There weren't enough bin lids to go around so the women took saucepans from
their kitchens and banged them on the metal fencing outside Andersonstown
barracks.
"Brits out! Brits out!" they yelled at the soldiers and police inside.
"You're going home. Buy your plane tickets now!" The scenes in west Belfast
as the IRA ceasefire came into operation nearly 10 years ago shook many
unionists.
It seemed the world, as they knew it, had ended. Everything was about to
change utterly. A group of men, including Alex Maskey, climbed up the
fencing and placed Tricolours on top of the barracks. "We've won!" shouted
one exuberant young man.
A cavalcade of over 100 cars, horns tooting crazily, toured the streets.
People sat on the bonnets, or hung out the windows, singing IRA songs. It
was enough to give even the most moderate unionist heart failure.
A decade on, unionists' nightmare scenario hasn't been realised.
Developments have occurred which are hard for many to swallow - IRA prisoner
releases, the RUC's name change, Sinn Féin in government.
But many grassroots republicans believed at the time - and were encouraged
to do so by their leaders - that the IRA had negotiated a secret deal with
the British to sweep away the Border imminently.
We now know a British withdrawal and the abolition of partition was never on
the agenda. The Provos ended their campaign without achieving their
objectives, something they said they'd never do. Republican prisoners might
have been freed but without the IRA's campaign they wouldn't have been in
jail in the first place so that's hardly a massive Provo victory.
Sinn Féin's success has, naturally, incensed unionists. During the Troubles,
Adams and co wore scruffy denim and had few friends outside the ghetto.
Socialising meant cheap pints in Ballymurphy and the Bogside.
Sinn Féin operated from dingy wire-caged offices. Its support circle
stretched to the British 'loony left' and die-hards in Brooklyn and the
Bronx. It was always broke. Annual conferences were held in rain-sodden
tents in poor areas of Dublin.
Foreign trips consisted of attending solidarity conferences with a handful
of Third World revolutionaries. Today, it's very different. Sinn Féin is the
wealthiest party in Ireland with plush, high-tech offices.
It has attracted middle-class support to become the largest nationalist
party. The SDLP is finished. Sinn Féin will hold high-profile ministries in
any new Executive, however long that takes. Government lies around the
corner in the Republic.
Sinn Féin leaders are the most professional and best dressed. They're
welcome in Downing Street and the White House. Movie stars and millionaires
queue to meet them.
But these trappings, however irritating to unionists, don't equal
ideological victory. Unionists should remember that republican goals haven't
been achieved. In fact, the personal and electoral success of Provo leaders
is at the price of abandonment of those goals.
Unionists might naturally oppose the Belfast Agreement but it won't lead to
Irish unity. Former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntrye has noted that only
someone with a "ballot box in one hand and a white stick in the other" could
think so.
North-South bodies, however distasteful to unionists, will no more end
partition than the Border Commission did. The Agreement represents
advancement in many areas for Catholics but within the existing
constitutional arrangements.
A similar deal was on offer in 1974 yet the Provos categorically rejected it
and rejoiced when Sunningdale was brought down. But 'Smash Stormont' has
long been erased from nationalist gable walls.
Unionists shouldn't under-estimate the disillusionment among republican
grassroots at what they see as a betrayal by their leadership on many
issues. If they listened to what former Sinn Féin supporters in Antrim's
Rathenraw Estate are saying, they'd gauge how far the Adams leadership has
travelled.
Unionists should be delighted that the primary concern of Sinn Féin's
leading light in the Short Strand is developing his back garden. Of course,
the Provos' continued existence annoys many but, apart from beating up
teenagers and dissidents, their days as a military force are over.
There are many things in the new Northern Ireland that unionists mightn't
like but they should remember that it could have been a whole lot worse.
