When Garret FitzGerald died last month, in the midst of the Queen of England’s trip to Dublin and points south, it was accompanied by what was, even by Irish standards, an excessive degree of exaggeration and distortion of the man’s true role in the defining event in recent Irish history, the Troubles in the North and more particularly how they ended.
Garret FitzGerald
The sheet had hardly been pulled over his head before his successor as Fine Gael leader and Coalition Taoiseach, Enda Kenny was proclaiming him as “a true patriot” whose “commitment to peace and reconciliation on the island and between Ireland and Britain had reached fruition” with Her Majesty’s Irish jaunt while his opposite number in Fianna Fail Micheẚl Martin, echoed him – minus the Queen bit – and praised FitzGerald as a “politician who made an immense and lasting contribution to peace and reconciliation on this island”.
To read and hear those as well as remarks from others – Martin McGuinness, who a few years ago might well have had someone shot for saying a kind word about FitzGerald, said the former Taoiseach had taken “great delight” in the progress of the Northern peace process – one could be forgiven for thinking that the peace process was nothing less than the outworking of all he had striven to achieve and teach on solving or at least putting aside the Northern conflict.
There’s no doubt that the way in which the Troubles have ended, with all shades of Irish Nationalism on both sides of the Border accepting the principle of consent, i.e. partition, is something that politicians of Garret FitzGerald’s ilk have long yearned for. That sort of endgame is what he and they were all about and he was never short of company under that tent. The real question is whether we would have got to where we are now if we had all followed Garret’s teachings on the North to the letter.
If there was one thing that defined his stance on the North it was an utter detestation of all things Irish Republican. It lay behind his famous, jaw-dropping denunciation of Charles Haughey when he was made Taoiseach in December 1979. Haughey was, in the eyes of Dublin Four – as FitzGerald’s political camp was less than fondly known in those days – responsible for the creation of the Provisional IRA and by extension had hands dripping with the innocent blood of the North’s dead.
His words in the Dail were: “Deputy Haughey presents himself here, seeking to be invested in office as the seventh in this line, but he comes with a flawed pedigree.” Remember that one of those seven earlier Taoisigh in whose footsteps Haughey intended to follow included Sean Lemass who was one of Collins’ Twelve Apostles, the band of IRA assassins who cold-bloodedly executed fourteen British secret agents, some shot dead in their beds, on Bloody Sunday, November 21st, 1920 – shootings which then led to the massacre at Croke Park – while Lemass’ predecessor was Eamon de Valera whose deviousness and dishonesty were probably responsible more than anything else for the Irish civil war. I would have thought that in the ‘flawed pedigree’ department those two gents could have shown Charlie a thing or two.
He was also the classic victim of his own propaganda. There’s little doubt in my mind that when he and his faithful minions in the Department of Foreign Affairs set out to cajole Margaret Thatcher into signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, he truly did believe that left alone Sinn Fein would have gobbled up the SDLP and all that was decent around them and having conquered the North, then made the whole island into an offshore Cuba from which to export revolution and the downfall of Christian civilization to the rest of Europe.
Garret FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher - Agreed the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement
There was one incident during the hunger strikes of 1981 that stands out as symptomatic of the FitzGerald paranoia about the Provos. It happened one night when a bearded, hairy and doubtless very smelly tramp called at chez FitzGerald in South Dublin, knocked the door and was about to beg for money. His wife Joan FitzGerald answered the door and nearly fainted with fright. That night RTE announced that Gardai were investigating reports that members of the Provisional IRA had attempted to attack the Taoiseach’s family and Mrs FitzGerald was suffering from shock in the aftermath. In other words in the world inhabited by les FitzGeralds there was no distinction between the threat offered by one of Dublin’s indigent poor and an IRA terrorist.
The one thing that obsessed him for years was the fear that the British would talk to the Provos and come to some deal to withdraw, leaving Ireland at the mercy of bloodthirsty IRA gunmen and rampaging UVF bombers. His paranoia in this regard reached a peak during the extended IRA ceasefire of 1974-1975.
The IRA’s leaders and Garret FitzGerald did share one characteristic, loath though both would have been to admit it: they were both conned by the British into believing that the secret talks during that ceasefire were a preamble to withdrawal rather than what they really were, a largely successful effort to debilitate the IRA with a long cessation while preparing the ground for a deadly new security policy – criminalization – which came tantalizing close to finishing off the IRA for good.
So alarmed was FitzGerald by what he and his officials were picking up that he went as far as recruiting Henry Kissinger, then President Gerald Ford’s National Security Advisor and Secretary of State – and the moral giant of his age – to intervene on his side against the British if it really came to the bit and the Brits did indeed start to board their ships in Belfast Lough.
Of course that never happened because the British never intended to do anything like that, not only because they were ideologically indisposed to such a thing but because they had happened upon a whizz of an idea which they thought could really bury the Provos for once and for all. What is astonishing about the episode is that there was an abundance of evidence at the time about the real British intentions but none of it was picked up by FitzGerald and his advisors. That’s the problem with idees fixes – you can’t get rid of them. Another characteristic he and the then IRA leadership shared, an inability to see what was in front of their nose.
Charlie of the Flawed Pedigree - Actually Did Get It Right
So imagine that if instead of knocking on Charlie Haughey’s door in 1986/1987, Fr Alex Reid and Gerry Adams had called round to the Fitzgerald household to ask him if he would interested in talking about peace. The odds are that they would have been given the same reception as that unfortunate tramp back in 1981 and Ireland would still be living with the Troubles. And isn’t it ironic that the man who actually did agree to start talking to them, and by so doing launched the peace process, was the guy with the flawed pedigree? And along with it came a more convincing claim than Garret FitzGerald could ever stake to having made a contribution to peace and reconciliation on the island.
This is one of those weeks when I am glad to be in New York and not Belfast. I’ll explain why further down, but it’s not for the reasons that you think.
Last weekend, dissident republicans, i.e. anti-Provisional ones, killed a young member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, using a bomb that was a standard IRA weapon when the Troubles were raging. It was nicknamed by those who developed and used the device ‘an up and under’, an appellation derived from the way it was placed.
Dissident IRA bomb killed policeman in Omagh, Co. Tyrone
An “up and under” was a small bomb, usually packed into a Tupperware-style container that was attached to the underside of a car, usually just beneath the driver’s seat, assuming the driver was the target, and designed to explode while the car was in motion.
It was affixed to the bodywork by a strong magnet and detonated by a mercury tilt switch, essentially a small tube partially filled with mercury that would flow from one end of the tube to the other, thereby completing an electrical circuit, whenever the car was driven on to a gradient.
Once it was flowing, the electric current would detonate a fuse which in turn would set off the main charge. It was the easiest device to place and it took just a few furtive moments to begin the process of hurling someone into eternity. All the bomber had to do was crouch down, slip the package underneath the car and then up into the seat well. Hence the nickname.
The Provisional IRA, whose resourceful engineering department devised this and many other weapons during the Troubles, used this sort of bomb repeatedly. Not only was it an effective weapon that invariably killed but it required little in the way of investment: a few ounces of explosive, some basic intelligence work, one person and a getaway car with driver. One additional bonus was that the hardest bit, placing the bomb, could be done in the middle of the night when the risks of being caught were minimal.
It also terrified those who were its potential targets, mainly RUC officers and members of the Ulster Defence Regiment but also politicians, judges, prosecutors and civil servants whose every day would have to begin with an undignified but possibly life-saving search of the underneath of their vehicles. The bomb was the ultimate psychological weapon, a constant reminder from the Provos to the security establishment that there was a war going on which might tomorrow morning claim their lives, or at least their legs.
Most the weapon’s victims were policemen or UDR soldiers killed as they drove to work in the mornings but there were more prominent casualties as well. John McMichael, the talented UDA leader, was one, killed in the driveway of his Lisburn,
John McMichael, the UDA commander killed by an IRA up and under" bomb
Co. Antrim home by an “up and under” device. His killing, it was widely believed at the time, was carried out by the IRA in retaliation for the assassination bid on Gerry Adams, shot as he was being driven through the centre of Belfast after a court appearance in March 1984.
