Ceasefire

'The first bomb exploded inside the joint police and army...'

'..overalls and wearing black hoods jumped out of a van...'

-'..abducted from his...'

-'..fired at close range...'

As 1993 drew to a close, and Northern Ireland was about to begin

the 25th year of its so-called Troubles,

it seemed that the conflict itself might have no end.

'An IRA bomb has killed 8 people in Belfast and injured...'

The preceding 12 months had once again seen a sequence of tit for tat atrocities

sink to a new low.

'A massacre, the scale and brutality of which was scarcely believable.'

'Armed and masked men walked inside and opened fire indiscriminately.'

There was an atmosphere in Northern Ireland at that time of

intense fear and, really, incipient despair.

More than 3,000 people had now died in the Troubles.

Rumours of peace initiatives had come and gone,

but the violence went on.

And as the new year dawned, the question remained, would the killing ever cease?

We went into 1994 with some hope,

but with no certainty.

This is the story of the last year of the Troubles.

A year of secret peace talks and savage brinkmanship.

And a year in which the lives of relatives who loved and lost

were indelibly defined by the last dying days.

The days before the cease-fire.

You had a sense that this was it. That you were living through an absolutely historic moment,

and who knew how bright the future might be?

In early 1993 it emerged that the seeds of a secret peace process

had been planted some five years earlier

by John Hume and Gerry Adams.

Known as Hume-Adams, these talks were facilitated by Father Alec Reid

at Belfast's Clonard Monastery.

Father Alec would say that his basic motivation,

he was representing the next person to be killed.

You know, so he wanted to prevent that.

I think we were both motivated for that passion for peace and justice.

The endeavour then to get John Hume as representative of Northern nationalists

were constitutional, and Gerry Adams together,

that was a core objective.

John Hume had wanted to draw the leaders of the Republican movement

away from their armed struggle.

Hume and Adams were exploring each other's positions.

Adams, I think, was looking for

more reassurance than John Hume could give him.

Gerry Adams and those around him were trying to create belief in an approach that

had been always thought of as heresy in Republicanism.

Politics and the IRA did not mix.

In a parallel, secret development, Clonard had also provided a space,

an opportunity for church leaders from the Protestant community

willing to take the risk of engaging with the Republican movement.

We were meeting between the leadership of Sinn Fein

and a number of clergy, mostly Presbyterian clergy.

Somebody from the Protestant side would share their story,

somebody from the Republican side would share their story.

When you heard stories you knew why people were angry,

you knew how people were alienated.

And you knew the journey they were trying to make.

I can remember my first meeting in Clonard, going to meet Gerry Adams.

When I met him, walked into the room, I remember

he reached out his hands to shake hands and I took his hand

and there was a sort of faint smile on his face,

but I wasn't really in the smiling mood.

The atmosphere changed slowly when we started talking about how we grew up.

Then we got on to challenging the whole strategy

of using violence to perpetrate political goals.

There was a lot of creative thinking and as, I was really very hopeful,

and I became convinced in 1993, early 1993,

that Adams definitely had bought into what I would call a peace process.

But that fragile peace process was dealt what looked like a mortal blow

on the 23rd October 1993 on Belfast's Shankill Road.

NEWSREADER: An IRA bomb has killed 8 people in Belfast

and injured up to 40 others.

There was no warning.

-NEWSREADER:

-The IRA said its aim was to kill Loyalist paramilitary leaders.

But the people here believe that the planting of the bomb

in the fish shop show they didn't care who was killed.

This was the IRA trying to kill the UDA leadership on the Shankill Road.

But when you bring a bomb on a short fuse into a fishmonger's shop

on a busy Saturday afternoon on the Shankill Road,

you were always going to kill civilians.

-NEWSREADER:

-As every emergency crew in the city converged on the scene,

bodies began to be brought out.

I counted five in the first half an hour,

many more followed.

It was a desperate result in all ways, and it just looked so much like mindless violence.

It set the mood back immensely,

the mood already strained and already anxious,

many people thinking, "What is this?"

NEWSREADER: The Shankill Road tonight. Quiet, almost eerie

as the clearing up operation continues.

