The Intelligence War against the IRA Read online

  Other indiscriminate actions by the British Army provided further recruits to the rural IRA. I have already mentioned the case of Harry Thornton from south Armagh. In Strabane, the British Army noticed an increase in IRA violence leading up to March 1972.128 British forces had caused controversy there. On 18 August 1971, the British Army shot twenty-eight-year-old Eamonn McDavitt (who was deaf) during a riot in the town. The Irish government later used McDavitt’s killing against the British government during a European Court of Human Rights case in the 1970s. The Irish government argued that the British Army had shot ‘a wholly innocent person’. MacStiofáin writes that the McDavitt killing provided an upsurge in republican support.129 The early 1970s saw internment and screening introduced to rural localities too.130 Both measures created local grievances against the British forces, for similar reasons discussed as those for nationalists in Belfast and Derry City. McKearney, for example, recalls that internment provided a boost to the Tyrone IRA in terms of numbers.131 It is likely that reports surrounding the internment and alleged physical mistreatment of Paddy Joe McClean, a teacher from Tyrone, would have increased anger towards British forces.132 With the Official IRA ending its campaign in May 1972, it was the Provisionals in rural areas who could utilise the resentment building towards the state. The combination of factors outlined made it unlikely that many rural nationalists would work against the IRA by June 1972. Unlike the situation in Belfast, the IRA’s campaign became more destructive in rural areas after 1972.

  Conclusion

  The evidence available suggests that the intelligence war had had minimal impact on the IRA’s campaign by June 1972. Various factors explain the limited infiltration in city and rural areas where the IRA operated by June 1972. In urban areas, IRA support increased following republicans’ role in defending nationalist areas, indiscriminate British Army actions against the nationalist community and the lack of political and socio-economic reform by Stormont and Westminster. Other factors unique to rural areas that restricted the use of intelligence included republicans’ long-term sense of injustice at being forced into a unionist-dominated Northern Ireland state in the 1920s. British forces also conducted various indiscriminate security operations in nationalist areas, such as in County Tyrone. These operations provoked further tension. The failure to coordinate British military and Special Branch intelligence on a consistent basis made containing the IRA harder. In addition, IRA barricades in Belfast and Derry City, and the ability of some rural IRA units to use the border to evade detection, meant that surveillance on the IRA via vehicle- or personality-checking systems was difficult. The intelligence war’s failure to significantly erode the IRA’s capacity for conflict partly explains why the British government talked to the IRA in June 1972.

  3

  The IRA’s Ceasefire: 26 June to 9 July 1972

  The IRA called a truce from June to July 1972, primarily because it was keen to negotiate from a position of strength. Equally, various IRA leaders recognised the need for a negotiated political settlement. The IRA demonstrated their desire to engage in dialogue with the British government in early March 1972, when leading IRA members held secret talks with the Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson. This chapter also argues that the British government were partly responsible for the collapse of the 1972 ceasefires. The British government never outlined for the IRA the boundaries of a political settlement. Neither did they try to politicise the republican movement by legalising Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland. The IRA contributed to the ceasefire’s failure too. Despite sizeable support levels in working-class nationalist areas, they had no political mandate from which to encourage the British government to provide concessions towards the republican position.

  Talks from a Position of Republican Strength, 26 June to 9 July 1972

  The intelligence campaign had not created an ‘acceptable level’ of IRA violence by June 1972. Why, therefore, did the IRA call a ceasefire and enter negotiations with the British government between 26 June and 9 July 1972? Public outrage had partly forced the OIRA into a permanent ceasefire on 21 May 1972. There was anger following the OIRA’s killing of William Best, a local Catholic British soldier, who had been on leave in Derry City.1 Seán MacStiofáin admits: ‘[b]y the end of May … the demands and calls for peace were mounting’.2