McMichael was the UDA’s military commander at the time and since he was spotted scouting the courthouse a few minutes before Adams was ambushed, it was assumed, not unreasonably, that he had something to do with it. The Provos bided their time and killed McMichael in December 1987 over three years later.
The timing of McMichael’s death may also have had something to do with an internal inquiry he had launched into fellow UDA member Jim Craig who was
Jim Craig, UDA traitor killed by his own people
killed by his own people a year later. Craig was a UDA traitor and as corrupt as they come. He had been passing on information to the IRA and INLA for some time and was believed, for instance, to have told the IRA where they could best kill Lennie Murphy, the leader of the notorious Shankill Butchers gang who was gunned down by an IRA squad in 1982. Revenge for trying to kill Gerry Adams was certainly one motive for blowing McMichael to pieces but so was the desire to preserve a valuable asset in the UDA.
(The Adams’ shooting had an interesting sequel. The late Tommy Little, who some years later succeeded Andy Tyrie as Supreme Commander of the UDA, told
Tommy Little, learned about the 'top men's agreement'.
me that later on the day of the Adams’ shooting an angry Joe Haughey rang the UDA’s headquarters on the Newtownards Road demanding to know what had happened to ‘the top men’s agreement’. Haughey was an IRA leader from the Unity Flats area, incidentally, who was later charged with, but acquitted of killing Mary Travers, the daughter of Belfast magistrate Tom Travers a few weeks after the attempt on Adams’ life. So why was an IRA commander making angry phone calls to the guys who had just tried to kill his boss? How come he even had their number?
Tommy made some inquiries and discovered that ‘the top men’s agreement’ was just that, a deal between the leaders of the IRA, UDA and UVF that while their respective ‘grunts’ were fair game, none of their leaders would ever be touched. It apparently had been struck sometime in the mid-1970‘s when Belfast’s sectarian slaughter was at its height. Such were the ethical rules of Northern Ireland’s dirty little war: kill the other ranks whenever and wherever you can, but we officer-types are off-bounds! Anyway the Adams’ assassination effort marked the end of the ‘top men’s agreement’, although it is remarkable how many of the ‘top men’ nonetheless came through it all with nary a scrape.)
Gerry Adams (centre, wearing glasses) - John McMichael was killed in retaliation for bid on his life
UDA and IRA had 'top men's agreement' to safeguard their leaders from attack
Nor was the IRA the only republican organisation to use “up and under” bombs. Their most famous victim was the Tory MP, Airey Neave who was killed in 1979 when just such a device placed by the INLA exploded under his car as he was driving up the ramp from the underground car park at the House of Commons in Westminster. The bomb blew off both his legs and he died an hour later in hospital from massive
Airey Neave with Margaret Thatcher
shock and loss of blood. Neave had masterminded Margaret Thatcher’s successful bid for the leadership of the British Conservatives and was slated to be her NI Secretary, which would have been good news for Unionists since he was an avid supporter of their cause.
I mention all this to demonstrate that the sort of bomb which killed Ronan Kerr has been around for decades and there is absolutely nothing new or particularly innovative about their use. But what did I read in the following Monday’s Irish Times but this:
British and Irish security and intelligence sources are increasingly concerned at the technical capacity of dissident republican groups following Saturday’s murder of Constable Ronan Kerr in an under-car explosion in Co Tyrone.
They believe the dissidents are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their bomb-making capability, while the PSNI has described as ‘substantial’ the device that killed Constable Kerr, a 25-year-old Catholic, in Omagh.
The PSNI, Garda and MI5 fear the dissidents are using under-car bombs that are miniature and more difficult to detect.
Reading that brought me back with a jolt to the days when it was often my job to write up such incidents. My abiding memory of that time was that the media, both Irish and British, often felt free, some seemed compelled, to write the most exaggerated, loosely sourced nonsense about such events. The effect was to to paint groups like the IRA in the most lurid of colors so as to emphasize how utterly beyond the pale they were.
In more recent times, both pre and post the St Andrews’ Agreement, there has been a small industry working away with energy and skill to do the same sort of thing with the dissidents, except in their case it is to inflate the perceived threat that they represent.
Before the St Andrews’ Agreement it was mostly Sinn Fein who were in this business and from their viewpoint it made sense. The more they could persuade everyone that only they stood between a fragile peace and a return to the bad old days of the Troubles, the easier it was to extract political concessions from the British and Irish governments and the easier it was to persuade the authorities on both sides of the Border to turn a blind eye to their various, uh, money-raising ventures, like armed robberies and tiger kidnappings on the grounds that such things were necessary to keep the hard men happy and on board.
Post the St Andrews’ Agreement a number of groups have had a vested interest in over-egging the dissident pudding. Some, like this bunch of London-based neocons, are in the business worldwide and especially in the Middle East, of exaggerating terrorist threats but is it not hard to work out either that, in these straitened days, both the PSNI and MI5 have much to gain if we are all led to believe that the dissidents are really, really bad news.
The PSNI and MI5 are, in Northern Ireland, primarily in the anti-terrorist business so the more terrorists they make us think there are and the more fearsome they seem to be, the greater the amount of money, manpower, prestige and bureaucratic clout that will come their way. There are also those, in both these two organisations and in the wider political world, who hope that in such ways Sinn Fein might be persuaded to embrace its Four Courts moment and take the offensive against erstwhile comrades, an event that would, like its Dublin counterpart in 1922, finally seal the peace process beyond any doubt or chance of retreat.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not going the other way and minimising the threat posed by dissidents. Clearly they are capable of killing people. It’s just that compared to the Provos and what it was really like during the Troubles, even in the final years, the dissidents are a faint shadow, a mouse beside an elephant in comparison and they just don’t merit the hysterical, exaggeration-laden coverage of the last few days. I’ve seen reports, for instance, that the dissident groups have 600 members between them. In the name of God, that’s more than the Provos had in their ranks in the 1980’s when they nearly wiped our Mrs Thatcher’s entire Cabinet!
Nor am I necessarily getting over-exercised about the behaviour of the PSNI and MI5. It is an immutable law of organisations that they overstate the need for their own existence. In such ways not only do they get to keep their jobs but they get better and bigger ones. I don’t like nor approve of what they do, but neither am I surprised. And as for nudging the Provos to their Four Courts moment, what would you expect?
What really bugs me, and brought me back in this instance with a jolt to the days when I had to report similar events, is that it is no business of the media to indulge these organisations and interests in the way reflected in that Irish Times report. Of course, reporters must give an account of what such people have to say, making clear these are only claims, and balance the report by putting what happened in context. But no more than that.
To highlight what I am trying to say here, that Irish Times report could just as easily have read:
Dissident republicans kill first security force member in two whole years using booby trap bomb technology developed thirty years ago and inherited from Provisional IRA campaign. Security experts believe dissidents have sourced a supply of smaller Tupperware containers. Attack highlights patchy and fitful pattern of violent activity from dissident groups better noted for incompetence, political confusion and propensity to steal money sent from American sympathisers for prisoners’ families.
The reason why reports like the one in the Irish Times that I have just lampooned bug me is that I know that the reporters are fully aware of all this yet it doesn’t stop them. I can’t speak on a first-hand basis for the situation nowadays but when I used to observe this sort of reporting in situ, I was overwhelmingly aware of the real, albeit unspoken reason and I doubt if it has changed that much.
It was as if the journalists were saying:
OK, I strongly suspect we’re being fed mostly bullshit. But if I don’t go along with it I’ll be accused of not taking the threat seriously which means people might think that I secretly sympathise with those responsible because I don’t want to make them look bad. So rather than be labelled ‘a sneakin’ regarder’, I’ll go along with all the hyperbole and that way I’ll keep my job.
That sort of reasoning is part of what I call the Section 31 syndrome, a nasty leftover from the official censorship and its more insidious cousin, self-censorship that was ushered in by the Irish Republic’s broadcasting law of the 1970’s. The law forbad radio and television outlets from broadcasting the voices of members of certain proscribed groups. The IRA and SInn Fein were the principal targets but it had a chilling effect generally on coverage of the Troubles that lasted for many, many years.
