Episode 2 From Our Ireland Correspondent

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

'After 48 hours, the standoff of violence and tension...

'The first IRA attacks since it ended its ceasefire was...

'Everyone knew the start of these talks would be difficult, but this isn't even the hardest part...

'The RUC says it's reintroducing security measures...

'This is the IRA statement, by way of deed, about the peace process -

'two bodies huddled under blankets on a pavement in Lurgan...

'Denis Murray, BBC News, Stormont.

'Denis Murray, BBC News, Dublin.

'Denis Murray, BBC News, Belfast.'

I'm Denis Murray and I was the BBC's Ireland Correspondent for 20 years.

For most of that time, I was covering the delicate and difficult

transition from conflict to peace in Northern Ireland.

The whole Irish story has roots going back centuries and, unlike in Britain, that past is

much more immediate to the present and part of that was that Northern Ireland had become not just

a divided society, in a way it was two completely different societies

with little or no consensus between them.

So, a key part of my job was to be the non-Ulster person's guide - a navigator if you like -

through the maze that was the past, the Troubles and the peace process.

And, to me, one of the most important parts of that process was

the British and Irish governments' Downing Street Declaration.

It was intended to secure Republican and Loyalist paramilitary ceasefires.

That, at the time, was hugely ambitious, but in less than a year, it would.

'It's now a month since the two Prime Ministers launched their declaration.

'It would now seem that Republicans will not be giving a definite response to it, saying they can't,

'without the clarification John Major says he will not provide.'

The only question that needs to be asked is not of

the British government or the Irish government, but of Mr Adams.

Will he stop the violence and enter the democratic process or not?

Everything else is fudge.

We all knew John Major was right.

Looking back, a ceasefire was inevitable, but getting there was tortuous.

The governments were adamant.

Sinn Fein was out of the picture while the IRA carried on.

If talks exclusion was the stick, here was one of the carrots -

Gerry Adams got a visa to visit the States.

But it still took time for the IRA to get the message.

It launched mortar attacks on Heathrow.

The IRA had learned one thing - loss of life was unacceptable,

but disruption got them the attention they craved.

'Nobody will talk to Sinn Fein while IRA violence continues.

'That's not going to end until such talks have taken place, so it's a stalemate.

'The question now is how to turn what the Government's called

'the first step towards peace, the declaration, into the next move, and that's not going to happen soon.'

While violence and political meetings went on, the South was caught up in the soccer World Cup.

The day before the Republic's first game in the USA tournament,

I was in Dublin covering a meeting between British and Irish ministers.

In the North, Loyalists shot dead three men.

That Friday night I decided not to stay and cover football fever.

It seemed to me, if the UVF wanted to murder Catholics, they'd pick a pub in the North

where the game was on TV, in somewhere that had so far escaped the violence.

-Just in case, the crew and I went home.

-It came towards Coyne.

Chance here for Houghton as he picks up a loose piece.

Tries a left-footed shot, and it's there from Ray Houghton!

He does a bowl over in joy, does Houghton.

'The two gunmen from the outlawed Loyalist group, the Ulster Volunteer Force,

'walked into The Heights Bar and sprayed it with gunfire from automatic assault rifles.

'The attack was over in seconds.'

The murder of six men in a small community like this,

where everyone knows everyone else, meant the bereavement was universal.

The pain in Loughinisland was there for all to see.

But the real horror, behind the doors of The Heights Bar, was much less visible.

'Inside, the scene, in the words of one man, was bloody awful.

'Most of the pictures filmed by the BBC this afternoon are simply too horrific to broadcast.'

I've often wondered since, should we have broadcast those pictures?

For years there had been a debate in the BBC about this -

how much blood, how much awful reality could be televised.

A senior editor described it as a decent attempt to find a balance between too much and sanitising.

Years later, I sat in The Heights Bar and met the locals,

including the man who'd been first on the scene afterwards.

I realised that, for them, the attack is still very real, and the emotions very raw.

At the time, I had to argue that we included the shot of the blood on the table.

Today, I'm glad that we didn't use any more.

Everybody knew the ceasefire was coming because the prospect of one

had been out there for quite some time and the ceasefire was greeted like a victory.

Now, it wasn't a victory - it was anything but - but it had to be looked at that way by Republicans.

The leadership knew it wasn't going to get anywhere

with its political project while there was an IRA campaign going on

and it took them a considerable length of time

to persuade the grassroots that it was necessary to do so.

The IRA ceasefire almost came out in secret.

It was like a secret communication,

whereas the Loyalist ceasefire was announced in public in a news conference.

We offer to the loved ones

of all innocent victims over the past 25 years

abject and true remorse.

