Conor O’Clery’s The Greening of the White House - a book review
Irish Americans, via Clinton, had brought the alienated nationalists and loyalists into meaningful peace talks. The cost of this had been to signal to Britain a clear post-Cold War downgrade in their status in Washington.
Two recent news stories juxtapose. On one hand, it is alleged that the Northern Ireland protocol has been solved, potentially signalling the endgame of Brexit wars. On the other, several members of a dissident republican group called the New IRA are under arrest for the shooting of a high-profile police officer in Northern Ireland, Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell.
Whilst the news features stories relating to Ulster, it seems like a good time to recommend Conor O’Clery’s book The Greening of the White House (the U.S. edition is called Daring Diplomacy). O’Clery was born in Belfast and was the Irish Times Washington Correspondent in the mid-1990s. He had been that newspaper’s man in Moscow as the Iron Curtain fell (I can also endorse his book Moscow, December 25th 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union). When in America, O’Clery covered the extraordinary story of how the Clinton Administration broke from the traditional position that Northern Ireland was an internal British matter, and how the President made securing a peace settlement a foreign policy priority. The Greening of the White House is where to go to learn about that fascinating story.
The Irish peace process, and the unprecedented level of presidential interest in it, was fluid, complex, and multi-dimensional. It would be impossible to precisely connect White House activity with specific outputs, such as the 1994-96 ceasefire, or the 1998 Belfast agreement. However, the account given by O’Clery demonstrates that the influence rendered was profound.
For centuries, Irish Americans had involved themselves in Ireland, but historically the wider US political interest had been minimal. However, a door opened as Clinton took office (around the same time that O’Clery took up his position in D.C. for the Irish Times). America had stood off the Irish question during the Cold War, sensitive to the feelings of their most natural ally against the Soviet Union, Britain. As the war ended and the East-West dichotomies broke, Clinton ran for office explicitly envisioning an America engaged with the entire planet, as the globe’s monopoly superpower.
Irish American figures set about taking advantage of the moment and actively engaging with the Clinton White House on the Irish issue. Irish Americans are a sophisticated ethnic minority. Often crucial for political finance and influence, and well represented in business, over 40 million Americans at the time could lay claim to Irish or Scots Irish descent (the President was one of them).
The community had been split during the Troubles. There remained much support for the republican opposition against the British and Irish unionists, but many viewed their methods as being unacceptable. An Irish nationalist debate in America was stimulated by the violence and loss of life. Pragmatism prevailed in Irish America, in which it was accepted that a united Ireland would only come about by consent, which led to the emergence of thriving diplomatic communications between Irish Americans, Republicans in Ireland, and the White House (often excluding the British or Irish unionists).
The objective of the Irish republicans in America was to involve the Clinton administration in an attempt to bring about peace in Northern Ireland. They were content to put to one side any short-term desire for Irish unification and worked to ensure Sinn Fein and the IRA knew the only remaining world power, whom Britain could not ignore, were keen to play the role of an honest broker and were prepared to use their clout in London to encourage serious peace talks. This could compensate for the Republicans perceived David status against the British Goliath.
The British themselves were also rethinking their role in Northern Ireland and reconsidering whether there remained any actual economic or strategic reason for the union, if a majority of the population wanted independence (such a position is built into the 1998 Belfast agreement, and eventual unification of Ireland seems inevitable at some point due to demographic shift towards Catholics). Britain and Ireland had also been partners in the European Economic Community for almost two decades by the time Clinton entered the White House, a community in which such open hostility seemed to be something of a faux pas.
O’Clery sets the political background out fantastically to describe how the conditions were in place for the White House to wade in and accelerate negotiations. Perhaps the most controversial part of this was the “visa wars” in which Gerry Adams was allowed to visit the US, and eventually to raise funds. O’Clery’s grasp of the political back and forth which underpinned the negotiations, ending with Adams touring America, is exceptional and he communicates it brilliantly in the book.
Clinton had been keen on securing the Irish American and Catholic voting blocks and had wooed them during his campaign to secure the Democrat nomination. It was during that campaign that Clinton first indicated that he would support a Gerry Adams visa application. Many felt alienated from the party by its liberal position on abortion and he set about winning them back. Whilst this may be put down to electioneering, there was more to it, according to O’Clery. Clinton was studying at Oxford in the late 1960s when the Troubles began and felt passionately that the peace process was genuinely important. It also cannot be ignored that he would come to resent the British Tory Party because of their open support for his opponent in his first Presidential election campaign, George HW Bush, and Clinton was content to take significant diplomatic risks with the ‘special relationship’.
