CHAPTER FIVE
At the beginning of the 1980s, the Thatcher Government was in power and little inclined to look to radical solutions to deal with the problems of Ireland. Indeed, for Mrs Thatcher, Ireland was not a priority, nor an issue that merited particular debate. Her allegiances in the Province were clear: she was committed to the cause of the Unionists1 and regarded the Republican paramilitaries as an issue that should be dealt with robustly, using the full powers of the security services. Despite these views, it was under the Thatcher administration that the British Government in the early 1980s took the most radical steps towards altering the pattern of politics in the Province with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. This brought the south firmly into the politics of Northern Ireland and made it clear to the Unionists that the British Government would not underwrite their cause for ever.2 This evolution in the political sphere was not mirrored by positive developments in security arrangements. In the same period that the British Government moved towards a settlement, the use of the security forces in Ireland underwent its most controversial phase. Throughout the decade, not only did the PIRA broaden its appeal through entering electoral politics, but both the RUC and the Army were dogged by allegations of ‘shoot to kill’ policies. The use of supergrasses also helped to undermine the picture of progress in the handling of the Northern Irish question.
New initiatives
At the beginning of the 1980s, as the H-Block protest came to its end, there were indications that the cross-party consensus that existed between the Labour and Conservative parties was, under the strain of the publicity generated by the hunger strikers, breaking down. At its 1981 conference the Labour Party expressed its support for a united Ireland by consent and two years later the Liberal Party, at its annual conference, passed a resolution calling for the withdrawal of British troops. During 1981 the Labour Party questioned whether the Emergency Powers Act should be continued or whether it should at least be debated. The Labour Party supported a motion introduced in the British Parliament that called for a review of the actual operation of the Act. While this motion was defeated by a vote of 279 votes to 213,3 it demonstrated that some on the mainland wanted to rethink the approach to Ireland. For Mrs Thatcher this was unnecessary. She was determined to utilize the full range use of emergency legislation. She was not, at this point, convinced that there was room for a new political initiative, let alone one that might mean a relaxation of the struggle with the terrorists or political concessions to the Republicans. In particular, she was opposed to any measure that might allow the Dublin Government a decisive voice in the affairs of the Province.4 This placed her at odds with some within the Conservative Party who believed that the only way forward was to try to work with the southern Government of Dr Garret Fitzgerald. Even as Mrs Thatcher reiterated the hard line, James Prior, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, began to search for a formula that would ease tensions in the Province. Some of his Conservative colleagues pressed him to implement a notion of integration, that is to treat Northern Ireland as if it was no different from any other part of the United Kingdom, but Prior wisely decided that this was not really a viable option and began instead to look at ideas such the devolution of powers as a new long-term solution to the problems of the North.5 In the short term, Prior believed, as William Whitelaw had, that tensions could be eased through some concessions or gestures of conciliation to the Republican communities. Accordingly, on 6 October 1981, Prior initiated new rules on prison clothes, remission and visits of relatives for those in the H-Block.
Prior's intentions were good but did little to ameliorate tension in the Province. After the death of Bobby Sands in May, there was violent rioting which continued throughout the autumn. During 1981 alone, the RUC fired 29,601 baton rounds of plastic bullets at rioters.6 By 1982, the RUC had lost 112 officers, the RUC Reserve 58, the British Army 394 and the UDR 127 in the conflict,7 but behind the usual pattern of violence the Republicans had begun to shift their activities towards a more sophisticated agenda. In the late 1970s the Sinn Fein leadership had decided to broaden its base of operations, but had not really implemented any new policies. The publicity surrounding the hunger strikes and the international attention that had subsequently focused on the Province after the death of Bobby Sands caused the Northern Command of the PIRA to accelerate its shift to a political agenda. In particular, it was Gerry Adams who sought to reverse the policies of the current leadership of Sinn Fein, which was still nominally under the control of the southerners. Adams argued that the party should reverse its traditional policy of abstention and contest elections in both the south and the North.8 This was a highly sensitive issue; since the partition of Ireland the hard core of Sinn Fein had prided itself on its absolute refusal to recognize the institutions and political system imposed by the British Government and had boycotted the Irish Dail. Adams sought to establish Sinn Fein as not just a party on the margins of Irish politics, but one that could operate throughout Ireland in legitimate politics. Adams wanted Sinn Fein members to contest elections, but the southerners in the Sinn Fein movement, led by O'Bradaigh, opposed this move. After the hunger strike, however, the momentum lay with the Sinn Fein members in the North. Adams and McGuinness capitalized on the emotional wave of support and sympathy for their cause in the North, using the media to broadcast their views on both television and radio.9 Adams in particular was seen within the movement as a dynamic figure who had been at the cutting edge of the struggle. O'Bradaigh, on the other hand, was regarded as the old face of Republicanism. There was little the southern leadership could do to challenge the northerners. O'Bradaigh was the subject of an exclusion order which prevented him from entering the North and challenging Adams.10 O'Bradaigh was also handicapped in the south because of the 1973 Irish Broadcasting Act which banned interviews with Sinn Fein, the IRA and other paramilitaries. This left the way open for Adams to assume the leadership and O'Bradaigh duly stepped down in 1982, finally handing over to his rival in November 1983.11 Adams denies membership of the IRA, but some sources believe that part of the reason why he defeated O'Bradaigh was because of ‘his impeccable track record in the war zone’.12 Whatever his past, Adams in the early 1980s had a clear vision of the manner in which the Republican movement should evolve. He was convinced