The article noted that “Anthony McIntyre rejected the claim: 'quoting him: it could have gone on forever as a tradition but not as an effective fighting force …': the IRA was:
diminishing due to an inability for its political wing to reach beyond a certain ceiling; penetration and surveillance; war weariness; dwindling enthusiasm within the community for the never ending conflict and threat from loyalism.
They were rapidly running out of their most precious resource - volunteers. Even the last properly functional ‘brigade’ in South Armagh was, with the sniper team, caught red handed by the SAS in an intelligence-led operation. And this ‘brigade’ was crucial to planting bombs in London.
He further claimed that the IRA “could not have gone on another 18-months never mind forever.”
The arguments central to rejecting Adams' claim that the IRA couldn’t have continued coalesce about Anthony McIntyre's analysis: capped political clout; war weariness; loss of nationalist support; and loyalist violence.
Political Support
It is true that Sinn Fein supported stalled at one MP and around 10% of the vote, with one former Secretary of State deriding Adams as the “10% man.” But it is also true that at the height of the IRA’s campaign, in the 1970s, there was no MP, and no 10% of the vote. Sinn Fein did not do electoral politics until the 1980s.
There are a number of questions to consider.
- If the IRA was active in any way, would Sinn Fein’s electoral support be capped?
- If the IRA had the capacity to fight a war that could be described as “clean” or “cleaner” within nationalist Ireland (limited civilian casualties, hard focus on prestige British targets), could Sinn Fein have increased their share of the vote?
- Did the IRA need political support to continue?
I think the answers to these questions are:
- Yes, it would be capped. Contrary to many unionist’s beliefs, the nationalist electorate did not give Sinn Fein votes when the IRA was active.
- Perhaps, but not to any significant degree. See above for reasons.
- No, it needed logistical support, and had an embedded support network that I think could have continued indefinitely.
War weariness/loss of nationalist support
This is an interesting one. Security force and loyalist excesses created an inbuilt amount of support within nationalism for the IRA. By the 1990s, “normalisation” had had some success, the army was on the streets less and less, and, whilst the RUC was still hated by many within nationalism, there were significant reforms. The UDR remained unreformed, however, and its continuing targeting by the IRA probably increased its support base within nationalism.
An RUC man described the post-1994 IRA as prosecuting a “pathetic, grubby little war” and I think he was right. War weariness arguably came about in part because of the deteriorating quality of the IRA’s operations.
The security forces inarguably had the upper-hand in the 1990s. But they also did at points in the 1980s, and the IRA regrouped and seized the initiative. I’ll talk more about the IRA’s resurgence in targeting loyalists, but I think it’s also important to note that far from being a moribund organisation, the IRA was still carrying out multiple operations a day on many occasions, and had manged to bomb the centre of an economically rejuvenated Belfast repeatedly and severely. This probably led to weariness in many nationalist quarters, but not all. And the killing of loyalists such as Joe Bratty were applauded across nationalism.
I think that at any time in Ireland, support for armed republicanism is simply one security force and/or loyalist atrocity away.
Few nationalists would have opposed targeting the UVF, UDA, or the Parachute Regiment. Significant support could still be found for attacks on the RUC and UDR. The Provisional IRA, I think, if they dedicated themselves totally to an offensive could have continued, and perhaps it would have created a momentum of harsh security force reactions, and a spiral of violence would have occurred.
There was also the ugly spectre of sectarian extremists staging a coup within the IRA or INLA and having started up indiscriminate and deliberate murder of Protestants. I think that we came closer to this in the early 1990s than many would like to acknowledge.
Whilst there may have been an undeniable nationalist thirst for peace, there would have remained a strong desire for vengeance and offensive action. Infamously, this could be seen at the rally where in response to a nationalist shouting “bring back the IRA” Gerry Adams replied “they haven’t gone away, you know.”
Penetration and surveillance
As I noted above, the security forces had seized the initiative. A sniper team had been captured in South Armagh, for example. But the expertise and weaponry remained in South Armagh, and, had they wanted to, I think they could created more. Whilst researching another article, I found an newspaper report stating that:
Crack SAS troops have been sent from Ulster to brief army officers at Sandhurst on a former American Marine turned IRA assassin they have nicknamed '"Goldfinger'.
The SAS had apparently analysed the tactics employed by the sniper teams, lecturing army officers on:
how the sniper picks his targets and positions the 'shoots' and revealed tell-tale signs of where and how he was trained. In every murder so far, the killer has fired with the sun at his back with the victim walking straight towards him” (Sunday Life, 22.08.93).
