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Did
Gerry Adams subvert the Provisional IRA by lying to
his comrades and plotting to frustrate their goal
of a united Ireland? Is Martin McGuinness a high-level
informer who has been working for the British for
the past two decades? These are just two of the tantalising
questions raised by this important and compelling
work, which slices through many of the convenient
untruths that have been peddled by the political elites
of Belfast, Dublin and London.
Ed
Moloney is no cheerleader for any of the main protagonists
in the Irish conflict, and in recent years he has
been one of the few who have steadfastly refused to
genuflect at the altar of that supposed force of history
known as the "peace process". His uncompromising
and sometimes brilliant book will make very difficult
reading for Adams and his followers, as well as, perhaps,
those in the British establishment who have eased
his path over the past two decades.
One
wonders, too, what Americans will make of the depiction
of Adams as one of those who approved the IRA's vicious
"human bomb" tactic that, in Moloney's words,
"would be imitated years later on a much larger
scale in lower Manhattan and on the streets of Jerusalem
by Islamic extremists".
So
far, Moloney's book, the culmination of some 24 years
of writing about the subject, has prompted the predictable
headlines that flow from alleging that Adams is a
senior IRA figure. One might as well be running stories
about the Pope being a Catholic. More surprising is
Moloney's contention that Adams probably never fired
a shot in anger against the British, but instead rose
to the top of the IRA by dint of his superb political
brain and ability to manipulate both his enemies and
internal opponents. The central figure here, he is
portrayed as clever, deceitful and utterly ruthless.
Moloney
also offers remarkable insights into such men as Martin
McGuinness, who he says held nearly every senior IRA
rank but did much to undermine the organisation, and
Brian Keenan, who pretended to be a hardliner but
in fact backed Adams all the way. Moloney knew most
of the current Sinn Fein leadership when they were
wearing balaclavas rather than well-cut suits. The
wealth of detail here has been built up through a
long familiarity with senior Provisionals; eventually
this familiarity bred something approaching contempt.
Although
Moloney tries to maintain a distance from his subject,
much of the power of the book lies in his passionate
engagement. One does not need to read too closely
between the lines to surmise that the author feels
Adams and his cohorts "sold out" Irish republicans
and cynically diverted them from pursuing the noble
aim of national unity. On page after page, there are
quotations from the ordinary IRA members who now agonise
over what their war achieved and whether the suffering
inflicted and endured was worth it.
From
the early 1980s, Moloney argues, Adams was determined
to wean republicans away from armed struggle and settle
for British neutrality rather than a united Ireland.
Moloney reveals startling new details of secret meetings
of the IRA's Army Council and other key bodies. They
show Adams as a Machiavellian strategist struggling
to change the IRA much as Tony Blair transformed the
Labour Party.
According
to Moloney, the IRA was brought virtually to its knees
by treachery. He makes a strong case that informers
led to the capture of a huge shipment of Libyan weapons,
the slaughter of IRA volunteers by the SAS at Loughgall
and in Gibraltar and the doctoring of mortars fired
at Heathrow. Much of the blame for this is laid at
the door of Adams, who insisted on a rigid top-down
control of the IRA that made it vulnerable to infiltration
and who knew that Sinn Fein's political strategy would
sap the IRA's ability to wage war. There are even
hints that the British intelligence services and successive
governments might have helped remove those IRA men
impeding Adams and used "agents of influence"
to steer republicans towards politics.
Although
the book does not name the high-level informer who
was apparently working for the British, there is a
strong implication that McGuinness is the most likely
"tout". As with a good Mafia thriller, the
reader is soon guessing which of the protagonists
is wearing a wire for the Feds. If Moloney knows,
he is not saying. But when he writes that "no
one ever suggested Martin McGuinness or any other
senior figures at his level were passing on information
to the British", one suspects that this is not
meant to be taken at face value.
The
author boldly states that the Troubles are now over
and indicates he believes the IRA lost. For Adams,
the peace process was "an exercise in management
towards an already decided outcome" that was
essentially a stalemate. An alternative theory, however,
is that Adams has used his skill not to achieve a
draw but to hold out for victory by, say, 2016 - the
centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin - and that
the IRA's tactical use of the armed struggle continues.
The IRA is largely intact and republicans are well
positioned to destroy the British state in Northern
Ireland from within.
In
a little-noticed 1990 interview, which is not quoted
by Moloney, Adams mused about a "gradualist scenario
with Dublin taking up more and more responsibility
and the British influence slowly waning". This
meant ending up "with a situation that may be
very bad for the very specific republican organisation
or base or struggle but becomes good for the overall
cause".
For
the British, he concluded, "in the very effort
to beat the main instrument of change, one actually
brings it about". A dozen years later, Unionists
might well conclude that this scenario is already
coming to pass.
Toby
Harnden is the author of Bandit Country, The IRA
& South Armagh. This article is carried with
his permission and was first published in the Daily
Telegraph.
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