For a group that has survived on ambiguity and twisted words, the declaration was unusually dear. On July 28th, after months of bickering and delay, the IRA pledged to "end the armed campaign" in a statement designed to signal that the terrorists had put more than three decades of bombing and shooting behind them once and for all. Only the IRA'S history of reluctant and glacial change diminished the sense that, this time, Northern Ireland might at last be promised peace. The statement marked the moment in Irish republicanism when Sinn Fein, once scruffy political cover for the terrorist operation, became the movement's centre of power. "All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms," it declared. "Volunteers" were ordered to work towards "purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means...We believe there is now an alternative way...to end British rule in our country." To an old Provo worth his Armalite, such language would have amounted to apostasy. The IRA might continue to exist, but as a husk-an association of old comrades.
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