The official censorship filtered into the print media and brought Ireland into an ice age of self-censorship that for many reporters was all about professional survival. Journalists were terrified of being labeled a fellow traveler of the IRA while timidity and mediocrity thrived. In my view Section 31 needlessly perpetuated the Troubles because it inhibited real understanding of what was going on. Simple reportage of the “Last night a bomb exploded….” variety almost entirely replaced efforts to explain what persuaded otherwise normal people to do things as extreme as planting the bombs.
The law was repealed at the outset of the peace process but the truth is that by that stage it was unnecessary to do such things by law; the media were perfectly capable of censoring themselves without any urging from the State. They still are and that this sort of behaviour lingers on in the coverage of bombings like that at the weekend is profoundly depressing and for me a reminder of why I was so happy to leave it all behind. And it’s why this week I’m glad I’m here and not there.
On a slightly different tack the killing of Ronan Kerr has brought the Provos a little closer to their Four Courts moment and that’s important because it helps to explain why the dissidents exist and are so intent on keeping a war alive that everyone else regards, correctly, as a lost cause.
The move came from Martin McGuinness who had these words to say to the media in the aftermath of the bomb:
I would say, and I am standing up to be counted, give the information to the police, give it to the Garda in the south if you have it, give it to the PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland] in the north.
My message is very, very simple: those who are perpetrating these acts, those who are killing our people, need to be apprehended.
These are people who are pledged to destroy the peace and destroy a peace process that many of us have invested much of our adult lives in trying to bring about.
That’s a step up from McGuinness’ comments when dissidents last killed security force members, two soldiers shot dead in March 2009 at an military barracks in Co. Antrim and a PSNI member shot dead in Co. Armagh. That time he called the perpetrators “traitors”. He was roundly criticized by other, non-Provo republicans, and even by some Provos, for his choice of words and that he has gone a stage further this time and called on people to inform is surely significant. It will also spur the dissidents to more violence.
A measure of how significant his words are can be judged by watching, by way of sharp contrast, this extract from a TV interview that McGuinness gave when he was Northern Commander of the IRA and men and women under his command did a good deal more than plant “up and unders” beneath policemen’s cars. “Death”, he agreed with interviewer Peter Taylor, was the fate reserved for those who betrayed the IRA.
Martin McGuinness knows a thing or two about informers. He was centrally involved in the celebrated, not to say infamous case of the Derry informer Frank Hegarty about which you can read more here. The affair ended with Hegarty’s death and a more than lingering belief amongst some at the IRA’s highest reaches that perhaps the wrong informer had been killed.
He also played a part in the more tragic death of IRA informer Caroline Moreland, a 34 year old woman from West Belfast whose offence was, so I have been told, to betray an arms dump containing a single rifle. (Maybe if she had just said that it was an act of anticipatory decommissioning she would have lived. But she didn’t.)
She was killed in July 1994 just a month before the first peace process, IRA ceasefire was called. When the Army Council met to decide, inter alia, whether to confirm her death sentence, IRA and Sinn Fein leaders were faced with a dilemma. Her offence was relatively minor and the war was about to end, so what the hell, maybe she should be spared. But if the leadership let her live then it would have sowed suspicion in the ranks of those in the IRA who still believed the leadership line that the peace process was merely a tactical device to wrong foot the Brits and not a plot to go constitutional. The dissidents-in-waiting, if you like, would have been needlessly alarmed.
And so poor Caroline Moreland was given the thumbs down by those seven men in a room. There was a brief discussion on how to handle her killing. One person suggested that she be disappeared, that is killed, her body dumped in a secret grave and lies told to her family about what had really happened. Who came up with the idea? Well, put it this way, it wasn’t Gerry Adams.
The idea was dismissed by one figure on the Council, someone who was aware that the whole issue of the disappeared of the 1970’s might well return to haunt him and that it would be foolish to add to that problem. And who was that? Well let’s just say it wasn’t Martin McGuinness.
The point about all this history telling is this. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness played roles in the development and selling of the peace process that was a little akin to Mutt and Jeff, the good cop, bad cop routine. Adams was the good cop, whose role was to interact with John Hume and be the public face of diplomacy in dealings with governments, the White House and so on. McGuinness’ role, a suitable one since he had the active service record and Adams didn’t, was to be the bad cop, to reassure the IRA grassroots that there would be no sell out while he was running Northern Command and that if Martin backed the peace process then there was nothing to be worried about.
And it worked perfectly, well almost so. Dissident opposition to the Adams-McGuinness strategy did emerge but it came in two waves and because of that the strategy triumphed. The first was led by people like Michael McKevitt, the IRA Quarter-Master General who was close enough to events and the major players to
Micky McKevitt, the first IRA dissident
get suspicious early on about the real deal that was coming down the pike. But his effort to overthrow Adams was frustrated and then when he broke off to form the Real IRA and made common cause with the INLA and the Continuity IRA against the Adams-McGuinness strategy, the venture was torpedoed by the Omagh bomb.
The next wave came many years later and really didn’t gather steam until the Provos agreed to accept and recognise the PSNI in the wake of the St Andrews’ Agreement which brought them into government with Ian Paisley and the DUP. The people involved in this wave were those who had ignored McKevitt’s warnings, and went along with the leadership’s claim that he was just an ambitious malcontent. They chose to stay within the bosom of the Provos, preferring to believe Martin McGuinness’s soothing words rather than the reality unfolding all around them. But when Martin & Co. agreed to back the PSNI they could deny the reality no longer.
Their determination to go back to war appears therefore to be fueled less by any sophisticated plan to destabilize Sinn Fein or the peace deal and more by their anger at being misled and tricked by the Provo leadership, especially the bad cop, Martin McGuinness. They were always wary of Gerry Adams. He was ever the crafty politician, never to be trusted. But Martin was one of their own. How could he lie so treacherously, they cried?
And so their anger at McGuinness is expressed in the killing of Ronan Kerr. Except that’s not the full truth either. The people they’re really angry at are themselves, for being so stupid, except they won’t admit as much. That’s why they’ll keep on planting “up and unders” and why others like Ronan Kerr will die. And it is why they’re not really a threat and why the peace process will likely survive everything they throw at it.
Brian Moore, aka Cormac, who drew cartoons in An Phoblacht-Republican News for over thirty years
I have just learned that Brian Moore, better known as the cartoonist Cormac, died recently in Belfast and reading some of the obits that appeared on the web and elsewhere, it struck me that his role in the development of republican, that is Provo republican, politics was not really given proper recognition by the various writers. He played a small part, for sure, but nonetheless an important one in its way in bringing about the leadership changes in the IRA and Sinn Fein that led us to where we are now.
He was originally a member of one of those Trotskyite groups – don’t ask me which one, but I have a notion it was an offshoot of the post-QUB, Peoples Democracy – which believed that national liberation struggles were more important than class ones, that supporting the Viet Cong and Che Guevara was more relevant than organising in the local Ford plant or giving out leaflets during strikes. In Ireland that meant backing the Provos and so it was that Brian Moore volunteered his services as cartoonist for Republican News and later An Phoblacht-Republican News (AP-RN).
As a cartoonist Brian Moore was strongly influenced by the American underground comix tradition of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s which was especially rich in the San Francisco area. That was no accident since San Francisco was at the centre of the Sixties counterculture ferment which was defined by political radicalism, disdain for mainstream values and liberal attitudes towards sex and drug use, all themes that were meat and drink in the world of underground comix.
The comix were mostly self-published and although they had small circulations the cultural influence of publications like Zap Comix and characters like Fritz the Cat or the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers was immense and stretched way beyond the west coast. One of the best of the underground cartoonists was Robert Crumb whose work and that of Brian Moore are strikingly similar. Two of Crumb’s creations, Mr Natural and Keep on Truckin’ could easily have jumped out of a Brian Moore cartoon in AP/RN or vice-versa.
