ABSTRACT
The period between 1985 and 1990 was one in which Northern Ireland appeared once again to have settled into aperiod of unremitting violence, a situation characterized by the Enniskillen bombing of 1987 and the deaths of three PlRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. Violence was firmly centre stage. Three factors account for the climate of violence that occurred after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement at Hillsborough. The first was that the Republican movement regrouped around an agenda that included the entry of Sinn Fein into southern Irish electoral politics, but which also sanctioned a renewed commitment to battle with the British Government. A second feature of the period was that the British Cabinet, buoyed by the success of Hillsborough, stepped up its attempts to contain the PlRA. Not only did the British Army reinvigorate the military struggle, they also sought to persuade the Dublin Government to greater efforts in containing the paramilitaries, not least through the adoption of tighter extradition procedures in the Republic. A third feature of the period was that the Protestants adopted a belligerent an tiHillsborough stance that led to an intensification of the activities of the Protestant paramilitaries. All of the above meant that after a period of initial optimism following Hillsborough, the Province lurched back into the familiar pattern of the modern conflict. Yet beneath the violence, very slowly, new trends began to emerge in Ireland. These included a greater degree of cooperation between London and Dublin over the containment of Republican paramilitaries and, towards the end of the decade, a decisive shift in Sinn Fein strategy. The latter emphasized the pursuit of political legitimacy in preference to violent rebellion. This chapter traces the evolution of those trends.
