A Secret History of the IRA

by Ed Moloney

  Adams scrupulously honored the terms of the Clinton visa. There were no efforts to fund-raise for the republican cause during his two-day trip and no public references to the armed struggle, much to the disappointment of some of the hundreds of IRA supporters who had turned up to hear him speak. “I come here with a message of peace,” he told the crowds gathered at the Sheraton Hotel for his only speech. Just two public figures were permitted to join him on the platform, the former congressman Bruce Morrison and the aged and ailing Irish-American lawyer Paul O’Dwyer. No one from Noraid was allowed on the stage, least of all the group’s longtime spokesman Martin Galvin. This was perhaps the most profound of all the signals sent during Adams’s two-day sojourn. Noraid had been the backbone of Provisional support in the United States during the war. Unpaid Noraid activists had spent countless hours fund-raising for IRA prisoners, organizing petitions, mounting protests against British policy, and finding jobs and new identities for IRA fugitives in cities along the east coast for the best part of twenty-five years. More secretly, Noraid sympathizers had funneled guns, equipment, and cash to the IRA. Some had gone to jail for their activities. Now they could be forgiven for thinking that Adams had turned his back on them.

  POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES had by mid-1994 been managed and contrived in such a way that the Army Council found it more and more difficult to avoid talking about the terms for a cease-fire. Rejecting the Downing Street Declaration was by this point not an option, while establishment expectation of an IRA cessation in Washington and Dublin had been heightened and, via the Adams visa and the scrapping of section 31, already been partly paid for.

  Adams introduced the idea cautiously, suggesting a short exploratory cessation. This would test the water, he argued, and determine if Dublin was serious about supporting Sinn Fein’s pan-nationalist agenda and also whether or not the British were really prepared to discuss withdrawal. If it failed, if the Irish and British governments were found wanting, the IRA could return to war and nothing would have been lost—in fact the two governments could be blamed for the breakdown. That, at least, was the way the case was put.

  Adams won approval to explore possibilities with Reynolds, and the shuttle diplomacy between Reid, Mansergh, who was still the Irish government’s principal point man on Northern Ireland, and members of the think tank intensified. The manner of these talks signaled another huge shift. The collapse of the talks with the British meant that these negotiations were premised not on the possibility of negotiating British withdrawal, as they traditionally had been, but on the construction of a pan-nationalist alliance with the Dublin government and the SDLP leader, John Hume. This was the core proposal in the lengthy message Father Alec Reid had brought from Gerry Adams to Charles Haughey way back in 1987; it had taken seven years of patient management by Adams and his allies to reach the point where the proposal could become reality.

  Not long after Adams’s return from New York, in February 1994, the think tank began work on producing the strategy paper that would underpin the cease-fire while McGuinness and Kelly, who had both joined the think tank by this stage, negotiated detailed terms with the Reynolds government on behalf of the Army Council, mostly using Father Reid, by now assisted by another Redemptorist, Father Gerry Reynolds, to ferry messages to and from Martin Mansergh. The think tank was now in almost total control of IRA strategy.

  The think tank came up with an acronym for the cease-fire strategy that illustrated better than any other feature of the peace process the ambiguity that underlay the Adams approach. It was called TUAS, but think tank strategists were careful never to spell out in the policy document what the word actually meant. When the strategy document was eventually circulated to the IRA rank and file in the late summer of 1994, activists were told that TUAS stood for Tactical Use of Armed Struggle, and that fitted in perfectly with the assurances given by the leadership that armed struggle was not being abandoned, merely refined so that it could be switched on and off, as circumstances demanded. The explanation given to the grassroots implied that if the cease-fire tactic failed, then armed struggle would resume.

  The other players in the peace process, principally Sinn Fein’s putative nationalist allies, were given the opposite spin. They were told that TUAS stood for Totally UnArmed Strategy and that conveyed the message that Adams and his colleagues on the Army Council were sincere about seeking a cease-fire and really did want to find a way to end the war and enter normal parliamentary politics.

  TUAS was constructed around the notion that a sufficiently strong and effective political consensus could be reached embracing the Dublin government, the SDLP, and Sinn Fein, who would agree on a set of principles and a common negotiating position to take to the British and the unionists. In fact the think tank had to admit that this objective was beyond reach. Neither Dublin nor the SDLP would agree that British sovereignty over Northern Ireland breached the principle of national self-determination or that the wishes of the unionists could be overridden. Nonetheless, the think tank recommended that TUAS be accepted on the grounds that the pan-nationalist bloc could, if expertly controlled, drive a wedge between Britain and the unionists.

  In place of IRA violence, according to the TUAS blueprint, leverage on the British would be applied by the Irish nationalist parties in concert: Sinn Fein, the SDLP, and the Reynolds government. This pressure, said the TUAS strategy, would be augmented by the Irish-American lobby, led by the Clinton White House and supported by corporate and congressional allies. On paper it looked like a formidable combination, but it failed to disguise that the constituent parties had conflicting strategic goals. While the republican side said it sought Irish unity, and British withdrawal, the priority of constitutional nationalists was to see IRA violence ended and stability restored to the island. In that sense their agenda was shared by the British.

