6 - ‘Everything Is Compromisable after the British Declaration of Intent’: The IRA Returns to Ceasefire, December 1974 to December 1975

Summary

A majority of IRA leaders agreed to a ceasefire in late December 1974 because the British government suggested privately that they were contemplating political withdrawal. This chapter also suggests that the ceasefire collapsed because the British government would not announce their withdrawal before a political settlement had been agreed. The British government feared that a declaration of intent to withdraw would provoke a loyalist uprising. Republicans did not trust that the British government would withdraw without a public or private declaration. Many grass-roots republicans felt tricked by the British government into a ceasefire that they began to believe had been designed to degrade the IRA’s armed capacity. However, evidence suggests that, in 1975, the British government wanted gradual political withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Many leading republicans were willing to politically compromise during that year and potentially accept an independent Northern Ireland. But pressure from grass-roots republicans meant that the leadership had to demand a British declaration of intent to withdraw.