A Secret History of the IRA

by Ed Moloney

  The principal supporter of this view in the Catholic Church was the second or third most important bishop in the country. Dr. Cahal Daly, who occupied the see of Down and Connor, centered in Belfast, was technically responsible for the spiritual welfare of Gerry Adams and most of the West Belfast IRA. He was, though, as violently opposed to what Adams represented as O Fiaich was critical of British policy in Ireland. Unlike Fitz Gerald, Daly rooted his objections in Catholic theology and moral teaching— namely that the IRA’s armed struggle was a sinful activity and thus abhorrent—but the effect was the same. In one typical onslaught he called the IRA “an evil and barbaric organisation,”34 which should be shunned until such time as its leaders accepted the church’s moral teachings on the use of violence. He regularly urged Catholic voters not to support Sinn Fein.

  Cahal Daly was a formidable opponent of the IRA. Born in County Antrim in 1917, he was ordained in June 1941 and spent most of his early years in the priesthood as an academic. An accomplished linguist and scholar who held separate doctorates in theology and philosophy, Daly had taught Scholastic philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast, for twenty years. When he was elevated to the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois in County Longford, the Catholic Bishop’s Conference was to discover that this thin ascetic figure was possessed of one of the ablest minds in Irish Catholicism. The other bishops soon asked him to compose their pastoral letters, thus giving Daly the opportunity to shape Catholic attitudes to a whole range of social and moral issues during the 1970s and 1980s. “He was streets ahead of the other bishops in intellectual ability,” recorded a contemporary.35 While the Provisionals returned Daly’s hostility with interest—“They cordially detested him,” recalled one of Adams’s closest advisers36—the widespread respect for his intellectual abilities, in Rome and farther afield, meant that his opposition could not be ignored.

  Before he embarked on his initiative, Alec Reid had been careful to secure the approval of the Redemptorist Congregation, both in Ireland and in Rome. Cardinal O Fiaich and Bishop Edward Daly of Derry, an often stringent critic of the IRA who nevertheless argued for dialogue with its leaders, agreed to write him letters of comfort, stating that his proposed talks with Adams had their approval. Armed with these letters, Reid won over his superiors. But he needed more. Constitutionally the Redemptorists were independent of Bishop Cahal Daly, even though the Clonard Monastery and their retreat house, St. Gerard’s in North Belfast, both later used as venues for peace talks, lay within Daly’s diocese of Down and Connor. The Irish Redemp torists answered to their superiors in Dublin and Rome, not to Down and Connor, but nevertheless the situation was awkward. After all, they were proposing church involvement in a process of which their local bishop heartily disapproved. In the councils of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the Southern bishops had left the issue to their Northern colleagues to debate and decide, but if support for the enterprise was to be found in Rome, Reid would have to have to answer Daly’s argument. Reid needed a heavyweight to counter Cahal Daly.

  He found him in the shape of a fellow Southern Irish Redemptorist, Father Sean O’Riordan, from Tralee in County Kerry. Just a year older than Cahal Daly, O’Riordan matched the Belfast bishop in academic prowess, in Reid’s view. The professor of moral and pastoral theology at the Redemptorist-run Alphonsian Academy in Rome, O’Riordan also held a double doctorate, in theology and in history. A liberal theologian, he was a scholar of world renown who together with other academics in the Alphonsian Academy had crafted key documents for the Second Vatican Council.

  By 1983 Reid had recruited O Fiaich to his cause but his attempts to persuade Cahal Daly to join his enterprise foundered.37 All this brought the division within Irish Catholicism out into the open. In December 1983 Adams had written to Daly asking for a meeting. “During the last 12 months,” he wrote, “a number of people [had] suggested to me that you and I should have a meeting and that discussions between us would be of benefit to the people of West Belfast.”38 Adams said that the unnamed intermediaries—meaning Alec Reid—had discussed with Daly the possibility of a meeting, and he had expected to hear from him. In the absence of an approach from the bishop, he was making himself “available” if Daly was interested.

