The Fenian Way discusses with Anthony McIntyre the inferences to be drawn from John Crawley's book which detailed systemic shortcomings within the IRA. 

AM: John Crawley has put together a serious account of the IRA in his book The Yank. You did a comprehensive review of it and in ways raised questions as important as those broached in the book. You avoided being catty but nevertheless brought sharp insight. There was a lot of interest generated by the review which drew a substantially higher amount of page views than is normal for reviews.

TFW: Sure. I have to reiterate, and I started the book review making this point, that in order to give a credible insight into that period, and the political consequences from it, emotional rhetoric, wild accusations and myths have no part to play.

AM: John Crawley in a piece in the Irish Echo explained that in the book he was driven by a need to challenge the misrepresentation and reinterpretation by the careerists among others of the cause in which you, he and many others invested considerable amounts of time and energy. The plausible answers have come from those who for one reason or another have moved outside the fold. Some of those have allowed themselves to be reduced to a screaming society venting plenty of what you describe as “emotional rhetoric, wild accusations and myths.” More heat than light in my view. What part thinking rather than screaming has to play is in bringing lucidity to the discourse and forensic clarity to the analysis and narrative. Both you and John Crawley have shunned the emotive approach and have tightly gripped the rail of reasoned argument which is anything but vituperative. You would subscribe to a traditional republican perspective as does John Crawley, without being blinkered by romanticism.

TFW: The strength of the book’s analysis is that it bases its conclusions on demonstrable facts that are open to anyone to reach their own conclusions. I know that the nature of this struggle, given the enormous sacrifices that individuals, families and communities have made, makes an emotional detachment very difficult, but it is essential if any meaningful discussion is to be had because the questions raised why so much for so little, needs to be answered in a very clear way.

AM: Answers, really, which have never been provided from within. The official narrative from Sinn Fein is patently false. Upon reading the book I came away feeling that he identified a major gap between the capabilities of the IRA and ultimately what it delivered – an internal solution with the same possibility for Irish unity that had existed since 1973. Then the consent of a majority in the North was enshrined to make up for the previous consent of the Northern parliament which had fallen the earlier year. In short, the IRA accepted the British terms for unity and jettisoned its own terms. At no point in the negotiations that the leadership was sucked into was sovereignty on the table. The negotiations ended as they started, and sovereignty remained where it was – with the British. All of what was ultimately settled for never figured in either your or John Crawley’s motives for becoming immersed in the republican struggle. Am I right in feeling that sovereignty not partitioned reformed was what motivated you and people like John? I had a conversation with John about this and if I am right then at the core of his thinking is national sovereignty.

TFW: The IRA was at war for one reason and one reason only, sovereignty. Armed struggle was not engaged in for republicanism, socialism or equality it was for national self-determination without external impediment. Sovereignty was the raison d'être of the IRA. When you consider that in the wake of the hunger strikes and the Libyan shipments the Republican Movement was at the height of both its political and military potential yet in a mere ten years it would surrender on the question of sovereignty, destroy its arsenal as an act of punishment for having it in the first place and urge members of our communities to give information to the RUC and Garda Special Branch on Irish republicans who disagreed with them.

AM: Your description of sovereignty surrendered seems, as with John, to place that at the centre of your political thinking and motivation, but from previous conversation with you – and I see you have referenced it above – the hunger strike period also appears to have been a huge influence on you.

TFW: The era of myself and John’s involvement was defined by the hunger strikes. The enormity of that event may only be truly grasped by future generations, students in school studying its implications as part of their history curriculum, but from this remove, from the standpoint of involvement in republican politics, that sacrifice was on a par with the 1916 executions.

Those executions led directly to other revolutionary acts, the 1918 General Election, the establishment of Dáil Eireann, the Declaration of Independence and so on, but the deaths of the hunger strikers failed to ignite any revolutionary spirit within the republican leadership other than routine military operations and electoralism. The hunger strikes could and should have been the catalyst to build a revolutionary movement, but republicanism was not led by revolutionaries, what they ultimately settled for is conclusive proof of that.

The point I’m making here is that it was not just the inadequacies of the IRA but of the broader movement as a whole. But what John points out in the book, or more so actually demonstrates, is that alternatives to remedy these shortcomings were in no way utilised as they should have been.

AM: You place the hunger strike in the historical context which therefore suggests you have a holistic republican view aimed towards a singular republican goal, rather than one that is fractured and fragmented into regionalism and a multiplicity of stepping stones: a revolutionary approach rather than a reformist piecemeal one. While I do not subscribe to revolutionary perspectives, my point here is that from the perspective held by you there should only have been one direction for the energy unlocked by the hunger strike to go – towards sovereignty rather than an internal solution. Added to that is that I have heard it said before that an opportunity was missed during the hunger strikes. It usually comes from the Marxist left which has a tendency at times to see revolutionary potential in situations which might not be as promising as they feel. What might have been done differently?

TFW: It should have marked the end of constitutional nationalism in the Six Counties. At that point we should have gone for its jugular. This was the time for active abstentionism, a chance for the republican position to be made manifest throughout our communities. Republicans should have disrupted every strata of the Six County administration that the SDLP and their like were involved in. All republican activity, military and political, should have been orchestrated as deliberate acts of sovereignty in defiance of British occupation and those who were collaborating with them.