A welcome addition to TPQ, Bleakly, analyses the IRA of the 1990s here, and far better than I could.
In Johnny Adair’s autobiography, he noted that his units operated in an extremely hostile environment. He had to contend with aggressive security force surveillance and operations, pressure from rival loyalists, and, not least, determined republican attempts to kill him.
The IRA operated with numerous competing restraints: totally dedicated, professional, hugely resourced and motivated security force entities, a support base which was conditional on the outcome of IRA operations (ie would diminish with civilian casualties), and as noted in the article, the loyalist threat.
Bleakly noted that “A lot of IRA attacks failed or were aborted in the 1990s, but a lot succeeded also.”
Gerry Bradley noted that whilst the RUC and army had excellent equipment, so too did the IRA. I read a commentator once say that drones would have rendered the IRA ineffective in Tyrone and South Armagh. I think it’s equally plausible that the IRA could have adapted drones to deliver drogue bombs against military targets. Perhaps the undoubted intelligence and ingenuity of the IRA’s engineering department would have moved away from IEDs and into cyber warfare.
Does this seem farfetched? So does a small group of men with limited resources repeatedly laying waste to the City of London financial district.
Loyalist violence
It’s interesting that people talk of the penetration of the IRA, but not the UDA and UVF. Steve Bruce reported that statistically more loyalists than republicans went to jail for murder. At the risk of incensing some commentators, the RUC were achieving success after success against loyalists. Recent studies have revealed a range of “collusive behaviours” which benefited loyalist paramilitaries, and it’s obvious that republicans were the security forces main target.
But why does nobody consider the hundreds of UVF men swooped in the 1990s, and the fact that Adair and his C Company were off the streets and into jail prior to the IRA ceasefire?
Republicans were killing more loyalists than loyalists were killing republicans in the run-up to the 1994 ceasefire. They had seized the initiative. I haven’t read a single analysis which suggested loyalism was close to defeat.
Why not?
If a simple sectarian murder tally was sufficient to deliver a knockout blow to the opposing community’s paramilitaries, then surely that would have happened in the 1970s? And, if this was the case, wouldn’t a republican group have embarked on a sectarian killing spree? I think there was probably a reservoir of support for this, at least as much as there was a desire for capitulation.
Did sectarian murder intimidate the nationalist population? Of course. Did it create pressure on the IRA to stop? I don’t think there’s any evidence for this, and in fact evidence to suggest the opposite.
Had the IRA not killed a large number of loyalists in the 1990s, perhaps that might have been different, but they did.
Conclusion
Had the IRA not called a ceasefire in 1994, their campaign would have ebbed and flowed, suffered setbacks, regrouped and hit back. I think sectarian war, particularly in Belfast, might well have happened. Who knows what tactics the IRA might have devised in more modern circumstances.
But, having said all that, there was undeniably an historical moment when the drive for an end to violence happened.
I am glad the PIRA stopped. But they stopped rather than were stopped.
⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys.
![Share](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?s=100&p[title]=Could The IRA Have Continued Forever? &p[summary]=Brandon Sullivan ✍ The Newsletter reported Gerry Adams saying that " … the IRA could have continued forever, because it had the bas...&p[url]=https://www.thepensivequill.com/2023/04/could-ira-have-continued-forever.html&p[images][0]=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXO9o3zlPKVXhaPEXZONoiMwYXEa-kriNW4OiKpXxg2fNOW8aJTuPYVkYWMm9w1HnXuOxmN_ut3I9fpT5qAKh5akuvNuTs9Z9RrQqRSiCdYwcxXtG2hNNOCep74DyIsNy0nXLJh4y2nyfJx8w5uQxT5r_K4bBfh1dtMyEYDYQ3S6mR_VYeS6JzHeWP/s1600/01%20Quill%20Hand.png){kind=link}
A speculative piece which the author did not get the amount of time he would have liked to have developed the themes further. He made this very clear when submitting it so it should not be nitpicked. Despite it being rushed, it is no less welcome for that. There is little point in thinking these matters are settled simply because of the widespread tendency to believe what Gerry Adams says he disbelieves.
ReplyDeleteAny writer is free to disagree with the very different views held by others associated with TPQ. It is an independence of mind the blog benefits from.
Keep them coming Brandon. It is being well read.
Question; Do the CNR community see the PUL community, the British Army, the Loyalist paramilitaries, the Spooks et all as different individual entities? I only ask this because we viewed an attack on one as an attack on all.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans waged war against the 'Crown': the Crown, its agents, and its lackeys.
Delete@ Henry Joy
DeleteYou aren't answer Steve's question.
