The Intelligence War against the IRA

by Thomas Leahy

  The final reason for not adopting the term ‘terrorism’ is that it is ‘a subjective, pejorative and politically loaded term’ used by states to legitimatise or delegitimise – whether rightly or wrongly – armed groups.68 For example, Hezbollah, the Shia Lebanese Islamic paramilitary, are designated as ‘terrorist’ by the predominately Sunni Gulf states. But Hezbollah is supported by the Assad regime in Syria and by Shia-dominated Iran.69 The term ‘terrorism’ is applied to organisations that certain states oppose, rather than to any organisation that meets a particular set of criteria. ‘Political violence’, ‘paramilitary’ or ‘armed groups’ are terms that do not have the same level of political connotations. For similar reasons, this research uses the term ‘counter-insurgency’ to describe the British state’s response to IRA activity. Insurgency refers to ‘an internal struggle in which a disaffected group seeks to gain control of a nation’. Counter-insurgency refers to ‘the constitutional, military, political or economic measures that represent the state’s response to this challenge’.70 In this book, I explore the military, political and intelligence measures deployed by the state in its response to the IRA. By not using the word ‘terrorism’, I am not advocating the ‘relativist argument that all acts of violence have equal justification or validity’.71 As English argues, it is open to the reader to ‘judge [whether] the violence of … the Provisional IRA … [has] been justified and legitimate’.72

  This book uses the widely accepted term ‘informer’ to describe an IRA member who provides information to British intelligence or RUC Special Branch.73 Alan Barker, a former Special Branch agent-handler who worked in Derry City, describes an agent as someone ‘who was not a member of … the terrorist groups … [who] had to be carefully manoeuvred along a path whereby he or she could eventually approach or be approached by a particular organization and accepted into it’.74 Another category is that of the British Army agent. This type of agent is a member of the British armed forces who infiltrates a paramilitary group for the intelligence services.75 Matchett also recalls the use of various one-off and informal agents from his time in RUC Special Branch.76 This book is primarily focused on individuals who provided repeated intelligence. Matchett explains how the persons who provided occasional intelligence remain unknown. Evidence surrounding their activities seldom survives.

  Whilst some self-confessed IRA spies have released memoirs, it is impossible to verify their primary motives for becoming agents or informers. Even with agent-handlers releasing memoirs, as in some cases, we cannot confirm what motivated an agent or informant. Available evidence suggests that people inform for a variety of reasons. Motivating factors can change over time.77 The case of Raymond Gilmour, a former Special Branch agent in Derry City in the late 1970s and early 1980s, supports this view. Alan Barker, his former Special Branch handler, also discusses Gilmour’s motives. Gilmour apparently began informing after facing a potential prison sentence for criminal activities. Gilmour said that his other motivations included a distaste for the IRA after they had carried out a punishment beating on his friends for anti-social behaviour, ‘a powerful financial incentive’ and the prospect of saving lives.78 Martin Ingram, the former FRU operator, agrees that agents and informers have ‘many motivating factors’. These include ‘revenge’ for paramilitary beatings, ideological opposition, the threat of imprisonment, a longing for excitement and ‘status’, and ‘good, old-fashioned greed’.79 Academic studies on other conflicts also show that agents and informers have various motives. Stan A. Taylor and Daniel Snow use the term MICE to account for common motives of those Americans informing for the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The acronym MICE stands for money, ideology, compromise or coercion, and ego. The authors add that other influences include excitement and revenge. Crucially, they suggest that: ‘no human act is ever motivated by a single factor’.80 The mixture of motives for agents and informers ensures that there will always be individuals who will inform. Kalyvas also explains that there is a difference between ‘political’ denunciation and ‘malicious’ denunciation. The latter is motivated by personal or local grudges. He proposes that malicious denunciation means that war ‘privatises politics’. War ‘transforms local and personal grievances into lethal violence’. Local or personal disputes can be given a political meaning by the group or state for which a person operates.81

  Sources and Methodology

  This book cross-references accounts from various conflict participants. These accounts come from memoirs and new interview material, alongside new and existing Irish and UK archival material. I have gathered the views of republicans who support the Provisional movement and those who are now unaffiliated,82 self-confessed IRA spies, former British security and intelligence personnel and British and Irish political representatives.

