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Showing posts with label Physical Force Republicanism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Physical Force Republicanism. Show all posts
Michael Phillips ✍ Ever since the PIRA stood down thirty years ago, various groups have tried to claim they are the natural evolution destined to continue the armed struggle. 

Nothing new there, supposedly. But times are changing—fast. The pace of military advancement is no longer just frightening; it’s alien. More on that shortly.

While some at home remain trapped in the past conflict, cleverly updating their messaging for the digital age and boosting their hype and marketing, their military thinking is still—well—pure 90s.

Take the recent emergence of the far-right New Republican Movement. You could almost hear the confused murmurs and head-scratching as people tried to work out whether this new armed group was masquerading as Republicans with extremist aims. I was quizzed on the breaking news and asked whether they had any connection to the old—or new—IRA. I had no idea, so I reached out home for answers. The replies were swift: their motives are purely racist.

The episode underlines how a Monty Python–esque reality is unfolding before our eyes. Leaving aside, for the moment, that this group claims to be “protecting Irishness,” releasing a Provo-style video and going viral for their efforts, it still exposes how delusional—and amateurish—such military posturing has become. And for a whole host of reasons, now more than ever.

Once, after I got out of prison, I was approached by the Real IRA. They wanted a meeting. I made enquiries about their motives and was promptly advised to avoid them like leprosy. They were in a recruitment phase, I was told, and heavily infiltrated by the Brits. Come to think of it, that advice came wrapped in a thick layer of irony. Either way, I avoided the intermediary until they eventually gave up.

The formation of the Real IRA, Continuity IRA, Saoradh and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement was a gift to the British, and they jumped in with both feet. It allowed them to shape military and political narratives from the outset. If you want evidence, just look at the results—or the lack of them. A quick, if lazy, glance at their Wikipedia pages is enough to grasp their failure to deliver on stated objectives. Internal feuding and endless splintering have always sabotaged even well-intentioned movements. Funny how that happens.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu writes:

Just as water, which carries a boat from bank to bank, may also be the means of sinking it, so reliance on spies, while producing great results, is oft-times the cause of utter destruction.

He goes on to describe five classes of spies: local, inward, converted, doomed and surviving. Considering the damage the Brits inflicted on IRA 1.0, imagine what they were able to do with these fledgling offshoots. As for any future claim to being the true heirs of the cause, it wouldn’t be shocking if British spymasters themselves were the entrepreneurs behind them. Divide and conquer.

Western states are now ramping up investment in their war machines. Partly this stems from Trump’s whining that the US carries everyone else, and his threats to pull American resources if allies didn’t pay more. Governments reluctantly opened their cheque books. The EU alone is projected to increase spending by 11% between 2024-2025. There’s also a relatively new addition to the war industry: quantum technologies. I had to look it up. This is the “alien” part I mentioned earlier. We can barely imagine what’s being developed—except to say Marjorie Taylor Greene may not have been exaggerating that much when she ranted about “Jewish space lasers.”

About a year ago, Ukrainian forces released footage of a small homemade drone effectively “capturing” a Russian soldier. The video follows him as he’s guided away by instructions relayed from the drone via its operator. Other clips showed soldiers who failed to grasp their predicament—likely their first encounter with this hovering menace—being killed by grenades dropped from above. I mention this because the three masked interlopers in the New Republican Movement video are going to need to seriously up their game if they believe they’re protecting anyone.

Back in the day, the Provos struggled to smuggle in a handful of handguns and AK-47s. And while merely possessing the capacity for violence was often enough to force negotiations, future conflicts won’t be fought with twentieth-century paraphernalia. Nobody fears the schoolyard bully anymore. Today’s real threats are the bespectacled nerds hunched over laptops—in bedrooms or modern glass towers—designing malware, drones and AI systems capable of doing far worse.

⏩Michael Phillips is a former republican prisoner. Keep up with his work.

Quantum Nightmares

Dr John Coulter ✍ so-called dissident republicans who disagree with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the peace process need to recognise the concept of ‘armed struggle’ is well past its sell-buy date and only democratic politics can further the aspirations of the dissident republican movement.

Dissident republicans are not stuck historically in 1916 and the failed Easter Rising; they are stuck in 1956 and the failed Border Campaign which began that year and eventually fizzled out in 1962.

Four years ago in 2019, I penned an article emphasising the futility of ‘armed struggle’ by dissident republicans.