Did you consider RUC station cleaners as a different entity than British army officers? Or low-level informers as a different entity than UVF mass-murderers?
"But, having said all that, there was undeniably a historical moment when the drive for an end to violence happened.
ReplyDeleteI agree Brandon.
However, the necessary conditions for that moment to come about were long years in the making, long in the making, and essentially engineered by McGuinness and Adams's leadership. Whether that was the right thing or not, and whether it served a Republican agenda are moot points.
From a traditional Republican perspective though, Adams, McGuiness & their cadre were strategically incompetent. Their strategic incompetence, supported by the recklessness of those who blindly followed, effectively-acknowledged & accepted Unionist supremacy, accepted a counter-democratic partitionist imposition devised and originated by the old imperialist & colonial master.
Your commentary, denying Republican objectives and minimising previously articulated goals & outcomes of the PIRA is somewhat akin to attempting to put lipstick on a pig.
Henry Joy, surely one of the reasons that Adams and McGuiness sued for peace was that the majority of the CRN populace opposed the armed struggle as is shown by the constant electoral majorities within in for the SDLP up until 2001 after the signing of the GFA,
DeleteBarry, firstly, that the SDLP had majority support within the CRN community is not contested. Secondly, support for armed resistance to the imperial coloniser was not necessarily constant. Though It fluctuated in volume, and in terms of commitment along a continuum, it maintained enough to sustain a viable campaign.
DeleteFrom an ideological perspective, participation in partitionist assemblies was the beginning of a process that would ultimately lead to capitulation.
In terms of military strategy, opening a second major front, i.e. political involvement beyond local councils, impacted immeasurably the cause of freedom and independence.
The IRA was stopped. Ideological Irish Republicanism was abandoned.
And none of that could have happened without the collusion of those within.
Brandon, your granular research into very difficult areas of the Troubles such as responsibility and motivations for killing should prove to be an invaluable resource for future researchers and scholars.
ReplyDelete@ Barry
ReplyDeleteThanks very much, that's a generous comment.
@ Henry Joy
"Your commentary, denying Republican objectives and minimising previously articulated goals & outcomes of the PIRA is somewhat akin to attempting to put lipstick on a pig"
Which commentary is this? The closest I've come to saying what you did there is noting (accurately) that volunteers didn't sign up for purist sovereignty related issues. I think, not for the first time, you're attributing words and theories to me which aren't mine.
@ Steve R
That's an interesting question. Speaking for myself, I would definitely differentiate between entities. I've made the point that nationalist Ireland en masse would have, as a bare minimum, tolerated any attack on the Parachute Regiment.
I recall reading a journalist saying something along the lines of (in the early 70s, in Derry) "when the IRA kills a British soldier, nationalists have a holiday in their hearts." I think Southern, American, and the Northern working classes would have felt little sympathy for British army casualties. The killing of UDR personnel was at least tolerated by large swathes of Northern nationalism. Probably to the same or lesser degree the same with the RUC.
I think the killing of informers was probably less popular than generally accepted. I think the killing of Caroline Moreland in 1994 would have caused revulsion amongst all but the immovable IRA support base.
Let me ask you something, how did the PUL view the range of victims of loyalist violence? Politically uninvolved nationalists, Protestants mistaken for Catholics, feud killings, bona fide republican targets, and British security forces?
Which commentary?
DeleteYour closing statement of your article; "But they stopped rather than were stopped.
I disagree. I believe the IRA was stopped by the 'establishment'. An establishment that the organisation was committed to overthrowing! The IRA was stopped, stopped by the 'establishment' aided in large measure by the connivance of its suspect leadership.
The actions of the leadership and those who blindly followed flew in the face of the stated aims of the movement. Each volunteer was supposed to familiarise themselves with the 'Green Book', here's a verbatim quote from it.
"The Strategy is:
A war of attrition against enemy personnel which is aimed at causing as many casualties and deaths as possible so as to create a demand from their people at home for their withdrawal.
A bombing campaign aimed at making the enemy's financial interest in our country unprofitable while at the same time curbing long term financial investment in our country.
To make the Six Counties as at present and for the past several years ungovernable except by colonial military rule.
To sustain the war and gain support for its ends by National and International propaganda and publicity campaigns.
By defending the war of liberation by punishing criminals, collaborators and informers."
"Let me ask you something, how did the PUL view the range of victims of loyalist violence? Politically uninvolved nationalists, Protestants mistaken for Catholics, feud killings, bona fide republican targets, and British security forces?"
DeletePolitically uninvolved Nationalists, Mistaken identity Protestants and attacks on Security forces were abhorred.
