The Intelligence War against the IRA

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The Intelligence War against the IRA Page 32

by Thomas Leahy


  The TUAS document circulated to volunteers shortly after the 1994 ceasefire highlights the hope that the leadership placed in the pan-nationalist alliance.153 Volunteers were informed that ‘[t]he [Downing Street Declaration] … does not hold a solution … Republicans are not prepared to wait around for the Brits to change.’ The way that the republican leadership envisaged ‘forcing’ the British government’s ‘hand’ was to build a ‘consensus’ on republican objectives with the Dublin government, the Irish-American lobby and the SDLP. A cautious note was sounded, reminding volunteers that ‘[t]here are … differences of opinion on how [nationalist] principles are interpreted … In particular … what veto and consent mean’.154 Neither Fianna Fáil nor the SDLP agreed to any electoral pacts with Sinn Féin.155 Nevertheless, the pan-nationalist alliance ensured that constitutional nationalists supported Sinn Féin’s inclusion in any multiparty talks, provided that there was an IRA ceasefire beforehand. The republican leadership declared in the TUAS document:

  the leadership believes there is enough in common to create a substantial political momentum which will considerably advance the struggle at this time … There is potentially a very powerful Irish-American lobby … [And] [i]t is the first time in 25 years that all the major Irish nationalist parties are rowing in roughly the same direction. These combined circumstances are unlikely to gel again in the foreseeable future.156

  The pan-nationalist alliance had provided some benefits for republicans before the ceasefires. Republican negotiators insisted on self-determination being implemented in the Downing Street Declaration in 1993 and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The self-determination clauses are important because they meant that unionists could only opt out of a united Ireland provided they remained a majority in Northern Ireland. Technically, there was no unionist veto anymore.157 The inclusion of the necessity of self-determination in the Good Friday Agreement also meant that this issue would be decided by the citizens of the Republic of Ireland as well. Of course, republicans wanted an exercise of self-determination to be held across the island as a single unit. Nevertheless, the Downing Street Declaration and the Good Friday Agreement were an advance on the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which had included no provision for self-determination across the island.158 Adams certainly believed that the pan-nationalist talks created a viable alternative.159 The fact that the Downing Street Declaration followed the Hume–Adams statements was evidence that the pan-nationalist effort was at least moving the process forwards for republicans.160

  Other positive factors for republicans encouraged a cessation by 1994. On the political front, Sinn Féin had experienced a small, but noticeable electoral renaissance by 1993. The party won the majority of nationalist seats on Belfast and Omagh district councils and increased their council seats across Northern Ireland from 43 in 1989 to 51 in 1993.161 It seemed that efforts aimed at ending conflict increased nationalist support for Sinn Féin. Albert Reynolds also aimed to show republicans that ‘an end to violence could have its own rewards’ in early 1994. The concessions included an end to the broadcasting ban in the Republic of Ireland, lobbying the US government for visas that would allow Adams and Joe Cahill to promote peace and raise funds in the United States, the early release of prisoners, and Sinn Féin’s immediate entry to talks in Dublin after a cessation.162 But the IRA had to end their campaign in order to enhance their political prospects and the pan-nationalist alliance by 1994, because other nationalists demanded it.163 McKeown explained in reference to 1994: ‘[t]here was always a pressure on the movement to [ceasefire] because … the southern government and supporters in the US … would support you only so far without a ceasefire’.164

  Why did the IRA break its ceasefire in 1996, but resume it in July 1997? According to Bew and Frampton, the IRA wanted to alter preconditions to talks in 1996, including the British demand for the decommissioning of weapons beforehand and the Mitchell principles of non-violence. They believe that the IRA returned to a ceasefire in July 1997 for reasons including the improved electoral performances for Sinn Féin across Ireland, and the fact that Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair had entered office and agreed that decommissioning could occur in parallel with talks. Bew and Frampton emphasise, however, that a principle factor was that the ‘Adams–McGuinness leadership was forced by the objective realities of the IRA’s declining position.’165 Admittedly, West Belfast commentator Ciaran de Baroid does say that in 1997 ‘IRA attacks [in Belfast] … were foiled, bombs were disarmed, rockets and mortars missed their targets, and several volunteers were captured.’166 The fact that ‘attacks were foiled’ could mean that British intelligence efforts were constraining the Belfast IRA by 1997. Elsewhere, there was a period of decline for the South Armagh Brigade after 1996, following the arrests of eleven IRA volunteers who had operated in England and in south Armagh. By 1997, British forces also worked out the patterns of the South Armagh IRA’s top sniper, arresting him and his team.167 A former British soldier commented that the ‘erosion of the South Armagh PIRA’ between 1996 and 1997 was ‘very significant’ in leading to a renewed IRA ceasefire.168 Matchett agrees with this assessment.169

