John Bruton’s former adviser says history of the peace process needs to be rewritten

Shane Kenny wrote nearly 40,000 of the words that appear in his book, Under the Rainbow, in the year after the government led by Fine Gael’s John Bruton lost power in 1997.
“Life got in the way,” says Bruton’s former adviser, explaining the delay in finishing it. Last Friday, the book – one that staunchly defends Bruton’s record, and the Rainbow government as a whole – was launched by former minister for justice Nora Owen.
The case for the defence is made from the opening paragraphs.
“Despite a generally held view that Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, with a nod in the direction of John Hume and Albert Reynolds, solved the Northern problem with the Belfast Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the historical facts are very different,” he writes.
Sitting in his Dublin home, Kenny goes further: “There’s a picture in the public mind that peace was delivered by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. I give all the historical facts to show that that is pure myth.”
A recent interview given by Ahern to mark the 30th anniversary of the IRA ceasefire has irritated: “I think he needs to be more generous. I think he needs to accept that a lot was done earlier,” says Kenny.
There were “six pillars” that led up to the Good Friday Agreement in the eyes of Kenny, a well-known RTÉ broadcaster before he became government press secretary after the Rainbow coalition of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left was formed in late 1994.
The first three of these were the dialogue between SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams; the Downing Street Declaration agreed by British prime minister John Major, Fianna Fáil’s Albert Reynolds and Labour’s Dick Spring; and the IRA’s 1994 ceasefire.
Three more of the pillars, however, were agreed by Bruton and Major, during a time when the Conservative leader was dependent upon the support of the Ulster Unionists in House of Commons votes.
The Joint Framework Document in 1995 laid down the need for exclusively peaceful means, for cross-border bodies, and that Northern Ireland’s constitutional status could only be changed by separate votes, North and South.
The fifth pillar was the international body to deal with paramilitary weapons, which brought the former US Senate leader George Mitchell and the Clinton administration into the heart of the work.
The sixth pillar was the 1996 all-party talks, chaired by George Mitchell, that led to the 1998 agreement. “Without these crucial pillars already in place, there would have been no agreement,” argues Kenny.
Some of Bruton’s critics have been “totally blind to the facts of what was going on in London, the fact that Major was losing his majority, that he needed the Ulster Unionists on board, needed every other vote he could get”.
[ John Bruton was more complex than his ‘nice, straightforward, violently anti-IRA’ reputation suggestsOpens in new window ]
In just two months after Major’s defeat in May 1997, Bruton and Labour’s Tony Blair “agreed everything that was necessary” to bring about the second IRA ceasefire “before the Ahern government took power”, he says, pointedly.
For some, Bruton’s attitude to the peace process is defined by one interview he gave in Cork to a radio reporter, where Kenny says Bruton had made it clear that he would speak only about local issues.
“(He) exploded in frustration, saying, ‘I’m sick and tired being asked about the f**king peace process.’ Hardly diplomatic, but not that unusual from some politicians, particularly if the ground rules are ignored,” says Kenny.
[ What Gerry Adams really said to David Trimble in the loo during peace talksOpens in new window ]
Critics claimed it was a revealing glimpse of his real feelings about the peace process.
Instead, Bruton “worked really, really hard” on Northern Ireland during his time in office: “I’d say 80 per cent of his time was taken up with (it),” says Kenny, who now divides his time between Ireland and Spain.
Bruton had immutable principles: “He wanted to stand aside from people who used weapons to kill other people to further their political agenda, but he wanted them to go the peaceful route and to give them as much support as he possibly could.
“This was despite the fact, you know, that in republican publications and elsewhere, he was savagely attacked. He didn’t care about that, he wasn’t going to give in on his own views about Northern Ireland and its problems,” Kenny says.
The progress that came in the end with Blair could have come earlier: “All (the later IRA killings) did was to make him [Major] totally intransigent and make it impossible for him to move with his Tory right wingers and his dependence on Ulster Unionists.”
Bruton, who died in February, and Kenny met rarely after the Rainbow administration ended, though the two debated the decision to hold an election in June 1997 when they spoke last year.
Kenny was one of the few who had wanted it held later in the year. Bruton had disagreed.
“I said it was a serious mistake. He said he wanted it to be called ‘a mistake’, but he did admit that it was one.”