Address by Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams MP - 27 October 1994
Seventy-five years ago the representatives of the Irish people, sitting in this hall as the 1st Dail Eireann, issued a series of Declarations announcing Irish Independence to the world, demanding that Britain withdraw its garrison from Irelareed Ireland.
But at the heart of this problem lies a number of core political issues which must be finally resolved if we are to build a permanent peace with justice and democracy.
The British presence in our country has never been benign nor has it been advantageous to the Irish people.
NO GOING BACK
The British government needs to recognise it is for the Irish people alone to determine the future of this island. It is for us collectively and by agreement, to exercise our right to self-determination and Britain's singular function should be to facilitate, not impede, the construction of a level playing pitch in which all of the participants can negotiate as equals.
Partition has failed. The six county state - by whatever measure of democratic legitimacy one choses to set it against - has failed. The policies which have sustained partition and the efforts of previous British governments to construct an internal political arrangement have all failed. There can be no going back to those failures. There can be no reworking of these failures or re-packaging of them under another guise. We must learn from the failures of the past and determine not to repeat them.
For too long the conflict in Ireland was pigeonholed as one of those intractable conflicts which could never be resolved - not unlike the view many held of South Africa. But the fact is that despite the many difficulties which still confront them, the people of South Africa did agree a new democratic arrangement which has not led to the "bloodbath" or "civil war" scenarios some elements, particularly the more right wing, were predicting as inevitable.
The key to conflict resolution is inclusive dialogue. The British government which has no difficulty supporting or applying that principle elsewhere in the world, is being brought slowly to the inevitability of that position in Ireland as a result of the initiatives taken by Irish nationalists, and the political momentum which has built up around the peace process. In my view it worked in South Africa and it can work here!
Irish nationalists have long recognised the centrality of dialogue. And the Dublin government's establishment of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, which opens tomorrow, is evidence of the Irish commitment to dialogue as a means of resolving the core issues giving rise to conflict, and of addressing the various new relationships which must be forged if we are to achieve a settlement based on democratic principles.
The Forum is itself a recognition that the policies of the past and present have failed to bring a lasting settlement and that we need new and democratic structures to move forward.
The significance of the Forum also lies in the acceptance by the parties attending it that, notwithstanding our own political differences, this is a decisive moment, an historic moment. It cannot be squandered, and it must be seized by all of those genuinely seeking not simply peace for a day, or a week, or a month or a year or even a generation but a permanent peace, a peace for all time, a peace which is for good and is irrevocable.
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND THE LOYALISTS
The roles of the British government and of the loyalists are crucial in all of this.
The decision by the loyalist death squads, welcome though it is, must be seen in its proper context. The historic decision by the IRA to call a complete cessation threw both the British and loyalists initially into some confusion.
The eventual response of a loyalist cease-fire is a tactical move largely dictated by pressure from the British government and the Ulster Unionist Party who saw continuing loyalist violence as a threat to the Union and to their political efforts to minimise the impact of a peace process with which they were never happy and to which they never willingly contributed. This is not to detract from the significance ofthe loyalist decision.
The British government has sought to convince the UUP and the loyalist death squads that there is no threat to the status quo or to the union. It also has tried to reduce the momentum of the peace process, to deflate its potential, to avoid the political and constitutional change which is fundamental to a lasting peace settlement. The reality is that the only threat to the peace process is from the British government's consistent failure to pro-actively engage in a positive way for a lasting peace in Ireland. On the contrary, throughout the entire process - and this goes back some years - London has failed to respond in an adequate way to the need for a peace accord. Indeed the London government has shown a remarkable ability to engage in stalling tactics or in distractions and diversions. The most recent example of this is John Major's announcement, in Belfast last Friday, of a proposals for a new Stormont assembly. Such a proposition is absolutely unacceptable to nationalists, there is no internal settlement, there can be no return to Stormont.
John Major's Irish policy is one of crisis management, but despite the negativity of his approach the situation can be moved forward. Positive change can be brought about. We were all told that Stormont would never go - it did.
We were also told the B-Specials would never be scrapped - and they were. We were told that the political power and patronage of unionism could never be eroded - and it has. And we were told that the British government would not talk to Sinn Féin - it did and it will again - soon.
Finally, we were told that there could only be an internal settlement. It is now widely accepted, even by elements of the political establishment in Britain, that there can be no internal solution.
All of these advances are a result of nationalists in the north aided by nationalists throughout the rest of the island, having confidence and an absolute determination to ensure that there will never, ever, be any going back to the failed structures and institutions of the past.
Moreover, that sense of our own value, of our own worth as Irish citizens, of nationalists in the Six Counties as equals, freed from the chains of repression and second-class citizenship, and parity of esteem, will be won and that a process of demilitarisation will see the RUC and RIR disbanded and the British remove their arsenal of war from our island.
Together, working as a team, keeping our eye at all times on the big issues - Britain's presence in Ireland, partition and the divisions they give rise to - we can advance the peace process to a point where agreement can be reached on these and related matters.
"STANDING ON THE THRESHOLD"
A resolution, a lasting settlement requires dialogue. It is crucial that substantive peace talks begin immediately, involving both Governments and all other parties, to address the core issues. These negotiations must be inclusive and all the issues which have given rise to conflict must be on the table for discussion and resolution. The British government must not be permitted to prevent this. Such negotiations need not be viewed as a contest spelling victory or defeat for any side but negotiations, real peace talks are the only way forward in a situation of conflict and division.
There is no single, simple key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted. Genuine peace must be the product of many people - the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new situation. For peace is a process, a way a problem solving.
So let us persevere. Tomorrow the first meeting will take place of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. The two main unionist parties have chosen not to participate - that is regrettable. We must therefore use the Forum to convince the unionists that they have nothing to fear, that peace need not be unobtainable or impracticable and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, by initiating a healing process, we can help everyone, but particularly the unionists, to see peace, to draw hope from it and to move irresistibly toward it.
Bobby Sands on day one of his hunger strike wrote in his diary; "I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world".
We too are standing on that threshold. We are in a time of change and it is our responsibility to ensure that it is peaceful and that it leads to a democratic agreement which embraces all the people of this island.