AM: Gerry Adams when writing as Brownie from Long Kesh argued for active abstentionism. From your own observations, it was a concept that either did not come into being or if it did it was short lived.

TFW: The election of Bobby Sands and Kieran Doherty was a magnificent success. Republicans were demonstrating that we had no fear of the ballot box and that it was a sovereign democratic republic that we were fighting for. Reducing the sacrifice of the hunger strikers to electoralism was a disaster. Again, one-dimensional thinking just as in the military campaign.

It also opened the door for a pro-active stance against the role of the Catholic Hierarchy in the conflict. Their consistent history of siding with the establishment was morally debased when set against the prison struggle and the deaths of those men. Unbelievable opportunities were missed to advance the struggle across a wide range of fronts that again the question of competence has to be raised. And this is why I say they were not revolutionaries; revolutionaries are not afraid to grasp at opportunities and utilise them for republican aims.

At the very least the hunger strike should have obliterated the very concept of an internal settlement from republican thinking. How can you travel from a point where you unreservedly supported the hunger strikers to a point where you reach an agreement that concedes the British were their lawful jailers after all?

AM: I don’t believe you can. We have the surreal situation of Gerry Kelly annually holding court around the H Block escape of 1983 yet at the same time calling for anybody against whom there is evidence to be prosecuted by the British police and then tried by the British judiciary in a no-jury court. This has to mean volunteers who were involved in the armed struggle. The logic of that is to consign the IRA’s armed struggle to the sphere of the illegal and assign to the British state the mantle of legal and deem it an authority fit for purpose to prosecute republicans. The upshot is Gerry Kelly now supports the prosecution and ultimate imprisonment within the British penal system of those involved in the escape but not yet brought before the courts. He also has to support the prosecution and imprisonment of those involved in the hunger strikes with Bobby Sands and the blanket protest where there is evidence available to the British police. That such a Kafkaesque situation has come about can be explained - if I read you and John correctly – by the outcome of the republican struggle being wholly out of sync with the abilities of the IRA. John takes the view that the IRA certainly was not lacking in ability but also had great potential for those abilities to be developed, expanded and extended. He feels that either through incompetence or intent to wind the war down, the request for upskilling never happened. You seem to offer one explanation for this in your comment about certain people in key positions feeling irreplaceable. How big an obstacle were the Irreplaceables?

TFW: It was a huge problem. And it was rife throughout the country. Individuals who couldn’t grasp the basic concept that healthy progress requires healthy change as time moves on. And because they deemed themselves irreplaceable, they pledged their loyalty to those who wouldn’t replace them.

AM: It was something the late Pepe Rooney drew my attention to in the jail. One of the people he referred to still considered himself indispensable a quarter of a century later. It indicates just how entrenched the phenomenon was.

TFW: A volunteer once remarked to me that he was organising resources for various GHQ Departments in a given area only to discover that the long-standing OC was coming in behind him and un-organising his efforts because he no longer had the energy or stamina to command increased activity in his area but at the same time did not want to relinquish the prestige of being the OC.

This was the brick wall mentality that myself, John and other progressive Volunteers came up against time and time again. And when it became entrenched at leadership level it became self-sustaining with unquestioning support for whatever direction that leadership chose to take.

One can argue that in hindsight this was a deliberate intent to wind down the military campaign. I can honestly say that I never sat in a room where anyone in leadership attempted to make this point for whatever reason. But the inevitability of the irreplaceable mindset was an armed campaign that could never realise its true potential given the resources now at its disposal. And this reality was played out in full view as the operational record demonstrates.

AM: This fed into a process where the IRA campaign failed to achieve a switch in sovereignty no matter how the outcome is looked at. Given John Crawley’s belief that the ability of the IRA fell short of what it achieved, what in your view were the possibilities flowing from the ability of the IRA which were never realised? I am talking specifically about sovereignty and whether in your estimation a republican struggle under a different leadership facilitating rather than thwarting development might not have fallen so far short of sovereignty. As you point out in the review, Tony Blair’s chief of staff was pleasantly surprised that the people who described themselves as competent negotiators ultimately negotiated so little.

TFW: To address the specifics of your question concerning the abilities of the IRA, John’s expose of their inability to grasp the very basics of an army’s basic weapon is the clearest indicator of how strangled IRA operational abilities were. The bricklayer didn’t know how to use their trowel - what sort of walls can you expect to be built?

The real problem however is that the IRA leadership did nothing about it when not only told of the issue but were offered the expertise to resolve it and turned it down. In his own words he was sent to get ineffectual weapons to be used by badly trained volunteers.

John raises the salient point of the de-skilling of volunteers regarding operational competence. A study of the IRA’s operational record shows the clear drift away from modern armaments and to the increasing dependency on homemade weaponry and the limiting of operational diversity. The British were driving that agenda.

But operations such as Derryard and Downing Street clearly demonstrated what was possible but to sustain that quality of operation personnel change at every level was required but this was resisted. In some areas, as well as leadership, the same people were there for years, in some cases decades, who had clearly lost the ability to be effective in their role but would neither relinquish that role to allow younger blood through.