that Sinn Fein should participate in elections and fought an internal battle within the party to get his views accepted. By 1986, both Sinn Fein and the IRA accepted that the campaign against the British Government should be one of both armed struggle and electoral strength.13 In 1983, in the election to the newly established Ulster Assembly (through which Jim Prior hoped to establish some form of rolling devolution), Sinn Fein won 10 per cent of the votes and five seats. In the Council elections of Northern Ireland, fifty-eight Sinn Fein councillors took office, and in Omagh and Fermanagh they won the Council Chairs. Subsequent Unionist boycotts of Council meetings reduced local governments to confusion. The growing attraction of the Sinn Fein party was confirmed in the general election of June 1983, when Adams was elected as the member of Parliament for West Belfast. To many observers this seemed an absurd twist of Irish history – that a man widely regarded as a terrorist was now an elected MP. The degree of support for Sinn Fein caused more than a ripple on the mainland. After the Labour Party had displayed interest in debating the Emergency Powers Act during 1981, some on the left of British politics had grown increasingly interested in the message of Sinn Fein. In July 1983, Adams was received in London as a guest of Ken Livingstone, leader of the now defunct Greater London Council (GLC). This suited the Sinn Fein strategy perfectly. It bestowed public recognition and a way of getting the Republican message directly into mainland politics. It also helped to legitimize participation at the ballot box, while the paramilitaries continued to pursue a parallel strategy of physical force.14
During the autumn of 1981 it was this Republican strategy of physical force that seemed to dominate activities. The Provisionals increased their killings and maimings with a vengeance and to maximum publicity, especially when the PIRA decided to once again take the battle to the mainland and mounted a series of vicious attacks in England. On 11 October the PIRA carried out a nail-bomb attack on the Chelsea barracks in London; on 17 October they placed a bomb in which Sir Stewart Pringle, the Commandant General of the Royal Marines, lost a leg, and on 26 October an explosive device in Oxford Street killed a bomb disposal expert. Then, on 14 November, back in the Province, the Provisionals murdered Robert Bradford, an Official Unionist MP.15 This killing sparked fears that a civil war was imminent. When James Prior attended the funeral of the Unionist MP, he was booed and jostled by waiting Unionists who felt that the British Government had once again failed them in their response to the activities of the Republican paramilitaries.16 Concern was such that the British Army was reinforced by 600 men in order to shore up the front line of beleaguered RUC forces. As 1981 came to a close the overall statistics for deaths in the security forces were worse than the previous year with deaths increased from seventy-six to 101.17
It was not just the PIRA who had stepped up the armed struggle with the security forces. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), too, seemed determined to put pressure on the British Government. Since 1977 there had been relative peace between Republican factions, although there were still a few housing estates or sections of cities which were considered Provo or INLA territory and closed to the rival organizations.18 But in 1981 the INLA, which had achieved infamy with the murder of Lord Mountbatten in 1979, began once again to step up its operations in the Province, on the mainland and in Europe. At the beginning of the decade the two factions appeared to be competing as to which could cause greatest damage to the security forces.19 During the latter part of 1982, the INLA appeared to be winning. In December it targeted a public house and disco – the Droppin Well at Ballykelly. It was a well-known haunt of off-duty British soldiers. An INLA bomb killed twelve soldiers and sixty-six civilians.20
Despite the increased activity of the paramilitaries, the security forces believed that they were coping well with the level of violence in the Province at the beginning of the decade. Two developments, however, seriously dented the images of both the RUC and the British Army. The first was the case of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy and the second was the trials of the ‘supergrasses’.
‘shoot to kill’
The allegations that the security forces in Northern Ireland operated a ‘shoot to kill’ policy had often been made by Republican spokesmen. From 1980 onwards, however, the controversy assumed a new dimension. Up until that point shootings by both the British Army and the RUC had evoked suspicion in the nationalist communities that they were deliberately targeting IRA men or IRA sympathizers. Abuses by the security forces had been well documented by a group of priests.21 The killing of John Boyle in July 1978 had once again aroused these fears in a wider public setting and done little to assuage Catholic fears, especially when the soldiers were later acquitted.22 Stories about a ‘secret war’ in Ireland had abounded ever since the early 1970s, but 1980 was a turning point because it was in that year that the law was changed so that killings by the RUC and the British Army were no longer subject to the normal proceedings of an inquest. The rules of a coroner's court were amended so that open verdicts could not be recorded. Instead, coroners were restricted to findings saying when, where and how the person had died.23 Nationalists believed that this merely covered up the fact that the security forces were targeting individuals known to them. In particular, the deaths of two INLA men, Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll, in 1982 in suspicious circumstances fuelled the controversy. In December 1982, two RUC cars were sent into Armagh to try and to pick up Dominic McGlinchey, a hardened operative of the INLA. Grew and Carroll were supposedly escorting McGlinchey to Grew's home but before they arrived, McClinchey had been dropped off. When the two INLA men arrived in Armagh they drove into some confusion. One RUC officer had crashed into another, but another RUC officer, Robinson, gave chase, overtaking them, cutting them off and then shooting. Both were killed. The RUC subsequently claimed that the two terrorists had tried to run a roadblock. Robinson was duly charged, tried and acquitted, but such were the discrepancies in the RUC evidence that concern was expressed that this was just a blatant example of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. Indeed, allegations were made that this attack was a reprisal against the INLA for the Droppin Well attack. On 14 December, James Prior admitted that there were special anti-terrorist squads operating within the RUC but denied that a ‘shoot to kill’ policy was operating.
