by Thomas Leahy
There were also many small-scale attacks in England.176 Andrew found that the number of IRA incidents after 1990 increased in England compared to the level of the 1980s.177A combination of low- and high-level attacks by the IRA in England suggests that the English department and IRA leadership were free from significant long-term infiltration. As a veteran Troubles commentator argues: ‘[i]f [the IRA] had been infiltrated the British security forces would have made it a huge priority to stop the English attacks, and they didn’t manage that’.178 McKearney argues: ‘[i]n spite of [the] great [difficulties] the IRA continued to bomb England until the end of its war and at times did so with spectacular results’.179 The takeover by MI5 of the lead role on mainland intelligence operations against the IRA demonstrates how difficult Metropolitan Police Special Branch were finding it to prevent republican activity by the early 1990s. Civil servants and MI5 leaders convinced John Major that the mortars on Downing Street in 1991 were further proof that Metropolitan Police Special Branch were failing to reduce the IRA’s ability to attack England. Earlier attempts to prevent MI5 taking over the lead role in operations against the IRA in Britain only failed because the number of republican attacks reduced in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, Metropolitan Police Special Branch could have few complaints about the takeover. They had not been able to prevent the IRA’s array of high-profile attacks before 1992.180 MI5 fared little better at first, illustrating how security-conscious and advanced the IRA in England had become by the 1990s.181 These attacks raise further questions about the relationship between the Garda Special Branch, RUC Special Branch and British intelligence services. It could be argued that there was a dearth of intelligence being shared. The ability of one suspect from the Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings to allegedly evade arrest in the Republic of Ireland raises questions about the relations between Garda Special Branch and the UK intelligence services.182 Having said that, there is also the possibility that the RUC and Garda Special Branch simply did not have sufficient intelligence to warn UK intelligence services about particular IRA volunteers and operations.
Chapter 5 explained how hand-picking volunteers for English operations and ensuring that only the IRA leaders knew about operations there increased the security of English units. Laurence McKeown confirms that few volunteers knew about IRA activities in England: ‘[m]ost volunteers wouldn’t know who was in those units … what type of work they are involved with wouldn’t be said and nobody would ask’.183 A former British soldier concurs that IRA cells in England were harder to infiltrate for similar reasons:
I did not get the impression that there was any major penetration [of the IRA in England] … PIRA kept it pretty tight because only a few individuals were involved … you would not have … low-level sources, eyes and ears individuals who might tell us that ‘[a person] is back in the area’.184
With peripheral sources not being directly involved in operations in England, they were not privy to information concerning who was involved, where they were based and the targets. True, the IRA did have peripheral members involved in transporting materials and volunteers to England. As Gerry Bradley remembered: ‘[y]ou had to have a lot of people even to get one bomb over to England. There would maybe have been about thirty people involved in the Brighton bomb in 1984.’ Bradley is likely to have an insight into this attack, since he knew Magee. Nevertheless, Bradley says that peripheral members had minimal input: ‘[o]ne individual would … get something from A to B, somebody else B to C. They wouldn’t know what each other was doing, or who the other people were.’185
Ironically, operating in a hostile environment sometimes provided the IRA with an extra level of security. Ó hAdhmaill explains how ‘fewer people knew about their existence [in England]’, making detection of republicans far harder.186 McKeown suggests that this lack of knowledge was partly because local people ‘were told to stay out of Irish pubs and clubs’.187 A republican activist agreed that ‘penetration was difficult’ because: ‘[t]here would be absolutely no communication, no backwards and forwards. It’s going into enemy territory undercover … for however long is necessary.’188 Other counter-intelligence measures adopted by English units prevented significant infiltration across the period. After O’Callaghan’s unit failed to conduct various operations, for instance, he was not selected again for English operations. Rotating volunteers prevented permanent infiltration. Jack Holland and Susan Phoenix add that: ‘[m]any of the big bombing attacks were organised from south of the Irish border or from south Armagh. Both presented surveillance problems.’ One problem for the British Army and police was that the Irish Republic ‘was outside the RUC’s jurisdiction’. The other difficulty was that south Armagh had proved ‘resistant’ to infiltration.189