AM: So, the IRA, contrary to what Barney Rowan suggests in his gripping book, Living With Ghosts, did not fight the British to a stalemate but instead fought their way to failure?

TFW: The IRA did not fight the British to a stalemate it fought itself into one, the British merely reaped the political rewards from it.

I know the temptation is to jump to conspiracy theories but what if it was something more basic, political and military illiteracy combined with a mindset in certain quarters that their positions in leadership were almost God given making them to their own minds irreplaceable?

Is that not a real asset for British Intelligence to manipulate to its own ends given that that is precisely what British Intelligence does?

AM: I think this is a good point to wind up as it allows us to smoothly transfer to an area that might be worth talking about and which you mentioned above –  the IRA’s operational record.


⏩ The Fenian Way was a full time activist during the IRA's war against the British. 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

In Quillversation 🎯 IRA Abilities And Possibilities

The Fenian Way discusses with Anthony McIntyre the inferences to be drawn from John Crawley's book which detailed systemic shortcomings within the IRA. 

AM: John Crawley has put together a serious account of the IRA in his book The Yank. You did a comprehensive review of it and in ways raised questions as important as those broached in the book. You avoided being catty but nevertheless brought sharp insight. There was a lot of interest generated by the review which drew a substantially higher amount of page views than is normal for reviews.

TFW: Sure. I have to reiterate, and I started the book review making this point, that in order to give a credible insight into that period, and the political consequences from it, emotional rhetoric, wild accusations and myths have no part to play.

AM: John Crawley in a piece in the Irish Echo explained that in the book he was driven by a need to challenge the misrepresentation and reinterpretation by the careerists among others of the cause in which you, he and many others invested considerable amounts of time and energy. The plausible answers have come from those who for one reason or another have moved outside the fold. Some of those have allowed themselves to be reduced to a screaming society venting plenty of what you describe as “emotional rhetoric, wild accusations and myths.” More heat than light in my view. What part thinking rather than screaming has to play is in bringing lucidity to the discourse and forensic clarity to the analysis and narrative. Both you and John Crawley have shunned the emotive approach and have tightly gripped the rail of reasoned argument which is anything but vituperative. You would subscribe to a traditional republican perspective as does John Crawley, without being blinkered by romanticism.

TFW: The strength of the book’s analysis is that it bases its conclusions on demonstrable facts that are open to anyone to reach their own conclusions. I know that the nature of this struggle, given the enormous sacrifices that individuals, families and communities have made, makes an emotional detachment very difficult, but it is essential if any meaningful discussion is to be had because the questions raised why so much for so little, needs to be answered in a very clear way.

AM: Answers, really, which have never been provided from within. The official narrative from Sinn Fein is patently false. Upon reading the book I came away feeling that he identified a major gap between the capabilities of the IRA and ultimately what it delivered – an internal solution with the same possibility for Irish unity that had existed since 1973. Then the consent of a majority in the North was enshrined to make up for the previous consent of the Northern parliament which had fallen the earlier year. In short, the IRA accepted the British terms for unity and jettisoned its own terms. At no point in the negotiations that the leadership was sucked into was sovereignty on the table. The negotiations ended as they started, and sovereignty remained where it was – with the British. All of what was ultimately settled for never figured in either your or John Crawley’s motives for becoming immersed in the republican struggle. Am I right in feeling that sovereignty not partitioned reformed was what motivated you and people like John? I had a conversation with John about this and if I am right then at the core of his thinking is national sovereignty.

TFW: The IRA was at war for one reason and one reason only, sovereignty. Armed struggle was not engaged in for republicanism, socialism or equality it was for national self-determination without external impediment. Sovereignty was the raison d'être of the IRA. When you consider that in the wake of the hunger strikes and the Libyan shipments the Republican Movement was at the height of both its political and military potential yet in a mere ten years it would surrender on the question of sovereignty, destroy its arsenal as an act of punishment for having it in the first place and urge members of our communities to give information to the RUC and Garda Special Branch on Irish republicans who disagreed with them.

AM: Your description of sovereignty surrendered seems, as with John, to place that at the centre of your political thinking and motivation, but from previous conversation with you – and I see you have referenced it above – the hunger strike period also appears to have been a huge influence on you.

TFW: The era of myself and John’s involvement was defined by the hunger strikes. The enormity of that event may only be truly grasped by future generations, students in school studying its implications as part of their history curriculum, but from this remove, from the standpoint of involvement in republican politics, that sacrifice was on a par with the 1916 executions.

Those executions led directly to other revolutionary acts, the 1918 General Election, the establishment of Dáil Eireann, the Declaration of Independence and so on, but the deaths of the hunger strikers failed to ignite any revolutionary spirit within the republican leadership other than routine military operations and electoralism. The hunger strikes could and should have been the catalyst to build a revolutionary movement, but republicanism was not led by revolutionaries, what they ultimately settled for is conclusive proof of that.

The point I’m making here is that it was not just the inadequacies of the IRA but of the broader movement as a whole. But what John points out in the book, or more so actually demonstrates, is that alternatives to remedy these shortcomings were in no way utilised as they should have been.

