Fourthwrite ..........................Issue No. 12

A secret history of the IRA... by Ed Moloney

Review by John Nixon

Ed Moloney's book The Secret History of The IRA isn't just another shelf piece that makes up the voluminous canon of literature about the Provisionals. All truth is bitter and when apologists for the Provisionals rush to rubbish and malign any book then it would be fair comment that all truth is bitter and Moloney's book is a bitter pill. The only ones not swallowing it are those who want to write or see history written as they would tell it. Napoleon's history was a fable agreed upon for Joyce's Stephen Daedelus it was a nightmare from which he was continually trying to awaken. We're still making it.

So what's different about Moloney, Bowyer Bell, Mallie or Coogan? Yes, Moloney's credentials are a major asset; former journalist of the year, northern editor of the Irish Times and Sunday Tribune but probably the book's most valuable asset as colleague Eamonn McCann observed is 'the measure of the solidity of his reputation that Sinn Fein supporters began rubbishing his book months before he delivered the final draft'. Sinn Fein’s Rita O Hare says "no-one in the IRA has talked to him for years". How would she know. It certainly wasn't to Gerry Adams ...he was never in the Provos!

If the Provos were in power Moloney would probably be the best banned (author) in the land. The difference with Moloney's book is the timing and impact. The former because all has changed …utterly, and the latter because it will have a political impact at a time of great political change. The pivotal character is Gerry Adams and his alleged involvement in IRA operations in the ‘70's. Moloney maintains Adams was commander of the Belfast Brigade, at the time of the Disappeared, the Unkowns, the Bayardo Bomb, No Go areas, etc. He has presented the facts here in stark impassioned detail. It is a story of loss, pain, cruelty, lost lives, lost youth and unimaginable sacrifice.

Those who carried the struggle will read this book and wince or weep. It grasps many nettles and exposes unpalatable truths. From the lean times of the Sixties to the rise (from the ashes of '69) of the Provisionals in the wake of Unionist/RUC pogroms to herald a new phase in the fight for Ireland's freedom. Between 'Freedom '74. '75. '76. 'Long Hot Summers' Ulsterisation of the Provisional's war effort, the Hunger Strikes, the Loughgall massacre, secret and not so secret talks, church and political intermediaries, backroom negotiations, deniable and undeniable deals and so on ad infinitum. Moloney's pragmatism in presenting account is evident in the detail. Barbed as the truth may be there is something here which differentiates it from more academic predecessors. There is a dimension of reality and historicism which puts it beyond accusations of rhetoric and falsehood.

This is the story of the Provisionals, warts and all, from birth pangs to a political maturity that is currently manifest in the real politik of constitutional and parliamentary democracy. The Good Friday Agreement heralded by Sinn Fein as a 'stepping stone' to a united Ireland, what ever that may be, has become a political tar baby with which many republicans are finding increasingly difficult to come to grips. Moloney dedicates his book to all those who lost their lives in the Northern Ireland Troubles. He should include all those who survived them and who, like the characters in Joyce's Dubliners, had painfully to come to terms with their own epiphanies. Ed Moloney's book will speed up this process.

N.B. For historical accuracy, it would have been better if the title had read: ‘Secret history of the Provisional IRA’. There are many IRA’s