, but there was another reason too: I thought it was no longer in anyone"s interest to tolerate conflict, not in Northern Ireland, but more important, not outside it. I thought the whole thing had become ridiculously old-fashioned and out of touch with the times in which the island of Ireland lived.
You might wonder what I mean by "no longer in anyone"s interest to tolerate conflict". When was it ever? Of course, for the people inside Northern Ireland it never was, but it was fuelled by bigotry and by the pain of the Troubles. For the external world, Northern Ireland was a dispute in which too often people could express their emotional connection without ever having to live with the consequences, rather like the Palestinian cause. I don"t mean by this that they actively sought to prolong the conflict, but they saw it pretty much from one side only. It was a rallying point. For communities with an Irish pedigree, it reminded them of their roots. They didn"t really think it could be solved, so they never rallied to making peace.
Parts of the Irish-American community were a prime example. Thousands of miles from a lawlessness which they would never have tolerated for an instant, they would reflect on Irish history and folklore, the iniquities of the British, the cause of their kith and kin, and happily raise money used to kill innocent civilians and British soldiers.
The gallant attempts by Gladstone, Asquith and then Lloyd George to resolve the issue by devolution within the United Kingdom which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries undoubtedly could have worked (and nearly did) were repeatedly broken on a wheel of sometimes opportunistic and always prejudiced rabble-rousing by Unionists and Tory MPs. Even great figures like F. E. Smith were prepared to use the dispute to cripple a United Kingdom government they did not like. For the politics of the Irish Republic, it was a useful unifying theme, giving point and purpose to the fledgling state as it gradually built itself. In the Second World War, Ireland was neutral, even mildly anti-British, though many brave and great Irishmen volunteered to fight the n.a.z.is.
But times were changing as the modern world took form around us. Old att.i.tudes clashed with new realities which had a youthful vigour. American statesmen like Teddy Kennedy began to dream of an Ireland at peace. Republican congressmen, who worshipped Margaret Thatcher and lauded her friendship with President Reagan, began to think it a trifle odd that they were supporting people who were actively trying to kill her. For British governments of whatever persuasion, the drain on resources and military manpower which Northern Ireland required made any prospect of peace extremely attractive.
But most of all, the Irish had changed, and with it att.i.tudes to them. It is hard to understand now how the Irish were regarded by many British and Unionists. They were the b.u.t.t of jokes, all revolving around stupidity. They were dismissively labelled "the bog Irish", to be employed as a builder"s labourer but not in a bank. They were often regarded, I am ashamed to say, rather as some whites in South Africa regarded blacks in the era of apartheid: as inherently inferior. It seems incredible now, yet at one time it was true. And their politics were defined by the legacy of their relationship with Britain.
In the 1980s and later under Albert Reynolds with Bertie Ahern as a reforming finance minister, the Irish embarked on a remarkable process of self-transformation. They joined the European Union and with the benefit of its generous programme of development, which they used with adroit intelligence, the country modernised. Dublin became a thriving go-ahead European city, and the economy boomed. U2 became one of the world"s biggest bands, Bob Geldof was a hero, Roy Keane became the best football player of his time. Irish business, Irish art, Irish culture, in short Irish everything took off.
In the s.p.a.ce of a few years it was no longer the backward old South that was looked down upon, but the North. The South was sprinting down the track towards the future, while the people of Northern Ireland were hanging around the starting blocks arguing about Protestants and Catholics in a way that obscured the race ahead in mists of irrelevance.
This was the factor that I thought gave us a chance of peace. For the Republic this was no longer a dispute to be clung to as a unifying symbol of Irish ident.i.ty, but a painful and unwelcome reminder of Ireland"s past. For decades, also, Unionists could point to Irish economic backwardness and their cultural and religious differences as making a fit between the two impossible. Now these elements were either fading or being reversed.
Even before taking office, I was working out a strategy. One of the first things I did on becoming Labour leader was to change our long-standing policy position on Northern Ireland. The Labour Party policy had for years been to try to negotiate a peace deal between Unionists and Nationalists on the grounds that we believed in a united Ireland and could be a persuader for it. It didn"t take a political mastermind to realise that such a position wholly alienated Unionist opinion, and in doing so disabled any attempt to negotiate a deal based on that premise.
