Sunday Business Post
01 January 2006
By Rory Rapple
The political situation in Northern Ireland in 1975 is painted in a bleak light in the state papers that have just been released by the National Archives in London and Dublin under the 30-year rule.
That year, the Irish and British governments and the political parties in the North were picking over the wreckage left by the fall of the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement.
Despite the collapse of Sunningdale, 1975 began with some hope as a result of the Provisional IRA truce - the paramilitary group’s Christmas ceasefire was extended until mid-January.
The Christmas truce was extended indefinitely starting from February 10. However, the ceasefire became more tenuous as the year dragged on.
British government officials in 1975 were constantly looking for reasons to help the “doves’‘ in the Provisional IRA to “go political’‘, despite the fact that the RUC, British Army and SDLP believed the IRA were “on their knees’‘, according to the 1975 state papers.
The state papers, which are normally kept secret for 30 years, provide a fascinating window into how politicians, senior civil servants and diplomats dealt with the affairs of the time.
Details of basic agreements or contacts between the British government and the IRA which facilitated the truce have not emerged in this year’s release, but it is certain that there was discord within the British administration and the Provisional IRA’s army council about the ceasefire.
The IRA army council was divided between “hawks’‘ and “doves’‘, with the doves holding a fragile upper hand, according to an analysis by the British.
According to a secret British document written in early January 1975, the British, in entering into an understanding with the Provos, had two aims - firstly, “to string [the IRA] along to the point where their military capacity went soggy and where Catholic community support disappeared’‘, and secondly, “to give the doves the excuse to call it all off without [the British] making substantial concessions’‘.
It was assumed that the IRA was losing support as a result of the war-weariness of the Catholic population, as well as the widespread revulsion caused by the Birmingham bombing in 1974.
The document showed awareness of the IRA’s overriding desire not to split, saying that “because the army council usually ends up united, the doves had to concede that so far they have got nothing out of a ceasefire’‘.
The “hawks’‘, on the other hand, had to allow the “doves’‘ to offer the British government the possibility of further talks.
Prior to the temporary collapse of the IRA’s initial cessation in late January, the document recommended that contact be made with the Sinn Féin president, Ruairi Ó Brádaigh, because “every day of peace weakens the Provisionals [and] it would strengthen the hands of the doves versus the hawks for the next round of bargaining which is bound to come’‘.
Written on the back of the partially destroyed final page of the document composed within the Northern Ireland Office is a personal note: “Michael is very worried that everything you say can clearly be heard outside in the corridor, on the stairs etc.”
Obviously within Stormont Castle, even in 1975, secrecy was difficult to guarantee. The left hand of the administration wasn’t meant to know what the right hand was doing.
At those early stages, the North’s secretary of state, Merlyn Rees, was frustrated most of all by those who he felt were “queering the pitch for the delicate exploratory discussions that Northern Ireland Office officials were having with the Provisional Sinn Féin’‘.
Chief among these figures was Dr John O’Connell, later a Fianna Fáil health minister, who had arranged a meeting between Harold Wilson and the IRA two years earlier.
O’Connell, according to Rees, “was [still] clearly in touch with the PIRA [Provisional IRA] at some level’‘, but Rees said secretly that “in all his dealings with Northern Ireland, nothing had made him more angry than Dr O’Connell’s recent machinations and well-publicised claims to be acting as an intermediary between the PIRA and the British government’‘.
Later, SDLP leader Gerry Fitt told Rees that the IRA army council had voted to end the ceasefire briefly in January by the smallest of margins: four to three. Leading Provisionals deemed to be in support of the cessation included Ó Brádaigh, Daithi Ó Conaill and Seamus Twomey.
Once the truce was reinstated in February, a new secret document on security was drafted which outlined that the best approach against the IRA, even if its ceasefire ended with a “bang’‘, would be a “selective'’ one.
“We should speak loudly and carry a small stick,” the document said. “We want to catch the violent men, not those who exert a moderating influence.”
In the event of a more gradual end to the truce the document recommended that “arrests should ideally be related to the bringing of criminal charges against those responsible . . . we shall want to pick up battalion or brigade staff members who we believe to be hawks.”
