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'If
it's true that Stakeknife was the head of [IRA] internal
security, then it's a major coup for the British.
It would mean they have been steering republican strategy
for years….' (1)
So
said Anthony McIntyre, a former member of the Provisional
IRA, in the wake of Sunday's revelations that 'Stakeknife'
- the British military's top mole in the IRA, who
has been the subject of speculation for years - is
allegedly one Alfredo Scappaticci.
Scappaticci
was reportedly the deputy head of the Provisional
IRA's internal security team from the late 1970s through
to the ceasefire of 1994. This would have made him
central to the IRA - responsible for rooting out alleged
informers and for scrutinising every new recruit who
entered the IRA's ranks. At the same time, he was
apparently passing information to the British army
for £80,000 a year.
The
Stakeknife revelations, if true, will certainly deliver
a massive blow to the IRA. Scappaticci's intelligence
is said to have played a role in some of Britain's
major attacks on Irish republicans in the latter half
of the 'Troubles' - including the Loughgall ambush
of 1987, where the SAS killed eight active members
of the IRA, and the killing of three IRA members in
Gibraltar in 1988.
Yet
for the shock that must be sweeping through IRA circles,
the Stakeknife episode reveals as much about contemporary
British politics as it does about the 25-year war
in Northern Ireland. From the internal British squabbling
that led to Stakeknife's identity being revealed to
the post-Stakeknife handwringing over Britain's dirty
war, it is the British elite's inability to hold a
line on any issue that has made this into such a big
deal. The Stakeknife debate shows that, today, the
liveliest clash over Northern Ireland is within the
British elite itself.
It
was the British authorities that made Britain's underhand
tactics in the Troubles - its use of paid informers
in the IRA and its collusion with loyalist paramilitaries
- into a major focus over the past five years. Irish
nationalists and republicans have been kicking up
a stink about Britain's so-called 'dirty war' for
the past 25 years, especially British forces' links
with loyalist paramilitaries - but their protestations
were largely sidelined.
Now,
the British-backed Stevens Inquiry into collusion
- which has been running for 14 years but has only
recently made a big impact - has published a 3000-page
report; the Stevens team has committed itself to further
investigation of British tactics in Northern Ireland;
and newspaper editorials demand 'a full public inquiry'
into the 'murky secrets' of Britain's war (2).
British
judges, politicians and, indeed, journalists weren't
always so keen to debate British collusion and infiltration.
During the Troubles, if any inquiry got too close
to the uncomfortable truth of the war, it was simply
shut up. The Stalker Inquiry into the Royal Ulster
Constabulary's alleged 'shoot-to-kill' policy, led
by John Stalker of Greater Manchester Police, was
closed down in 1986, after Stalker was accused by
British sources of 'associating with known criminals'.
Even
earlier versions of the Stevens Inquiry into collusion
were intimidated by British military forces. In January
1990, the Stevens team launched a dawn raid to arrest
Brian Nelson, a British military agent who had infiltrated
the loyalist Ulster Defence Association, enabling
it to target prominent Irish republicans. When the
Stevens team returned from the raid, they found their
secure investigation headquarters in flames (3).
The
infamous Brian Nelson court case of the early 1990s
was more an attempt to take the heat of the British
military, rather than anything like a real investigation
into the 'dirty war'. By allowing Nelson to be arrested
and tried for passing sensitive information to loyalists,
British forces in Northern Ireland hoped that collusion
would appear as the dodgy work of a handful of out-of-order
British agents, rather than as a British policy in
the war against the IRA.
Yet
now 'dirty war' talk is everywhere, instigated, not
by anti-British elements in Ireland, but by sections
of the British elite itself. It seems to have been
this process of British self-investigation that led
to the unveiling of Stakeknife's identity by Irish
and Scottish newspapers over the weekend. Scappaticci's
name was apparently revealed to journalists by a former
British agent who once infiltrated the IRA, and who
is now unhappy about Britain's failure to offer him
proper protection.
Yet
members of the Stevens Inquiry have been talking up
the prize of Stakeknife, and their desire to interview
him, for months. And when Andrew Jaspan, a journalist
at the Glasgow Sunday Herald, informed government
sources that he intended to reveal Stakeknife's identity,
they didn't warn him off. According to one report:
'[I]n two previous cases, when the Herald was
on the brink of naming British spies, a Treasury solicitor
had threatened the paper with legal action….
Jaspan said he received no such warning this time,
leading him to speculate that the government might
have decided it wanted Stakeknife's identity to be
in the public domain.' (4)
Stevens
officials and sections of the British government may
have wanted Stakeknife's identity in the public domain,
but the British military and the Department of Defence
most certainly did not. Military commanders are said
to be 'furious' with the Stevens Inquiry (5), while
defence secretary Geoff Hoon has spent the past few
weeks slapping injunctions on anyone who attempted
to name Stakeknife - even as other government sources
apparently turned a blind eye to Stakeknife's eventual
unveiling.