I knew I could never get a policy change through the party"s usual policymaking machinery certainly at that time so I"m afraid I just popped up one morning on the Today Today programme not long after becoming leader and announced we would henceforth have a new policy: neutrality on the issue of a united Ireland or a United Kingdom. I also replaced Kevin McNamara a really lovely man but wedded to the old policy with Mo Mowlam, who had held a junior Northern Ireland position under John Smith. programme not long after becoming leader and announced we would henceforth have a new policy: neutrality on the issue of a united Ireland or a United Kingdom. I also replaced Kevin McNamara a really lovely man but wedded to the old policy with Mo Mowlam, who had held a junior Northern Ireland position under John Smith.
I then put us basically in a bipartisan position with John Major, fully supporting his foray into peacemaking. At the time, the bipartisan approach was very rare, partly because of the sharp moves to left and right of Labour and Tories, but also because it was thought to be bad politics. John Smith, however, had cannily backed Major in talking secretly with the IRA.
I decided to make it a full-blown demonstration not just of a change in Northern Ireland policy, but of a change in approach to being in Opposition. As I expected, people thought it mature politics; no one believed Northern Ireland should be a focus of partisan point-scoring. We held this approach up to and through the 1997 election. I cultivated ties with David Trimble and the Unionists. I sent messages showing interest in Sinn Fein. I met Bertie Ahern, also a Leader of the Opposition, and we got on immediately like the proverbial house on fire. The Taoiseach John Bruton was a great guy but was plainly going to lose.
Our victory of 1 May 1997 had released new energy everywhere. Challenges that mired a tired and psychologically demoralised government now inspired an energetic and confident team to have a go. I often reflect that such audacity could only be given wing in the first flush of enthusiasm that greets a profound moment of change.
The first few weeks taught me a lot about the nature and complexity of this challenge. While I was at my first European summit, news came through that the IRA had killed two off-duty police officers, shot in the head as they walked down the street. Two lives ended; two families in mourning. I was repelled. I had sent warning messages to the Sinn Fein leadership before the election. It didn"t seem a wildly optimistic start.
I had also decided that my first major speech as prime minister would be on the subject of Northern Ireland and peace. I had been mulling over what to say for some time even before the election, and had talked about it with David Trimble. Once we were in Downing Street, the diplomat John Holmes, who had done sterling work under Major, joined us and became an integral part of the team. Jonathan Powell was the key operative in the government effort from the outset.
I was never entirely sure why or how Jonathan became so important on the issue, but he did. You can always exaggerate in such situations and say "Had it not been for so-and-so this would never have happened", but in this instance it is no less than the unvarnished truth. Without him, there would have been no peace. Every talent he had and he has many seemed to be displayed to best effect in pursuit of this peace agreement. He was diligent, quick-witted, insightful, persistent, inventive and above all trusted in so far as anyone was by both sides. He and Adams struck up a genuine friendship. The Unionists respected him and he got the best out of the Northern Ireland Office that all parties affected to despise and which was the object of innumerable complaints, but which in fact did a superb job in well-nigh impossible circ.u.mstances. His invariable calmness was also a great foil for the mood swings which Northern Ireland produced in me.
I say invariable, but there was one meeting which I had on the Drumcree madness when he erupted in a way I had never seen before. The Drumcree people were the unreasonable of the unreasonable of the unreasonable. In the premier league of unreasonableness, they left every other faction, in every other dispute, gasping in their wake. There was one guy, Breandan MacCionnaith, who represented the residents of the Garvaghy Road ... But first let me explain Drumcree in a nutsh.e.l.l.
The Unionist marches often went through Catholic and even Republican areas. Not unreasonably the Nationalists and Republicans didn"t like it. Somewhat unreasonably they wanted them banned. Wholly unreasonably the marches would provoke violence. Of the several hypersensitive routes, Drumcree was the most sensitive. Part of the route of the annual march there went down over a hundred yards of Garvaghy Road, a highly Republican neighbourhood. There was a Parades Commission that had to decide whether to allow it or not, and then the police, poor things, had to keep order.
The whole thing was a nightmare. Banning it caused tens of thousands of Unionists to take to the streets. Allowing it caused riots in Republican areas. Part of the peace process was trying to resolve it. The residents were led by this Breandan MacCionnaith. He was so unreasonable that in the end I became rather intrigued by him, much to Jonathan"s disgust. He took unreasonableness to an art form. He conceded nothing, and I mean nothing. I"m not just talking about the substance of meetings, I mean where a meeting should be held. Who should be there. Who shouldn"t be there. When it began. When it ended. What its purpose was. Who spoke first. Who spoke last. Who spoke in between first and last.