It was a very poisoned atmosphere,

and it was one of the darkest days when nobody thought

that there was any hope in the aftermath of that.

The peace process, which had barely begun, was already in danger of collapsing.

For the mediators, the risks were now all too clear.

I remember going over the following morning,

it was really, just terrible just to be there.

And I was dressed as a clergyman and I went to the, um,

the other side of the road from where the bomb was and,

um, some of the people saw me and were very angry with me.

I, personally, didn't know what to believe. I certainly felt betrayed,

I didn't really know what was happening.

And in that confusion I was increasingly angry and disappointed.

Northern Ireland held its breath,

and just seven days after the Shankill bomb

came the reprisal that everybody had feared.

NEWSREADER: A massacre the scale and brutality of which was scarcely believable.

In the village of Greysteel on the shores of Loch Foyle,

UDA gunmen burst into the Rising Sun Bar

and shot dead eight people.

Six Catholics and two Protestants.

You had this awful scene described of a gunman

just shooting the bar, riddling people, trying to kill

as many as possible.

Suddenly you felt a lot of the old rules have gone,

we've descended into something we haven't seen before.

And you could hear people saying, "This is absolutely hellish."

The funerals came at a time when people were so distressed

by the spectacle of one community turning on the other.

Out of that, curiously, came something hopeful.

The daughter of one of the Greysteel dead turned to

John Hume, who was among the mourners and said,

"Round my father's coffin we were thanking you for your efforts. Please keep going."

And Hume turned away and was seen on camera crying.

My sense as reporter at that time was that anything was now acceptable

to the IRA and to the UVF and UDA.

Amidst the fear of an increasingly vicious cycle of violence

the British and Irish governments were compelled to act.

And as 1993 drew to a close

they unveiled their own plans for peace.

The declaration was important more in the kind of appearance of it,

because whenever you looked at the actual language of it

it was very dense, it was very obscure,

and there weren't very many commitments in it.

The Taoiseach and I have now agreed on a joint declaration on Northern Ireland.

Within the Loyalist community they sensed sell-out.

Within the IRA and Republican community the sense was that Albert Reynolds,

the Taoiseach at that time, had abandoned the Hume-Adams process

to involve himself in another process with John Major.

So there was no certainty that the Downing Street declaration was going to delivery anything

that would end the violence.

The governments had produced this bureaucratic document,

the paramilitaries were doing what the paramilitaries had always done,

so the year ended on a bleak note.

NEWSREADER: A few minutes into the new year, the first fire was discovered

at the B&Q store in Newton Abbey.

Before long, it seemed that 1994 might be no different to 1993.

Belfast was in flames once again.

A clear message from the IRA that its campaign was to continue.

Soon, the Loyalists would follow suit and the killing would begin yet again.

-He was very kind and generous and...

-A good family man.

Yes, he loved his family.

He was just a great man, he used to love sitting out in the sun,

pair of shorts on, doing his crossword and...

Danielle. Playing with Danielle, his granddaughter,

and Shane, his grandson, so...

Great, happy times like that.

He worked in the telephone exchange,

he was an installer.

We lived in Belfast and then we built our house here in Mullaghdun.

He opened a new telephone exchange in Enniskillen and thought,

"This is great, this is my opportunity to get out of Belfast

"and maybe move back down to Fermanagh again, so...

the telephone exchange didn't stay open too long and he had to go away again, you know, so...

-He used to leave about six o'clock on a Monday morning.

-Yeah.

But he'd ring nearly every evening to see how we were and

then we always used to look forward to him coming back in on a Friday evening.

I remember I was making my lunch for the next day's work.

And I just popped my head into the window and I said,

"Daddy, do you want me to make you a sandwich for lunch the next morning?"

And he said, "Yeah, that'd be great."

So I stuck my head around the door and I said,

"I'm away to bed, I'll see you on Friday evening." He said, "That's all right, no bother, son." So...

That was the last time I seen him.

He'd just gone to Belfast that morning.

I spoke to him at seven o'clock,

and he was dead at one o'clock, 1am.

NEWSREADER: Desy Doherty was staying at number 8 Candahar Street

while he was working on a contract for British Telecom in Belfast.