To put it at its simplest, having thought about it, you could say

that the Loyalists maybe felt that they had something to apologise for and the IRA didn't...

..and that theirs was a revolution and stuff happens in revolutions.

I am now prepared to make a working assumption that the ceasefire is intended to be permanent.

This means we can move carefully towards the beginning of dialogue between Sinn Fein and the government.

We shall, therefore, include proposals for an Assembly

and, again, we shall be seeking the basis for broad agreement.

We hope to move speedily through these discussions towards inclusive peace talks with all the parties.

Sinn Fein met British officials for the first time

at Parliament Buildings, Stormont,

a powerful piece of symbolism, underlining the significance of the event.

John Major had taken a big step, so had Sinn Fein.

And so, too, had the parties representing the Loyalist paramilitaries.

Within days, they were at Stormont.

The ceasefires had made this possible.

The best card ever played by the combatant groups, particularly the IRA, was a simple one.

Stopping.

A torchlight parade through the peace line in West Belfast.

Gates that once divided two communities opened since the ceasefires

and the scene tonight where Protestants and Catholics came together.

But if there was some cause for hope, the old enmities lay under a very thin veneer.

This part of Armagh is really scenic, like a lot

of Northern Ireland is scenic, and it is really tranquil today.

And, actually, most days, even at its worst, things were quiet here

during the day, as was most of the rest of the Northern Ireland.

But this place was effectively the fuse for the powder keg that was the rest of Northern Ireland

and all round the province, there was violence, road blocks, burning vehicles, gun fire,

security forces stretched beyond limit.

And just a small personal note - my colleagues and I had one thing in common with the police.

For that fortnight around the 12th July, for nearly 10 years, all leave was cancelled.

Anybody else who could take their holidays, who weren't interested in this place, took their holidays.

The place emptied.

'After 48 hours of standoff, violence and tension, finally today

'the Orangemen of Portadown stepped out on their traditional route, exactly as would have happened

'on Sunday when the confrontation began, though with one major difference - in silence.'

This was the first Drumcree - the passage of the march through the Catholic area was negotiated.

That would not happen again.

Two of the negotiators were MPs. Both would become First Minister of Northern Ireland.

But this day, they only represented one community.

We are delighted to be back down the traditional route, as we expect to be again.

That celebration served to convince the Catholic community

that the marches, all of them, were as they had always believed - triumphalist.

The parades issue, particularly Drumcree, would continue to be

one of the biggest threats to the peace process.

One of the reasons this was such a flashpoint

was that while there were deeply held passions on both sides,

the people involved in that period - both sides - were actually going out of their way

to be offended by the behaviour of the other side, which is, perhaps, why it went on for so long.

'An Anglican church on a hill in the countryside. It could be anywhere.

'This is happening in the United Kingdom tonight.

'In the shadow of this spiral of Drumcree Church,

'a weekly Sunday service, because of the route to the Orangemen want to take after it's over,

'becomes the fulcrum of politics,

'security and relations between Catholics and Protestants right across Northern Ireland.'

It was very difficult to explain to a British audience,

perhaps an audience anywhere outside Northern Ireland,

why the marching season aroused such primeval passions on both sides.

Because while people here instinctually understood what the issues were and why it was causing

such intense passion, it was very difficult to explain it to people outside Northern Ireland.

And really what it came down to was that the Catholic residents saw the parades as sectarian

and triumphalist and the Orangemen just could not understand

why they weren't welcome to walk down a piece of road,

which in some cases they'd walked down for decades and longer.

And there's really no halfway house between that.

You either have the parade or you don't have the parade.

Security considerations were always foremost, and that's why you had a Parades Commission to begin with

because the government did not like having to take the decision, and the police absolutely did not

like having to take the decision because they were taking it on security considerations.

Somebody once described it more recently as Northern Ireland's annual trip to the edge.

But it was a horrible thing to report on because it was

the place I grew up in torturing itself to death over what seemed to the outside eye not very much.

'The tensions of the last days and weeks were evident again today

'as the Republican march passed a police station on the Falls Road.

'At the City Hall, Sinn Fein held their rally.

'A Union flag was burned and at one point at voice in the crowd called out, "Bring back the IRA".'

They haven't gone away, you know.

Like all the journalists who were there, I jumped.

We couldn't believe he'd said it.

He thought it was a joke, but it came across to everyone else as a threat.

David Trimble was a surprise choice as Ulster Unionist leader.

The party chose him as a hard man, and he was a hard negotiator,

but, ultimately, he would go too far for many of his own grassroots.

Decommissioning, handing up some weapons, may not be enough.

The dialogue is increasingly becoming an all-inclusive dialogue.

Everybody is now talking to all the other relevant players.

