FORMER NORTHERN IRELAND Secretary of State Mo Mowlam told Fr. Alec Reid that she was ‘f****d’ if there was another paramilitary killing during the decommissioning impasse in August 1999.
Mowlam, who died from cancer in 2005, was one of the critical figures during the Northern Ireland peace process and drew praise from across the political spectrum for her bravery and no-nonsense approach.
Each year, decades-old government documents are released under the National Archives Act, providing journalists and historians a fresh glimpse into historical events.
Previously confidential files from the Department of An Taoiseach NI Division in 1999 have now been released and shed further light on the aftermath to the Good Friday Agreement.
One such file written by Martin Manseragh, a former NI advisor to successive Fianna Fáil taoisigh, reported that Gerry Adams had said the peace process was “surviving by the grace of God” in the year after the GFA.
Outstanding issues leading to the stagnating process included decommissioning, ongoing paramilitary ‘punishment attacks’, British demilitarisation and policing reform.
Paramilitary groups on both sides struggled to maintain discipline in their ranks and the shooting dead of a Catholic taxi driver Charles Bennett by the Provisional IRA in July 1999 put a specific pressure on the process.
Manseragh and other officials met with Fr. Reid on a number of occasions during this period to gauge the mood within republicanism and reports of these meetings show that the leadership of both Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA were under strain.
The late Fr. Reid was one of the pivotal figures in the Northern Ireland peace process, having acted as an intermediary for paramilitaries and in facilitating talks between Adams and SDLP leader John Hume.
In the weeks following the killing of Bennett, secret Irish government documents contain reports of discussions with Fr. Reid after the priest had held separate meetings with Adams and Mowlam, as well as a briefing he had had from the IRA Army Council.
Reid reported following his briefing from the IRA Army Council that the focus on decommissioning had “caused credibility problems for the Sinn Fein leadership”.
“The Army Council could not decommission one gun without an Army Convention, which would require a two-thirds majority, and without a change in its constitution. This was simply not on at present. It would be ‘pushing at a door, and it will not open’,” Fr. Reid reported to officials.
The files also showed that there were serious questions over whether Adams and Martin McGuinness could convince the Provisional IRA to give up its weapons.
There were even questions over the manner in which decommissioning could take place, with another report showing that Adams had warned Fr. Reid that elements in republicanism viewed dumping the weapons as being interpreted as “surrender”.
In one file, it is reported that a focus on decommissioning could “drive people back to war” and that “the main problem now was simply to hold the movement together and keep the ceasefire”.
In another file, Fr. Reid reported that Adams was “in very indifferent shape despite two weeks’ holiday” and that his impression of the Sinn Féin leader was that “he was depressed and feared the process was doomed”.
His report of Mowlam was more direct, however, saying that she “showed much understanding of the situation” but had told him that “if there was another killing in the next fortnight, she was f****d”.
Reid was encouraged by Irish officials to press home the message to the Republican Movement that they shouldn’t be “pushed into error” by delays as this would “hand the victory to Unionists”.
The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning assessed that the last of the IRA’s weapons were put beyond use in 2005, with loyalist paramilitaries doing so a number of years later in 2009.
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