Crossing Borders and Double Crossing

By AM Friday, April 29, 2011

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First carried in Fortnight Magazine

The man who claims to have supplied Gardai with the bug that Charles Haughey eventually used to eavesdrop on adversaries had a long career in the shadows. George Clarke of RUC Special Branch had been running informers in the Republic from the very early 1970s. Between September and December 1971, those violent volatile months following the introduction of internment, he made 47 visits south of the border. It was to fish but not at rivers. At one point during his long agent running career he attended the Provisionals’ annual Bodenstown rally which honours the United Irishmen leader Wolfe Tone. Viewing the crowd he might well have thought ‘this kingdom shall be mine.’

Of all those he baited and hooked his best catch would appear to have been fortuitous, a 1973 walk-in who gave RUC Special Branch vital information about the London Bombings. If Clarke’s account is correct this information, while not able to prevent the bombing of the British capital, led to the arrest of those involved, most notably the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian.

So weak was the coordination between the two police forces in 1970s Ireland that ‘McMahon’, then a Gardai informer inside the IRA, was advised by the Gardai to take his information about the imminent London attack to the RUC as he would be more likely to get his asking price for it. This blasé attitude perhaps explains the inability of the London police to foil the operation, its intervention restricted to spoiling the getaway.

‘McMahon’, whose real identify is well known, was not named by Clarke although he provided sufficient detail to allow anyone not already aware the means to find out. The informer had worked for the British during an earlier IRA campaign in the 1950s and ‘60s. Although Clarke described him as a senior member of the Provisional IRA, it would be more accurate to see him as well positioned at a crucial intersection.

Border Crossing is a book that does not cross many lines in terms of revelations. Considering himself ‘highly intelligent’ he made few slips in his determination to give little away. The readers are left with a clever narrative but little balance. Highlighting Branch flaws comes over as a device for enhancing the author’s credibility which he then employs to defend his team. Where it is revealing, Border Crossing flags up systemic defects in the nature of cooperation between RUC Special Branch and its Gardai equivalent in the intelligence field, which was ad hoc and informal, even when effective. This is illustrated by the fact that it was McMahon who actually made the tie up between the separate intelligence agencies. As Clarke put it the notion of being introduced to Gardai Special Branch by an informer in the IRA was ‘unbelievable, really unbelievable, like something from a novel.’

McMahon’s house, where contact was often made, was a location where Clarke would bump into a range of IRA characters including the legendary Michael McVerry from South Armagh. Luckily for Clarke, McVerry trusted the informer sufficiently to have any potential doubts about Clarke smothered before they could take embryonic form. Clarke showed a surprising measure of respect for McVerry and acknowledged that he died bravely during an IRA operation against the RUC.

In 1973 the Branch regarded the British military intelligence gatherers as ‘upper class twits’ who were only interested in ‘kills’ or ‘trophies.’ The inference to be drawn is that killing Irish people was on a par with stag hunting to them. Robert Nairac was one such type who had little regard for the law he was ostensibly meant to uphold. Although Nairac’s SAS membership has been disputed since his death at the hands of the IRA in 1977, Clarke, who worked with him and actually used him as a baby sitter, makes it clear that he was a senior officer in this most murderous of regiments.

Clarke’s early police background was in the Lower Falls where he once saved the lives of two children during a house fire. Even then he was adopting a system of monitoring and observation against petty criminals which marked him out in the eyes of his superiors as the best practical cop in town; an intelligence led mindset ideal for transfer to Special Branch. In its ranks he served in the South Down area which served as a gateway to Louth.

Border Crossing seeks to play down allegations of collusion between the British security forces and loyalists, arguing that no Special Branch operative would provide information that would lead to murder. However he provides confirmation about the dirty war when he discloses that he was at one time in discussions with other members of British security forces about planting a bomb in the Dublin HQ of Sinn Fein.

Here I was asking a member of the IRA to place a bomb on behalf of the British Security Services at the Headquarters of Provisional Sinn Fein in Dublin, in anther country.

In the post war era where memoirs are adding to our understanding of that war, this contribution while welcome could have been so much more positive. The pages of this book are not what they should have been – a window on the murky world of RUC Special Branch; the insider complement to the findings of former police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan.

George Clarke, Border Crossing. Gill & Macmillan: Dublin. ISBN 978-0-7171-4568-3.