International attention was aroused by the issue of whether or not a ‘shoot to kill’ policy was operating when Amnesty International began its investigation into killings by members of the British security forces in Northern Ireland. It was concerned by the spate of killings in late 1982 when six unarmed people were killed by members of what appeared to be an anti-terrorist squad within the RUC.24 It emerged that senior police officers had made up their own versions of what had occurred prior to the killings and had later instructed lower ranks of RUC officers to collude in this endeavour. Public concern was such that in May 1984 a British police officer, John Stalker, was appointed to examine whether there had been a cover-up. Stalker carried out his own examination of the evidence in all the cases. He subsequently alleged that he was hindered in his investigation by the RUC and, before he could complete his task, he was removed from duty. The inquiry was completed by Colin Sampson, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, another British police officer, but the findings were not published, although eighteen officers were disciplined.25 Much in the security politics of Northern Ireland remained hidden, but some things were revealed by the Stalker/Sampson investigations. It was clear for example that suspected members of Republican paramilitary groups, who were under surveillance, were killed by covert anti-terrorist squads operating within the RUC. It was also apparent that the original police investigations of the killings were at best incompetent and at worst corrupt. It also raised suspicions of many other instances in which the security forces have killed when it would have been possible to arrest. The list of justifications for the killing of suspects began, as the 1980s wore on, to sound predictably familiar: that the suspect had tried to run a roadblock; that the suspect reached for a gun; that the car carrying the suspect was fired at accidentally. All of this sapped at the confidence placed in the RUC and reinforced the idea that, like its predecessors the B-Specials, it was incapable of nonpartisan behaviour.
At this point, despite the strategy of police primacy, the main responsibility for covert operations once again returned to the British Army. Since then, in almost all the controversial incidents involving security forces, it has been British soldiers who have been implicated in allegations of ‘shoot to kill’. According to one report by Amnesty International, between 1976 and 1992 the SAS killed thirty-seven members of the PIRA.26 This is not the whole picture, however. The SAS have had long periods in which they have not killed suspects and other periods of intense activity when many paramilitaries have been shot. For example, between December 1983 and February 1985, ten people were shot dead, eight of them members of the IRA, but this was after a period of five years in which the SAS killed no one.27 What this points to is that the SAS are deployed more aggressively in periods when it is felt that the paramilitaries are most active. The secrecy which surrounds the SAS and its operations makes it difficult to comment with any degree of certainty as to whether the British military was engaged in a ‘shoot to kill’ policy when it felt that it was losing the initiative to the paramilitaries, but what is not in question is that SAS personnel were indeed used to ambush suspected terrorists and killed people. It has been argued by one authoritative source that in Northern Ireland, ‘There is no shoot to kill policy in the sense of a blanket order to shoot terrorists on sight. Rather the knack is to get IRA terrorists, armed and carrying out an operation, to walk into a trap.’28 This thinking illustrates the grey area that the British military was operating in – no obvious agenda to kill, but a consensus that if the situation arose, such an outcome would be a positive one.
The controversy over a ‘shoot to kill’ policy raised the perennial questions of the security problem in Ireland: what behaviour is appropriate for security forces countering the paramilitaries? What actions can and should be justified in pursuit of peace? If these questions were becoming familiar by the 1980s, then the ensuing debate was in many ways ritualistic. The military had no doubt that while the rule of law should be obeyed, it should, when necessary, be amended to allow the forces of law and order to defeat terrorism. The views of General Frank Kitson are illustrative of military thinking on this issue. He argued that there were two possible uses for the law: the first and most controversial was that ‘the law should be used as just another weapon in the government's arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public’.29 The second was that the law should remain impartial. Kitson actually favoured the second route on moral grounds, although he recognized that it might prove militarily difficult.30 In reality, most of the military believed that the law should be one more weapon in their fight against the terrorists and provide leeway for them in dealing with suspects. Yet this approach remained at odds with the public commitment to normalization and criminalization; increasingly, extraordinary legislation and the use of the SAS appeared out of step with the desire to make political progress. While the Conservative Party had sympathy with the views of the military, the conflict in Ireland, with its repressive legislation, started to appear increasingly at odds with European opinion and began to draw condemnation from a wider audience than had hitherto been the case. After the hunger strikes, there was considerable adverse publicity in the continental press and the European Commission of Human Rights condemned the nature of the British response to the H-Block protest. In 1982, partly because of their use in Ireland, the European Community decided to condemn the use of plastic bullets.31 All of this meant that the British authorities were subjected to a more complex scrutiny of their activities in Ireland at a time when both the PIRA and Sinn Fein were beginning to operate more efficiently.