The Official republican movement realised the futility of terrorism in 1972 when the Official IRA called a ceasefire. Nine years later in 1981, the Provisional republican movement realised the advantages of the ballot box when hunger strikers won seats in the Dail and Westminster, especially the victories of Maze PIRA OC Bobby Sands and his election agent Owen Carron in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone Commons by-elections.

As a young cub BBC Radio Ulster freelance, I covered Carron’s victory. Could you imagine what his reaction would have been if I’d told him that one day the Provisional republican movement’s former Derry IRA commander Martin McGuinness would operate a successful partitionist power-sharing parliament at Stormont with DUP boss Rev Ian Paisley!

Or, that opinion polls would indicate that the Provisional republican movement’s political mouthpiece, Sinn Fein, would be odds-on to form a coalition government in the next Dail General Election in the Irish Republic, let alone Sinn Fein TDs taking their seats in the Dail!

But Sinn Fein has worked the ballot box to its advantage to the point where in Northern Ireland, with the exception of a couple of constituencies, it is electorally eclipsing the moderate nationalist SDLP in the same way the SDLP eclipsed the old Irish Nationalist Party from the original Stormont Parliament which was prorogued in 1972.

After the Provo ceasefires of the 1990s in the run-up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, republicans who vehemently disagreed with the Sinn Fein peace strategy formed a series of terror gangs and political wings.

In those years, we have seen the New IRA, the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, and Oglaigh na Eireann (ONH) to name but a few of the splinter groups. Their reasoning for so many groups was to try and make it more difficult for the intelligence community to infiltrate their ranks.

But as the security forces on both sides of the Irish border have demonstrated, surveillance techniques have developed to such a capacity that infiltration of the dissident movement has become almost second nature and dissident terror leaders are having to try and rely on new, young republicans for whom people such as Martin McGuinness and Rev Ian Paisley are now merely names in their history books.

For a start, dissident republicans will have to rebrand themselves. Just as Provisional Sinn Fein abandoned the ‘ballot box and Armalite’ tactic in favour of the ‘ballot box and honours degree’, so dissident republicans will have to create a new identity for themselves as the Alternative Republican Movement - but with no violence!

Two decades ago in 2003, there was some hope so-called dissident republicans might adopt this path when during the Northern Ireland Assembly election of that year, a number of republicans entered the fray under the banner of Concerned Republicans.

That was the election in which Sinn Fein overtook the SDLP as the leading voice for nationalism, and Concerned Republicans failed to win any seats.

Rather than focusing on an ill-fated terror campaign, those republicans who do not agree with the Sinn Fein peace strategy should bond together and form a new alternative and united republican party capable of giving Sinn Fein a run for its money in future elections.

Then again, does the old jibe come to mind - that when a new republican group is formed, the first item on the agenda is ‘the split’! This brings to mind the comic scenes from the 1979 Monty Python blockbuster film, The Life of Brian, featuring the Judean People’s Front, the People’s Front of Judea, and the Popular Front of Judea!

With each of the dissident republican terror gangs having a so-called political wing, could a combined new Alternative Republican Party be a non-starter as each of these political groups would claim to be the true political descendants of the 1916 Rising, or even the United Irishmen of 1798.

What would really throw a spanner in Sinn Fein’s works would be if any new Alternative Republican Party opted to take its ‘fight’ right to the very heart of the British Establishment by taking its seats at Westminster. Look at the impact which the then Bernadette Devlin had when she took her Mid Ulster Commons seat as a Unity candidate in the late 1960s. If the Scottish National Party and the Welsh nationalists as well as republicans within the Labour Party can take their Commons seats, then imagine the impact an Alternative Republican Party could have especially after the next Westminster General Election if either Labour or the Tories have only a wafter-thin majority?

Just as former Tory PM Theresa May needed a ‘confidence and supply arrangement’ with the DUP to keep her administration in power, could Labour boss Sir Keir Starmer need a couple of Alternative Republican Party MPs to hand him the keys to 10 Downing Street? Where would that leave Sinn Fein’s strict abstentionist policy?

With the cost of living crisis biting hard and so much being decided at Westminster because of a lack of a Stormont power-sharing Executive, each vote in the House of Commons will be vital in the coming months of 2023.

Put bluntly, given the importance of such votes, Sinn Fein MPs are meaningless at Westminster no matter how much they might chuckle on about influence in the corridors of power! Makes you wonder that one of the main reasons the SDLP still have Commons seats in Foyle and South Belfast is because its MPs take their seats?

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. 