  Daly replied and marshaled the moral argument against dialogue. Adams’s membership of Sinn Fein and that party’s “unambiguous support” for the IRA’s violence was “completely contrary” to the church’s moral teaching, he wrote. If there was a change of heart on Adams’s part, he would be glad to meet, but otherwise, no, the meeting could not happen.39 In January 1984 Adams responded, “Whilst accepting your desire for confidentiality I cannot, in honesty, accept any other conditions, no more than I would expect you to accept conditions set by me. We all have a duty to seek ways to resolve the present conflict. This can only be done by means of dialogue and by an honest and frank exchange of views.”40

  Daly’s reservations about the enterprise were not just theological. He also distrusted the Provos and feared they would deliberately leak news of their meeting to cause him embarrassment and weaken his influence with unionists. When Adams made their correspondence public in April 1984, it seemed his doubts had been well founded. “He was not hostile to what was happening, nor did he ever try to stop it, but he wanted nothing to do with it himself,” explained a source close to Daly.41 Seven years later, when Cahal Daly succeeded Tomas O Fiaich to the archdiocese of Armagh and was able to learn much more about the years of secret diplomacy, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the process. But in 1983 and 1984 his views were fixed. Nonetheless, the correspondence with Adams had set out the theological case against dialogue; the Redemptorists were obliged to respond, and they looked to O’Riordan for an adequate reply.

  The opportunity came a year later, in January 1985, when again Adams and Daly clashed publicly. In a speech Daly had castigated the IRA’s campaign as immoral and counterproductive, and in response Adams published an open letter asking the bishop what his alternative to violence was. Adams posed a series of questions to Daly, and it was to these that O’Riordan addressed himself, as one figure familiar with the debate recalled. “Adams had asked Daly that if he was advocating a peaceful struggle, then was he ready to spell out an alternative, and O’Riordan basically said that Adams was justified in asking the question,” the source said. “He unequivocally backed Reid’s opinion that the church should talk to anyone and everyone and had a duty to help in the process of devising an alternative to armed struggle. He also welcomed a remark by Adams that he himself would be pleased to consider any alternative to armed struggle, and that was an important thing to say.”42 O’Riordan tape-recorded his analysis in Rome and sent it to Clonard, where it was transcribed. Whenever Reid needed to recruit politicians or other influential figures to his enterprise, O’Riordan’s document was at hand to strengthen his case.

  In January 1985 the Irish peace process was just over two years old, and by this stage the Vatican was being kept fully informed by Cardinal O Fiaich of the progress of the dialogue with Gerry Adams. One channel of communication was the papal nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, a figure whose sympathy for Irish republicanism was a constant source of friction between the government in London, which resented Alibrandi’s perceived interference in Northern Ireland’s affairs, and the Vatican. Valuable though Alibrandi’s support was, the Redemptorists and O Fiaich had more direct access to the Vatican through a contact who was often at Pope John Paul II’s elbow.43 Archbishop Justin Rigali had been talent-spotted early on in his church career as a potential Vatican highflier and by 1985 had spent virtually all his life as a priest in Rome, immersed in the high politics of the church. By that stage he was well placed to shape papal thinking and Vatican policy.

  Born into a devout Catholic family in Los Angeles in 1935 and ordained in 1961, Justin Rigali was, at just thirty-five years of age, appointed director of the English-language section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. The job description meant h
e liaised on behalf of the papacy with the church in Britain, Ireland, the Antipodes, and North America, all powerful and wealthy outposts of Catholicism. His elevation brought him right into the inner councils of the papacy. He became English-language translator for Pope Paul VI during his trips abroad, and when John Paul II ascended the throne of Saint Peter, it was Rigali who organized and accompanied the new pontiff on his many international trips, including his visit to Ireland in September 1979. It was during this journey that Rigali and Cardinal O Fiaich became friends, and as his influence with John Paul II grew, so the Clonard Redemptorists could be more certain of a friendly reception for Alec Reid’s diplomacy. Rigali, like John Paul II a theological conservative and a strong supporter of the pro-life lobby, rose irresistibly through the Vatican hierarchy, each move strengthening his influence in papal circles. During the years 1985 to 1990 he sat on no fewer than seven Vatican commissions; in December 1989 he was named secretary of the Congregation of Bishops and a year later secretary of the College of Cardinals, one of the most powerful posts in Rome. In 1994, as a reward for his years of loyal service and as a possible precursor to the red cardinal’s hat, John Paul II made him archbishop of St. Louis, Missouri. The esteem in which the pope held Rigali was illustrated in January 1999 when he chose St. Louis as the only venue for the U.S. leg of his trip to the Americas.

