When William Jefferson Clinton was elected as the 42nd President of the United States of America in 1992 having beaten the current incumbent President George H Bush, and independent candidate Ross Peroe, he took to a stage in Little Rock in his home state of Arkansas and delivered a speech to his adoring public. At the end of the speech, Clinton as he had done throughout his campaign stated that he .
"Still believed in a place called home".
(Clinton Library, Election Victory Speech 1992).
At the same time in the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in the six counties of Northern Ireland, a place were they could call home was the furthest thought in the minds of the people. For the previous twenty five years there was no place where they could call home.
In the six counties (Armagh, Derry (Londonderry), Antrim, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Down) the people had witnessed great death and destruction since 1969 and in particular since 1972, when British Armed forces opened fire on innocent republican civil rights campaigners on the 30th of January, Bloody Sunday, and as the Saville report would report in 2010 .
"Unlawfully terminating the lives of thirteen innocent men".
(London, report of Lord Saville 2010).
In the days that would follow Bloody Sunday the numbers of people involved with the Irish Republican Army (hereafter I.R.A) increased dramatically, which ultimately lead to fatal divisions in the I.R.A. One of the two groups, the larger of the two renamed themselves the "Provisional I.R.A" ( hereafter P.I.R.A), who are said to have caused as many as 60% of the 3714 deaths reported to have been due to the political violence in Northern Ireland.
Many times over the course of "the Troubles" (name given to the era of political violence on the island of Ireland between 1969 and 1998) the British and Irish governments had attempted to wager a peace-agreement in an attempt to at least end the political violence in Northern Ireland, but they came and went and ultimately ended in failure.