Time For A New United Dissident Republican Party

Suzanne Breen solicits a range of republican opinion on the state of armed republicanism. 

'I believe 100% that all republican groups should call a ceasefire': Dominic McGlinchey

Many dissident republicans, including Dominic McGlinchey, feel the armed struggle has long served its purpose, but there are still diverging opinions.

Dominic McGlinchey is steeped in militant republicanism. As a teenager, he would visit Bellaghy Cemetery on Easter Sunday morning - lily proudly pinned on his lapel - to lay wreaths on the graves with the rest of the village after Mass. A few years later, he was "deeply honoured" to read out the Easter statement on behalf of the Provisional IRA in Swatragh 10 miles down the road. 

In 2006, McGlinchey split from Sinn Fein and became prominent in dissident republican circles. Today, he is among those arguing that 'armed struggle' should end. "I believe 100% that all republican groups should call a ceasefire," he says. 

Of course, it's up to them, but you can't continue doing the same old thing over and over again. You can't keep doing it just because you've always done it, and that's the way it is. Why should we keep putting generation after generation through this? People are fed up with armies dressed up in uniforms marching down roads. They know it doesn't work. As republicans, we have to stop living in our bubble and look to the outside world.

The son of INLA leaders Dominic and Mary McGlinchey, he was nine years old in 1987 when his mother was shot dead in Dundalk as she bathed his brother Declan.  Aged 16, he was with his father when he was shot dead in a Drogheda phone box in 1994. McGlinchey was questioned by the PSNI about the 2009 murder of two British soldiers at Massareene. He strongly denies any involvement. 

He says if republicans are to justify using violence, then "it has to take you somewhere" which the New IRA and Continuity IRA campaigns don't. "There is nothing about them that would make the British apprehensive," he says. He dismisses the traditional argument that "an armed campaign is needed to keep the flame lit" for the next generation. "That can be done through education or producing Irish history podcasts," he says. McGlinchey stresses the consequences of violence:

Once you pull that trigger, someone is dead, and it's more than one individual. It's the life of their family, and your family. It's the shopkeeper who witnessed what happened. It's the child on the passing bus, forever traumatised. It's the ambulanceman who picked up the body.

Republicans "must be prepared to go to politically uncomfortable places", he says.

There's a danger that we become conditioned to our doors being kicked in, to standing in white-line pickets, and to going to jail. We need to look at new ways to climb the mountain.

McGlinchey wants young republicans to prepare for a border poll: 

Brexit is the biggest opportunity for us since partition. Yet anti-Agreement republicans are becoming more and more marginalised every day because of armed actions. I'd like to see energy focused on discussing what type of united Ireland we want. How will we establish a link between a young loyalist in Carrickfergus and a young nationalist in Cork? What will we offer women, gay people and ethnic minorities? How will we avoid a society of the haves and have-nots? Look at the advances the far-Right have made in Ireland in a short space of time with negative politics. It's a bad impact, but it's still an impact. Anti-agreement republicanism has existed for over two decades and has made no impact at all - they must take stock. I want to see our youth out there knocking doors, focused on community activism and, most importantly, staying safe.

Anthony McIntyre served 18 years in jail for the murder of a UVF man in 1976. He is a critic of Sinn Fein's political direction but has long opposed continuing violence.  He brands the New IRA "the most ineffective IRA ever" and says it poses a threat predominantly to its own community as it has "inflicted no casualties on the state" in five years. "I see it as a political cult that is self-reverential and has no idea of what is going on in the wider world," he says. 

They may claim to be the same as the 1916 leaders, but they're not. The men and women of Easter week marched down O'Connell Street and fought, and they also knew when to quit. Dissidents are not 'engaging with the enemy' - they spend more time marching around in sunglasses posturing - and they don't know when to end their phoney war. Continuing it only allows MI5 to keep fine-tuning their surveillance, intelligence and security techniques.

Like McGlinchey, he believes dissident groups are "heavily infiltrated". McIntyre went to jail when he was 16: 

I've a son that age, and if he was out doing now what I did then, I'd be distraught. I've an obligation to point out that I didn't make the right choice. If I was to do it again, I'd join St Vincent de Paul rather than the IRA because I'd be making a more useful contribution to society - and I say that as an atheist.

McIntyre wants to see focus on a border poll: 

It doesn't offer revolutionary change, but incremental change is better than none. It's about trying to lessen British influence in Ireland. There are republicans who object, on strict ideological grounds, but it's Latin Mass stuff. They say 'We need to fight', but fight for what? Republicanism doesn't produce victories, it produces political careers.