In Bradley’s opinion: ‘why did the Brits talk to us in 1992 and 1993 when the England department was blowing the City of London to bits? To get us to stop, that’s why’.190 Alan Barker, a former RUC Special Branch officer, agrees that the London bombings, ‘did the trick’ and convinced the ‘British government … to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict or see the financial powerhouses move out of London.’ Barker believes that the British government’s desire for ‘financial stability’ explains the intensification of the talks process leading up to 1993. He even suggests that additional IRA mainland bombings in 1996 meant that: ‘anything that Sinn Fein wanted … they would get … eventually’. Barker cites a ‘Sinn Fein wish list’ being fulfilled, such as the release of all prisoners and the disbanding of the RUC.191
It is true that IRA bombings in England certainly did not stop the talks with British officials, particularly by 1993. A meeting between ‘Fred’ (also known as ‘British Government representative’), Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly went ahead in March 1993, despite the Warrington bombing. Peter Taylor argues that attacks in England brought home the need for the British to bring closure to the conflict.192 In addition, the Financial Times editor in 1993 said that attacks in the City of London and the resulting insurance costs made the talks more urgent. McGladdery feels that the IRA attacks in England during the 1990s ‘arguably [shaped] the peace process. The city bombings in particular demonstrated the financial cost of the conflict to the British.’193 It seems that Barker and Bradley are correct to argue that the British were keen to talk to republicans in order to end the physical and financial damage caused by attacks in England during the 1990s. But it is also evident that IRA attacks and threats led to the British government delaying face-to-face talks. The British consistently stressed in backchannel meetings with republicans that the number of ‘events on the ground’ had to decrease before intensive discussions with Sinn Féin could take place.194 Neither is Barker accurate in his contention that Sinn Féin has been granted everything it wanted. Republicans still want a truth commission to be set up, similar to that in South Africa, and this has not happened. Despite the heavy costs of the bombings for the British government, the IRA and Sinn Féin lacked the political support to force all of the political concessions they desired.195
The landing of numerous major weapons shipments from Libya between 1985 and 1987 further illustrates that the IRA’s highest ranks escaped permanent infiltration. The Army Council, the Chief of Staff, the quartermaster and select members of his department decided when and where to import weapons, and who would hide them. Such shipments were not always landed without being impeded. Libyan arms aboard the Eksund were intercepted in 1987 off the coast of Brittany. Moloney suggests that this incident points to activity by a high-level informer.196 Within the Endgame in Ireland archive, the comments of Baron Powell of Bayswater, private secretary to Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1983 and 1991, hint at an IRA leak. He said: ‘[v]ery rarely did one get very specific intelligence about arms shipments … But there was the particular case of the [Eksund] which was … successfully intercepted’.197 Earlier, Sean O’Callaghan, who informed for both Irish and British intelligence, led to the seizure by the Irish Army of weapons aboard the Marita Ann fro
m Boston in 1984, and the arrest of senior republicans in Kerry such as Martin Ferris, now a Sinn Féin member of the Irish parliament, the Dáil. Despite not being told when the guns were coming, O’Callaghan says that he discovered the details from the loose talk of the skipper of the vessel.198
Nevertheless, the landing and hiding of various weapons consignments from Libya demonstrates that the higher echelons of the IRA were not infiltrated to any great extent. As MI5 reflected internally: ‘PIRA had acquired from Libya more weapons etc than it can use.’199 Sean O’Callaghan also argues that the Libyan weapons represented a ‘security disaster’ for the intelligence agencies because the weapons and explosives ‘provided the IRA with the wherewithal to continue their activities indefinitely’.200 Lord Powell of Bayswater emphasised: ‘it’s only when you get very hard intelligence about specific shipments can you actually do anything … and it was very rare that we got that hard intelligence’.201 There was clearly a lack of intelligence at the senior IRA levels where it was needed in order to prevent various Libyan weapon shipments from landing. It is impossible to know who sat on the IRA Army Council, despite speculation. But events do suggest that there was continuity in its leadership, since major operations and weapons shipments were not prevented on a regular basis after 1975. The decision by the IRA to stop Army Council members from participating in operations after 1975 helped to ensure that continuity.202 An MI5 legal adviser commented in the 1980s that ‘the upper terrorist echelons have become a bedrock’ because ‘the Provisionals’ leadership was effectively beyond the reach of the law’ as a result of its not participating in operations.203 Indeed, there was a consistent failure to convict senior republicans allegedly involved in the IRA.204