Mr Natural, a character created by San Francisco cartoonist Robert Crumb, and an inspiration for Cormac
Keep on Truckin', another Robert Crumb cartoon
It was Danny Morrison who as editor in the mid-1970’s brought Brian Moore into Republican News, the Provisional weekly that was set up by the Belfast Brigade of the IRA in 1970 under the direction of Jimmy Steele and Hugh McAteer, the latter a former Chief of Staff, the former an early Provo icon and veteran of the Thirties and Forties campaigns.
The early Republican News was almost a caricature of the early Provisionals and faithfully reflected the devout Catholicism and fierce anti-Communism of the new IRA’s founders. One of its first editorials railed against erstwhile comrades in the Official IRA, explaining the reasons why people of the calibre of Steele and McAteer had broken with them to set up the Provisional IRA in terms that Joe McCarthy would have been proud of: “Gradually into executive posts both in the IRA and Sinn Fein, the Red agents infiltrated and soon these men became the policy makers”. Its first editor later became a leader in the Tridentine Mass movement which was dedicated to returning the Catholic church to Latin rituals and the dogmas and attitudes of pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
By the time Brian Moore joined Republican News, both Steele and McAteer were dead and the IRA in Belfast was moving leftwards under the direction of Gerry Adams, Ivor Bell and Brendan Hughes whose influence was enormously significant even though all three men were in Long Kesh at the time, either as internees or jailed because of escape attempts from internment.
The IRA had just ended a long, debilitating ceasefire which had caused huge dissension within the organisation. The camp led by Adams, Bell and Hughes – then the IRA’s Young Turks – opposed the ceasefire, arguing that the leadership in Dublin had been tricked by the British into believing that withdrawal was on the cards. Instead, they said, the British had used the lengthy ceasefire to build up intelligence on the IRA and to refine their anti-terrorist strategy, notably by criminalising the IRA, which almost resulted in its defeat.
Danny Morrison, editor of Republican News, on a visit to Long Kesh, circa 1981
Danny Morrison had at first supported the 1974-75 ceasefire but was talked round by Adams and then became an enthusiastic convert to the anti-leadership cause. Adams & Co. were agitating to take over the IRA and the centerpiece of their argument was the conviction that a quick military victory was no longer possible, that the war against the British was going to be a long one and to survive that length of time, the IRA would need to become politically relevant to those from whom it drew support. That necessitated both that the IRA move leftwards and that it get involved politically, two ideas that not only would have been anathema to Jimmy Steele and Hugh McAteer and their confreres but contained within them the mustard seeds of the peace process.
Under Morrison’s editorship, Republican News became the vehicle for this agenda. Gerry Adams and like-minded IRA prisoners were given columns in the paper. Adams chose the Brownie byline (for a detailed explanation, see Voices From the Grave) to protect his anonymity as he pushed his programme, although everyone knew it was him, but others also wrote influential columns, not least Bobby Sands under the nom de plume, Marcella.
Hiring Brian Moore was an inspired move by Morrison and along with allowing the late John McGuffin, a friend and colleague of Moore’s, free rein to write The Brigadier column, an often hilarious send up of the British Army’s officer class, these moves helped make Republican News one of the most attractive and interesting political papers in Western Europe. The Cormac cartoon though was its distinctive feature and as Danny Morrison noted in his obituary of Moore it was often the first thing that readers would turn to.
The contrast represented by Morrison’s Republican News with the staid leadership that had led the IRA into the ceasefire disaster, old men with politics to match, could not have been greater. They were yesterday’s men, out of touch and out of date, whereas Adams & Co., as symbolised by their newspaper, were tomorrow’s young, vibrant and relevant hope for Irish republicans, people who were brimming with ideas and enthusiasm. In the world of political propaganda, hiring Brian Moore and transforming RN was the equivalent of ditching Thompson machine guns for Armalite rifles.
It was no accident either that when Gerry Adams made his move in the late 1970’s to consolidate the take over of the IRA that he and his allies had been long planning, they chose the organisation’s newspapers as a major battleground. In those days RN’s circulation was confined to the North; the IRA’s Southern supporters were sold An Phoblacht (The Republic) which was produced in Dublin and strongly reflected the views of the anti-Adams Southern leadership.
Adams’ victory, and his readiness to wade in the gutter to achieve it, was signaled when, after a fierce battle that involved badly smearing AP’s editor Gerry O’Hare, the two papers were fused. Any doubt as to who had won were settled when the first edition of the re-christened An Phoblacht-Republican News appeared. It was Republican News, in content, style and politics, with a slightly different name; An Phoblacht had been swallowed up and was no more. In this bitter little battle Brian Moore and Cormac had played a not insignificant role.
But what goes around, comes around. I doubt very much whether Danny Morrison’s observation remained correct throughout time and that when AP-RN moved into what can only be described as its Pyongyang Times phase, when pro-peace process political correctness became the stifling order of the day, people still as enthusiastically turned to the Cormac cartoon.
The truth is that, at the end, his cartoons became infected with the same malady, faithfully drawn to conform to that week’s orthodoxy. The cartoon chosen by AP-RN to accompany his obituary was typical of this, celebrating Stormont, once the symbol of partition and a prime target for destruction by the IRA, but now the Holy Grail partly because Sinn Feiners sit in its chamber but mostly because Unionists don’t like that. The cartoon is also, interestingly, a measure of how much sectarianism is now part of the Provo culture. In fact AP-RN became so dull that it is no longer sold as a newspaper, hawked as it once was, door-to-door by volunteers and is now only available on the web where it is read by an ever dwindling audience.
The politically correct Cormac cartoon chosen by AP-RN for Brian Moore's obituary
A Cormac cartoon from the time of the 1981 hunger strikes. More typical of the body of his work.
There was, though, another aspect of Brian Moore’s life that is worth remembering and that was as songwriter and performer for the Men of No Property, an eclectic group which produced original pro-IRA music and songs in the early 1970’s. Two of Moore’s creations, the self-explanatory England’s Vietnam and Jesus and Jesse, the story of Jesus Christ and Jesse James meeting in the Belfast of the early 1970’s, have become classics and also relics of what now seems to be a long-lost age. Their music is still on sale here. Here are those two songs for you to savour:
Thanks to the Cedar Lounge for this link. It’s an RTE radio documentary called ‘Dogfight: Conor and Charlie’, that zeros in on one constituency, Dublin South-West during the recent general election campaign and the re-election bid of the area’s two former Fianna Fail TD’s, Conor Lenihan and Charlie O’Connor. Lenihan is the scion of a distinguished Fianna Fail family. His brother Brian was the finance minister in the FF-Greens coalition and the point man for the economic meltdown; his late father, also called Brian, was Charles Haughey’s ill-fated Tanaiste, and his aunt is Mary O’Rourke, a three time minister in Fianna Fail administrations.
Conor Lenihan, Charlie O'Connor and new FF leader Micheal Martin in happier days
It is a great piece of radio and is required listening because it graphically illustrates why the general election went the way it did. What comes across as Lenihan and O’Connor separately canvass housing estates in places like Tallaght, is the sheer venom of so many of the voters towards Fianna Fail. The verbal abuse directed at the two men, the sheer anger at what the Fianna Fail government did to the Irish economy and the damage done by people like Brian Lenihan to ordinary lives is extraordinary. There are a couple of instances in the documentary where the two, soon to be ex-TD’s, are lucky to escape physical violence on the doorstep.
That anger became quantifiable on February 26th. Between them Lenihan and O’Connor barely ended up with half a quota and the contrast with 2007 could not be greater. Four years ago Lenihan topped the poll, exceeding the quota on first preference votes and O’Connor was not far behind. This time O’Connor outpolled Lenihan (evidence, surely, that being a brother of the finance minister did him only harm) while Labour and Sinn Fein took their seats, improving their share of the first preference votes respectively by 81% and 41%.
The documentary gives colour and atmosphere to the wider message coming from the general election result, which is that it was not a judgement about other parties’ policies, ideas and competence as alternatives but overwhelmingly an opportunity, grasped eagerly by the voters, to give Fianna Fail a severe kicking. Fine Gael, Labour and the independents, notably the left-wing ones, all benefited enormously from this revenge factor in the voters’ minds and so did Sinn Fein. In fact one of the striking features of the documentary was how some of the angriest voters saw voting for Sinn Fein as the best way of doing the most damage to Fianna Fail.