  Rigali gave the fledgling Irish peace process vital access to the papacy, but, no less important, he also opened doors to the politically powerful U.S. church, especially to those in the hierarchy of Irish-American ancestry. “Rigali was a key man in influencing people like Cardinal O’Connor and Cardinal Law,” recalled one church source. “The Americans were involved long before Clinton came on the scene.”44 Cardinals John O’Connor of New York and Bernard Law of Boston both received their red hats at around the same time, in 1984 and 1985, respectively, just as Alec Reid’s enterprise was picking up speed. Both men were to play crucial parts in persuading U.S. political opinion of Gerry Adams’s bona fides and greatly assisted his efforts to woo and then win over important figures in corporate Irish-America.

  BY 1985 AND 1986 small glimpses of the secret diplomacy were occasionally visible, and with hindsight it is possible to discern the direction in which the talks were heading at this time. Three elements went together to make up the embryonic peace strategy. One was a proposal to forge an alliance of Irish nationalists which would replace the IRA’s violence as the cutting edge of the republican struggle. The second was the idea that a conference should be held to which all shades of opinion in Ireland would be invited and which would hammer out a political settlement. The third was a declaration of neutrality from the British, a statement that said they had no desire to impose a settlement on anyone in Northern Ireland and would be content to accept whatever political representatives could agree in negotiation. Taken together, the peace strategy outlined a way in which Adams could accept the principle of consent in relation to the political future of Northern Ireland while being able to say that none of the core republican doctrines had been abandoned or compromised.

  The tip of the iceberg soon became visible. Gerry Adams first broached the idea of pan-nationalism at Sinn Fein’s November 1984 Ard Fheis when he called for “a firm, united and unambiguous demand from all Irish Nationalist parties” for an end to the unionist veto. This he said would create a new situation in which future arrangements could be worked out in “business-like negotiations” with all the parties in Ireland.45 A few months later, in February 1985, during the course of a radio current affairs program, Adams asked the SDLP leader, John Hume, for talks to establish “a united nationalist approach” to the British.46 In March he again called for “a united and dogmatic Irish nationalist approach” to the North.47 These were all clues to the direction of the still-secret diplomacy. Cardinal O Fiaich meanwhile was treading similar ground. In January 1984 the Catholic primate urged the convening of a political forum either in Belfast or in Dublin where “representatives of all sides” could meet to discuss the future of the North.48 Three times in 1985 he called on the British to indicate that they would not be staying in Northern Ireland forever and in the meantime to use their good offices to “try to bring Protestants and Catholics together.”49 It is possible to discern in his remarks the germ of what soon became recognizably the Adams peace strategy.

  It was all very tentative stuff, and only those who were privy to what was going on behind the scenes could be aware of its real significance. The rest of Ireland, distracted by the ferocity of the IRA’s campaign, dismissed the comments either as irrelevant or as deliberate distractions. The idea that the SDLP, Fianna Fail, or any other constitutional nationalist party in Ireland would want to link up with the Provisionals at that time or that the British would somehow agree to such far-fetched proposals was simply unimaginable.

  It was also an impossible concept for most Provisional activists and supporters to grasp, at grassroots or even at leadership level. The common IRA/Sinn Fein view of the SDLP and Fianna Fail, the hatred at the core of their relationship, had been expressed in a bitter statement by the IRA prisoners at the end of the 1981 hunger strike—the same statement that had so bitterly excoriated the Catholic Church. Attitudes had changed little since then. Fianna Fail and the other Southern parties, the prisoners had said, were “accessories to the murder” of the ten hunger strikers for failing to confront Thatcher, while the SDLP was merely “an amalgamation of middle class Redmonites, devoid of principle, direction and courage.”50 The enmity between the Provos and the Irish establishment was deep and seemingly unbridgeable.