AM: You place the hunger strike in the historical context which therefore suggests you have a holistic republican view aimed towards a singular republican goal, rather than one that is fractured and fragmented into regionalism and a multiplicity of stepping stones: a revolutionary approach rather than a reformist piecemeal one. While I do not subscribe to revolutionary perspectives, my point here is that from the perspective held by you there should only have been one direction for the energy unlocked by the hunger strike to go – towards sovereignty rather than an internal solution. Added to that is that I have heard it said before that an opportunity was missed during the hunger strikes. It usually comes from the Marxist left which has a tendency at times to see revolutionary potential in situations which might not be as promising as they feel. What might have been done differently?

TFW: It should have marked the end of constitutional nationalism in the Six Counties. At that point we should have gone for its jugular. This was the time for active abstentionism, a chance for the republican position to be made manifest throughout our communities. Republicans should have disrupted every strata of the Six County administration that the SDLP and their like were involved in. All republican activity, military and political, should have been orchestrated as deliberate acts of sovereignty in defiance of British occupation and those who were collaborating with them.

AM: Gerry Adams when writing as Brownie from Long Kesh argued for active abstentionism. From your own observations, it was a concept that either did not come into being or if it did it was short lived.

TFW: The election of Bobby Sands and Kieran Doherty was a magnificent success. Republicans were demonstrating that we had no fear of the ballot box and that it was a sovereign democratic republic that we were fighting for. Reducing the sacrifice of the hunger strikers to electoralism was a disaster. Again, one-dimensional thinking just as in the military campaign.

It also opened the door for a pro-active stance against the role of the Catholic Hierarchy in the conflict. Their consistent history of siding with the establishment was morally debased when set against the prison struggle and the deaths of those men. Unbelievable opportunities were missed to advance the struggle across a wide range of fronts that again the question of competence has to be raised. And this is why I say they were not revolutionaries; revolutionaries are not afraid to grasp at opportunities and utilise them for republican aims.

At the very least the hunger strike should have obliterated the very concept of an internal settlement from republican thinking. How can you travel from a point where you unreservedly supported the hunger strikers to a point where you reach an agreement that concedes the British were their lawful jailers after all?

AM: I don’t believe you can. We have the surreal situation of Gerry Kelly annually holding court around the H Block escape of 1983 yet at the same time calling for anybody against whom there is evidence to be prosecuted by the British police and then tried by the British judiciary in a no-jury court. This has to mean volunteers who were involved in the armed struggle. The logic of that is to consign the IRA’s armed struggle to the sphere of the illegal and assign to the British state the mantle of legal and deem it an authority fit for purpose to prosecute republicans. The upshot is Gerry Kelly now supports the prosecution and ultimate imprisonment within the British penal system of those involved in the escape but not yet brought before the courts. He also has to support the prosecution and imprisonment of those involved in the hunger strikes with Bobby Sands and the blanket protest where there is evidence available to the British police. That such a Kafkaesque situation has come about can be explained - if I read you and John correctly – by the outcome of the republican struggle being wholly out of sync with the abilities of the IRA. John takes the view that the IRA certainly was not lacking in ability but also had great potential for those abilities to be developed, expanded and extended. He feels that either through incompetence or intent to wind the war down, the request for upskilling never happened. You seem to offer one explanation for this in your comment about certain people in key positions feeling irreplaceable. How big an obstacle were the Irreplaceables?

TFW: It was a huge problem. And it was rife throughout the country. Individuals who couldn’t grasp the basic concept that healthy progress requires healthy change as time moves on. And because they deemed themselves irreplaceable, they pledged their loyalty to those who wouldn’t replace them.

AM: It was something the late Pepe Rooney drew my attention to in the jail. One of the people he referred to still considered himself indispensable a quarter of a century later. It indicates just how entrenched the phenomenon was.

TFW: A volunteer once remarked to me that he was organising resources for various GHQ Departments in a given area only to discover that the long-standing OC was coming in behind him and un-organising his efforts because he no longer had the energy or stamina to command increased activity in his area but at the same time did not want to relinquish the prestige of being the OC.

This was the brick wall mentality that myself, John and other progressive Volunteers came up against time and time again. And when it became entrenched at leadership level it became self-sustaining with unquestioning support for whatever direction that leadership chose to take.

One can argue that in hindsight this was a deliberate intent to wind down the military campaign. I can honestly say that I never sat in a room where anyone in leadership attempted to make this point for whatever reason. But the inevitability of the irreplaceable mindset was an armed campaign that could never realise its true potential given the resources now at its disposal. And this reality was played out in full view as the operational record demonstrates.

AM: This fed into a process where the IRA campaign failed to achieve a switch in sovereignty no matter how the outcome is looked at. Given John Crawley’s belief that the ability of the IRA fell short of what it achieved, what in your view were the possibilities flowing from the ability of the IRA which were never realised? I am talking specifically about sovereignty and whether in your estimation a republican struggle under a different leadership facilitating rather than thwarting development might not have fallen so far short of sovereignty. As you point out in the review, Tony Blair’s chief of staff was pleasantly surprised that the people who described themselves as competent negotiators ultimately negotiated so little.