However, as O’Clery recounts, back in London, and amongst the unionists in Northern Ireland, there was a general sense of ease at the start of the Clinton presidency. He seemed less interested than he had been during his campaign, and a visa had not been granted for Adams, specifically on the grounds that US intelligence reports suggested he was involved in terrorist activity at the highest strategic level. The appalling Shankill bombing had recently taken place killing 10 people and Adams had been a coffin carrier for the bomber, so perhaps it is understandable that his opponents were pleased he had not been immediately embraced by the new President.
But this was playing badly for Clinton’s domestic politics. He met with the Irish PM Albert Reynolds in 1993. Reynolds asked Clinton not to send an envoy and unnerve the British, as progress between Reynolds and John Major was being made (indeed a joint declaration was published later that year). That Major-Reynolds consensus statement came just before Christmas 1993, and the mood changed. The Clinton administration gave strong signals a new visa request may be accepted. Britain and Sinn Fein were in tentative communication, with ceasefire being the initial objective. As Adams was the leader of Sinn Fein, he was thought to be essential to the peace process.
In 1994 President Clinton gave Adams the sought after visa. This was not a decision made without contention. Clinton was advised to do so by his national security advisor, Anthony Lake, and his colleague, Nancy Soderberg. But the Secretary of State, the FBI Director, and justice ministers, and the US embassy in London, had all been against it. It was an immense blow for US-UK diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, the way the White House saw it, by giving Adams a visa, the Americans were able to show that there would be a political pay-off to putting violence behind them.
Ceasefire was called in August 1994, and lasted until 1996. At short notice Sinn Fein asked for IRA veteran Joe Cahill to be granted a visa to explain the ceasefire to Irish Americans. The State Department opposed it, as did the British. It was granted. When Adams wanted to raise funds in the US (oddly he could already raise funds in Britain), even his usual supporters were opposed as the IRA had not declared the ceasefire to be permanent. But Senator Chris Dodd, chairman of the Democrats, and Senator Ted Kennedy, lobbied in Adams’ favour. Clinton told his people to “find a way to get it done”. The White House secured a commitment from Adams to make a public statement that he was prepared to discuss the decommissioning of arms. The British and Irish were not involved in the discussions and negotiations. They were between the White House and Sinn Fein. John Major was furious. Clinton was not perturbed by his fury.
It wasn’t until the new year of 1996 that the ceasefire was broken by an IRA bomb killing two people in Canary Wharf. The emerging peace was derailed. It was the low point of the process. The IRA said it was because there had been no date set for multi-party talks by the Major government. Clinton saw something he had staked much on put at serious risk. Irish Americans were stunned by the return to violence, having relished their roles as peacemakers. Kennedy said he would not meet Adams again until the ceasefire was restored. Many involved felt they had been betrayed, or even knowingly duped by Adams and the IRA.
Adams urgently went into damage control mode with his American supporters, telling them he was committed to the peace process, claiming that there was still 10-20% of the republican movement he didn’t control. Rioting started in places like Portadown. Demonstrators from both sides were involved. It quickly mutated into an “orgy of violence” according to O’Clery.
And this is where O’Clery’s book ends, on a depressing note. Clinton had delivered on his Irish promises and could rely on the Irish American vote for re-election. The Republican opposition criticised the President for the damage done to Anglo-American relations, and for being gullible enough to host Adams and then see the resumption of terrorist atrocities. But as O’Clery says, their heart wasn’t in it. Many Republicans had welcomed Adams and their candidate for President, Bob Dole, had basically supported Clinton on Ireland. As we know, following the change of government in Britain, a peace agreement was eventually reached by Easter 1998 (considered by some, such as the columnist Peter Hitchens, to be a surrender to terrorism. Hitchens make a number of amusing - but also very serious - cameos in O’Clery’s book, doing his job as the Washington correspondent for the Daily Express, holding Adams to account as he travelled).
What had been achieved by 1996 was that Irish Americans, via Clinton, had brought the alienated nationalists and loyalists into meaningful peace talks. The cost of this had been to signal to Britain a clear post-Cold War downgrade in their status in Washington. O’Clery shows us how the US made significant contributions to the origins, evolution and longevity of that peace process. Whilst the book ends in a bleak spot, the events described played a role in what happened next and the agreement that was eventually reached. The Greening of the White House is essential reading to understand the role Irish America played
