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For
young people growing up in the Markets and adjacent
Lower Ormeau area in the early 1970s Freddie Scappaticci
was a household name. A well known and respected local
republican he twice found himself interned without
trial. Few then could have imagined that three decades
later his locally revered name would assume national
prominence as a consequence of having become embroiled
in one of the major controversies to emerge from the
British state’s dirty war in Ireland - which
has led to fierce media allegations identifying him
as the supposed top British agent within the IRA,
Stakeknife.
The
republican writer Danny Morrison today urged caution
in relation to such reports, flagging up other instances
where a frenzy of media activity ultimately proved
groundless. It is the type of advice seasoned commentators
would disregard at their peril. Morrison, however,
does admit that the IRA had on occasion been penetrated
by the British state.
While
in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh in 1986 I expressed the
view to Brendan Hughes that it would make strategic
sense for the British to place an agent in the upper
echelons of the IRA’s internal security department.
In doing that they would secure a long term agent
who, unlike those in the operational IRA who habitually
risk imprisonment, would serve them as a permanent
human listening device.
Whatever
the truth of Stakeknife’s identity, the allegations
that the IRA’s internal security had been seriously
compromised by the British over such a prolonged period,
while unlikely to shatter present republican strategy,
does help explain how such a loser’s strategy
took hold.
Some
speculative but dubious journalism which took root
after the existence of ‘Stakeknife’ was
made public, implied that a sinister hand either in
or close to the Sinn Fein leadership was directly
working for the British and influencing the peace
process. More prudent journalism dismissed such unmediated
causality, opting instead to show how a seriously
compromised IRA campaign would reinforce a peace lobby
within republicanism. Arguably, this is where the
role of Stakeknife became crucial.
There
is no route more direct through the fog of IRA mystique
and secrecy than that of seniority within the internal
security department. Those who manage it know most
of what is worth knowing. Stakeknife, if one of its
senior operatives, may not have been aware in advance
of IRA operations, but would most certainly have known
the identity of all key operators. His continuing
debriefing of volunteers after arrest or as part of
the incessant inquiries that characterise the IRA,
was made workable only by an extensive knowledge of
the background. The organisation’s weaknesses
and strengths, the unquestioning or critical approaches
to leadership of its volunteers, the fighters and
the shirkers would all have been known to Stakeknife.
More importantly, British placed informers within
the IRA could have been protected by Stakeknife, while
more committed volunteers may have been set up for
arrest or assassinaton.
Given
that his information did not remain the coveted prize
of his military handlers and was passed to the desks
of various British prime ministers, the British Government
was optimally positioned to encourage the peace lobby
within the republican camp - punish the enemy of that
lobby and reward its friends. It knew the military
strength or weakness behind every republican position
and could readjust accordingly. The ultimate aim was
to secure republican acceptance of the British state’s
alternative to republicanism - ultimately made manifest
in the internal solution known as the Good Friday
Agreement.
Stakeknife
damaged the IRA irreparably and helped pave the way
for its defeat. The suggestion that Sinn Fein leaders
were conscious British agents as yet remains unfounded.
But there is little room for doubt that the hand of
the British state was on the tiller of the peace process
which the Sinn Fein leadership came to wholeheartedly
embrace. And its grip was made all the firmer by Stakeknife
serrating away at IRA capacity.
An
edited version of this article appeared in the Times
on 12/5/2003
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