In light of this evidence, any suggestions that there was extensive and persistent infiltration at the highest levels of the IRA seem inaccurate. As Danny Morrison argues:
If the IRA was so well infiltrated are we suggesting that in order to protect an informer the British allowed the IRA to plant the bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton? Are we saying that they allowed the IRA to mortar-bomb Downing Street in order to protect an agent? If the IRA was so badly infiltrated, how come these things took place? Clearly they did not have anybody at a senior level informing.205
It seems inconceivable that British intelligence would have allowed IRA operations to threaten the lives of British prime ministers in order to protect senior agents or informers or electronic sources of intelligence.206
Conclusion
Various rural IRA units maintained the ability to persist in killing ‘intended targets’ after 1975 and resisted damaging infiltration. In particular, the South Armagh IRA were a constant threat to the security forces right up to the 1994 ceasefire. In fact, this chapter has detailed how the South Armagh IRA were so secure that they were spearheading the IRA’s campaign in England by the 1990s. Although not as destructive in their activities, the IRA in Fermanagh, north and mid-Down and north and mid-Armagh also posed a persistent threat to the security forces until the 1990s. In addition, the IRA caused increasing destruction in smaller towns and cities, such as Portadown, Lurgan and Armagh, during that period. All of these units did suffer some infiltration. Yet there are a variety of factors that explain why high-level infiltration of these units did not occur, and why electronic intelligence and the SAS did not significantly disrupt IRA activities in many rural areas. What made rural units particularly deadly was their ability to conduct substantial bombings. These tactics meant that they carried the threat of potentially killing numerous people in single attacks. They also helped transport weapons and explosives into the North. Admittedly, the East Tyrone and the South Down IRA suffered operational difficulties in the 1990s at the hands of the security and intelligence services. But other reasons also account for the decline of these two units, including, in the case of the East Tyrone IRA, the fact that they took risks, making it possible for British intelligence to monitor and ambush their units. Nevertheless, this chapter has demonstrated that similar success against other rural IRA brigades had not been achieved by August 1994. The IRA threat in rural areas had not been reduced to an ‘acceptable level’.
The persistence of the IRA’s campaign in England and the successful landing of the majority of weapons shipments from Libya strongly suggest that there was no permanent infiltration of the IRA leadership. The IRA’s campaign in England further disrupts the notion that republican activity by the 1990s had reached an ‘acceptable level’. Based on this evidence, Danny Morrison seems right to argue that ‘the IRA was armed to the teeth … [they] called the ceasefire [in 1994] from a position of military strength’.207
10
‘It’s the Primacy of Politics That’s Important’: Alternative Reasons for the IRA’s Ceasefires in August 1994 and July 1997
The first section of Chapter 10, ‘The “Irish Peace Initiative”, 1983–1998’, explores why the SDLP and Irish government talked to republicans from the late 1980s.1 I argue that Sinn Féin’s sizeable minority of the northern nationalist electoral mandate and the IRA’s persistent campaign can explain the fact that these talks took place. The second section, ‘A Change in British Strategy, 1989–1998’, explains that the IRA’s continuing campaign, Sinn Féin’s share of the vote in Northern Ireland and the pan-nationalist talks encouraged a majority of British ministers and civil servants to include republicans in a political settlement in the 1990s. As a result, the British state reintroduced the dual approach in trying to end IRA activity that had first been attempted between 1974 and 1975. The security forces would use intelligence to try to quickly force the IRA into a ceasefire. At the same time, the British government would persuade republican leaders to make political concessions in backchannel conversations.
