A Secret History of the IRA

by Ed Moloney

  In an interview given to a press agency in November 1989 to mark his first one hundred days in office, Brooke conceded that the British and the IRA were in a military stalemate. He then made remarks that came so unexpectedly that they confounded observers at the time. Now, in the knowledge of the secret Reid-Adams diplomacy, they make perfect sense. “There has to be a possibility that at some stage debate might start within the terrorist community,” he said. “Now, if that were to occur, then you would move towards a point, if in fact the terrorists were to decide that the moment had come when they wished to withdraw from their activities, then I think the government would need to be imaginative in those circumstances as to how that process should be managed.”2

  In an interview at his office in Westminster, many years later, Brooke explained to the author what lay behind his words. “That 1989 interview was based on a mixture of what I had heard from John Hume, MI5, and military intelligence and finally what I had heard about Reid,” he said. “I had heard about Reid during a briefing I got from Tom King. What Reid was saying to us was that there was an opportunity here to end it, and one of the aims of what I said in the interview was to communicate my attitude on talks to Sinn Fein.”3

  What Peter Brooke learned about the Reid-Adams diplomacy suggests that the dialogue had begun not long after Tom King had become secretary of state. “I… saw intelligence [on Reid-Adams],” he told the author, “going back as far as 1986, intelligence which underlay my November 1989 interview.”4

  Tom King also confirmed the existence of the Reid-Adams pipeline to the author during interviews conducted at Westminster in 2000. A former British army officer and gentleman farmer-businessman turned MP for one of England’s more affluent shire constituencies, King was fortunate to have been made a minister. A close friend of Michael Heseltine, a major critic of Thatcher’s right-wing ideology, King was on the wrong end of the Tory Party spectrum for many of Thatcher’s allies, but when he arrived in Belfast he made efforts to get in the unionists’ good books. He hit the headlines when a few weeks after the Hillsborough pact had been signed, he said the Irish prime minister, Garret FitzGerald, had “accepted that for all practical purposes and into perpetuity there will never be a united Ireland.”5 The remark ruptured relations with Dublin but delighted unionists.

  King could not say whether or not the Redemptorist pipeline to Adams was in place before he arrived in Belfast, but he did confirm that it was working while he was there. “I became aware of it,” he said. “I may have asked questions, but I think I knew there was a Clonard connection.”6 King also confirmed that Margaret Thatcher was aware of the contact with Adams and had approved it.

  King said that he was first active in the communication “at the turn” of 1986–87; in other words, that the dialogue did begin sometime in 1986.7 This accords with Peter Brooke’s memory of the intelligence briefing he received, which also suggested that the pipeline was opened sometime in 1986—at the very least. The matter is important not just because it fundamentally challenges other accounts of the peace process, which have the first contact between republicans and the British happening much later, but because it suggests that the British must have had an invaluable insight into the mind and intentions of the republican leader on the eve of what proved to be a turbulent and violent period in Northern Ireland, encompassing the smuggling of huge amounts of Libyan arms to Ireland and an intensification of IRA violence. The knowledge that Adams was at least prepared to talk about peace at this time was priceless information.

  Other evidence suggests that the Adams-King dialogue continued until late 1987 or mid-1988 when spectacular bursts of IRA violence—the postponed “Tet offensive”—caused the British to cool the diplomacy. Either way, it is clear beyond contradiction that secret talks between the British and Adams began much earlier than any of the participants have so far admitted, a disclosure that demands a fundamental reassessment of the genesis and origins of the Irish peace process.

  This disclosure also challenges another long-held belief about the peace process—namely, that it was the Irish government in Dublin with which Reid and Adams first made contact and that this was followed, in an admittedly lengthy and tortuous manner, by attempts from Dublin to coax the British to join the process. That is clearly not true. It is now evident that at the very least the British were contacted at the same time as Dublin, and that, far from having to be cajoled by Dublin into joining the process, the British, very possibly, were engaged first. What also emerges from this account is that the peace process was well advanced by the time the Eksund set sail from the Mediterranean and into the trap laid between them by British intelligence and the well-informed IRA traitor. Had the vessel and its deadly cargo gotten through and the IRA been able to launch its “Tet offensive,” then a well-developed peace process would have been its first casualty. Whoever betrayed the Eksund saved the process, whether wittingly or otherwise.

  It is also clear that the Reid-Adams dialogue with Tom King played an enormously important part in the evolution of the peace process even if the Provisional representation was confined to Gerry Adams and his close advisers and did not, at that stage, embrace the rest of the IRA leadership. Both Brooke and King believed, they told the author, that Adams was acting with the approval and knowledge of the Army Council. They were wrong, but they were not to know that. Adams was engaged in an enterprise of which the Army Council knew nothing, and had it been privy to these events it is likely that it would have heartily and angrily disapproved. The Reid-Adams initiative was a hugely dangerous exercise for the Sinn Fein leader.