The supergrasses
Increasingly, it seemed that everything to do with the Irish question was disputed. The effort to impose law and order in Northern Ireland, which was always difficult, seemed even more problematic after the hunger strikes. Internment had not worked; the Diplock courts had proved controversial and the use of interrogation on prisoners had led to hostile publicity. By the early 1980s the British Government was ready to try something new to secure the conviction of paramilitaries – the use of the supergrass or the ‘informer witness’. Supergrasses were normally, but not exclusively, men on the margins of the INLA, the PIRA or the UVF who were willing to ‘confess’ to, and implicate others in, the carrying out of terrorist offences in return for their freedom and a new identity. Their use, it was hoped, might do what covert operations had only partly succeeded in doing – eliminate the main leaders of the terrorist organizations. The use of supergrasses could provide the security forces with insight in and information on both the PIRA and the INLA. The confessions of supergrasses meant that there was less need to intern or interrogate suspects. Christopher Black, the first IRA supergrass, implicated thirty-eight people by his testimony.32 Henry Kikpatrick was one of several members of the INLA arrested in 1981. He was regarded as a particularly valuable ‘catch’ as he was a central figure in the Belfast brigade of the INLA. He gave testimony that led to the conviction of twenty-seven INLA men.33 These convictions were later overturned as unsafe and the men were released in 1986. This effectively ended the use of supergrasses, but during the early 1980s the use of informer witnesses was regarded as successful and, in the case of the INLA, as having led directly to its demise. The INLA, which was a relatively small and fractured organization, was badly hurt by the confessions of the supergrasses. By 1986 the INLA was riven with disputes and degenerated into a spate of vicious tit-for-tat murders, primarily because of mutual suspicions raised by the supergrass system. In the period between 1982 and 1984 the returns from the use of informer witnesses seemed positive. Five hundred people were arrested and charged with over 1,500 offences,34 while the show-trials of those implicated were designed to demonstrate the ability of the security authorities to deal with the paramilitaries. The success was short-lived, however, and as so often in Ireland apparent successes often had unexpected consequences. Many of the supergrasses turned out to be unreliable witnesses. Under cross-examination they tended to break down and, most damaging of all, some reneged on their confessions, denying their testimony. This did considerable damage to the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland and, as the supergrasses were primarily drawn from Republican paramilitary groups, did little to bolster Catholic confidence in the judiciary. A survey carried out in 1984 during the supergrass hearings found that 72 per cent of Catholics questioned disapproved of the supergrass system, on the other hand only 21 per cent of the Protestants asked expressed doubts.35 By 1987, the release of many of those tried under the system effectively ended the process, but damage had already been done once again to the judicial system in the Province. All in all, with the deaths of the hunger strikers, the ‘shoot to kill’ and supergrass controversies, the early 1980s did much to strengthen Sinn Fein. It was fear of Sinn Fein's political advance that, more than any thing else, prompted both the Dublin Government and the SDLP in the North to press Westminster for new political initiatives.
The inclusion of the south in the politics of Northern Ireland
While the supergrasses and the ‘shoot to kill’ controversies unfolded, Jim Prior was seeking political solutions. In this, he was not initially encouraged by the British Prime Minister.36 Mrs Thatcher was suspicious that any move to build closer ties with Dublin would necessarily antagonize the Unionists. She also believed that the southern Irish Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald was seeking to play the British card in domestic Irish politics. By this she meant that he was seeking to make political capital out of pushing Westminster into concessions in the North. Despite Prior's best efforts, Thatcher remained sceptical of taking any new path, but by November 1981, pressure was building for the British Government to move towards some form of political initiative. In 1981 the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council was set up. The southern Irish Government was hopeful that it marked a move towards greater Anglo-Irish collaboration whereas Thatcher believed that it was nothing more than a formalization of existing links.37 These different perceptions of what had been agreed became somewhat irrelevant in the spring of 1982, when Garret Fitzgerald was replaced by Charles Haughey and Anglo-Irish relations were disrupted by the Falklands War. In April 1982 Prior had introduced the White Paper on Northern Ireland which contained the notion of rolling devolution. Haughey denounced the Paper as an ‘unworkable mistake’ which was faced with inevitable failure.38 Five days earlier the Argentinians had invaded the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. The Irish reaction to the British war effort effectively destroyed any goodwill in Anglo-Irish relations. Not only did the Irish Defence Minister, Paddy Power, describe the British Government as the aggressors, but the Irish Government, after the sinking of the Argentinian battleship, the Belgrano, demanded an immediate meeting of the UN Security Council.39 On 2 May the Irish Government abandoned its agreement with the European Community to employ sanctions against Argentina. Irish behaviour in the foreign policy arena meant that no progress was made on Northern Ireland throughout the rest of the year. It was only the return of Garret Fitzgerald as Taoiseach in December that gave the opportunity for an improvement in relations. Upon his return to office, he described Anglo-Irish relations as being in a disastrous condition.40
Part of the British agenda for reopening talks with the southern Irish Government in 1982–83 was to press Dublin over the issue of security cooperation on the border, rather than to discuss new political ventures.41 Garrett Fitzgerald was willing to offer improved cooperation along the border and also proposed a direct role for the Irish Police, the Gardai, in the Province as well as hinting at the possibility of a role for the Irish Army itself. This was not even a possibility for Thatcher.