A great belief of mine is that when you are negotiating with someone, the first thing is to set the atmosphere at ease; signify a little glimmer of human feeling; exchange a few pleasantries; and above all start by saying something utterly uncontroversial with which disagreement is impossible. Get the other person"s head nodding. It"s that nod which establishes rapport, and which is an early, tiny sign that all is not lost. I might say: "I know you feel strongly about this." Well, of course they do; that"s why there"s a dispute; and there would be a nod.
Breandan MacCionnaith was completely and totally nodless. If I said to him, "I know you feel strongly about this," he would say, "I don"t feel more strongly about this than anything else." So I"d say, "Yes of course, sorry, but obviously you do have strong feelings." "Who are you to tell me about my feelings?" he would reply. When I said that the purpose of the meeting with Orangemen and residents was that we could resolve the dispute satisfactorily for everyone so that peace broke out, he said, not a bit of it; the purpose was to dispatch the Orange Order and their oppressive provocation of ordinary decent residents on the Garvaghy Road to the dustbin of history, or some such. In the end I would say, "What about ..." and then pause, just to hear him start to say "No" before I"d even explained the proposition. If I tell you Breandan MacCionnaith didn"t stand out dramatically for his unreasonableness (though he did ultimately clinch gold medal), you might understand how unreasonable they all were.
Strangely it was with the Orange Order that Jonathan lost his cool. We were having one of those interminable, circular and unproductive meetings around whether, where, how the march might be done, and the Orange Order (in the main fairly polite) were making their points. One of them made a childish remark about my involvement. Suddenly I became aware of a rumbling to my right followed by Jonathan leaping to his feet, virtually throwing himself across the table, face red with anger, shouting: "How dare you talk to the British prime minister like that? How dare you?"
We were all speechless with amazement. Except Jonathan, who was full of speech, somewhat repet.i.tive but making his point with great clarity. The Orange Order chap was quite shaken. So was I. As I say, I"d never seen him like that before. We had some words afterwards along the lines of "You should have taken your tablets this morning", and I"ve never seen him like that since. No one ever quite behaved normally around the issue of Northern Ireland. The incident also raised an interesting reflection on the nature of the job: you have to absorb a large amount of abuse. Not crude shouting down or protests, but your motives constantly questioned or traduced, your words misunderstood or misrepresented, your attempts to do good seen as attempts either to further your own interests or even to do bad.
I had a constant problem of trust, mostly with Unionists but often with the other side too. It derived partly from the necessarily tricky path that had to be woven through the hazardous thickets of Northern Irish politics, and deals of every description side, secret and surface abounded; but it was more to do with the general point that people find it hard to accept political leaders might genuinely be trying to help. So, in respect of Northern Ireland, you might think the involvement relatively selfless: the conflict was the the issue in Northern Ireland (no Labour voters there) but not really an issue in United Kingdom politics (indeed, the more you solve it the less salient it becomes); fantastically difficult; inordinately time-consuming. In terms of pure political self-interest, stakes were high if you failed, low if you succeeded. issue in Northern Ireland (no Labour voters there) but not really an issue in United Kingdom politics (indeed, the more you solve it the less salient it becomes); fantastically difficult; inordinately time-consuming. In terms of pure political self-interest, stakes were high if you failed, low if you succeeded.
Yet all the way through the process, the good faith of the government, never mind its good government, was in question. In the end I decided people operate at two levels in relation to political leadership. At one level, they vest all their hopes, expectations and, most of all, once in government, their frustrations in the leader. You are the focal point, and therefore the focal point for criticism. At this level you aren"t measured against a reasonable yardstick but against perfection. Unsurprisingly, you fall short.
However, at another level, less visible but real, people indeed take a more mature view and if you are really trying, you get credit for it. Nevertheless, as I say, a great capacity for absorbing abuse was a necessary part of the job.
There was another trait that served me well in Northern Ireland. I don"t really get on my high horse. I am not big on the "dignity of office" stuff. I rested my authority on motivating and persuading people, not frightening them. It"s possible I took this too far, at times, and it may also be true that on occasions a bit of hauteur and bossing, even bullying, would have served me better, but there it is: it"s my nature. In Northern Ireland, it worked. People could be really very insulting without much provocation, yet if you fell out with them over it, the consequences could be unpredictable. So by and large I didn"t.
