IRA TERRORISTS who are still on the run abroad are being offered what amounts to an amnesty by the Government. A tribunal, rather than a court, will remove the threat of a criminal sentence if the fugitives promise to behave themselves in future. The historical parallel we are invited to draw is “truth and reconciliation” after apartheid. In fact, it is no precedent — the IRA fugitives need not atone for their crimes or even attend the tribunal.

It is not to South Africa but to the early days of the Irish Free State that a better parallel exists. The threat that IRA opponents to Partition posed to the southern Irish Government of W. T. Cosgrave between 1922 and 1923 was far more deadly than that confronting Stormont or Whitehall. The Dublin Government brutally repressed the guerrilla war that was trying to overthrow it. IRA prisoners were executed in reprisal for assassination attempts. In April 1923, with its leaders dead, captured or on the run, the IRA suspended “all offensive operations” and ordered its volunteers to dump arms.

Dublin continued to bang up suspects. Among fugitives captured was Eamon de Valera. But within a year, he was among around 15,000 prisoners released. He turned to constitutional politics and by 1932 won power. His Fianna Fail party had been assisted by the IRA and a “release the prisoners” campaign. In office, he ensured that past crimes were forgiven and their perpetrators slept more easily with the bribe of a state pension to all IRA veterans.

Might history repeat itself? Ministers in London and Dublin must hope not. Not all the former terrorists were long pacified. The pensions were not enough. Banks were raided and a bombing campaign on the British mainland started in 1939. Keen to stay out of the world war, de Valera was forced to take hard measures at home. Several IRA terrorists were executed. Internment was reintroduced; 800 were held behind the wire of the Curragh camp. This measure was not confined to the “emergency ” of 1939 to 1945; de Valera reintroduced internment between 1957 and 1959 for those who returned to terrorism.

Those detained in these camps were liable for release only if they “signed out”. This involved them renouncing their terrorist past. Few did. Some feared the IRA’s persuasive methods towards those it suspected of betrayal but many refused to renounce a violent path in which they fervently believed. This remains the case now.

Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, recognises that IRA fugitives will not come in from the cold if this involves apologising, so there is no point in making such abasement a precondition of their reintegration into society. Ironically, it was de Valera, who well knew the terrorist mentality, who ended up wanting personal reassurances before issuing amnesties.

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