TFW: To address the specifics of your question concerning the abilities of the IRA, John’s expose of their inability to grasp the very basics of an army’s basic weapon is the clearest indicator of how strangled IRA operational abilities were. The bricklayer didn’t know how to use their trowel - what sort of walls can you expect to be built?

The real problem however is that the IRA leadership did nothing about it when not only told of the issue but were offered the expertise to resolve it and turned it down. In his own words he was sent to get ineffectual weapons to be used by badly trained volunteers.

John raises the salient point of the de-skilling of volunteers regarding operational competence. A study of the IRA’s operational record shows the clear drift away from modern armaments and to the increasing dependency on homemade weaponry and the limiting of operational diversity. The British were driving that agenda.

But operations such as Derryard and Downing Street clearly demonstrated what was possible but to sustain that quality of operation personnel change at every level was required but this was resisted. In some areas, as well as leadership, the same people were there for years, in some cases decades, who had clearly lost the ability to be effective in their role but would neither relinquish that role to allow younger blood through.

AM: So, the IRA, contrary to what Barney Rowan suggests in his gripping book, Living With Ghosts, did not fight the British to a stalemate but instead fought their way to failure?

TFW: The IRA did not fight the British to a stalemate it fought itself into one, the British merely reaped the political rewards from it.

I know the temptation is to jump to conspiracy theories but what if it was something more basic, political and military illiteracy combined with a mindset in certain quarters that their positions in leadership were almost God given making them to their own minds irreplaceable?

Is that not a real asset for British Intelligence to manipulate to its own ends given that that is precisely what British Intelligence does?

AM: I think this is a good point to wind up as it allows us to smoothly transfer to an area that might be worth talking about and which you mentioned above –  the IRA’s operational record.


⏩ The Fenian Way was a full time activist during the IRA's war against the British. 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

23 comments:

  1. A brilliant discussion, Certainly raises a lot of questions as to how the military campaign was run down, considering the amount of new weaponry that sat in bunkers all over the country, Kieran Conway said much the same in Southside Provisional.
    I hope this discussion can continue as alluded by Anthony in the last paragraph. Thank you both for a super piece

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks VFP,

      I intend to continue with it. I feel it is an important discussion to have from a historical perspective. It adds to our understanding.
      John Crawley has set out the context where he feels the starting point was A, the end point was Z, the capacity existed to move closer to Z than to A yet the IRA reached no further than E or F. And some would even query that it got that far.
      I think The Fenian Way provides some of the answers we might have immediately wished to ask John upon reading his excellent book.

      Delete
  2. Cam Comments

    Having not read the book, nor likely ever to, and having read this conversation there is nothing surprising in it. The whole concept and self-belief of being ‘irreplaceable’ was and is an agency circumstance that was driven by the British. Those who were not for ‘turning’ were either captured, imprisoned or killed while on active service or killed by extension – Loyalists. That isn’t a logical answer drawn from ‘emotional rhetoric, wild accusations and myths or conspiracy theories’ but a concluded derivative from the evidence available.
    Why would structural change be possible when the agent is in control?
    As a lad lost in the crowded room during both hunger strikes I noticed how B McAliskey’s organisation and leadership skills were obviously seriously missing for the second strike - a great lady. Not sure if she would appreciate being referred to as a lady!!!!
    Perhaps the lack of education (which McAliskey didn’t lack!) at the leadership level narrowed down their ability and view to that of a colloquial war, mostly based in West Belfast. Perhaps it wasn’t that they were unable to effectually use the arms at their disposal but simply that they lacked the education to confidently adapt tactics and employ those arms effectively. I think the gaps in intelligence from lack of education at the leadership level was blatantly obvious - how the fuck can you expect direction and leadership from people who every time they crossed the West Link they carried their passport!!!!!!!!
    To be honest, I believe that the leadership was compromised well before the hunger strikes and this agency concept of being irreplaceable only allowed the British to always retain overall control.
    It’s a ploy quite similar to a once proposed escape from the blocks where the main objective was to take the prison central control room and from that position the prisoners could dictate the pace of escape unhindered - take the head and control the body!
    To see where it all ended up is a clear indication of the degree of intelligence and quality of the leadership. To say it leaves a bitter taste is a gross understatement. A bitter taste can be resolved with mouth wash!
    I can never understand why the British allowed it to continue for so long when they were in direct control of it for so long - that baffles me. Perhaps they derived some warped pleasure from playing with live toys!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cam - you would enjoy the book. Well written, not turgid tracts but clear writing. It is a quick read.
      I know you place emphasis on agents. Whie I would not dismiss that perspective too readily, The Fenian Way seems to suggest that it is only part of the answer.

      Delete
    2. Cam Comments

      May very well take you up on your recommendation to read the book!
      I understand that agents alone were not the only explanation for where the movement ended up but were the biggest contributors. Hence I mention 'education' or lack of. Travel prior to revolution is also an important experience that can provide scope.

      Once the Brits realised who exactly they were up against it was no surprising where we ended up - hemmed in within West Belfast!

      Delete
    3. I think the book read in conjunction with what The Fenian Way says both above and in their review of the book will be a fruitful endeavour.

      Delete
  3. Gerry Adams was 23 and Martin McGuinness 22 when they attended talks with the British in 1972. History has proven that lines of communication were re-established in later years but those are only the lines of communication which have been revealed.

