ALEX KANE: Why the IRA wasn’t wiped out

Published on Monday 9 January 2012 08:37

THERE has been an interesting little intra-republican spat this week, between Danny Morrison and Richard O’Rawe, about whether the “lives of the last six 1981 hunger strikers could have been saved had an outside committee of senior republicans not overruled the prison leadership’s acceptance of a British offer to end the hunger strike in early July”.

It boils down to this: O’Rawe – who was a Maze inmate at the time – seems pretty convinced that the last six strikers were allowed to starve themselves to death because it suited the political, propaganda and electoral needs of Sinn Fein. It is, of course, an entirely semantic debate, for the first four hunger strikers were allowed to die for precisely those reasons anyway.

There has never been any ambivalence on the IRA’s part when it comes to death. All the ‘volunteers’ were expendable; as were policemen, soldiers, politicians and ordinary civilians. Back in July 1972 the IRA met representatives of the British government in London, beginning what can be described as the ‘gun-in-one-hand-and-back-channel-negotiations-in-the-other’ phase of the campaign. This was later replaced by the ‘armalite-and-ballot-paper’ phase; which, in turn, was replaced with the ‘what-price-we-want-to-extract-from-you-for-decommissioning’ phase.

In other words, 26 years before they signed up to the Good Friday Agreement and took their seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, Sinn Fein was aware that they would almost certainly consider and then opt for an internal, power sharing arrangement with unionists, which would be underwritten by the British and Irish governments. Yet, knowing that to be true, they still continued their terrorism — fully aware that one of the consequences would be loyalist paramilitaries targeting entirely innocent Roman Catholics.

Some of them still try to argue that the necessary changes of unionist mindsets and dismantling of anti-Catholic structures would not have happened had the IRA not continued with the terror. That is, in every sense of the term, bloody nonsense.

The changes in housing allocation, employment rights, mandatory power sharing, local government reform, equality legislation et al, were either completed or well in hand by the late 1970s. The Stormont Parliament had been prorogued in March 1972 and any return to a unionist dominated administration had been ruled out in the autumn of 1972. And none of this had anything to do with the IRA, however much they would have you believe otherwise.

Yet, all of this raises another very interesting question, namely, why did successive British governments refuse to use their very clear military and intelligence superiority to wipe out the IRA? Well, what long term purpose would it have served? History would suggest that republican terrorists, if knocked down, always regroup, rebuild and reappear again further down the line. Indeed, the end of every phase of the armed struggle, from the first day that British troops set foot in Ireland hundreds of years ago, could have been greeted with the conclusion — “they haven’t gone away, you know”.

So, how did you get them to go away? To paraphrase Machiavelli: “sometimes neither death nor shackles will destroy your enemy, so make him believe that he has won”. And as far as British governments were concerned that meant back channel communications with the IRA (which opened within months of the Provisionals emerging) and infiltration of the organisation at just about every level. It also meant convincing Sinn Fein that the only hope they had of Irish unity lay in proving that they could ‘do’ proper politics in the North.

One can obviously question the morality of a strategy which meant that British intelligence was aware of IRA operations and yet chose not to prevent them: but maybe the long term view was that an ‘acceptable level’ of violence would allow Sinn Fein to be steered in another direction.

That direction was towards an answer to the Irish Question – short of unilateral British withdrawal – that all sides could buy into.

Yet, at the same time as the IRA was being infiltrated and Sinn Fein mollycoddled, the British were also making it clear to unionists that any political deal – while it would be built around the constitutional guarantee – would involve sharing power with both nationalists and republicans.

It seems to me that the British wanted a deal which would cover a number of bases: it could be underwritten by Dublin and, if required, the southern electorate; the IRA could be persuaded to decommission and stand down; Sinn Fein could be persuaded to play a key part in governing Northern Ireland; unionists could be persuaded to co-govern with republicans; and both communities would be content to rub along together in the absence of a violent background. And, most important of all, the British could leave Northern Ireland to get on with it, promising to ‘facilitate’ whichever constitutional preference the majority opted for — and all the while fairly certain that the era of an ongoing armed struggle had come to an end.

Now then, if that is a reasonable reading of British policy since the late 1960s, it is clear that the IRA were the big losers. They have been neutered and Sinn Fein has been neutralised. Put bluntly, they are no better off now than they were in 1969. The Brits are still here. Unionism is still here. The border is still here. The noise in favour of Irish unity is at a pretty low level. And let’s not forget that British-Irish relations are probably better now than they have been for almost a century — which is, I think, another bonus for unionism.

On the other hand, if my reading of British policy is wrong then it raises a whole other set of questions about how the IRA and Sinn Fein got themselves suckered into their present position. They are still on the losing side, with nothing to suggest that an independent Ireland is one dot closer than it was in 1969, 1921, 1800 or, indeed, 1171.

Members of the Provisional IRA have been killed, interrogated, and imprisoned: and their organisation was permanently infiltrated by British agents. Today, some of those same members of the Provisional IRA are being paid by the British to govern this part of the United Kingdom: all done with the approval of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness – the same two men who first met the British government’s representatives way back in 1972.

Hmm? Go figure!

Comments

There are 19 comments to this article

Order by:

Page 1 of 2

Neill

Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 12:15 PM

Alex, I enjoyed the analysis. I regret you didn't interrogate the DUP's position more thoroughly (another article perhaps?). Their rhetoric has been proved to be empty. Their political machinations have left them emasculated and unable to govern. Their moral agenda has been squandered and their currency of invective misspent. Sammy has transmogrified into a sort of beneficent uncle and the First Minister's former energy for polemic has been transmuted into impotent little statements about shared education. It is hard not to subscribe to a romance in which British Intelligence has been able to manoeuvre all former protagonists of "the Troubles" into a cul-de-sac in which they will spend the rest of their careers grouching about their neighbours as part of a Neighbourhood Watch initiative. Just what information is British Intelligence holding about all of them?

ALEX KANE: Why the IRA wasn’t wiped out

Comments

Neill

Dan Digger

Alex. Kane

belfastview

Starlight85

SeamusNapoleon

Alex. Kane

belfastview

RedBranch

Alex. Kane

G_E_F

Alex. Kane

RedBranch

Alex. Kane

Cruimh

Your view

Top stories

Community

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Property

Search for a house

Weather for Belfast

Home

Services & Offers

Send to a friend

Report

Weather for Belfast