Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I: Defining the Community
- Introduction to Part I
- 1 Shaping the Terrain: Economy, State and Civil Society
- 2 From Resistance Community to Community Politics
- 3 ‘They Haven't Gone Away, You Know’: The Withering Away of the ‘Provisional State’?
- Part II: The Historic Compromise?
- Conclusion: The End of a Song?
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - ‘They Haven't Gone Away, You Know’: The Withering Away of the ‘Provisional State’?
from Part I: Defining the Community
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I: Defining the Community
- Introduction to Part I
- 1 Shaping the Terrain: Economy, State and Civil Society
- 2 From Resistance Community to Community Politics
- 3 ‘They Haven't Gone Away, You Know’: The Withering Away of the ‘Provisional State’?
- Part II: The Historic Compromise?
- Conclusion: The End of a Song?
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
[Michael Corleone:] Kay, my father's way of doing things is over – it's finished. Even he knows that. I mean in five years the Corleone family is going to be completely legitimate. Trust me. That's all I can tell you about my business.
‘Let's not kid ourselves that we are better than… the Sticks were or Fianna Fáil’
By 2007, the Provisionals’ long journey into Northern Ireland's political mainstream seemed complete. From sitting in a ‘partitionist assembly at Stormont’ through to the decommissioning of IRA weapons, and now jointly heading a devolved government with the DUP, the previously unthinkable had become the commonplace for the Provisionals. Taking responsibility for policing and taking the pledge of office upholding the rule of law were more than just symbolic acts to restore devolution. Recognizing the state's legitimate monopoly of violence and its ultimate right to enforce its will marked ‘the irrevocable final step away from trying to overthrow the state’. Given what these symbols represented for longstanding Republican aims, the belief that this acceptance of ‘Britain's illegal claim to sovereignty in Ireland’ and ‘their total immersion into the English system in Ireland’ constituted defeats seemed accurate.
There were other signs of significant political change within the Provisional movement. Twelve years after the first IRA ceasefire it seemed that the balance of power within the movement had finally shifted away from the armalite towards the ballot box. The IRA statement of July 2005, instructing volunteers to dump arms and ‘assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means … to advance our Republican and democratic objectives, including our goal of a united Ireland’ appeared to end the central ambiguity in Provisionalism between electoral politics and the military instrument. Other evidence in 2006 seemed to confirm that the IRA was indeed going away: according to the Gardai, the Provisionals had ‘abandoned organized crime’ in the Irish Republic, while the Independent Monitoring Commission's eleventh report in September 2006 declared that:
[The IRA] is not engaged in terrorist activity, by which we mean undertaking attacks, planning … them, or developing a terrorist capability by … procuring weapons or training members. The leadership is opposed to the use of violence in community control, has taken a stance against criminality and disorder amongst the membership and has been engaged in successful dialogue to prevent violence during the 2006 parades season.
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- The New Politics of Sinn Féin , pp. 91 - 132Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007