The issue of joint cooperation between Westminster and Dublin was raised again with the setting up of the ‘New Ireland Forum’ in Dublin. This was the brainchild of John Hume MP, the leader of the SDLP. He believed that members of the Catholic and Nationalist parties should try to take the lead in dictating which way Ireland could be unified by consent and in a manner that would include and incorporate Unionist interests.42 Hume also had another aim which was to ensure that Sinn Fein did not whittle away the electoral appeal of the SDLP by posing as the only party that could offer unification. Discussions of the New Ireland Forum began in May 1983. All the parties in the country, with the exception of the Unionists, who boycotted it, and Sinn Fein, who were not invited, took part in the forum. It also involved prominent academics, politicians and church leaders. The forum deliberated for over a year. When its findings were finally published, they evoked controversy. For the most part, the report was intensely critical of the British handling not only of the current crisis in the North but also of the historic British role in Ireland,43 perceiving a British presence as one that had contributed to but not eased conflict. This was part and parcel of the nationalist interpretation of Irish history, and not suprisingly failed to recognize the part that British forces had played in separating the warring Catholic and Protestant communities in 1969. The lack of recognition of the sectarian nature of the conflict was reflected in the somewhat Utopian manner in which the forum hoped that the Unionists could be reconciled to the proposal of a unitary state of Ireland, with one Parliament and one government. The forum proposed that the Unionists would be guaranteed a minimum number of seats in the Parliament.44 It also held out the possibility that the Unionists might be induced to accept unity, without a British presence, through certain benefits which would accrue from the proposed unitary state. Not least, the forum held out the prospect of an ‘all Ireland’ economic system that could bring about prosperity through greater efficiency. This was all very well, but in the short term most analysts were agreed that a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland would actually have disastrous economic results.45 The forum did not actively envisage a British withdrawal, but rather the inclusion of the south and a relative weakening of the British position in the North. Hence, it put the case for equal responsibility between Dublin and Westminster for the government of the Province. This meant, it was claimed, not joint sovereignty but joint authority. There were three different models for the way this might work: a confederal Ireland; a unitary state; or joint authority. On security issues, the forum's sub-committee recommended joint responsibility for a criminal justice regime and discussed the establishment of a new police force -seconded from the existing ones in the south of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Eventually, the operation of such a police force would open the way for a British military withdrawal.46
For the British Government the most crucial element of the forum was that not only did it raise issues of sovereignty (the British Prime Minister was not convinced by the distinction between ‘authority and sovereignty’), but it also ignored the reality of Unionist wishes. In his response to the forum, made in the House of Commons, James Prior pointed out the reality of an entrenched Unionist opposition to such a proposal. While Prior denied that the Unionists could or should operate a veto on future arrangements, he went on to say that the consent of the majority would have to be obtained before any such vision could be entertained. In effect, therefore, the Unionists did have a veto.47 This meant litde progress could be made.
Yet the years 1983–84 provided much food for thought for the British Government. Not least, the successes of Sinn Fein in the elections of 1983 gave the British administration a greater incentive to do something in the Province, lest the Republicans create a situation where they could gain enough support to veto future developments. The deliberations of the Kilbrandon Committee, commissioned by the British-Irish Association to put together a response to the forum, supported a wider involvement of the south and was critical of British pessimism over the proposals of the forum, but publicly at least the Thatcher administration was not willing to endorse any great new venture. Behind the scenes, however, Dublin and London were negotiating over what types of joint security operation might be implemented for Northern Ireland. As early as March 1984, Sir Robert Armstrong, the Head of the Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary, presented to Dublin the suggestions of the British Cabinet for improving security cooperation. These proposals included the creation of a ‘security band’ along the border which would be overseen by a Joint Security Commission and policed by joint crime squads, which might then become a common police force. A Law Commission was also proposed to oversee an all-Ireland court. On the British side there was even a willingness to redraw the existing border with the Republic.48 These provisions, however, were based on the understanding that the south would provide a guarantee of the status of Northern Ireland by renouncing Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution.49 This was not acceptable to the south. While the British stuck to the notion of having to maintain full sovereignty over Northern Ireland, Dublin was equally wary of holding hostages to the future by renouncing their historic claims to the Province. During the summer the Irish Government did, for the first time, explicitly put forward the idea of amending Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution, but the British Government remained unconvinced that the Irish could deliver.50
Against this background of public wrangling over constitutional positions, throughout the summer the Irish and British Governments, using ‘back door’ channels, continued to debate the future policing of the Province. In response to Sir Robert Armstrong's proposal of a ‘security band’ along the border, the south put forward its own views, stressing that in any new arrangement the wishes of the Catholic minority in the North should be considered and, where possible, due deference should be shown in new security arrangements. In this vein, spokespersons urged consideration of a new additional nationalist police force in the Province. This force would not be armed and would work with the RUC, backed by a new joint security force.51 Mainly though, for the south, any progress on security hinged upon the creation of a new joint political framework along the lines of the New Ireland Forum. The British response was cautiously welcoming to the proposals over security, although they remained sceptical of the value of an unarmed police force operating within the Province. Instead, they raised the possibility of a type of force, based on the German frontier police, which would be armed but which could operate with another force that might be unarmed. It would mean three different forces operating in the same relatively small area, the costs of which were certain to be prohibitive.52 The British Government also mooted once again the notion of an all-Ireland police