The recent intriguing documentary by Darragh Macintyre, The Secret Army, about Bowyer-Bell’s long lost 1970s propaganda film for the IRA – which was not all it seemed – has reopened the chatter about touts/informers. In particular, it has started the media off again on one of its favourite subjects, assisted by various anti-Sinn republicans, about whether Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were British agents all along.

The Secret Army was a strange title for the IRA in 1971/2. It was far from being a secret army at that time and the film shows it acting quite openly and unmasked, including its commander In Derry, Martin McGuinness. A young female volunteer is also shown skipping to school before later training in the countryside with rifle in hand and delivering car bombs to Belfast city centre. What would the nuns think?

The IRA at this time thought of itself as the army of an alternate state. It was getting the better of the British and Unionists – whose policy of internment had backfired and had instead multiplied its membership and assistance within the Catholic community. Its ability to improvise an insurrection had caught everyone on the hop and it was giving the governments at Stormont and London and their security forces the runaround. It began to look unstoppable and it anticipated the conference table where its demands would be met, more than half-way. Why would it be a secret army?

It was also widely known who its leadership was, both in the North and South. The fact that British Intelligence may have acquired a copy of the film and did not arrest Martin McGuinness seems beside the point. It had to capture him first, for one thing, by smashing down the barriers and entering the no go areas controlled by the IRA. And even when 25,000 troops were used to do this, later in 1972, I seem to remember Captain Paddy Ashdown, of the British Army, saying how he had spent many months hunting for its commander in Derry before visiting Martin’s mother and conceding defeat and leaving his best regards to the mother of a gallant soldier.

The media, who are people of the moment, don’t seem to remember any of this these days. The past is really a different country to them.   

The fact that Adams and McGuinness were allegedly senior in the IRA when 3 very significant events occurred – the assassination of Lord Mountbatten in 1979, the Brighton bombing of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party Conference in 1984 and the mortar bombing of the British Cabinet in Downing Street IN 1991 – is a bit of a fly in the ointment for the argument that they were British agents all along. If it were true it would seem to suggest that British Intelligence were prepared to sacrifice members of the Royal Family, Prime Minister Thatcher and the British Cabinet to protect their assets in the IRA!

A much more reasonable explanation to all of this appeared in the last few weeks.

The most senior MI5 officer in Northern Ireland told Margaret Thatcher that a political initiative by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness should be “a development to be encouraged”, according to a new book. ‘Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice in Northern Ireland’ by Henry Hemming. David Ranson, who was Director and Co-Ordinator of Intelligence, expressed his view in a letter to the Prime Minister in 1981 following secret negotiations between the British security services and the Provisionals to try to end the H-Block hunger strike. Hemming found the correspondence in the National Archives in Kew.

Hemming believes that, although unsuccessful in ending the hunger strike, the talks led the British to believe that the IRA leadership could lead the organisation to a compromise peace and an abandonment of the armed struggle:

“A radical idea had washed up on the shores of MI5… Some of the intelligence officers working on Northern Ireland had begun to wonder if it might be in Britain’s interests for Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams to remain in control of the IRA. By 1981, some MI5 officers had begun to imagine an alternative ending to the Troubles…”

British agents within the Provos, therefore, had a political role:

“You have agents like Willie Carlin in Derry and Denis Donaldson in Belfast who are in Sinn Fein. Rather than trying to slow down the party’s growth, they do the opposite. They work their socks off to move it to respectability and electoral success. They’re not agents provocateurs, they’re agents pacificateurs – helping steer the party towards peace. When Carlin tells an MI5 officer about the voter impersonation orchestrated by Sinn Fein in the 1982 Assembly election, the officer isn’t interested in stopping it. Instead, he tells him McGuinness must be elected “whatever it takes”. So, there are people in MI5 who want a bigger and more credible Sinn Fein because that will inevitably mean switching away from the IRA’s armed campaign.”

Hemming does not believe that McGuinness was on British Intelligence’s payroll:

“All the evidence suggests he was never taken on as an agent. He was more important than that. Instead, he was singled out as early as 1981, along with Gerry Adams, as someone with the ability and desire to steer the IRA towards a political settlement. Once this had become clear to the British, the case for taking on either man as an agent fell apart. From a practical, legal and moral point of view, it made more sense to protect them both rather than recruit either one. This explains why attempts to kill each man came to nothing, and why the police were instructed in 1993 not to charge McGuinness in relation to Frank Hegarty’s murder.”

