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The IRA army council wanted to negotiate peace directly with the British government rather than its “less favored option” that Sinn Féin join the talks, according to recently declassified files.
The documents, just published in the National Archives under the 30-year rule, suggest that the Provisional IRA leadership did not unanimously support the party, but was able to “impose its point of view” on Sinn Féin, while “it was not upside down”.
A memo, marked secret, later taoiseach Charlie Haughey in May 1990 updates him on the efforts of two Maze prison chaplains, Father John Murphy and Reverend Will Murphy, to alienate the IRA and UVF from the violence.
As part of the early peace initiative, Fr. Murphy had just had a “series of intense discussions with the IRA Army Council.”
In briefing Irish diplomat Brendan McMahon about the discussions, the priest said the army council favored direct secret talks, before calling for a ceasefire, with the British government.
“The Army Council’s preference is, of course, that such conversations be held in public, although they accept that any conversation would likely have to take place in absolute secrecy,” according to a note from Fr. 3. 4).
“The third option for the IRA, and the least favored, would be conversations involving Sinn Féin.”
Father Murphy told McMahon that “One thing that has struck him in the course of this initiative is the striking difference between the IRA and Sinn Féin, with members of the Army Council referring to Sinn Féin simply as’ the party that is closest to our opinion ‘”.
Murphy’s impression was that “not all members of the army council are particularly in love with the socialist views advocated by the current urban leadership of Sinn Féin.”
Informed Prelates
The two chaplains had briefed four church leaders at the time: Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiach, Archbishop Robin Eames, Bishop Cathal Daly and Bishop Sam Poyntz of the IRA about the “willingness to seek an alternative to the campaign of violence. “and that he was prepared to” enter into exploratory discussions with the British government. “
Fr Murphy noted that “this was not a ceasefire at this stage” but that the intensity of the IRA violence at that time could be “reduced” in case of talks.
Ó Fiach and Eames had agreed to meet with then-Secretary of State Peter Brooke to advance the talks.
In a separate memo to the taoiseach, Irish diplomat Dermot Gallagher, who later became Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, notes a meeting he held with Daly, then-appointed Primate, in November 1990 at the home of the leader’s brother. the church in Belfast. .
Daly told Gallagher that the former IRA chief of staff, Sean MacStiofáin, who “keeps in regular contact with the IRA leaders,” regularly briefed him on the army council’s thinking.
“Regarding the relationship between the IRA and Sinn Féin, the bishop said that he is convinced that they are separate organizations; he also expressed the opinion that while the IRA was in a position to impose its point of view on Sinn Féin, the opposite was not the case, ”the memorandum records.
“If this is true, and we suspect that the bishop’s reading of the situation in this regard is accurate, it follows that the messages emanating from the IRA itself. . . probably outweigh anything that emerges from the ongoing dialogue between [Gerry] Adams and John Hume. “
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams attended the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation at Dublin Castle in 1994. Photo: Frank Miller / The Irish Times
In 1990, the IRA killed British politician and lawyer Ian Gow outside his home in East Sussex and increased the use of indirect bombs. On October 24, Catholic Patsy Gillespie was tied to a car in Derry and forced to drive an IRA car bomb into a British Army checkpoint, killing him and five British soldiers.
‘Depths of horror’
In an effort to get the peace talks off the ground, Hume regularly reported to the Irish government on his contacts.
In a briefing memorandum, also marked as secret, the then-SDLP leader said that an IRA emissary had warned him that if peace efforts were not taken there would be at least two more decades of violence that would “sink new depths. of horror “. ”Including the shooting of nationalist politicians in the streets.
Hume told the government that he was approached by Derry businessman Brendan Duddy “with what Duddy claimed was a document agreed to by the IRA Army Council.”
Duddy was used by the IRA as an intermediary for Hume twice before and had taken Hume “part of the way” to a secret meeting with the IRA, so his approach had to be “taken seriously,” according to the memo.
The document called for the holding of a nationalist conference on all the islands, with an agreed date for the IRA to declare a ceasefire, in which a common strategy towards a united Ireland would be drawn up “and subsequently presented to the leaders of the European Community”.
“In this sense, the text was written in language that emphasized Ireland’s place and role in Europe, and the fact that the Irish have always had a European perspective,” Hume told the government.
“The thinking here seemed to be that the British could be pressured to respond positively to nationalist goals through effective campaigning in a European context.”
Duddy went on to express “great concern” to Hume that if “the feelings of the IRA were not responded to, the violence in the north could continue for another twenty years, and in this period it would sink new depths of horror.”
The businessman told Hume there was “some hope of ending the campaign while Adams and people his age were in charge.”
“However, I was deeply concerned and frightened by the attitude of the huge mass of young (ie, under 35) unemployed and alienated Catholics,” the memo notes.
“If they took command at some point, then even more extreme action was possible, including, if they saw it as useful for their strategy, shooting nationalist politicians in the street.”
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