Around one o'clock this morning at least one gunman broke in the door of the house with a sledgehammer,

went upstairs and shot Mr Doherty at least once in the head.

Father Finnegan came to the door,

and a policeman, I said, "Oh, he's had an accident, where has he had the accident?"

I asked all... I was asking the questions

so they didn't tell me for a wee while then, so...

there was a lot of commotion then.

I came down then, and my mum said, "Oh, your dad's been killed in an accident."

And then the policeman said, "No, I'm sorry, Mrs Doherty, it wasn't an accident. He's been shot."

I kept thinking, "He couldn't have been shot, it must be mistaken, it must have been somebody else."

Just couldn't get my head around it that somebody had killed him, you know?

-It's hard to describe it.

-Just devastating, you know?

It's very hard on my two sisters, they took it really bad.

Just devastated the whole family - we just couldn't get our head around it. Why?

-Can't be bitter about it.

-Definitely not bitter, no. Definitely not.

Can't be bitter about it.

We've got to learn to forgive.

Despite the resurgence in their violence, Loyalist paramilitaries

were also engaged in secret dialogue with Protestant church leaders.

And once again, the idea of a cease-fire was broached.

The Reverend Roy Magee, Presbyterian minister,

had been in touch with me about the possibility of talking to Loyalism about the way forward.

It was suggested to them that morally they would score a lot

were they to take the first step.

But I'm afraid that was a voice in the wilderness.

The majority at that stage were using the argument, "Until the OTHER side takes a step

"we can't risk doing what you're asking."

But within some quarters of Loyalism, change was taking place.

A belief that the way forward might be through politics, not the gun.

There were progressive voices coming from the Loyalist community

and in particular David Ervine, who sought to get

Loyalist paramilitaries out of the kind of mindset

that they had gone into.

He tried to interest them in a kind of class politics.

In fact, David Ervine and the UVF were already planning their own peace initiative,

and in 1993 had opened a secret channel to the Irish government

through a Dublin-born trade unionist.

I met David Ervine initially

as a community worker from Belfast.

But I learned that David was, in actual fact, still a volunteer in the UVF

and had done time for his involvement in the UVF.

David said to me, if you can set up a meeting with the Dublin government for us, directly,

we will deliver a big prize.

And I said, "And what do you mean?"

And he said, "Well, the obvious. We will deliver peace.

"We will call a cease-fire prior to any IRA cease-fire."

But then everything went dead for some time.

And I don't think at the end of the day

they were able to bring everybody together to call a cease-fire

because Loyalist paramilitaries are not now, and never were,

a homogenous organisation.

So I think maybe they just couldn't deliver it.

While some leading Loyalists were seeking communication with Dublin,

the stakes were also high for Republicans as they came under pressure

to respond to the Downing Street declaration.

There were mixed signals. Clarification was the buzzword.

Confusion was what we were seeing and there was no certainty about where any of that was leading.

But while the IRA's campaign continued,

Sinn Fein looked for another way forward.

Granted a visa waiver to travel to the United States,

following the intervention of President Bill Clinton,

Gerry Adams and the Republican movement now had

the encouragement they needed for the change in strategy.

America was now a big, big player.

It was moving Republicanism from the sidewalk in New York and in Washington

into the corridors of power.

That's a photo of Jack and his fiancee, because they were getting married.

He was working for to buy a house for him and her.

That grin was always on his face.

And anybody that knew him would have told you that,

he just had the same look about him all the time.

Never seen him angry.

Full of devilment. But just very, very good people.

He used to help everybody out.

That's him and his two brothers at Wesley's wedding.

Nearly all his friends were all Catholics.

They never would have asked, "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant or

"what are you?" They just were the Smyths.

"I'm Jack Smyth, doesn't matter who you are,

"come on up to my house."

He was doing the weights, he was going down to the weightlifting.

That is when he heard about the job and he was delighted he got the job,

as a bouncer. Loved it, he loved that job.

I had to put the news on and it said about the doorman being shot.

Right away, I phoned my sisters then to see if they had heard anything.