'The two Prime Ministers took months to cook up this agreement

'and they used a recipe for fudge,

'but as one Nationalist politician said, "What's wrong with fudge, if it works?"

'John Major and John Bruton have simply put off resolving the crucial question that lies at the heart

'of the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons issue.'

We see no way other than physical beginning of decommissioning by Sinn Fein.

That remains our position.

A physical gesture of decommissioning of arms in advance of talks,

while undoubtedly desirable, it is the position of our government

that that is not an attainable objective.

After the news conference that day,

I asked could I go to the bathroom. About a minute after I walked in,

in came the PM with his press secretary and as we were washing

our hands, suddenly, out of the blue, he faced me directly and went into this impassioned speech about

how much he cared about Northern Ireland, how much he was trying

to move it forwards, how much that was against the grain of his own party and his backbenchers,

about the risks he felt he was taking for the good of the process. I never saw that side of him

outside of that one moment, because before that and ever after,

he was always that cool, dispassionate, detached Prime Minister figure, and it was a really

striking thing just to see very briefly the human face behind the Prime Minister's mask.

The two Prime Ministers had gone for a twin-track approach - one,

politics, and all-party talks -

and two, an international body to oversee the decommissioning issue.

Enter America.

Bill Clinton had already appointed former US Senator George Mitchell

as his envoy to Northern Ireland. And Mr Clinton came to town.

My first daddy died in the Troubles.

It was the saddest day of my life.

I still think of him.

Now it is nice and peaceful.

I like having peace and quiet for a change,

instead of people shooting and killing.

My Christmas wish is that peace and love will last in Ireland for ever.

You must say to those who still would use violence for political objectives,

"You are the past. Your day is over.

"Violence has no place at the table of democracy.

"And no role in the future of this land."

By the same token, you must also be willing to say

to those who renounce violence

and who do take their own risks for peace,

they are entitled to be full participants in the democratic process.

This was the key political moment of the whole visit

because nobody knew whether the leader of the free world

would shake hands with the public face of the IRA.

So it was the shot we all wanted.

Bill Clinton's speeches were brilliant,

incredibly well informed, and he challenged all sides.

Have the patience to work for a just and lasting peace.

Reach for it.

The United States will reach with you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

This was the stuff of the President's wildest dreams

he and Hillary Clinton still refer to it as a high point of his presidency.

That was a real pleasure to be involved in that presidential visit,

the first time a serving US president has come to Northern Ireland.

And the whole thing had a good feel to it.

There was a certain amount of movie-star appeal to Bill Clinton.

There's no doubt he had great charisma,

but thousands and thousands of people turned out to watch that

and there was such a good feeling around it all that even the most cynical of journalists

began to think maybe this process might just work after all.

But what we didn't know at the time but found out later

was that the IRA was already planning the Docklands bombing.

'The first IRA attack since it ended its ceasefire was at Canary Wharf in London.

'The destruction of life and property by Irish terrorists in what they see as the enemy's heartland.'

The implications of the bomb are clear.

It's an indication from the IRA that they continue to be prepared to threaten the peace process,

but what THEY must understand is the legislation will go ahead,

the talks will go ahead, the process of seeking a permanent peace

in Northern Ireland will go ahead,

and those discussions will go ahead

without the participation of Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein was shocked by the Irish Government's reaction to the bombing,

and while contacts with officials continue,

the door to the Irish Cabinet Room has shut on Republicans.

Dennis Murray, BBC News...

That was just an ordinary Friday night,

I was getting ready to go home. We'd been kicking around ideas,

would our subject matter change, would there be different stories

from Northern Ireland, would we have to find different ways of doing them?

A lot of people in the newsroom were going to a formal dinner that night.

Then we had the Docklands bombing and they had to go back to work,

so the newsroom was full that night of people in dinner jackets and ballgowns.

But there was a real sense that night that having felt we might

be out of the woods finally, there we all were, back at square one.

Nobody else, though, was prepared to let that happen.

It was anything but an easy or harmonious start,

but it was a start.

The British and Irish governments, Unionists, Nationalists

and those representing the loyalist paramilitary groups

all round the same negotiating table.

One set of chairs was empty - Sinn Fein's.

Forget policy, forget talks one thing Sinn Fein did better

than anyone else was image making.

The day the talks started, their leaders posed for the media

at Stormont's gates - but it was the IRA's actions that'd excluded them.

What did they expect?

The principles of non-violence established months earlier

by George Mitchell made that inevitable.

Maybe the IRA didn't care.

Making a point with violence, to them,

was more important than progress.

The talks went on at Castle Buildings,

part of the Stormont estate - without Sinn Fein.

It was going to take something remarkable to get them back in.

