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Over
the last thirty years, a significant number of books
have been published on the Irish Republican Army.
Ed Moloney's A Secret History of the IRA (Penguin,
2002) is likely to become the standard if not the
definitive work on the history of the Provisional
IRA. Ed Moloney is a serious journalist who has covered
the conflict in the North of Ireland for over twenty
years, and has proved himself not afraid of asking
difficult questions. Challenging the orthodoxies of
Northern Ireland journalistic coverage recently resulted
in him parting ways with the Dublin-based Sunday
Tribune for which he had worked as Northern Ireland
editor. Moloney's history of the Provisional IRA is
an authoritative work of investigative journalism
and political analysis based on the author's privileged
access to inside information both with the IRA and
the British and Irish government. Never before have
the internal workings of the IRA been so well described.
The
Secret History of the IRA could have better been
titled A Secret History of Gerry Adams as the
book's narrative is centred on Adams's political trajectory.
Moloney shows how Gerry Adams led the Republican Movement
for more than twenty years, during which volunteers
killed, died, were tortured and imprisoned for a British
declaration of intent to withdraw and a 32-county
Irish Democratic Socialist Republic; while having
agreed as early as 1982, in secret talks behind the
backs of the IRA leadership with the Redemptorist
priest Alec Reid and the Catholic Church - a Church
that had just helped to defeat the H-Block struggle
- a programme that negated everything Republican militants
thought they were fighting for. Moloney then shows
how Adams made a secret deal with Fianna Fail and
the SDLP - on Fianna Fail and the SDLP's terms before
cutting with the British government - with whom he
was already in contact with in 1986/87 - what amounted
to more or less the same sort of deal that was on
offer during the Sunningdale Conference in 1973 and
which had then totally been rejected by Republicans.
Those secret deals were made sometimes behind the
back of the leadership and most often behind the backs
of the grass roots members of the Provisional Republican
movement, to whom the actual contents of those deals
were not made public. One just has to remember how
Republicans were called by their leadership to demonstrate
in support of the 'Hume-Adams Document' while ignoring
the actual content of that document. Moloney provides
the best description published so far of the development
of the Peace Process and is at his best when describing
how the Adams faction sold the Good Friday Agreement
to a sceptical Provisional IRA. The strength of the
book is not so much the author's description of the
dishonesty of the Provisional leadership and their
betrayal of the fundamental principles of Irish Republicanism,
but Moloney's detailed depiction of the actual mechanism
of the Provisional leadership's sell-out and surrender.
The
media was quick to jump on the more sensationalist
aspects of Moloney's book: that Adams has prior knowledge
of IRA involvement in the killing of Jane McConville
and other "disappeared" (A group of alleged
informers kidnapped and executed by the IRA. The organisation
until recently had always denied involvement in those
disappearances.), that a double agent placed at the
highest level in the leadership of the IRA was responsible
for the capture of the Eskund arms shipment that would
have allowed the Provisional to launch an Irish equivalent
of the Tet Offensive, the failure of which significantly
strengthened Adams's strategy. Moloney hints that
British intelligence might have helped remove those
in the IRA - like Jim Lynagh and those killed at Lough
all - that could have caused problems to Adams and
used their agents within their organisation to push
the movement towards the peace strategy.
Moloney
portrays the IRA as being brought down by treachery
and British onslaught rather than as the 'undefeated
and defiant army' presented by the Provisionals. Moloney
gives valuable insights into the various individuals
who lead the IRA. For example, he shows that the way
Brian Keenan is presented as some 'hard line radical
Marxist' is just a myth. The book is a good antidote
to many of the self-deluding myths vehiculated by
the Provos. Moloney's mixture of good investigative
journalism and high standard political analysis makes
The Secret History of the IRA an indispensable book
for anyone interested in Irish politics.
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