Is this a metaphor? I do believe it is!
I’ve stated before on ASF that the vast majority of “Western” career journalists don’t know their arse from their elbow when it comes to writing about the minutiae of politics and history in nations or regions far away from their own (and as we know, the devil is in the detail). As a general rule of thumb, the further a reporter strays from his or her home territory the greater the gulf of misunderstanding grows. For instance, if you think that your TV news shows or local press are giving you fair and accurate descriptions of the events in the conflict-cauldron of Syria and Iraq, well think again. They give half-stories, or more frequently stories wrapped in crude and easily digestible stereotypes that supposedly make it clearer for the general audience or readership to understand what is happening – but which just as often leads them completely astray, leaving false, and in some cases, dangerously misleading impressions (Gulf War II, anybody?). Lest you think this phenomenon is confined to the more exotic climes of the world, even modern European nation-states can be subject to the indignities – or stupidities – of lazy (or politically partisan) reporting. For instance, take this preview from CBS’s flagship news and current affairs show, 60 Minutes, on an upcoming documentary on Gerry Adams TD, the Sinn Féin leader and former Irish republican insurgent. Let’s just say if the synopsis is anything to go by it may well make for cringe-inducing viewing for anyone in Ireland. My comments in the square brackets.
“Many believe Adams could be the Republic of Ireland’s prime minister someday [ASF: It’s Ireland not the “Republic of”, and no they don’t; they really, really don’t]. He is careful in his answers to questions about his affiliation with the IRA, for whom many Catholic Irish voters sympathize. [ASF: And who would they be? Some 85% of the electorate in Ireland, if one were to go by the last census? And of course, on this island nation, we all vote according to our religious identity or that of our parents or grandparents… Sigh]
…[Jean McConville] was believed to have betrayed the Catholic IRA by informing on them to the British – the group’s enemy, along with Protestants who supported British rule in Northern Ireland. [ASF: The “Catholic IRA”? Seriously? This is like a British news report from 1971!]
In 1984, Adams was shot three times in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in an attack that a Protestant militant group said was retribution on Adams for orchestrating attacks on Protestants. [ASF: Protestants, Catholics, sectarian, tribal, tit-for-tat, blah, blah, blah…]
Northern Ireland is still very much divided. Despite a “Good Friday” agreement for shared power in the country between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority reached with Adams’ help in 1998, walls separate neighborhoods and Catholics will only call a Catholic cab, Protestants patronize their own livery services. [ASF: Irish Nationalists? British Unionists? Has anyone in CBS heard of these commonplace and politically accurate terms? And what in the name of Christ is a Protestant livery service?!]”
Like I said, don’t bother with getting to know the minutiae of the subject or using recognisable descriptions of groups or communities; just chuck out some old propagandist labels and stereotypes from the middle of the 20th century. It really is easier than doing some up-to-date, 21st century journalism. As for the issue of Jean McConville’s murder and Gerry Adams’ likely involvement as a former senior member of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army’s Belfast Brigade HQ Staff in 1972, the truth is out there. Unfortunately it’s a little bit more complicated than the news media can handle (or would wish). So, you know, they’ll stick to reporting the more melodramatic, fact-averse versions that they always have. Especially with two general elections looming on the horizon…
Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army in surplus US Army combat uniforms, one armed with an American-supplied M16 assault rifle, Occupied North of Ireland, 1970s
Irish journalist and author Ed Moloney, now resident in New York, has an interesting article over on his Broken Elbow blog examining possible evidence of the reorganisation of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army into a “cellular” command and control structure primarily based upon Active Service Units (ASUs) at a date much earlier than previously thought.
“Way back in January 2013, myself and James Kinchin-White researched and wrote a lengthy article, based on British Army publications and a website, about the death of James Bryson, a famous IRA activist from Ballymurphy who was shot dead in a disputed incident in August 1973 along with Patrick Mulvenna, brother-in-law of Gerry Adams.
