British rules intelligence business

by Tommy McKearney

The northern situation is moving into new but predictable territory as those with real power – the British government - orders the players to do as they are told. For a period of time London allowed different parties a degree of ‘slack’, giving them time to come to terms with the new order but eventually this honeymoon period had to end and bargains struck in the past have now to be honoured. The stability sought, above all else, by the British (and Irish government) is now being imposed by a series of deft political and security manoeuvres. Some have argued that the catalogue of happenings of the past year are nothing more than a string of individual incidents. Attempts are being made to interpret these events away from the context of the imposition of an overall settlement according to British terms. This is a mistake.

The British government has a real interest in seeing an Ireland that is fitting obediently and placidly into the New World Order in which London has secured a subservient but lucrative place. A troublesome and violent Northern Ireland may not have the destabilising potential of a Vietnam, but it acted as a dangerous little pool of dissatisfaction during the time of conflict and it provided a potential focus for other discontented elements in Britain. Without a settlement it might do so again. With ‘International Terror’ the new ‘Red Scare’, it’s hardly surprising that Washington’s newest ambassador – Tony Blair - is determined to ensure the success of his own personal triumph over ‘Domestic Subversives’.

In spite of suggestions to the contrary, military solutions are rarely Britain’s favoured approach to any situation and then only the use of what force is necessary to achieve success. This is not to say that the British government has any compunction about spilling blood or bending and breaking the rules while doing so. It is merely to say that they recognise the value of securing an opponent’s submission and cooperation on one hand and have long understood the potentially damaging effects to British self-interest of hostilities and (especially the gratuitous use of) violence on the other hand.
From London’s point of view, the arrangement arrived at on Good Friday 1998 appeared to be an admirable solution to the Irish Troubles. The Union would remain, with the agreement of the Dublin government, unionists would agree to share the administration of the area with nationalists and the republican insurgents would agree to end their war and in return, play a part in the administration of the area. In his haste to get product from the 1998 negotiations, Tony Blair failed to have the participating plenipotentiaries state publicly the terms that were supposed to be agreed. In the absence, therefore, of a public commitment to specific details, supporters of the different parties held onto self-servicing interpretations of the deal. Such a state of confusion could not last indefinitely and we are now watching the removal of any and all misconceptions.

It goes without saying that by the very nature of the beast, the British government was always going to see the existence of an underground insurrectionary movement as posing a much greater threat to good order and discipline than the continuation of the discriminatory practices that called the ‘rebels’ into being in the first place. So when David Trimble and his unionists made it clear that they could not/would not remain in government with Sinn Fein while even a supine IRA remained in being, Tony Blair issued the Provos with their demob suits.

There is often a temptation to delve into conspiracy theories when examining British government dealings with Irish republicans yet there is frequently good reason for doing do. The ostensible cause of the Executive’s collapse was the IRA’s use of Stormont for gathering intelligence information on a range of individuals. How much of this was plain, ordinary information gathering and how much of it could or ever would have been used for anything other than political advantage is difficult to say. What we can say is that the Provisional IRA was militarily inactive and that few believed that it had the slightest intention of returning to war with the British state. What it was doing though was maintaining a low profile presence, a type of ‘we haven’t gone away you know’ turnout that allowed its members and supporters to hold the illusion that it still constituted a threat of sorts. This low-key activity however, made it vulnerable to expose and was always likely to lead to its entrapment in some form of snare.

When faced with a choice between Trimble and Adams, Britain chose the former and must surely have instructed its intelligence services to provide the material help necessary to finally sew up the Northern Ireland situation. We are now hearing about ‘rogue elements within British Intelligence’ acting for a range of personal reasons as if the people in charge of MI5 and MI6 have suddenly lost the authority to invoke ‘D notices’ and worse if they chose to do so. A much more likely scenario is that having examined the options, British intelligence has decided to orchestrate a clever plan to force the Provisional IRA to capitulate. By creating the impression that a few loose cannon from the Secret Service are anxious to talk and expose highly placed agents within Sinn Fein and the IRA, the British have caused alarm within the republican constituency.

The Sinn Fein leadership compounded their problems by refusing to deal with the issue openly and by not making their principal spokespersons available for interview. At the heart of their difficulty lies the fact that Sinn Fein has tried for years to pretend that British Intelligence has not penetrated their upper tier. In spite of ample evidence to the contrary, they have stubbornly insisted that the groups in charge of both the IRA and Sinn Fein have remained immune to penetration by the enemy.

The greatest reason causing Sinn Fein and the IRA to deny any form of contamination is the undue emphasis the movement places on leadership invincibility. Unlike most other conventional political organisations, Sinn Fein is an extremely hierarchical party that has no genuine alternative-tendency or person contending for the top position/s. The party president and his advisors enjoy an authority that no other political party (apart possibly from the DUP) bestows upon its ruling circle. Right wing commentators wrongly attempt to describe this method of management as anti-democratic. People who join the Sinn Fein party know what they are entering and can leave at any time. They do, however, agree to submit themselves to a form of discipline that tolerates no opposition to the steering committee and/or its president but in return they expect inspired guidance from the ‘men in the 13th Floor’. While great trust is placed in the wisdom of the leadership, there is little tolerance for those who are perceived to have feet of clay, no matter what they have achieved or contributed, as the late Sean MacStiophan found out in the early 1970’s.

Under such a regime it would be a major blow to Sinn Fein if it were proven that it had had a traitor or traitors at its bosom during the last crucial years. As a Dublin government spokesperson is reported to have told the Irish Times: it would enormously damage – possibly terminally - the current republican leadership if they were to now appear as political cuckolds.

The very thought of such a thing is enough to send tremors through the bowels of Connolly House. The threat of such a person being revealed might very well drive a pragmatic and ambitious party to leave its past behind it and disestablish its armed wing. The sequel would eventually be a perfectly house trained Sinn Fein, a contented Trimble, a return of the Executive and would you believe it – a well pleased Tony Blair. It is too, the type of scheme that the spooks in MI5 are adept at manufacturing when they are dealing with opponents who refuse to recognise their own limitations.

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