In that respect Fianna Fail’s tactic of leafletting constituencies with warnings that Sinn Fein’s vote could increase unless the party faithful answered the call on election day badly backfired since it served only to alert voters that this was the outcome most feared by FF.
Protest vote or not the results were translated into bums on seats in the Dail chamber and in that department, Sinn Fein saw its group of TD’s more than triple to fourteen even if the first preference vote rose by less than 45%. This was the result that Sinn Fein had hoped for and expected in 2007 but had it come about then, the Provos would almost certainly be political toast now. With fourteen seats under its belt in 2007, Sinn Fein would, in all likelihood, have taken the place of the Green Party in coalition with Fianna Fail and now would probably be in the same place as that party: utterly destroyed and without a single TD to its name.
With a result like that four years ago, the Shinners would have been able to boast that the peace process strategy had reached its medium term goal, even if the holy grail of Irish unity was still out of reach. That goal was to have SF bums nestling on chairs around cabinet tables in both parts of Ireland and a voice in the formulation of all-Ireland policies in each jurisdiction.
The chief architect of the process on the Republican side, Gerry Adams would have hailed this as a vindication of the decision to dump armed struggle and the IRA – and of all that preceded and enabled this, especially the controversial offers, deals and non-deals that accompanied six of the ten deaths during the 1981 hunger strike and the consequent foray into electoral politics.
Sinn Fein’s surprisingly poor showing in 2007 deprived Adams of that triumph but fortuitously so, as it turned out. However, luck, one of the biggest housing bubbles in economic history, the Anglo-Irish Bank and the most stupid, incompetent and possibly corrupt Fianna Fail government in the history of the State combined in the period since then to give Sinn Fein a second chance.
It seems pretty clear that for Sinn Fein to achieve in 2015 or 2016 what it failed to obtain four years ago, a certain set of conditions would have to exist. The major prerequisite would be that in four or five years time the Irish economy is every bit as damaged and derelict as it is now. That’s a distinct possibility but the downside for Sinn Fein is that if this were so then emigration would in all likelihood have returned to the distressing levels last seen in the early 1980’s and many of those leaving Ireland’s shores would be natural SF voters and therefore no longer available to the party (hence, I suspect, the reason for SF’s demand that emigrants be given the vote).
Another set of requirements would be that the recently elected Fine Gael-Labour coalition would be every bit as venal and bungling as Fianna Fail was, that when the next general election is called the voters are as angry as they were last month and, last but not least, that Sinn Fein has shown itself as a talented and inspirational opposition. Again, all three of those preconditions are by no means impossible, but neither are they anywhere near certain.
Then there would be the question of whether Sinn Fein should aim, as it did in 2007, to be the junior partner in the post 2015/2016 coalition government or the senior one. Since the election campaign would be focussed on attacking the FG-Labour government, coalition with either of those parties would be automatically ruled out (just as FG could not now contemplate a partnership with Fianna Fail).
That means that if Sinn Fein wants to be in government in four or five years time, its likely partner, possibly the only one available, will be Fianna Fail. Here’s where it starts to get tricky for SF. If Sinn Fein’s support is going to grow in the next four or five years it will in the main be at the expense of Fianna Fail yet it will need Fianna Fail to have recovered a lot of the support lost in the recent election for such a government to be viable. How to balance those competing demands will be a challenge.
If Sinn Fein’s participation in the next government is dependent upon Fianna Fail’s recovery, where then would SF’s extra votes come from except from the many independents who were elected last month, or the Labour party? The other option would be to set out to absorb as much of Fianna Fail’s support as possible, effectively replacing it as the Republican party of Ireland, and then cobble together a coalition from the remnants of FF and the scattering of independents.
What matters here is that in either scenario, aiming to be the junior or senior partner in the next coalition government, Sinn Fein would have to grow and develop – and be led – like a normal political party. The problem for Sinn Fein is that it is not a normal political party. It came to life as an offshoot of the IRA and it continues to behave, particularly in the way it handles its internal affairs, as an offshoot of the IRA, where obedience to an all-controlling leadership comes before all else.
The symptoms of this were visible in the years after the 2007 electoral setback with a series of resignations from party ranks in both parts of Ireland – perhaps twenty in all – and most damagingly in Dublin. Perhaps the most telling of these was the defection of Dublin councillor Killian Forde to the Labour Party in January 2010, a rising star who many predicted would go far. He chose his words carefully when he resigned but their import was unmistakable:
“The leadership of the party appeared to not recognise or were unwilling to accept that changes are long overdue. These changes were essential to transform the party into one that values discussions, accommodates dissent and promotes merit over loyalty and obedience. It is only logical that if you disagree with the direction of the party and are unable to change it there is no option but to leave.”
He didn’t put a name to the problem but we all know who he was talking about. Last week Gerry Adams was chosen as leader of the new, expanded Sinn Fein group in the Dail, replacing the dull but dependable Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin. He was picked for the job in the same way as Sadam Hussein was in Iraq, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Josef Stalin in Soviet Russia, with no rival or dissent worthy of the name and success absolutely assured. His selection has to be ratified by the Sinn Fein Ard Comhairle and it surely will be, as all his wishes have been.
Gerry Adams - President of SF since 1983 and now leader of the party in the Dail.
In assuming leadership of the Dail party, Gerry Adams may well have missed one of those opportunities that the great leaders recognise when they come along, that for the good of the party and the project for which they have struggled, it is time to stand aside for newer, younger and fresher blood.
Now it may be that Gerry Adams does see the reality of his situation and that when the new Dail sits, he will be leader in name only, that in practice he will let the Pearse Doherty’s shine and get their way in charting the party’s direction and shaping its decisions. If he does then Sinn Fein will have a betting chance of growing and, more importantly, attracting talented and ambitious people to its ranks and by so doing significantly improve the chances that it will end up in power in 2015 or 2016.
But it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Even harder when there’s a great temptation to see the election result, and his own performance in Louth, as a massive vote of confidence in the way he goes about politics. Gerry Adams’ problem, as Killian Forde implied, is that he sees little difference in leading Sinn Fein and leading the IRA.
Surviving at the top of the IRA, as he did for so many years, required being on constant guard against dissent and brooking no disobedience of, or divergence from the leadership strategy, no matter how trivial, for fear that it will bloom and grow into a significant and even life-threatening challenge. (If you don’t believe this is how he ran the IRA, go ask Ruairi O Bradaigh, Ivor Bell or Micky McKevitt) That may be an acceptable style of leadership for an armed group waging a revolutionary war – or for a revolutionary leader intent on leading his army in a completely new direction – but it’s fatal for a political party in a democratic, parliamentary system.
It means, inter alia, that there’s a natural tendency for such leaders to surround themselves with untalented sycophants, valued mostly for their trustworthiness and dependability, or carpetbaggers who stare lovingly into their eyes and murmur compliments about standing on the shoulders of giants. These are precisely the sort of people who are not needed in a party that wants to flourish and expand.
In two years time, Gerry Adams will have been leader of Sinn Fein for thirty years. I can’t think of any European or Western party with a leader who’s been in office even half as long as he has. But over in North Africa there is one leader just as unwilling as he is to pass on the reins of power to others. Muammar Gaddafi, long time patron and sometime paymaster of the IRA, has been ruling Libya for forty years and is, as I write, stubbornly – and violently – resisting efforts to dislodge him from office. The two men’s lives intersected constantly over the last four decades and it looks like they will continue to do so till the bitter end.
Not too long ago anyone who publicly doubted the honesty and integrity of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams was, in some quarters south of the Irish border, risking the sort of response usually reserved for child molesters and war criminals. Few could be more withering and condemnatory, especially behind one’s back, than Fianna Fail, although to be fair the Department of Foreign Affairs always gave them a run for their money.
I am of course speaking of the days of the peace process, especially pre-Northern Bank robbery, when to suggest that Gerry Adams was anything less than a fountainhead of truth and candour was on a par with concocting a breakfast recipe that featured fattened Protestant babies in the main course.