In those first months after taking office, I was trying to give shape to our strategy. I made the speech at the Royal Ulster Agricultural Show on 16 May and deliberately set out to woo and bring onside Unionist opinion. The setting itself was indicative right in the heart of the Unionist community. Acting on David Trimble"s advice, I made it clear I valued the Union and then, in a pa.s.sage that caused a lot of sucking through teeth, said that I doubted we would see a united Ireland in the lifetime of anyone present. Since some of those present were in their twenties, it was quite a bold pro-Union statement. It was the weirdest place to give a major speech, in a tent where outside prize bulls jostled with ruddy-faced farmers while the potential future of the land was being made.
Despite the murders of the two police officers (and the IRA sent messages essentially saying it had been unauthorised), we gave the IRA five weeks to renew the ceasefire, which in the past eighteen months had lapsed. This they did on 19 July 1997.
Weeks later the British and Irish governments agreed to establish an Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). The issue of decommissioning was one very unfortunate legacy from the previous administration which was to become a big ball and chain round our legs in the years to come. Under Unionist pressure, John Major had agreed that a vital precondition of peace and power-sharing was for the IRA not merely to embrace peace but to decommission their weapons. Of course, at one level this is entirely reasonable: if you are for peace, you don"t need weapons; but on another level, it carried an implication for the IRA of surrender, of not merely embracing peace but of apologising for ever having been to war, and it complicated their internal management horribly. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were trying to bring their movement with them. Like all such situations, there was a spectrum of Republican opinion. There were real hardliners. They would stay hardliners. The important thing was not to let them have traction on the middle ground. The prospect of the IRA being forced to destroy their weapons gave them such traction, but there it was; to renege on John Major"s commitment was impossible, so it just had to be managed. The IICD bought us some time and s.p.a.ce.
George Mitch.e.l.l had been doing great work drawing up principles of non-violence and common positions a commitment to exclusively peaceful means for all parties in government, for example, things that were broad but set a framework for the much bigger negotiation to come and had been chairing talks before we came to office. Sinn Fein immediately said they would abide by the Mitch.e.l.l principles, but the IRA refused to give the same commitment. That didn"t exactly rea.s.sure Unionists, but we persevered and identified three strands to the negotiation which had begun when John Major was prime minister: how Northern Ireland would be governed under a devolved system of power-sharing; relations between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (EastWest); and relations between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland (NorthSouth).
The talks began in September without David Trimble. Republican dissidents set off a bomb on the second day. On the third day, the Unionist parties other than the DUP, Paisley"s party, entered the talks.
There were further talks the next month and then I went over on 13 October to have my first meeting with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Up to then, no British prime minister had met either of them. It was a big moment. A crucial question was whether or not I shook hands with them (no Unionist leader did until 2007). I decided just to do the thing naturally. So they walked in, we shook hands.
When asked about it afterwards, I said I treated them like any other human being, but later the same day I got a taste of Unionist sentiment. I was invited by Peter Robinson, the DUP deputy leader, to visit a shopping centre in his const.i.tuency. I was never sure whether he set me up or not. I"ll a.s.sume not.
The place was full of the most respectable elderly grannies doing the shopping. Like something out of a bad dream, however, they suddenly morphed into very angry protesting grannies, shouting, swearing, calling me a traitor and waving rubber gloves in my face. I was perfectly happy to listen to them, but the RUC with what I thought was a trifle too much eagerness turned it into a major security incident and physically carried me into a room for my own safety.
Amusingly, I didn"t get what the rubber gloves were about at all. I thought they had just finished doing the washing-up or something. When I told Jonathan, he roared with laughter and said, "No, it"s because you should have worn rubber gloves when shaking hands with Gerry Adams."
The next few months were a complicated trek through a very dense and dangerous jungle, as we tried to get to the uplands where we could see our way to a negotiated deal. Our path was constantly, though fortunately temporarily, barred by unhelpful events. One Loyalist group reinstated their ceasefire. Good. Then another Loyalist group broke theirs and had to be excluded from the talks. Bad. In February 1998 there was a real crisis when the IRA killed two people in Belfast. Sinn Fein were excluded for seventeen days. Then the dissident Republican group the Irish National Liberation Army killed Billy Wright, the Loyalist Volunteer Force leader, inside the Maze prison. More upheaval.
