by Thomas Leahy
The supergrass system that was implemented after Mason’s time demonstrated further limitations of the criminalisation strategy. With the security services predicting increased IRA operations following the hunger strikes in 1981, the RUC began pressurising paramilitary members to give evidence against their comrades in return for a lower prison sentence or total immunity from prison. There were some initial successes. In Belfast, Christopher Black’s evidence led to thirty-five convictions in 1983 in return for immunity from prosecution.22 Agent-turned-supergrass Raymond Gilmour from Derry set up the arrests of forty republicans in 1984 in return for immunity from prosecution.23 The supergrass trials had, however, collapsed by 1986. The Northern Ireland Court of Appeal eventually found it unacceptable to uphold convictions based solely on the evidence of a dubious witness. Most supergrasses (apart from Gilmour) had been paramilitary members beforehand, under threat of conviction. Supergrasses were likely to implicate others purely to reduce their own sentence or to gain immunity.24 Unsurprisingly, this incentive encouraged some supergrasses to fabricate evidence. One such informer, for instance, admitted to not implicating two people because they were his friends.25 The supergrass system was further damaged when some ‘turned’ volunteers accepted IRA amnesties, including Eamon Collins from Newry, who retracted his evidence.26 In October 1983, Robert Lean from west Belfast appeared, somewhat surprisingly, at a press conference. Mark Urban writes that Lean ‘had given the slip to detectives at Palace Barracks’ where he had been staying since turning supergrass against twenty-eight people. In the press conference, Lean claimed that the RUC fabricated charges against those he had implicated, and got him to sign the ‘confession’. Various intelligence officers suspect that republicans used Lean to challenge the supergrass system.27
Stretching the law also failed to increase nationalist support for the British state. Sinn Féin’s share of the vote increased in the 1983 general election. Furthermore, 70 per cent of Catholics interviewed for a national survey after the supergrass trials felt that these had shown the British judiciary to be corrupt.28 Criminalisation and the supergrass trials also failed to curtail the IRA’s ability to conduct high-profile operations. On 27 August 1979, the IRA killed eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint, and Lord Mountbatten in County Sligo.29 The IRA also bombed the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984.
The Callaghan government’s termination of the contacts with Duddy may suggest that they had shifted from the Wilson approach on how to use intelligence gathered on the IRA. It is possible to view the ending of backchannel contacts as part of a new tactic by the Labour Party that focused on using intelligence primarily for short-term gains against the IRA rather than to discover whether the IRA might accept a political agreement. Nonetheless, Callaghan and Mason followed similar policies to those Wilson and Rees had adopted by the end of their time in office. The IRA’s refusal to participate in Northern Irish elections in 1975, alongside the increase in killings in Northern Ireland by paramilitaries in 1976, convinced the Callaghan government to cut contacts with the IRA.30 As Callaghan retained Donoughue as an advisor on policy,31 it is not the case that his government took a tougher stance towards the IRA because of personnel changes within the civil service and Cabinet either. The Labour government saw no prospect of a political compromise being agreed in the late 1970s if the same republican leaders that the British had spoken to in 1972 and 1975 remained in charge.
Changes in IRA Structure and Objectives
It was particularly important for the intelligence services to improve their coverage of the IRA after 1975, because the organisation began operating in smaller cells in Belfast and Derry City.32 The IRA declared that it was going to fight a ‘Long War’ in 1977. But a paramilitary group containing a large number of volunteers who know about the organisation’s plans ‘does not lend itself to long-term conduct of a guerrilla struggle’.33 The cell structure aimed to solve these problems for the urban IRA units in various ways: each cell was to consist, typically, of four to six volunteers, who supposedly were unknown to each other beforehand; each cell was not supposed to know the identities of the other cells’ members; IRA numbers were reduced within each unit to prevent agents and informers facilitating mass arrests; cells also tried to get volunteers to operate outside their local area, in order to ‘confuse’ British intelligence; only the cell leader was supposed to have access to senior volunteers to procure weapons, intelligence and operational plans; and the IRA would recruit primarily ‘green lights’ into cells, meaning republicans who were unknown to the security forces.34
In practice, Belfast and Derry City cells did overlap on occasions, long-serving volunteers were still recruited, and senior IRA agents and informers had some access to cells other than their own. Nonetheless, the cells did improve the internal security of the IRA in urban areas, certainly initially. Ó hAdhmaill remembers how in Belfast: ‘the cells made it much more difficult for local people to know who was in the IRA; or at least … who held what positions in the movement … it was much more secretive’.35 According to Operation Banner, the security services saw a refined IRA as a formidable opponent after 1975:
PIRA gradually recommenced activity … in a new, effective cellular structure … attacks were fewer; but more selective, better conducted and more effective. This period demonstrated the emergence of PIRA as a highly effective terrorist organization.36
In 1978, Brigadier James Glover and the Army’s intelligence staff conducted a review of the counter-insurgency effort.37 They agreed that the cell structure meant: ‘PIRA … is less vulnerable to penetration by informers’, and that it could sustain a ‘disproportionate’ level of activity in view of its numbers.38