Now it may have been the case that people like the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and his Northern point man Martin Mansergh truly believed that Adams was being sincere and straight in his peace process dealings but I seriously, seriously doubt it. Something as difficult as getting the IRA to end its war on the terms that were finally accepted was not the sort of project that could be steered to success without a considerable amount of falsification and dissembling. And Bertie and Martin would have known that very well.
So when Gerry Adams or his nom de guerre, P O’Neill, would routinely assure the troops that IRA decommissioning was just not on the cards, my hunch is that Bertie and Martin would look at each other and wink. They would, or should have known via Garda Special Branch that this was nonsense and that plans to do just this were already being laid just as they knew that Adams was aware that decommissioning was the price he’d have to pay to get Unionists to share power with him.
But they would also have been acutely conscious of another peace process reality: lying to and deceiving the Provo grassroots in this way was the only assured route to eventual success. It kept the IRA rank and file content and quiet, lulled into a false sense of security until it was too late for them to do anything about it. In the same way, Bertie and Martin would, I suspect, have grinned and borne it whenever Adams or P O’Neill denied that the IRA robbed this or that bank, knowing this would also keep the grassroots bamboozled, convinced that their leaders were trustworthy, had once again successfully hoodwinked the Irish government and that the IRA would never go away.
Bernadette McAliskey once compared the peace process to pushing a fly down the neck of a wine bottle. Eventually a point would be reached when there was no traction left and the fly would fall, helpless, to the bottom of the bottle where it would drown in the dregs. Mendacity was the stick that pushed the fly down the neck of the bottle.
In fact it would be no exaggeration to say that the ability of Gerry Adams to lie and fool so expertly was the peace process’ most valuable asset. Had Adams been straight and honest with his people about where the IRA was going to end up, he would have been found long before 2005 in a ditch somewhere in South Armagh, trussed up like a Christmas turkey with several bullet-shaped holes in his skull. Without his talent for dissimulation we would never have got to 2005 when the IRA, finally divested of its Semtex and AK-47’s, declared its war against Britain to be over.
The corollary of all this was that a special venom was reserved by the Irish state for anyone in the media who dared suggest that the Sinn Fein leadership had less than a monopoly on the truth. Everyone knows the fable of the Emperor’s new clothes, how a child shames the crowd into admitting the truth, that the Emperor parading in front of them supposedly clothed in finery is actually stark naked. There is a special Irish version of the story with a very different ending. When the child cries out ‘the Emperor is naked’, the crowd reacts by turning on the child and beating it to death.
It is, of course, the job of government to lie and deceive or to connive at others’ lies in the pursuit of implementing policy. And many will say that telling lies in the quest for peace in Northern Ireland was not only excusable but laudable. But journalists are not politicians, or at least they shouldn’t be. They – we – have a special duty to the truth, even if that causes discomfort or difficulty. Whenever I was assailed by government officials, or more often by fellow hacks, for writing stories deemed ‘unhelpful’ to the peace process my response was simple: if this process cannot survive one of my stories then it’s doomed no matter what I write or do not write. Joining in the deception, either by commission or omission, wouldn’t make a jot of difference except to devalue the trade of journalism, to render it a useless and unconvincing charade.
So, I have to say that when I heard that the new Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin had challenged Gerry Adams to tell the truth about his past membership of the IRA, to “come clean” about his “baggage from the past” as he put it, I have to confess that I laughed out loud and long. “There is a fundamental problem for Gerry when he continues to deny his membership of the IRA”, said the bold Micheál, “because every time he talks in this debate during the election about honesty . . . it jars very much with his own position about the past.” Indeed it does Micheál but you didn’t have that problem back in 1998, did you?
Micheál Martin was not only a minister in the Fianna Fail cabinet from 1997 onwards, during the key years of the peace process when there a special premium on Adams not telling the truth, but he is a former Minister of Foreign Affairs whose civil servants not only helped Adams hone to perfection his dissembling skills but often led the charge, employing a special sense of viciousness, against anyone who questioned the Sinn Fein leader’s honesty.
Micheál Martin, more than most people, has known for a very long time that, in relation to Northern matters, Adams and the truth have often been strangers and the fact that he chose this time to let us all in on the secret is a sure indication that in the forthcoming election the Fianna Fail party is headed down the toilet. Truth suddenly acquires virtue, one could say, when political destruction stares you in the face. There was a sense of desperation about what he said, as well as artifice, and I suspect the Irish voter picked up on it.
There was however one line in Micheál Martin’s statement that especially drew my attention and it was this: “Martin McGuinness doesn’t have a problem admitting his membership in the past but I think there is a huge problem for Gerry Adams in a credibility sense.”
Actually not entirely true, Mr Martin. Not only not the full truth but also unfair to Mr Adams. It’s unfair to Gerry Adams because in the narrative of Provo dishonesty peddled by the likes of Micheál Martin, the Sinn Fein leader is depicted as the singular voice of skullduggery in Sinn Fein whereas in fact Martin McGuinness has lied ever bit as flagrantly about his IRA history as Gerry Adams and, I strongly suspect, would have lied as comprehensively but for a few inconvenient pieces of newspaper and television archive.
The Martin McGuinness that I came to know as a journalist covering the Northern Ireland beat was rarely far from the very top of the IRA pyramid. In the mid to late 1970’s he was the IRA’s first Northern Commander, appointed to the job when on Adams’ advice a separate Northern Command was created whose effect, if not purpose, was to take power away from Southern IRA leaders. He then became Chief of Staff and held that post until 1982 when others on the Army Council insisted that he had to give it up if he wanted to run as a Sinn Fein candidate in the elections to Jim Prior’s Assembly.
He always hankered to get the job back and for years afterwards a vicious feud simmered beneath the surface between him and Kevin McKenna who took over the post and held it until he was succeeded by ‘Slab’ Murphy. McGuinness re-entered the military picture in a serious way in the mid-1980’s when, in preparation for the arrival of Libyan weaponry and the launching of the IRA’s version of the ‘Tet offensive’, he was again made Northern Commander with the special job of distributing Col. Gaddafi’s guns to the units on the ground. The task that he performed was done in such a way that it brought him into conflict with Michael McKeviit, then the QMG. McKevitt came to suspect that for whatever reason, McGuinness gave more weapons to units that were most likely to lose them, usually through the efforts of informers.
When the peace process got under way he played two key roles. One as the IRA’s (or at least Gerry Adams’) secret contact man via people like Derry businessman Brendan Duddy with British intelligence and the Northern Ireland Office; the other as Chairman of the Army Council, traditionally the IRA’s chief diplomat and representative in discussions with outside individuals and bodies. When the media would describe McGuinness as the ‘Sinn Fein negotiator’ during peace process talks they got it wrong. He was actually there representing the Army Council, as their official ambassador.
So in all the years between the mid-1970’s and 2005, Martin McGuinness was there at the very top of the IRA or thereabouts, playing a crucial role in both its military and political side.
But what does Martin McGuinness himself say about what he was doing during this period?
Well the answer to this question can be found in the report of the Saville Tribunal into Bloody Sunday, to be specific in the transcript of witness cross-examinations, pages 140-141 of day 391’s business. McGuinness was being questioned by Christopher Clarke QC, counsel for the Tribunal about the “Green Book’, which contains the IRA’s manual, statement of aims and constitution and this is how it reads:
Q. It may well be, sir, you had already left the IRA by the time this document in the form that we have it, came into existence. When did you leave the IRA?
A. Here we go again, on another trawl through the Martin McGuinness fixation.
Q. No, it is not at all, sir, not at all. May I just explain to you, because you have been very concerned, understandably, to be treated in the same way as the soldiers, and it is precisely the same question, word for word, as was asked, I think, of some seven or eight soldiers.
A. Were they asked when they left the British Army?
Q. Yes, simply because it was thought to be relevant to the way in which other people had reacted to what had happened on Bloody Sunday. You do not have to answer my question or any of them, I ask them, and I will not ask them twice, it is for the Tribunal to say whether you should answer them or not: I ask again, when did you leave the IRA, if you did?
