Introduction:
According to the first chapter of the Irish Republican Army's "Green Book", every new recruit is taught that: "The most important thing is security.... Don't be seen in public marches, demonstrations or protests. Don't be seen in the company of known Republicans, don't frequent known Republican houses. Your prime duty is to remain unknown to the enemy forces and the public at large." (Coogan, 1993;413). Considering the sheer number of high-technology surveillance systems bristling throughout the six counties of British occupied Ireland, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers must consider these orders to be quite sensible. Notwithstanding these orders, until recently it appears as though British intelligence agencies have reasoned that most important "counter-terrorist" intelligence would be gained by directing the bulk of their surveillance upon known Republicans, such as members of Sinn Féin, and their contacts. In simple terms, the thinking seems to have been that, eventually, the all but invisible modern Michael Collins" would be caught through observing, questioning, or imprisoning known Republicans. However, such a focus has ignored: 1) the direct admonition contained in the "Green Book", 2) the abject failure of strategies such as internment, and 3) the periodic discovery of IRA cells which have little connection to known Republicans.
Many Unionist and conservative politicians routinely refer to Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army as if they were a unified Mafia-like organization called "SF/IRA", complete with "godfathers" and "terrorist thugs.". In a variation on this theme, some less melodramatic Unionist and Conservative politicians prefer to say that Sinn Féin and the IRA are "inextricably linked", or that the IRA is Sinn Féin's "private army". Some of the most extreme Unionists even proclaim that Sinn Féin and the IRA are essentially "one and the same." Most authors and journalists do not go anywhere near so far as Unionist or Conservative politicians, but many still refer to Sinn Féin as the "political wing of the IRA". While various arguments have been made in support of each of these characterizations, the fact is that even the best of them are no more than crude approximations that routinely misguide government policy. Moreover, the worst of them are intentional misrepresentations, invented and sustained by opponents of Sinn Féin, including some of the major institutions and defenders of the British and Irish establishments. There is a simple enough reason that much of British and Irish officialdom allows these misrepresentations to be perpetuated, and it is this: Sinn Féin opposes the jurisdiction of British institutions in Ireland, and it has also sometimes been rather severely critical of certain major parts of the Irish establishment. Thus, Sinn Féin is the target of much official distrust and opposition, which tends to predispose government officials to accept, and, in some cases, even promulgate, these oversimplified characterizations. Unfortunately for all those seriously attempting to heal the divisions in Ireland, the net result of all this misrepresentation is the enhancement of the ability of anti-democratic forces to sustain the status quo by rationalizing political stalemate and fostering the continued alienation of ordinary Unionists and Republicans.
I. The Republican Movement Includes More Than Just Sinn Féin and the IRA
At the beginning of 1999, it is accurate to describe the present incarnations of Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army as currently two of the most significant components of what is commonly referred to as the "Republican movement". This broad movement also currently includes the IRSP and the INLA, Republican SF and the CAC, the 32 County Sovereignty Committee and the RIRA, the Workers Party, and countless dedicated support groups such as Saoirse, Noraid, Troops Out, etc. To some extent, it also has support within other groups such as Fianna Fáil (Soldiers of Destiny) and the SDLP as well as recently growing portions of the worldwide Irish diaspora. As has been amply demonstrated throughout the 20th century, it is neither reasonable, nor wise, to treat the various components of this movement as either unchanging or monolithic. From the Easter Rising to the Good Friday Agreement, from Derry to Omagh, from Belfast to Dublin, from the days of the Irish Citizen Army to the emergence of the Provisional IRA, the Republican movement has repeatedly shown itself to be a changing alliance of many separate groups. Republican groups have always displayed a divergence of political philosophies, and a wide range of strategic disagreements. From the terrible aftermath of the 1921 Treaty, to the horror of the 1998 Omagh bombing, far too many human lives have been needlessly destroyed as a result of the inadequacy of all peace strategies predicated on the mistaken premise that Sinn Féin effectively controls the entire Republican movement.
Sinn Féin says that they do not even control the IRA, let alone the entire Republican movement. Unionists, Conservatives, and most members of the newsmedia are generally dismissive of such statements. The reasons they give for this dismissive response are many. First of all, it is true that some current Sinn Féin political leaders have actually served in the IRA. Others, although never actually members of the IRA, have fought shoulder to shoulder with IRA volunteers in certain defensive circumstances. Both these and other Sinn Féin activists ("Shinners" to Unionists) have been quite openly supportive of the IRA in public statements and by participation at events such as IRA funerals and commemorative ceremonies. And, of course, most Sinn Féin activists grew up in the same neighborhoods that produced IRA volunteers. Many of them have kinship ties, or have lived closely together, subject to the same oppression and brutal treatment at the hands of state forces, sectarian mobs, and loyalist death squads. Under internment without charge or trial, some of them have even been imprisoned together, and are consequently alumni of the same so-called "Republican University". Secondly, members of both groups share much common ideology, and are thus natural political allies. For the most obvious example, both groups aspire to a United Ireland. They likewise honor many of the same historic events, and the sacrifices of those who have shared in their common goal. Finally, they have been able to communicate privately even under extremely difficult circumstances, and their members seem to understand and respect one another even when they may have major strategic disagreements - as illustrated, for example, by accounts of the 1981 Hunger Strike such as David Beresford's "Ten Men Dead". Clearly then, at a minimum, Sinn Féin has much potential to influence the IRA; and Sinn Féin's political opponents can easily imagine that its potential is great enough to amount to actual control.
