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The
New Year is that one time when large swathes of the
population become like politicians and make resolutions
and promises they have absolutely no intention of
honouring. Caught up in the revelling, caution goes
into the bin along with the cigarette packet only
to make a comeback a day or two later. For those with
a more political bent - not politicians, who rarely
want the truth out about anything unless it helps
propel their own careers - the New Year is an intellectual
Christmas with the Public Records Office willing to
oblige in the role of Santa. Amongst these types,
the New Year is greeted less because it itself is
new but more for the new light it throws on events
in a year now three decades old.
The
past three to four New Years have been of particular
interest because they have begun to peel away the
layers of secrecy shrouding the formative years of
the post-1969 conflict. There is a tangible rather
than abstract feel to the events referred to because
unlike documents from the 1920s many of us were witnesses
to history as it was being made and can recall the
matters referred to in the freshly released papers
as they blink under the spotlight of public view.
The participants were real flesh and blood, people
of our time, rather than the jerky characters of old
film footage and poorly maintained newsreel.
It
is said that history is invariably constructed from
the perspective of the present. How we view things
today tends to shape the interpretive framework we
approach the past with. It never just explains itself
from the perspective of its own day. It is subject
to evaluation and in many cases revisionism. What
is relevant to one historian may be inconsequential
to another; appetite, interest and no small measure
of prejudice ultimately playing some part in governing
choice. For myself, wondering how we republicans ended
up with the wooden spoon, what I found most interesting
about the papers from 1972 is the extent to which
it becomes clear that the most violent year if not
the most turbulent - 1981 may compete with it for
that - was also the one where, from a position of
the British admitting to being on the point ‘of
losing control of events’ there emerged a clear
British state strategy which by the 1990s ultimately
came to prevail and secured a British victory over
its main antagonist, that other ‘determining
force at the heart of the crisis’, the Provisional
IRA.
What
also becomes clearer as each year passes is that the
British had no imperialist designs on the North and
that the anti-imperialist struggle republicans engaged
in was more rhetorical than real. This does not mean
that the British were any less malevolent because
of that, nor does it imply that the sufferings and
sacrifices of republicans were in some way less meritorious.
The British proved a brutal and cynical opponent who
called into being against themselves an army of deprived
people determined to go round for round. The British
willingness to cast off territory through re-partition
meant that they had no commitment to the territorial
integrity of the ‘UK’, as they liked to
term it, not that they would be any less brutal in
ensuring that their own writ would run unchallenged
while here. Ultimately, the North of Ireland could
come or go as it pleased. Despite the leftist rhetoric
of the time, particularly pronounced with Michael
Farrell, the British did not require territorial acquisition
to maintain capitalism in Ireland or to keep the working
class downtrodden and divided. There were plenty in
Ireland quite willing to do that on their behalf.
There are probably even more now than then. The British
lack of commitment to holding on to the North as a
territorial entity can be seen in divisions within
the cabinet with Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister
Heath's foreign secretary, claiming that no sustainable
framework was possible to keep ‘Northern Ireland
within the United Kingdom’. He backed a united
Ireland as the long-term solution. Heath, while showing
no such radical inclination nevertheless sensed the
key to resolving the issue from a British point of
view when he defined the problem in the following
terms: ‘a major obstacle to any rational solution
was likely to be the absence of any incentive to the
IRA to desist from violence at any point short of
a revolutionary all-Ireland republic.’ The primary
goal from that point on would be to create an alternative
to republicanism while a secondary and somewhat delayed
objective would be to entice some within republicanism
to embrace it.
Ronan
Fanning and James Downey for the most part, in separate
accounts, describe accurately this alternative to
republicanism. 1972:
was
the year when the British Government, having finally
abandoned the Unionist regime by introducing direct
rule, opted instead for an Irish dimension and an
alliance with the Irish Government in the governance
of Northern Ireland … during the course of
1972 and 1973 the political and official establishments
in both London and Dublin began the process which
led in the end to near-consensus and the Sunningdale
Agreement. The principles underlying that accord
were carried through into the Anglo-Irish Agreement
and the Good Friday Agreement.
In
movement which showed that strategic thinkers rather
than Colonel Blimps were the intellectual driving
force behind the British counter insurgency campaign,
British military leaders of the day, Harry Tuzo and
Michael Carver, rather than favour the prosecution
of an escalatory war against republicanism advocated
a scaling down of war-like activity. Concomitantly,
the British Government noted as early as March of
1972 that ‘acceptance by Roman Catholics of any
political settlement, however, depended in large measure
on its endorsement by the Government of the Republic.’
Clearly, the North of Ireland was not considered as
British as Finchley. Nor has there ever been any suggestion
that Bradford should be governed only with the endorsement
of the governments of Pakistan or Bangladesh.
Clearly,
the die was being cast. The outstanding problem was
to find sufficient transmission points within the
insurrectionary community through which the British
state could make its strategic logic appear irresistible
to the point where the bulk of the opposition would
shout in chorus, in agreement with the British, ‘there
is no alternative’. If the hard opposition could
not be diminished in both size and strength it would
have to be co-opted. But it would be some years before
General Sir James Glover could claim with undoubted
satisfaction that the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams,
is ‘a man with whom we can do business.’
