The strategy emerged after the
1981 Irish hunger strike as a response to the electoral success of
Bobby Sands in the
April 1981 Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election and pro-hunger strike campaigners in the
Northern Ireland local elections and
Republic of Ireland Dáil Éireann elections of the same year. It was first formulated by Sinn Féin organiser
Danny Morrison at the party's
Ard Fheis (Annual Conference) on 31 October 1981, when he said: The strategy was a mixed success. Sinn Féin had a solid core of 9-13 percent of the vote in Northern Ireland, which gave the party some credibility on the international stage. However, at home, it highlighted the non-violent
Social Democratic and Labour Party's (SDLP's) dominance in Northern
nationalist politics, while Sinn Féin's vote in the Republic remained tiny once the emotion generated by the 1981 hunger strike subsided. In the longer term, it had two significant political consequences, each of which fed into the emergent
Northern Ireland peace process. When the
governments of the UK and the Republic of
Ireland drafted the
Anglo-Irish Agreement, this convinced many in Sinn Féin that it was possible to make political gains without violence. However, Sinn Féin's electoral setbacks, such as the loss of 16 of the party's 59 council seats in 1989, pushed the emphasis of the Republican movement away from the
Armalite and towards an election-focused strategy. On 12 August 1994, just 19 days before the first IRA ceasefire, Danny Morrison declared that the Armalite and Ballot Box approach was over, and stated that "different times require different strategies". By that time, a confidential paper had been released within the IRA and Sinn Féin, referred to as the "TUAS document". The TUAS (Total Unarmed Strategy) set the goal of achieving a wide Irish nationalist consensus among the main nationalist players (Sinn Féin, SDLP and the
Republic) with strong international support (especially from the U.S. and the
European Union). ==Legacy==