  The Clinton White House had its own reasons to get involved in the Northern Ireland peace process. It was popular with Irish-American voters, a not inconsiderable factor, given that Clinton would run for the presidency again in 1996. Northern Ireland also offered Clinton the prospect of at least one foreign policy success during his time in the White House. But the underlying interests of the United States, to achieve stability, were the same as those of the Irish and British governments, as Clinton’s national security adviser Nancy Soderberg told Conor O’Clery: “The truth is we don’t and I don’t know whether there’ll ever be a united Ireland or not. I don’t really care whether there is a united Ireland or not. All I care about is that there not be violence and that the North gets developed economically and politically so that it’s a functioning society.”33

  The pace of activity accelerated during the late spring and early summer of 1994. At Eastertime the Army Council was persuaded to call a three-day cease-fire to mollify Reynolds, who was pressing for more fundamental decisions from the IRA. But the countervailing need to reassure the IRA rank and file led to a series of mortar attacks on Heathrow Airport in March. These were popular with IRA activists but angered Irish-Americans who had argued for the Adams visa. The Heathrow mortars were puzzling. The Army Council was told they had malfunctioned, but republican sources in Belfast suggested to the author at the time that the devices had been doctored to ensure they would not explode. The forensic evidence later supported that explanation.

  Despite the airport attack the negotiations between Reynolds and the McGuinness-Kelly team intensified, and Army Council meetings happened with increasing frequency until at the end they were weekly events. Eventually a fourteen-point proposal was put together by the Irish government and think tank teams and placed in front of the Army Council. If there was a cease-fire, Reynolds said, his government would implement the following initiatives immediately, the details of which can now be revealed for the first time:

  1. Sinn Fein would be treated like any other political party and would not be subjected to harassment or marginalization. To demonstrate the Dublin government’s bona fides, a meeting would be held wi
thin days of the cease-fire announcement between Reynolds, Adams, and Hume;

  2. Within two weeks of the cease-fire Reynolds would meet privately with Adams;

  3. Adams and Reynolds would consult as regularly as required thereafter;

  4. There would be regular consultations between Sinn Fein and the Irish government at all levels as required by events;

  5. There would be regular consultation between the government and Sinn Fein on wider issues, including briefings of Irish government ministers as regularly as required by Sinn Fein representatives on the full spectrum of issues affecting the peace process and Sinn Fein’s constituents;

  6. Arrangements to set up a Forum on Peace and Reconciliation proposed by Reynolds in the Downing Street Declaration would go ahead with immediate discussions on the matter between Sinn Fein and the government;

  7. Sinn Fein would be guaranteed full participation in the Forum;

  8. The ending of all measures aimed at the isolation and marginalization of Sinn Fein and all republicans in general;

  9. Reynolds would set out to persuade the British to scrap all their measures which isolate and marginalize Sinn Fein, including dropping their broadcasting ban;

  10. Reynolds would also set out to persuade the Clinton White House to allow an Army Council representative to visit and win over supporters in the U.S. before news of the cease-fire broke;

  11. Reynolds would set out to persuade the Clinton administration to lift the general visa ban on Sinn Fein members;

  12. Reynolds committed the government to repeal repressive legislation and agree to the speedy release of IRA prisoners;

  13. Reynolds and Hume would press the British to open cross-Border roads, scrap repressive legislation and deal speedily with the question of IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland and British jails;

  14. Reynolds would commit the Department of Foreign Affairs to seek foreign support for the peace strategy especially in the United States and friendly states with ethnic Irish communities.34

  THE POLITICAL TERMS for the cease-fire were being worked out in some detail, and so too were the military provisions. If a cease-fire was called, according to secret terms agreed to by the Army Council, the IRA would stop recruiting, cease all military training, and end targeting activity, that is, halt all actions aimed at gathering intelligence for operational purposes in the South. The same commitments were made in regard to IRA activity in the North. In return, surveillance, arrests, and harassment of IRA members by the security forces, North and South, would cease. The British were well aware of the impending cease-fire and had been party, via various intermediaries, to the negotiations. The notion that the 1994 cease-fire was an affair whose arrangement was confined to the IRA and the Reynolds government, as was claimed afterward, was not strictly true.

  Army Council meetings were characterized not just by endless discussion of these terms but also by growing pressure from Adams on his colleagues to call a cease-fire. As the summer of 1994 advanced, he put forward two major arguments in favor of a cessation. The first was that Reynolds was threatening to remove everything from the table if there was not a cease-fire and, if that happened, republicans would be more isolated and friendless than ever. The second was that Dublin was hinting broadly that the pan-nationalist alliance could be employed to force the British to talk about withdrawal. The IRA, he would say, had little to lose by seeing what might be on the table. If Dublin was wrong, then war could be resumed in more favorable circumstances. Seen from another angle, however, it was clear that the Army Council’s options were being cut off, one by one. It had reached the point where wiggle room on the question of a cease-fire was virtually nonexistent.