Jean says, "It is, it's our Jack."

So it was just bedlam after that.

-NEWSREADER:

-Two gunmen walked up to the entrance of the Bob Cratchit pub

and nightclub and fired a number of shots at Jack Smyth, who

was on duty as a doorman.

Afterwards, some tried to give Mr Smyth emergency first aid

but it was too late.

Staff at Bob Cratchit's say they are devastated and describe him

as extremely popular with the regular customers.

That is him lying after the gunman had decided to take

a life of somebody that was working.

Everybody just was so fond of Jack, it was

so unfair that somebody could come and just shoot him for no reason.

You know?

It is hard to think that there are people like that going about.

Do you know, if whoever done that would have taken five minutes to

speak to him, they wouldn't have pulled the trigger.

Because they would have seen what Jack was made of, you know?

He was just a gem, like. You know?

Sinn Fein's return from America raised expectations that the

IRA might indeed be persuaded to end their armed struggle.

But five weeks later, that seemed like a vain hope.

-NEWSREADER:

-Around Heathrow's northern runway,

the police search for further evidence of the mortar attack

continued from first light this morning.

At the height of the alert last night, the runway remained open for

around half an hour after two of the mortars landed on the runway.

It was a classic case of the twin track approach at that point in time.

You had all this diplomacy going on but the IRA were reminding

the British of their potential and what they were capable of.

At first, everybody was absolutely stunned.

Then it came out afterwards that this was some

sort of attempted or tailored attack where these devices

weren't actually going to explode, they were more designed to say,

"This is the sort of thing we can do.

"If things don't go our way, who knows,

"we might do this this time with devices that would explode.

"But for the moment we are just demonstrating

"the strength of terror."

My daddy was a family man.

He was a quiet person and he was a very private person

if you know what I mean. But a joy to be around, like, know what I mean?

We had some laughs, the craic sometimes was 90, like.

It was always in the back of your head,

would my daddy be shot doing his job?

Because taxi drivers were an easy target.

He was probably like everybody else,

never thought it was going to happen to him.

All he wanted to do was get his day's work over with,

come home to his family and that was it.

Within minutes of it happening, when I came down the street there,

as soon as I turned the corner and I said to a friend of mine,

"What's going on?"

He said to me, "Just get up there, to Mummy's house."

I knew then, you know what I mean, butterflies,

the adrenaline running through you, you just...

You don't know what to expect.

So when I came in here, my daddy was lying on the floor

and I knew by looking at him, like.

I knew by looking at him that he was dead.

Oh, God. The worst nightmare. That is something I will never, ever forget.

-NEWSREADER:

-Despite the frequency of Loyalist attacks

in the New Lodge area,

Joe McCloskey felt no need to lock his door.

Last night the UFF were able to walk in

and shoot their victim at close range.

I lost the plot, to be honest with you.

I can only describe it like being on a roller coaster ride

and didn't know how to get off it.

And it took me down the road of drink and drugs

and really abusing myself.

My father was dead, I had no father figure left,

you know what I'm saying?

I had nobody or my mummy, everybody in my family's head was pickled.

They were trying to deal with it in their own way

and I was just left on my own devices, if you know what I mean.

I was left on my own, basically.

That's the only way I can describe it.

I will take it to the grave with me.

No counselling in this world would cure me away from my dad.

It can't.

Cos the people out there who are counselling you has never

experienced this. So how can they put people right?

Do you know what I mean?

-NEWSREADER:

-A senior police officer said the security forces had

been in the area before the attack took place

but they rejected outright any suggestion of collusion.

There are a lot of questions to be answered.

There wasn't even an investigation, to be honest with you.

Some forensic work. They didn't care, do you know what I mean?

And that is the way we felt as a family. Let down by the system.

I don't know whether I will ever find it any way easier to deal with.

Another 20 years, I'd still feel the same way.

But hopefully I will have answers, all of us will have answers.

Because it will help us in some way or other.

To be able to get some closure on it. Know what I mean?

That's all we need, is closure.

At the end of March 1994,

an IRA statement declared an unexpected cease-fire.

It was scheduled to last just three days but it was also a sign

that some kind of political process was gaining momentum.