However, the Republican movement has shown repeatedly that it cannot be effectively dealt with by treating it as the sort of organized and well-controlled hierarchy so well understood and utilized by the British ever since what is now England was conquered by the Romans. It is instead more of a Celtic construct, including allied but relatively autonomous groups with some major goals in common, and also with room for considerable strategic disagreements, changeable allegiances, and a complex mix of perceived leaders, followers, heroes, and villains. With all of the Republican movement's demonstrable philosophical and strategic variations, the notion that some small cadre forms a unified Republican decision-making command is almost certainly incorrect. The following analysis supports this conclusion and argues that this must be taken into account in any strategies of dealing with Sinn Féin, the IRA, and the rest of their changing allies and opponents in the Republican movement.
II. Sinn Féin and the IRA Are Linked - Yet Also Separate
"The Republican community operates very much as a clan," or, so says Tim Pat Coogan in his book "The Troubles" (Coogan; 1996,207). This characterization, while probably closer than any of the others we shall consider, is still too simple a model upon which to base the appropriate governmental response to the various components of the Republican movement. First of all, the notion of a singular Republican "clan" is not consistent with the great diversity of Republican origins. For example, consider the diverse backgrounds of the early 20th century leaders of the Republican movement. Tom Barry was a British Army soldier who knew nothing of Irish Republicanism or even Irish history when the 1916 Easter Rising occurred. Sir Roger Casement was a prominent member of the British government. Thomas Clarke was a shop owner from the Isle of Wight. Michael Collins was a bank-clerk from County Cork, who learned his first Republicanism in grammar school. James Connolly was a labor organizer from Scotland. Countess Marckievicz (Constance Gore-Booth) was the granddaughter of a wealthy Ascendancy landlord. Patrick Pearse was a poet born in Dublin. Eamon de Valera was a mathematics teacher born in America. These men and women were not all from the same clan - not in the least. At the end of the 20th century, we can see something of the same diversity in the Republican movement. We can see the geographic diversity of its support from Troops Out in England to Noraid units throughout North America. We can see its political diversity from Sinn Féin to Republican Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Socialist Party. We can see its strategic disagreements from support of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) by Gerry Adams to opposition to the GFA by Bernadette Sands. We can see its military diversity from the IRA and the INLA to the CAC and the RIRA. We can see its wide variation in strength of group loyalty from Republican heroes like Gerry Kelly, Patrick Finucane, and Bobby Sands to Republican outcasts like Sean O'Callaghan, Eamon Collins, and those dissidents who were responsible for the Omagh atrocity. And we can see a slow broadening and mainstreaming of its international support, from the shores of the Potomac to the banks of the Liffey, and even along the river Thames.
Coogan is indeed on the right track when he suggests the clan analogy. It works even better, however, if we expand the analogy to more than one, indeed many, clans, each of which potentially has its own internal dissidents, and all of which are autonomous enough to make their own choices about war and peace. This, after all, has been reported as the way of political and military alliances in Ireland since long before its recorded history began in 432 AD.
Within that portion of the Republican community generally loyal to Sinn Féin and mostly supportive of the IRA, Coogan speaks of "…the Adams-McGuinness faction…" which encourages "…incessant discussion. Ideas and new policies are dissected and teased out to the nth degree before being accepted or rejected." This encourages "…internal debate, as a means of strengthening both understanding and the resolution to carry through whatever course is decided upon." (Ibid.) Yes, "…elders are consulted when occasion warrants," but this is not the sort of top-down, order-giving hierarchy that has conventional controls vested in its leadership. It is not the sort of organization whereby Gerry Adams may simply command that "The war is over. Turn in your weapons," and expect his fellow Republicans to say, "Yes sir, my Lord." Instead, the Republican movement is an international collection of linked, but autonomous clan-like groups, with both the collegiality and all of the potential for internal and inter-clan disagreement that sort of extended multiple-family relationship implies. Under these circumstances, and given the continued British occupation, it is a great credit to the Adams-McGuinness faction that they have been able to persuade so many Republicans to pursue their goals exclusively within the political arena.