Local legend had it that the pair were killed by the Official IRA but this account makes it clear that the killers were undercover soldiers from the Royal Green Jackets regiment hidden in the roof space of a house overlooking the Bullring in Ballymurphy.
Bryson and Mulvenna were, before their deaths, slated to be key members in a new IRA cell in Ballymurphy set up by then Belfast commander, Ivor Bell, to replace the heavily compromised and infiltrated company structure. Bell had succeeded Gerry Adams as Belfast Brigade leader after Adams’ arrest along with Brendan Hughes the previous month.
The importance of the incident lies not just in the deaths of two of the IRA’s most valuable activists but in the challenge it presents to the official narrative behind the creation of the IRA cell structure. The conventional view is that cells were introduced largely in response to the setbacks suffered by the IRA as a result of Castlereagh-style interrogations which followed changes in British security policy which, so the internal critics had it, were facilitated by the misguided ceasefire of 1975-1976.
But this account challenges that version and shows that considerable infiltration of the Belfast Brigade by British intelligence forced an experiment with cells on the organisation in the city long before the 1975 ceasefire was thought of.”
Read it here.
Margaret Thatcher touring the British Occupied North of Ireland in 1981 wearing a beret of the UDR, an infamous British Army militia responsible for scores of terrorist attacks during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s
Sometimes I do wonder if the dozens of Irish and British journalists who spent most of their careers loftily dismissing the evidence of Britain’s criminal counter-insurgency war in Ireland as “republican propaganda” have any regrets now that the veracity of those allegations has been proven to be correct? Or do those newspaper columnists, press editors and TV producers who were wilfully blinded by their own ideological myopia in years past, fellow-travellers of the British Occupation and those who defended it, still maintain that they were in the right?
Do the journalistic champions of censorship really believe that all those deaths and injuries stemming from a needlessly extended conflict were worth the lies, falsehoods and cover-ups? And for what? Sinn Féin to be the largest nationalist party in the north-east of the country, and for Martin McGuinness – a former (P)IRA Chief-of-Staff – to be Deputy Joint First Minister in the regional administration at Stormont? For SF to be one of the most popular parties nationally and Gerry Adams to be one of the most popular TDanna?
From the Guardian newspaper, a report on what the UK press describes in its distorting lexicon of “Dirty War” language as the “shoot-to-kill” policy of the 1980s and ‘90s. In other words the assassination and summary execution of Irish (and nominally UK) citizens by the British forces on this island nation:
“Details of an alleged criminal conspiracy by MI5 to obstruct one of the most sensitive murder inquiries of the 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland have been exposed following the emergence of key sections of a previously secret police report on the affair.
The report details how officers of the security service were said to have concealed the existence of an audio recording of an incident in which RUC officers shot dead an unarmed teenage boy, Michael Tighe, and then destroyed the tape to prevent it falling into the hands of the detective who was investigating the killing.
Compiled at the height of a tumultuous 1980s political scandal known as the Stalker affair, the report recommended that two officers – thought to be the highest-ranking MI5 officers in the province – be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.
Its author, Colin Sampson, then chief constable of West Yorkshire, condemned MI5’s concealment of a key piece of evidence during a murder inquiry as “wholly reprehensible”, and said the officers responsible were guilty of “nothing less than a grave abuse of their unique position”. He added in his report that the excuse they had given for failing to surrender the recording was “patently dishonest”.
He also recommended that three senior police officers be prosecuted for conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
In the event, none were prosecuted after the then attorney general, Sir Patrick Mayhew, said the government did not believe it to be in the interests of national security to bring them to trial.
The police ombudsman of Northern Ireland is currently investigating the actions of a group of former Special Branch officers, while detectives from Police Scotland are investigating the conduct of a number of former MI5 officers.”
In a related and more in-depth article the Guardian almost but not quite admits the real nature of the UK policy:
“…many nationalists in Northern Ireland were enraged by the killings, and senior members of the Roman Catholic clergy were demanding an independent inquiry. Sinn Fein accused the police of carrying out summary executions. The suspicion grew that the RUC was running some sort of a death squad. Few people were prepared to use such a term, however: instead, someone coined the ambiguous phrase “shoot-to-kill”.”