Feud killings were ignored. SF/PIRA taken out greeted with congratulations though now I feel a deep sense of regret at having those emotions. I've been away so long it seems like a half forgotten dream, and the Belfast I remember has changed unrecognizably. Not perfect, but a shit ton better than the 70's,80's and early 90's we lived through. As I've said before, I'd go to any lengths to prevent Irishmen killing Irishmen again.
@ Henry Joy
ReplyDeleteYes, I've read the Green Book. I have a copy of it here. But it's irrelevant, because you accused me of:
"denying Republican objectives and minimising previously articulated goals & outcomes of the PIRA"
Which I didn't do in the piece that I wrote. What I did do was demonstrate that the IRA could have continued in the manner that they had been prior to the 1994 ceasefire. Data suggests that I am correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chronologies_of_Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army_actions
Whilst the IRA campaign of the 1990s was not sufficient to cause "as many casualties and deaths as possible so as to create a demand from their people at home for their withdrawal" neither was the IRA of the 1970s or 1980s.
The IRA of the 1990s could and did explode massive bombs costing HMG billions of pounds, and the North was not governable except by a heavily militarised police, backed up by the army.
I didn't talk about leadership chicanery, I simply looked at the available data and gave an informed opinion.
The leadership were part of the IRA. That IRA called a ceasefire. It wasn't like the IPLO capitulating to a superior armed force, it was a military ceasefire called for political reasons.
As it happens, I do agree that the IRA was being reduced in strength and power - "run down" - and that the leadership were responsible for this. But even with all of that, the IRA of the 1990s had substantial power. And, this is the point I'm making, could have easily changed tactics and caused mayhem at any stage.
William Matchet is one of these RUC types that has to believe that his organisation "won" - they didn't. Some republicans, and I can understand why, see anything less than what they felt they did a lot of time for (let alone took life or destroyed property for) is a loss.
The IRA didn't win. But they could have continued.
@ Henry Joy
ReplyDeleteUpon reflection, I think we may broadly agree on something. I think that Sinn Fein arguably got the IRA to stop.
which does not address the question of why?
DeleteThere was a very poor chance of the IRA reaching its objective of a united Ireland. It was never going to get to the finishing line. The opposition had protected the unity only by consent principle with an echelon defence which kept the IRA well away from its goal. The British goal was to impose or have everybody acquiesce in the consent principle. The IRA goal was to have the coercion principle succeed. There was no stalemate outcome to that zero sum game. The IRA accepted the British terms for unity and abandoned their own. British strategy changed from defeating the IRA by excluding republicans and republicanism to defeating the IRA by including republicans but excluding republicanism. SF leaders (who were the IRA) persuaded themselves to stop and use what leverage they had before it diminished further in the face of British counter insurgency strategy.
Keep backpedaling Brandon.
ReplyDeleteYou'll get to somewhere useful eventually!
@ Henry Joy
ReplyDeleteThere's no backpedalling going on whatsoever. I titled my piece "could the IRA have continued." You haven't disproved that.
@ AM
Re the "why" of the question. That's an interesting one. Why 1994, instead of 1972 (proroguing of Stormont), or 1973 (advent of Sunningdale), or 1985 (Anglo-Irish Agreement), or indeed 1993 (Downing Street Declaration)?
I think Ed Moloney's analysis is basically correct, and that at some stage in the 1980s, the Adams leadership saw that a military victory was impossible, and that the IRA's campaign brought diminishing tangible returns. So why continue?
A cautious IRA after the breakdown of the 1994 ceasefire still managed to detonate huge bombs in England, bomb army bases, kill RUC officers, and target and kill loyalist leaders. This, and the tempo of attacks pre 94 ceasefire, suggest to me that the IRA could have continued indefinitely. But they wouldn't have achieved anything.
From a review of The Lost Revolution:
"asked about the Good Friday Agreement, Goulding remarked: ‘We were right, but too soon. Gerry Adams is right, but too late.’"
I'm paraphrasing, but I recall reading Danny Morrison saying that had the IRA called a ceasefire in the 70s or 80s, the unionist/loyalist attitude would have been "that was close guys, but we held out long enough. Back to our old ways." That's not a good enough reason to continue, but he had a point.
Brandon - when the ceasefire ended in 96, the leadership tried to control the operations and restricted the theatre to England with a GHQ run campaign. With the big arrests in England, that had to change so they gave it to the Northern Command which ran out of road after Thiepval and the arrest of Bobby Storey. It was than handed to the brigades which led to the RUC put-down you referred to - a pathetic grubby little war. The leverage the IRA had in February 1996 had been degraded by the summer of 97. They got a lucky bounce of the ball with the election of the Blair government. Nevertheless, they were compelled to accept the British terms. Yes they could have continued indefinitely . . . and at some point end up as active as the New IRA. And there is not a shed of a possibility that the New IRA would have the strength to prompt the Brits to invest the time in energy in anything remotely like the GFA.
