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Showing posts with label Quillversation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quillversation. Show all posts
Barry Gilheany ✍ For what looked unthinkable and, to many, unpalatable now looks more than a theoretical possibility. 

In what would be the biggest upset in the liberal democratic hemisphere since the first and then second elections of Donald Trump as President of the United States; the Reform UK party led by its mercurial leader Nigel Power could sweep to power in the United Kingdom with an absolute majority in the next scheduled general election in 2029. Extrapolations from Reform’s triumphs at the Runcorn parliamentary by-election and local government polls in May predict this outcome; given the right psephological circumstances the informal gaming of the First Past The Post electoral system by voters at key constituency battlegrounds which emasculated the Conservative Party and which delivered the largest seat majority for the Labour Party of any party since 1832 could conceivably turn the worm in a radical right wing direction towards Reform. 

In what throughout Great Britain is now effectively a five-party system (excluding the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and, of course, the anomalous Northern Irish party formation), Reform’s 30% plus constant opinion poll ratings lay out a clear pathway to power. The most recent IPSOS poll puts Reform on 34%, nine points ahead of Labour on 25%, with the Tories a distant third on 15%. Were these figures to be replicated across the country at a General Election held now with every constituency behaving the same way, an apocalyptic scenario emerges in which Reform could win as many as 340 seats, giving it a majority of 30; Labour could be reduced to 176 seats, down 236 from last year’s election, while the Tories would hit a record low of 12 seats.[1] While this doomsday situation may not come to pass so starkly, such reading of the runes do suggest terminal decline for the Conservatives; a Labour Party in Government struggling to find its identity and purpose and very fertile terrain for disruptors such as Reform.

Reform is here to stay. Sir Keir Starmer recognises this reality as he now treats them as the Real Opposition to his Government and distinguished members of the commentariat as such as Andrew Marr now envisage Farage in 10 Downing Street and is tracing out his party’s path to power.[2] Farage is the British embodiment of the Three P-virus that has infected and spread throughout the liberal democratic world – Populism, Polarisation and Post-Truth. The United States totally succumbed to the disease when Donald Trump won not just the Presidency in November 2024 but all the levers of power in the US thereby neutralising the cordon sanitaires of the separation of powers between executive, legislature and judiciary and facilitating the steady march of militarised authoritarianism of which the persecution of undocumented migrants stands as arguably the stand out, performative exemplar of cruelty. Within the European Union bloc, liberal democracy as we know it is effectively dead in Hungary; the gates have been breached in Italy where far rightist Georgi Meloni heads a coalition government and the Netherlands, where before his petulant resignation, the anti-Islam and antiimmigrant hatemonger Geert Wilders also led a coalition administration. In Europe’s two powerhouses, National Rally and the AfD, have so far failed to breach the electoral barriers to power in France and Germany respectively although National Rally has been the single largest opposition party in the French National Assembly since 2022. Hindu nationalist, anti-democratic supremacism in India and Jewish populist, anti-democratic extremism in Israel continue to play out with disastrous effects especially in the mass bloodletting in Gaza. On a more positive note, in Brazil, the Latin American Trump Jair Bolisanario is facing the judicial reckoning that his role model should have faced for attempting to thwart the will of the electorate who had democratically evicted him from power.

So is the oldest democracy in the world, the seat of the Mother of Parliaments with its venerable but unwritten constitution; its famed conventions and institutional resistance to the politics of the rabble rousing about to fall to its own barbarians at the gate? One had better believe that such a moment may indeed be upon us; being an island country no more inoculates it from the dangers of radical, populist, polarising insurgency than it does from the effects of climate change. To appreciate the threats some of the backstory of Nigel Farage and the sentiments he taps into have to be told.

So how is it that a former commodities dealer in the City of London with a private education and who has lived all his life in the wealthy stockbroker belt of the South East of England has become, in the words of Andy Haldane, the former Chief Economist to the Bank of England “as close to what the country has to a tribune for the working classes” and why is there is no politician ‘”that comes even remotely close to speaking to, and for, blue-collar working class Britain”.[3] How does Farage seemingly hit the spot with working people in ways that current Labour Cabinet ministers with council housing, single parent and benefit recipient backgrounds like Angela Rayner, Bridget Phillipson, Wes Streeting and Steve Reeds seemingly cannot?[4]. The answers partially lie in Farage’s slick ‘man of the people’, anti-establishment insurgent communicative persona; the alarming failure of the incumbent Labour to fashion any sort of coherent narrative as yet; and the concatenation of falling living standards; economic stagnation; the steady long term decline of trust in democratic institutions; the growing primacy of identity struggles over those of working class solidarity and a transformed communications landscape in which consumers receive their news and current affairs information in byte sized chunks from partisan and algorithm derived social media sources. All these factors risk creating the post-truth petrie dish around, for example, vaccine, climate change and ‘globalist elite’ disinformation in Britain that has incubated Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and their Triple P proteges and in which the malignant aspects of Farage’s character and career are simply ignored by a public mesmerised by his charisma.

Nigel Farage was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999 with the first of his political enterprises, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and made seven unsuccessful attempts to win a Westminster seat before winning the Clacton-on-Sea constituency in the 2024 general election with his latest start-up Reform UK. For much of his political career, his was a one-trick pony – UK withdrawal from the European Union. Formed by the economist Alan Sked in 1993 UKIP’s initial mission was simply the repatriation to the UK of economic and fiscal powers to enable traditional left-wing policies around nationalisation of industry. Since the UK voted to stay in what was then the European Economic Community (EEC) or ‘Common Market’ in a referendum in June 1975 a consensus had developed within the political and opinion making classes that Britain’s future lay in Europe. By and large, a formerly largely Eurosceptic Labour and Trade Union movement had also come round to this position by the late 1980s. Within the Conservative Party however opposition began to develop to closer political integration within the European body which was now known as the EU; an opposition which was increasingly being vocalised by the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (who had assented to the Single European Act in 1986). The 1990s saw the development of a small but growing backbench Tory Eurosceptic lobby (the ‘bastards’ as Thatcher’s successor John Major not so privately called them) which harried the front bench over the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty signed in 1992 and from which Major negotiated a UK opt out from the single currency and the Social Chapter. On the fringes of politics, the Referendum Party was set up by the prominent millionaire Sir James Goldsmith to campaign for another plebiscite to leave the EU. The seeds had been sown for the long march towards Brexit and the related self-immolation of the Conservative Party.

Enter stage right Nigel Farage. After the death of Goldsmith and the winding up of his party, UKIP was the only anti-EU show in town. In the same manner in which he was to deal with future colleagues and rivals, he muscled Alan Sked aside and became party leader. In 2004, an opportunity arose for Farage to stamp his particular imprint on the anti-EU case when ten new countries joined the EU, eight of which were post-communist states, the so-called European A8 (accession eight). Tony Blair’s New Labour government - unlike all other EU members except Ireland and Sweden- choose not to impose any “transitional controls” restricting freedom of moment from the A8. For Farage, this was the moment to reopen the debate on immigration which he claimed had been shut down since Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968. Farage distances himself from direct comparisons with Powell admitting that “... the words he used, the analogy he chose, destroyed the debate on immigration for a quarter ... made it impossible even to talk about it.”[5]

Not anymore if that was ever the case. As a result of the sudden influx of Eastern European immigrants because of freedom of movement; immigration steadily became part of the national conversation and steadily climbed up the political agenda. Tory election posters proclaiming “It is not racist to talk about immigration controls” and asking “Are you thinking what we are thinking” aimed to create a new ‘common sense’ on immigration; it was left to Farage to blow the dog whistles around ‘never hearing English spoken in London Underground carriages’ or complaining of being delayed on the M4 due ‘to the amount of foreign registered cars on the motorway. As more and more Eastern European immigrants came into the UK and as the Europe was convulsed by the millions of migrants arriving on its shores in the refugee crisis of the mid 2010s, the in/out referendum called in 2016 by a PM David Cameron desperate to shoot the UKIP fox that now was hoovering up millions of votes and to unite a Tory Party split down the middle by Europe became entwined with immigration in the most toxic manner. Farage’s Breaking Point poster depicting the continent of Europe being besieged by columns of countless brown faces escaping the Middle East represented perhaps the nadir of that most divisive campaign. It was because of Farage’s tendency to push the envelope on matters pertaining to racial and cultural divisiveness that his Leave.EU vehicle lost out to Vote Leave in the contest to be the designated Leave campaign. But there can be no doubt that effective though Vote Leave’s strapline of Take Back Control was in securing the Out victory in the referendum, Farage’s quasi-demagoguery over the spectre of the loss of British (or more accurately English) identity provided much of the emotional ballast for the Brexit outcome.

