One Man's Terrorist Read online

  A few months before the Westminster poll of 1983, the NIO’s David Blatherwick weighed up the chances that Sinn Féin might supplant the SDLP as the dominant force in nationalist politics.13 Blatherwick found nationalist opinion to be characterized by ‘frustration and helplessness’: ‘Catholics see in London a government which they believe to be dominated by chauvinistic and anti-Irish attitudes.’ A growing number feared that any return to devolved rule would simply be a vehicle for unionist domination: ‘Many ordinary Catholics appear to have concluded that the unionist leopard will not change his spots, that British governments will not grasp the nettle of unionist intransigence, as they see it, and that no “internal” solution is therefore possible.’ This drift in nationalist thinking was ‘not so much a reasoned decision to opt for Irish unity – many see the problems and dangers of unity and question the social norms of the Republic – but a reflection of their frustration over their inability to get what they want inside Northern Ireland’.

  This was all music to Provisional ears. But Blatherwick’s paper also found a potential crumb of comfort in the class divide among nationalists, which strongly influenced their political attitudes. In the Catholic ghettoes of Derry and Belfast, where rates of poverty and unemployment were still alarmingly high, ‘people find it easy to believe that they would be no worse off, and maybe even better, in a united Ireland. Certainly, they can have little reason to believe that a resumption of devolved government, even on a power-sharing basis, would lead to a dramatic improvement in their standard of living.’ This was no exaggeration: in 1981, the male unemployment rate for Northern Irish Catholics was higher than for any region or any other ethnic minority in the UK.14 Having experienced political violence as part of their everyday lives for more than a decade, working-class nationalists could now, as Blatherwick observed, ‘view with comparative equanimity the prospect that getting the “Brits” out of Ireland may mean more bloodshed, especially if it might solve the problem once and for all’.

  The attitudes of their middle-class brethren were more complicated. Unemployment had not affected this social layer to the same extent: indeed, direct rule had ‘largely removed from them the stigma of second-class citizens’ and opened the door to public-sector employment for Catholic university graduates. Blatherwick still found middle-class Catholics to be ‘deeply suspicious’ of British and unionist attitudes, which made the idea of Irish unity more attractive from their perspective; however, ‘because of their greater stake in the community they are far more disturbed than their working-class counterparts about the implications of continued violence’. They could still be weaned away from opposition to British rule if their political representatives secured a role in the administration of Northern Ireland: ‘If not, the danger is that the Catholic community will lose interest in ordinary, constitutional politics; and even that the SDLP will lose heart and disintegrate.’

  Boats and Boxes

  Danny Morrison took on a distinctive role in the new Sinn Féin leadership team. His rhetorical style was blunt and provocative, in contrast to the measured, avuncular persona that Adams sought to cultivate. It was Morrison who coined the soundbite of the decade at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, when he asked the assembled delegates: ‘Will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?’15 Soon after the 1983 election, he spoke at a rally in West Belfast to mark the anniversary of internment. Morrison gesticulated angrily at the helicopter that hovered over the crowd – ‘the skies won’t always be safe for the British pigs’ – and offered British soldiers two routes out of Ireland: ‘There is the boat and the box. We want them to take the boat. We are a peace-loving people and it is up to them.’16

  Sinn Féin chose Morrison as its standard-bearer for the party’s next big test, the European election of 1984. If the Provos could win a seat at the expense of John Hume, the implications for Irish politics would be earth-shattering. Morrison launched his campaign with confident predictions of victory, promising to use the assembly in Strasbourg to ‘harangue the British government over plastic bullets, show trials and its illegal occupation of this part of our country’.17 Even Hume’s Unionist opponents were beginning to worry about his prospects. The UUP leader James Molyneaux had previously said there was no point trying to rescue the SDLP from ‘the results of their own mistaken policies’.18 But as the European election approached, Molyneaux gave the nod to a more diplomatic intervention by his party secretary Frank Millar, urging unionists to ‘refrain in coming weeks from rhetoric of the kind which easily inflames fear and suspicion in our community’, for this might simply help Sinn Féin leapfrog the SDLP – ‘the ultimate nightmare for all the people of Northern Ireland’.19