CHEERING

New Labour's huge majority in the general election gave

Tony Blair much more room for manoeuvre than his Tory predecessor.

His victory had been anticipated, but not what came next.

Not only that he came to Northern Ireland

as almost his first move in office, but what he said.

The settlement train is leaving.

I want you on that train.

But it is leaving anyway,

and I will not allow it to wait for you.

You cannot hold the process to ransom any longer.

So end the violence

and end it now.

What the PM was doing in that brief statement was that he was

offering Sinn Fein talks with Government officials without

a declared IRA ceasefire. Now that was completely unprecedented,

a huge leap in the dark for a British Prime minister to take.

And I still think that it was

the biggest risk that Tony Blair took in the entire peace process.

This is the IRA statement by way of deed about the peace process.

Two bodies, huddled under blankets on a laneway pavement in Lurgan.

Constables John Graham

and David Johnston were community officers - shot from behind.

The act of a coward and deeply cynical,

deliberately timed ahead of Drumcree.

Everyone in Northern Ireland knows

someone killed or injured in the Troubles - it is a small place.

The question in most hearts tonight,

is why should any more children and families suffer?

The misery for many continued.

But if there was change in British politics, there was

change in Irish politics, too.

Within weeks of Tony Blair becoming Prime Minister of the UK,

there was a new man at the Irish Parliament, Bertie Ahern.

And he had this in common with Tony Blair -

whether you love him or loathe him - they had the energy, the patience

and the dedication to stick with the peace process through some of the most difficult times.

-Gerry!

-Gerry!

Somewhat against expectation,

the IRA ceasefire was restored, and this cessation was to last.

But would the Unionists take the Provos at their word?

It looks now as if we have got Sinn Fein into the talks process.

I do not acknowledge or admit that the Unionists are yet lost.

The violence didn't stop completely, but the focus became

the politics - and that was in a way that hadn't been seen for more than

20 years, arguably in a way not seen before at all.

Castle Buildings was the centre of it.

Oddly, while my colleagues and I were covering the biggest story of our careers,

none of us actually got inside.

But we did get into one place - the Maze Prison -

the men of violence were still part of the process.

Mo Mowlam worried the Loyalist ceasefire was at risk.

I reminded the prisoners that the only way their concerns can ever be addressed

is through the negotiating skills of their political representatives at the talks.

I'd been Ireland Correspondent for ten years and I'd always been busy.

But 1998 stands out as a year that saw so many events,

both political and violent.

And it wasn't just the amount, it was the scale -

many of them lead stories right round the world.

There were times here when everyone looked miserable

and I don't mean the journalists - the politicians.

But that was because they were still finding their feet.

The DUP didn't like George Mitchell as chairman, they couldn't bear to sit in the same room as Sinn Fein,

so they were in the talks and then left.

The Unionists and Loyalist parties eventually took a huge leap in the dark and decided they would,

which made the whole thing possible, but that's one of those things,

what you once could not do suddenly became doable and ho-hum, routine and happened every day.

There were bad phases for all parties -

this was the first time that that generation of politicians

had all sat down in the one room and actually had to listen to somebody else's point of view,

and not just listen, but take it on board and do something about it.

There was real dialogue.

A day like today, it's not a day for sound bites...

but I feel the...I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder.

'Agreement - the impossible was done late this afternoon.

'And in the end, after 36 hours of non-stop, no sleep,

'all night and day negotiation,

'it was as close a call as can be imagined.'

Even now, this will not work

unless in your will and in your mind,

you make it work.

Rollercoaster doesn't begin to do justice

to the nature of this process. It was a done deal in the early hours,

a matter of time at lunchtime

and on the verge of collapse in mid-afternoon.

And that's just one day.

Now come the referendums and the Assembly election,

an entirely new form of government for the most tortured part of these islands.

The Northern Ireland Referendum,

22nd May 1998.

The percentage votes given

was as follows.

Yes - 71.12%...

UPROARIOUS APPLAUSE

'The three main Yes leaders of massively different tradition

'and background knew it was enough.'

CHEERING

'And even the political opponents of the main Nationalist leader

'accept that he's been the chief architect of the process.'

It's a very clear statement from our people that they want the foundations laid for lasting peace and stability,

and how those foundations should be laid are spelled out in this agreement.

One of the core skills a journalist must have

is the ability to remain detached.

And that day, it was impossible not to feel, yeah, that's good, that's a good thing.

But as we all know now, the Agreement certainly marked the end of something,

it was also a beginning.

The Good Friday Agreement, whatever its flaws,

remained the template for everything that followed.

But as Senator George Mitchell predicted, on the day,

implementing it would prove at least as difficult as agreeing it.

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