    It has been often stated that the British identified Adams and McGuinness as people 'they could do business with'. The British business model has forever been founded upon exploitation. So I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that when the Brits said this they really meant people they could exploit.
    Neither man would ever serve time for membership in the 6 counties despite Adams' fingerprints apparently being discovered in a car used in an IRA operation in 1971. In later years this incident raised controversy when a computer traced to the Vatican was used to remove references to it from Adams' Wikipedia page. I find it most ironic that it was never the British who revealed the grotesque crimes of Liam Adams but rather his vilified victim, who had brought said crimes to the attention of uninterested state 'law enforcement' years before. This led to Gerry's revelations regards his late father and given the level of surveillance the family would have been placed under I'd surmise it wasn't news to the Brits.

    There was a plethora of photographic and video evidence of McGuinness brazenly brandishing weapons and explosives in Derry at a time when people were being tortured into signing confessions for possession and yet the Brits turned a blind eye.

    I was at a Sinn Féin 'town hall' meeting in Galbally in '08 (policing I think) when a Blanketman and cellmate of Martin Hurson spoke from the floor. He pointed out to Adams and McGuinness the absence of many senior Tyrone Republicans. This was around the time that a significant cadre of East Tyrone Republicans parted ways with the shinners. I was taken aback by the venomous retort McGuinness spat at the Blanketman. I don't remember the exact words but it was all about McGuinness and what he 'suffered'.

    Galbally man Martin Hurson's death on Hunger Strike had a major mobilising effect on Tyrone. Britain focussed her SAS and UVF death squads on the county as part of their 'pathway to peace'. I had a reminder of this today when the Tyrone Roll Of Honour was read at the commemoration of Volunteers John Paddy Mullan and Hugh Heron. Twenty Volunteers, including Martin Hurson died before the Hunger Strike and 34 died afterwards of whom 6 died before Loughgall.

    How many of those Volunteers died as a result of 'negotiated de-escalation'? I had a conversation with an ex-combatant and current shinner, shortly after returning from America in '07 where I made slightly-veiled allusions to the potential role of McGuinness, based on revelations from Ed Moloney and Richard O Rawe's books and the Frank Hegarty allegations. Their response was to describe McGuinness as a "very pragmatic man",

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gavin,

      a lot of seriously good stuff there.

      I suppose it would make them assets rather than agents. It is hard to believe that they were not conscious assets rather than unconscious ones. As they drove to consolidate their political careers, they had to have realised that they were delivering what the Brits wanted most of all - the acceptance of the consent principle which necessitated the abandonment of the coercion principle: the war they waged.

      At the same time, there is an increasing number of people who think McGuinness was more than an asset, and they can't be pigeonholed as screamers. They have thought deeply about the way things ended up. I haven't seen enough evidence to conclude he was anything more than an asset.

      The tremendously sad thing is that while they were setting up the ducks of their political careers they were still sending volunteers out to risk being shot like ducks in a barrel (and risk the lives of others) when the end goal had become something other than what the volunteers in the field believed it to be.

      The peace is better than the war but it does beg the question of why the war was ever fought, given the misery that it brought, only to settle for the goal the SDLP and constitutional nationalism had pushed for. To be fair to the constitutional nationalists, they killed nobody in pursuit of their political careers.

      Delete
  4. Anthony,

    firstly wee typo; should have written 'Twenty Volunteers, including Martin Hurson, died before the Hunger Strike ended'.

    It's obvious the British exploited Adams and McGuinness to their own ends. Whether labels like agents, assets, compromised and complicit, useful idiots or manipulated egos are applicable may ultimately be determined by history but it's unlikely the whole truth will ever be known fully.

    Seamus Mallon described the GFA as 'Sunningdale for slow learners' but Denis Faul also spoke of the British love for 'a long, slow game of cricket'. Britain harvested all manner of research data from their 'conflict management lab' and, despite Mallon's assertion, my perception is they never appeared serious about ensuring unionist acceptance of Sunningdale. Even today they don't appear serious about ensuring unionist acceptance of the GFA.

    It certainly appears a fraud was committed on those who voluntarily put themselves in harms way to ultimately achieve only a 'settlement' predicated on the obvious lie that 'Britain has no selfish strategic or economic interest' in Ireland.

    There are, in my opinion, multiple reasons of history, tradition, reaction and opportunism which in their own ways explain why the war began. The more pertinent question, I think, is why it continued and for so long.

    The mass protests of Civil Rights defied the brutality of the orange state and shook it to its core. Progressives from the unionist community were active participants. Such a phenomenon is dangerously difficult to misdirect and control. That, I believe, is why the paras were sent to Derry that Sunday.

    Self-appointed armed 'elites' are a much less daunting task for those skilled in the dark arts. It certainly appears that many of those at the top of the self-appointed were not the most elite thinkers and strategists but then compare with the current British government who are elected politicians. Also the seemingly-charmed ascendency of Adams and McGuinness could not have happened had it not been for the exploitable limitations of seniors and contemporaries.