  The political cataclysm feared by Millar did not materialize on polling day. Hume fought a skilful campaign, presenting himself as a statesman who could work wonders for Northern Ireland on the international stage. As Ed Moloney observed, the SDLP leader channelled much of his energy into winning over ‘that broad mass of Catholic voters often decried by Sinn Féin as “middle class” but who are in fact mostly employed, respectable, Church-going Catholics who are definitely working-class but who aspire to greater things for their sons and daughters’. Morrison’s image as a ‘Belfast street fighter’ limited his appeal to this constituency.20

  Sinn Féin’s vote share – just over 13 per cent – was the same as in the previous year’s Westminster election, albeit on a lower turnout. But Hume had increased the SDLP’s score by 4 per cent, so the Provos were losing ground in the battle for nationalist hegemony. Moloney found party members to be ‘openly despondent’ about Morrison’s performance at the count centre.21 The overall winner was Ian Paisley, who topped the poll with a third of all votes cast. The SDLP’s biggest concern was that Paisley’s triumph and Hume’s strong showing might discourage Thatcher from making any concessions to Irish nationalism when she responded to the New Ireland Forum’s report.

  Gerry Adams denied that Sinn Féin had reached a ceiling in its electoral ascent, but suggested that Morrison’s vote reflected ‘varying degrees of tolerance within the nationalist electorate for aspects of the armed struggle’: those who voted for the SDLP, or didn’t vote at all, ‘may have had some misgivings about IRA operations’.22 Danny Morrison later expanded on those comments in an interview with Magill. Morrison cited several factors that might have contributed to Hume’s success, from tactical voting by Alliance Party supporters to the boons of incumbency. But he also put his finger on a deeper problem for Sinn Féin: ‘Perhaps it’s not entirely possible to totally harmonize the relationship between armed struggle and electoral politics.’23

  Morrison was careful to stress that there could be no winding down of the IRA campaign: ‘Electoral politics will not remove the British from Ireland. Only armed struggle will do that.’24 His insistence that ‘all republicans’ were united on that point masked a bitter dispute that was unfolding behind closed doors, pitting Gerry Adams against his former ally Ivor Bell.

  Bell, who had been part of the delegation that met William Whitelaw in 1972, supported Adams and his comrades as they took control of the movement after the 1975 truce, and played a central part in reorganizing the IRA along cellular lines.25 Unlike Adams and Martin McGuinness, Bell had not taken on a public role to match his position in the IRA leadership. Now he was concerned that Adams was diverting resources from the movement’s coffers to fund election campaigns. Bell and his associates also wanted to loosen the restrictions on IRA activity that the leadership had imposed for the sake of Sinn Féin’s public image. Behind these arguments lurked a suspicion that republican political growth was bound to come at the expense of the armed struggle.

  Facing a potential challenge from a dangerous adversary, Adams moved quickly to arrange Bell’s expulsion from the IRA. Bell’s former comrades warned him not to set up a breakaway faction or join the INLA.26 The tightly guarded affair stood as a warning to Adams that he risked provoki
ng a split if the IRA was not given room to breathe. As 1984 drew to a close, republican sources boasted that they had the manpower to return violence to the levels of the early 1970s: all they lacked was the necessary arsenal.27

  In the utmost secrecy, the IRA pressed ahead with a scheme to import weapons from Libya that Bell had helped to initiate. The Libyan connection gave fresh impetus to the IRA campaign just as Sinn Féin faced its first political setbacks. In the meantime, the Provos sent a defiant message to their opponents by planting a bomb at the Conservative Party conference in October 1984.

  The Brighton attack claimed the lives of five people and came within a hair’s breadth of killing Margaret Thatcher. The IRA revelled in the shock it had provoked and issued a statement baiting Thatcher and her colleagues: ‘Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.’28 Whatever might be happening out of public sight, the message conveyed to the outside world by the IRA was one of uncompromising militancy. It would lay down its arms when Britain announced a date for withdrawal, and not a day before.