force. This was rather curious as an all-Ireland police force raised difficult issues, not least for the British Government, the matter of sovereignty in Northern Ireland. Just how seriously Mrs Thatcher took this debate is difficult to know; she maintained publicly throughout 1984 that the British Government could not and would not be pushed into limiting its influence in the Province and there appeared little real hope of political advancement. What is significant is that the British administration was willing to consider new security arrangements which would affect the position of the British Army and in some respects allow for partial withdrawal. The Irish question was literally thrown on to the political agenda on 12 October 1984 when the PIRA staged a savage attack on the life of the British Prime Minister during the Conservative Party conference at Brighton. Five people were killed. Mrs Thatcher said afterwards that the experience at Brighton meant that ‘she was not going to be bombed to the negotiating table’ and this, in part, accounts for her attitude to Anglo-Irish relations in the aftermath of Brighton.53 Five weeks later, after an Anglo-Irish summit meeting at Chequers, Mrs Thatcher put paid to any notion that the Irish forum might have a future. She dealt with the Irish issue, announcing that the findings of the forum were not acceptable. She named the three central tenants of the forum and after each one said ‘that one is out’. It became known as the ‘out, out, out’ speech and sparked an immediate crisis in Anglo-Irish relations.54 Within a year, however, Mrs Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was widely regarded as a milestone in Anglo-Irish relations.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement
Despite the rhetoric, the British shift to a more accommodating position vis-è-vis the inclusion of the south in the political processes in Northern Ireland had been slowly occurring since 1980–81. In particular, Jim Prior had played a positive role in encouraging the British Cabinet to accept that in order for progress to be made, Dublin would have to be brought on board. Although James Prior resigned as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in September 1984 and was replaced by Douglas Hurd, the momentum was building for an agreement to be concluded. The British Government was particulary influenced by the arguments of John Hume of the SDLP that Sinn Fein might make substantial inroads into the nationalist vote if concessions were not made. There was also growing international pressure on the Conservative Party to ease the tensions in Northern Ireland, particularly after the death of Bobby Sands. Specifically, Mrs Thatcher appears to have listened to the urgings of the US President, Ronald Reagan, to act positively on the Irish question.
The American interest in Ireland has been well documented,55 as has the fact that Americans were and are the IRA's main source of funding,56 but US political influence in Ireland began to grow from the mid-1970s onwards. As early as 1977, President Jimmy Carter had indicated that the politics of Northern Ireland was a direct concern of US foreign policy, while the powerful Irish-American lobby led a campaign to correct the position of the Catholics in Northern Ireland. In November 1984, for example, the so-called MacBride Principles were established. These aimed at persuading American companies involved in Ireland to adopt programmes to employ Catholics. The principle of positive discrimination in favour of Catholics was endorsed by the American Labor Federation in 1985.57 Against this backdrop of pressure, President Reagan, with whom Mrs Thatcher had a close working relationship, urged her to make some concessions. In an address to a Joint Session of the US Congress on 20 February 1985, Mrs Thatcher recognized the depth of American interest when she talked of Ireland and assured the Congress of her desire to work with Garret Fitzgerald.58 While American influence may not have been the decisive factor, by 1985 the British Government, having suffered a series of embarrassments over Northern Ireland, was prepared to do a deal with the south.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland on 15 November 1985. The agreement (also known as the Hillsborough Agreement) contained thirteen articles which laid out the positions of both London and Dublin on Northern Ireland. The first article confirmed that any change in the status of the Province could come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland.59 The second article established an intergovernmental conference through which both governments could discuss policy issues and promote a devolved government for Northern Ireland. The latter point recognized the virtue of a wider Irish dimension in the problems of the Province and gave a degree of legitimacy to southern Irish claims of influence over that part of the island. More significantly, the Anglo-Irish Agreement demonstrated, on behalf of Westminster, a commitment to reform in Northern Ireland and an acknowledgement that reform necessitated an input from the south. As William Shannon, a former US Ambassador to Ireland, wrote: ‘Never before has Britain formally acknowledged that Ireland has a legal role to play in governing the north.’60
Reactions to the Anglo-Irish Agreement varied widely. Generally, the agreement was well received on both the mainland and in the south of Ireland. Some nationalists perceived it as a triumph of Sinn Fein strategy. In particular, Gerry Adams claimed that the agreement demonstrated that Westminster could be pressurized into concessions.61 In a more controversial vein, the Provisionals, while acknowledging the influence of Sinn Fein's electoral successes, argued that the Anglo-Irish Agreement had only come about because of the Brighton bomb.62 Despite the triumphalism, Sinn Fein also saw that there was another side to the Hillsborough Agreement. In particular, it was recognized that the improvement in Anglo-Irish relations meant a stabilization of the British position in Ireland; Dublin had, rather worryingly for the Provisionals, been brought into the ‘containment’ of Northern Ireland. Not least from this perspective, Articles 4 and 5 of the accord were important and signified much greater security cooperation along the border, and while not incorporating the radical ideas discussed during the summer of 1984 for new military forces, it represented an improvement in cross-border policing to deal with Republican paramilitaries. Indeed, there were almost immediate tangible benefits in the security field from the signing of the agreement. Ireland ratified the European Convention for the suppression of terrorism – something it had refused to do in 1977 – and this, in turn, directly led to a greater degree of cooperation between Dublin and London over the extradition of prisoners.63
While nationalists pondered the mixed results of the Hillsborough Agreement, the Unionists were in little doubt that it represented a British sell-out. Whereas it is true that some in the Unionist community saw the agreement as a pragmatic one that actually brought the southern Irish into underwriting the present status of Northern Ireland, most were convinced that this was the first step towards a British political and military withdrawal. In some respects they were right; most analysts agreed that it marked a significant step towards a downgrading of the British commitment to the Province.