With Jeremy Corbyn & the comrades @ Portcullis House, Westminster. http://t.co/A6Vgmaglsa—
Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) July 21, 2015
Watching the right-wing and nationalist press in the UK gnashing its teeth at the thoughts of left-wing MP, Jeremy Corbyn, becoming the next leader of the British Labour Party is laughable. It almost certainly won’t happen. Labour in Britain, like its counterpart in Ireland, is devoted to holding the political centre-ground with a strong strain of socio-economic conservatism inherited from the Blair years. The party is far more likely to elect a Blairite clone (of which there seems to be plenty), reflecting a greater reliance on chauvinistic English votes to sustain its electoral fortunes now that left-leaning Scotland is lost to the SNP.
Among the more amusing obsessions of the London metropolitans has been Corbyn’s historic record of attempting détente between Irish and British belligerents to the conflict in the north-east of Ireland. When the Labour representative for Islington North was reaching out to Sinn Féin in the hopes of initiating a peace process the news media believe he should have been amongst those leading the charge against the “terrorists”. A charge of course which ended up joining that of the infamous Light Brigade in its complete and abject failure. From the Daily Telegraph summation of Jeremy Corbyn’s career:
“From the mid-Eighties, a decade before the IRA ceasefire, he worked hard to build links between Labour and the Provos, regularly hosting senior figures from their political wing in Parliament, calling for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland and paying tribute to deceased terrorists.
His defenders call him ahead of his time; his opponents say that, by giving the IRA hope that the armed struggle was working, he and others on the Left actually prolonged the conflict.”
One might have imagined that the UK government, through various Irish, British and international intermediaries, engaging in negotiations with the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army behind closed doors throughout the 1980s and early 90’s might have done more to convince the (P)IRA that the armed struggle was working than any number of meetings with opposition backbench MPs. Since it was manifestly doing so. As I have written before on ASF, the Irish have come to terms with the meaning and effect of the Belfast Agreement of 1998, and the manner in which the Long War all but ended. The hubristic British on the other hand are still in denial.
Pride comes before a fall, an’ all that.
A Volunteer of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army in a military training camp outside the town of Donegal, Ireland, 21st August 1986
Just a quick heads-up for those who have access to the series “Twentieth Century British History” from the Oxford Journals. A recent edition features an article titled “The Influence of Informers and Agents on Provisional Irish Republican Army Military Strategy and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy, 1976–94” by Thomas Leahy of King’s College, London. In it the researcher pretty much demolishes the myth of the British “super spies” in the ranks of (Provisional) Irish Republican Army. From the introductory abstract:
“This article investigates the impact of British informers and agents on Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) military strategy and British counter-insurgency strategy in Northern Ireland between 1976 and 1994. The importance of this topic was highlighted by revelations in 2003 and 2005 concerning two senior republicans who had both been working for British intelligence for decades. While acknowledging other important factors, various authors believe that these intelligence successes were vital in containing the IRA, and significantly influenced that organization to end its military campaign in the 1990s.
Yet after cross-referencing new interview material primarily with memoirs from various participants in the Northern Ireland conflict, this article reveals that the nature of many rural IRA units, its cellular structure in Belfast, and the isolation of the IRA leadership from the rest of the movement, prevented it from being damaged to any considerable extent by informers and agents.
In fact, by the 1990s the resilience of the IRA was a crucial factor encouraging the British government to include Provisional Republicans in a political settlement. The IRA’s military strength by the 1990s also points towards the prominence of political factors in persuading the IRA to call a ceasefire by 1994. The role of spies in Northern Ireland and the circumstances in which the state permitted negotiations with paramilitaries such as the IRA, are key considerations for those interested in other recent and current conflicts.”
This of course is an argument that I have been making myself since 2011, and can be found in such ASF posts as:
Fantasy Troubles Part III – Britain’s Superspies!
