What did John Major mean by saying the IRA could not be defeated?

John Major made important progress towards peace in Northern Ireland, and helped to make Tony Blair’s breakthrough possible, because he saw the situation with an outsider’s eye. “When I became prime minister in December 1990 I knew very little of Northern Ireland,” he admitted in his autobiography. But that “had its advantages: my hands were clean; I came to it fresh”.

Major saw clearly that a military solution was not possible. Thanks to the release this week of the note of a conversation with Albert Reynolds, the new Irish prime minister, in February 1992, we know that the UK prime minister thought that it “would be very difficult” when asked if it was possible to defeat the IRA militarily: “I would not say this in public, of course, but, in private, I would say, possibly no.”

Despite the attempt by the IRA to kill him by a mortar attack on Downing Street only a year earlier, in February 1991, Major seemed to understand the basic psychology of a negotiation that would allow both communities in Northern Ireland to retain their self-respect.

So when he received a message from the IRA a year later, in February 1993, saying “the conflict is over but we need your advice on how to bring it to a close”, he was ready to restart negotiations with a view to including Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.

With the help of Reynolds and his successor John Bruton, Major worked on the main elements of what was to become the Good Friday Agreement after he had left office. These elements were: the restoration of devolved government in a way that respected the rights of both unionists and nationalists; the end of the Irish Republic’s claim to the north; the release of prisoners convicted of terrorist offences; and a disavowal of violence.

This last is what tripped Major up, because he naively put it first when the only way that the IRA’s leaders could sell it to their people was to work towards it once the gains of peaceful negotiation had been demonstrated.

Thus, although the IRA announced a ceasefire in August 1994, its refusal to make it permanent hampered talks, and the ceasefire was ended with a bomb that killed two people near The Independent’s office in Canary Wharf in February 1996. That explosion marked the end of Major’s attempt to reach a settlement, but he had put in place the building blocks that his successor needed to try to take advantage of the historic realisation on both sides that neither the UK government nor the IRA could prevail by violence.

Blair came to office with new advantages: another clean slate; an understanding of the need to finesse the disarmament issue; and friendly relations with a US president who could use his prestige to influence all the parties. Thus, in April 1998, less than a year after Major left No 10, Blair completed his work by concluding the deal known as the Good Friday or Belfast agreement.