(Hegarty was an informer reportedly promoted in the IRA by McGuinness and put in charge of Libyan arms dumps in Donegal. Hegarty fled to England after his cover was blown by IRA intelligence but missed his home and was encouraged to return (it is claimed) by McGuinness – who was one of three senior IRA men who interrogated him before his subsequent execution).

The present writer tackled this issue around 2 decades ago in the Irish Political Review when there was a flurry of speculation in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement, and then again, about 8 years ago in the book Resurgence: The Catholic Predicament in Northern Ireland (Athol Books).

I think this was in the wake of Peter Mandelson’s suspension of the institutions when Anthony McIntyre had made the following comments about the situation: “Small wonder that the British diplomat Sir David Goodall said of the Good Friday Agreement that ‘it is working almost exactly to plan’.  Who else knew the plot?” (Forthwrite, Spring 2000)

From the start there were dark hints at treachery and collusion between the Republican leadership and the British State from those who opposed the calling off of the War.

It had been, of course, the objective of some elements within the British State to “politicise” the Provos for many years, at least since 1972, as a way of ending the conflict. It had been the objective of other elements to destroy the Republican movement and claim outright victory. The British State is not a monolith, it is multi-faceted and devises many possible policies to pursue its broad objectives, and it knows that there are different ways of skinning a cat.

The vigour of the British State results from the great variety of things, often contradicting each other, that goes on within it. The key is to be prepared for every eventuality – even defeat – if it can gain a rewarding position or save a position for further advantage. The British have never been “all or nothing men.”

It would be safe to say that the preferred option of the British State during the 1970s was to destroy the Republicans as a political force and cobble together a settlement with some compliant Catholics from the SDLP, who would pose no problems for anyone. The second option would have been to reduce the Provos to political insignificance. The third best option would be to politicise them and remove the military threat (mainly to stop bombs going off in Britain) so that they could be dealt with in politics – an art which the British State is immensely skilled at. A final option was to concede and withdraw from Ireland – though not necessarily bringing about Irish unity.

There were occasions in which some people probably toyed with the fourth option (1974/6) but they were rare and discounted quickly. And they would not have necessarily resulted in a Republican victory – much killing and re-partition were far more likely in the circumstances.

It would not be surprising or sinister for a part of British Intelligence to have been the promoters of the third best option – that of grooming the Republican movement for politics.

Over the years it became a common refrain in the British democracy that there could be “no talking to terrorists” and the “evil men of violence.” A consensus was developed between the Parties of State that was rarely challenged. Furthermore, no politicians, who, after all, are merely temporary creatures of Party in Britain – would have had the staying power for such an enterprise, even if they had bothered their heads about it. Willie Whitelaw was the most substantial talent that was applied to the sorting of ‘Northern Ireland’ and he was moved on before his work was complete. It was the 50^th anniversary of his efforts this month. And from then ‘Northern Ireland’ only appeared on the political agenda momentarily when there were great, but short, upsurges of violence there, or the trouble visited the “British mainland” which had carefully excluded ‘Northern Ireland’ three quarters of a century before, for that purpose.

That was the case in the mid-1970s when British politicians made the last concerted effort to tackle the problem. But with the decline of the Republican capacity for escalating the War and their containment by counterinsurgency it went off the British agenda. British politics are about parties winning votes in elections to gain the power to govern and ‘Northern Ireland’ was detached from the party politics of the State on purpose to prevent it interfering in this contest between the essence of the system, Parties of State. With the Republican Army contained and ‘Ulster’ ring-fenced it was business as usual for the British State and Ulster was way down its political agenda – until the next bomb in London or large dose of killing interfered with normal service.

So, the British democracy would have been the last place that a long-term project for a peace settlement would develop and it was much more likely to be found elsewhere within the more permanent, long-standing and stable architecture of the British State.

The intelligence services have much more freedom of action than democratic politicians in the British system. For one thing they are largely beyond democratic control and the short-term hysteria of democracy. They pre-date the British democracy by many centuries – from the time of the Cecils. They represent continuity in the State and are there for both the long-haul and the long-term interest. It is one of their characteristics that they often contain innovative mavericks who have a tendency to “go native” and “think the unthinkable” and start acting more in the interests of those they are supposedly countering than those they are working for (Lawrence of Arabia being a partial example). Their purpose is to “think outside the box” because the politicians, troubled by the headlines, might one day come to them not knowing what to do next and ask them if they have any thoughts about getting out of a damned pickle.