Throughout I was never off the phone to David Trimble and Unionist leaders, desperately holding them in while, not entirely unreasonably, they regarded the continual outbreaks of sporadic violence as somewhat inconsistent with the Mitch.e.l.l principles.
To a.s.suage Nationalist opinion and under pressure from the Irish, I also ordered an inquiry into the b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday shootings in 1972, when British troops had opened fire on protesters in Belfast, killing a number of people. Nationalists claimed they were peaceful protesters. An inquiry at the time by Lord Widgery, the then Lord Chief Justice, was widely condemned as a whitewash and we agreed to meet the twenty-five-year demand to have another inquiry. It certainly a.s.suaged opinion at the time. It also turned out to be a long-running saga, however, lasting twelve years at a cost of nearly 200 million. Until it reported in 2010, I considered it a cla.s.sic example of why you should never conduct inquiries into anything unless utterly impossible to resist, or in the most truly exceptional circ.u.mstances. They rarely achieve their aim. However, the report when published proved me wrong. It had been worth it: an exhaustive and fair account of what happened.
Somehow or other we staggered into early April when we had decided to try to broker agreement around the three strands that had been the basis of the talks under John Major. We fixed a date for the meeting. The fascinating thing about the Good Friday Agreement is that the way it came about was far more by accident than design. I was due to stay a day to give an agreed deal my endors.e.m.e.nt, the detailed work having been done by officials. I ended up staying for four days and nights and engaging intimately in the detail of one of the most extraordinary peace negotiations ever undertaken. At critical points throughout those days the deal was lost; but in the end, and by the squeakiest of squeaks, we got it through. I can truthfully say I have never been involved in anything quite like it. And it did make history.
Talking of "history", there was a hilarious moment when I first arrived. I had heard from David Trimble on the phone the night before that although an immense amount of detailed work by officials had indeed been done, not only was none of it actually agreed, it also looked as if it was very unlikely to be agreed. I decided to be in practical, workmanlike, non-rhetorical mode when I addressed the press outside Hillsborough, the stately home that is the perquisite of the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. "Today is not a day for sound bites," I began eagerly, oozing impatience to get down to work and irritation with anything flowery or contrived. Then and heaven only knows where it came from, it just popped into my head I said, "But I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder", which of course was about as large a bite of sound as you could contemplate. In the corner of my eye I could see Jonathan and Alastair cracking up. I decided to say no more and quickly went back into the building before being taken to the negotiations, held at Castle Buildings at Stormont.
Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland government in the years following part.i.tion until the whole system collapsed, is typical of the extraordinary buildings with which Britain told the rest of the world of its own importance. Built in the early twentieth century, it is an imposing edifice with grounds to match and a grandeur that is impressive, stately and strong. Some lunatic, however, had decided that Castle Buildings the modest annexe should be where we met. There should be a warrant out for the person who designed it. There were next to no facilities, it was ugly, cramped and, worst of all, had no soul. I am rather sensitive to my surroundings. I love good design, find energy in beauty, particularly of architecture, and I like to work in an environment that pleases the eye and refreshes the soul. Castle Buildings was the ant.i.thesis.
However, never mind the d.a.m.n building, it was clear that we had badly misjudged Unionist readiness to deal. Of course David Trimble was under perpetual pressure from Ian Paisley, who turned up outside Castle Buildings to condemn the whole thing as a monstrous sell-out.
I had also taken the precaution of talking the evening before to John Alderdice, the leader of the cross-community Alliance Party. John was the thoroughly reasonable leader of a thoroughly reasonable party, which meant they stood no chance of winning. Nonetheless, they exercised some swing influence in the centre and John, especially, was a quality politician who knew the Unionist community well. He told me bluntly the thing was a non-starter for David Trimble.
I went up to the room on the fifth floor that was to become my living quarters, my cell, for the next few days. I beetled along the corridor to see George Mitch.e.l.l, who was in jovial mood but somewhat unnerved me by telling me jauntily that he thought the deal was undoable.
I took the decision then and there to take complete charge of the negotiation. I spoke again to David Trimble, who was in favour of leaving things until after Easter. I started going through the detail of what he needed. The previous night I had familiarised myself with the complexities of the different strands of negotiation. It was like being back at the Bar reading up the next day"s brief. I am lucky in being able to digest a large amount of information quickly, an invaluable training which the law really provides.