    The security, policing and social engineering lessons learned from the late 60s - early 70s and Hunger Strikes would be implemented in British cities and public order legislation while the tell-tale signs of other such 'expertise' are all over the sectarianisation and destabilisation of Iraq and Syria.

    I've often wondered if the GFA was part of the roadmap to the 'War On Terror'. The concept may have appeared harder to sell if a significant portion of the American population had at least a sneaking regard for 'good terrorists' fighting their coalition partner.

    I grew during what I thought was a war until I witnessed what I thought was a war in Iraq until I saw what's happening in Ukraine. Peace is unquestionably the better environment.

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  5. This is a very interesting discussion. I haven’t read the book, but have listened to interviews with John Crawley. As I discussed with AM, I think he’s a political purist, as well as a compelling speaker.

    Some points I’d contribute:

    @TFW

    “The IRA was at war for one reason and one reason only, sovereignty. Armed struggle was not engaged in for republicanism, socialism or equality it was for national self-determination without external impediment. Sovereignty was the raison d'être of the IRA.”

    I don’t think it’s as clear as that. IIRC, the Green Book stated that the short-term objective was to make NI ungovernable, and the long-term objective “Brits out.” But the motivation of a typical volunteer was most probably, pre-imprisonment anyway, less political purist and sovereign nationalist and more, as Ed Moloney put it, in the Defenderist tradition.

    Exceptions abound; Adams was pre Bombay Street, as was Martin Meehan. Meehan could arguably be described as part of the Defenderist tradition; Adams most certainly could not.

    The IRA existed for sovereign reasons, but was propelled by a swelling within its ranks of those without a considered political allegiance to sovereignty. I think this explains in part why an internal settlement didn’t cause widespread splits.

    “It [hunger strikes] should have marked the end of constitutional nationalism in the Six Counties. At that point we should have gone for its jugular. This was the time for active abstentionism, a chance for the republican position to be made manifest throughout our communities. Republicans should have disrupted every strata of the Six County administration that the SDLP and their like were involved in. All republican activity, military and political, should have been orchestrated as deliberate acts of sovereignty in defiance of British occupation and those who were collaborating with them.”

    This brings to mind an Irish American saying that every employee of the British state in Ireland should be shot, including Royal Mail post-men. I am not saying you’re implying this, but it seems that you are suggesting ramping up military and political action to an extent that would have mobilised the forces of Ulsterisation (with all of the financial and logistical backing of the British state) against the forces of armed republicanism, and nationalism more generally. I don’t see how this would result in anything except a ‘civil war’ scenario in Belfast, and most probably other parts of the North. With an uptake in sectarian attacks against Catholics, support for the IRA would have grown, but to what extent would it have to have grown to win the conflict it found itself in?

    I’ve always thought that if republicans were killing people, any constitutional change would only have come about after an intense and bloody conflict with loyalism/unionism. With a British commitment to withdraw, I also think republicanism would ultimately prevail, but at a huge cost in lives and livelihoods.

    Whether by accident or design, following the GFA, unionism and loyalism has fractured and fractured again. I don’t think there would, or could, be an effective armed campaign against a UI (or a ‘new Ireland’). That wasn’t the case in 1981, or 1974.

    I don’t think the IRA was ever going to beat the British militarily, but I think they destroyed any notions of an Orange state.

    The sovereignty of the IRA can only be considered in the sectarianism of the conflict in the North, and I don’t think the two of them can be easily teased apart. I didn’t always think that, but I do now.

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    1. Brandon,

      I think Ed Moloney is right. However, Robert White in some great work back in the 1990s created a motivation typology which showed different dynamics at play North and South and pre-69 and post-69.

      There was more to Meehan than the defenderist tradition although that was very much a part of his thinking. Also, important to know that he was a pre-69 volunteer. It is more difficult to tell what Adams was given his persistent shape shifting.

      I believe we need to look at the energy that give rise to the modern IRA, rather than read it through the lens of its own discourse.

      While widespread shifts were not caused by the acceptance of an internal solution, what would have happened had the internal solution came around 86? And then there was the pretence that it wasn’t actually an internal solution. Obviously because the GFA fell so far short of the key republican objective, the leadership could not then pretend it was a transition to a united Ireland. So we had some of them claiming it was a transition to a transition.

      TFW in comments about the HS does not remotely suggest that postmen should be shot or anything similar but does argue that more than was done could have been done – the creation of new space rather than getting hauled onto the ground of constitutional nationalism. His is a counterfactual interrogation of the dominant SF narrative.

      An upping of the war might very well have been possible but there were dangers in that as you point out, and is perhaps something TFW might address in future discussions.

      Tommy McKearney has often made the point about the IRA finishing off the Orange state – but if that was a goal then at what point was that achieved and why did the armed struggle continue after it?


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  6. The tremendously sad thing is that while they were setting up the ducks of their political careers they were still sending volunteers out to risk being shot like ducks in a barrel (and risk the lives of others) when the end goal had become something other than what the volunteers in the field believed it to be.