Former Republican Sinn Fein president Des Dalton resigned from the party last month after he was suspended for saying that dissident republican violence was "counter-productive and copper-fastened partition". He had been a party member for three decades.  "I've no regrets," he says. 

You have to be true to yourself. I didn't do anything wrong or anything that compromised republican principles. It would have been easy for me to sit back and say nothing.

 From Kildare, Dalton was an Ogra Fianna Fail member who joined Republican Sinn Fein at 17: 

I grew up in a staunch Fianna Fail home, but became disillusioned with the party. In opposition, it had rejected the Anglo-Irish Agreement for recognising the unionist veto, then took a different stance when it secured power. It extradited republicans. I remember Dessie Ellis being flown to Britain on a stretcher when on hunger-strike. It was a very emotional image for me.

While Dalton doesn't believe there will be a united Ireland in the short-term, he sees a "far more open political atmosphere" post-Brexit than ever before. 

An armed campaign can't be currently justified from a moral or practical point of view. Community support just isn't there - the water for the fish to swim in is too shallow. The bravery of Bobby Sands and 1916 leaders is inspirational, but it's time for a different type of bravery now. I'd rather see young people channeling their energy into productive political activism than heading like lemmings over the cliff edge and filling Maghaberry and Portlaoise jails for a campaign that just isn't happening anyway. Perpetual armed struggle and repeating the same mantra is not working. It's not advancing republican ideals. It's keeping the groups on the periphery of politics.

Cait Trainor, an independent Co Armagh republican, was charged with encouraging terrorism under the Terrorism Act after a TV interview in 2010. She had told Channel Four: "I support the right of every Irish man and woman to participate in armed struggle." She sees the current situation as unchanging for republicans. "I fundamentally disagree with those who say today is different, and there are opportunities for us now that previously weren't there," she says. 

British rule has never been so strong. Sinn Fein might say that the Orange state has been smashed and there are equal rights for Catholics. But, for republicans, nothing short of an all-Ireland republic is a victory.

Trainor won't "felon-set fellow republicans" who are "doing what they've always done". She says there is a "growing trend of post-republicanism" by those "who present themselves as republican elders, and patronise and demoralise the younger generation". She opposes a border poll and believes, if one is called, nationalists should boycott it as they did in 1973: 

Irish freedom should not be dependent on the whim of a popularity contest called by a British Secretary of State. Ireland is not Scotland or Catalonia. An Irish republic was declared in 1916 and voted for in 1918.

Trainor believes that a border poll is "fraught with danger" for republicans: 

There is a mistaken belief that victory is guaranteed. While more Catholics have been born in the North, the nationalist vote has remained almost static in the last decade. A 'no' vote would set republicans back decades. London would dangle it in front of the world and say, 'The people of Ireland have endorsed British rule.' Republicans seeking a border poll are like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Des Long from Limerick is a founding member of the Provisional IRA and sat on its executive for 17 years. He says he would be lying if he told dissident groups to "abandon an armed campaign". He believes they are "very fragmented with a lot of big egos and many people wanting to be boss", but he doesn't support a ceasefire. As long as the British occupy Ireland there will be people who resist," he says. "British soldiers may not be on the streets, but there are still thousands of them garrisoned in this country." 

Long has "no faith" in a border poll: 

It's 100 years since the signing of the Treaty, and we're no further on in getting rid of the British than we ever were. I would love to see them leaving without a shot fired or anybody killed or sent to jail but the British will never leave until they're driven out.

All Republican Groups Should Call A Ceasefire

Des Dalton sets out his reasons for leaving Republican Sinn Fein 

Statement from Des Dalton

Following on from my interview given to the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies Civic Space, excerpts of which were carried by Henry McDonald in The Observer, the Ard Chomhairle of Republican Sinn Féin voted to suspend me from membership of the organisation.

To accept such a suspension would be to renounce the ideas I put forward in my interview and that is something I cannot do. To do so would be untrue to myself and to ideas that I passionately believe are necessary to advancing traditional Irish Republicanism in the Ireland of 2021 and beyond. Therefore, I have now tendered by resignation from Republican Sinn Féin. 

Resigning from an organisation to which I have rendered over 30 years of service, and within which I have built strong personal relationships, is not something I do lightly. However, I believe it is now time for me to find my own voice and advance my ideas and analysis in the wider discussion about the future of traditional Irish Republicanism.

