Today is the 30th anniversary of the Provisional IRA ceasefire. In 1994, after their “inevitable” 25-year war for ‘Brits Out’, the IRA decided that the Brits could stay after all and that Sinn Féin would administer the north on their behalf.

It was hardly surprising therefore that the anniversary is passing without much celebration. Thirty years later there are no crowded black taxis on the Falls Road with tricolours waving and horns blaring. Today there is just the grim reality of Stormont’s abdication of responsibility, reflected in the poverty, the growing number of food banks, the 47,000 waiting to be housed and the 500,000 on health waiting lists.

While much of the analysis of events in the past 60 years has centred on the IRA’s claim that the war was necessary (it wasn’t), much less attention has been paid to its strategy in the peace talks. That strategy was certainly not necessary.

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It might have been reasonably expected that those claiming to be Irish........

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