by Thomas Leahy
Conclusion
The Belfast IRA faced some disruption at the hands of British intelligence agencies in the pre-1975 period, for various reasons. Yet the Belfast units reacted to this by reorganising into smaller cells from late 1973. This structural change had begun to reignite the IRA’s campaign in the capital by the late 1970s. Meanwhile, in Derry City the IRA was not facing terminal decline at the time of the 1975 ceasefire. The Derry City IRA reacted immediately to Operation Motorman by moving its leaders to Donegal and sending only small units of volunteers to continue its campaign in Derry. These measures meant that the Derry City IRA had become difficult to infiltrate and hard to monitor via surveillance by 1975.
In rural republican heartlands the IRA’s armed activities had increased by 1975. The intelligence war was ineffective there for various reasons, including tight security arrangements. This resilience against the intelligence war can explain why the South Armagh IRA began to lead the republican armed campaign from 1975. Rural units became more important to the IRA’s campaign, partly because of their resistance to significant infiltration. The other outlet for the IRA by 1975 was its campaign in England. An informer appears to have prewarned the authorities about its first attacks in March 1973. The IRA reacted by tightening its security for cells in England. The inability of British intelligence to prevent various attacks shows a consistent lack of information on IRA operations in England.
It is true that the level of IRA killings had declined since 1972. But the movement had spread further across Northern Ireland and the borderlands of the Irish Republic. The IRA maintained a persistent, if reduced, campaign. For these reasons, this chapter questions the suggestion that the IRA was in serious decline by 1975.198 As Rees told the Northern Ireland ministerial committee in February 1975, the security effort had depleted the IRA in some locations, but ‘they are not beaten’.199 Whilst the intelligence war had damaged the Belfast IRA by 1975, it had not achieved similar results against the organisation in Derry City, England and in rural areas. Fifty per cent of the IRA’s units were not as active as they had once been. Yet the other 50 per cent were certainly pulling their weight by 1975. Since the Belfast Brigade could still operate, it is not the case that only 50 per cent of the IRA was causing the British state security concerns in 1975. The implication of this argument is that we need to reassess why the IRA called a lengthy ceasefire in that year.
6
‘Everything Is Compromisable after the British Declaration of Intent’: The IRA Returns to Ceasefire, December 1974 to December 1975
A majority of the IRA leaders who agreed to a ceasefire in late December 1974 did so because the British government had suggested privately that they were contemplating political withdrawal.1 This chapter also argues that the ceasefire collapsed because the British government would not announce their withdrawal before a political settlement was agreed. The British government feared that a declaration of intent to withdraw would provoke a loyalist uprising. Republicans did not trust that the British government would withdraw without a declaration. Many grass-roots republicans felt they had been tricked by the British government into a ceasefire that, they had begun to believe, was designed to degrade the IRA’s armed capacity. However, the evidence suggests that the British government wanted gradual political withdrawal from Northern Ireland in 1975. Many leading republicans were willing to politically compromise during that year, and potentially accept an independent Northern Ireland. But pressure from grass-roots republicans meant that the leadership had to demand a British declaration of intent to withdraw. This chapter cites the private papers by the IRA’s intermediary and leadership held in the National University of Ireland Galway, alongside British government papers and Garret FitzGerald’s papers.