There are major opportunities opening up. The constitutional question is centre stage in a way it has not been for over 40 years. In Scotland, the move towards independence has accelerated to a point where the future of the whole so-called ‘United Kingdom’ is seriously in question for the first time in over 300 years. In such a scenario, to what union will unionists be loyal? Traditional Irish Republicanism has roots deep in Irish history and has a reach that is often underestimated. Without the distraction of sporadic armed actions, I believe its message can resonate even wider.

Irish Republicanism needs to free itself of the shrill voices who shout “sell out” or “slippery slope” when any initiative or fresh thinking is advanced for discussion. This is irrational and simply stifles the kind of honest and open debate that is necessary if the ideals of Irish Republicanism are to be advanced. Such debate must take place in an environment which is honest and rational, underpinned by a firm grasp of what the fundamental principles of Republicanism are. These are set out in the 1916 Proclamation. 

I am confident and secure in my Irish Republicanism as I have been my entire adult life. My allegiance remains with the All-Ireland Republic proclaimed in 1916. I believe that by refusing to engage with objective realities Irish Republicanism risks isolating itself further. I believe those who advocate for perpetual armed action without clear short term and long-term objectives do a disservice to Irish Republicanism as by their actions they serve only to copper fasten the institutions of partition.

I believe Irish Republicanism has so much to offer the Irish people in terms of political, social, and economic justice. I hope that the analysis that I shared in my interview can begin and contribute to an open, informed, and constructive debate about the way forward in the struggle for the All-Ireland Republic.

An Phoblacht Abú

⏭Des Dalton is a long time republican activist.

Des Dalton Resigns From Republican Sinn Féin

Anthony McIntyre tells Suzanne Breen that in his view Saoradh is as big a threat to state as St Vincent de Paul.

 
McIntyre says there is little support for dissident group or its political wing in wake of MI5 sting.

An ex-IRA prisoner has said that the New IRA's political wing, Saoradh, "poses as big a threat to the British state as St Vincent de Paul".

Anthony McIntyre said there was little support for either republican organisation in their own community in the wake of revelations that the dissidents had been infiltrated by alleged MI5 agent Dennis McFadden.

Ten people, including two women and a Palestinian doctor, are facing a range of terror charges following the sting.

Mr McIntyre said that the New IRA was viewed as “a pale imitation” of the Provisionals.

“People see it as an irritant,” he said. 

It is not a serious IRA fighting a determined guerilla war against the state. It is known for its incompetence and ineffectiveness.  It has inflicted no casualties on the state since 2016. Last year it killed journalist Lyra McKee when it opened fire recklessly during a riot in the Creggan, and it came close to wiping out a group of young people when it exploded a bomb on a street outside a courthouse in Derry.

Mr McIntyre served 18 years in jail for the murder of a UVF man in 1976. He is a long-term critic of Sinn Fein’s political direction but opposes continuing any armed campaign.

He added:

Apart from the risk it poses to civilians primarily within its own community, the New IRA does nothing more than make a bit of noise and give the state the opportunity to continue using repressive legislation and curbing people’s civil rights.

Mr McIntyre challenged Saoradh’s claim that last month’s MI5 operation was an attempt to crush the party.

“Few will give any credence to the charge that this is a state attempt to close Saoradh down or wipe them out,” he said. “My feeling would be that Saoradh poses as much a threat to the British state as St Vincent de Paul do — which is none.”

Mr McIntyre claimed he had not seen the party “use its energy on serious and substantive” issues.

What I have seen is Saoradh join others and follow a few groups around Belfast city centre, and shout at them on the street on Saturday afternoons. It’s actually embarrassing. It makes republicans look as bad as those that they claim they are challenging.

Scotsman Dennis McFadden has been named in court as being the alleged MI5 agent involved in the New IRA sting. It has been claimed that he organised safe houses for the paramilitary group which were bugged by the intelligence services.

Mr McIntyre said:

Spying is called the second oldest profession precisely because it is not a new phenomenon. Many agents and informers penetrated the ranks of the Provisional IRA. And the IRA itself has used informers in the past. The late prison officer, John Hanna, spied on his colleagues for the IRA. So when republicans howl about spies it is only because of whose ox has been gored. If a player in any game gives the opposition a penalty kick, their adversary would be a fool not to take it.

Hanna was a senior prison officer in the H-Blocks. In 1990 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Maghaberry jail for helping the IRA murder his colleague, Brian Armour, two years earlier.

Hanna had been involved in plans to stage a large-scale prison breakout.