As the British political system went into meltdown over the next three years over how to negotiate and implement the means of UK withdrawal from the EU, Nigel Farage having dispensed with UKIP having, in his words, secured “Independence Day” on 24 June 2016; then came out of his first phase of voluntary retirement to form the Brexit Party in 2019 to campaign against any backsliding from giving effect to the Leave vote at a time of growing Remain clamour for a second referendum in which the options would voting for whatever withdrawal deal Parliament came up with or Remain and the desperation to avoid a no-deal exit. Formed as a private company with him as sole director (the same model used by the pro-Corbyn left-wing campaign group Momentum and the short-lived Change UK party),the Brexit Party topped the poll with 30% of votes cast in the UK’s last election to the European Parliament and winning 29 of the 80 seats available. Its decision not to stand candidates in Tory held seats in the General Election held later that year, if not the decisive factor, helped to pave the way for Boris Johnston’s thumping eighty seat majority and for the UK’s formal withdrawal from the EU on 31st January 2020.

Having achieved his life’s work of enabling the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, Farage then went onto convert the Brexit Party into Reform UK which, as standard fare for right wing populist parties elsewhere, campaigned against Covid lockdowns; immigration and Net Zero. While promising again to step back from front-line politics, Farage took 60% of the controlling stake in Reform UK and, once again, surrendered to the elixir of power and publicity by pushing aside its leader Richard Tice in the middle of the 2024 General Election and assuming the reins himself. Reform won five Westminster seats, including Farage himself in Clacton (and as importantly came second in a staggering 98 seats of which 89 are held by Labour and in this year’s local authority elections, won a slew of County Councils, predominantly from the Tories; two newly created Mayoralties and the parliamentary by election of Runcorn by six votes. Their quintet of MPs has been reduced to a triplet with the resignations of Rupert Lowe over staff bullying allegation and his oppositions to the personality cult around Farage and James McMurdock over alleged irregularities over receipt of Covid funds for businesses that he ran (he has also a conviction for domestic assault).

The criticisms, both political and personal, that can be levelled at Farage and at the various bands of “mad, swivel-eyed loons” of David Cameron caricature that he has led are legion and largely well founded. They range from his neglect of his constituency duties and absence from important Commons votes while attending to his array of media and consultancy jobs; his part in encouraging the conspiracy theories and two tier policing narratives surrounding the race riots that broke out last summer after the Stockport stabbings; his casual use of Alt-Right and antisemitic tropes around “globalism” and racially charged dog whistles, his avoidance of scrutiny around policies and personal probity; his thin skinned manner and his ruthless, self-serving style of leadership; his affinity with Donald Trump and admiration for Vladimir Putin. These biographical details and his various political manoeuvrings will be subjects of a future article. But at this juncture they do not enable an understanding of his possible path to power and the conditions that that are so propitious for it.

For yes, Farage may spout politics at the level of bullshit as he did when on a visit to South Wales two months ago where he made the case for reopening Port Talbot steelworks. Sure, he admitted that “it might be easier to build a new one” while acknowledging it would cost billions of pounds to do so. Extending his fantasy visions of reindustrialisation by suggesting the reopening of the Welsh coalmines, he mused that “If you offer people well-paying jobs ... many will take them, even though you have to accept that mining is dangerous.” Never mind the climate crisis caused by the burning of centuries of fossil fuels; ignore the lack of an available workforce (there are likely no Welsh miners under the age of 60; remain blissfully unaware of the topological history of mining in the creation of slag heaps and land slips which birthed the Aberfan disaster of 1966 and the memories of generation lost to colliery disasters. No what mattered is the spectacle; the performance; telling of a tale of a glorious past; the narrative of a romanticised yesteryear told to an audience in the eternal present of anaemic growth and productivity, austerity, stagnant wages, loss of hope and fear of the future – the unchanging socio-economic conditions that led to the rise of UKIP and Brexit (Wales and especially its former mining redoubts voted Leave)[6].

But Farage gets to perform such gigs up and down left-behind Britain. Since his entry into politics almost three decades ago, trust in his profession has almost vaporised. But none of the unforgiving rules of British politics appear to apply to him. As already pointed out, his Commons appearances are infrequent, his extracurricular activities prolific, his party’s internal culture chaotic. In a country that supposedly is crying for less rancour in politics and for its politicians to be humbler and apologetic, Farage’s public manner exudes brazen self-confidence and self-satisfaction; lack of humility and total absence of repentance.[7]

Few Labour or Tory policies feel designed without actual or potential Reform UK voters in mind. Its current pole position in the polls indicates that winning power is a possibility. Leading figures in Reform such as its Chair Zia Yusuf, now back in post after a 48 hour period of resignation, over the curveball that its newest MP, Sarah Pochin threw at Prime Ministers Questions when she asked if the burka would be banned (Reform has no policy on the matter), and Richard Tice are formulating policies and fiscal issues deliverable in government. KCs have been brought in by Reform to draft legislation, including a Great Repeal Bill, part of the preparation for mass deportation and an effective blockade of the English Channel.[8]

As relative new kids on the block in the Commons, Farage and Reform can act as the opposition in the amorphous and potent rather than narrowly parliamentary sense: as a repository for the hopes and fantasies of a wide range of voters that can be rescued – “reformed” – by a radically different government.[9]

Strangely and frustratingly, there appears to be little prospect of Farage suffering any sort of consequences for the calamitous effects of his one concrete achievement – Brexit. Recent research by the University of Warwick has found that post-Brexit costs have risen most in in areas that: a) voted Leave in 2016; b) have large manufacturing sectors; and c) have high numbers of low-skilled workers. The North East of England, Scotland, the English Midlands, coastal towns, and old industrial centres have experienced a collapse in manufacturing exports which are now 15% lower thanks to Brexit. These Brexit voting areas have also lost at least 8% in GDP despite being poorer than the rest of the country. Analysis by the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank shows: “The economic decline is most pronounced in England and Scotland respectively with GDP reductions of -7 percentage points and -8.7 percentage points, respectively. While the West Midlands and even London have seen declines, the report “coastal districts (like Clacton) and cities have been hit hardest.” On top of all that, the sectors most damaged by erratic immigration controls - regional universities, social care, the NHS, construction, and agriculture – are often the largest employers in struggling regions. And yet, researchers have identified a “doom loop” in which Brexit voters who suffer most from Brexit are the most likely to vote for the far right.[10]

Proponents of rational choice theory and devotees of class consciousness may struggle to understand such seeming counter-intuitive electoral behaviour. How can individuals and communities buffeted by nearly two generations of cuts, deindustrialisation and its associated mass unemployment, deskilling, insecure precariat type jobs and low wages be seduced into voting again for the snake – oil salesman who has so blatantly pulled the wool over their eyes. The answer probably lies in lack of hope and collective demoralisation and corrosive cynicism towards a political system and class that they feel does not serve or represent them. Yes, the Brexiteer mantra that foreigners – Brussels bureaucrats, Polish plumbers, asylum seekers – were to blame was a lie in 2016 and is a lie now. But it remains persuasive to those with nothing else to believe in.[11] And don’t all ethno-nationalist demagogues know that?

So, will General Election 2029 (or sooner) prove to be Brexit 2.0 just as the US Presidential Election proved to be the dawning of Trump 2.0? Will that be the moment the memories and lessons of the political convulsions which seized Britain in the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit vote and the central role of Nigel Farage will be forgotten about with the electoral victory of his party and him installed in 10 Downing Street. Just as the chaos of the first Trump administration and the events of 6th January 2021 did not figure in the considerations of the electorate who granted Trump untrammelled power in Presidential Election 2024. The portents look ominous but it is to be hoped that the glare of scrutiny on the performance of Reform controlled councils; how its national policies cohere; Farage’s style of party management and the vagaries of international affairs, particularly concerning further Russian aggrandisement which would put the spotlight on Farage’s not so distant admiration for the leadership skills of Vladimir Putin. That’s if Britain has not entered the post-truth era by then.

References


[1] Serena Barker-Singh, Reform UK would win a majority if election held tomorrow, poll suggests Sky News 25 June 2025

[2] Andrew Marr Farage will likely be our next prime minister – and his party is preparing for power The New Statesman. 4-10 July 2025

[3] Andrew Marr Far-right have provided light relief, but Schadenfreude is not a political strategy. New Statesman 13-19 June 2025 pp.10-11.

[4] Ibid, p.11

[5] Jason Cowley Nigel Farage is an extraordinarily protean politician – and is closer than ever to power The New Statesman. 9-15 May 2025

[6] John Harris Britain is stuck and it’s Farage’s toxic vision that’s on repeat Opinion. The Guardian 16th June 2025 p.3

[7] Andy Beckett Why does Nigel Farage get to play politics on easy mode. The Guardian Journal 13th June 2025 pp.1-2

[8] Andrew Marr Farage will likely be our next prime minister – and his party is preparing for power. The New Statesman. 4-10 July 2025 pp.10-11

[9] Beckett, p.2

[10] Jonty Bloom Brexit’s doom loop The New World Issue 440 19th June 2025 p.26

[11] Ibid

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

It Couldn’t Happen Here, Could It? Nigel Farage As (Dis)United Kingdom Prime Minister

Brandon Sullivan ðŸŽ¤ Quillversation with Jonathan Trigg, author of the newly released book: Death in Derry: Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA’s War Against the British, and his first book in this area, the well-received Death in the Fields: The IRA in East Tyrone.

