by Thomas Leahy
when you look at the figureheads for the republican movement and the idea that informers were significantly planting ideas to move republicans towards non-violence, it does not seem to fit that the informers influenced these men … The republican super-tanker was heading in a certain direction anyway. I do not think there was a cunning little guy in the engine room that was adjusting the direction.235
Conclusion
This book began by outlining the revelations surrounding senior IRA and Sinn Féin informers that emerged after 2003, including the cases of Stakeknife and Donaldson. Based on the available evidence, I suggest that neither these nor other aspects of the intelligence war influenced republican armed or political strategy to any great extent during the conflict. Admittedly, it remains unclear whether Stakeknife and Donaldson will be the last senior republican informers to be unmasked. Somewhat unsurprisingly, political opponents of the Provisional republican movement believe more revelations of senior informers will emerge. During a debate at Stormont on collusion in June 2015, Edwin Poots, a DUP minister, said that informers ‘didn’t end at … Scappaticci1 or Denis Donaldson’. ‘I suspect’, he continued, ‘some of those high-level informers could be in places of high authority even as we speak’.2 Republicans have mixed views. Tommy McKearney also believes ‘that other, well-placed Crown agents will have their identities revealed in the course of time’.3 In contrast, one republican activist commented:
we’ve always been given this line, which I think is a myth at this stage, about … the one [informer] at the very top … The whole idea [is] that Scappaticci … or Denis Donaldson was thrown to the dogs in order to protect a higher source … It’s almost like a John le Carré novel.4
We cannot say whether other senior agents or informers will be discovered. Having said that, I am confident that my arguments will withstand any future revelations.
The British state used the intelligence war to try to reduce republican armed activity over time to an ‘acceptable level’. The British state felt that containing IRA activity would assist constitutional nationalists and unionists in reaching a political agreement. The British government followed this objective between 1969 and June 1972, between July 1972 and May 1974, and between 1976 and 1989. Even when the British government wanted to include Sinn Féin in a political settlement, the intelligence campaign continued. Alongside backchannel talks, the intelligence war tried to get republicans to end their armed activities. The British state followed this dual-approach strategy between mid-1974 and 1975, and 1989 to 1998.
The majority of evidence suggests that the intelligence war did not influence the IRA or Sinn Féin towards ceasefires to any great extent during the conflict. By June 1972, the intelligence services had made very little progress against the IRA. The IRA called a ceasefire in 1972 primarily because they held the military advantage. The republican leadership felt that they could get significant concessions towards Irish unity in talks. Chapter 5 argued that infiltration and surveillance of the IRA had increased in Belfast by 1975. Nonetheless, the IRA remained resilient and expanded its activities elsewhere across Northern Ireland and England between July 1972 and December 1975. The IRA’s prolonged cessation in 1975 was primarily motivated by British intermediaries suggesting that the British government wanted a form of political withdrawal from Northern Ireland. The republican leadership believed that they could negotiate a British withdrawal through talks.
The current historiography has overemphasised the role of the intelligence war in influencing IRA cessations in 1994 and 1997. The Belfast IRA did suffer significant infiltration at times, and faced a range of electronic intelligence and surveillance measures. But the Belfast Brigade persisted in causing instability within Northern Ireland’s capital between 1976 and 1994. Their campaign was partly aided by the cellular structure used after 1975, which helped unearth some agents and informers in IRA units in the city. The fear of damaging Sinn Féin’s electoral prospects by using heavy weaponry or substantial bombs on a frequent basis that could have killed many civilians in the narrow city streets tied the hands of the Belfast IRA to some extent between 1981 and 1998.5
In Derry City, the IRA did experience some operational difficulties because of infiltration and surveillance. But on the political side, the SDLP dominated local council elections there and attracted investment into the city. The Derry City IRA could not have afforded the political fallout that would have ensued if they had recommenced a bombing campaign there in the 1990s, as this would have targeted their potential support base.6 The IRA’s units in south Down and east Tyrone were facing setbacks because of intelligence leaks by the 1990s. The SAS also inflicted significant damage to the East Tyrone IRA between May 1987 and February 1992. But in rural areas such as north Armagh, south Armagh and Fermanagh, the IRA’s campaign persisted into the 1990s. The South Armagh IRA even assisted the IRA’s high-profile bombing campaign in England during the 1990s because of their resistance to infiltration and their expertise. The intelligence war did not have a significant impact on the decisions of many IRA units to cease their campaigns in 1994 and 1997.