ReplyDeleteYou ask 'why continue' when the writing was on the wall? Very true - but what was written on the wall and who wrote it?
Internal Solution
The only outcome.
Nothing Else available.
Yours truly
The Brits.
Rather than say the IRA stopped but were not stopped is it not better to say they stopped before they were stopped?
@ AM
ReplyDeleteI have read about the IRA almost being "destroyed" after the 1974 ceasefire, and Eamon Collins wrote that the H-Block hunger strikes "occurred at a time of great weakness for the IRA. Had political status been maintained, the war might have fizzled out between 1982 and 1984.
I can't recall the exact terminology, but I think there was an internal IRA paper captured which bluntly described the IRA as being defeated because of the "conveyer belt" at Castlereagh. Other times, Roy Mason's policies were deemed as beating the IRA. As did the Supergrass system.
Removing the role that Sinn Fein played in the move to ceasefire, would the following be considered a greater threat than that I listed in the paragraphs above? "diminishing due to an inability for its political wing to reach beyond a certain ceiling; penetration and surveillance; war weariness; dwindling enthusiasm within the community for the never ending conflict and threat from loyalism."
The IRA proved remarkably resilient. To go back to the points raised in the Newsletter article, and my piece above, I don't think the reasons stated were enough to ensure that the IRA couldn't have continued indefinitely - weakened, yes, but history shows a process of evolution and adaptation. I just can't imagine the IRA ending up as a New IRA outfit, nor even an IPLO outfit.
But I accept I could be wrong - I wasn't there.
It was destroyed in the past or came close to it even if the 75 period might have been exaggerated by the people who wanted to replace the leadership and sought to undermine it by withholding weapons until key people got out of jail.
ReplyDeleteThe IRA did not feel defeated by Mason or supergrasses. While feeling the heat it knew it could survive both. By the late 80s there was a different mentality creeping in. One former prisoner visited me in the jail some time after Gibraltar and commented that selective internment would destroy the IRA and that at some point it would have to call it a day.
It could also have fizzled out by mid 80s but for the hunger strike. The prisons gave it a lease of life and the Libyan weaponry gave it leverage but little in the way of military capacity. The most effective outcome for them from the shipments seemed to be Semtex used in booby traps.
I once asked one of those revolutionary talking heads in the jail what the IRA would do once it became incapable of reaching a kill rate of ten British soldiers a year. His response was that it would mean the defeat of the IRA so that point would never be reached because the IRA could not be defeated. Yet it did and he just moved the goalposts when that point was reached.
That is why the IRA in my view would have ended up like the New IRA: claiming to be involved in some campaign of resistance which nobody else notices apart from the rare occasion they do something.
The internal paper you refer to was probably the GHQ staff paper but it too was the work of the people who wanted to be the leadership and wanted the war geared towards a long war until a declaration of intent was secured. Never remotely happened.
The degradation of the IRA reached the pathetic grubby little war. The Brits were not going in that direction. They had the capacity to stay in the game forever without their strength being diminished. In as far as you can believe him, John Chilcott said that by the early 90s the British focus on the IRA had shifted: they knew the IRA would come to heel despite the ability to attack. For the Brits it was the end game.
In the real world guerrilla campaigns don't go on forever. In the mind of Adams there is an opportunity on the 25th anniversary of the GFA to promote himself by claiming it could have gone on forever only for him; that without him the GFA would not have been possible.
This is why I do not buy the criticism that the IRA could have won had Adams not sold out. For sure, he finetuned his political career in the context of the IRA losing the momentum but his real ability lay in managing the failure of the IRA campaign not in causing it.
Some nuanced commentary from AM. Especially this analysis "British strategy changed from defeating the IRA by excluding republicans and republicanism to defeating the IRA by including republicans but excluding republicanism".
ReplyDeleteMental gymnasticism at its best.
Irish Republicanism was once again shown to be a chocolate tea pot.
The late Lord Trimble didn't agree with my analysis and linked Scap with Sinn Fein's desire for a compromise. I remember seeing graffiti in a pub on the Falls:
ReplyDelete"Trimble Will Tremble When the Boys Reassemble"
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/stakeknife-double-agent-fears-forced-sinn-fein-to-negotiating-table-said-trimble/262582324.html