It’s my pleasure to start another Quillversation with Jon Trigg. This time, the focus is on Derry, where the late Martin McGuinness held sway for a very long time. As with the last Quillversation with Jon, my hope is that questions will follow, and we’ll get another piece. Or two, as proved to be the case last time.

Please add your own questions in the comments below, or comments on the answer, or indeed questions, on this piece.

Let’s get started.

Brandon Sullivan (BS): You wrote the well-received book on the East Tyrone Brigade (ETB). In writing the Derry book, did you do anything differently?

Did writing the ETB book make the Derry book easier or harder to write?

Jon Trigg (JT): Very kind of you to say on the ETB book, I'd probably say it was well received by some, less so by some others. In retrospect I probably wasn't prepared as I thought I was for some of the criticism, which was pretty vitriolic. Naive of me really, this is a very emotive subject with people holding very strong views indeed, so one thing I did differently was 'armour' myself better for what I now knew would come my way.

The second, and far more important thing I wanted to do in the Derry book was to interview more former volunteers than I'd been able to for Tyrone. They're the lifeblood of the books and that's where Death in the Fields came in very handy. I don't flatter myself that every former volunteer devoured every word of it, but the feedback I got from the Derry guys was that they'd read - or heard - enough of it to think they would get a fair hearing. They also believed - rightly - their words wouldn't be distorted or their identities revealed, and on that basis I had a lot more people willing to be interviewed, and that made a huge difference. Experience always helps too, so having written one book on a PIRA brigade, I was hopefully better equipped to write another - but I'll let the readers judge that.

BS: In terms of the reviews that you received, one thing that I saw as positive and interesting was that it started conversations on TPQ, and I presume among former volunteers, and amongst people like myself, amateur historians/researchers.

Did any of your sources for the Derry book give a specific reason or rationale for their participation?

Going back to the reviews again, what stands out as being useful?

And going to the content of the book itself, let's start off with a fairly standard question - simply, what were the main differences between the ETB and the Derry Brigade?

JT: Yes I think it did, and I see that as a big win - if we want something to die then a good way of achieving that is not to talk about it, and I strongly believe that would be a major error for the Troubles and do all those from all sides who fought and suffered a huge disservice.

By far the most common reason sources gave me for participating was to ensure their side of what happened was recorded and heard by the wider public. For Seán McGlinchey - who was very kind in giving up his time to meet - he knows he's a well-known figure with a public profile and his past is documented, but often without any input from him and he wanted the opportunity to talk about it in his own words. For other former volunteers quite a few had never been asked to talk before and felt their stories had been overlooked and would soon be forgotten. They'd devoted their lives to the Movement and while they didn't want plaudits or brass bands they wanted that commitment remembered in some way.

Strangely enough there were echoes of the same motivations among some of the ex-members of the security forces I interviewed. None of them were 'bigwigs' or the men in the headlines but they wanted their experiences recorded and remembered.

As for reviews I was initially going to say 'all reviews are useful', but then I remembered those that aren't; I've had several that simply said 'after ordering, the book arrived quickly' . . . useful for Amazon perhaps but less so for me. Reviews can be helpful though, less so perhaps for specific points but more in terms of a 'general view', so if readers consistently point out a lack of balance on an aspect of the book, for example, that's useful. One such theme I get quite a lot of is where readers say the book leans too heavily towards one side but is a good read nonetheless - I get that from both sides of the fence, so am I doing something right? Perhaps.

For the South Derry units and the ETB they had a lot in common and fought broadly similar wars, but Derry city PIRA was very different as you'd expect. Firstly, the geography of the war in Derry was hugely compressed compared to the ETB. Operations were often sandwiched into small networks of streets, lanes and alleys, and that flowed through to the type of operations carried out. The Derry Brigade couldn't launch the type of attacks the ETB often could - large road mines, improvised mortars and major assaults on police stations, because of the danger to civilians. Of course that was mostly to avoid innocent bloodshed, but let's be clear it also had a practical, military driver as well in attacks like that eroded support from the communities they operated in, and that was very dangerous.

I'd also say a big difference between the two was the men in the ranks themselves. In general terms the ETB relied on recruits from a network of families with republican traditions that had links with each other often going back generations. That links with motivation too - the ETB's war sprung in large part from the land itself and what they viewed as the injustice of confiscations that happened centuries previously. This wasn't the case in Derry. Civil rights and not land were bigger motivators there as you'd expect in the city that suffered the tragedy of Bloody Sunday. In Derry the links that bound ETB members weren't as strong - or so tied up in history, and the very proximity to each other of volunteers in the city made security so much harder, hence why Derry was easier for the security forces to penetrate and the likes of Raymond Gilmour for instance could do so much damage.

The biggest difference though - in my opinion - was Martin McGuinness. The ETB had some notable commanders in its time; Kevin Mallon, Patrick Kelly etc, but no-one like McGuinness. His longevity and influence dominated the Brigade almost from its creation. You can see it in the brigade's lifecycle; when he was engrossed in the military struggle so was the brigade, when he began to move towards a political solution the brigade's military side withered.

BS: I’ve decided to cluster a series of questions and answers by topic:



Quillversation about Martin McGuiness (McG)

BS: I think one of the strengths if the book was the presence of McG - it wasn't a book about McG, or even about McG's command of Derry. I think it successfully showed Derry as an entity independent of McG. A few questions on McG:

Do you have an opinion on whether he was an agent of some type? Perhaps a strange question, but were you left with the impression that you'd have liked to have gone for a pint with McG?

What are your thoughts on him as a military leader? And as a leader of men more generally?

JT: I'd have very much liked to have had a quiet drink with McG, albeit I don't think he would have had a pint, a soft drink for him I think and he wouldn't have said much, far too cagey and self-possessed for a simple scribbler like me.

No, I don't think he was an agent of any type, despite the thoughts of some of my interviewees. Do I think there was more to his thinking - and perhaps his actions - than was apparent at the time? Perhaps, but not to the point where he was in any way working for the British. I do think, however -  and let me be very clear here that I have no written or verbal evidence for this whatsoever, this is purely my own 'hunch' if you like - that he had confidential back channels to the British (Security Service personnel in particular and that's not news of course) that he might have used on very rare occasions to discuss sensitive subjects of mutual benefit. But who knows for sure? Maybe we'll find out in years to come, but probably not.

Hmm, a military leader/leader of men, he was definitely a leader of men, he obviously inspired devotion and admiration among his own men and commanded both their respect and that of his enemies. He was a good tactician in many ways but what I would call his 'military knowledge' was not as good as it was made out to be. John Crawley makes some very good points about this in his book 'The Yank' - which is excellent by the way - and I agree with him. To be an effective military leader you need to have the basic knowledge of individual and small unit tactics, understand weapons systems and their characteristics as well as pros and cons, and have a good understanding of all the necessary facets of military leadership; training, logistics, communications, intelligence etc, and McG didn't have that. Perhaps more importantly he didn't either surround himself with (or delegate to) those that did have that knowledge, or seek to remedy the gaps in his knowledge through learning.

BS: I share your hunch - but at a certain point his interests became in-line with strategic British (though not RUC) interests. From memory there was a significant RUC operation against him (Operation Taurus). Had there been the political will, I think he could possibly have been convicted of "directing terrorism" a la Adair, and a UVF character named Maguire.

Crawley's criticisms of McGuinness's military leadership are hard to refute - it seems he had a natural charisma and an innate military cunning, but didn't seek to nurture these talents with appropriate training, or as you say surround himself with those who could fill the gaps or train him. Could this be a personality defect that he had? An arrogance? Or, as you say, do you think he simply got more interested in politics and the military aspect took a back seat?

I was trying to think of a comparison with McGuinness. Gerry Adams didn't really control Belfast, but he was obviously a strong influence. Slab Murphy is more analogous to McGuinness in terms of longevity and unquestioned leadership. But obviously Slab wasn't a politician, and in fact seems to have very little respect for most of them. Did you hear any commentary on McGuinness's relationships with, or attitudes to, figures such as Slab, or the former Chief of Staff Kevin McKenna (alleged to have had a non-violent feud with him).

JT: Very good questions on the 'why' with him. He was clearly hugely charismatic and an inspiring figure in republicanism, but why this lack of military leadership at anything above a very local, tactical level? He obviously was involved in operations and took risks personally - that is a very clear sign of a leader and one that would have gone a long way in inspiring devotion from his men, but why not kick on from there? True, I think his adoption of the car bomb and conviction that an economic offensive would be a pragmatic military pathway in Derry was something that in classic military thinking would be termed an 'operational' level, but he didn't appear to kick on from there - was the lure of politics too great, did Adams persuade him that was the route to success?

You're right on Slab Murphy, but I would say Murphy was a better military leader than McG as he evolved and in particular - and I would be the first to admit I'm no expert on S Armagh - he did indeed delegate to others around him and promote younger men around him who showed sharp tactical minds, ingenuity and innovation in their operations - S Armagh were also happy to learn the use of newer, heavier weapons which require military expertise to use effectively.