Various factors contributed to the IRA’s decision to call ceasefires in 1994 and 1997. A crucial one was that the IRA lacked a majority of support from nationalists across Ireland. This electoral stagnation prompted republican leaders to try to create a political compromise from at least 1983. Continuing IRA activity and Sinn Féin’s electoral mandate in Northern Ireland helped encourage the SDLP, the Irish government and, eventually, the British government to search for a political solution involving republicans.7 At the same time, the inability of Sinn Féin to win a majority of the nationalist vote across the island of Ireland convinced republican leaders that there was no more to gain from armed conflict.8 In 1994, once the British government would concede no more concessions before an IRA cessation took place, republicans called a ceasefire. The republican leadership sought multiparty talks and tried to use the pan-nationalist alliance to extract the maximum concessions possible towards fulfilling republican objectives by 1994.
The British state’s failure to contain IRA activity and support at an ‘acceptable level’ throughout the conflict led to the British government’s attempts to include republicans in peace talks. The peace process was not solely about the British state pushing and pulling republicans into talks.9 In fact, and this is the crucial point, it was the Irish people who gradually encouraged the republican movement towards peace.10 They did so by not voting for Sinn Féin in large numbers before the 1990s. During the peace-process years, they did so again by increasing their support for Sinn Féin when the movement was heading towards a permanent cessation. In the words of Gerry Adams in 1989, what mattered to republican leaders by the 1980s was not maintaining tactics for traditional reasons but instead ‘the primacy of politics’.11 If the IRA’s campaign was holding back political progress for Sinn Féin, the implication was that it had, at the very least, to be refined or reconsidered altogether in the leadership’s opinion. This book has detailed the growing evidence that the republican leadership recognised the importance of increasing political support in order to move their campaign for Irish unity forward from the 1980s. Any factor preventing a forward political march towards the ultimate objective of Irish unity was reconsidered.
Whilst the Belfast Brigade did face operational difficulties caused by the intelligence war at times, particularly between 1973 and 1975, these setbacks did not prevent that brigade from running a persistent low-level campaign. The IRA kept the city on high alert up until the 1990s and prevented normality returning. The cell structure was crucial to the IRA’s survival in Belfast after 1975 and its advantages have been underestimated in many academic studies. Furthermore, the decline in IRA activity in Belfast from the late 1970s was not solely a result of infiltration. More influential factors included the IRA leadership’s desire to avoid numerous civilian casualties damaging Sinn Féin’s electoral prospects, a risk that was ever-present in heavily populated city areas.12
Even if Belfast struggled at times, many rural units and the IRA in England regularly caused financial and physical damage to the British state. Outside Newry and east Tyrone, the rural IRA was a persistent threat to the security forces. These units were difficult to infiltrate, monitor, ambush and apprehend. Many rural units appear to have avoided significant infiltration because of their ability to evade arrest in the Irish Republic, and because units such as the South Armagh IRA were risk-averse. English units also seemed secure against intelligence activities throughout most of the conflict. The secretive nature of the IRA leadership meant that those they selected for English units were unknown to most volunteers.