  Politically, the SDLP had effectively ‘vetoed’ the IRA’s plans for the nationalist community in mid-1971 too. Sinn Féin had called for a federal Ireland with four federal parliaments, based on the four traditional regions of Ireland. In the North, the idea of leading republicans Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill was to create a nine-county parliament based on the ancient province of Ulster. They believed that this set-up would redress the six-county Northern Irish state’s sectarian imbalance. When republicans held a convention in Monaghan to discuss a nine-county Ulster parliament in August 1971, unsurprisingly no unionists attended. Far more damaging was the fact that the SDLP rejected this idea. Instead, the SDLP convened the Northern People’s Assembly in Armagh in October 1971. Whilst not representing a serious effort to create a peace settlement, the Armagh assembly was structured on a six-county basis and excluded non-elected representatives. It challenged and rejected the Provisionals’ plans for the nationalist community.3 The Irish government throughout the 1970s dismissed politically engaging with the Provisionals, because of IRA activities.4

  On the other hand, it is important not to overplay the impact of public outrage and political pressure on the IRA’s decision to call a ceasefire in June 1972. Both MacStiofáin and Peter Taylor describe how two senior republicans from Derry suggested negotiations should take place because they believed that it was best to talk from a position of strength. MacStiofáin felt: ‘it was a good moment from the military standpoint … we were not only strong but … held the initiative’.5 It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the political initiative lay with the Provisionals. The SDLP had rejected Éire Nua, the IRA’s plan for a ‘New Ireland’ based on four federal parliaments. Nevertheless, the fact that the SDLP convinced the British government to talk to republicans from June 1972 shows that other nationalists accepted that republicans had considerable community support in nationalist areas. The SDLP recognised how increasing IRA activity was, at the very least, preventing attempts to create a political settlement.

  In addition, the IRA would have seen that the Fianna Fáil–led Irish government and the SDLP proposed radical solutions to the Troubles in 1972. The SDLP’s Towards a New Ireland document suggested that Britain declare that Irish unity was the way forward. In the meantime, the SDLP argued for joint sovereignty of Northern Ireland between the Irish Republic and Britain.6 Jack Lynch’s Irish government was encouraging the British government to declare that they wanted Irish unity in the long term.7 A British civil servant’s report sent to Prime Minister Heath about the meeting with the republican leaders in London on 7 July 1972 pointed out that the IRA demand for all-Ireland self-determination ‘was very close to the position of Mr Lynch’.8 Evidence suggests that this view represents a misunderstanding of Irish government objectives. Lynch envisaged unity as the ‘long-term’ prospect with interim solutions necessary to end the violence beforehand, including nationalist representation in devolved government in the North.9 Nonetheless, the Irish government and the SDLP had failed to come up with any popular alternatives for a political settlement by June 1972, as demonstrated by the increase in IRA violence. A significant part of the political ‘initiative’ did lie with the Provisionals.

  The IRA called a ceasefire in June 1972 because of their willingness to reach a negotiated settlement, albeit one primarily on their terms. As early as July 1971, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, one of the IRA’s seven-person Army Council, told the Belfast Telegraph: ‘I cannot imagine the IRA driving the British Army into the sea … but I think it would be possible to force the British authorities to the conference table’.10 Republican leaders were fighting to force the British government into talks. Republican leaders ha
d political ideas by September 1971 that they wanted to discuss in negotiations. The IRA’s ‘Five-Point Peace Plan’ contained these conditions: a ceasefire by the British forces; the abolition of Stormont and free elections for a nine-county Ulster parliament; a new federal structure for Ireland; the release of detainees; and compensation for those injured by the British Army.11 The trouble was that unionists were unlikely to accept joining with the other three counties of the ancient province of Ulster. But Éire Nua, which related to the idea of a nine-county Ulster parliament being created in a federalised and united Ireland, did at least consider the role of unionists in that new Ireland. Mulholland is right that it was grounded in a ‘hard political logic’ that could claim to rival the legitimacy of the six-county state.12 The republican leadership felt that unionists exaggerated their willingness to resist unity. Dáithí Ó Conaill, an IRA Army Council member and the vice-president of Sinn Féin, told the republican newspaper An Phoblacht in March 1971 that ‘70,000 Unionists in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan were forced out of the United Kingdom in 1921 and though they protested and said they would never live under a Dublin government, they did so’.13