No commentary from Derry volunteers on McKenna and the alleged feud.

BS: John Crawley was a former training instructor with US Marine Reconnaissance teams. I imagine that South Armagh would have recognised Crawley would have been better employed training IRA volunteers in weapons and tactics than going into gun stores in New York to buy one rifle at a time because he had an American accent. In simple terms, McGuinness sent John Crawley to America to buy weapons. That is unimaginative at best, and purposefully damaging at worst.

In Derry, there wasn't an equivalent to "The Surgeon" that I could see, at least not in Derry City. South Derry was different, but they seem to have more in common with the ETB than South Armagh.

Were many volunteers positive about McGuinness?

JT: That's exactly what I’d have used John Crawley to do, and I would have ensured his 'shopping list' of weapons was what he got. Agreed on the commonality between South Derry and ETB, linkage across to West Tyrone and Donegal and tie in Fermanagh and you've got a 'super brigade' area.

There was no outright hostility to McG from any of the volunteers. Some had questions/concerns and one obviously believed he was compromised in some way, but almost all of them greatly admired him - they loved the fact that he was 'one of their own' and had risen so high in the Movement too.



Quillversation about sectarianism in the Derry IRA

BS: Were the 1974 murders of Winston Smith and Bert Slater ever discussed? How were Protestants, unionists, and loyalists generally discussed? And regarding the killing of Alan "Smudger" Smyth - was this well received by the volunteers you spoke to? The IRA in Derry had some successes against loyalist figures, reasonably high-profile UDA men were killed, and Smudger was quite a coup. And South Derry got a few UVF members.

Compared with the East Tyrone Brigade - how much did conflict with loyalists inform the attitudes/fears/motivations of republicans?

JT: In general the former Derry volunteers didn't say much about Protestants, unionists and loyalists. They very much thought the RUC and the UDR in particular were sectarian, albeit the city volunteers didn't have that much firsthand experience of the UDR. With the ETB it was a huge issue, I mean huge, and there were echoes of it among the S Derry volunteers - Sean McGlinchey was very clear about that - but it wasn't nearly as big a deal in the city.


Quillversation about informers in Derry

BS: The Derry brigade seemed to be badly affected by touts. What was the attitude to volunteers about them? I've read so many conflicting stories about Paddy "Warhead" Flood. Your Branch contact seemed emphatic. What did the volunteers think?

Did anyone ever discuss the paedophile John Collett who the IRA shot dead? Apparently he was a prolific child abuser, and the community put intense pressure on the IRA to do something, so they killed him.

JT: All the volunteers felt the same about informers - they detested them. They understandably saw them as the 'enemy within' and the greatest potential weakness in the Brigade. The city volunteers knew there was getting away from the fact that the city is fairly small so by necessity it was almost impossible not to know who was involved which made them very vulnerable.

Yes on Flood I've heard a lot of conflicting stories too, and the volunteers I spoke to weren't sure whether he was or not - they mostly didn't want to talk about it really. But the SB guy was clear on it, but I would have preferred to have more corroboration.

No-one mentioned Collett and I didn't ask any of the interviewees as I didn't think it important enough to be a line of questioning. I knew he was a habitual criminal but I didn't know he was a child abuser. CAIN has it down as a punishment shooting gone wrong which is what I went with in the book.


Quillversation about Patsy Gillespie

BS: Could you talk a bit more about this operation, how the volunteers felt about, and if anyone actually defended it?

JT: None of the volunteers defended it, although most were ambivalent about it, seeing it as a successful operation in that it killed soldiers but also understanding the strong emotions using Gillespie as a proxy bomb had inevitably evoked. As I say in the book the Gillespie operation was one of three coordinated to happen pretty much simultaneously - which is a sophisticated feat in itself requiring a lot of planning, logistics and communications. I can't help but think the proxy bomb concept is clumsy and not a sound military operation. In effect by bringing in an unwilling 'bomber' into the very heart of the action you lose the ability to control the attack.


Quillversation about Sinn Fein

BS: What was the volunteers attitudes to Sinn Fein? Any difference between the city and country volunteers in terms of attitudes?

JT: None of the volunteers were anti-Sinn Fein, mostly their attitude seemed to be that the party is a 'necessary evil' if the Movement is to achieve its goals; although interestingly none of them were personally involved in Sinn Fein. A few of them admired Michelle O'Neill, they hadn't met her but felt she'd outsmarted many other SF bigwigs by playing up the 'dumb blonde' persona while actually being a very savvy political operator.

Sean McGlinchey was pro-Sinn Fein as you'd expect from the former Mayor of Limavady, and I got the feeling from him the country volunteers were more pro-Sinn Fein on the whole than the city lads, seeing it a community organisation that very much worked in the interests of local nationalists across the board - the city volunteers were a little more sceptical about ts motives, but not overly much.


Quillversation about the security forces

BS: One of the strengths of the books was the inclusion and voice given to the army and RUC. What do the security forces have in common with volunteers? And what, besides the uniform (or lack of) are the main differences?

JT: I agree. This to me is one of the key drivers for the book - for all of them actually - the books aren't the story of the IRA told exclusively from the standpoint of the IRA - I want to give everyone a voice, including the army and the RUC - and even loyalists, because everyone was involved and has a story to tell. I want to prominently feature former volunteers because I feel strongly that the voices of the frontline volunteers has been largely unheard for a variety of reasons, some of them understandable, others less so. But that means walking a difficult and tricky path; and so much hinges on the use of language. When is a death a 'murder', or an 'execution'? Wherever I can I try not to describe an act myself but allow the interviewees to use their own language, but clearly that isn't possible for every incident in a book so that invariably means me as the author getting involved as it were, and I know from personal experience that can be very, very difficult for a lot of people. They contact me and tell me in no uncertain terms how angry my writing had made them - and that's from all sides, former security forces, volunteers etc.

On areas of common ground what a lot of interviewees (but by no means all!) have always told me about the other side as it were is that they respected the fact they believed in their cause - all sides thought the other sides' cause was wrong, but in general they knew it took commitment to adhere to it.

In terms of differences the three that stand out are resources, focus and training. For obvious reasons the security forces have vastly more resources than the volunteers, be that money, weapons, logistics, technology, you name it. But the second issue of 'focus' counterbalances that to a degree - not a huge degree, but some - and by that I mean for the British Army the war in Northern Ireland wasn't the be all and end all of soldiering, the main theatre was at the time in Western Germany and countering the Warsaw Pact. That's what the mass of equipment, training, preparation etc was geared for. Obviously that wasn't the case for the volunteers, for them the war in Northern Ireland was the Only war.

Lastly, there's training. For members of the security forces - and the army in particular - life revolves around training at all levels. Volunteers didn't have that luxury but at the same time I didn't get a sense from the volunteers that the organisation they were members of really valued or invested in training. As one interviewee said 'if you hadn't got the hang of a rifle or whatever in a couple of sessions then you never would.' I understand the thinking but don't agree. Training, training and more training is the key to successful soldiering, especially down at small unit size, for example an ASU.


The next book

BS: I think to finish up, maybe talk a little about future plans, approach to Belfast book and so on?

JT: The next subject is the Belfast Brigade. It will be a huge undertaking. It's where the Provisionals were really birthed and where so much of the heart of the Movement sat - and still does. Covering it in one book alone wouldn't do it justice in my view, so I'm looking at maybe two. I've asked a couple of former volunteers themselves their thoughts and they've suggested the time split might be '69-'77 for vol 1 and then vol 2 for the rest, but I'm not sure as yet. If TPQers have thoughts on that then please let me know.

As ever the key will be getting people to talk to me and so again, if anyone out there wants to talk to me then please get in touch via my website - there's a Contact me function they can use. As usual it would be confidential and if people want to be quoted anonymously then that's fine.

The debates I have with former volunteers who I'm close to has been around my use of language - and the Derry book is a case in point. Some have very strong feelings that my personal background comes through in the language I use and it demonises them. It's a huge dilemma for me personally and has made me reflect on the way I write. I'm not interested in my work on being a mouthpiece for any side, and I neither condemn nor applaud any side, but achieving objectivity in such a highly charged environment is difficult beyond belief and I accept I don't always attain the goal I set myself - and for that I ask forbearance. I will leave it to those like TPQers who are immersed in the subject to tell me where I'm going wrong, and hopefully where I'm going right too.

⏩ About Jonathan Trigg: Historian, writer and broadcaster, Jonathan Trigg has written over a dozen books with Death On The Don nominated in 2014 for the Pushkin Prize for Russian History. Latterly his Through German Eyes series exploring various Second World War campaigns and battles from the German perspective have been a critical and popular success. Inspired by events closer to home Jonathan has now embarked on a project to cover the Troubles. His first book on the subject - Death in the Fields: The IRA and East Tyrone was published by Merrion in Easter 2023.

Jonathan previously served in the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, reaching the rank of Captain, and completing emergency tours of East Tyrone and Bosnia. He left the Army after a final posting as a Military Instructor to the United Arab Emirates.

