Why the IRA changed its mind over arms

Why has the IRA at last acted on the arms issue? After all, senior republican Brian Keenan told us there would be no decommissioning except the decommissioning of the British state in Ireland. The IRA itself said in 1998 there would be no decommissioning, either by the front or the back door.

There are three profound reasons for the change of heart. First, David Trimble's high-risk decision to resign as Northern Ireland's First Minister placed a massive question mark against the continuation of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement in the absence of decommissioning. At this moment, Trimble's lonely and much-criticised decision appears to have been justified.

Then came the fiasco of the IRA's involvement in Colombia with Farc, the group the US State Department regards as narco-terrorist. Even before 11 September, the Bush administration adopted an unforgiving stance on this - in marked contrast to the Clinton administration's relaxed attitude towards IRA gun-running out of Florida in 1999.

After the attacks on 11 September, the US adopted a new policy of zero tolerance of terrorism. Sinn Fein, heavily dependent on Irish-American support, had a simple choice - join the good guys or stick with the bad guys.

The Gerry Adams-Martin McGuinness leadership of Sinn Fein expects a difficult few days. The grumbling of their foot soldiers has already begun. It will increase when some Ulster Unionists claim a great victory. But having survived a few days of turbulence, the Sinn Fein leadership expects a profoundly beneficial political pay-off - in both parts of Ireland and in the US. They will hope to win as many as 10 seats in the next Irish general election, which is only a few months away. They will expect dramatic gains at the expense of the SDLP in Northern Ireland before too long. They will also expect fundraising in the US to now continue much as before.

Downing Street is reported to be euphoric. Blairism, it seems, can sort out even the most apparently irreconcilable problems. It is said to be a good Irish omen for the much bigger problems on the world stage. Even though Neville Chamberlain believed much the same thing after the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1938, the Prime Minister is entitled to his sense of relief. He has put an enormous effort into Northern Ireland and deserved a decent result; without him there would have been no Good Friday Agreement in the first place. That said, in the end it was David Trimble and the Americans who actually brought the matter of decommissioning to a head.

What will be Unionism's reaction? There is still plenty of suspicion of the IRA's intentions both inside and outside Mr Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party. He will face a hard struggle to get re-elected as First Minister and may need support from prominent dissidents in his own party such as Pauline Armitage and Peter Weir. But there are signs some of Mr Trimble's most substantial critics recognise the world has changed. UUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson has been scrupulously moderate in his remarks so far.

Some of the more acute politicians in Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, which made gains at the last general election, said erstwhile middle-class UUP voters switched to them through gritted teeth in protest at the lack of decommissioning. These will now be only too pleased to declare their protest vote worked and return to their natural home.

This is all the more likely because there is a growing awareness in Ulster society that the mainstream IRA cannot launch a second Canary Wharf operation. After 11 September, IRA attacks of this sort, prototypes as they were for the attacks on New York and Washington, become inevitable propaganda disasters. The republican movement has thus lost its supplementary mandate in negotiations, a mandate which kept Unionists on the back foot in the three years since the Good Friday Agreement. The threat of political violence having thus been greatly reduced, Northern Ireland has a chance to achieve a new type of stability.

So as he now moves, as he will, to reestablish the agreement and its institutions, Mr Trimble has a serious chance of outright success. He will focus on ensuring momentum is maintained by mobilising Unionist public opinion to force Loyalist paramilitaries to respond by decommissioning arms.

Still, we are not quite out of the woods yet. In 1998 Mr Blair rightly insisted that for a party with paramilitary links to stay in government in Northern Ireland, there had to be not only decommissioning but an end to all beatings and killings. Mr Trimble intends that the fostering of a new culture of lawfulness should become the project of Northern Irish politics. It is essential if the institutions of the agreement are to be bedded down. Once again, he will need the Prime Minister's support.

Nevertheless the nature of Irish politics changed yesterday. The IRA statement makes clear that although it has decommissioned, it does not really consider decommissioning a legitimate part of the peace process. In that case, it is all the more remarkable it has acted as it has. Remember Mr Keenan's words in South Armagh earlier this year: "The revolution can never be over until we have our country, until we have British imperialism where it belongs - in the dustbin of history."

This is the world we have left behind. The ill-fated Colombia adventure may prove to be the last gasp of the Irish revolutionary republican physical force tradition. Disappointingly last night, Mr Adams still refused to say the war was over, but in practical terms many more people now believe that it is.

The symbolism of what has happened is immense. The IRA has at last displayed a sense of respect for Northern Ireland's democratic institutions. It will be hard for Unionist rejectionists to sustain a negative campaign. Even Nigel Dodds, newly-elected DUP MP for North Belfast, told Sir David Frost in June that, in the event of decommissioning, he would accept power-sharing with Sinn Fein. This is a sentiment which will now be put to the test.

Paul Bew is Professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University, Belfast.