  There is insufficient evidence to suggest that the arrests between February 1996 and July 1997 resulted from significant intelligence. In south Armagh, security-force members had partly worked out the patterns of the snipers during the ceasefire and benefitted also from bugging the premises of one IRA suspect.170 Nevertheless, no convictions arose for attacks such as the 1996 Manchester bombing. The South Armagh IRA was still able to get away with attacks partly because the police had to find conclusive evidence for convictions. Gathering such evidence remained difficult given the lack of agents and informers in this unit advising the intelligence services when and where IRA teams were about to attack.171 Following the security and intelligence services’ large-scale search operation in south Armagh in June 1996, arrests did occur and forensics were taken from suspected vehicles involved in a number of attacks, including in England. Yet still no convictions emerged.172

  The IRA continued to conduct major operations in this period that inflicted substantial financial and physical damage. On 10 February 1996, the IRA ended its 1994 ceasefire with a bomb allegedly made in south Armagh, which exploded in the Docklands area of London, inflicting an estimated £150 million in damages.173 Later, on 15 June 1996, an IRA bomb injured many civilians in Manchester and caused £100 million worth of damage. IRA units also managed to get inside and detonate two car bombs at British Army Headquarters at Thiepval Barracks in October 1996.174 Whilst the IRA did face setbacks in south Armagh and England by 1997, these arrests came after the 1994 ceasefire. The ceasefire in 1994 shows that a majority within the republican leadership and many grass-roots activists had already accepted the need to compromise in talks before the arrests occurred. Laurence McKeown suggests that:

  [e]ven when the ceasefire broke down, people knew it would only be temporary and that we would quickly be back to a situation where we would be looking to participate in a solution. That was the way that politics was going at the time.175

  McGuinness said in February 1995 that the ‘military stalemate’ meant that ‘there [was] nowhere else to go’ but to the negotiating table for all sides.176 The arrests in south Armagh in 1997 had little impact on the republican leadership’s decision to search for a political compromise, which had already been decided by 1994. According to Adams, ‘the easy bit’ in getting another cessation in 1997 was ‘engagement with the Army Council people’ because ‘[e]ssentially the same people who had authorised the 1994 cessation’ remained. True, there was some opposition from a ‘minority’ on the IRA Executive to another cessation.177 Senior republicans on the Executive attempted to place their supporters on the Army Council in 1996 to prevent further cessations, believing only a British declaration of intent to withdraw could justify peace.178 But the majority of republican leaders and grass-roots activists agreed with another ceasefire and a political compromise, provided that guns were not handed in
before talks took place.

  Attacks by the IRA after 1996 were designed only, in the words of Jonathan Powell, to act as a ‘short sharp shock’ to break the deadlock over the British demand for decommissioning before talks.179 They did not represent a full resumption of the IRA’s campaign. At this time, there was still a reduced level of IRA activity in Northern Ireland. Rather than this being a symptom of British security and intelligence successes against the IRA, it appears to have been a deliberate strategy. As Peter Taylor suggests, the IRA conducted what he calls ‘focused terrorism’, primarily hitting commercial targets in London. The IRA’s campaign between 1996 and 1997 seems to have been an attempt to provoke a response from the British government in order to break the impasse over decommissioning, whilst trying to avoid numerous civilian casualties that might tarnish Sinn Féin’s electoral prospects or prevent a renewed understanding with Fianna Fáil and the SDLP.180

  The IRA refused to decommission any weapons or explosives before talks took place, because they felt that this would look like surrender.181 Jonathan Powell claims that the British government’s demand for decommissioning before talks and the failure to bring about multiparty talks played a major part in breaking the ceasefire. He adds that John Major’s decision to ignore the Mitchell suggestion for parallel talks and decommissioning in January 1996 made republicans conclude ‘that the Brits were messing about and had no intention of letting them into all-party talks except at an impossible price’. In Powell’s opinion, ‘the fact that Major was depending on Unionist votes’ in Westminster led to obstacles being created to multiparty talks for republicans.182 It is principally for these reasons that the IRA returned to its armed campaign, to make a restatement of their bottom line for another cessation: multiparty talks occurring promptly following a ceasefire.183 Once that precondition was permanently dropped by the new British Prime Minister Tony Blair and new Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the IRA called a second ceasefire in July 1997.

  Calling a ceasefire in July 1997 marked an opportune moment for the Provisionals following an increased Sinn Féin electoral mandate in the 1997 UK elections. Both Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams were elected to the UK parliament. In elections to the Dáil, Sinn Féin gained a seat in Cavan–Monaghan for Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin in 1997 and increased their electoral mandate. These results demonstrated increasing public support, especially in the North, for a political process inclusive of Sinn Féin to commence. Furthermore, the return of Fianna Fáil to political power in the Irish Republic suggested greater prospects of renewing the pan-nationalist consensus in talks, and potentially gaining greater concessions.184

  The Relationship between the Republican Leadership and Grass-Roots during the Peace Process

  Moloney believes that a small elite surrounding Gerry Adams secretly organised the peace process from the early 1980s onwards. He suggests that Adams made it clear in backchannel conversations with Father Reid, John Hume and the Irish and British governments that he would accept partition. For Moloney, there were ‘two peace processes’ by the 1990s. The first was the one made public, whereby republican leaders were willing to talk only if republican objectives were fulfilled. The other ‘secret’ process was one in which Gerry Adams and his ‘think tank’ signalled to the British that they wanted to politically compromise. Moloney argues that this group carefully ‘ushered’ the IRA into a ceasefire with minimal internal debate beforehand. He believes that deception, the removal of opponents and manipulation of key votes at the Ard Fheis or IRA conventions all played a part in leading to the Good Friday Agreement.185