For further information and to contact Jonathan directly please visit his website

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

Quillversation With Jonathan Trigg 🪶 The Derry IRA

Brandon Sullivan ðŸŽ¤  The third part of the Quillversation with Jonathan Trigg, author of Death in the Fields: The IRA in East Tyrone.


Part one available here. Part two available here.

Some Quillers contributed questions/themes for this piece. My thanks to them, and to Jonathan Trigg for taking part in what has been a fascinating piece of work.

As ever, comments/questions very welcome.

The Eksund, and Libyan Arms shipments

BS: After the capture of the Eksund (01/11/87) and revelation of the previous shipments, what were the British Army’s expectations of operations to come? And what was their attitude or understanding if and when those expectations did not materialise?

JT: The biggest thing at first was anger towards the security services that hadn’t uncovered the Libyan link beforehand, and then there was a general expectation that both the number and sophistication of PIRA operations would increase significantly. One former 14 Company officer I interviewed said all the talk on the Special Forces side was ‘this is going to get very hairy very soon’, but then it was tumbleweed. Yes, a portion of the weaponry began to find its way to the ASU’s, but almost as fast as it was appearing it was getting picked up. In ‘on the ground’ terms the Army saw the Armalite increasingly replaced by the AK47/AKM, and Semtex was making a splash of course, but where was the ‘muscle’, where was the mass of weaponry? Even on Semtex the Army saw it being used as a ‘booster’ charge and not the main charge in most devices, so Semtex wasn’t replacing HME {Home Made Explosive) but supplementing it. There were no crew served mortars, the SAM-7s were a damp squib, the Dushka wasn’t used in an effective manner that would harness its strengths – for example, the Coalisland RUC station operation, where a Dushka with an effective range of 1.5 miles was used from less than 20 metres? It would’ve been far better to go for medium machine-guns like the GPMG for example. By the early 1990s with little sign of the Libyan stockpiles coming on line the Army had stopped really thinking about them if I can put it like that – definitely at my pay grade we didn’t know why, but we just got on with it.

BS: Do you think that the IRA's inability/failure to utilise more effectively the Libyan weaponry at its disposal had a direct bearing on the outcome of their negotiations with the British Government?

JT: Very good question, in effect the question boils down to what was the better negotiating position for the IRA leadership; use the weapons to launch a major wave of attacks that hugely upped the ante militarily and then negotiate, or not use the weapons but make sure the British knew they had them and could unleash them if necessary. Personally I think the leadership opted for the latter approach as they – understandably – feared an all-out offensive would result in a British military reaction that would cripple them, while not moving the dial too much on public opinion i.e. the British wouldn’t start shelling nationalist areas or villages but would – potentially – being back internment and launch a host of ‘lethal’ ambushes in rural areas in particular. This would be internment Mark 2, based on all the up to date intel the British had and so avoid the mistakes of internment Mark 1. The second part of the question could be what approach would have achieved a British withdrawal and a united Ireland at that point – and in my view it was neither, the leadership went for the best they thought they could get.

BS: Regarding the anger towards security services for not uncovering the link/shipments, I wonder if you could comment more broadly on the attitudes of the British army towards MI5/MI6 in this regard? And towards special forces?

JT: Two different things there. MI5/MI6 was way above my lowly rank and we had nothing to do with them, even battalion commanders were too low in the food chain to get involved at that level, but at brigade level and above that’s where the frustration kicked in. On Special Forces if you mean how did the rest of the Army think of them it was one of almost ‘adulation’ if I can put it like that. Everyone knew what the selection process was for Hereford and so knew just how hard it was – 14 Company were different, no-one really knew what their selection process was, but everyone assumed it was incredibly tough as we did know the drop-out rate was over 90%. Special Forces were obviously far more plugged into the intelligence picture than we were, but even they were only ever given snippets – ‘need to know’ was the strict rule.

BS: Was the AK47/AKM a "better" weapon for the IRA purposes? Aesthetically, the Armalite was iconic, of course, but the AK has a certain revolutionary chic.

JT: In my opinion yes it was a better weapon, guerillas usually have issues in keeping weapons clean and in good working order and if they can’t then they jam at the wrong time, and the Armalite wasn’t that robust, but the AK – wow – we had a few lessons on using and firing it and at the start of the first lecture about it the instructor dropped one into a pool of muddy water at his feet and stood on it while he gave his lecture. At the end he picked it up, shook the water and mud off it, aimed it at the target and fired - and it worked!

BS: If we can move across to attitudes from volunteers about the Libyan weaponry. How much awareness was there within the rank and file that substantial shipments had arrived? And could you talk a bit about how they felt when the supply of Libyan weaponry was so limited?

JT: Rank and file didn’t know much at all, but more senior guys did – not the Libyan bit until that hit the news – but they knew lots of stuff had come in but it only trickled out so even the more senior guys didn’t have any real idea just how much had been shipped in. The changes for them though were the switch to AKs, Semtex and the odd ‘prestige’ weapon like the Duschka rather than the M60s of yesteryear.

BS: Did any volunteers suggest reasons or rationale for the lack of access to the stockpiles?

JT: Only one really, he was ‘middle ranking’ I’d say and he thought it was the leadership wanting to go for politics and move away from the war. He was appalled by it and it made him lose a lot of faith in the Movement.

Researching the Derry Brigade

BS: Moving onto Derry, what made you choose that Brigade area?

JT: Having covered a rural brigade in Death In The Fields I didn’t want to do another ‘country’ unit as it were – going over the same ground in terms of themes etc. Instead, I wanted to juxtaposition that narrative with a ‘city’ unit, so it was either Derry or Belfast, and I’m saving Belfast til last, so Derry it was. Having said that I didn’t want to stop at the city limits, so South Derry PIRA are very much part of the story in the next book.

BS: In terms of research, how was it different to East Tyrone?

JT: Chalk and cheese. Persuading former East Tyrone Volunteers to talk to me made pulling teeth look easy, it was only due to the help of a couple of very kind intermediaries that I was able to sit down with any of them. The same was not the case with Derry where a lot more veterans were willing to talk. I think the first book helped with that as well, as Volunteers could see what I’d written, and how, and that gave them some comfort they’d be treated fairly – I hope so.

As for former members of the security forces it was the same as for East Tyrone, my own background gives me that ‘in’ with them, although covering Derry I was out of my personal experience zone having never served there. Having said that, I loved the research – I always do, which many people think is a bit sad and weird (and they’re probably right!) – it’s seeing and doing something new. For example, going to see the Bloody Sunday monument, the Claudy monument, spending hours walking round the Bogside and Creggan, Bellaghy and Dungiven. One memory that sticks with me; I was in Dungiven waiting to interview Séan ‘Chinky’ McGlinchey – which I really enjoyed by the way, he was very generous with his time and memories – so I walked around the village and as I went up Main Street from the Sinn Féin office I looked down and there was a slab in the pavement with a dedication to Francis McCloskey. I’d researched his death and here I was standing looking at a mini-monument to him.

The other huge difference in the research was Martin McGuinness. He dominated everything in Derry in a way that I don’t think anyone else in the Movement did. East Tyrone had some stand out individuals; Kevin Mallon, Jim Lynagh, Padraig McKearney and Paddy Kelly for example, but no-one was like McGuinness. Standing outside his family home in the Bogside was surreal.

BS: What did you expect the differences in the Brigade areas to be?

JT: Geography was the biggie. Fighting in a city – the British Army calls it FIBUA; Fighting In a Built-Up Area – is a world away from fighting in the countryside, it affects everything from tactics, to weapons to organisational structure, and it certainly did.

BS: Was there much difference between South Derry IRA and the East Tyrone Brigade?

JT: In military terms not much; they were equipped and trained in much the same way, and had the same outlook on the war, both units also produced their fair share of standout individuals – for East Tyrone’s Jim Lynagh, Padraig McKearney and Paddy Kelly read South Derry’s Francis Hughes, Ian Milne and Dominic McGlinchey. Unfortunately they also shared the same enemy; namely for both the focus of their war was the RUC, UDR and – latterly - civilian contractors. Was this inevitable given the composition of the security forces ranged against them? Perhaps in part, but it was also clear that both units were fighting a ‘local’ war that they felt was inter-generational as much as anything else.

BS: Dominic McGlinchey and Francie Hughes are now legends (or infamous), but Ian Milne was on a wanted poster, too. Did you uncover any more "unsung" figures in your research?

JT - I was very keen to talk to Ian Milne for the Derry book but Séan McGlinchey told me that unfortunately his wife was very unwell and naturally he was focused on that – I left it at that of course and I hope she is recovering. It’s an interesting question, as to attain the sort of Dominic McGlinchey or Francie Hughes status you really need to either be dead or have served an extraordinarily long time in prison, and is that a sign of ‘success’? What I can say is that I interviewed more than one former Volunteer who I think were very successful in their roles, and part of that success was not being in the limelight, and of course still being alive.


BS: Could you talk a bit about the "human bomb" attacks (24/10/90) - how did Derry Brigade veterans negotiate discussing such a topic? Was Ranger Best (killed by the Official IRA in Derry a few days after Bloody Sunday) discussed?