  If there was no prospect of a ceasefire to clear the way for Sinn Féin’s electoral advance, the Provos could still hope that British intransigence might drive nationalists into their arms. In November 1984, Thatcher responded to the New Ireland Forum’s report by rejecting every option it had presented with undiplomatic candour. The SDLP’s deputy leader Seamus Mallon reacted with fury to Thatcher’s ‘insulting’, ‘offensive’ and ‘racist’ comments, while Gerry Adams claimed vindication for Sinn Féin: ‘It must be a bitter disappointment to the SDLP and others who had hoped for a meaningful response.’29 In the wake of the Forum controversy, politicians and civil servants embarked on a new round of Anglo-Irish talks to try and break the deadlock.

  Meanwhile, Sinn Féin prepared itself for another test in the 1985 local elections. Adams was careful not to repeat Danny Morrison’s mistake as the party launched its campaign, conceding that Sinn Féin had been ‘ambitious’ in its previous targets and suggesting that it might even lose votes this time.30 His exercise in managing expectations proved to be a wise move. The SDLP’s vote share fell back to its 1983 level, suggesting that John Hume’s performance in the European election had been a personal achievement. But Sinn Féin also lost ground, so there was a 60:40 split between the two parties, below the level Sinn Féin had reached in 1983. The ceiling on Provo support was beginning to look like a permanent feature of Northern Irish politics.

  When Adams addressed his party’s annual conference in November 1985, he dismissed the Anglo-Irish talks as an attempt to isolate republicans and prop up the SDLP.31 Within weeks, the two governments had announced the result of their deliberations, the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA). Claims that London and Dublin would now exercise joint sovereignty over Northern Ireland were based on a reckless misreading of the text.32 The disputed region was to remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as a majority wished, but the Irish government now received a formal consultative role, with a permanent secretariat of civil servants to deal with issues like policing and discrimination.

  Northern Ireland was no longer, in Thatcher’s redolent phrase, ‘as British as Finchley’. Unionist politicians responded angrily, resigning their Westminster seats to trigger a series of by-elections and calling for mass civil disobedience to overturn the agreement. John Hume was the only Northern Irish politician to have had any real influence on the talks, and the SDLP brandished the outcome as proof that its strategy could deliver.

  Garret FitzGerald and his colleagues in the Irish government presented the AIA as a response to ‘nationalist alienation’. But there was no homogeneous community with the same experience of alienation. For working-class Catholics who bore the brunt of violence, poverty and everyday harassment by the security forces, the agreement had limited appeal. For their middle-class counterparts, with ample reason for discontent but still much to lose if British withdrawal resulted in chaos, Hume’s promise of incremental gains within the Anglo-Irish framework was likely to prove more attractive. The very fact of Unionist opposition, and Thatcher’s willingness to face it down, made the agreement look more attractive to many nationalists. The campaign of resistance took many different forms, from big demonstrations to minor acts of non-compliance: four years later, the UUP’s Ken Maginnis was still refusing to pay his television licence.33 In spite of all these efforts, the hated agreement remained firmly in place.

  Sinn Féin had to frame its response to the AIA carefully. Gerry Adams predicted that it would result in more loyalist violence against Catholics, and warned that there could be no peace without an end to partition. However, in describing the agreement as a ‘carrot and stick’ approach by Thatcher’s government, he was keen to argue that any concessions stemming from it would be a response to Sinn Féin’s political growth.34 In private, NIO officials cheerfully acknowledged that Sinn Féin’s breakthrough had been a vital stimulus: ‘Our interest in fostering the SDLP as the party of constitutional nationalism increased; and that, indeed, was one of the objectives of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.’35 Danny Morrison put forward a similar line to Adams, describing Thatcher’s shift to a more conciliatory stance as a ‘delayed reaction’ to the Brighton bombing. Morrison insisted that Sinn Féin had never referred to the agreement as a ‘sell-out’, and accused the SDLP of wrongly attributing that view to his party so that it would have sole title to any nationalist gains.36