One myth about me is that I prefer the broad brush to the detail. In truth, it"s impossible as prime minister to be across the detail of everything, and in addition, too much detail creates an immediate wood/trees problem. But sometimes at moments of crisis or negotiations like this, or some of those back-breaking European treaties or Budget agreements the detail is absolutely of first importance. At such times, I would immerse myself in detail.
I did so now, and just as well. David had pages of amendments, and, naturally, one side"s improvement to the text would be the other side"s loss. With not much genuine basis for so doing, I promised David I would deliver what he needed.
I next got hold of Bertie, who had just arrived. Bertie is one of my favourite political leaders. Over time he became a true friend. He was heroic throughout the whole process, smart, cunning in the best sense, strong and, above all, free of the shackles of history. That is not to say he had no sense of history; on the contrary, his family had fought the British, had been part of the Easter Uprising, were Republicans through and through; but he had that elemental quality that defines great politicians: he was a student of history, not its prisoner.
His mother to whom he was close had just died, and the previous night he had watched over her body. It was good of him to come at all. Now he had to contend with me telling him that the NorthSouth part i.e. the all-Ireland part, so dear to his const.i.tuents would have to be rewritten. It was not the news he wanted, but here"s where Bertie showed his mettle and his character.
On 7 April 1998 and many times later in the years to come he could have put the traditional past perspective of his country before a living, evolving vision of its future. Instead, he chose repeatedly to put the future first. His support and his ingenuity were recurring mainstays of the progress in the search for peace. His officials were really capable, and they took their cue from him. His presence and mine, his personality and mine, in a way symbolised the new, modern realities which were extinguishing old att.i.tudes. In a sense we personified the opportunity to escape our history, British and Irish, and move on. Nonetheless, he left me in no doubt that rewriting the NorthSouth pact would be a blow to the Nationalist side.
The next thing was to see David Trimble with his full team. Here was a strange phenomenon about the difference between the two sides. When you saw the Republicans, you saw unity in motion. They had a line; they took it; they held it. If it appeared to modify in the course of a meeting, it was an illusion the modification had been pre-built into the line, and the line was sustained. Gerry Adams was the leader. You would no more have had one of the delegation raising eyebrows during his remarks, let alone uttering words of dissent, than you would have had Ian Paisley leading a rousing chorus of "Danny Boy". Per contra, the UUP had the most alarming way of conducting meetings. You would think you had them all jolly and sorted and then one of them, usually not the leader, would make a depressing or downbeat comment and helter-skelter they would all follow in leaping off the cliff. Even more alarmingly, it could happen on the most apparently minor issue. As for supporting their leader, they didn"t regard that as their job. At all. Not merely eyebrows, whole hairlines would be raised in mock bemus.e.m.e.nt as their leader spoke, generally insinuating that whatever he might be saying, don"t let that kid you for a moment they were going down that path.
They also had an innate and powerful tendency to think they were being had. It wasn"t always without justification, but that wasn"t the point. That"s just how they were. David Trimble would go back and explain what he thought was a reasonable outcome, only to be clattered around the head with innumerable objections, qualifications, additional points, amendments, requests for clarification and so forth. Whenever I used to think leading the Labour Party was hard, I would think of David and feel grateful.
Having conceded a lot to David, I thought we might get a smooth enough ride with him and his colleagues in delegation. I was quickly disabused of such a fond notion. Ken McGuinness, a big, hale, hearty and actually rather decent man, who was in charge of security for them, had a whole new raft of changes. Disconcerted, I tried to accommodate them. Then Reg Empey, David"s deputy, began the helter-skelter by saying: Why not take the whole thing off the table and start all over again? The room swayed. I sent Jonathan off to talk to Ken about security, and pretended Reg hadn"t said what he had said (which was hard since he kept repeating it). I was throwing concessions around like confetti, since I knew the danger was they would just march out. Putting off until tomorrow what you didn"t want to do today had served Unionists well for decades, if not centuries. I knew delay was fatal.
I had a now-or-never sense. Truth be told, at that point I would have bet the house on "never". Jonathan, though, was insanely upbeat and said it could be done. Bertie had had to return home for his mother"s funeral. When he got back, he just took the decision that he would agree to the NorthSouth amendments. It was a big step. He simply took it. Progress!
We then got the Irish and UUP in the one room my office to talk it through. Bertie"s decision gave the Unionists heart. We decided overnight that they should come up with an agreed text.
