Just about holding fire

THE Dalek is now surrounded by bollards. In front of the wire cage that surrounds the British army observation post in the square of Crossmaglen, known as the Dalek for its resemblance to an oversized robot in a cheap science fiction story, there is a row of new iron bollards. Slim and stylish, with the dull black sheen of a restored Victorian fireplace, they are strangely reminiscent of the kind of street furniture that tends to be placed in the cleaned up "heritage" quarters of old cities.

They are also the one obvious legacy of the 18 month long IRA ceasefire that ended in February.

Across the road, on the far side of the square, the Sinn Fein office also has a curiously touristic air. In the centre of the square is a bronze monument to the IRA dead, its inscription declaring: "Glory to all praised and humble heroes who have willingly suffered for your unselfish and passionate love of Irish Freedom". Beyond it, the front room of the Sinn Fein office has been converted into a souvenir shop. Instead of postcards, miniature thatched cottages and Aran sweaters, it sells republican posters, t shirts, badges and books.

But in the back room, decorated with murals of Bobby Sands and the local hunger strike hero Raymond, McCreesh, the activists are more concerned with selling the party in next week's elections. Just as, behind the pretty bollards, the British army continues its work of intensive surveillance, so here too it is business as usual. The long and bitter conflict may not be fully back in train, but neither is it a piece of finished history, ready to be converted into a heritage industry. For the party workers in the office, the prospect of a return to full scale conflict is very real and not entirely unwelcome.

Paradoxically, one of the reasons it is so difficult to end the conflict here is that it has been unusually simple. The Crossmaglen area is overwhelmingly Catholic, so there has been little direct sectarian confrontation. Neither, as Conor Murphy, Sinn Fein councillor in nearby Camlough, says, does it have a very large economic dimension.

"There is some deprivation here, but mostly the place is pretty prosperous. In the cities, the struggle certainly has a social element, and I suppose economic changes could make a difference. Here, it's not about discrimination in jobs, or people wanting better houses. It's essentially national: we want to live our lives without interference from the British. People here have always resisted British rule, at some times through passive resentment and at others through armed struggle, and they're never going to accept it."

Not that republicanism here is without contradictions. Sinn Fein activists accept that the prosperity of the area comes largely from the ability to exploit the opportunities for dealing and smuggling offered by the Border. And the main local issue in the election campaign is the threat to close the DHSS sub office in Crossmaglen and a day care centre for people with disabilities.

But the demand for State services does not preclude a deep seated suspicion of all officialdom. The surrounding terrain of dark hills, winding lanes and hidden culverts has always been hard to police, and Conor Murphy accepts that even if there were a political settlement, it would take a long time for that to change. "If there was a settlement tomorrow, I still wouldn't want to be the person in charge of setting up a new police force here. People here have always resented the law."

Sitting behind the desk in the office is Pat McNamee, a local man who is at the top of the Sinn Fein electoral list for Newry and Armagh, and himself an IRA veteran who served six years in Portlaoise prison from 1982 to 1988. He recalls that the mood in south Armagh at the time of the IRA ceasefire in 1994 was sober. "In Belfast," he says, "there was some cavalcades, and maybe an over optimism on some people's part. Certainly people in Newry and Armagh, while there was some optimism, were also very sceptical about what would actually happen. There would have been a certain amount of belief that the British government's objective is to bring about an IRA ceasefire, to prolong it indefinitely because that would have a weakening effect on the IRA, and that they'd be happy to run along with it without actually doing anything."

These fears were not confined to south Armagh. According to Pat Doherty, the Sinn Fein vice president, internal debate leading up to the ceasefire was haunted by "a bad memory of what had happened in 1974 and 1975", when an uneasy truce was widely blamed by republicans for weakening the IRA's military capacity. The debate was thus every intense and strong at times".

Conor Murphy, one of the people who had the job of selling the ceasefire to local, republicans, agrees that there was a good deal of scepticism among IRA supporters in south Armagh. In Belfast, he says, the range, of opinion among republicans stretches from those who don't want an armed struggle at all to those who would be very reluctant to give it up. But he reckons that the range of opinion in south Armagh is narrower. At one end are those prepared to do without the armed struggle if they can be convinced that there is an effective alternative. At the other there are those who believe that victory will never be won without it. Most, he says, are somewhere in the middle - sceptical about British intentions but prepared to see what might happen.

Yet, in spite of this range of views, and of dire predictions from the outside, there was no split in the IRA in south Armagh, and no attempt break the ceasefire. The reasons are critical to any understanding of the peace process and its problems. The sceptics stayed on side because they understood that the IRA campaign was merely, in the words temporarily added to the "Sniper At Work" signs that still festoon the lamp posts around Crossmaglen, "on hold".