A. I left the IRA in the early part of the 1970s.
So during all those years when we thought that Martin McGuinness was Northern Commander (twice), Chief of Staff and then Chairman of the Army Council, he was really a civilian with no connection at all to the IRA. How could he be anything else since he told the Saville Tribunal under oath that he had left the organisation in the ‘early’ 1970’s?
I can almost hear the readers’ response: “Sure, that’s bullshit but at least he admits he was in the IRA, if only for a bit!” And that’s true and it’s more than Gerry Adams has ever acknowledged. But why lie about the three decades or so after the ‘early’ 1970’s and not about the two or three years before it? Is it because there’s more to hide in the later years or because he screwed up in those early years, admitting things about his association with the IRA that he regretted later and which the wilier Adams would never have? And if he had not said or done those things would he too, like Adams, now be swearing to the world that he had never, ever been in the IRA?
Martin McGuinness at an early IRA funeral in Derry
There’s this for instance, something that falls into the rush of blood to the head category, a statement he made from the dock in Green Street courthouse, Dublin in 1973 when he was convicted of IRA membership:
“We have fought against the killing of our people. I am a member of Oglaigh na Eireann (IRA) and very, very proud of it.”
That’s something Mr Adams would never have said.
Then there’s this video of an appearance at an IRA press conference in Derry in June 1972, perhaps an example of McGuinness succumbing to the lure of the klieg lights. He is flanked by IRA Chief of Staff, Sean Macstiofain, Belfast Commander Seamus Twomey and Army Council member Daithi O Connail, and the purpose of press conference was to put forward an IRA ceasefire proposal to the new NI Secretary, Willie Whitelaw. There’s an even more famous television interview, broadcast on ITV but sadly not available on YouTube, in which a youthful McGuinness admits being the Derry Commander of the IRA. Again the shrewder Gerry Adams would have steered well clear of such exposure.
After blatant admissions like these it would be impossible for Martin McGuinness to deny he had been in the IRA in the ‘early’ 1970’s. But after that, in the subsequent three decades, he never made a similar mistake or engaged in such embarrassing frankness ever again and, thankfully from his viewpoint, it was so much easier therefore to resort to the lie.
There’s another part of the story of Adams, McGuinness and the peace process that is vital to an understanding of this period. For sure, Gerry Adams dissembled the IRA into decommissioning its weapons and ending its war with the British but he didn’t do this alone. He couldn’t have achieved it without McGuinness’ help for while Gerry was the Provos’ political leader, he never had the trust of the IRA rank and file that Martin had. The reason was simple: Martin had a military track record and Gerry didn’t. Martin had done the business and Gerry hadn’t. So when Martin would give substance to Gerry’s assurances that all was well, as in this video, it gave the whole project a crucial credibility.
In the days before my book ‘A Secret History of the IRA’ was published in the autumn of 2001, Martin McGuinness toured newspaper and television offices in Dublin and London to talk about it to editors and senior journalists. His purpose was simple, to blacken my name and label me a dissident fellow-traveller. It was partly an effort to do the book down and partly an exercise in intimidation, carrying with it the implied threat that any journalist treating my book sympathetically or seriously risked the same treatment. He even went to see my editor in the Sunday Tribune, Matt Cooper. Matt asked him did he believe Gerry Adams when he denied ever being in the IRA? “Yes” replied McGuinness, not missing a beat. “He looked me straight in the eye when he said it”, recalled Cooper.
The announcement last week that Tony O’Reilly had sent the bailiffs into the Sunday Tribune was a bit like hearing of the death of an old ailing friend; you had been expecting it for a long time but even so, the shock is still intense, the sadness real.
The Sunday Tribune was so much part of my life in Irish journalism that it really does feel like a limb has been chopped off (not that you would notice the difference these days!).
The paper was born out of the old Hibernia weekly magazine that had been run for years out of a Dickensian suite of offices near Dublin’s Custom House by John Mulcahy and his wife Nuala in their uniquely paternal but often inspirational way. They gave me my first proper job in journalism – for which I will always be grateful – and since I was there at the death of Hibernia, I can claim, I think, to have played a small part in the conception, if not birth, of the Tribune.
The Mulcahy’s had the good luck to come into ownership of Hibernia at the start of the Northern Troubles and they made the magazine’s name with a consistent record of investigative journalism on that side of the Border, burrowing into places where the mainstream press did not have the nous nor, as government-imposed and media self-censorship began to bite, the courage to delve. To its eternal credit Hibernia earned the wrath of Conor Cruise O’Brien in the flush of his Section 31 days; he took a hissy fit one day and condemned it as a cross between the good wine guide and Republican News. Mulcahy thought it a wonderful compliment.
Sadly it was the North that also brought Hibernia to its knees. An article by the late, great Jack Holland about the involvement of the Royal Ulster Constabulary alongside Loyalist paramilitaries in the intimidation and forced movement of hundreds of Catholic families from the Rathcoole area of north Belfast in 1972 spelled disaster for the magazine. Jack had named a couple of senior RUC officers as being in charge of the local police, and therefore responsible for what happened during those terrible days but unfortunately he got his information from a Constabulary gazette that was out of date. The cops sued, it was an open and shut case and that was the end of Hibernia.
(In a last desperate effort to get some dirt on the policemen, Mulcahy gave me two weeks off in the early part of 1980 to dig into the story for any evidence that they had been somehow involved. They weren’t, but my burrowing took me to the Twinbrook housing estate on the fringe of West Belfast where many of the Rathcoole refugees had been rehoused. One of the families I interviewed was called Sands and they told me that yes, the RUC had stood idly by watching, while they were forced by armed thugs to flee their home and their eldest boy, who was called Bobby, was so angry that afterwards he had joined the IRA and was now languishing in the H Blocks of Long Kesh. We’d soon hear a lot more about him.)
With Hibernia out of business, Mulcahy launched the Sunday Tribune later the same year with Conor Brady (originally editor of the Garda Review and later the Irish Times) as his editor. But then the Midas syndrome, the conviction that some businessmen develop that they can do no wrong or ever fail in commercial matters, intervened. The Tribune was doing well, its journalism was much admired and it was moving towards profitability when one of Mulcahy’s partners, Hugh McLaughlin insisted on launching a new daily paper, the Daily News which was a (deservedly) disastrous flop. When it failed the Sunday Tribune was brought crashing down alongside it.
In stepped Vincent Browne to buy the title and relaunch the paper. Sunday Tribune Mark II, the real Trib, was born.
If there is one man who made me the journalist I later became it was Vincent. By the time I first encountered him, in 1979, he was already a legend. He’d cut his reporting teeth for the Irish Press group and later the Irish Independent covering the North in the very early days of the Troubles. He was the very first to talent spot Gerry Adams, then working his way up through the ranks of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade, and he penetrated the strange world of Northern Loyalism, something very few other southern journalists were able or willing to do.
One story, an interview with a youngish Ian Paisley caused a sensation when the Protestant leader effectively (albeit only temporarily) abandoned his Unionist politics and conceded that if Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution were scrapped (they laid claim on the territory of Northern Ireland), he’d favour closer relations with the South. Changing the constitution in this way thereafter became a priority, even an obsession for the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin. They finally got their way in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement.
By 1968 he had already started one magazine, the monthly Nusight (which propelled that complex being, Kevin Myers into journalism) and then in 1977 he launched Magill magazine which had so many high points over the years (the Arms Trial issues come to mind) that you couldn’t count them.
Two qualities marked Browne out as a truly exceptional editor and journalist: one was a real love for the skill of reportage, that is the ability to firstly identify where the story was and then to get at it and finally write it up in an attractive, readable yet penetrating fashion, and the second was his gift for spotting other journalistic talent. Some of Ireland’s most talented reporters and writers, from Colm Toibin (former Magill editor) to Paddy Agnew to Gene Kerrigan (Magill columnist) amongst many, many others, got their start with Vincent and I believe it is for this that he should be best remembered. He watered the garden of Irish journalism (often with more than the stuff that comes out of taps) and planted many of its seeds. Inasmuch as the garden has blossomed, it is in no small measure down to Vincent.