He had also given information on other colleagues during an affair with a female IRA intelligence officer. He died of cancer in 1992, aged 45.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Of Spies And Men

Anthony McIntyre senses a general republican indifference to recent arrests of prominent Saoradh members. 

The arrests of a number of Saoradh activists alleged by British police to be senior figures in the New IRA, as it is frequently described, has prompted a flurry of media commentary and speculation. For the news hounds it is a big story. With the New IRA not doing very much, what is supposedly being done to the New IRA makes the headlines.

Some of Saoradh’s republican rivals are said to be gloating. Those of us who have spent considerable time behind bars avoid that, even if we have little fraternal feeling for Saoradh. There are enough imbibing the sweet juices of Schadenfreude, without ex-prisoners sticking their straw in as well. While gloating has a presence, it seems indifference is the foremost sentiment circulating within republican circles. 

I don’t much follow the internal machinations of that fractious world, tending to see its incessant bickering, backbiting and jockeying for pole position much as Kissinger did when observing the politics of the university scene: they are “vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”

Consequently, I didn’t feel in much of a position to comment when a couple of journalists contacted me, more or less restricting myself to saying that I had next to no interest in Saoradh or the New IRA and that my understanding of either was rudimentary. My curiosity was so stifled that when the arrests were first announced I had no great desire to find out who had been gripped. My response was the same as it would have been had news broken that a lot of clergyman had been arrested, accused of blocking a motorway in opposition to abortion or same sex marriage. The story might be interesting in itself but wondering who might be caught up in it all was absent. So, no point in feigning to journalists an interest that does not exist for the purpose of waxing learned. These things only grab my focus if the arrested are personal friends of mine, as on previous occasions they have been.

What concentrated my mind was the issue of agent involvement. I didn’t know Denis McFadden, but the informed speculation was that he had been a friend of a friend, since deceased. Not just a friend but a great friend. I didn’t see it as a reflection on the late Tony Catney, but that more than anything else drew me to the story.

The British police, back in the day when there was a serious IRA fighting a determined guerrilla war against the state, made use of informers as a counter-insurgency tactic. They invariably brought with them controversy and at one point seriously damaged the reputation of the Northern judiciary as it summersaulted from guilty to not guilty verdicts in the era of the supergrass. Probably the Beaks' worst judicial hour in a clatter of bad ones to choose from. 

Informers are invariably the most unreliable of witnesses. All too often they have with handler approval been up to their necks in the very activity the state likes to claim they have been instrumental in curbing – think Stakeknife and Mark Haddock. Self-serving accomplices, informers have every reason to cover their tracks with the scent of others. The state attempt to tart them up as having undergone some ethical conversion is simply shining a turd.

A species despised the world over because of what debased motives are attributed to them, the image of Gypo Nolan’s monetary reward being disdainfully pushed across a table to him at the end of a stick in the movie The Informer is indicative of even the handler attitude towards the type. The damning line from Louis Borge’s poem The Spy, I betrayed those who believed me their friend, perhaps captures better than most the reason they are held in such low esteem. Perhaps as a result of an evolutionary biological trait towards cooperation for purposes of survival, the stench of betrayal instinctively causes the nostrils to flare in revulsion towards the alien presence. 

For all of that, as reviled as informers are, virtually every agency across the board from states to guerrillas use them. The commodity is secrecy and the marketplace for that particular piece of hardware is densely populated by buyers and sellers. The very term industrial espionage shows its more widespread application.  Spying is not called the second oldest profession because it is a relatively new phenomenon. The IRA too made use of informers in the past – the late prison officer, John Hanna, for example. So when republicans howl about them it is only because of whose ox has been gored. If a player in any game gives the opposition a penalty kick, their adversary would be a fool not to take it.

Colleagues and friends of the arrested will exhibit a sense of entitlement, demanding that all republicans stand shoulder to shoulder with those behind bars. Outside of lip service that is unlikely to happen. Few will give any credence to the charge that it is a state attempt to close Saoradh down, feeling that Saoradh pose as much threat to the state as St Vincent de Paul. If they don't say it openly they seem willing to state privately that the arrests are the inevitable outcome, not of radical politics but of traditional militarism.  Most, while feeling aggrieved that MI5 and informers still figure on the landscape - courtesy of the parliamentarization of the Provisionals - will probably leave the arrested to their fate, feeling that energy is better invested elsewhere rather than in pushing the Sisyphean stone uphill only to have it roll back down again ad infinitum. 

