ABSTRACT
In the mid-1980s, the IRA leadership vilified Tommy McKearney for arguing that the IRA’s armed struggle had been ineffective. Ironically, broadly the same arguments used at that time by McKearney are put forward by today’s republican leaders to justify the peace process, as the following testimony shows:
If for thirty years or so you’re conducting an armed struggle and it hasn’t achieved your goals, well then either you’re going to have to escalate it to a level whereby the achievement of your goals becomes closer or you reassess it, and I think that is what’s happened. The armed struggle was in progress from say 1970 until 1994 and throughout that period, there were always attempts being made to escalate it, to get more people involved, to insti gate more attacks, that was always happening. By 1990, maybe before that, I think it was becoming clear that Irish republicanism was incap able of raising it even more. My own opinion is that the IRA could have continued the armed struggle at the same level for another hundred years, but then you have to ask yourself, will that achieve anything just by sustaining an armed struggle? It’s not enough. If you’re involved in armed struggle, it’s not enough to sustain it just to keep the war going. The war has to, there has to be some progress, there has to be the prospect of victory and I think by 1980 that didn’t exist and the IRA had attempted to escalate it, to raise it even more and weren’t able to do so.1