JT: Ranger Best was only mentioned in passing, and then as a mistake, but the proxy bomb attacks were universally condemned by the former Volunteers I spoke to – particularly Patsy Gillespie’s killing. Don’t get me wrong, the men I spoke to aren’t guilt wracked, wondering around in floods of tears with their heads in their hands – these are hard men who accepted long ago that war is brutal and people die – but they viewed the proxy attacks (that’s what the British Army terms ‘human bomb’ attacks) as massive errors of judgement on behalf of whoever ordered them as they turned their natural supporters against them. More than one even thought there was perhaps more to it and they were launched deliberately to discredit the armed struggle and support the move towards a political solution.

BS: Regarding the human/proxy bombs, do you have an opinion as to whether they were carried out to limit/discredit the IRA? Compared to, for example, Enniskillen, what effect do you think they had on IRA morale, and 'popular' support within the nationalist community?

JT: Oooh, murky waters here, I don’t think the proxy bombs were done specifically to limit/discredit the IRA, I think they were seen - by some at least - as pretty successful military operations, but perhaps there was also a thought for some of the leadership that it might have that negative effect too, which wouldn’t be a bad thing necessarily. Enniskillen vs proxy bombs, degrees of losing really. Perhaps the proxies were viewed with more horror than Enniskillen because the ‘humans’ used were Catholics, I don’t know, but as ever with these things it was a combination of events that created momentum rather than a single action.

BS: It's interesting that you describe the East Tyrone Brigade and South Derry units if the Derry Brigade as being primarily concerned with targeting the RUC and UDR. My understanding is that within the IRA, that in terms of prestige/esteem of success, targets were British Army soldiers (not UDR), RUC, UDR, loyalist paramilitaries, security force contractors. Did any volunteers that you spoke to ever discuss a "hierarchy" of targets? Or appear to derive particular pride from an operation that killed British soldiers, as opposed to one that assassinated a UDR man at home/work?

JT: I’m not surprised about the ‘hierarchy’ of targets you outline, but no volunteer has ever expressed it to me in that way, and as for any of them being ‘happier’ if a particular operation was against British soldiers as opposed to say the UDR or RUC the answer is no, a target was a target and that was that as far as the veterans I’ve spoken to have said. Having said that many of them have also expressed a visceral hatred of the RUC and even more so for the UDR, and that hasn’t been the case for the regular British Army – don’t get me wrong, they detest the Army too but it’s not the same, not by a long chalk.

BS: Following on from the above question about "success" it brings to mind a joke I was made aware of in IRA circles. When you joined, you were told your likely outcomes were death or jail. But on the upside, you "got a good funeral!" South Armagh were the Brigade least affected by death or jail for their volunteers. The ETB seemed to suffer high fatalities. In terms of death/jail, compared to other Brigades, where did Derry sit?

JT: ‘A good funeral’ like it! Yes, I got the same from former volunteers, they said they were never sugar coated, joining would almost certainly end in either death or jail and they had to accept it. And yes, South Armagh suffered relatively few casualties, especially given the focus put on them by the security forces. East Tyrone were second hardest hit – after Belfast which tops the list by a long way – and then Derry was in third if I can put it like that, not that I want to portray it as some sort of ‘league table’ or anything like that.

BS: Do you have a take on the Peace and Reconciliation Group and how they helped to shape the mindset of the soldiers.

JT: Soldiers on the ground had no view on them at all as they knew next to nothing about them, that ‘wider’ context of what was going on was never covered, everything was very operationally focused.

BS: Did any soldiers feel a certain "foreboding" being deployed in Derry due to the legacy of Bloody Sunday?

JT: Perhaps in the 1970s but by the 80s, no. Most of the guys were school kids when Bloody Sunday happened and knew nothing about it. Some of the older guys did know, but as far as they were concerned it was the Paras and not them, and that was that. As for what the Paras thought . . . you’d have to ask them.

BS: According to David Norris, he:

...dealt with a group of gay people who left Derry in terror. They were both Nationalists and Roman Catholics who had made little badges entitled 'Saoirse Go Homogeneasai'. They emigrated to London but before leaving they told me on the way of the bullying and harassment they received from the Provos and how others were being beaten and knee-capped. This is of course hear say but I have no reason to disbelieve it. 

Anyone I have spoken to who is from Derry has never heard of this tale. Has he?

JT: Sorry, no, never heard it but sounds awful.

This will be the last Quillversation with Jonathan for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed them, and look forward to maybe having more when the Derry Brigade book is released. 

About Jonathan Trigg: Historian, writer and broadcaster, Jonathan Trigg has written over a dozen books with Death On The Don nominated in 2014 for the Pushkin Prize for Russian History. Latterly his Through German Eyes series exploring various Second World War campaigns and battles from the German perspective have been a critical and popular success. Inspired by events closer to home Jonathan has now embarked on a project to cover the Troubles. His first book on the subject - Death in the Fields: The IRA and East Tyrone was published by Merrion in Easter 2023.

Jonathan previously served in the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, reaching the rank of Captain, and completing emergency tours of East Tyrone and Bosnia. He left the Army after a final posting as a Military Instructor to the United Arab Emirates.

For further information and to contact Jonathan directly please visit his website 

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

Quillversation With Jonathan Trigg: The Eksund, Libyan Arms, Derry Brigade, Coshquin “Proxy” Bomb Attack, “Long War”

Brandon Sullivan ðŸŽ¤  The second part of the Quillversation with Jonathan Trigg, author of Death in the Fields: The IRA in East Tyrone.

Part one available here.

BS: Still focusing on Tyrone, when researching the book, did you get a sense that the OIRA, or INLA, had significant presence or impact in Tyrone?

JT: INLA was a no, but OIRA was a yes. During the early days, there was a significant residual loyalty to the Officials, and it has to be remembered that communication and access to information wasn’t it as it is now, so people simply didn’t know all the details of what was going on with the split and when. Add to this the natural reluctance of rural folk to trust what ‘outsiders’ – particularly city boys – would be coming in and saying and you get the relatively slow transition over to support for the Provisionals.

BS: Regarding the Officials, did the British Army in general have any thoughts on them as a distinct entity from the Provisionals? And you personally?

JT: No for both, we were never briefed on the Officials, and the vast majority of soldiers didn’t know there were two separate IRA organisations.

BS: This is a comment left under a TPQ review of Up Like a Bird:

When Hughes began operating in East Tyrone under Kevin Mallon there seemed to be one Provo unit, when the IRA intercepted the secret British army document on future trends in 1979 that assessed the IRA it stated that East Tyrone had 10 active service units in the field.

Which do you think is more accurate?

JT: Good question, but I’m always wary of exact figures that relate to numbers of units or volunteers. A guerilla force doesn’t keep records – for very good reasons – and by necessity their organisation, structure and strength is fluid and oft changing. I think the major point to take from this is that the Provos in Tyrone were growing in strength throughout the 70s, and – I suspect – not just from new recruits but also from former Officials going over.

BS: That's an interesting reflection about the Provisionals growing in strength throughout the 1970s. The implication being that that tailed off in the 1980s. If that's the case, why do you think it is? I'm wondering if it was Ulsterisation, the realisation that it wasn't going to be a "quick war" or security force attrition?

JT:  It wasn’t so much that the Provisionals tailed off in the 1980s, rather that they changed, and went from a more ‘people’s force’ to a smaller, far more secretive organisation operating in the shadows. They had to of course in order to survive as the security forces became more effective – and arguably the evolution made them more effective militarily - but it irrevocably altered their relationship with the nationalist community who then had very little contact with them and so ‘grew apart’ from them if I can put it that like that. The concentration – some might say overconcentration – of recruitment from a small number of republican families impacted that change as well. Again, a totally understandable approach but one that had consequences.

BS: A number of debates have taken place on TPQ about the ability of the IRA to have continued. Again focusing on Tyrone, do you think the IRA in Tyrone by 1994 could have continued indefinitely? And, if so, what sort of operational potency might they have had? Alternatively, did you see a more likely path to defeat?

JT: ‘Indefinitely’ is a long time and I’d hesitate to label anything as being to last that long! But I do think the IRA in Tyrone could have continued to function beyond 1994 – some would say elements of it are still functioning today. The potency question I think is more relevant, and on that point you can look at the stats and see that by ’94 the numbers were all declining; number of attacks, casualties caused etc. The type of attacks had also changed significantly, the days of multi-weapon shoots and close quarter assassinations were gone, replaced by stand-off mortar attacks on security force installations. That type of attack could be devastating – the 1985 Newry RUC station for example - but more often than not the ops weren’t successful.

BS: When I think of "combined arms attacks" by the IRA, the Derryard attack in Dec 1989 comes to mind. Could you talk a bit about that particular attack?