An important point for further research is that we should not underestimate how vital rural units were to the IRA’s campaign. I suggest that many rural units were fundamental in driving the organisation’s armed campaign by the 1990s. These units allowed the IRA to evade containment elsewhere, supplied materials and volunteers for the mainland attacks in the 1990s and provided the space needed to inflict numerous casualties in single attacks against the security forces, all of which made them a consistent threat to the British Army and RUC. Investigating the course of the conflict outside of Belfast is essential. Ó Dochartaigh emphasised in his study of the origins of the conflict in Derry in 2005, that ‘the simple presentation of local detail can … puncture general assumptions. It can completely disrupt the accepted chronology of events and subvert theories which supposedly apply to the whole.’ Understanding the regional struggle between the IRA and British state can ‘fill in many of the gaps in our understanding’.13 This book, by its ‘presentation of local detail’ outside Belfast, has ‘punctured general assumptions’ about the success of the intelligence war against the IRA. It is hoped that this research has contributed as an example that fulfils the general call by Stathis N. Kalyvas for studies that overcome the prevalent ‘urban bias’ and focus on urban insurgent groups, a focus that can lead to inaccuracies relating to the reasons for a conflict and a peace process emerging.14 Further research on local reasons for the acceptance (or the rejection) of the peace process by republicans is important. In the words of Ó Dochartaigh:
The [republican] movement was always heavily dependent on strongly localized networks from which it drew both material support and legitimacy. The national leadership was not in a position simply to command ground-level activists to pursue a course of action that they strongly opposed.15
The evidence provided has demonstrated that leading republicans (including informers such as Donaldson) did not have unrestricted access to all IRA units and could not simply command them to pursue particular strategies.
This book suggests that we risk underestimating the strength of IRA units by overlooking IRA activities that did not lead to deaths. I have attempted to compare a range of IRA activities with suspected and known intelligence operations against them in various areas. It seems that the intelligence war’s impact has been unduly emphasised in many areas. Investigating the range of IRA activities across Ireland is essential to help us to understand the intensity and type of conflict that emerged in different regions.
Divisions within the state have been a significant theme in this book. There were divisions at times between the intelligence and security services, including the FRU, the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, MI5 and RUC Special Branch. The success or failure of each of these organisations in their efforts to contain the IRA contributed to their rise or fall in the intelligence network. Chapter 9 detailed how the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s failure to stop persistent IRA attacks in England by the 1990s led to MI5 taking over control of intelligence operations in the UK mainland. The FRU and RUC Special Branch also accuse each other of concealing intelligence at times. The Tasking and Co-Ordinating Groups (TCGs) demonstrated that there could be effective intelligence sharing on other occasions and that this could be used to target the IRA. Nevertheless, the complex intelligence system in Northern Ireland, which sometimes lacked clarity as to who the lead agency was, and in which there was no standard practice on intelligence sharing, was a contributing factor in the emergence of reforms after 1998. In 2007 MI5 took over the lead role in national security and intelligence work in Northern Ireland.16 The reforms that emerged suggest that the intelligence services themselves and British government did not see the intelligence structures as adequately equipped for the future. Admittedly, turf wars between intelligence agencies are not unique to the British intelligence efforts against the IRA. Amy B. Zegart explains how a combination of tensions between US intelligence agencies and a disorganised structure with little direction from the US government led to mistakes in dealing with the jihadist threat, with horrific consequences in 2001.17 A more centralised and efficient system of intelligence cooperation led by the UK government now exists to counter the activity of dissident violent republican groups. British and Northern Irish intelligence agencies have learnt lessons from the chaotic structure of the intelligence network during the Troubles.
There were also divisions between civil servants and ministers throughout the conflict. Disagreements emerged over topics such as whether to talk to the IRA or whether to use the intelligence gathered primarily for eroding the organisation’s armed capacity. The policy adopted depended very much on the preference of the key ministers and civil servants involved in Northern Irish affairs at that time. This includes the UK prime minister, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State and the Permanent Secretary of the Northern Ireland Office in particular. If any of these actors wished to engage in dialogue with the IRA, it generally happened regardless of any resistance from other ministers and civil servants. One example of this took place during the Harold Wilson government in 1974 and 1975, when Sir Frank Cooper, Merlyn Rees and Wilson initiated talks with paramilitary groups despite some concerns from others. If these key ministers and civil servants rejected talks with the IRA, policy focused on isolating republicans from political life and containing IRA activity instead. This latter approach was prevalent during many years of the Heath and Thatcher governments, despite some civil servants gathering open-source intelligence to show that republican leaders might be moving towards a political compromise. The prime minister in particular had considerable influence over policy towards republicans in Northern Ireland. The willingness of the IRA leadership and grass-roots to negotiate also influenced whether talks could occur.
