Thirty years ago last week, the first British soldier to be killed on duty in Northern Ireland was shot dead on the New Lodge Road. His name was Gunner Robert Curtis. He was aged 20. A few hours before his death, he learned that his wife, also 20, was pregnant. He was a trainee surveyor in the army, with little military expertise, and had been pressed into front-line security duties because of a crippling shortage of infantry as the IRA campaign began.
That campaign has now lasted as nearly as long as the Napoleonic wars and the two World Wars together. At its outset, there were two IRAs disputing the possession of the one, true, republican mantle. Now there are three. On the early morning of January 23rd, just three weeks ago today, as the anniversary of Robert Curtis's death approached, a 200 lb mortarbomb landed in Ebrington Barracks in Derry. Had it exploded as intended, it would have killed the 30 soldiers it landed amongst, and possibly many local Protestants whose homes lay within its blast radius, thereby setting the peace process almost as much in the past tense as the lives of the 3,650 people who have been killed in the Troubles.
Relying on luck
Luck, not human intention, prevented that massacre occurring. Luck has repeatedly intervened in recent months to keep this peace process alive. Luck prevented a massacre in Claudy that same week. Luck prevented a successful land-mine attack on the security forces in Armagh. In all three cases, only minor technical problems prevented the attacks being successful. We can't rely on such luck continuing. It is time to be selfish. It is time to assert our will.
The mortar bomb that was lobbed into Ebrington Barracks was assembled somewhere near Dundalk. It was carried by van or lorry over the Border at Aughnacloy, through Co Tyrone to Strabane and into Donegal, from where it returned to Northern Ireland near Derry. The bombers were then able to cross the Foyle at their leisure and, equally at their leisure, place the mortar tube's base-plate with pinpoint accuracy, without fear of discovery at any stage.
The essence of guerrilla/terrorist war is the element of uncertainty on both sides. What diminishes the daring of the irregular is the possibility of random roadblocks and covert patrols. What minimalises the power of the regular is the unpredictability of where the enemy will strike next. Within a protracted struggle, as intelligence on both sides deepens and methods are refined, something of a stalemate results, and casualties diminish. Out of that stalemate sprang the shoots of peace.
Productive stalemate
But now one of the conditions of keeping the green shoot alive - and I mean green in every sense - is an insistence that the very conditions which brought about the productive stalemate be concluded. Across the board, nationalist Ireland is insisting for an end to vehicle checkpoints, to army patrolling, to covert surveillance operations. The peace process has thus created the most perfect operating conditions for terrorists who have rejected the peace process.
Any restoration of security measures to protect soldiers - and thereby the peace process - is almost certainly going to be denounced as provocative by the Department of Foreign Affairs, the SDLP, Sinn Fein. Such a denunciation would certainly make sense if the only IRA around was the Provisional IRA, which has largely kept its ceasefire towards those soldiers who keep the peace in Northern Ireland. (You dispute the term, "keeping the peace"? Ask nationalists in North Belfast, Larne or Carrickfergus what would happen if the British army were withdrawn today.)
Alas, there is more than one IRA. There are two other IRAs, separate and distinct. They are not dissidents who can be persuaded to return to the fold, but rivals. They have left the fold for good, yet are able to enjoy the same freedom from interference from the security forces negotiated by those remaining within the ceasefire fold. They enjoy the benefits of the ceasefire, but are at war. No marketplace can survive such trading terms; yet these are the terms which the peace process stallholders not merely operate within, but actually insist on.
The insanity of this, and the disregard for the lives of young soldiers which this entails, might perhaps not matter if the soldiers could be swiftly withdrawn and replaced by police. But we are as close to agreeing a new police service as we are to putting a giraffe on Mars; and meanwhile the RUC is disintegrating, with a mass exodus of the experienced middle-ranking officers who have borne the brunt of the terrorist war. That there is still the skeleton of a functioning security apparatus in the North is largely due to the charisma and huge moral integrity of the RUC Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan.
Benign neglect
But no system so dependent on one man and astounding good luck can long survive; nor can any peace process which is determined to reward the non-compliant with the same benign neglect it accords the compliant. No doubt the Department of Foreign Affairs, which is probably only too aware that I have been speaking recently to senior British army officers, thinks that I am merely mouthing their opinions. No matter.
But how easy will their consciences rest if, because of the very degradation of security measures which they have demanded, more members of the security forces suffer the fate of poor Gunner Robert Curtis, shot dead 30 years ago last week, and the thousand policemen and soldiers who subsequently went the same way?