Unionist anger meant that the Hillsborough Agreement marked the beginning of an upsurge in Protestant mobilization and paramilitary violence. Some Protestants, fearing a British betrayal, reached for their guns.64 Roads all over Northern Ireland were barricaded and serious rioting took place throughout Protestant areas. The UDA and the UVF threatened to shoot the collaborates of the new regime.65 Protestant protest took many forms. In a re-run of the anger after the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974, Unionist politicians withdrew from meetings with British officials, Unionist councils suspended business and Unionist MPs resigned their seats to force a by-election on the Hillsborough Agreement. The Unionists had not been consulted in the run-up to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and some Unionist leaders, most notably the Reverend Ian Paisley, had warned Mrs Thatcher of the dangers of letting Dublin into the affairs of the North.66 Anger was such that the RUC was forced to police the Protestant areas and, after the shooting of one Protestant youth by an RUC officer, some Protestants turned against the police force.67 Yet for all this anger, the Unionists had a problem in what response to adopt with the government on the mainland in the aftermath of the Hillsborough Agreement. The Unionists were rioting to stay within the United Kingdom and were attacking British security forces to ensure that they remained stationed in the Province, but, and this was, for the Unionists, the unknown factor, if the British were prepared to withdraw, might not such actions hasten their departure? In other words, how far could the Unionists go to pressurize the British Government to keep troops in Northern Ireland? This would remain a key question throughout the late 1980s.68
The PIRA, too, after Hillsborough, sensing the strain upon the security forces, began an offensive against police stations in rural areas. The Anglo-Irish Agreement had caused problems for the command of the Provisional paramilitaries. While they were more than willing to take the credit for having bombed the British to the negotiating table, some analysts argue that the PIRA leadership was aware that an increase in paramilitary activity before the Hillsborough meeting might bring about a security clampdown or, indeed, wreck the agreement itself, and risk the ire of moderate nationalist opinion. Instead, in the month before the agreement was signed, the PIRA leadership stated that it would not carry out actions to disrupt the accord, but rather would expose the weakness of the agreement and make the case that real gains for Republicans could only be achieved through armed struggle.69 In effect, this meant that the British Government had, in 1985, scored a victory over both Sinn Fein and the Republican paramilitaries. Through their willingness to include the south in Northern affairs, Westminster had taken the wind out of Republican sails. The British had made concessions and in some respects won over moderate nationalist opinion, a fact which was borne out by the election results of 1986. In the January by-elections, the SDLP candidate, Seamus Mallon, took the Newry and Armagh constituency. The Sinn Fein vote there dropped from 21 to 13 per cent, signifying a weakening of support for the movement after Hillsborough.70 The return of the Provisionals to a rural campaign in late 1985 was the result of frustration at a British success. Even though the Provisionals had claimed that they were not going to disrupt the Anglo-Irish Agreement through violence, in 1985 they had launched a massive bombing campaign both in Ireland and on the mainland. They claimed to have used more explosives in 1985 than in any other year of their campaign. After the signing of the agreement they intensified their activity with bombings and bloodshed.
The combination of paramilitary activity by both the Provisionals and the Unionist groups throughout the autumn led in the following months to a considerable setback in the policy of ‘police primacy’. Despite a decade in which the British had been trying to withdraw troops from the Province and return to normal policing, the upsurge in violence meant that two more British Army battalions were sent to Northern Ireland in 1986, with a consequent rise in the numbers of soldiers stationed there from 9,000 to 10,200. This was regarded as a temporary measure but, as the next few years would demonstrate, there was little real hope of substantial troop withdrawals and British ideas of new security arrangements, discussed with the southern Irish in 1982–83, which might have allowed this, never materialized.
Indeed, by late 1985 there was no real consensus, despite both Labour and Liberal Party policy that British troops should be withdrawn. Only two British soldiers were killed in the Province during 1985 and the Army, despite the ‘shoot to kill’ allegations, were regarded as the best instrument not only for countering the PIRA but for once again keeping the peace between the two communities in Northern Ireland. By 1986, British troops were once more deployed in considerable numbers on the streets of Northern Ireland. This time they were underwriting the political initiative of Hillsborough, which had alienated the Unionists.71 Yet, it was not only the Unionists who would present the British Army with its greatest challenge from 1985 on, but also the regrouping of the PIRA who in 1986 sought once again to drive the British out of Ireland.
1 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 385.
2 Anthony Kenny, The Road to Hillsborough: The Shaping of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1986), pp. 130–2.
3 For a discussion of the Labour Party and Northern Ireland, see Paul Dixon, ‘British Parties and Ulster Unionists’, Irish Political Studies 9 (1994), pp. 25–40.
4 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 402.
5 See Sabine Wichart, Northern Ireland since 1945 (London: Longman, 1991), p. 192.
6 J. Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967–1992 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1993), p. 632.
7 See Robert M. Pockgrass, ‘Terroristic Murder in Northern Ireland: Who is Killed and Why?’, Terrorism: An International Journal 9.4 (1987), pp. 341–57.
8 See Mark Ryan, War and Peace in Ireland: Britain and the IRA in the New World Order (London: Pluto, 1994), p. 65.
9 Brendan O'Brien, The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Fein, 1985 to Today(Dublin: The O'Brien Press, 1993), pp. 112–13.