-NEWSREADER:

-While the IRA's three-day cease-fire is a welcome development,

it has also dismayed those who had hoped for more.

It is aimed primarily at the British government in an attempt to

prove that the Republican movement is serious about...

At the time, there was a bit of cynicism around about a three-day

cease-fire but it was an attempt by the IRA to show,

we are a disciplined organisation

and we have the capacity to turn this thing on and off.

So it was a marker as to the potential of what could

happen down the line if the right circumstances were realised.

So it was quite seminal but overtly, publicly,

few understood the import of that particular three-day cease-fire.

I think that that cease-fire announcement in 1994 had

an importance internally within the IRA

and also had an importance externally, in terms of sending

a message to the States, to Dublin and to London,

that Republicans were serious about peace.

My dad, his name was Eric, and he was just a big, honest, decent man.

He was my daddy.

He worked in the water service in Armagh,

where he had lots of friends of all sorts of different backgrounds.

He did serve in the UDR on a part-time basis.

I can remember him always going out on duty at the time that most

people would be going to bed.

He would have gone out as we were going to bed

and he would always say good night to us.

He was actually medically discharged from the UDR and I can

remember almost a sense of relief, thinking that danger is gone.

There was such a sense of, thank goodness that part's over and gone.

This isn't going to happen to us.

He had been at my aunt and uncle's farm and was on his way home.

I was in bed and I could hear the shots and I just knew,

I knew what had happened.

I went downstairs and my mum was just standing at the bottom

of the stairs, you know, didn't know where to turn or what to do.

-NEWSREADER:

-Eric Smyth was shot by at least two gunmen as he arrived

at his home after a day working on a friend's farm.

His killers fired several bullets into his van and Mr Smyth,

a former UDR soldier, died almost immediately.

I just remember the house being full of people

but no-one actually ever telling me, you know, "Your daddy's dead."

It is just a surreal feeling.

It just felt like this wasn't supposed to happen,

it shouldn't happen to anyone,

but it had come to our door and it was just devastating.

It was just like a huge hole was just in our lives.

Along the way there have been a lot of different life events

that, you know, your daddy should be there for. And he wasn't there.

At my wedding, at graduation, you know,

whenever the children were born.

I just know that they have a really good relationship

with their other grandad and I just feel that there is that

emptiness that they haven't with my dad.

I know that he would have just loved them and they would have loved him.

I suppose this year being the anniversary as well, you know,

it did bring back more memories.

My husband never met my dad.

Other people who have come into my life since my dad,

I don't always tell them what happened but, you know,

if they start to ask questions, it does bring back memories.

Some of them are good but whenever you think of what actually

happened, obviously it is always going to be with us.

After their short-lived cease-fire in April 1994,

the following month the IRA was active once again.

IRA violence was still going, they were still trying to kill soldiers

and police.

But at the same time,

you could see they were trying to tailor their campaign of violence.

They weren't trying to escalate, they weren't trying to build it up.

But they were still going.

At the same time, the ferocity of Loyalist attacks was striking

terror within the Catholic community.

And by May, there were fears of an even more violent offensive.

The language was becoming more hostile.

There was a lot of nervous tension.

And there was still a voice within Loyalism that felt

that in actual fact, they could beat the IRA.

-NEWSREADER:

-In Dublin at the weekend, the UVF carried out a gun

and bomb attack on a pub where Sinn Fein was holding

a function to raise funds for the families of Republican prisoners.

They were trying to prove that they were now developing military

capacity and they wanted the other side to understand that,

you know, if this war goes on, we can deliver.

I was first stationed here in 1970.

I never really understood anything about Northern Ireland

until I came over here.

It was just a place with odd-named football teams.

You would probably say that Nigel was the sort of lad that in his short

life, he probably enjoyed most things.

Put in that way.

He packed a lot into it.

He got a job in a security company

but he ended up in Anderson and McAuley department store,

where he worked mostly dayshift.

He wasn't involved in anything

so I had nothing really to be worried about.

The last time I saw Nigel was in the morning, about 7.20,

when I left for work.

He would have been getting ready for work

so I would have said cheerio.