  Gathering oral histories has enabled my research to gather some ‘hidden histories’, particularly of rank-and-file republicans whose views have not been heard within memoirs. There has been a tendency for the debate surrounding the past within republicanism to be between current and former Sinn Féin leaders and specific unaffiliated republicans, whose critiques are regularly aired via memoirs and blogs.83 By relying on these accounts, we overlook the multiplicity of views within republicanism on this topic. Gathering these additional opinions broadens our understanding of the debates within Irish republicanism. Paul Thompson, a veteran oral historian, promotes interview research precisely because: ‘[r]eality is complex and many-sided’.84

  There are many potential limitations with the source material chosen. One difficulty is that memoirs or interviews may be ideologically motivated. As Trevor Lummis argues: ‘[c]ontemporary values clearly shape the informant’s interpretation of their own past’.85 In the Northern Ireland context, the debate about whether the IRA lost the intelligence war can be used to support or criticise the peace process and Sinn Féin. Nonetheless, it is important not to overstate how contemporary ideological views might influence some accounts. Various accounts of the intelligence war by interviewees are similar, regardless of which side they are from. To overcome this potential problem, I reference interviews and memoir accounts from multiple and different perspectives. I also check the validity of interviews and memoirs against archival material, statistics and records of events.86 In reality, the importance of cross-checking sources is applicable to all historical studies, not just research using oral and memoir accounts.87 Alessandro Portelli, veteran oral historian, makes the crucial observation that even if an opinion cannot be proven correct, it remains ‘psychologically true’ for a certain person or group, and we need to analyse why that viewpoint is held.88

  Perhaps the greatest methodological hurdle for the use of interview research on the Northern Ireland conflict has emerged in recent years. Between 2001 and 2006, former Provisional republicans and loyalists conducted candid interviews with former paramilitaries. The recordings were part of an oral history project linked to Boston College in the United States. Interview accounts were not to be released until after that interviewee had died. Questions surrounding the project emerged in 2010 when Ed Moloney published Voices from the Grave. This book was partly based on the testimony given to the Boston College project by Brendan Hughes, a former IRA commander in Belfast. Hughes claimed that the ‘disappearing’ (burying in an unmarked grave) of Jean McConville, a widow from west Belfast, in December 1972 was ordered by Gerry Adams. Adams, the Sinn Féin president until 2018, denies this accusation.89 In 2010, an interview was also published in the Irish News with former Provisional Dolours Price (she died in 2013). The story claimed that Price admitted to being involved in the McConville killing. Dolours Price had also given interviews to the Boston College project.90 In 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) began legal proceedings to extradite material relating to the McConville case from Boston College. By 2014, a number of republicans allegedly associated with McConville’s disappearance had been arrested, including Ivor Bell; these arrests were partly based on their supposed int
erviews with the project. However, the case against Bell will not proceed. In December 2018, the Belfast Crown Court said that he was unfit to stand trial on health grounds. Ivor Bell denies the accusations.91 In October 2019, he was cleared of all charges at Belfast Crown Court.92 In May 2014, Adams was arrested and questioned, but released without charge. Adams denies all the accusations associated with the McConville case, including IRA membership.93 The fallout from the Boston project highlights the challenges of conducting oral historical research on incidents still under investigation from the Troubles. The Boston College project has also led to potential interviewees being understandably wary of contributing to research via interviews.94

  However, I have been able to undertake interviews for this book with the willingness and consent of participants. The primary aim of my interviews was to research the general influence that the intelligence war had on the IRA and the peace process. Only information in the public domain was discussed with interviewees.95 My research has not gathered or captured any revelations or personal experiences of IRA and intelligence service activities that are not in the public domain. This book does not attempt to explore whether an individual was or was not an agent or informer, or the specific circumstances surrounding their lives.

