INDEPTH: NORTHERN IRELAND
IRA disarms: Tony Blair's statement
CBC News Online | July 28, 2005
On Thursday, July 28, the Irish Republican Army announced that all of its clandestine units have been ordered to place their weapons into arms dumps and cease all activities. The paramilitary organization had announced an end to its armed struggle aimed at ending British rule of Northern Ireland.
Here is British Prime Minister Tony Blair's reaction to the IRA statement:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street in London, July 28, 2005, welcomes the IRA's statement to end its armed campaign. (Getty Images/AFP/John D. McHugh)
I welcome the statement of the IRA that ends its campaign. I welcome its clarity. I welcome the recognition that the only route to political change lies in exclusively peaceful and democratic means.
This is a step of unparalleled magnitude in the recent history of Northern Ireland. The Unionist community in particular and all of us throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom would want to see this clear statement of principle kept to in practice.
The instruction in the IRA statement that volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever, will be taken as a forthright denunciation of any activity paramilitary or criminal.
The independent monitoring commission is in place to ensure that what is said is what is done. Decommissioning must be completed, as the statement said, as soon as possible.
The commission on decommissioning will verify that. But the statement is of a different order than anything before. It is what we have striven for, and worked for throughout the eight years since the Good Friday agreement. It creates the circumstances in which the institutions can be revived.
Unionism would want to know that these circumstances are permanent and verified. But if in time they are, then proper devolved, democratic government should be restored to Northern Ireland.
Of course there will continue to be fundamental disagreement about the pass. The IRA believed their means were justified, the rest of us do not, and will remember today the many thousands of victims of their campaign. But the best way to serve the memory of victims is to make the future brighter.
And there is at least some hope today that the future will indeed to be such as to banish the ghastly and futile violence from Northern Ireland forever.
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