    That is the long and short. Thomas 'Bootsy' Begley was the first person who came to mind when I read that line. I'm from Ardoyne. I know some Quillers and others will think "Shankill bomb" etc...Like Sean Kelly, both were used as cannon fodder, like countless others since the late '80's. Gerry Adams has a lot to answer for. The man is still alive. i am not trying to say he personally knew about a particular Provisional IRA Op....or any. But I have never heard anyone ask Adams directly on radio/TV why didn't he at least let Provisional IRA volunteers know he was talking to the British in the late '80's on how best to wind things up....

    That aside....There are one or two things with what John Crawley has said that don't add up. In the interview he gave to Parricia Devlin. At around 41mins he says that if the Provisionals knew what a psychopath Bulger was then they wouldn't have any dealing with him. Then I think the disappeared and Scaps nuttin' squad.

    For the faults people level at the Provisionals and INLA, I am awe any time I read about lots of their exploits. It takes balls to break out of prison. The kangaroo's are a classic, a few days later as the song goes...."Martin, Dutch and Hugie upped and joined the kangaroos", the Maidstone 7...Shooting their way out of the Crum...the '83 jailbreak....If it had have been the US doing the same in 'Nam or the British doing similar in WW2, Netflix would be making movies and documentaries today. How the INLA took Neave out in the heart Westminster, lets be honest Quillers Israel the West and Russia take out people everyday of the week and no one really complains.......

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  7. Did it take balls to massacre ten civilians at Kingsmill?

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    1. it is a silly response, really, It took more balls to commit that particular war crime than the one at Derry. But each were equally as wrong. Had the evidence against the Paras been as available and as abundant against the Kingsmill killers, they would all have been jailed for life. Not one day spent in jail by those who perpetrated Bloody Sunday.

      All armies carry out courageous activities and cowardly ones. But shortly we will see Sir Keir and the establishment standing to honour British war criminals, without making any distinction between those who waged war and those who perpetrated war crimes.

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  8. @ Frankie

    There's a brilliant book about Airey Neave's life, and about the operation to kill him, and the aftermath. It's called PUBLIC SERVANT, SECRET AGENT: THE ELUSIVE LIFE AND VIOLENT DEATH OF AIREY NEAVE.

    Article by the author here:

    https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-paul-routledge-on-the-killing-of-airey-neave-39882/

    Regarding Kingsmill, are the names of those who did it well known in republican circles? I have never had even a hint at who did it, and who planned/authorised it.

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    1. Brandon,

      Thanks for the link on Neave...The political assassinations the piece mentioned carried out by the British speaks volumes...

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  9. Brandon. I saw a documentary on the BBC linking an ex Para called Paul O'Kane to the murders of the three Scottish soldiers in March 71 and later Kingsmill.

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  10. I know the documentary you mean - The War Next Door? Will need to dig it out again. I know one of the contributors.

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  11. The documentary was compiled and presented by Darragh MacIntyre. It may have been a Spotlight production. Try BBC iplayer, Brandon or You Tube.

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  12. Enjoyed John's book, as always clear and unequivocal. Still much is unsaid, but no fantasy or self congratulatory nonsense.

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  13. Barry

    Did it take balls to massacre ten civilians at Kingsmill?

    it's cheap comments like that Barry that reinforce my belief that you are more British than Finchley. While you think what I have said is a slur, cheap shot insult etc...All anyone has to do is go into the vortex of TPQ and Frankie fact check what I said while reading your comments. Have you stopped to think that if Loyalist gunmen hadn't of murdered members of the O' Dowd and Reavey families servearl hours before then Kingsmill may not have happened? if the Glenanne gang weren't slaughtering innocent people then Kingsmill may not have happened?....I don't think you have.

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    1. Frankie, oh the whataboutery and the cheap, Poundshop quasi-racist shots. Your stock in trade whenever you get riled. I have never concealed my opposition to ALL atrocities committed by ALL actors in the NI conflict. But first let's stick to the facts. The Kingsmill massacre was plotted well before the murders of the O'Dowd and Reavey families who both pleaded for no retaliation. I am well aware of the history of the Glennane gang and for you to to use it as a means of scoring pathetic points against me is contemptible. Republican and Loyalist terror groups always used the crimes of 'the other side' for their heinous deeds. If you think that to be Irish means acquiescing in support for armed struggles, then thankfully you are in a minority both sides of the border.

      You might be interested to know that I have let my UK passport expire and posses an Irish - EU one as I do not identify with the Brexshit Britain that you are so enthusiastic for.

      You recently quoted approvingly the late Ruari O'Bradaigh; the same Ruari who rationalised the death of 18-month year old Angela Gallagher in a shooting in 1971 as "an accident of urban guerilla warfare".

      Frankie, I have no problems debating ideas on TPQ with anyone including yourself; I am just not going to descend into the gutter by rationalising Bucha and Bosnian crimes against humanity such as Kingsmill and those of the Glennane gang.

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  14. It's an interesting discussion. I think the active abstentionism stuff should have been fleshed out more. The key question is what basis would the alternative political power have had. In the early 1920s the republican administration (so called Sinn Féin courts) had a functioning bureaucracy with paid officials. They had their own small financial system and could make the bones of a state. That changed the game.
    Exactly those possibilities may not have existed in the 1980s in nationalist communities in the six counties, but the question of active abstentionism is an economic one regardless. To paraphrase Mellows, the governing institutions are basically a derivative of the economic structure.

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