  A crucial moment in the secret contact came early on when King received a lengthy letter from Adams, which posed a number of questions about Britain’s policy in Northern Ireland and its attitude toward the Provisionals. King has confirmed that this happened and indeed believes there may have been two letters from Adams. “I had one or two letters but I can’t remember the detail, just the opening, ‘A Chara,’” he said.8 “A Chara” or “friend” is the traditional Irish opening to a letter and the equivalent of “Dear so-and-so.”

  In an earlier interview King said that he had received a series of questions from the Reid contact, and it is apparent that this was a reference to the Adams letter. “We received questions,” he said, “asking us, ‘Is this right?’ ‘Is that right?’ ‘How can that possibly be?’ ‘Surely there are strategic and economic reasons to hang on in Northern Ireland?’”9

  There were six questions in Adams’s letter. Although Tom King says he has forgotten what they were, another well-informed participant in the peace process does remember. They were the following:

  1. What is the nature of the British government’s interest in Ireland?

  2. What is the British government’s attitude toward self-determination, and what will it do to ensure that there is no veto exercised which would militate against the exercise of self-determination?

  3. Will the British government play a positive role in persuading unionists toward self-determination?

  4. Will the British government publicly state its position, assuming the appropriate replies to these questions?

  5. Will the British government accept that the republican movement will represent itself in any negotiations?

  6. In the context of dialogue free from interference, will the British government publicly state its intention to withdraw from Ireland and give a date by which such withdrawal will be complete?10

  Taken at face, the questions contained nothing that any of Gerry Adams’s IRA colleagues could have quarreled with. They were all seemingly embedded in traditional IRA dogma, all apparently predicated upon the analysis that Britain’s presence in Northern Ireland prevented the Irish people as a whole from freely deciding their own future. But the questions opened the way for the British to offer Adams an exit from armed struggle by redefining what was meant by concepts such as “self-determination” and “withdrawal.”

  Tom King has declined to say whether he or
someone else wrote the document that was sent in reply to Adams, but that there was a reply is not in doubt. It came in an undated, unsigned statement, twelve paragraphs and nearly a thousand words in length, that responded to four of Adams’s six questions in the order in which they were asked.11

  The British answers set the agenda for the rest of the peace process and created a template for negotiations that after delays and many failures of nerve were to lead some ten or so years later to the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998. Most of the concepts and much of the language that characterized the process during the long years of its gestation and development were contained in the secret British reply to Gerry Adams’s letter to Tom King. If the peace process has a philosophical fountainhead, this is it.

  The British reply, now revealed for the first time, is possibly one of the key, historic documents of the peace process. It reads in full:

  The Provisional IRA say they are fighting a war of independence to win freedom and self-determination for the people of Ireland. They maintain that force must be used to persuade the British government to acknowledge such a freedom because it has a colonial self-interest in remaining in Northern Ireland and in exercising authority there. This interpretation of the political situation in Northern Ireland is based upon the false assumption that Britain has some interest of her own in remaining there and is therefore engaged in some way in defending those interests by force of military strength.

  Britain of course has an interest in Northern Ireland which is to respond with a warm goodwill and friendship to the needs of the people of Northern Ireland as a whole. (We respect and admire the contribution which they have made to the union in peace and war.) But let me be very clear! In the second half of the 20th century no matter what has been the position in the past the British government has no political, military, strategic, or economic interest in staying in Ireland or in the exercise of authority there that could transcend respect for the wishes of the majority in Northern Ireland.

  The political and security situation as it has now developed in Northern Ireland is due to the historical, political, religious and cultural divisions which separate the people of the nationalist tradition from the people of the unionist tradition in Ireland. These divisions are at the root of the conflict there and not any self-interested dominion policies of the British government.

  The central issue in the conflict therefore is not to persuade the British government to decide on the question of self-determination in Ireland but to bridge the divisions between the people of both traditions there in a way that will enable them to decide it freely and democratically for themselves. The political consensus and agreement which would bridge these traditional divisions and so open the way to a peaceful resolution of the questions of Irish self-determination can only be achieved through the processes of political debate and dialogue between the peoples of both traditions.

  Should they through their political representatives agree to engage in such dialogue the British government would do everything possible to accommodate and facilitate it. It would, for example, provide the necessary framework and forum which could take the form of an ongoing conference or convention composed of the official representatives of the people of both traditions. It would confine its own role in such a dialogue to that of facilitator and so would not officially take part in it or, much less, seek in any way to dictate to it.