And that was the last time I saw him.

-NEWSREADER:

-Around 1:40, a number of gunmen entered the back

entrance of the Anderson and McAuley's building in Fountain Street.

They approached the security guard who was standing at the back of the

building and shot him several times in the body and head at close range.

Just numb.

It's something...

The victim is believed to be in his mid-20s

and comes from the Shankill Road area.

He was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital

and died several hours later.

To this day, I don't really know why, that is the most infuriating thing.

I just can't understand the reason why anyone would want to do that.

This is only the sort of thing I kept.

This was the tie he had on.

And the shirt.

The Good Friday Agreement has been tough...

I am glad there is peace and they're not shooting everybody

but that particular part of it where I have had that justice

taken out of my hands has been tough.

A lot of people will end up saying, "I forgive them," and all this.

Well, unfortunately I don't and I never will.

I will take that to the grave with me.

They should be paying for their crime.

Something like this just never goes away.

You know, we are left basically with a life sentence.

There is always something missing there.

There is always an empty chair at Christmas.

Nobody really knew what was coming next, and suddenly

out of nowhere, we had this awful shooting on the Shankill Road.

-NEWSREADER:

-The shooting happened just after one o'clock

outside a Co-op building.

It is believed two gunmen were involved.

The men had been standing outside a Co-op building

when the INLA gunmen drove up and opened fire.

Four men were hit.

The shooting in June claimed the lives of three members of the UVF.

Once again, Northern Ireland held its breath for the inevitable

Loyalist response.

The only questions were when and where the gunmen which strike.

Everybody knew that there would be retaliation.

Within days, we had the awfulness, the ugliness,

the grotesqueness of Loughinisland.

-NEWSREADER:

-Their grief was instantaneous

and impossible to hide.

The unthinkable had happened in this small County Down village.

It had been a night of high emotion.

Ireland was on its way to defeat Italy in the World Cup.

The bar was packed with local people watching the match on TV.

Then two UVF gunmen walked through the front door.

Automatic rifles cut down one person after another.

There was pandemonium.

The Loughinisland attack was the most simple of circumstances.

A group of people gathered together in their local pub to

watch the World Cup.

Again, it was people thinking, "Can we not have normal lives?

"Can we not go to the pub and watch a football match?

"Is nobody exempt from this?"

Again, we were plunged into darkness.

It didn't appear possible that we could move forward.

It looked as if we were conspiring against our own future, yet again.

Barney and Brigid married when I was six.

They had a long life together.

They just, hand in glove,

and they both made everybody very welcome into their home.

It was a very open house.

They weren't blessed with any family of their own,

so I was always about it and, you know, all the wee treats and whatnot.

With working in the building trade, with being a pig farmer

and with playing whist, he was very...known here near and far.

It was the World Cup match

and his nephew was going into hospital the next week

and they were going out for their...

what would be their last drink, maybe, for a few weeks.

He got himself spruced up, the good bits on and the good hat.

He got dressed and...away they went.

-NEWSREADER:

-Two UVF gunmen walked through the front door.

It was not a frenzied attack.

They calmly walked in and carefully targeted their victims.

All six men who died were Catholics.

The eldest, Barney Green, was 87.

It was just...incredible

that a wee country pub and six innocent men,

just gunned down in cold blood.

You can imagine what that was like.

You don't ever get over it.

You learn how to live differently,

but you don't ever go back to the way it was before.

I can see him sitting up in bed,

bringing his breakfast down to him.

The glasses off him.

Sitting in the bed, the wee red cheeks.

I've a lot of memories.

We want what we've always wanted which is truth and justice.

We have learned a lot over the years

and we still feel that there should have been more done,

we really do, and we're not going to stop.

We're the voices of our loved ones, and we have to continue.

That's the way I look at it,

and that's the way, as a group, we function. We have to...keep going.

It was another one of those moments that shook

the confidence of ordinary people. It certainly shook me.

Again, it put me in a place where

I really didn't know what was happening. Was I being deceived?

Were we being betrayed?

Loughinisland was an awful erosion on our hopes.

