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:
Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?[4]
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.[5] 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.[citation needed]
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).[6]