The IRA Ceasefire in 1975
The IRA’s persistent armed campaign across Northern Ireland and England by 1975 calls into question the view that the ceasefire was equally motivated by the intelligence war and political factors.2 If true, it is surprising that the IRA did not call a ceasefire earlier in 1973 or 1974 following setbacks for the organisation, including the end of the no-go areas in Belfast and Derry City. The IRA called a ceasefire primarily because they were receiving messages from backchannel conversations that the British government might be willing to withdraw. This argument does not imply that infiltration of the Belfast Brigade and the arrest of senior operators did not influence the ceasefire decision at all, particularly amongst IRA leaders in Belfast. But available evidence suggests that this factor was not of equal importance compared to political factors. The IRA leadership felt that the British government were ready to withdraw. For example, Billy McKee, a Belfast republican who met British representatives during 1975, was only willing to talk because he claimed that at the initial meeting on 7 January 1975 MI6 officer Michael Oatley had mentioned withdrawal.3
Ó Dochartaigh is right to say that republican leaders ‘were willing to make major compromises’.4 The IRA initially wanted Éire Nua, a four-province federal system.5 During the 1975 ceasefire, some leading republicans began to suggest that they would go further to accommodate loyalists and unionists. On 27 October 1975, Duddy outlined republican thinking to the British representatives at Laneside. His statement explains the process by which republicans would accept a temporary six-county set-up under loyalist rule:
the [Provisional Army Council] does not want war … Would they work politically? Yes … Could the Rep[ublican Movement] work with the Loyalists? Yes. In a six county, Northern Irish state? Yes … But it would require a steady transition [to] a 32 County [socialist] Rep[ublic] … The Rep[ublican] position is that the [Protestant] Majority had the right to rule [Northern Ireland]. They did not have the ‘right’ to abuse that ‘right’. The [Republican Movement] had but one aim … eventual withdrawal of the British. Everything is compromsibale [sic] after the British Declaration of Intent.6
This statement shows that republicans were ostensibly willing to negotiate with loyalists on continuing the six-county set-up, provided that British sovereignty was renounced. Republicans could be persuaded to accept independence as it could represent the ‘steady transition’ to a united Ireland, because British sovereignty over Northern Ireland would cease.7 Irish people would be ruling their own affairs.
Admittedly, on reflecting upon his role as a negotiator with republicans and unionists from the late 1990s and early 2000s, Jonathan Powell said: ‘[s]ometimes it is necessary … to temper the message … or to bend it a little … to point out the opportunities it presents and so move the negotiation along’. The caveat for Powell was that ‘it is crucial not to distort that message too far or you will find the two sides negotiating on false premises’.8 Duddy possibly exaggerated how far republicans might make political concessions. Elsewhere, however, Duddy does record that Ó Brádaigh told him in November 1975: ‘We had offered the British everything – To live in a Protestant N[orthern] I[reland] under [loyalist] control if only the British would leave.’9 In Ó Brádaigh’s own records, he notes proposed talks with loyalists between intermediaries Seán McBride, a former member of the republican movement and human rights activist, for republicans, and Desmond Boal, a barrister and one-time DUP member, for loyalists, later in the spring of 1977. As worded in a proposed joint loyalist and republican statement, the aim was to produce ‘[a] lasting peace on a basis acceptable to all the people of our Island’.10 In the end, the Irish government discovered and exposed these talks, fearing that loyalists and republicans posed a threat to the Republic by redrawing the northern state’s boundaries. But Ó Brádaigh took these talks seriously. He must surely have known that republicans needed to compromise, perhaps in a six-county format independent of British rule, since unionists had already rejected a nine-county Ulster province.11 Duddy alleges that McKee remarked in May 1976 that he too would ‘settle for an independent Ulster’.12
Other available sources suggest that there was a willingness to compromise amongst some republican leaders during the 1975 c
easefire talks. During a meeting with a representative from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs on 21 October 1975, Bill Craig, the unionist leader of the Vanguard party, revealed: ‘The Unionists have been getting a series of message from different quarters from the Provisional IRA that … [they] would agree to stop their campaign if independence on certain conditions were agreed.’13 Craig said that he was not interested as he did not trust the Provisional IRA, and did not feel independence was economically viable.14 In January 1974, the republican leadership had also shown an ability to compromise on their demand for a nine-county Ulster parliament in a federal Ireland. They had supported Desmond Boal’s idea of a six-county northern parliament within a federal Ireland.15