More Cloak And Dagger Shenanigans In Fantasy Troubles
Kurt Eichenwald is a veteran American journalist of some thirty years standing who has specialised in everything from corporate malfeasance to defence issues for publications as diverse as the New York Times and Vanity Fair. For the last year he has been authoring a series of investigatory or analytical pieces for the current affairs magazine Newsweek, some of which have drawn much praise. In a recent article headlined “How Uninformed U.S. Politicians Help ISIS“, he laments the ignorance of the American political class in relation to militant political Islam and its habit of engaging in lazy stereotyping that misleads more than it illuminates, offering up this rhetorical equivalent from another conflict:
“…the greatest financial support for the radical Catholic terrorists in the Irish Republican Army came from American Christians. Despite the IRA’s murder of 1,800 people, American politicians proved they were soft on terrorism. Representative Peter King of New York even went to Ireland and hung out with the group’s sympathizers. Fortunately, the British were tough and used enhanced interrogation techniques—including waterboarding—on these radicals.”
Which is a fair enough analogy if Eichenwald was to go on and explain the falseness of such claims as they relate to the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army and the misleading nature of, for instance, British government propaganda in times past (particularly in the United States, where the “two warring tribes” misinformation campaign by the UK’s embassy in Washington and the consulates in New York and L.A. was hugely successful until thrown into disarray by the interventionist policies of the Clinton administration in the 1990s). There is a strong critique to be made here, with the obvious comparisons to the shallowness of understanding concerning the various inter- and intra-communal power struggles in the Middle East and beyond. However that is not what happens. Instead we are given this.
“Offended by what you’ve just read? Good. You’re supposed to be. That diatribe, while all true, is horrific. Sadistic lunatics, whether as individuals or groups, have nothing to do with Christianity. They have just appropriated a peaceful religion to justify their murderous impulses.”
Except the diatribe is not true, and that surely is the point? (P)IRA was not a “radical Catholic” guerilla force, the vast majority of its funding did not come from the US, and it never used religious sentiment to justify its actions. The organisation was a secular, left-leaning armed resistance, its beliefs very much reflected in the early quasi-Marxist policies of its political wing, Sinn Féin. Its military budget from the 1970s to late ’90s was largely funded through a process of domestic “revolutionary appropriation” here in Ireland; that is the voluntary or more usually intimidatory “taxing” of criminals and businesses, as well as the profits derived from smuggling, counterfeiting, etc. Nor for that matter was (P)IRA responsible for the deaths of 1,800 people, a throwaway statistic much favoured by sections of the right-wing press in Britain (who like their American counter-parts blithely ignore the casualties inflicted by the British military and paramilitary forces, both official and unofficial).
The great irony of Kurt Eichenwald’s analogy from the Long War, the insurgency and counter-insurgency conflict in Ireland, is the seeming ignorance or imprecision that shapes it, the same lack of insight that he accuses others of professing in relation to the global Muslim community and the perverse ideology of the Islamic State. Perhaps the article is simply poorly phrased? Remove the words “while all true“, and the Irish section of the article has a different meaning. However in its presence form it is simply another example of an opinion piece in the US public domain that further obfuscates and confuses the record of a faraway war that most Americans have – and had – little to no comprehension of. Including much of the news media.
It seems in this at least very little has changed indeed.
From 1995 to 2001 an organisation calling itself Direct Action Against Drugs, or DAAD, was involved in a series of “vigilante-style” attacks on a number of criminals and underworld gangs in the north-east of Ireland. The various assaults, involving the use of guns, bombs and so-called “punishment beatings”, took place against the background of the Irish-British peace process of the 1990s and early 2000s, and two negotiated ceasefires by the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army and the British Occupation Forces – the latter without formal acknowledgement by the UK authorities. Indeed it was widely accepted that DAAD was simply a flag of convenience for (P)IRA as the organisation dealt with anti-social elements amongst the northern nationalist communities in a more covert manner than was common during the decades-long period of open conflict. Moreover many of those involved in its activities were newly recruited volunteers rather than military veterans of the insurgency, and no small number gained deeply unsavoury reputations of their own. Unsurprisingly in the pursuit of “peace” and an end to the Long War (or “Troubles”) the governments in Dublin and London frequently turned a blind eye to the policy of “self-policing” by the (Provisional) Republican Movement until the early 2000s when the DAAD-strategy was largely abandoned by (P)IRA.