Vincent also gave me a start by commissioning a series of articles on the North in 1979. With those pieces in my portfolio I was able to persuade John Mulcahy to give me employment (landing a job with Hibernia was the equivalent then of waking up in Heaven) and the rest is history. I briefly rejoined Magill a couple of years later before moving to D’Olier Street and when the Irish Times and myself fell out in 1986, I was hired by Vincent as the Sunday Tribune’s Northern editor. I stayed there until 2001, outlasting him incidentally by nearly a decade. He could be extraordinarily kind and generous – he and his delightful wife Jean, once put me up for weeks in Dublin while I house-searched for my new family – and he always paid well if he was getting good work from you.
Vincent in his heyday
There was however another side to Vincent, as those who had dealings with him knew only too well. He could never make a friend without falling out with them, often in a tirade of angry insults and abuse. He had high standards to be sure and couldn’t abide it when others failed to meet them, as they often did. There’s nothing wrong with that but Vincent could be so unimaginably cruel to people who otherwise worshipped him that these confrontations often ended with the victim in tears, vowing eternal hatred for the man.
His editorial meetings on a Tuesday morning were such exercises in terror that I always found an excuse to skip them. That was the great advantage of working in Belfast, a hundred miles away; there was always a breaking story to cover or the plea that making the journey there and back would lose me a full working day.
I attended only a handful of them and they were truly awful affairs. The staff would filter into Vincent’s office with about as much enthusiasm as a condemned man facing the gallows. The bravest among them would take seats at the big editorial table while the rest hugged the wall as if praying that they would merge with the paintwork and go unnoticed. There was a good reason for that; Vincent would always descend upon one poor soul and rage about how pitiful their story that weekend had been. Even though the humiliation was heart-rending to witness, the rest of us would breathe a sigh of relief, quickly tempered by a horrifying thought: “Would it be my turn next week?”
Being stationed in Belfast meant that our paths rarely crossed and for that reason I probably stayed friends with Vincent longer than most. But inevitably the day of our falling out arrived. We quarreled about many things but at the root of our dispute was a fundamental difference about where the North, and specifically the IRA, was going.
Like most in the Southern media, Vincent had failed to spot the burgeoning peace process and by the early 1990’s he was openly advocating the re-introduction of internment to deal with the Provos. By contrast I was writing about the potentially huge ideological changes, and likely compromises to come, that were happening within the leadership of Sinn Fein and, therefore, the IRA. But as far as Vincent was concerned I might as well have been filing my copy from Mars, so out of touch with reality, so accommodating to the men of violence was my coverage.
We dueled furiously over ersatz issues and finally a fax arrived one summer afternoon. I was being transferred to work in the Dublin office. How quickly could I report for duty, he demanded? I replied ‘Whenever you wish’ and heard nothing more. He had obviously been hoping that I would object and refuse, and that would be a firing offence. In reality he wanted me nowhere near the Dublin office. And so it went on until deus ex machina-like, everything changed.
For that I have to thanks Vincent’s other failing, the fact that he was a lousy businessman. Like Hugh McLaughlin he was infected with the Midas virus and in the early 1990’s, as the Sunday paper was consolidating itself, he started the Dublin Tribune, a giveaway that was meant to form the beginnings of a new daily paper.
Now anyone who knows anything about the newspaper business can tell you that you produce freesheets with nothing more ambitious than two men and a dog; anything more and it becomes a sure money loser. But Vincent knew better and before too long there were more reporters working for the giveaway Dublin Tribune than were employed in the money-making parent publication. Admittedly the journalism was great and once again Vincent discovered some great writing talent – it was edited by the lovely Michael Hand and Rory Godson and, inter alia, included amongst its stars Ed O’Loughlin, listed for a Booker prize in 2009 for his novel ‘Not Untrue & Not Unkind’ – but it was a commercial disaster and a drain on the Sunday Tribune.
Finally the board moved against Vincent and, in 1994, he was sacked. The Trib then became part of the Independent stable, bought by Tony O’Reilly we were told, to stave off a broader challenge to his titles from Rupert Murdoch’s empire.The Sunday Tribune never made Tony O’Reilly a penny, as far as I know, and it was always a mystery why he kept it going, especially since the rationale for buying it had long since been undermined by the Sunday Times’ success in Ireland. The only surprise in the move to put the paper into receivership is that it took so long to happen.
I cannot say that I have a word of complaint about O’Reilly’s management of the Sunday Tribune. They stood bravely by me when Scotland Yard attempted to destroy my career and always allowed me a complete free hand in my coverage of the North, especially during the controversial years of the peace process when the Irish media were sharply divided into the (larger) ‘helpful to the process, i.e. ask no questions’ camp and the (much smaller) ‘unhelpful, i.e. ask too many awkward questions’ bunch, of which I am proud to say I was a founder member.
But the Sunday Tribune for me will always be Vincent Browne’s newspaper. I will miss it just as I miss our friendship.
In the wake of the economic collapse in Ireland, the Fianna Fail-led coalition government headed by prime minister Brian Cowen has crumbled amid allegations of widespread lying and corruption in Irish political life. A general election will be held within weeks.
Gerry Adams Action Hero
Gerry Adams has quit his West Belfast seat to stand in Louth, and if elected will lead Sinn Fein in the Dail, the Irish parliament. Many observers believe Sinn Fein could do well, possibly well enough to become a partner in the next government. In the coming election the dishonesty of politicians and the extent to which their words and promises can be believed, will be major issues in voters’ minds. Here are some extracts from reports and interviews dealing with the central issue in Adams’ political life, the achievement of a united Ireland via the peace process. No comment from me is necessary.
BBC, 14th January 2000
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has predicted there could be a united Ireland in 16 years time.
Mr Adams made the comment to rousing applause at a rally for party supporters in New York on Thursday night.
He said the logic of the peace process would lead to unification – perhaps by the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, which was seen a turning point for Irish nationalism.
“If we want to make progress then there is no reason whatsoever, from someone who has dealt with the unionists close up, who has dealt with the British close up, no reason why we cannot celebrate the 1916 Rising in the year 2016, in a free and united Ireland.”
Irish Independent, 18th November 2003
A UNITED Ireland by 2016 is on the cards, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness predicted last night.
With nine days left to the North’s Assembly Election, the Mid Ulster MP said at his party’s manifesto launch republicans could attain their goal by the centenary of the 1916 Rising.
“As we develop the north-south implementation bodies and people co-operate and work together, I think people will see more and more the logic of that,” Mr McGuinness said.
“Certainly it is our view that it can be accomplished over a short period. Gerry Adams has said 2016 and I think that is achievable.”
Guardian, 15th September 2007 — Gerry Adams interviewed by Nick Stadlen,
NS: You said that a united Ireland could be achievable by 2016, the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising …
GA: Well I didn’t quite say that. A colleague of mine said that and then when I was asked the question I said: “But if we don’t get it, don’t blame us”. Because it will not happen inevitably, it will only happen if we continue to pursue proper strategies, and if we’re able to develop the political strength and the political support … if we’re able to create the political conditions to bring that about, and I think that we have got the ability to create those conditions, but I wouldn’t be precious about it’s going to happen at such and such a date.
University Times (paper of Trinity College, Dublin), 26th January 2011 — Gerry Adams interviewed by Eugene Reavey
Q – It now seems that the party’s goal of achieving Irish unity by 2016 will not come to fruition. Are you still hopeful of achieving unity in your lifetime, or do you feel the political will amongst the other parties no longer exists?
A – The party’s primary political objective is to attain Irish reunification. I believe that it is a doable and achievable project. I want it to happen sooner rather than later.
The party never had a position of achieving this by 2016. It will happen when sufficient political and public support has been attained. Bear in mind that under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement the Government of Ireland Act was scrapped and replaced with a new constitutional arrangement. The British government is now committed to legislating for a United Ireland if a majority of citizens in the north want it.
That places a huge challenge before all of us who want Irish unity. We have to win support for it. We have to especially reach out to unionists. But we also need to make the border irrelevant by building on the all-Ireland dimensions of the Good Friday Agreement and harmonising relations between north and south.
The Broken Elbow 
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