Various republican leaders wanted to work with loyalists to create a new political system in Northern Ireland and across Ireland. In October 1975, for instance, Duddy records that Ó Brádaigh asked him to contact Vanguard and UDA’s Glenn Barr to explore the prospect of a political compromise.16 This request from Ó Brádaigh coincided with his statements to Duddy, and with Rees’s letter to Wilson in autumn 1975 that mentioned republicans being willing to settle for an independent Northern Ireland following a British declaration of intent to withdraw. Furthermore, a high-level UDA contact informed an official from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in January 1975 that they had contact with the IRA via an intermediary.17 Ó Conaill was also willing to engage with Ulster loyalists and unionists. One example came in an interview with the journalist Mary Holland in November 1974. Although stating that a British declaration of intent to withdraw was necessary, Ó Conaill argued that republicans wanted to achieve ‘progress’ towards ending the conflict in Northern Ireland by talking to loyalists. Ó Conaill revealed that republicans had been in contact with the UDA and the UVF in 1974. The contacts failed to produce an agreement, since republicans wanted a nine-county Ulster and a British declaration of intent to withdraw. Nonetheless, a significant section of the republican leadership showed a willingness to engage with unionist politicians and loyalist paramilitaries to produce a political compromise.18
Key republican leaders including Ó Conaill and Ó Brádaigh wanted to begin contesting elections. In March 1973, for example, Sinn Féin ‘welcomed’ calls by Merlyn Rees for the ban to be removed on their party because: ‘[I]t is nonsense for that authority [the British government] to talk about … political solutions while denying the freedom of political action to one of the major elements in the Northern situation.’ ‘The British Government’, the statement added, ‘has the opportunity to prove its sincerity as regards a political solution by removing the ban on Sinn Fein’.19 Ó Conaill also supported the creation of a Constitutional Convention, because he believed it showed that the British state wanted to ‘stand aside’.20 Seamus Loughran, a leading Sinn Féin representative in Belfast at the time, told a journalist on 10 February 1975 that republicans wanted to contest the Convention election on a non-abstentionist basis. Yet he added that they would have to vote internally on the measure before making a formal announcement.21 Eventually republicans decided not to contest the elections. The SDLP’s representatives told an Irish Department of Foreign Affairs official in early April 1975 that their contacts had suggested Ó Conaill and Ó Brádaigh were ‘disappointed by absence of support’ from grass-roots republicans for contesting elections in Northern Ireland.22 These examples indicate the preference for active political participation in the North on the part of some leading republicans by 1975.
The precondition to any republican compromise with loyalists remained a public or private commitment by the British government to withdraw from Northern Ireland. Duddy’s quote above makes this clear. Ultimately, republican leaders felt that loyalists would never accept significant political change until the British left Northern Ireland. Since the republican movement was not facing terminal decline by 1975, and believed that the British government were considering withdrawal, they saw no reason to accept British control of Northern Ireland. During a meeting on 19 January 1975, republicans warned British representatives ‘if [Her Majesty’s Government] wanted to disengage quietly from Ireland [we] would help them, but if [Her Majesty’s Government] wanted to restructure British Rule in Ireland … then [we] would contest the ground with them’.23 Rees realised in November 1975 that whilst republican leaders might compromise with loyalists, ‘they wanted first from us a private indication of intent to withdraw from Ireland’. Rees refused because he feared a loyalist uprising in retaliation.24 As Duddy reports, Ó Conaill and Ó Brádaigh said republican leaders ‘want peace but will die rather than accept British rule’.25 Ó Brádaigh also told Duddy in November 1975 that he would consider living in a six-county state under loyalist control ‘if only the British would leave’.26 For certain leading republicans, accepting Ulster independence was dependent on the British government first declaring their intention to withdraw either publicly or privately. The ceasefire was only called and observed as long as the IRA leadership felt British withdrawal was on the table. After the Constitutional Convention convened in the early summer of 1975, IRA activity increased. For the IRA, the Convention meeting on a six-county basis under UK control suggested that the British were moving away from withdrawal.27 But republicans continued talking to the British in the hope that IRA attacks could extract further concessions towards withdrawal.28