Unfortunately the violent genie once let loose from the bottle was never going to be returned and the same period witnessed increasing social and interpersonal conflict amongst some communities in the north-east as they eased their way out of a near half-century of military occupation and a communal resistance to that occupation. While hundreds of (P)IRA volunteers were happy to seek some form of normality in their lives after decades of clandestine activity others proved unable to let go of the past, joining those who sought new opportunities to assert their social standing or influence in a time of (relative) peace. One illustration of this post-war turbulence is the 2005 killing of Robert McCartney, a petty criminal who – along with a compatriot – was beaten and stabbed in a violent, drink-fuelled altercation with local republicans in Belfast. Following a lengthy internal investigation that some allege covered up as much as it revealed Sinn Féin suspended, expelled or forced into resignation several activists while (P)IRA court-martialled and dismissed three volunteers, including Gerard Davison, a senior brigade officer in Belfast, an SF member and the probable directer of DAAD’s anti-criminal operations in the city. Several other (P)IRA figures suspected of being involved in the murder were cleared of any responsibility, although to a great deal of public scepticism.
Fast-forward to May 2015 and Gerard Davison, still firmly within the Sinn Féin fold – despite his divisive reputation – and linked to anti-criminal campaigning in his neighbourhood, was shot dead by an assassin in the Markets area of Belfast while on his way to a community centre where he worked. Forensic evidence soon pointed to a notorious Lithuanian gang based in Dublin as the supplier of the Russian-made handgun used in the murder. Within weeks local witnesses and republican activists had identified one Kevin McGuigan, a former (P)IRA volunteer-turned-criminal, as the suspected gunman. Some three months later McGuigan also met a violent end, shot to death at his home in the Short Strand district of the city by two masked men armed with semi-automatic weapons. Remarkably both victims were former comrades in (P)IRA’s Belfast Brigade and McGuigan had served under Davison in the DAAD structure. Suspected corruption and personal animosity had led to McGuigan’s violent dismissal from (P)IRA, seemingly pushing him into closer association with criminal elements in Belfast and elsewhere.
Now the British paramilitary police in the north-east of the country, the PSNI, are briefing the news media that an existing vigilante organisation which claimed responsibility for Kevin McGuigan’s revenge killing, Action Against Drugs or AAD, is composed of former (P)IRA volunteers and activists from one or more of the republican Resistance groupings (the so-called “Dissidents”). Furthermore it seems that current volunteers within the stood-down (Provisional) Irish Republican Army may have co-operated, probably in a personal capacity, with AAD in planning the murder of McGuigan. The idea that (P)IRA continues to exist as a military organisation, however skeletal its nature, seems to have taken a lot of journalists, politicians and other commentators by surprise, which I suppose highlights the levels of wilful ignorance or feigned naivety that exists amongst the chattering classes. Of course the Executive, Army Council, GHQ Staff and various directorships and departments still exist, if only in nominal form. It doesn’t mean that (P)IRA has several hundred volunteers ready and willing to be placed on active service should the need arise, or units capable of being mobilised across the length and breadth of the country with the issuing of a communiqué from Dublin. Did it ever?
We exist not in a period of peace but in a period marked by an absence of war. This is the fíorpholaitíocht of the peace process between Ireland and Britain, this is the defining characteristic of the British Occupied North of Ireland and it will remain so until the occupation itself ends. The (Provisional) Irish Republican Army and the British Army have not gone away, nor have their allies and proxies. The Long War may be over but the Cold War is not.