Jonathan and I got a couple of hours" sleep after meeting other parties (all of them had to be seen regardless of whether or not they could add anything, because otherwise backs were put up and feet might walk). When we returned, to our consternation the Irish and UUP had only talked around the issue and had not agreed anything. Frantic work ensued. I decided to let the UUP draft a text and the Irish amend it. By midday we had what I thought was an agreed text, and on the trickiest of issues.
Foolish thought. I said that the Republicans showed military discipline in presenting their case and supporting their leader. That is true, but they weren"t the only party on the Irish side. There were the Irish government and the SDLP, the moderate Nationalist party, and they would be locked in the same frenetic dance with each other as were the Unionists. The SDLP thought that they often got ignored because we were too busy dealing with Sinn Fein. "If we had weapons you"d treat us more seriously" was their continual refrain. There was some truth in it. The big prize was plainly an end to violence, and they weren"t the authors of the violence. Their real problem was that strategically they decided they would never go into government with the Unionists unless Sinn Fein were at the table too. This was understandable, because in the past Sinn Fein had collapsed the show by claiming the SDLP were selling out. They therefore had somewhat of the same problem the UUP had with the DUP.
Nonetheless, it meant that they gave up their trump card. They used to attack me for "handing Sinn Fein the veto", but actually they they had, since without Sinn Fein there could be no government with the SDLP. But the point was this: they were always looking to stymie Sinn Fein if they could. When Bertie had told the Irish side for these purposes the whole spectrum of Irish opinion the concessions he"d made, they revolted. had, since without Sinn Fein there could be no government with the SDLP. But the point was this: they were always looking to stymie Sinn Fein if they could. When Bertie had told the Irish side for these purposes the whole spectrum of Irish opinion the concessions he"d made, they revolted.
The result was, in the afternoon, the thing fell apart. Again Bertie came to the rescue. I explained we could not now go back to the UUP with the old text. They would walk. Reluctantly he agreed they would negotiate on the basis of the UUP draft, and faced everyone else down.
Once that happened, on Strand One (the governing of Northern Ireland) the Unionists conceded to work off the SDLP proposals. Crucially and this was David Trimble"s huge contribution they agreed that there would be a system guaranteeing genuine power-sharing across a.s.sembly voting and in the Executive. Up to then, Unionism had always said it should be a majority vote, ignoring that, practically speaking, this could mean supremacy of the majority, i.e. them, in Northern Ireland. Instead, now there would need to be cross-community support for things to happen and the government seats on the Executive would have to be shared out fairly.
The thing started to come together again. We breathed a sigh of relief. Again too soon. Sinn Fein had resented the way the SDLP got agreement with the UUP. They felt cut out, and issued a press release that there would be no agreement.
At this point, I should say something about the world beyond the negotiating madhouse which we were inhabiting. We were in a coc.o.o.n. We might as well have been in outer s.p.a.ce. As the hours then the days pa.s.sed, I had little sense of the fact that outside Castle Buildings had gathered an army, a convocation, a full-blown live happening of the world"s media. It was the start of 24-hour-a-day news, and they came in their droves, with a lot to say and nothing to say, if you get my meaning.
I didn"t really imbibe the full purport of this until after the event, which is just as well, since had I thought about it, I would have quailed at the political risk we were taking. As time went on, the stakes became ever higher as it was clear I was putting my whole prime ministerial authority on the line for a deal. Failure was going to be not just bad, but potentially dangerous, with both streets Unionist and Nationalist inflamed, possibly literally.
Alastair and John Holmes, the other part of the team, were performing to the highest standard. Alastair was rather brilliantly trying to feed the media beast without a lot of meat in the sandwich, conscious that one word out of place could provoke some party or other to feel slighted. John was the perfect foil for Jonathan and me, working up the detail, providing ideas, being brilliantly creative and letting us take care of the politics. Mo Mowlam was glad-handing and looking after people, but a little removed from the negotiations.
The moment Sinn Fein told the waiting hordes of media there would be no agreement, collective hysteria broke out. The result, as no doubt Gerry and Martin intended, was that we had to scuttle off to them and try to bring them back. They were negative. Martin bluntly said he couldn"t recommend it. I suggested that they went away and came back with their amendments. I knew the Unionists would go nuts if they thought we were asking Sinn Fein for ideas on their doc.u.ment, but I couldn"t think of another option. Everyone had to be kept in play. The see-saw was in a state of constant imbalance, as first this side and then that felt cheated, or taken advantage of, or let down.