  TOWARD THE END of the third week in August 1994, the Army Council gathered at a location in south Donegal to decide whether or not to call the cease-fire. The weeks of debate had ended, and now it was time to make up minds. The proposal—for a four-month, exploratory cessation—was formally put by Gerry Adams and seconded by the Army Council chairman, Martin McGuinness. The debate and argument did not last that long, and soon the vote was taken. Five men were in favor—Adams, McGuinness, Pat Doherty, Joe Cahill, and the South Armagh adjutant of Northern Command—while only Kevin McKenna, the chief of staff, voted against. Slab Murphy abstained. Micky McKevitt and Gerry Kelly, QMG and adjutant general respectively, spoke—McKevitt against the cease-fire, Kelly for it—but neither man could vote.

  Slab had been thrown into confusion by the way the meeting had gone, in particular by Joe Cahill’s behavior. Cahill had given IRA colleagues the impression that he was against a cease-fire. If Cahill voted no, then Slab would follow suit. That would mean the best vote that Adams could get for the cease-fire would be four to three, too narrow a majority to risk going ahead. But during the meeting Cahill suddenly announced his support for the cease-fire proposal; unsure how to respond, Slab decided to sit on the fence and abstain. A five-to-one majority for the cease-fire gave Adams and his allies a comfortable margin.

  Within days Cahill was flying to New York’s JFK Airport in fulfillment of Reynolds’s pledge that a republican figure would be allowed into the United States before the cease-fire became public to settle the fears of IRA activists and supporters on the east coast. His trip was later extended by fifteen days, and he was permitted to visit California and other western states.

  The question of getting a visa for Cahill had been the focus of intense diplomacy for a week or ten days before the Army Council meeting. It had involved the U.S. ambassador to Dublin, Jean Kennedy Smith, Albert Reynolds, the National Security Council, and eventually Clinton himself. The affair puzzled some in the IRA. It was not so crucial that nerves in the United States had to be calmed. The IRA in America had been loyal to the Adams leadership up to then, and it was likely that it would remain so, especially if it became clear that the organization in Ireland stayed united. It had been years since Cahill had visited the United States, and it was unlikely the IRA there would know him that well. There were others who would have carried as much, if not greater, weight with the IRA there. But it was decided that without an assurance that Cahill would get to New York the cease-fire vote in the Army Council might be lost. Inevitably the suspicion took hold in the IRA’s highest reaches that Cahill, who died in July 2004, had been prompted to change his mind with the offer of a lengthy vacation trip to America, a bribe that necessitated frantic diplomacy to obtain him a visa.

  A few days later, on August 31, the formal announcement came. The IRA declared a complete cessation of military operations, starting at midnight that day. There was no time limit attached to the declaration; the four-month limit was kept a tightly guarded secret. Eight months earlier the Army Council chairman, McGuinness, had told the IRA faithful that there would have to be an IRA Convention before a cease-fire could be called and that anything short of a British declaration to withdraw would be unacceptable to the IRA leadership. The IRA had ended its violence, at least for the time being, without either.

  It was without doubt a historic moment in Ireland’s history and was greeted accordingly by the media and political world alike. The long, slow, and complex journey to the cessation had been watched with a mixture of fascination and hope by millions in Ireland and abroad. Few of them could have realized just how long, slow, and complex the odyssey had really been.

  SIXTEEN

  The Sos

  Under the guiding and skilled hand of Gerry Adams, the think tank, and others, the IRA had been ushered into a cease-fire, the first in twenty years, and for Father Reid and the Sinn Fein leader, this culmination of their secret diplomacy was a truly remarkable achievement. A dialogue begun with the kidnapping and killing of UDR Sergeant Thomas Cochrane in 1982 had borne sweet fruit some twelve, patient years later, and the architects of the enterprise could afford to congratulate themselves on what they had done. This cease-fire was qualitatively different from any that preceded it, for it was predicated on a secret set of agreements that, if implemented, would end not
just the Troubles but possibly bring to a conclusion the age-old tradition of armed-struggle republicanism in Ireland. A breakthrough had surely been made, even if there was still a long way to go.

  None of this was at all clear in the heady days of September 1994 as Northern Ireland began to get used to a new way of living. The precise terms of the cease-fire were kept secret, and consequently there was not even agreement on what the IRA cease-fire meant or whether it was supposed to be permanent or short-lived. Irish politicians like Albert Reynolds had been pressing for a permanent cease-fire; otherwise, he said, Sinn Fein would not have a chance of getting into serious political dialogue. And so the language of the IRA cease-fire statement and comments made by senior republican figures like Adams and McGuinness in the ensuing days were anxiously scanned for clues as to the IRA’s real intentions. Republican leaders did their best to reassure the British, Irish, and American political leadership that the cessation was indeed permanent, but it was a difficult exercise, primarily because their rank and file needed to hear quite the opposite message—that the cease-fire was a tentative and tactical move that would be quickly abandoned if it failed to produce results.