There were many significant statements during the course of the peace process, each pored over and dissected in detail to establish what the words actually meant.
Even at the relatively advanced stage of 2003, almost a decade on from the first IRA ceasefire and some five years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, what Gerry Adams in his role as Sinn Féin president said was regarded as reflective of the republican movement’s direction of travel and ultimately an indication of whether the peace would hold.
At the beginning of 2003, with the devolved institutions having been suspended a matter of weeks previously amid the so-called Stormontgate controversy, the IRA’s New Year statement said the peace process was “under threat”.
Talks were taking place between political parties aimed at restoring devolution but it would prove an arduous route back over the next four years.
Freshly released state papers show then British prime minister Tony Blair attempting to amend Mr Adams’s April 2003 statement on IRA disarmament, three years after the original deadline for decommissioning had passed.
The IRA had agreed, following discussions with the General John de Chastelain-led independent International Commission on Decommissioning on the principal and logistics, however, it had yet to put its arms “completely and verifiably beyond use”.
The Sinn Féin president’s statement – a week after Easter – sought to bring some clarity to the outstanding issues around the IRA’s long-term intent, in what was then cast as a stand-off involving London, Dublin and a vulnerable Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, with the increasingly influential DUP scrutinising every word and gesture.
Mr Blair, on behalf of most peace process stakeholders, had called on the IRA to provide clarity around three outstanding questions from its statement and subsequent communique issued days earlier, which placed responsibility on the two governments for creating the circumstances under which decommissioning could take place.
What emerges from the newly-unsealed Department of Affairs’ documents is triangulation involving Dublin, London and Mr Adams, prior to the latter’s statement, which Mr Blair and then taoiseach Bertie Ahern believed could help garner support for Mr Trimble - as long as it said the right things.
The two leaders provided the Sinn Féin president with words which they believed would convey sincerity, while extracts of Mr Adams’s remarks were shared with the two governments’ senior representatives.
The Sinn Féin leader’s final address did not include any of the suggested words verbatim though whether their sentiment is evident in Mr Adams’s statement is moot.
The taoiseach, at least, appeared satisfied, describing Mr Adams’s clarifications as “important” and “helpful”.
There was mild recrimination in the aftermath of the statement, with the IRA later accusing the two governments of a breach of trust. However, it’s clear that the channels of communication that had been created over the previous decade were being fully utilised in the bid for peace.
As the politics of the peace process becomes less current affairs and more about history, it becomes increasingly apparent that what was happening in the pubic sphere differed from the private exchanges, even pre-IRA ceasefire.
British prime minister John Major declared in the House of Commons in November 1993 that to “sit down and talk with Mr Adams and the Provisional IRA ... would turn my stomach” yet the British government had already opened lines of communication with the Republican Movement.
This year too we learned that DUP representatives met with Sinn Féin before agreeing to share power in 2007 – something they had castigated David Trimble for.
It’s said that all is fair in love and war – and perhaps even duplicity can be excused if the ultimate prize is peace?