10 Ibid., pp. 112–13.
11 Ibid., pp. 112–13.
12 IRA source, interview by Brendan O'Brien, quoted in O'Brien, op. cit., p. 113.
13 Ryan, op. cit., p. 65.
14 See Gerry Adams in M. Collins (ed.), Ireland After Britain (London: Pluto, 1985). Quoted in M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 162.
15 Bowyer Bell, op. cit., p. 635.
16 James Prior, A Balance of Power (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986) p. 149.
17 Bowyer Bell, op. cit., pp. 641–2.
18 Ibid., pp. 641–2.
19 Interviews with Superintendent Donnelly and others, N. Division, April 1984, quoted in Pockgrass, op. cit., p. 201.
20 Bowyer Bell, op. cit., p. 657.
21 See Gerald McElroy, The Catholic Church and the Northern Irish Crisis 1968–86 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1991), pp. 96–7.
22 Mark Urban, Big Boys’ Rules. The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA (London: Faber & Faber, 1992), pp. 63–4.
23 Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles; Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace (London: Hutchinson, 1995), p. 258.
24 Amnesty International, Political Killings in Northern Ireland (London: Amnesty International British Section, 1994), pp. 5–9.
25 See John Stalker, Stalker (London: Harrap, 1988).
26 Amnesty International, op. cit., pp. 11–12.
27 Urban, op. cit., p. 165.
28 Ibid., p. 164.
29 Frank Kitson, Low-Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peacekeeping (London: Faber & Faber, 1971), p. 69.
30 Ibid., p. 69.
31 See Brendan O'Leary and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland (London: Athlone Press, 1993), p. 214.
32 Bowyer Bell, op. cit., p. 661.
33 See T. Gifford, The Use of Accomplice Evidence in Northern Ireland (Nottingham: Russell Press, 1984), see also, John E. Finn, ‘Public Support for Emergency (Anti-Terrorist) Legislation in Northern Ireland: A Preliminary Analysis’, Terrorism: An International Journal 10 (1987), pp. 113–24. In February 1987, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Tom King, admitted that 52 persons convicted on the evidence of an ‘accomplice’ had had their convictions overturned on appeal. See HC, 6 series, vol. 110, cols 726–7, 18 February 1987.
34 Bowyer Bell, op. cit., p. 661.
35 See Fortnight: An Independent Review for Northern Ireland (November 1984).
36 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 394.
37 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 393.
38 Garret Fitzgerald, All in a Life (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 408–9.
39 Ibid., p. 409.
40 Ibid., p. 462.
41 Thatcher, op.cit., p. 395.
42 See New Ireland Forum Report, Dublin 1984, p. 15.
43 Kenny, op. cit., pp. 41–3.
44 Ibid., pp. 46–48.
45 Ibid., p. 48.
46 Ibid., p. 42.
47 Ibid., p. 65. See also House of Commons Debate (hereafter HC), vol. 87, col. 768, 26 November, 1985.
48 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 395.
49 Fitzgerald, op. cit., pp. 494–5.
50 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 395.
51 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. 504.
52 Ibid., p. 504.
53 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 399.
54 Garret Fitzgerald revealed that just before the speech Mrs Thatcher had, in private, appeared more committed to the process. See Fitzgerald, op. cit., pp. 522–4.
55 See S. Hartley, The Irish Question as a Problem in British Foreign Policy 1914–1978 (Basingstoke/London: Macmillan in association with King's College, London, 1987). See also S. Cronin, Washington's Irish Policy 1916–86. Independence: Partition Neutrality (Dublin: Anvil, 1987).
56 Jack Holland, The American Connection: US Guns, Money and Influence in Northern Ireland (New York: Poolbeg, 1987).
57 O'Leary and McGany, op. cit., pp. 214–15.
58 Paul Arthur, ‘The Anglo-Irish Agreement: A Device for Territorial Management?’ in Dermot Keogh and Michael H. Haltzel (eds), Northern Ireland and the Politics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 221.
59 T. Hadden and K. Boyle, ‘The Anglo-Irish Agreement: Commentary, Text and Official Review, 1989’, p. 58 in Arthur, op. cit., p. 209.
60 W. Shannon, ‘The Anglo-Irish Agreement’, Foreign Affairs 64.4 (Spring 1986).
61 Interview with Gerry Adams, The Hillsborough Deal: Stepping Stone or Mill Stone? (Dublin: Political Sinn Fein Pamphlet, December 1985).
62 Irish Republican Information Service (October 1987), quoted in Smith, op. cit., p. 189.
63 Gerard Hogan and Clive Walker, Political Violence and the Law in Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), p. 181.
64 See Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 236.
65 Ibid., p. 236.
66 For the Unionist response, see Arthur Aughey, Under Seige: Ulster Unionism and the Anglo-Irish Agreement (London: Hurst and Co., 1989), p. 8.
67 Steve Bruce, op. cit., p. 237.
68 On this issue see John Whyte, ‘The Dynamics of Social and Political Change in Northern Ireland’ in Keogh and Haltzel, op. cit., p. 106.
69 See E. Maloney, ‘Provos Wait for the Anglo-Irish Offensive’, Fortnight (21 October 1985), quoted in Smith, op. cit., pp. 190–1.
70 O'Brien, op. cit., pp. 133–4.
71 Tom King, speaking in the House of Commons, stated that it was completely false to see the increase in British troop levels as linked to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Rather, he claimed, additional troops were needed to combat a growth in terrorism. See HC, vol. 92, cols 1050–1, 27 February 1986.