Glover
uncapped the crucial moment when it had arrived, even
if it was a long time coming. In this sense the 1972
papers reveal that Glover had reached conclusions
rather than starting points. The genesis of this type
of thinking existed in 1972. But the papers also show
the state of despair which gripped the British, leading
them to exhibit tendencies of the wish being father
to the thought. There is no doubt that when the colonial
military logic of 'shoot the big bugger at the front
wearing the turban' was breaking little delft other
than that within the hearts of British politicians,
a new logic kicked in - that of cultivating leaders
amongst the insurgents whom they could either work
with or work through. But the British delegates who
met with Gerry Adams and Daithi O'Conaill in exploratory
talks, in their eagerness to find a quick fix solution
attributed characteristics to Adams that were not
in fact there at the time. ‘There is no doubt
whatever that these two genuinely want a ceasefire
and a permanent end to violence.’
At
that meeting Philip Woodfield asked both Adams and
O’Conaill if the upcoming meeting in the Cheyne
Walk home of Paul Channon could go ahead unadorned
by the presence of the Provisional IRA chief of staff
Sean MacStiofain. At the eventual face to face meeting
between the Provisional IRA and William Whitelaw British
officials noted that ‘MacStiofain was ‘very
much in charge … dictating surrender terms to
us like Montgomery at El Alamein.’
What
this does not tell us of course is that when MacStiofain
(who had been exploring the possibility of a ceasefire
as far back as September 1971 on the basis that it
was a prerequisite for launching his scheme of an
all-Ireland conference aimed at creating sufficient
pressure to secure British disengagement) first proposed
the ceasefire to the IRA’s Belfast Brigade, he
was informed by Seamus Twomey and Ivor Bell, that
he would only get it if he first secured the release
from internment of Gerry Adams. MacStiofain’s
brashness at the Cheyne Walk meeting was less about
negotiating with the British but more about staying
at the head of the pack of militant Belfast wolves
who had accompanied him to London. Half the delegation
came from the Northern city.
Regardless
of the MacStiofain stance at the meeting, he left
determined that the truce would hold whereas the Belfast
delegation decided on the plane back to Belfast that
they would break it. Days later they did. Although
the IRA was eager to blame British bad faith at Lenadoon,
the 1972 papers show that the British military on
the day paid the organisation a sum of money designed
to take the heat out of the situation. The Belfast
leadership, happy enough to divest the British of
their money, had no intention of meeting the requirements
for receiving it. They had already ordered some of
their most seasoned volunteers, Maidstone escapees
amongst them, to open fire on the British Army on
receipt of a hand signal from another experienced
volunteer. The sham negotiations at Horn Drive were
an exercise in damage limitation and culpability transference.
MacStiofain’s role in the truce ending was not
one of making the ultimate decision but of being told
by the Belfast leadership to release a statement to
the effect that the truce had collapsed due to British
obstinacy. He obliged with considerable despair.
When
Tom McGurk of the Sunday Business Post claims
that the British and the Provisionals ‘might
still be circling each other had not wiser heads opted
for the peace process … in the years between
Seán MacStiofáin and Gerry Adams, the
IRA was locked into a desperate political ghetto…’
he is helping to impose a template which is considerably
at variance with what we now believe to be a more
plausible account. MacStiofain was not the uncompromising
hawk whose presence at the London talks pre-empted
any movement toward peace. Nor was Adams the dove
who sought peace and was frustrated by MacStiofain
and his baneful influence which, if McGurk is to be
believed, long polluted the intellectual and strategic
stratosphere inhabited by Provisional leaders for
some time after his departure as chief-of-staff; and
who once free from the influence of MacStiofain could
begin to develop a peace process. The two central
planks of the peace process - a power sharing executive
accompanied by an Irish dimension - were key British
objectives as far back as 1972 in their bid to build
an alternative to republicanism. Gerry Adams for long
helped frustrate any peace process.
Our
knowledge of how and why Adams shifted position by
180 degrees, is severely limited. And in an environment
where that supposedly omniscient discursive formation,
the peace process, ‘is watching you’ the
tendency to ask the type of questions that might begin
to produce such knowledge is severely curbed. Consequently,
historians could do much worse than take their courage
in their hands, refuse to be intimidated or dissuaded
and concentrate on tracing the contours along which
these British objectives were pursued and secured.
Ed Moloney alone seems to have acquired the distinction
of being the sole writer to have offered a rigorous
and as yet unrivalled account of this process. In
his work A Secret History of The IRA he outlines
how the British were able to secure within republicanism
sufficient points of transmission through which they
could secure the hegemony of their alternative to
republicanism. For his efforts Sinn Fein has described
him as a ‘bitter wee man.’ Perhaps his plucking
of a ‘bitter wee truth’ from a carefully
constructed maze of lies is the real source of the
party’s annoyance. If other writers and historians
lack the fortitude to do likewise, we may just wait
until 2032. Although by then we may be distracted
by other things - such as blaming the securocrats
for sabotaging the end of partition 16 years earlier.
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