JT: Derryard was a major op, not just in the weaponry used and the number of volunteers involved, but in its ambition. To destroy a PVCP and its garrison - not by a stand-off mortar or IED attack but by, in effect, a classic infantry assault – was unprecedented. I didn’t cover it in Death In The Fields, but my understanding is that Pete Ryan of the ETB commanded the attack, with volunteers from both the ETB and Fermanagh, and possibly S Armagh too included, and Tom Murphy was involved in some way – not actually on the op I hasten to add but in its planning. The British Army in professional terms was both impressed by it – specifically the fact that the volunteers didn’t bug out when fire was returned but tried to fight through the position – and alerted as it then knew it had to be prepared for more attacks like that. The fact there weren’t is something I’ve scratched my head over. Ryan was still very active until his death in Coagh in 1991, as – I assume – were many of the volunteers on the op, Lawrence McNally for example, and the weapons were available, and they had the lessons from Derryard for the next time. The only thing I can think of is the senior leadership not wanting that sort of multiple casualty operation at that stage as they progressed with politics. Funnily enough no-one I spoke to in Tyrone mentioned it, maybe because it was out of area, I don’t know.

BS: What do you think the decline in number and type of IRA operations was about? My own view is that the IRA at management level was reducing the tempo of the campaign and that this, probably more than security force success (and with loyalist violence an arguable and very distant influence) informed the decline.

JT:  I would agree that the leadership had a downward influence on the tempo of the campaign, but would make a case for the security forces becoming far more effective too – especially Special Branch. The other element I would propose is war weariness, and I mean that in the human sense of the sheer will needed to maintain a campaign ad infinitum. By their nature regular armed forces can sustain a campaign for longer by treating it as a job complete with regular pay, holidays, medical services, housing, equipment provision, pensions etc, while irregular forces struggle to do the same, making it far harder for people to focus on operations.

BS: Regarding a particularly infamous action from the ETB, was Teebane done from a position of strength or weakness? Could you imagine the A-Team who were killed at Loughall conducting such an operation? It's interesting that it was carried out without notifying senior ranking Provisionals.

JT: I think Teebane was born of weakness, and perhaps also from the internal struggles going on at the time within the Movement. I can’t imagine the A-Team carrying out such an op because it wasn’t their type of op, they specialised in close quarter assassinations of course, but mainly multi-weapon shoots, mostly combined with other weapon types such as bombs/mortars, far more a ‘combined arms’ approach if I can put it like that, whereas Teebane was a far simpler remote attack. The Harry Henry killing showed they weren’t worried about hitting contractors – as did several other such killings – but they were more ‘look them in the eyes’ stuff. Teebane definitely wasn’t that.

BS: Moving on from Tyrone and into Operation Banner more generally, I wonder if you have any thoughts or analysis on the "Corporals Killings" of March 1988? Some interesting documentaries have been made in recent years that covers the sequence of events surrounding that incident. Also, any thoughts on the Gibraltar killings (Operation Flavious).

JT: The chain of events leading up to the Corporal Killings was clearly instrumental in what happened that day. And especially given Stone’s attack at Milltown I can understand the fear engendered by the unknown car with two guys appearing during the funeral procession etc, but I still think despite all that once their identities had been ascertained by volunteers involved – and my understanding is that was done – there was no need to kill them. It was an appalling act that did the Republican Movement nothing but harm. A lot of the debate around the killings has centred on the role of the two Corporals; were they Special Forces and what were they doing there? I have interviewed a former 14 Company officer who knew them (the more experienced one well and the other hardly at all as he’d just arrived) and he confirmed to me they were NOT 14 Company themselves But Were Royal Signals comms specialists attached to 14 Company. I haven’t had that corroborated but given my knowledge of how 14 Company operated that explanation seems wholly plausible, as does his explanation of their being there as the older guy’s ‘showing off’ to the new guy who’d only just arrived in the Province. Cock-up or conspiracy, and on this one I go with tragic cock-up.

Flavius is something I would very much like to delve more into at some point, especially given it was my battalion who were the intended target of the trio of volunteers – I obviously wasn’t with them at the time and was still in school. Until I know more I think I’ll keep my powder dry on that one though.

BS: Could you talk a bit about different regiments of the British Army, their attitude, training, aptitude, reputation within the army, and their efficacy for Operation Banner?

JT: That’s a huge topic and I could bang on for hours – I won’t as it would bore most people to death – but in general terms it was infantry battalions which were deployed to Northern Ireland, but Not the Irish Guards (they did go but only at the very end of Banner) or the Gurkhas. Royal Artillery and Cavalry units also went but usually only for specific roles such as guarding the Maze or manning PVCPs such as at Aughnacloy. In the 70s artillery units especially did some ‘normal’ patrolling, for example Derry from 1972 for two years but it was relatively rare. Each battalion would also have specialists from other Corps attached for specific roles e.g. Pay Corps, REME for vehicle maintenance, Signals for specialist comms etc.

The Army tried to ‘spread the load’ as it were among the infantry but some battalions went more than others, including the Light Infantry, Royal Green Jackets, Royal Anglians, Fusiliers and Paras – this was down to a combination of experience and timing. All battalions would do 6-month work-up training before deployment, with UK-based units doing specialist training in Kent and West German-based units doing it in Sennelager. The training was intense, comprehensive and geared to where you were deploying, i.e. a city or rural tour. The training was the same if you were going for an emergency 6-month roulement tour or a two-year residential tour. Each battalion would also run specialist courses so as to have a Close Observation Platoon for static covert surveillance, specialist Search teams for weapons hides and some would also have an Operations Company for high intensity Brigade-wide operations.

Preparing for Northern Ireland was taken extremely seriously, nothing was taken for granted and if officers and NCOs weren’t up to scratch they’d be sacked, but by the late 80s in particular most battalions had a large core of very experienced officers, NCOs and soldiers who’d done multiple tours and knew what they were doing. For example when I led my platoon to Tyrone I was one of less than a half dozen out of 30 who hadn’t been before. As to reputations the key thing was performing professionally on a tour, if a unit didn’t do that it was a black mark.

BS: Could you expand a bit more on what we discussed on the phone, Para's, Marines, Highland Fusiliers and their aptitude, or otherwise for Op Banner?

JT: Generalisations about different battalions are exactly that, generalisations, but in broad terms the Paras are viewed as aggressive on operations; in part because they’re selected and trained with that characteristic in mind, whereas the Marines – who also undergo a rigorous selection and training regime – tend to be ‘calmer’ if I can put it like that. The Royal Highland Fusiliers always had a ‘challenging’ reputation, good on the job but a bit mad off it. In general county infantry regiments were seen as quiet, steady and good under pressure, they wouldn’t do anything particularly spectacular but would just get on and do the job.
 
About Jonathan Trigg: Historian, writer and broadcaster, Jonathan Trigg has written over a dozen books with Death On The Don nominated in 2014 for the Pushkin Prize for Russian History. Latterly his Through German Eyes series exploring various Second World War campaigns and battles from the German perspective have been a critical and popular success. Inspired by events closer to home Jonathan has now embarked on a project to cover the Troubles. His first book on the subject - Death in the Fields: The IRA and East Tyrone was published by Merrion in Easter 2023.

Jonathan previously served in the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, reaching the rank of Captain, and completing emergency tours of East Tyrone and Bosnia. He left the Army after a final posting as a Military Instructor to the United Arab Emirates.

For further information and to contact Jonathan directly please visit his website 

To be continued . . . 

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

Quillversation With Jonathan Trigg ❥ The IRA, Tyrone, Teebane, And Operation Banner

Brandon Sullivan ðŸŽ¤Quillversation with Jonathan Trigg, author of Death in the Fields: The IRA in East Tyrone.

Intro

I read and enjoyed Death in the Fields when it came out. Tyrone during the conflict was and is a contentious and contested subject. I listened to a long-form interview with Jonathan Trigg on the Good Listener podcast, interviewed by the host, John Hadden. I have a particular interest in the IRA’s campaign against security force contractors, as well as analysis around the methods and efficacy of security force and loyalists in attacking the Republican Movement. In both of these areas, Tyrone is distinct, and fascinating. I was therefore pleased to make contact with Jonathan Trigg, who graciously agreed to an interview.

Please note that when Trigg refers to veterans, it is veterans of all combatants, military and paramilitary. 

Anyone wishing to suggest questions for me to post in subsequent pieces, please leave a comment below.

BS: Could you start with discussing why you wrote Death In The Fields? Perhaps comment on the inception and research process, and how it may inform your work in the future?

JT: I was born in August 1970 so never knew a time before the Troubles. I also knew from a very early age I wanted to join the British Army – no idea why to be honest, no-one in my family served and I didn’t know anyone who was in, but it was always just there. I also always knew I wanted to join the infantry, so that meant going to Northern Ireland, I just accepted that reality.

Years later I read Toby Harnden’s Bandit Country and it’s such a fascinating piece of work I thought that if I ever write something about Northern Ireland I want it to be like that. So, having written over a dozen other books – mainly about the Second World War – and interviewed a host of veterans I thought the time was right to start what I hope would be a series of books about the different brigades that made up the Provisional IRA. As my work is based on interviews and first-hand testimony I needed to speak to veterans from all sides, and, given my background that gave me a problem – how could I get former Provisionals to talk to me? So that meant finding a new publisher – Merrion – who could put me in a room with the people I needed to talk to.