Heroes on horseback, to cite Marx, rarely change society and seem unfailingly willing to place their faith in those ready to change horse.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Second Oldest Profession

Alex McCrory ➤ reflects on the ongoing use of the informer by the British state security apparatus.  

He crept in like a thief in the night.
Stealthily, he stalked his prey.
The characteristic smile.
Extended hand of friendship.
He moved quietly amongst the duped.
The gullible who welcomed him with open arms.
But something didn't quite gel. 
Was it his flaky personality?
A square peg in a round hole.
Where did he come from?
To where has he gone? 
Vanished into thin air.
His legacy.
Broken hearts and broken homes.

Gypo Nolan, a dim-witted Dubliner played by Victor McLaglen, is thrown out of the IRA for failing to execute a British solider. He harbours a dream to escape to America with his prostitute girlfriend Katie, but he has no money to buy the boat tickets. A solution presents itself in the form of personal betrayal of his close friend and comrade, Frankie, who is on the run from the Tans. Desperate to see his family after weeks of dodging the enemy, the fugitive plans to return home to see his mother and sister Mary. He is taking a massive risk.

Gypo gets wind of this and decides to squeal on his mate for a reward of £20, a princely sum for the time. As the result, Frankie is killed in a shootout at his mother's house while trying to escape. Gypo starts drinking heavily and spending money freely about town. This is noticed by the local volunteers who begin to suspect him of being a tout. Mary tells the IRA that Gypo was the last person her brother spoke with that day. All the evidence points in one direction. 

The IRA finds Gypo drunk in a local pub and arrests him. Although he denies setting up his friend, the court marshal finds him guilty and sentences him to death. But the condemned man manages to escape through a hole in the ceiling and runs straight to Katie's house to profess his love. She pleads for his life but the IRA commander refuses to intercede on her behalf. IRA men hurriedly go to Katie's house and shoot Gypo dead. 

The Informer is a story of betrayal, greed, love and retribution. These are some of the ingredients that turn a comrade into a Judas Iscariot. Whether it be for money, revenge or self-preservation, the tout relinquishes all bonds of friendship and brotherhood. This he must do in order to effectively serve his master.

In the first instance, informing is usually a panicked response to some type of leverage or threat exerted by interrogators or spooks. Few set out to be stoolies, on the contrary, most are pressurised and cajoled by authority into cooperating. The price is far too high for it to be a voluntary decision. However, a brutal death on a lonely country road has failed to deter some from accepting their thirty pieces of sliver. The certainty of a long prison sentence can override the possibility of discovery. For some it is a chance worth taking in certain circumstances. 

What prompted this post is the recent exposure of Denis McFadden as a British agent. What is his story? We will probably never know the answer.


 
 Informers become adept at telling lies and covering their tracks. It is part of the tradecraft. There are no obvious tell-tale signs to alert us to their presence. In some cases there may be grounds for suspicion, but it usually comes later in the day. An awful lot of damage already be done by the time someone comes under suspicion. The many unanswered questions around McFadden has excited speculation and theories which is understandable, but there is little hard evidence to support them at this time. We may come to learn more as the story unravels. But, from the standpoint of his handlers, it is a job well done.

McFadden was personable, affable, generous, helpful, resourceful, likeable and friendly. These traits did not point him out as an informer rather than being just a nice guy. 20/20 vision makes the fool a wise man after the fact. How much of the above was simply a part of his legend; a clever construction designed to ingratiate and mislead. Again, we may never know the answer.

Today, ten republicans are in jail on the most serious of charges. Families and relationships have been turned upside down in the space of a week. The immediate future looks bleak for all concerned. A man who was embraced as a friend, welcomed with open arms, has left a trail of devastation in his wake. This is the hallmark of The Informer.


Alec McCrory 
is a former blanketman.

The Informer

Matt Treacy ➤ If reports are to be credited, British intelligence appears to have successfully moved against one of the aspirant IRAs – namely those claimed to be in the New IRA and those in the left-wing grouping, Saoradh. 

 

The scuttlebutt is that MI5 recruited a leading member of the organisation in question who embarrassingly it would seem managed to obtain not only audio but video recordings of meetings of its leadership. It would appear that the recordings are to supply one of the key elements in charges against those arrested over the past number of days. Seven of those have so far been charged.

 

he alleged “supergrass” has been named on several social media forums along with his photograph. It would seem that he was a former member of Sinn Féin and was one of those who worked on their internet sites and media. He was involved with the party in Antrim from the early 2000s and when complaints were made about him, people were told that he not only represented SF, but the “whole republican movement.” Indeed.

