It will be 25 years today 31 August since the IRA announced its ceasefire. Six weeks later, the Combined Loyalist Military Command also said it was ending its campaign of terror.
To mark what was a major milestone in our history, Niall Donnelly presents a special Up Close programme on UTV.
In it, Niall speaks to many of the protagonists on both sides who played key roles in getting peace over the line. Among them are the former Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh Dr Robin Eames, former UVF prisoner Billy Hutchinson, and former IRA prisoners Gerry Kelly and Tommy McKearney.
Also interviewed are the former advisor to three Irish Prime Ministers Martin Mansergh, and the historian Dr Eamon Phoenix.
Remembering the day the IRA ceasefire was announced, Danny Morrison tells Niall: “I just went back to my cell and I just cried, I wept for all the people who had died, for all the people who had lost their lives and been injured, for all those families.
“I wished it had never happened.”
The months leading up to the ceasefires were some of the bloodiest of The Troubles and included atrocities like the IRA slaughter on the Shankill and the UVF murders at the Heights Bar in Loughinisland.
Billy Hutchinson recalls how, at times, he thought they may not happen.
However, he pays tribute to one of the founders of the UVF Gusty Spence. Spence read the loyalist ceasefire announcement.
“Gusty was a wordsmith,” he said. “He was also a key figure in a sense that quite a lot of people respected him.
“So therefore, yeah, he was, he was key in terms of getting the statement right and also working with others to make sure the wording of it was right.
“And then he had to convince people who wanted to change things, irrespective of which organisation they were from.”
The ceasefires came months after the signing of the Downing Street Declaration.
Archbishop Robin Eames helped draft some of the paragraphs in it – and, crucially, he met with loyalist paramilitary leaders at his residence in Armagh urging them to end their campaign.
Presbyterian minister the Reverend Roy Magee helped facilitate those discussions, as Dr Eames recalls.
“The loyalist paramilitary overlords came to Armagh with Roy and they talked to me about the length of time it had taken the IRA ceasefire and what the thinking was in their ranks,” he says.
“Now they had heard plenty of condemnations from me from pulpits and so it was a strange feeling meeting them face to face.
“And I said there were certain assurances I needed before I would go any further in talking to them. One was that they would be truthful with what they were intending to do.
“Secondly, that if they did decide to call it off, they would have to express in some way regret for the lives of people who had been taken and for the lives of injuries and hurt.
“And then they said to me ‘we need assurances from the British Government that, in fact, there is nothing that would trap us if we were to announce a ceasefire, that there’s no private agreement with Republicanism, anything like that’.
“I said to them that I would be prepared, if I was assured that they were playing clean with me, that I would try to get the answers to those questions.”
Niall Donnelly’s first report on UTV was to gather reaction to the loyalist ceasefire announcement on the Shankill Road.
He recalls those weeks as a time of great hope – hope, that now, has gone.
The historian Dr Eamon Phoenix agrees that the day the IRA announced an end to their violence was one of great hope.
Twenty-five years on he feels that despite what he calls “the political shenanigans”, things are much better than they used to be.
And he’s relieved that the paramilitaries have only minimal support.
“No one wants to go back to the killing fields of the 1970s and the 1980s – people know what that’s like,” he says.
“It’s conveying that to a new generation because no one, as you know, under the age of 40, remembers The Troubles.
“We have to remind them how awful it was.”
Watch – Up Close Ceasefires 94
[[] https://www.itv.com/utvprogrammes/up-close/up-close-ceasefires-94 ]
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