  In his presidential address to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in October 1971, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh stressed that the new federal system protected unionist interests. Unionism would still have a majority in the nine-county Ulster parliament. But the increased nationalist minority in the North would ensure that there was no more discrimination.14 In April 1972, Ó Conaill spoke at an event to commemorate the Easter Rising in Monaghan. He stressed that republicans were offering the ‘hand of friendship’ to Northern Protestants because ‘we seek your cooperation to build a new Ulster’ without religious discrimination. ‘We share’, he added, ‘a common Ulster urge of sturdy independence’. He emphasised that a new nine-county Ulster parliament could solve the conflict between the two communities.15 The republican leadership had political plans for the reconstruction of Ireland that they wanted to discuss, including with unionists. British representatives including Frank Steele and leading republicans Ó Conaill and Gerry Adams met near Donegal on 20 June 1972. A report of the meeting records how the republicans ‘asked if the Northern Ireland Office would be prepared to … introduce them to representatives of the UDA … they might get along better than some people would expect’.16

  Signs that the IRA were willing to negotiate a political settlement emerge from mid-1971. A few examples are: the September 1971 peace plan; the call for negotiations by volunteer Frank Morris in February 1972; the March 1972 ceasefire and meeting with Labour leader Harold Wilson;17 and the Free Derry press conference led by leading Provisionals Martin McGuinness, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Seán MacStiofáin and Séamus Twomey on 13 June 1972. Ó Conaill also recalls that in early May 1972, the IRA Army Council agreed to explore the idea of a ceasefire, but they needed permission from IRA leaders in Belfast and Derry first. This latter point is crucial as it demonstrates that regional IRA units had an influence over whether a ceasefire emerged. The IRA Army Council did not dictate policy to the rest of the movement. On this particular occasion, Ó Conaill argues that the arrest of Army Council members such as Joe Cahill in southern Ireland forced IRA leaders to go underground and cancel the ceasefire plans.18

  The Provisionals wanted to present their case at the peace talks. They did not see their lack of an electoral mandate as diminishing the reality of their support levels on the streets. Ruairí Ó Brádaigh told a reporter in March 1972 that electoral mandates were meaningless at the time:

  it’s over three years since there has been an election … the Republican Movement now enjoys massive support from the population … to be realistic, it would be necessary … to make … talks meaningful … to have representatives of the Republican movement at the conference table.19

  Frequent IRA attacks, the no-go areas and the fact that the SDLP suggested that the British government should talk with the IRA highlights that the Provisionals had considerable backing in urban working-class nationalist areas. By June 1972, Whitelaw had agreed that IRA support levels and increasing armed activity made it essential to bring them into political conversations. The Provisionals felt that they had support on the streets that would help them gain substantial concessions from the British government, especially as the British Army had not contained IRA violence in Belfast and Derry City. Danny Morrison saw the 1972 ceasefire as:

  an occasion where both sides were equal … [it was] the first time since 1921 that the British government was directly engaging with the republican movement. There was a feeling that maybe this was going to be the end of the conflict.20

  The upsurge in IRA violence, and the sense of despondency about escalating IRA violence evident within British government and military documents, supports Morrison’s view that ‘both sides were equal’ by June 1972. The IRA entered the negotiations with evident support from the nationalist community and an increasing armed campaign in Derry City and Belfast, which was spreading to the rural areas. Republicans also controlled the no-go areas. The IRA entered the June–July 1972 ceasefire from a position of strength.