I said to Roy Magee, "I'm sorry, Roy,

"I'm going to have to walk away."

If they were capable of Loughinisland, what was the point

of doing anything about encouraging them to think of peaceful means?

It was, for me, an extremely difficult time

because I began to question my own involvement

in engaging with these people, whether it was the right thing to do.

I travelled up to Belfast after Loughinisland

and at that meeting, David Ervine said to me,

Loughinisland was "returning the serve"

and he also said to me, you know, the UVF, not him personally

but the UVF could do this every day of the week, but they chose not to.

But he said to me that

we both had to ignore what happened on the street.

We still had to continue with this

because this was about the bigger picture and the final goal

and that was a cessation of violence.

More than ever, the picture was contradictory.

Like the Loyalists,

the Republicans were rumoured to be moving towards another cease-fire.

But trust on either side was in short supply.

Again and again,

we had IRA voices saying, "There will be no cease-fire,"

while at the same time we were hearing from other Republicans,

"Hmm, we are working at this

"and Adams is involved in something very serious,"

but because the violence kept going, what were you to believe?

Certainly you had the Loyalists trying to kill Sinn Fein

and, if they could, IRA people

and on the IRA side, you had them settling the scores,

people like Ray Smallwoods.

-NEWSREADER:

-Hundreds of people crowded into a small street

in the Tonagh estate in Lisburn

while a private family service was held in Ray Smallwoods' home.

Catholic priests Alec Reid

and Gerry Reynolds from Clonard in West Belfast were also present.

We had been meeting Ray Smallwoods as part of a little group.

My impression of Ray Smallwoods was

that he was a man who was very committed to moving the thing

into a political form.

There was a view within Loyalism

that the IRA were out to take out all the thinking people within Loyalism,

the people like Ray Smallwoods, people like David Ervine and others,

and to use that awful phrase that was used to me,

there was a bit of book-keeping.

People were trying to score a few points before the actual cease-fires.

Within the Republican movement,

intense debate was building over the implications of an IRA cease-fire.

And when Sinn Fein called a special conference in Donegal

at the end of July, an expectant media watched intently.

I think we believed at that stage

we were closer to the possibility of cease-fire

and I think some people misread Letterkenny,

that that might be the moment for some sort of announcement.

It was part of the process of preparation. It was consultation.

It was the Republican community talking to itself.

It was about getting ready for what might come down the road.

Well, certainly you felt something was coming, but you didn't know

what it was going to be, you were just in a mood of uncertainty.

There were lots of rumours going around that Sinn Fein had been

engaged in an extensive dialogue with its own constituency

and that the vibes were good.

I think by mid-August we knew something was coming

and of course we all had doubts

because we continued to see those killings and that violence

right up to the last, the last minute of the last hour.

-NEWSREADER:

-A cease-fire by the IRA is now expected very soon.

The Government has moved to reassure Unionists that

there have been no concessions to Republicans. Downing Street...

Everyone else is left with their hopes and their fears, and

all sections wondering if violence will at last give way to politics.

I can remember taking a call around nine o'clock.

The caller on the other side of the line said to me,

"Same place as Saturday. 11 o'clock.

"Bring Eamonn," meaning my journalist colleague, Eamonn Mallie.

That fateful phone call came to myself and Brian Rowan

to go to meet somebody in West Belfast.

At 11 o'clock, we went to a coffee shop in West Belfast.

A well-dressed lady walked in to inform us that she had a statement.

The IRA woman sat at the table with Eamonn Mallie and myself,

whispered the words of that cease-fire announcement very quietly.

I can remember the opening sentences,

"the complete cessation of military operations that would take effect

"at midnight that night,

"that all units had been instructed accordingly."

We knew that we were witnessing history.

We had the most anticipated message in the western world in our hands.

I called a copy typist in the BBC newsroom.

I gave them those two sentences,

that from midnight there would be a complete cessation of IRA operations,

that all IRA units had been instructed accordingly

and within seconds, that became the newsflash across the BBC.

It's just been announced that from midnight tonight,

the leadership of the IRA

have decided that as of midnight, August 31st,

there will be a complete cessation of military operations.

I can remember the huge buzz.