  It is worth noting that even written sources such as Lost Lives present difficulties. Those noted in such material as agents or informers are sometimes only suspected of infiltration. The decision of the intelligence services not to name their sources, whether dead or alive, creates this difficulty.96 With regard to suspected agents and informers referred to in Lost Lives and others texts including memoirs, I am not suggesting that the accusations surrounding them are true. Instead, this research recognises that if the IRA was killing people they suspected of infiltration, this would imply that they were facing operational difficulties in specific regions. Their operation difficulties can be investigated by studying IRA activity levels at the time.

  A range of archival evidence has been gathered from the UK National Archives, leading IRA members’ and intermediary papers held at the National University of Ireland Galway and the National Library of Ireland, the Garret FitzGerald papers at University College Dublin and from political papers held at the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. This range of archival material provides great insight into British and Irish republican strategies and opinions during the conflict. Nonetheless, there has not yet been a full disclosure of all the available material. Studies in intelligence often struggle to precisely prove the effect of intelligence because archival materials remain secret. This has not prevented authors in historical and intelligence studies attempting to evaluate the effectiveness of British intelligence against various opponents in conflicts since 1945. Aldrich, for example, has researched the impact of GCHQ and other forms of intelligence on British political and security policies, including during the Cold War, the Falklands conflict and against the IRA in Northern Ireland. Aldrich produced this research without full access to intelligence sources and archival materials.97 Even official histories such as Andrew’s research on MI5 cannot provide a complete analysis. For instance, official histories analyse British intelligence successes and failures without cross-referencing IRA or Taliban documents (which may or may not exist).98 All of these books and articles utilise the available source material to present credible assessments of the effectiveness of British intelligence campaigns in various settings. They have advanced the field of intelligence studies and history by doing so. In Andrew’s words: ‘British historians in a great variety of fields have yet to consider the relevance of Security Service history to their own research.’99 This quote is not only applicable to studies relating to MI5. Andrew’s comments support the methodology used in this book, that of gathering the primary evidence available to evaluate the effectiveness of the intelligence campaign against the IRA. The arguments presented here represent work in progress, since the full details surrounding the intelligence war in Northern Ireland have not been revealed (and probably never will be). Nonetheless, this research sheds new light on the conflict and opens avenues for further research.

  Part I

  The Intelligence War: August 1969 to July 1972

  1

  British Political, Military and Intelligence Strategy towards the IRA: August 1969 to July 1972

  Between August 1969 and March 1972, the British government focused on supporting unionist-led Stormont in the introduction of gradual political and socio-economic reforms to appease unionists and nationalists. Various factors explain why the British government decided to work with unionist-majority rule at Stormont. First, the British government did not want to trigger a unionist revolt and a civil war that could tarnish Britain’s image abroad. At the same time, Northern Irish votes had very little impact on Westminster politics. It was not politically expedient to spend significant time and energy on Northern Irish affairs. Aldrich and Cormac also suggest that Heath’s Conservative government became ‘[i]ncreasingly obsessed with subversion’ from ‘domestic enemies’ including trade unions and the IRA.1 This fear can partly explain the Conservative government’s support for maintaining unionist-majority rule until March 1972. These reasons help to explain why the British state’s military strategy focused on defeating the IRA before 1972.