The cell structure partly signalled the change in IRA strategy towards a ‘Long War’. The organisation publicly declared in 1977 that they would fight on indefinitely until the British grew tired and declared their intention to withdraw from Northern Ireland. Most authors take the ‘Long War’ declaration at face value.39 Even some republicans, such as Tommy McKearney, agree that: ‘[t]he concept behind the Long War strategy was that the organization would … pursue its armed campaign for whatever length of time it took to force the British government to declare its intention to withdraw from Ireland’.40 In contrast, I believe that the evidence now available supports Ó Dochartaigh’s view: that for the republican leadership, the ‘Long War’ strategy was actually ‘a bargaining move aimed at pressuring the British government to re-engage in negotiations with the Provisionals’. The republican leadership sought only to pressure the British government back to the negotiating table with persistent IRA activity. The introduction of Sinn Féin’s electoral mandate to republican strategy from 1981 would further pressurise the British government to recommence talks. Republican leaders hoped that a growing electoral mandate could help maximise concessions towards fulfilling republican objectives. Talk of imposing republican objectives on the British government through armed and political means was primarily designed to motivate volunteers. More importantly, it tried to convey republican resilience to the British government, so that the latter did not see a republican willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness.41
A few republicans interviewed suggested that their aim was to get the British government back into negotiations after 1975. Séanna Walsh explained that by the late 1970s:
[t]here would be smaller numbers involved rather than big numbers … When you understood that we were about fighting the British here until the British realised that they don’t have any alternatives but to sit down and talk to the Republican leadership, then you don’t need your thirty to forty people in every area.42
Danny Morrison echoed this view:
The IRA from … 1977 onwards said publicly that this was going to be a long war … the Brits were thinking that they were going to squeeze the IRA … all these statements backfired on the Brits. Whereas the IRA was able to say that we did not say we were going to win in 1978 … they said that they were fi
ghting until you come to the negotiating table.43
Morrison would certainly have insight into republican leadership strategy because he had close connections to leading republicans such as Gerry Adams at the time. Of course, it could be argued that republicans supportive of Sinn Féin are perhaps trying to alter republican objectives in hindsight so that the Good Friday Agreement appears a success. But other evidence suggests that by at least 1983, the republican leadership were interested in a negotiated political settlement. Brendan O’Brien, a one-time senior RTÉ reporter with contacts in the republican movement and leadership during the Troubles, wrote:
by 1983 … [t]he thinking of the [republican] leadership was that … in the event of a settlement good enough to bring about an end to the IRA campaign, the Republican Movement would not remain on the outside, marginalised … that meant getting into elections, maximising their political support North and South, to arrive, finally, at the negotiating ‘table’ with the strongest possible mandate.44
The fact that O’Brien reached this verdict in various versions of his book between 1993 and 1999 is important. O’Brien is not attempting to tone down republican objectives to justify republican compromises since 1998. Crucially, the late Father Alec Reid, who was involved in dialogue with Gerry Adams from the early 1980s, told the producers of the Endgame in Ireland documentary in 2001 that: ‘the representatives of … Sinn Fein … consistently told us’, between 1981 and 1983, ‘that they would cooperate fully with the church and her representatives in … the creation of an alternative method to the armed struggle’. Reid adds that republican leaders accepted the need for a ‘democratic resolution’ by the early 1980s.45
Of course, republicans wanted the highest possible level of disruptive attacks and political mandate, so that when talks emerged they could extract substantial concessions. But the republican leadership did not believe that this strategy would guarantee a British withdrawal. Ó Dochartaigh points out that leading republicans such as McGuinness and Adams had been present during the failed ceasefire talks in 1972, had witnessed the lack of progress towards a political agreement in 1975, and found the Thatcher government reluctant to concede to the five demands of the hunger strikers in the early 1980s. After such experiences: ‘it [was] unlikely that … the [republican] leadership ever envisaged a moment when they would finally impose their demands on the British government’.46 Admittedly, during interviews for the Endgame in Ireland documentary in 2001, leading republican Pat Doherty said that the republican movement had: ‘wanted the British to withdraw and … a timeframe for British withdrawal’. Nonetheless, Doherty adds the important caveat that the leadership ‘were … realistic enough’ to know that the strength of their electoral mandate would determine what concessions were achievable.47
There were signs from the 1980s that republican leaders sought political negotiations, which they recognised might lead to political compromises based on their electoral mandate. In his recent work, Richard English agrees that alongside the IRA’s primary objective of a united Ireland, the IRA had ‘secondary strategic goals’. These goals included ‘the prevention of opponents from securing their preferred outcome to the Northern Ireland conflict’ and ensuring Sinn Féin’s inclusion in any final political settlement.48 Further evidence from archives and memoirs suggests that republicans wanted a negotiated political settlement. On 10 December 1983, The Belfast Newsletter reported Martin McGuinness’s angry response to the refusal of James Prior, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State at the time, to talk to Sinn Féin. McGuinness commented: ‘It is surprising that he [Prior] has not learned the lesson of Irish history which demonstrated Britain’s readiness to negotiate with republicanism as in 1920–21, and again in ’72, ’75 and ’76.’ The leadership of the republican movement, including McGuinness, were in theory supposed to be against further ceasefires in 1983. This statement suggests that leading republicans wanted a return to political negotiations with the British government. It is interesting that McGuinness here did not demand preconditions to the talks that included British withdrawal, showing some willingness to negotiate as early as 1983.49