Were republicans deluded about British withdrawal? The British certainly mentioned it. Duddy and Ó Brádaigh claim that in a Christmas letter in 1974, the British were prepared to discuss ‘structures of disengagement’.29 On 20 May 1975, Duddy records a phone conversation in which Donald Middleton, a senior British intermediary from the Northern Ireland Office, allegedly assured him: ‘don’t expect to see it in print. It is inevitable that the British are going.’30 The Ó Brádaigh papers attribute similar statements to the British representatives. There was the caveat that the British government would not declare privately or publicly any intention to withdraw for fear of provoking civil war.31 In order to keep the potential prospects of a loyalist and republican political agreement on course, British intermediaries continued to tell the republican leadership in 1975 that if the Convention failed to bring about a political agreement, a ‘widening of the gap’ between the UK and Northern Ireland would emerge.32 Intrigued by the British government’s supposed statements, Peter Taylor once asked Michael Oatley whether republicans were telling the truth. Oatley replied:
I always made it clear that the Government’s ability to consider withdrawing from Northern Ireland was entirely dependent upon the will of the majority in Northern Ireland … [But] I said I am prepared to discuss anything you like.33
The evidence we have seen in Chapter 4 suggests that the British government tried to get republicans to realise that anything could happen if republicans reached an agreement with loyalists first. When republican delegates told their rank-and-file members that the British wanted to go, it was true.
Where republican leaders were economical with the truth was when it came to a British declaration of intent to withdraw being on the horizon. The IRA’s leaders perhaps promised a declaration was forthcoming in order to satisfy ‘hardliners’ that the ceasefire was worthwhile, and to keep the talks going to see what could be agreed. In April 1975, for instance, SDLP representatives commented to an Irish Department of Foreign Affairs representative that their contacts with republicans had learnt that:
the [republican] activists, especially in Belfast, South Armagh and Tyrone want an immediate resumption of offensive activities and were temporarily silenced only by an assurance that the leadership was … negotiating with the British on the terms of a declaration of intent to withdraw.34
The republican leadership knew that they could only sustain the ceasefire with the support of grass-roots republicans if progress towards a British withdrawal was forthcoming. In fairness, leading republicans could claim that discussions on an independent Northern Ireland were technically about British withdrawal. But they did not tell
their grass roots about their exploration of Northern Irish independence, undoubtedly fearing opposition for doing so.
The SDLP and Irish government record British ministers mentioning withdrawal too. At a meeting between Irish government representatives, including Garret FitzGerald, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the SDLP in August 1974, the latter discussed their recent conversations with Harold Wilson and Merlyn Rees. The SDLP ‘were now convinced that the British and especially the Labour Party wanted to get out of Northern Ireland’.35 In October 1974, following further conversations with British government officials, the SDLP told Irish government ministers that they ‘have no doubt that the British are preparing to get out’. A senior SDLP representative added that ‘a move towards Northern Ireland independence [was] more likely negotiated than unilaterally declared’ by loyalists. This SDLP leader was not prepared to encourage that option for fear of loyalists using independence as an excuse to return to discriminatory majority rule.36 A later report by an official from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in June 1975 noted that if the Convention failed and the British withdrew, the SDLP had decided that they might discuss Ulster independence as a last option if nationalists were given a place in government and there was a guarantee for minority rights.37 The Irish government were so concerned about the British government making a unilateral declaration of intent to withdraw that they contacted their UN contacts to explore options for a UN peacekeeping force in the summer of 1974.38
Loyalist paramilitaries and unionist politicians informed the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs that they believed the British government wanted to withdraw. In fact, the prospect of British withdrawal encouraged leading UDA, DUP, Official Unionist Party and Vanguard representatives to consider negotiated Northern Irish independence.39 Republicans were clearly not deluded about the potential prospect of British withdrawal in 1975. All other major parties involved in the political or military side of the Northern Ireland Troubles believed British withdrawal was a possibility.
