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This
book claims to be "the definitive account of
the Real IRA". According to the publisher, "the
authors have written the best chronicle of the secret
army", and the book "reads with an urgency
and a moral commitment which belongs to the finest
fiction." In fact, those familiar with the subject
are likely to be disapointed. There is little new
in this book. Anyone reading about the Real IRA in
newspapers and on the internet on a daily basis since
1997 will not learn much from this work. Most of its
content has already been written about, the book serving
it in a 'cut and paste' version and written in the
style of a third rate thriller. The authors write
as 'crime correspondants' type journalists, and display
none of the analytical skills of historians, sociologists,
or political scientists. The material on which the
book is based is very thin, for example one cannot
fail to notice that there are no references to material
from The Sovereign Nation, Beir Bua or Republican
Forum. This is like writing a history of the Provos
with no references to material from An Phoblacht
or Republican News.
However,
to be fair, the book is not as bad as one could expect
from journalists of the Irish Star and with
a foreword by Victor Barker. The authors generally
display a good deal of objectivity and fairness when
dealing with the Real IRA, for which of course they
have no sympathy. The book begins with the split at
the October 1997 IRA convention and finishes with
the conviction of Michael McKevitt by the Special
Criminal Court in 2003. The narrative shifts from
the perspective of the Real IRA to that of the Irish
and British security forces and the relatives of the
victims of the Omagh bomb.
To
their credit, the authors describe the Real IRA as
being politically rather than criminally motivated,
though mention is made of smuggling activities. Nor
are they being described as some sort of bloodthirsty
psychopaths. The book tells how the Real IRA was horrified
by the Omagh bomb, and how "although McKevitt
had seen mass murder in the past, the extreme loss
of life that resulted from the Omagh bomb personally
sickened him." (172) The authors also make very
clear that once the Real IRA resumed its operations,
it was imperative for volunteers to avoid civilian
casualties. The book gives some hint about the overall
political context, albeit in an undeveloped and unsystematic
fashion. McKevitt's "most serious error was to
believe that there was still an appetite for militant
republicanism; there wasn't." (31) This is probably
the most serious objection the authors could have
levelled against the Real IRA, but they fail to develop
it further. A great deal of the book deals with the
informers and agent provocateurs inside the Real IRA,
Paul Dixon and David Rupert in particular. Mooney
and O Toole show how dubvious a character Rupert was,
how his motivation was purely financial. The book
is also good on the various approaches the Irish government
made to the Real IRA and the 32 County Sovereignty
Movement. The authors show how this "well thought
out strategy of fighting terrorism through dialogue"
(142) complemented the apparatus of repression.
When
dealing with the political strategy and thinking of
the Real IRA, the authors display a dialectic of blindness
and insight. They shift from ascribing to the Real
IRA a coherent political strategy to criticising the
organisation for having none. For example, Mooney
and O Toole write, "What Campbell was planning
was a frightening, nihilistic onslaught. The strategy
was to mount attacks purely for the sake of mounting
attacks" (131) whereas a couple of pages later
we are told that "McKevitt's strategy was a grandiose
one. He wanted to gain political strength through
bombing ..." (137) One of the problems is that
the authors display no real evidence to back up their
judgements. We are told that in 2001, the Real IRA
Army Council "had no interest in republican politics"
(289): "The new Army Council mounted bomb attacks
without having any political agenda or strategy. The
stream of attacks indicated that the Army Council
had lost control. Real IRA Units now operated independent
of each other." (292) This might be the case,
but there is not enough evidence to assert this. For
example, a Real republican might reply something like
"in 2001 the Army was in a process of restructuration
and debating a long term strategy taking account of
new circumstances." According to the authors,
in 2003, "the RIRA had become a group of free
wheeling mercenaries and smugglers answerable only
to themselves. They lacked a command structure and
political ideology other than to intermittently attack
the British security forces in Northern Ireland and
bomb London." (309) The authors' case would have
been stronger had they developed criticisms of why
the Real IRA allegedly lacks a strong command structure
and political ideology, but again one of the characteristics
of this book is the absence of a proper political
analysis. Also noticeable is the lack of discussion
of the politics of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement.
Finally the reader will be struck by the arbitrary
nature of some of Mooney and O Toole's judgements.
For example, they write of the killing of Joseph O
Connor by the Provisionals: "The truth was that
the RIRA Army Council didn't care. O Connor was a
thug and a criminal." (268) This is a totally
arbitrary judgement as no evidence is provided to
back up their claim that first O Connor was a thug
and secondly that the Real IRA didn't care.
Some
examples show that the authors have little grasp of
the mindset of Real Republicans. They write of them
that they saw the IRA "not as a political organisation
but as a religion ... Their ideology was greatly different
from those of the Provisionals. They studied Irish
history and would often refer to men like Padraig
Pearse, the leader of the 1916 rebellion who sacrified
his own blood for his dream of a United Ireland."
(39) Apart from the historical inaccuracy that Padraig
Pearse could not have died for a United Ireland as
the country had not yet been partitioned, it is unlikely
that the authors have spent much time with Real Republicans,
because very few would be of the religious type. A
quick glance at publications such as the Sovereign
Nation tells the opposite. The biggest criticism that
can be levelled at this book is its inability to insert
the Real IRA within the longue duree history
of Republicanism. For example they could have shown
the similarities and differences between the RIRA
and the IRA in the late 1930s and 1940s, with which
it has a lot in common.
The
authors lack of historical and political understanding
results in the conclusion that contrary to the publishers'
claim, the definitive history of the Real IRA remains
to be written.
John
Mooney & Michael O Toole, Black Operations:
The Secret War Against the Real IRA (Ashbourne:
Maverick House Publishers, 2003) ISBN 0-9542945-5-6,
£14.99
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