There is also evidence that republicans were willing to open dialogue imminently after the 1975 ceasefire ended. A fascinating example comes from 3 February 1977. In a letter from Mason to Callaghan, the former gives information from a reliable source about the IRA Army Council’s intentions at the time. The letter notes IRA plans to increase the number of attacks in England alongside continuing activity in Northern Ireland. Mason believed that the purpose of further attacks was to generate greater pressure from the UK public on the British government to alter its policy in Northern Ireland to ‘withdraw its troops … and come to terms with the Provisionals’. In the most intriguing part of the letter, Mason revealed to Callaghan:
The PAC [Provisional Army Council] is convinced that a combined push in the North and on the mainland can lead them to victory in 1977. The victory they envisage is that HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] under considerable pressure from the voters at home, will accept a Provisional ceasefire proposal and agree to negotiations … The concessions demanded by the Provisionals remain the same: principally the withdrawal of the British troops from the North of Ireland … and a free hand for the Provisionals in carving out some kind of independent Ulster in collaboration with representatives of the Protestant para-militaries.50
This extract makes it clear that the IRA leadership sought a return to negotiations with the British state as early as February 1977. Whilst they demanded a British troop withdrawal, there remained a willingness to negotiate a new political set-up for Northern Ireland, with loyalists included, in the form of potentially ‘some kind of independent Ulster’. The IRA leadership would have accepted a political compromise rather than an immediate united Ireland in 1977, albeit one that still had to involve a British withdrawal before a political compromise could be reached. The IRA’s willingness to accept some form of independent six-county state ended once the younger generation of leaders had taken over the movement by the early 1980s. They distrusted any notion that loyalists would compromise and treat nationalists fairly in a six-county independent state. Nevertheless, some of the IRA leadership’s intentions in private were more flexible than their public statements.
Another example of the republican leadership’s willingness to return to negotiations came in 1978. The Irish Times revealed that Gerry Adams had had a secret conversation with Douglas Hurd, a leading member of the Conservative opposition. Both sides felt there was little common ground on which to continue talks.51 Nonetheless, even before Sinn Féin had entered the electoral arena in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s, Adams continued to seek conversations with British representatives. A few British officials have also recorded that Adams wanted to move towards ending the IRA’s armed campaign in the early 1980s. In November 1983, for example, a UK civil servant commented in a document discussing Sinn Féin: ‘[t]here are signs that Sinn Fein under Adams [sic] leadership may be edging away from public commitment to violence’, although the document did not detail what these ‘signs’ were.52 The fact that particular civil servants were collecting evidence to show that there might be a mood change within the republican leadership in terms of attitudes towards IRA violence and a political compromise is significant. Not everyone within the British state was convinced by the Thatcher government’s approach of not talking about political settlements involving republicans in the 1980s.
By 1990, Sinn Féin members, particularly Gerry Adams, were calling for a preferred settlement involving a British withdrawal in some form, but they also made it clear that they sought dialogue and compromise. During his presidential address to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in 1991, Adams stated: ‘Sinn Fein have consistently said that negotiations, without preconditions, are an essential first step in the search for peace’ and called for the British Secretary of State to commence negotiations. Crucially, alongside demanding that the British support Irish unity, Adams said: ‘We are prepared
to take political risks. We are prepared to give and take.’53 Republican leaders such as Adams and McGuinness wanted talks and a negotiated political settlement from at least the early 1980s. The IRA’s continuing campaign tried to ensure that the republican movement was not ignored in talks and could extract further concessions, supported by Sinn Féin’s political mandate.
With the IRA adopting the ‘Long War’ and the cell structure in cities by 1977, the security forces had to respond. They did so primarily by expanding their ‘intelligence war’ against the IRA. The RUC and British intelligence had learned from agents and informers that parts of the IRA, such as its internal security department, created in the late 1970s, had potential access across the entire organisation. In theory, placing spies into the higher echelons ‘could cause havoc’ throughout the group’s structure.54 Meanwhile, British intelligence would recruit low-level agents and informers to further restrict IRA activity. Disruption would be gradual to enable spies to climb the IRA’s hierarchy in order to prevent more attacks. The importance of human intelligence is implicit in the recent de Silva review (2012), which investigated state collusion with loyalist paramilitaries in the killing of lawyer Pat Finucane. It describes how, by the 1980s, the British state were placing a ‘high-priority in pursuing an intelligence-led approach … [which focused on] the penetration of agents to the heart of a terrorist group’.55 Operation Banner also recalls that from 1972: ‘[t]he whole campaign rapidly became dominated by considerations of intelligence’.56 This included the use of signals, electronic intelligence and special-forces operations alongside human intelligence.