  The consensus in the academic and journalistic literature about the 7 July 1972 talks between the IRA and Whitelaw in London is that republican leaders made unrealistic demands for immediate British withdrawal. Following this line of argument, the blame for the ceasefire collapsing lies with the IRA, whose leaders were completely removed from reality.21 Parts of the primary literature present a similar view. Maria McGuire, who worked with leading republicans such as the Ó Brádaighs, suggests that MacStiofáin and many Belfast volunteers sought only the full acceptance of republican demands in talks.22 Whitelaw certainly felt that MacStiofáin as the IRA’s Chief of Staff made ‘absurd ultimatums’ during the 7 July meeting.23

  During the 72-hour ceasefire in March 1972, a select group of IRA leaders led by Joe Cahill met with Harold Wilson and Merlyn Rees from the UK Labour opposition in Dublin. Republicans reiterated their three demands:

  1. An immediate withdrawal of British armed forces from the streets of Northern Ireland coupled with a statement of intent as to the eventual evacuation of [British] Forces and an acknowledgement of the right of the Irish people to determine their own future without interference from the British Government;

  2. The abolition of the Stormont parliament;

  3. A total amnesty for all political prisoners in Ireland and England.24

  Notes within Wilson’s papers on the meeting suggest that republicans ‘wanted peace’ but that ‘[t]he three conditions are the absolute minimum’. Republicans believed that a British declaration of intent to withdraw would create a new reality and produce talks between nationalists and unionists towards a political settlement on Irish unity. In reply to a question about a loyalist backlash emerging if the British state accepted republican terms, an IRA representative replied: ‘it has always been the case that the Unionists threatened war, but never fought it’. Wilson said that he could not accept the demands of the IRA but suggested that they remember his speech to parliament in November 1971. Wilson was referring to his 25 November 1971 speech, in which he announced a fifteen-point plan towards Irish unity.25 Wilson informed the IRA representatives ‘I said 15 years’ for Irish unity but ‘[t]he way your friends are going on it will be … longer’. He added: ‘[i]f it could be cut down to eight or 10 years I would be delighted’. But Wilson warned that his vision for unification was not possible to implement without an end to IRA activity and IRA demands for an announcement of British withdrawal.26 Joe Cahill recalls that ‘damn all’ came out of these talks, and, unsurprisingly, the IRA cessation ended. A further meeting with Wilson and Rees, attended by republicans including Cahill, occurred in Buckinghamshire, nine days after the breakdown of the truce, in July 1972. Cahill once more states that: ‘We had been fully briefed by the chief of staff after discussions … to take a hard line until we found out what he [Wilson] wanted … We told him that the British would have to indicate that they were getting o
ut. That was our bottom line.’27 These three demands by the IRA could further suggest an unrealistic approach to peace talks in 1972.

  Many secondary accounts argue that the IRA staged the confrontation at Lenadoon in west Belfast, which took place after the talks in July 1972 and led to the ceasefire ending. Taylor was reporting in Lenadoon at that time. A confrontation developed in Lenadoon because Catholic nationalist families tried to move into the area. Loyalist intimidation had driven these families out of the Rathcoole estate. The loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) threatened mayhem if nationalists moved so close to a loyalist area. Taylor implies that senior IRA figures in Belfast, including Twomey, saw a confrontation at Lenadoon as the perfect opportunity to break the ceasefire. Taylor admits that the British Army did obstruct the lorry carrying nationalist families’ possessions, but feels that the IRA were already awaiting a return to conflict anyway.28 Brendan Hughes admits that he and other IRA volunteers were ready to fire at Lenadoon that day, as instructed by Twomey.29

  Andrew Mumford, however, has justifiably argued that the 1972 truce collapsed partly because the British government offered ‘[n]o coherent pathways out of violence [to the IRA]’.30 At the time, Sinn Féin was a proscribed organisation in the North.31 Neither Whitelaw nor Wilson proposed to legalise Sinn Féin during talks in 1972. Legalisation could have at least indicated a political route out of the conflict for republicans. Wilson even told republicans during the 13 March 1972 meeting that the SDLP should speak for them at the conference table. The IRA representatives were not impressed, replying that: ‘No one substituted for them in the fighting, and they do not want a substitute in the talking.’ Wilson asked again during the conversation: ‘[w]hat politicians have you confidence in Northern Ireland?’ IRA representatives gave a curt reply: ‘None of them … The people who can secure satisfactory talks are two parties: the British Government and our friends [republicans].’32 The failure of Wilson and Whitelaw to provide a legal political outlet for republicans overlooked how some republican leaders wanted to play a more politically active role.