As loyalist violence threatens the IRA ceasefire there are moves
despite the bluster to pacify the terrorists on both sides of the
religious divide in Northern Ireland.
WHEN historians come to trawl the tortuous build-up to the IRA's
ending of its 25-year military campaign, the five central figures in the
story will be Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, Prime Minister John
Major, US President Bill Clinton, the SDLP leader John Hume and the Sinn
Fein president Gerry Adams.
In the next rank of credits are senior politicians like the Irish
Foreign Minister, Dick Spring, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State,
Sir Patrick Mayhew, and the SDLP deputy leader, Seamus Mallon.
Full access to documentary and oral sources will enable the historians
to uncover the involvement behind the scenes of a number of diplomats
and churchmen who played a crucial intermediary role between Sinn
Fein/IRA and the Dublin government.
Among the diplomats a trusted role was played by Dr Martin Mansergh,
the special adviser to Mr Reynolds. A Tipperary-born Protestant, Dr
Mansergh is the son of the late historian, Nicholas Mansergh, who wrote
the magisterial work on The Unresolved Question: the Anglo-Irish
Settlement and Its Undoing, 1912-72.
Now as it were, Nicholas's Oxford-educated son is trying to completely
undo that book by spearheading this latest attempt to reach a final
settlement of what George Dangerfield called ''the damnable question''.
With his anglified accent and donnish appearance, Martin Mansergh
looks a most unlikely contender to be the confidant of an Irish
Taoiseach, moving furtively around Belfast and other towns in Northern
Ireland on secret assignments. But this he has done loyally in this
capacity with Charles Haughey and now Albert Reynolds.
Dr Mansergh is imbued by the idealism of the United Irishmen of two
centuries ago who were crushed in the Great Rebellion of 1798. Their
philosophy of reconciling Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter seeps
through the speeches which he assiduously prepares for Mr Reynolds.
It may be no coincidence that Mr Reynolds, who once described himself
as ''a one-page memo man'', has acquired a taste for voluminous
historical novels.
While church leaders such as the Catholic and Anglican primates,
Cardinal Cahal Daly and Archbishop Robin Eames, have contributed to the
peace moves, the history books will pay an enormous homage to a
Belfast-based monk, Father Alex Reid, a Redemptorist priest at Clonard
monastery in republican West Belfast.
Without naming him, Mr Reynolds, in the Dail, paid tribute to Father
Reid, who since January 1992 acted as ''a respected clergyman
intermediary''. It was Father Reid who conveyed messages back and forth
between Mr Reynolds and Sinn Fein.
According to a source close to Mr Reynolds: ''Father Reid was at all
times absolutely reliable in conveying what the various views within the
republican movement were.''
Not surprisingly, there have been unconfirmed reports that British
intelligence bugged the Clonard monastery. Not only was Father Reid a
major conduit between Dublin and Belfast, he was a broker of the talks
between John Hume and Gerry Adams, which began in 1988, the year he came
to public prominence when he was photographed giving the last rites to
two soldiers who had been beaten up by angry and frightened local people
in West Belfast and then shot by an IRA gunman.
As for Dublin's links with the Protestant population in Northern
Ireland, Mr Reynolds has concentrated his attention on securing an
equivalent ceasefire from the loyalist paramilitaries. A trusted adviser
to the Irish Premier is a Presbyterian minister at Dundonald in Belfast,
the Rev Roy Magee.
Mr Magee is a frequent contributor to BBC programmes and has been
meeting the loyalist paramilitaries for the past three years.
On the Gay Byrne radio chat show yesterday Irish Prime Minister Albert
Reynolds spoke of how he was approached by a former army officer who
told him he did not understand Northern Ireland Protestants. Mr Reynolds
asked what did Protestants want and asked to be informed in writing.
When the text came back, Mr Reynolds had this incorporated in the
Downing Street declaration as part five of the agreement. This contains
six sentences which include commitments to free political thought,
expression of religion, the right to equal opportunities regardless of
class, creed, sex or colour and the right to seek constitutional change
by peaceful means.
However Mr Reynolds's appeals last weekend for a loyalist ceasefire
appear to have alienated their leaders, who feel that he is interfering
in their affairs and is backing a Hume-Adams pan-nationalist movement.
Last Friday too a Dublin-based peace activist, Chris Hudson, who is a
Unitarian minister spoke to sources close to the Ulster Volunteer Force,
and he reported their thinking back to Dick Spring. On Mr Hudson's
advice Mr Spring issued a statement on Sunday evening reassuring
loyalists that the Irish government had not entered into any secret
deals with the IRA which would undermine their right to remain British.
Only hours after Mr Spring issued his statement, loyalists claimed
responsibility for a car blast outside the Sinn Fein headquarters in
Belfast. More intensive persuasion by anonymous mediators is needed to
get the loyalists to abandon the gun and the bomb.
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