  British political and military objectives proved difficult to achieve because the British government allowed Stormont to delay reforms and influence security policy. This dragged the British Army further into conflict with the nationalist population, especially as the Army frequently used the indiscriminate population-control techniques previously employed across the empire. As nationalist anger increased, the non-violent Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) pulled out of Stormont in the summer of 1971. The activities of the IRA increased. Escalating violence eventually forced the British government to suspend Stormont and assume direct rule. By March 1972, the British government had realised that the IRA could not be militarily defeated. Instead, in the words of the British Army’s review of the Northern Irish campaign, Operation Banner, the aim switched to producing ‘an acceptable level of violence’. This situation was one whereby violence would be reduced to ‘a level at which normal social, political and economic activities can take place without intimidation’.2 In order to decrease IRA activity and support after March 1972, William Whitelaw, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, also followed the advice of the SDLP and reduced British Army activity. But IRA activity continued. Eventually, both the SDLP and Whitelaw realised that the IRA had to be included in negotiations if peace was to be attained in Northern Ireland. Talks between Whitelaw and the IRA commenced in July 1972.

  From ‘Defeating’ to Talking to the IRA, August 1969 to July 1972

  Full-scale intercommunal violence erupted in Northern Ireland in August 1969, primarily in Belfast and Derry City. The British Army was called upon ostensibly to ‘keep the peace’ between Catholic Irish nationalists and Protestant unionists. Initially, restoring law and order was the aim of British security and political policy.3 In practice, this meant attempting to prevent any more incidents as had been witnessed during the Battle of the Bogside in Derry City in August 1969. There had been street fighting between nationalists, on the one side, and loyalists and some Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) members on the other.4

  Rather than attempting to ‘avoid responsibility’, the British Labour government under Harold Wilson wanted Stormont to introduce the reforms that the civil rights movement demanded.5 These reforms included seeking to end gerrymandered electoral boundaries. According to Whyte, unionists primarily in the west of Northern Ireland (Derry, Fermanagh, Tyrone and parts of County Armagh) discriminated against Catholics in electoral boundaries, employment and the allocation of public housing. The result was that the unionist population could maintain control of a local authority, even when they were in a minority. One example was Derry City Council. There were eight councillors for 14,000 Catholics, whilst the 9,000 Protestants in the city had twelve.6 In the e
ast of Northern Ireland, in areas such as Belfast, nationalist grievances focused more on other forms of discrimination. For example, the Special Powers Act enabled the RUC to ban nationalist marches, meetings, newspapers and flags.7

  The first major turning point in British strategy towards nationalists came in early 1970. The British Army became increasingly hostile towards nationalists in working-class city areas, such as west Belfast and the Bogside area of Derry City. This shift in British security policy occurred for multiple reasons. The British government delayed introducing certain reforms because of the negative reaction of unionists. The Hunt Report, for example, was published in October 1969. Hunt recommended disbanding the Ulster Special Constabulary, a back-up organisation for the RUC. Clashes between the British Army and loyalists followed.8 British policy switched from appeasing nationalists to pacifying unionism. This change in emphasis was partly based on the British government’s fear of getting dragged into the constitutional affairs in Ireland again, and potentially a civil war. The nationalist–unionist divide in Northern Irish politics also meant that there were no electoral seats available in Northern Ireland for Labour, the Liberals and Conservatives.9 Britain also had its own large Irish-immigrant community. The British government was keen to insulate the ‘mainland’ from sectarian divisions creeping in from Northern Ireland. There also appeared to be the subordinate motive of ensuring as little international publicity as possible surrounding the situation in Northern Ireland. For T. K. Whitaker, an Irish economist and key advisor to Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Jack Lynch, the slow pace of the reforms showed that the British wanted to quietly ‘clean up what they regard as an unpresentable back-yard’ to avoid international attention.10 The transition from Wilson’s Labour government to Edward Heath’s Conservatives in June 1970 initially meant that those engaging in civil or violent disobedience were going to obtain few concessions. In the eyes of Heath and his government, domestic enemies were mounting across the UK, be they the IRA or trade unions. Heath intended to challenge these enemies, not compromise with them. Otherwise, there was a risk of disorder. The trouble with such an approach to Northern Ireland’s affairs was that any ‘gains against the IRA came at the cost of alienating the nationalist community’ and increasing violence.11