The
publication of this book couldnt have been more
fortuitously timed. Coming as it did within days of
the spy-raids on Sinn Feins Stormont office,
it is uniquely placed as an insight into the post-Troubles
IRA. Rather than presenting an historical account
of the organisations campaign of violence, Ed
Moloneys book offers instead a thorough political
history of the republican movement. As such, it chronicles
Gerry Adamss efforts to gain control over the
IRA, presenting an unflattering portrait of the Sinn
Fein president.
Beginning
with an account of the Libyan arms- smuggling operation
of the mid-late 1980s, which Moloney understands to
be the linchpin that secured Adamss campaign
to control the Provisionals, the narrative returns
to the streets of Belfast and the birth of the Provisionals.
Emerging in 1970 from the split with the Official
IRA over the issue of recognition of the Stormont,
Dublin and Westminster parliaments, the Provisionals
eventually became known simply as the IRA
as they adopted the role of defender of Catholic communities
from loyalist mobs, and soon took on the British army
as well.
Moloney
notes that Adams was slow to declare his allegiance
during this split, instead waiting until the majority
of republicans in Belfast backed the Provisionals.
As Moloney puts it, he joined the winning team
only after 15 of the citys 16 IRA companies
sided with the Provisionals. He also points out that
Adams was not known to have fired a single shot alongside
his IRA colleagues.
From
then on it was a gradual rise to the top for Adams,
which he secured by introducing the Northern Command
and its cell structure, designed by a
fellow Belfast republican, Ivor Bell. The cell structure
reduced IRA active service units to small groups of
five or six individuals and has gone down in republican
mythology as an effective method of resisting infiltration
by military intelligence and RUC Special Branch. Moloney
maintains that in reality this system failed because
Adamss Northern Command proceeded to centralise
its control of all IRA operations. Therefore, a vertical
command structure was implemented, along which operations
had to be vetted before they were sanctioned. This
inevitably left IRA members at the mercy of well-placed,
higher-ranking informers, who had access to the vetting
process. It also leads Moloney to the conclusion that
both Adams and Martin McGuinness, as members of the
IRA Army Council, knew about and sanctioned attacks.
He proposes that the Army Council, rather than rank-and-file
IRA members, planned the notorious human bomb
explosion of October 1990, when Patsy Gillespie, a
Derry man who worked in a British Army canteen, was
forced to drive a van bomb into a British Army checkpoint,
killing himself along with five soldiers.
Moloneys
history of the IRA shifts into a political mode with
its description of the peace process. He dates this
back to contacts between Adams and the then secretary
of state, Tom King, which he claims occurred as early
as 1987. Meanwhile, Adams started to rely more and
more on the Think Tank, an Orwellian group of advisors
led by Ted Howell. This group manipulated republican
thinking to the point of a U-turn, when in March 1998
a Sinn Fein conference voted overwhelmingly to take
seats in the Stormont assembly. The Think Tank achieved
this through a long-term process of dissembling: Not
meaning what was said increasingly became a defining
and acceptable feature of republican political culture.
It was to occupy a central place in the peace process
strategy.
Significantly,
Moloney reminds us that the IRAs first breach
of its 1994 ceasefire was a robbery in Newry in which
Frank Kerr, a postman, was shot dead. This murder
pointed to the criminal direction now being taken
by the IRA, and the book could have bene-fited enormously
from an analysis of the IRAs descent into a
profoundly localised mafia-style, family-controlled
organisation.
Another
improvement would have been an analysis of the barbaric
attacks that are carried out by the Provisionals against
anybody they perceive as a threat. The detailed chapter
on the discussions of the IRAs adoption of the
Mitchell Principles could have shed light upon the
organisations failure to adhere to the fifth
principle To urge that punishment
killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps
to prevent such actions.
Despite
these omissions, Moloneys book stands out as
the most compelling and comprehensive account of the
organisation to date. His study serves as a macro-
history of the IRA, charting its personalities and
their conflicts with each other. He demythologises
the IRA and gives a unique insight into the personalities
involved in it over the past 30 years, an insight
complemented by an appendix of brief biographical
descriptions of the key players. It is also distinguished
by the authors consistently critical approach
towards the IRA, and by his ability to resist clichéd
representations of post-ceasefire politics.
This
article was first published in The Sunday Times and
is carried with permission from the author.
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