I remember reporting that day that none of us could dare say

that this was the end of the IRA,

but what it certainly was was the start of something new.

We had what we deemed to be the ultimate statement, saying, "it's over."

You couldn't help but feel relieved and excited.

It was a remarkable moment.

31st August is a day I will never forget

because I took that as an absolutely marvellous affirmation

of our three to four years' dialogue,

that if the armed struggle was now being put on the back burner,

that political, inclusive political talks

would be put onto the front burner.

That was the announcement of this new era in Irish politics,

where the armed force tradition and the constitutional tradition

came together in a new alliance and initiative for peace.

CAR HORNS BEEP

The IRA announcement provoked jubilant scenes

on the streets of West Belfast.

Finally, after many years of violence,

the cease-fire would begin within hours,

at the stroke of midnight on 31st August, 1994.

CLOCK STRIKES

But within hours, the focus turned to the Loyalists.

Were they also ready to declare a cease-fire

or would their campaign of violence continue?

After the IRA cease-fire, the onus was obviously on Loyalists,

that they were going to have to wind down their campaign

because they had kept up this pretence, fairly thin pretence,

that their violence was reactive to the IRA's violence,

so there was no longer any justification,

even in their own eyes, for their campaign of violence.

The Loyalist reaction to the cease-fire was one of suspicion.

There was an element of saying,

"Has John Major sold us out? Is there a secret deal here?"

The Loyalists had placed great importance on Robin Eames

and Roy Magee at that stage.

Probably more Eames because he was the Church of Ireland Archbishop.

I suppose what the Loyalists thought was,

"Would a Prime Minister lie to the Archbishop?"

I went to Number 10.

I told the Prime Minister that there was a chance

that Loyalism might take a step.

He said, "You can tell Loyalism

"no deal was done with the IRA to bring about their cease-fire."

-NEWSREADER:

-Speculation pointing to the possibility of

a Loyalist terrorist cease-fire has been running for weeks,

and it's now being suggested that an announcement is imminent

and could come within hours.

Finally, on 13th October 1994,

six weeks after the IRA cease-fire,

the Combined Loyalist Military Command summoned the media

to a press conference.

'They launched it in a very formal way,

'this table full of middle-aged men

'with Gusty Spence,'

the pipe-smoking grandfatherly figure as the kind of elder statesman.

The Combined Loyalist Military Command will universally cease

all operational hostilities as from 12 midnight

on Thursday, 13th October, 1994.

'We always talked about that

'they needed to be penitent towards those innocent people'

who had died or were murdered

and damaged by the UVF and Loyalist paramilitaries.

And I think these words helped remarkably,

and I think they did have an impact.

We offer to the loved ones of all innocent victims,

over the past 25 years, abject and true remorse.

'The attempt to reach out and say,

'"We regret it, we regret what has happened,"'

was really the dominant tone,

and it was something we hadn't, none of us, I think, had expected

of Loyalist paramilitarism, and it was perhaps their finest moment.

It was profoundly relieving to know

that this was actually all finally coming to an end.

It seemed a bit unbelievable and it was fantastic

and it was wonderful, but it was also, you just felt so sad

about the horrific violence that had preceded it.

The cease-fires marked a dramatic turning point

in the history of Northern Ireland.

But they came after a heavy price had been paid by many,

and none more so than those who lost their lives or their loved ones

in the dying days of the Troubles.

As the snow fell at midnight on New Year's Eve, 1994,

hopes were high that the peace would hold.

In the years to come, there would be tragic lapses,

but the Troubles, as the people of Northern Ireland had experienced them for 25 years, were over.

People no longer were being killed at that horrendous rate

and the figures for deaths in those first couple of years

bring it home just in itself.

In 1993, there were 90 deaths.

In 1994, there were 69 deaths.

In 1995, there were nine deaths.

Who among us didn't know somebody

who had been killed, decimated, blown apart?

Who among us?

There are many, many empty chairs there still.

The remembrance of the Troubles

and all the ways in which it dehumanised us

is a very important thing to reflect on

because what happened before could happen again unless we're careful.

We have to remember the history so as not to repeat it.