  Even if Gerry Adams had wanted to confide in his senior colleagues, it is highly questionable that he would have received a sympathetic hearing. Most IRA activists at this point believed unwaveringly in the armed struggle and tolerated electoral politics only because it seemed to offer, as Adams and others had told them it would, a way of increasing logistical support for the IRA. Had they thought that the political path down which Adams had taken them would lead into negotiations that threatened to dilute dearly held republican beliefs, most would have seen it as treachery.

  So it was that the diplomacy of Alec Reid and Gerry Adams was kept a tightly guarded secret even from the IRA Army Council. Although Adams was slowly to win over key members of the council to his strategy with the passage of time and did confide in the small group of advisers around him in Belfast, his enterprise with Reid was never discussed or formally approved by the body charged with deciding IRA policy and strategy.51

  What the reaction of IRA leaders would have been had they been fully aware of the ideological territory being traversed by the still-secret peace process can only be guessed at. The logic of the entire initiative was, of course, to produce an alternative to the IRA’s armed struggle. The goal of Reid’s diplomacy, the reason for its existence, was to achieve a cease-fire, and not long after it was launched, that possibility was being actively canvassed, as one senior Protestant cleric remembered:

  It was around 1983 or 1984 that I became aware through Alec Reid that Adams was asking three questions, a sort of testing-of-the-water exercise in my view. The first question was “What would the parameters of a political settlement be if there was an IRA cease-fire?” Second, “Would the unionists and the British just pocket the cease-fire and return to the trenches?” and third, “How influential would people like me be with unionists? How proactive was I prepared to be?”52

  THE REID-ADAMS INITIATIVE had gotten off to a moderately encouraging start. Adams himself was clearly willing to discuss an alternative to the IRA’s violence, and to contemplate huge ideological shifts. There was no shortage of Catholic Church figures, at very senior levels, eager to assist him in his difficult journey. But the real problems lay elesewhere, in persuading and cajoling and otherwise moving the Provisional support base in the same direction. By the mid-1980s, however, other events were combining to make that task a little less daunting than it appeared.

  The Provisional
s’ foray into electoral politics had been a triumph at the start, but Sinn Fein soon discovered that this new weapon was a two-edged sword. As long as electoral support for Sinn Fein was growing, as it was in the first two years, everything was fine, but once the vote started to slip and falter, this would be bound to be seen as a verdict on the IRA’s armed struggle. Sinn Fein’s electoral strategy made each poll a popularity or unpopularity contest for the IRA. The election of Adams to the West Belfast Westminster seat in the British general election of 1983 was the high point of the strategy. A total of nearly 103,000 people voted for Sinn Fein in that poll, almost 43 percent of the nationalist electorate, and the party came close to a second seat when Danny Morrison lost by just 80 or so votes in Mid-Ulster to the Paisleyite cleric Willie McCrea. But after that, it was a gentle but unstoppable slide downward. The Sinn Fein vote was being pinched in two directions. The novelty wore off for many Sinn Fein voters, and it became more and more difficult to cajole them into the polling booths, while the IRA’s continuing violence put a natural limit on Sinn Fein’s appeal. There was a broad swath of Catholic voters who just would not vote for Sinn Fein while the IRA killed and bombed. In the 1984 Euro election the SDLP leader, John Hume, easily outpolled Danny Morrison, and the SF share fell to 37 percent of the nationalist vote. A slight rise to 39 percent was recorded in the council elections the following year, but then two results, a series of Westminster by-elections in 1986 and the full British general election in 1987, saw the SF vote settle at around the 35 percent mark. As the SF vote dipped, Adams and his allies slowly but surely put more and more of the blame on botched IRA operations, which, they said, sapped support for Sinn Fein. And as the pressure grew on the IRA to refine, dilute, and ameliorate its campaign, it became easier to sell the idea of a political alternative.