Regional differentiation in the response was also deemed important. In Derry, the local IRA men were disaffected by the movement’s strategy, and had to be treated with caution and without a provocative police response, the document said.
By May, the SDLP’s John Hume had told officials from the Northern Ireland Office that the IRA was unpopular in Derry, and “the presence of Martin McGuinness in the streets while people were still in detention had angered a good deal of Republicans . . . but in a Doomsday situation the Provisionals would be in a good situation to show themselves as the defenders of the Catholics.”
Seven incident centres, often manned by members of Sinn Féin, and facilitated by civil servants in the Northern Ireland Office, were set up in nationalist areas to monitor the truce, to dispel rumours that would inflame the situation and to act, in some ways, as welfare centres.
Seamus Loughran, a leading member of Provisional Sinn Féin, hinted that, in conjunction with the muted army presence, the centres effectively provided a framework for local policing.
Enoch Powell, at this stage an Ulster Unionist MP, denounced the centres, saying they had been “set up for the purpose of swapping yarns about outrages . . . no severer censure can perhaps be passed upon this device than that it was described by the Liberal party as ‘imaginative’.”
Most other Unionists, according to the British government, “saw [the centres] as a cover for negotiating with the IRA, undermining the authority. . .of the RUC [and] by-passing the properly elected representatives of Northern Ireland.”
Rees countered these allegations by pointing out that the police were continuing to bring charges against anyone who had broken the law.
In August, Hume complained to Dublin that, whereas SDLP involvement in the constitutional convention had been a liability for his party, the centres had effectively resuscitated the IRA’s stature in the nationalist community.
The steady release of internees by Rees was deemed by Catholics to be a direct result of the IRA’s contact with the British government.
The same month, Fitt told Harold Wilson he had heard stories that staff at the centres were being paid, “and one member of the IRA had told Mr Airey Neave [the Tory spokesman on Northern Ireland] that they were being paid £30 a week’‘.
The Cosgrave administration in the Republic, uncompromisingly harsh in its attitude to republicanism, was almost as suspicious as unionists that secret concessions were being granted to the IRA by the British. There was no let-up in the Garda Special Branch’s pursuit of republicans or appeasement towards the status of IRA prisoners in the 26 counties.
Disaffection within the IRA during the period of the truce found expression in a number of ways. There were sporadic breaches during the summer and early autumn in Belfast.
Sectarian attacks by the “South Armagh Republican Action Force’‘, in response to the sustained “Protestant Action Force’‘/UVF offensive in the “murder triangle’‘, showed that the Provisional IRA had problems of internal discipline. In September, the IRA’s bombing campaign in England started again, along with renewed feuding against the Official IRA in Belfast.
Much of this activity had been anticipated in a secret memo on security written by the British government on September 5. “A low-key bombing campaign in Great Britain would suit their purpose very well,” it stated, “[and] would prove a salutary jolt to Her Majesty’s government and avoid strong public reaction against their cause.”
Significantly, the memo presumed that political contact with the Provisional movement would continue, despite the rise of unrest in Belfast and Armagh. “They can participate in, even promote, tit-for-tat sectarian killing without affecting their posture or with luck, their credibility with us,” said the memo.
The British Army, according to the memo, was “much happier in a war situation and their official line seems to be a repetition of old themes. And they seem ready to deploy their forces especially out of Belfast more readily than before.”
Fitt told the head of the Northern Ireland Office, Sir Frank Cooper, on September 25 that “he had it on the authority of the Garda Special Branch that Daithi Ó Conaill had deliberately given himself up [because] he knew he could not hold the Provisional movement throughout 1975.
“He was therefore best out of it and his plans were to reemerge early in 1976. . .and reassume the leadership. He deliberately telephoned the Garda Special Branch to arrange to be picked up having, of course, ensured that he had nothing of any serious nature on him or in the house in which he was arrested.”
The IRA’s Derry brigade blew up the city’s incident centre on November 10, an indication of the republican movement’s rejection of the truce.
Dr Rory Rapple is a Fellow in History at St John’s College, Cambridge.