Each British government’s political and military policy towards the IRA seems to fit their pattern of behaviour towards violent and protesting groups in the UK mainland at the time. The Heath and Thatcher governments rejected political dialogue with republicans for many years, partly because of continuing IRA activities. But their governments were also reluctant to engage with disruptive or armed groups in fear of displaying weakness against internal enemies in the UK. Heath and Thatcher primarily used intelligence for short-term advantage against the IRA. The IRA’s persistent campaign and other factors eventually influenced the Heath and Thatcher governments to act on intelligence that suggested republican leaders wanted negotiations. The Blair, Major and Wilson governments took a more long-term approach. They tried to use intelligence to help negotiate peace with the IRA, alongside trying to reduce IRA activities. Blair, Major and Wilson took considerable risks in permitting backchannel talks with republicans whilst the IRA continued its campaign. These British governments did not appear to have foreknowledge of the republican leadership’s long-term strategy. Their decision to talk to republican leaders despite the continuation of IRA activity shows an ability to trust the intelligence received about republican leaders’ desire for peace. Blair, Major and Wilson all took a calculated risk.18 Further research could improve our understanding of how each prime minister behaved in relation to intelligence when dealing with Irish affairs.
According to Frank Foley: ‘[s]tating that they had learned from the mistakes made in Northern Ireland, British officials now affirmed that responses to terrorism had to be “proportionate”, in
order not to exacerbate the problem’. Alongside major security force operations that proved controversial such as Bloody Sunday, certain intelligence operations such as the ‘shoot-to-kill’ incidents appeared to sustain rather than contain or degrade IRA activity.19 Chapters 8 and 9 raised doubts about the effectiveness of special operations and ‘shoot-to-kill’ tactics in deterring further IRA violence. Incidents in which the security and intelligence forces shot unarmed republicans and IRA volunteers in north Armagh and south Armagh seemed at the very least to cement republican support, inspiring further republican activities rather than functioning as a deterrent in these regions. The same argument applies to the ineffectiveness of collusion between the security forces and loyalists in the killing of some republicans and nationalists in areas such as Belfast and north Armagh. An important element in combatting political violence is the need for the state to reduce the potential support for insurgents or paramilitaries in the local communities where they operate.20 In republican heartlands of west Belfast, Derry City, east Tyrone and north Armagh and south Armagh, this did not seem to occur to any great extent.21
This book questions Stakeknife’s effectiveness against republicans during the conflict. Since 2016, there has been an ongoing independent investigation led by former Chief Constable Jon Boutcher of Bedfordshire Police into the ‘alleged activities of the person known as Stakeknife’. In January 2018, the man accused of being Stakeknife was arrested as part of the investigation, although he was released on bail. He denies all allegations.22 Investigations into the activities of agents and informers such as Stakeknife or Brian Nelson, a loyalist informer, illustrate the difficult legacy the intelligence war has left to the UK state following the Troubles.23 The British state’s reputation in Northern Ireland is questioned as a result of such incidents. However, these cases do not seem to have the same impact on Sinn Féin’s electoral appeal. The party’s electoral mandate has increased in both parts of Ireland since 1998. Not all agents and informers tested British legal limits. Donaldson, for instance, does not appear to have been involved in the types of activities that is alleged Stakeknife participated in. Nonetheless, the behaviour of particular agents and informers has led to inquiries and reforms to the intelligence services in Northern Ireland since 1998.