The third section, ‘Political Factors and IRA Strategy, 1983–1998’, argues that security-force pressure did not succeed in getting the IRA to call a ceasefire in August 1994 or in July 1997. Ultimately, the IRA cessations during the 1990s reflected the republican leadership’s realisation after the mid-1980s that Sinn Féin was unable to significantly expand its electoral support whilst the conflict continued. The republican leadership only agreed to these ceasefires because the political limitations and opportunities at that time suggested that the republican movement could gain no more concessions from the IRA’s armed campaign.
Chapter 10’s fourth section, ‘The Relationship between the Republican Leadership and Grass-Roots during the Peace Process’, reconsiders the view that the republican leadership orchestrated the peace process without widespread consent from grass-roots republicans. I suggest that the various republicans interviewed supported peace from the late 1980s onwards because they agreed with the republican leadership’s analysis of the armed conflict and political situation. The republican leadership did investigate whether most republicans favoured their strategies before the Good Friday Agreement. The leadership went along with the general consensus. This chapter cannot decisively prove that the majority of republicans were not forced into peace because of leadership manipulation. But the evidence provided develops a discussion surrounding republican support for the Good Friday Agreement.
The final section, ‘Sinn Féin Informers and the Peace Process’, counters the view put forth by some dissident and dissenting republicans that the activity of agents and informers within Sinn Féin, such as Denis Donaldson, was crucial in leading to the Good Friday Agreement. These dissenting republicans suggest that Donaldson and others helped British intelligence to identify and remove opponents to the peace strategy.2 I argue that there was a widespread consensus amongst republicans by 1994 that a political compromise should be reached, and that this was so for reasons other than Donaldson’s ‘enforcement’. Since Donaldson was outside the group of leading republican strategists, I explain how he only fed to British intelligence what the republican leadership wanted the rest of the movement to hear. Even former British civil servants and advisors agree that they lacked insight into the long-term str
ategic plans of leading republicans such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.3
The ‘Irish Peace Initiative’: 1983–1998
In 1987, John Hume, the leader of the SDLP, and Charles Haughey, the Fianna Fáil Irish Taoiseach, received letters from Father Alec Reid from Belfast on behalf of Gerry Adams.4 The letters sought to encourage dialogue to find political alternatives to the IRA’s armed campaign.5 Martin Mansergh, the go-between for the Irish government with republicans for much of the peace process, remembers that ‘the orthodoxy’ followed by the Irish government up until this point was ‘that there should be no contact with terrorist groups, who would … take encouragement from being treated as equal’.6 As late as June 1983, a report in UK archives about a speech by Gerry Adams at Bodenstown records that: ‘the Garda are … studying Adams’ remarks with a view to instituting proceedings against him under the [Irish] Offences Against the State Act’.7 Whilst a conviction did not emerge, the Irish government remained committed until the mid-1980s to ignoring Sinn Féin in political talks because the IRA’s campaign was continuing. For the Irish government, Sinn Féin and the IRA threatened the security and existence of their state by potentially fostering civil war.8
The SDLP were keen not to engage with republicans because they were their political rivals in northern nationalist communities. Talking to republicans risked letting it appear as if the SDLP condoned IRA activity. Nonetheless, senior SDLP members, led by John Hume, met with Sinn Féin for talks in 1988. They debated the rationale behind the IRA’s continuing campaign. Talks continued in private between Adams and Hume thereafter.9 In March and June 1988, a delegation secretly sent by the Irish government, including Fianna Fáil TD Dermot Ahern and historian Martin Mansergh, met with Adams, Mitchel McLaughlin, a senior Sinn Féin representative from Derry City, and Pat Doherty, a leading republican who was based in Donegal at that time. The Irish government continued talks with republicans into the 1990s.10