Why
have Britain's dirty war tactics become such an explosive
issue now? And why are sections of the British elite
seriously clashing over their 25-year war in Northern
Ireland? This squalid infighting among the British
authorities is less an effort to see justice done
in Northern Ireland than a bad dose of post-conflict
confusion and uncertainty. It is British self-loathing
that has made dirty war tactics such a focal point.
From
1969 to 1994, the British authorities fought a war
against the Irish republican movement, which was demanding
a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Britain
denied that the 'Troubles' was a war at all, instead
claiming to be simply upholding law and order against
the criminals of the IRA. Yet it was broad-based support
for the IRA within nationalist communities that allowed
it to conduct a 25-year campaign against British forces,
and which undermined the British authorities' claims
that the IRA was just a small gang of thugs.
Despite
Britain's claims about the Troubles, on the ground
its security forces and judiciary operated as they
normally do in war time: combating, killing and imprisoning
the enemy. As during any war (as opposed to your average
clampdown on 'criminals'), all sides did nasty things
- including, on Britain's part, colluding with pro-British
paramilitaries, and allowing British agents within
the IRA to kill and torture in order to protect their
cover.
As
in any conflict, differences of opinion that army
majors, judges, soldiers or politicians might have
had about army tactics would have been settled behind
closed doors. The threat posed by the IRA to the stability
of the United Kingdom forced the British establishment
to close ranks against its common enemy, and to settle
problems in private. So Northern Ireland was the one
issue that enjoyed bipartisan agreement in parliament.
From the army's point of view, it would have been
unthinkable to have a political debate about underhand
tactics.
It
was the end of the Irish conflict in 1994 - in the
absence of the common enemy of the IRA, who at least
reminded the British authorities what they were all
against - that led to serious cracks in the establishment
over Northern Ireland. With the winding down of the
conflict, debates that once would have taken place
in private emerged into the public arena.
So
the Stevens team launched its most serious investigation
into collusion in 1993, as the British and Irish governments
kickstarted the peace process and just months before
the IRA declared its ceasefire. In the 1990s, against
the wishes of the military, the Stevens Inquiry has
had its remit extended.
It
wasn't just the issue of collusion that exploded in
the aftermath of the war. The events of Bloody Sunday,
when 14 Catholics were killed by British paratroopers
in Derry on 30 January 1972, became a live public
debate in British political and military circles in
the 1990s. The ongoing Bloody Sunday Inquiry has forced
British soldiers and commanders to reveal all about
Bloody Sunday - and some in the military have responded
by claiming that Downing Street, not the military,
gave the ultimate orders to open fire in Derry.
Sections
of the British elite are at each other's throats over
the events of the Troubles, publicly passing the blame
and the buck among themselves. It would have been
unthinkable for such divisive debates to have taken
place during the conflict, when the state displayed
a solid and united front against the IRA. But with
the end of the conflict, and the instability of the
peace process that followed, nothing seems certain
- except that the British elite finds it difficult
to close ranks or act in a singular or determined
fashion on just about any issue.
Even
worse than the internal clashes over who should take
responsibility for the dirty war, British politicians
and commentators are now taking part in some serious
self-flagellation over the Irish conflict. The Stevens
Inquiry accuses British soldiers of doing 'terrible'
things; British soldiers confess their feelings of
guilt and regret at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry; prime
minister Tony Blair talks up Britain's responsibility
to the 'victims' in Northern Ireland. If there's anything
more off-putting that the British elite's squabbling,
it is its self-loathing.
Beyond
the immediate focus on Northern Ireland's 'dirty war',
some in the British elite appear to questioning the
very drive that enabled the British authorities to
contain the IRA for 25 years. With the loss of any
clear sense of what the British elite represents or
what it fought for, what would previously have been
seen as acts of war are now seen as being problematic
or even shameful.
The
current tensions over Northern Ireland are internally
generated. Anybody who thinks that justice will come
out of this internal war, for either community in
Northern Ireland, should think again.
Read
on:
(1)
Top
IRA killer revealed as British spy, United Press
International, 12 May 2003
(2)
Stakeknife's
dirty war, Guardian, 13 May 2003
(3)
The
Stevens Inquiry: Chronology, BBC News, 17 April
2003
(4)
How
Stakeknife was unmasked, Guardian, 12
May 2003
(5)
Top
double agent in IRA guilty of 'up to 40 murders,
Belfast Telegraph, 12 May 2003
This
article was first published in Spiked
Online and is carried here with permission from
the author.
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