  The Southern Strategy

  The 1987 general election was the next major skirmish between the two nationalist parties, resulting in a clear triumph for the SDLP, which increased its vote share by 3 per cent, while Sinn Féin fell back again. Gerry Adams held onto his seat in West Belfast, but the SDLP outpolled Sinn Féin in all but two constituencies and won almost twice as many votes in total. The elections of 1984–85 had already suggested there would be a limit on Sinn Féin’s expansion for as long as the armed struggle continued. The latest results powerfully reinforced that message. However, there could be no question of an IRA ceasefire, as the Adams leadership needed to buy the support of IRA Volunteers for a long-awaited move to abandon Sinn Féin’s abstentionist policy. This was the very issue on which the Provos had broken with Cathal Goulding at the start of the conflict, so a great deal of care was needed in preparing for the shift.

  Adams and his comrades learnt from Goulding’s experience in two respects. First of all, they promised that Sinn Féin would never take its seats at Westminster or any revived Stormont assembly: Dublin’s Leinster House was the only platform it would use. Secondly, they made sure to keep the debate over abstention boxed off from any question marks over the armed struggle. Not only would the war continue, the IRA would actually intensify its campaign, with the help of the Libyan arms shipments that had started to make their way into the country.37 These promises of improved weaponry and greater autonomy for local units helped win the vote to ditch abstention at an IRA Army Convention in 1986.38 Announcing the policy shift, an IRA spokesman promised there would be no let-up in its struggle against British rule.39

  The IRA’s decision gave Adams a vital asset as he faced his opponents in Dublin at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that November. Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was the spearhead of a traditionalist faction that opposed any change. All of the barely suppressed animosity between the old guard and those who had displaced them came to the surface, with talk of a split already trailed in the national media. Martin McGuinness scornfully dismissed Ó Brádaigh and his associates as a ‘former leadership’ who had never come to terms with their eclipse. He urged Sinn Féin members to keep faith with the ‘true revolutionaries’ of the IRA: ‘If you walk out of this hall today the only place you are going is home. You will be walking away from the struggle.’40 McGuinness was already settling into his role as the IRA’s conscience, a bluff, plain-speaking militarist to offset the ‘sleekedness’ of his party leader.41 The reputation he had earned by playing a han
ds-on role in IRA operations made him popular with the movement’s grassroots, and his support for Adams in the debate was invaluable.42

  Adams himself sought to rise above the polemical fray, acknowledging that many republicans had ‘deep and justifiably strong feelings about abstentionism’. But he accused the Ó Brádaigh camp of trying to ‘panic and intimidate’ Sinn Féin members with talk of a split, and set out the case against abstention in emphatic terms: ‘It is a massive mistake to presume that our republican attitude to Leinster House is shared by any more than a very small section of our people, especially the citizens of this state.’ By taking their seats in the Dáil, republicans could open up a new political front. For Adams, this was ‘the only feasible way to break out of our isolation, to make political gains, to win support for our policies, to develop our organization and our struggle’.43 He made full use of the Army Convention’s recent vote to sway any doubters. The IRA was ‘united in its determination to pursue the armed struggle’, and those who denounced its new policy would have to turn their backs on republican prisoners in British jails.44 Adams and his comrades had been keen to avoid a generational split by keeping veterans like Joe Cahill and John Joe McGirl on board. McGirl gave his full backing to the new line from the platform, insisting there could be no parallel drawn between Adams and Cathal Goulding: ‘We have an army fighting sixteen years which will continue to fight until British rule is defeated.’45

  The result was a decisive victory for Adams, as his supporters won the two-thirds majority needed to change the party’s constitution. Ó Brádaigh and his comrades left the conference to set up a new organization, Republican Sinn Féin, which was still committed to the abstentionist policy. Their splinter group received the seal of approval from Tom Maguire, the only surviving member of the second Dáil elected in 1921. In private, the Provos warned Ó Brádaigh not to foment any split in the IRA’s ranks.46 His new party and its highly secretive military wing, the Continuity Army Council, would remain on the sidelines until the peace process of the 1990s gave Ó Brádaigh an opportunity to challenge the Adams leadership once again.