Researching the book was a joy – and a trauma. So much pain, all these years later it was still raw for so many, but to listen to them was a privilege, I only wish more people would have talked to me but I always knew that would be the case. The ‘sequel’ is on the Derry Brigade and I’m very glad to say that writing Death in the Fields has encouraged a lot more veterans to talk to me, which has been brilliant.

BS: In Chapter 3 (The Mallon and McKenna Years), you wrote about an incident at a republican commemoration when a Protestant man "with the mentality of a child" was seen by IRA men. Sean O’Callaghan in his memoir The Informer wrote that Brendan Hughes (the Tyrone IRA man, not The Dark) and a friend were beating the Protestant man and only stopped when O’Callaghan fired warning shots to get them to stop.

Hughes wrote in Up Like a Bird that he went to where the Protestant man was being held by two IRA Volunteers awaiting instructions on whether to kill the man, and ordered that he be released immediately. Hughes wrote that being "incensed at O'Callaghan's description” of this event was one of the reasons he wrote his memoirs.

Could you offer an opinion on which version you find more credible? And comment more widely on the sectarianism of the East Tyrone Brigade (ETB)? Perhaps how it was perceived within the PUL community, and also from within or around the ETB itself?

JT: I would’ve loved to talk to Sean O’Callaghan about it and ask him about that incident, but alas I couldn’t of course. As to whose version is the more credible I want Brendan Hughes’s to be true as it is more human, and having seen Hughes interviewed by John Hadden on The Good Listener podcast he is clearly a thoughtful individual who I feel is very credible, but am I just kidding myself? I don’t know. Basically, I’ve never spoken to any former Volunteer who hasn’t loudly and insistently proclaimed they don’t have a sectarian bone in their body, but really? Shooting unarmed men outside their church as they stand with their children? Kingsmill, Darkley?

Loyalists were nakedly sectarian – and it’s vile – and they accepted they were, and while I understand the argument that it was the uniform that was the target and not necessarily the person in it, that’s a tough line to defend in my view. Blood and soil are powerful things – I know, I’ve interviewed a lot of former German Second World War veterans – and I think that creed seeped into the minds of the ETB, generation after generation. The legacy it left in the Protestant community – who live cheek by jowl with them – is total poison.

BS: Volunteers would argue that if they wanted simply to murder Protestants, then they could have in very large numbers, almost any time that they wanted. In terms of Blood & Soil, Kevin Toolis made the point in Rebel Hearts that to this day, Catholic farmers can look at land owned by Protestants that was confiscated from their families centuries ago. Toolis also wrote that economic jealousy could have informed some individual IRA members' keenness to target certain Protestants, though they would have had to have approval from the PIRA hierarchy. With this in mind, could you perhaps comment on the Teebane operation? It has been debated widely on TPQ.

JT: I have no argument with any of that, yes they could have murdered so many more Protestants and yes, Catholic farmers could see ‘stolen’ land every day but at what point do we let the past be the past and forgive each other – I know it sounds all sunshine and flowers but what’s the alternative? Personally I blame the Norman Conquest for destroying an Anglo-Viking society in England that was working pretty well but I can’t curse the Normans amongst us for ever – I’m married to an amazing woman who from her surname is almost certainly descended from them.

As for Teebane – well, objectively it was an operation that ‘worked’, i.e. they hit their target, and although I have no definitive evidence I’d be surprised if it didn’t scare off other contractors, but even so I struggle to think of it as anything except an atrocity. That late in the war was it going to make a difference to any outcome?

BS: Was sectarian division obvious when you served in Tyrone? And what were attitudes like within the British Army towards the Catholic & Protestant populations respectively?

JT: Soldiers are venal creatures, I definitely was, and we measured the division in terms of tea and cake, nothing more fundamental – sorry but we did. We knew we were in a ‘friendly’ area when people would offer us tea and cake, and when they didn’t it was a ‘bad’ area.

The Protestant/Catholic thing in the Army is a very good question and one that doesn’t get any attention; OK here goes, it was irrelevant to 90% or more of soldiers, to be honest most (I accept some Scottish regiments in particular would be an exception) soldiers had no idea there was a difference between Protestants and Catholics – I know that’s difficult to except for many but that’s the truth. I took my soldiers to Bosnia for a ‘religious war’ and they couldn’t get the whole ‘Muslim/RC/Orthodox Christian’ thing then too - most thought we were all just Christians and couldn’t get the concept of two ‘versions’ – most of my guys had never gone to church ever. In my battalion a large proportion of the officers were Catholic, it was a ‘thing’ apparently because a lot of our officers had been to private schools in east Anglia that were Catholic.

In Tyrone most people either looked through us like we weren’t there or were pretty friendly – open hostility was very rare - and we left it at that, we had a job to do and we got on with it.

BS: The book is about the East Tyrone brigade of the IRA. What other agencies/organisations (within Tyrone) were important in terms of effectiveness and/or power? As an example, Republican War News frequently featured businesses publicly announcing cutting all commercial ties with the security forces due to IRA threats. How was the general civilian population affected by the various armed organisations in Tyrone - police, military, paramilitary?

JT: The most effective agency in Tyrone by far was Special Branch. Every agency is going to try and talk up its own impact – future funding depends on it for a start – but with SB the reality matches the hype. After them I’d give the nod to 14 Company. Least of all I’d tip the regular British Army. They were the ‘face’ of the war in many ways, but mainly provided the ‘framework’ within which everyone else operated, almost without being a major player themselves.

As for the economic war thesis I have big doubts; in a capitalist model there will always be those who see a competitor cutting commercial ties with a customer as an opportunity, and frankly if the Army had to fly bread in from Manchester it would’ve done, so was the idea flawed in the first place? It’s difficult to argue it wasn’t in my view.

As to how the mass of the population were affected, two short personal stories if I may; I was leading a patrol near Dungannon when we passed a school at kicking out time. A bunch of girls shouted at me to ‘Go home!’ When I said I’d like nothing more – I was exhausted and irritable at the time – one girl exclaimed loudly ‘What? You can’t leave us like this!’. A week later at the end of another 12-hour patrol I got the call that our pick-up helicopter had been re-tasked so we had to tab back to base – a dozen miles. We reached Dungannon hours later in mid-afternoon and as we patrolled up the high street not a single person gave us a second look – there we were in helmets, cam cream, full webbing, assault rifles, the works, and it was like we were invisible. I looked to my right and saw myself reflected in the window of a Wellworths as the people inside were doing the pick’n mix. It was surreal. Then I threw up blood on the window. I didn’t know it at that point but I had pneumonia. Most people were just trying to have a life, and all of us were just ‘in the way’, if that makes any sense.

BS: Where does the UVF fit into that picture?

JT: At that point they weren’t a big thing. We never made a distinction either. As far as we were concerned we weren’t ever going to ask an armed individual if they were in the UVF or PIRA, the rules were if you were caught by us carrying a gun and were endangering life we’d shoot you. What ‘organisation’ you were in was for your family to sort out. For local Tyrone republicans I can’t speak to that, but my guess is they detested them with a passion, and with good reason.

BS: In terms of the economic war, the bombing of commercial and industrial premises was one element. The campaign against security force contractors was distinct, I believe. I think you’re correct when you said that “in a capitalist model there will always be those who see a competitor cutting commercial ties with a customer as an opportunity” – The ETB arguably reduced the pool of “collaborators” (as they would term it) to Henry Bros, who they then attacked mercilessly and frequently. How was the campaign against security contractors perceived by the British Army on the ground, at by the contacts you interviewed when researching the book?

JT: To be honest at my very junior level over there I had no view – and didn’t hear anything either – as to the campaign against contractors. We were very self-contained and ‘cocooned’ really. If we did see/hear anything about it we would have just viewed it as part of the general stuff we were dealing with – we were very tasked orientated; operation to find a bomb, operation to clear a route, operation to find a weapons hide and so on ad infinitum.

On the ‘collaborators’ piece I’d ask the question where does it stop? Building a base is one thing, but what if you sell petrol from your gas station to someone who happens to be an RUC officer, or what if you teach a primary class where eight of the kids have parents in the security forces, are you a collaborator?

About Jonathan Trigg: Historian, writer and broadcaster, Jonathan Trigg has written over a dozen books with Death On The Don nominated in 2014 for the Pushkin Prize for Russian History. Latterly his Through German Eyes series exploring various Second World War campaigns and battles from the German perspective have been a critical and popular success. Inspired by events closer to home Jonathan has now embarked on a project to cover the Troubles. His first book on the subject - Death in the Fields: The IRA and East Tyrone was published by Merrion in Easter 2023.

Jonathan previously served in the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, reaching the rank of Captain, and completing emergency tours of East Tyrone and Bosnia. He left the Army after a final posting as a Military Instructor to the United Arab Emirates.

For further information and to contact Jonathan directly please visit his website 

To be continued . . . 

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

In Quillversation 🎤 With Jonathan Trigg

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