  Brendan Hughes, a former IRA commander in Belfast, disagreed with the peace process because: ‘all the IRA had done is just to become another SDLP … the British government … eventually … succeeded in turning a revolutionary movement into a conservative organization’. Hughes suggests that ‘[t]hanks to the loyalty factor in the IRA, Gerry [Adams] was able to control and manipulate people like myself and many others’.186 Gerry Bradley claims that there was a lack of transparency over the peace process:

  The leadership ‘conditioned’ people right through the 1980s. Got them ready to accept the next step, and the next step was always the IRA taking a step back. I believed them when they said the campaign was moving up a gear after the Libyan gear came in … I feel so betrayed … they lied to us over the years.

  Bradley believes that the leadership’s approach was flawed because ‘[i]f they’d kept the IRA strong, they’d have got a lot more out of the Brits than they settled for in 1998’.187 Tommy McKearney also suggests that strategies towards electoral politics were not properly debated:

  When the Army Council and GHQ Staff of the IRA decided to adopt a parliamentary path, it was a relatively straightforward matter of placing people loyal to the Army Council and GHQ … in positions of influence … There was no open discussion about alternative options.

  In his opinion, the lack of debate was partly ‘[b]ecause of the IRA’s clandestine and hierarchical structures’. He does dismiss the idea of ‘outright duplicity’ by the republican leadership, but feels that alternative suggestions were not debated or tolerated. Examples that McKearney uses to support his view include the dropping of abstention from the Dáil in 1986, for which he believes the ‘outcome’ was determined by the leadership ‘well in advance’.188

  Since Hughes was once a close ally of Adams, his view may be influenced by their falling-out.189 McKearney created and joined organisations opposed to the path mainstream republicanism was taking in the late 1980s. He supported a Marxist reading of the situation in the 1980s and believed that participation in the democratic process would dilute the revolutionary attitudes of republicans.190 Bradley was also a dissenting republican in his later years.191 Anthony McIntyre (whose views are discussed in the next section) also left the Provisional movement.192 Nonetheless, their accounts represent one side of the debate within republican circles about why the IRA ended its campaign and need to be explored.

  There is growing evidence to suggest that many Provisional republicans had debated and supported the prospect of an IRA cessation and political compromise prior to 1994. Séanna Walsh’s and Laurence McKeown’s views, mentioned in the previous section, ‘Political Factors and IRA Strategy, 1983–1998’, and in Chapter 7, demonstrate that they saw the need for a negotiated political settlement in the 1990s. McKeown also reported that there had been discussions about future strategy in the prisons from the late 1980s.193 Michael Culbert, another former republican prisoner from Belfast, told the author: ‘I initiated without any prompting from the leadership in the jail a discussion within my wing of the H-blocks in 1991 about the prospects of the IRA calling a ceasefire.’ Culbert said that he arranged this discussion because of Brooke’s statements and because the subsequent public replies by republican leaders via the open media made it clear to prisoners that discussions were happening. Culbert was in favour of the pan-nationalist alliance strategy, as he felt that the SDLP and Fianna Fáil ‘were potential allies’ because they both wanted a united Ireland.194 Other former republican prisoners report similar discussions. Ó hAdhmaill recalls from his prison experience: ‘[t]here would have been people arguing for a political settlement in the jails in the late 1980s’. He continued:

  people were thinking … at that time … what was [armed struggle] actually achieving? How many people are we alienating from our own community? … . in the late 1980s … people like Adams were looking at the [republican campaign] rationally and thought how can we best progress our project. People like Hume … made it clear … that you probably could advance your struggle more through unarmed struggle.

  Ó hAdhmaill admits that the republican movement was ‘an alliance with … different ideas’ and that not everybody agreed with the peace process.195 Nevertheless, there were discussions about ceasefires in the prisons in the late 1980s and 1990s and there were no widespread defections to dissident and dissenting republicanism. The examples above show that there has been an acceptanc
e of the peace process and Good Friday Agreement from a variety of former republican prisoners from different parts of Northern and southern Ireland.196

  Rogelio Alonso and Moloney admit that there were ‘controlled debates’ and meetings within the prisons and republican community from the 1990s, so that the republican leadership could test their ceasefire proposal. These meetings indicate that the republican leaders knew the general consensus was leaning towards a cessation.197 Furthermore, republican leaders had been promoting internal debates about whether a change in tactics was required since the late 1980s.198 The debate on whether to proceed with a peace strategy was clearly a decision that the leadership floated with rank-and-file members beforehand, even if, as alleged by some republicans, the leaders did not allow individual grass-roots members to suggest alternatives.199 It appears that it took considerable time for a ceasefire to be called in the 1990s because the republican leadership wanted to move forward with the majority of the rank and file.200 Jonathan Powell agrees that republican leaders moved in a ‘crablike’ fashion towards peace to ensure republican unity was maintained as much as possible.201

 

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