It could be said that in the mid-1980s elements in the Republican Leadership started having the same thoughts as some elements in British intelligence and began working toward a common purpose from different directions. They were coming from different perspectives with differing objectives in mind, but they met within the understanding that a political solution was necessary because a military one was not on.

There was, in other words, a confluence of interest.

The present writer remembers Martin McGuinness’s fiery, uncompromising speech at the 1986 Ard Fheis. I sat just below the podium as he gave it, having been invited there as a guest to it and having a ringside seat. If I remember correctly McGuinness said there would be no winding down of the armed struggle until the British were driven out of Ireland. He accused the previous leadership of having been taken in by the Brits and having disorganised the freedom struggle as a consequence. He did not sound like a man who was convinced of a peace strategy at that stage. I believe it was not until around 1990 that he became convinced that a peace strategy was necessary and not until 1993 that he thought the British were likewise inclined.

The Gerry Adams/Fr. Reid/Charlie Haughey dialogue took place sometime in 1986 and Fr. Reid communicated, in November 1986, to Haughey the basis on which the IRA campaign could end. Hume/Adams talks only began in 1988, after the Enniskillen bombing. From there on there was much persuading to be done to make a peace strategy reality. 

British Intelligence and its special forces played out a shadow war with the Provos in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but were probably convinced of the direction things were heading in.

This is the main thing that came out of the Peter Taylor television series, ‘Brits,’ – that from 1974 onwards, the running of British State policy in ‘Northern Ireland’ was effectively ceded by the government to the security services.  The democracy began washing its hands of the mess after the failure of 1974. And, when this fact is taken into account, a lot of the subsequent developments up to the present day become more understandable. 

It might seem improbable, and the stuff of conspiracy theories, that politicians would abandon power and responsibility to the ‘securocrats’ in important affairs of State. But, when one considers that the British political parties have no electoral interest in ‘Northern Ireland’ and have made it a detached part from their body politic for the best part of a century, it becomes apparent why they despaired of it themselves and handed responsibility for it over to those who had more experienced in non-domestic and colonial environments.

The key figure in political dialogue between British Intelligence and Republicans was Michael Oatley of MI6. Oatley was instrumental in the talks leading up to, and during, the 1975 IRA truce. Later, when the Government policy of criminalising Republican prisoners ran into crisis in the H-Blocks in 1980, he came up with a functional settlement of the first Hunger-Strike, which should have averted the second one.  And he re-emerged to see through the process which put an end to the War in the early 1990s.

Interestingly, on the Taylor programme, he ridiculed the demand for a formal IRA arms handover as “meaningless” and “politically counter-productive”. Decommissioning only mattered in substance and there was to be not truck with symbolism to butter up Trimble.

Where would the British State be without people like Oatley? 

So what if the British had indeed successfully moulded a compromising Irish Republican leadership. Quelle surprise! That is what the British attempted everywhere they have ever been in the world when they were forced to into a process of disengagement.  Usually, there was a struggle, and then power was handed over by the Imperialists to the element that had proved itself dominant in the course of the anti-imperialist struggle. The British then did their best to ensure the new regime became their friends so that maximising the British interest could be resumed. Even with Robert Mugabe they nearly succeeded – if it wasn’t for Tony Blair.

In ‘Northern Ireland’ all the previous moulds had failed. The Stormont Unionist one after fifty years, the Unionist-SDLP of Sunningdale one after a few months, and the British-Irish Government one of the Anglo-Irish Agreement after a few years.

If the Republican movement could engage with Protestants and make politics work over a couple of decades, development towards a unitary state could not be ruled out.  And surely that was in Britain’s long-term interest, and is what its security services, which handled affairs in this area, had been working toward for the last number of years. If it could not, ‘Northern Ireland’ would continue to exist and be employed in its traditional function of exerting leverage over the lost part of Ireland, that went in a direction of independence but might be persuaded to not go too far if it still wants its heart’s desire.

It should now be apparent that there was some superior force at work shepherding the deal that resurrected the institutions, through the instrument of Jeffrey Donaldson, while at the same time preparing to ditch the asset once it was got across the line. This was a very delicate process, handled by some force with the technology, secrecy and wherewithal to achieve a significant feat for a British Government, not known for its competence.

Do the media seriously suggest this was the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who apparently only knew of the allegations once the deal had been done, when it was presented to them on a plate by persons so far undisclosed?