Contrary to the assurances given in 1994 by Martin McGuinness that "the ceasefire will hold in all circumstances," republicans actually believed from the start that the ceasefire would hold only in the very specific circumstance of progress towards the achievement of their political goals. When that progress was not forthcoming, there was a belief that it was time to revert to the old strategy.

"People were becoming impatient, were becoming disillusioned with the lack of progress," says Pat McNamee. "People were saying `What's happening? Are we going to continue asking for all party talks when the British government doesn't seem to be interested?' People were saying `Where are we going? Is it not time to take a different stance?'

"The IRA," says Pat McGeown, Sinn Fein councillor for the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast, and an IRA veteran who came close to death after 42 days on hunger strike in Long Kesh in 1981, "went on ceasefire in the belief that there was a way of moving forward peacefully. They came off ceasefire, because they didn't believe that there was that way any more. It's a rational, logical view that drives their actions."

This, he says, is "why the idea of a split has no basis. It isn't a case of the IRA with one analysis and any other strong group of people within the republican community having a separate analysis. It's rather a case that their analysis is one that we actually accept." Divisions within republicanism are about tactics, not fundamentals, and the idea that the republican movement is deeply, divided between doves and hawks, riven with conflicts over the principle of political violence, has little basis in reality.

"There's not a lot of republicans," says Gary Fleming, Sinn Fein organiser in Derry, "who actually would identify with a struggle for Irish liberation without armed struggle. Those who would think of it that way wouldn't be in the mould of Irish republicans as we are. But those who have been either active members or supporters of Sinn Fein and of the wider republican movement, while maybe having particular problems about particular parts of the armed struggle, recognise its inevitability, unless there's movement."

There was not, within the republican movement, in south Armagh or elsewhere, a change, either of mind or of heart, about the armed struggle. The IRA has long since" given up on the belief that it will win a military victory. But even in Derry, an area notable for the low level of IRA activity for some years before the ceasefire, there are very few republicans who believe, in principle, that the use of violence for political purposes is illegitimate.

In this sense, the views of Gary Fleming in Derry city would not be out of place in Crossmaglen. "The IRA accept that they don't have the capacity to win a military victory," he says. "They're not going to drive the last Brit into the boats at Larne and chase them home. It's not going to be that type of victory where you drive the Brits into the sea and you raise the tricolour and form a government. But there is a military aspect to the liberation struggle in Ireland, and while Britain has tried to declare that it has no selfish interests in Ireland, they've kept their soldiers here and their administration here."

"When they are being forced to pay a price militarily, that keeps it up there. That's what actually keeps the struggle alive, keeps it focused. So there is a military role if people aren't going to talk. If people are going to talk, and get into meaningful dialogue, then that should resolve the conflict. The Brits would actually like the IRA to go away and for us to enter into what they term the democratic system, which of course isn't a system and certainly isn't democratic, and play about for 50 years or 100 years while they maintain control over six counties of Ireland. That's not acceptable and there will always be Irish people who will arm themselves to oppose it."

Given the degree of initial scepticism about the ceasefire, there was little surprise in Crossmaglen when the IRA announced the renewal of its armed campaign. "There was," says Pat McNamee, "a sense of well, it was going to come wasn't it, because there had been no progress. In terms of the exact date of the breakdown there was surprise but there was a general expectancy that it was going to happen. There was a general acceptance of it. Some people were almost happy that the limbo situation was over, that somebody has made a move to change the situation. It wasn't overbearing, but there was an element of `I told you so'. Why did we ever think we were going to get anything from the British in the first place?"

According to Pat McGeown in Belfast, there is little demand from Sinn Fein supporters for a renewal of the ceasefire. "The IRA are logical and rational people and they'll make up their own minds. But really what they're doing is reflecting what you'll find from people in Ballymurphy or anywhere else. There's no way that I could say to the IRA that I think this process is okay. There's no basis on which to engage them in an intellectual argument to that effect. And they would be quick to point that out to us.

"You're in a position where not only the IRA but the republican community have lost confidence in the fact that there is such a thing as a peace process. It's not there. There's no way that I could, without appearing to be absolutely mad, hand on heart go to the IRA and say `I think yous have got it wrong. There is a peace process here, and all you have to do is follow it'. Because if I did, it isn't only the IRA that would be telling me I'm nuts, it would be the community I'm supposed to represent."

Pat McNamee and Conor Murphy, who helped to sell the ceasefire to republican's in south Armagh in 1994, both say that it would be much harder to do it a second time, and both think it "unlikely" that they will be asked to do so in the immediate future. "The people who have to make the argument to the IRA to call another ceasefire," says Pat McNamee, "have a much more difficult job to do. The amount of political activity after the Canary Wharf bomb, was very significant compared to the months before. So most people are liable to say `Well, now we know what makes things move.'"