He was also involved for a time as secretary with a group called Justice Watch which styled itself as a human rights NGO. He also apparently owned a takeaway and a bar in Belfast while involved with Saoradh. Which tells its own story.

A number of things are worth pondering in relation to all of this, not least for those persuaded that a revival of armed struggle might be a good thing. Firstly, it proves once again how easy it is for the intelligence services to infiltrate and manipulate secret organisations.

Without dabbling in the more extreme conspiracy theories regarding the demise of the Provos, it is clear that the IRA was penetrated at all levels and that this played a probably not inconsiderable part in its surrender, disarmament and disbandment. Which you might think would motivate others in questioning the point of attempting to create a retro Provos.

Whatever the intelligence and counter-insurgency aspects of the demise of the IRA, the decision to end the armed campaign was the correct one. It had long since ceased to be a plausible path towards a British withdrawal and the ongoing deaths, imprisonments and collateral damage were pretty much for nothing by the early 1990s.

So calling it off was the correct move. The politics of what followed are a different matter. Certainly, few republicans who supported the ceasefires could have envisaged that Sinn Féin would follow the military capitulation with the acceptance of Partition, and a role in administering the British controlled part of Ireland.

Along with that in short order came the abandonment of any pretence to be a movement standing for the sovereign independence of Ireland. Or having a plausible strategy to bring that about. The acceptance of the EU’s control over vast areas of Irish life is one consequence. The other is the headlong embrace of the mindless liberalism that will if successful make any project for national sovereignty meaningless, even in the unlikely event of it being formally ratified at some stage in the future.

So there is certainly an intellectual and historical argument against the direction which the republican movement in the main has taken over the past 25 years. There is none for reviving a failed armed campaign, which in any event is counter-productive when it does splutter into occasional life. More pointless deaths and more men and women doing jail time when they might be devoting their energies to something more productive.

The politics behind all of this are pathetic. I have seen leading members discussing Maoism. Apart from that nonsense, there is the usual left republican obsession with the past. Connolly for Dummies based on de-contextualised quotes from something written over a century ago. As though any of this has the slightest relevance to Ireland today. Like the Bourbons, they have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing.

It is surely ironic too that one of the political manifestations of the group in question, Saoradh, has been to turn out in support of Irish government ministers to clamp down on free-speech. They joined with the usual Pollyanna NGOs, professional lefties and antifa soccer casuals in support of Charlie Flanagan’s proposed “hate” legislation in a demonstration against free speech at the Dáil.

Of course, once their presence was highlighted, the Care Bears were appalled given Saoradh’s investigation by the PSNI following the killing of Lyra McKee in April 2019. Now the same state on whose side Saoradh is standing “objectively” (Marxists love that word) is doing its best to destroy them. That’s the thanks you get for “confronting the far right” it would seem.

It’s curious to see Saoradh joining with Antifa to try to attack people taking part in anti-lockdown rallies or demonstrations. Surely those demonstrators are ‘anti-establishment’? Does that make Saoradh ‘stooges of the state’, or some such phrase they would use to describe others? Or is this more of the M15 directing operations? Who knows.

Anyone familiar with the Dublin Fenians in the 1880s and 1890s will see some echoes in the current predicament of conspiratorial armed republicanism. As the land reforms and seeming success of the Irish Party at Westminister in advancing Home Rule took hold, some in the Irish Republican Brotherhood were reduced to squabbling factions, led by the nose through Special Branch into bombing schemes and occasionally murdering one another over money and allegations of informing.

Meanwhile the coming revolution was being shaped by those who in a period of political becalment were working through the cultural organisations to re-assert a national consciousness that was under threat of extinction.

The more far-sighted among the Fenians eschewed the plotting in dingy bars for the practical work within the GAA, the Gaelic League, national minded newspapers, and economic co-operation. It was this which laid the basis for what freedoms were won after 1916.

We arguably face a similar period now, as the forces inimical to our culture and sovereignty as a people have the upper hand. Those who think it can all be solved by kindergarden ultra leftism allied to an intermittent “armed struggle” are clearly part of the problem, not the solution.


Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.
He is currently working on a number of other books; His latest one is a novel entitled Houses of Pain. It is based on real events in the Dublin underworld. Houses of Pain is published by MTP and is currently available online as paperback and kindle while book shops remain closed.

Why Are Saoradh Joining With Antifa To Attack Anti-Lockdown Rallies?

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