  This means the British government is prepared to withdraw from the central area of historical, political, religious and cultural conflict and from the central forum of political debate that would seek to resolve it so that the parties to the conflict, namely the people of the nationalist tradition and the people of the unionist tradition can engage freely, independently and democratically in the political dialogue and in agreement-making which would bridge their divisions.

  Should this dialogue result in agreements based on the consent of the people of the two traditions which would bridge the political divisions between them and to define the forms of new political structures which would embody, institute and organise such agreements the British government would respond with the necessary legislation.

  We hope that this statement will clarify our present policies in Northern Ireland. We also hope that it will prompt the Provisional IRA to review their present policies and to see that the use of violent tactics against “colonial interests” which in fact do not exist is a mistake and a tragedy beyond words not only for the people of Ireland generally but also for themselves.

  Questions about Irish political self-determination can only be answered by the people of the nationalist and unionist traditions in democratic conference among themselves. Britain can assist them but she cannot answer for them because the problem is not that the British government will not agree to Irish self-determination but that the people of the two divided traditions do not at present agree amongst themselves on how to exercise it.

  It is our fervent hope that what we have said in our statement will convince the Provisional IRA and the Sinn Fein party that the political divisions between the people of the two traditions in Ireland which are at the heart of the conflict cannot be bridged much less healed by force. Their use of force is, in fact, holding back the day of justice and peace for the people of both traditions because the political debate which would bring that day forward cannot take place freely and democratically while they or indeed any significant section of either tradition are using the argument of the gun.

  We accept that the republican tradition within the nationalist community should be represented at the peace conference table but we cannot and will never accept that the Provisional IRA and the Sinn Fein party should be represented there while they continue to use the tactics of violence. Apart from other considerations they themselves would never really expect to sit down with representatives of the unionist tradition to confer and decide about the political future while unionists feel as they do that Republicans are holding a gun to their heads.

  The strategies of peacemaking are the strategies of political dialogue, political persuasion and political force. These alone can create the political agreements whatever their developing or final form which would breach the divisions between the people of the nationalist tradition and the people of the unionist tradition in Ireland. Only on such a bridge can the conflict be ended and the foundation of a just and lasting peace for both traditions be soundly and progressively established.12

  The secret British document made three significant and important statements to Adams. It said first that, contrary to IRA dogma, Britain had no interests in Northern Ireland, no selfish reason for remaining there, and was indifferent about the nature of any settlement as long as it was not imposed by force and did not offend the principle of consent. Britain was also prepared to allow Sinn Fein to have a part in the forging of any settlement, but that would be conditional on an IRA cease-fire. That was not a departure from policy. Britain had always made it clear that IRA violence was the obstacle to Sinn Fein’s taking part in normal political life. What made this offer interesting was that Britain also offered to convene the sort of conference that Irish nationalists had long asked for and promised that it would not attempt to impose its will upon its deliberations. Sinn Fein could attend, providing the IRA ended its violence, while Britain also gave a pledge to implement any settlement in legislation, a hint that the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, which upheld the partitionist settlement, could be significantly amended and even replaced.

  The most intriguing and momentous part of the British reply came with the novel redefinition of what British withdrawal would actually mean. The traditional republican interpretation of this was straightforward. The British would physically leave, their troopships would sail from Belfast harbor, and their politicans and officials would decamp while Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, got on with the business of constructing a new government for the whole of Ireland. Irish and British constitutional politicians had long rejected this scenario as unworkable, largel
y on the grounds that Protestants would resist it probably to the point of civil war. But now the British came up with an ingenious reworking of the idea. Britain would not physically withdraw but it would withdraw politically, that is, it would promise not to interfere or intervene in the decision-making process—the all-party negotiations in other words, aimed at securing a final settlement. Irishmen would be allowed to construct the deal while the British acted as impartial facilitators.

  Two of Adams’s questions went unanswered, and many of the ensuing problems faced by the peace process would be caused by this. The British did not respond to Adams’s request to make their position public—that would not happen for two or three years, until Peter Brooke gave his neutrality speech. Nor would the British name a date for the end of the process, the point at which they would finally leave Ireland. At the time of this writing the answer has still not been given.

  Nevertheless, it is possible to see in the secret British letter the blueprint for the peace process as it unfolded in the coming years. Armed with this redefinition of British disengagement and a statement of neutrality, Adams could happily continue the secret diplomacy with Reid while the road map showed that all-party negotiations, an IRA cease-fire, and adherence to the principle of peaceful consent were the way forward. This is precisely what did happen, although it would be nearly eleven years before the destination was reached. The argument that the peace process was a precooked deal and that much of what happened in the process was about managing the various forces involved, not least the IRA and Sinn Fein rank and file, finds its origin in this document.