III. Sinn Féin and the IRA Are Not "One and the Same"
Sinn Féin, today the 3rd largest political party in Ireland, which received over 160,000 first preference votes in the last six county election, cannot be "one and the same" as the IRA, which may number fewer than 1000 active service volunteers at the present time. Apart from the obvious numerical discrepancies, if Sinn Féin and the IRA were in fact "one and the same", the RUC/BA should have had far less difficulty predicting the actions of the IRA over the past three decades. They certainly have had the technological capacity to spy upon the private lives of all Sinn Féin officials. Indeed, according to the November 1, 1998 Sunday Times, the RUC has only last year cut back on some rather expensive and virtually fruitless surveillance of Sinn Féin officials. This included monitoring "...with listening devices, hidden cameras, telephone intercepts and close personal surveillance. This has now stopped.... Telephone calls made from Sinn Fein offices are no longer monitored either."
Can anyone seriously believe that all those Sinn Féin officials have been able to regularly deceive the entire intelligence apparatus of the British and Irish governments for all these years? To the contrary, if any of those officials had truly been active members of the IRA as well as Sinn Féin, it is virtually impossible to believe that the British government would not have unmasked them and prosecuted them with incontrovertible evidence long ago. Instead, as indirectly acknowledged in The Sunday Times on February 7, 1999, all the British propaganda machine has done is routinely leak and/or repeat vague stories for which there is apparently no reliable evidence after nearly 30 years of intensive surveillance. In that article, the reporter states, "The revelation that Adams and McGuinness met an IRA fugitive is the first evidence of a direct link between them and the IRA." He is referring to allegations made by two people who were questioned by Irish police for harboring a man suspected of killing an Irish police officer. Both Gerry Adams and a spokesman for Martin McGuinness have already stated that there is no truth to the story, that there were no such meetings. Whether this particular story is false or not, the reporter has perhaps inadvertently made the point that many years of intensive surveillance have turned up no prior evidence that these two Sinn Féin officials might also be active members of the IRA. Unfortunately, unlike this reporter, most others in the newsmedia seem to be unaware of how little reliable evidence has been produced in support of the various characterizations of the relationship of the IRA to Sinn Féin, including their favorite, that Sinn Féin is "the political wing of the IRA".
Consider just one more recent example that illustrates the fallacy of viewing Sinn Féin and the IRA as a single organization. In the aftermath of the 1996 IRA bombing of British Army headquarters at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn, an alleged IRA intelligence unit was uncovered and several alleged IRA members were subsequently convicted. Not one of them was a Sinn Féin activist. Part of the evidence against one of them was purported to be his journal wherein he wrote that he was "not allowed to attend republican funerals/ events, meetings etc", and should stay out of drinking clubs in nationalist areas because they could be fitted with listening devices. (Vincent Kearney, "The Secret Diary of…" The Sunday Times, January 24, 1999). This is entirely consistent with IRA directives to its volunteers, which are publicly available in the "Green Book". No, if we are to believe that those convicted in this case were indeed members of the IRA, it follows, that Sinn Féin and the IRA cannot be "one and the same."
IV. Sinn Féin Does Not Control the IRA
What about those who contend that "SF/IRA" is a conspiracy whereby Sinn Féin controls a "private army"? If it could be shown that Sinn Féin had the actual wherewithal to hire, fire, retire, promote, demote, transfer, discipline or otherwise control IRA volunteers, someone would have turned up convincing evidence to that effect after all these years. First of all, Sinn Féin is not a government with all of the potential controls that governments may exercise. And, we must remember that even heads of state sometimes fail to fully control all of their military units. For example, on January 30, 1972, was the British government fully in control of 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment as they drove hundreds of innocent civilians into the crossfire of the Royal Anglians and 22nd Light Air Defence Regiment on the walls of Derry City? (Mullen, 1997;16) If so, the British government was in control of a calculated and brutal operation, which, by killing 13 unarmed civilians, amounted to nothing less than state terrorism. Using the "logic" of Sinn Féin opponents, the British government should thus be excluded from the polite halls of democracy. Secondly, with all of the intense scrutiny that governments give to its financial dealings and all of the extraordinary invasions of privacy to which its members are subjected, it is unlikely in the extreme that Sinn Féin could be a money-laundry or front for a private organized crime syndicate. Not being a government, and almost certainly not being part of a wealthy Mafia-like operation, Sinn Féin thus has no enforcement powers and insufficient financial powers with which to control a so called "private army".
Understand as well that the IRA Army Council would be extremely foolish to permit control of military actions by Sinn Féin political activists. All such activists are well known to the authorities, and thus subject to heavy surveillance. With the anti-IRA motivation of the RUC, MI5 and 6, the Garda, and other law enforcement agencies, this would inevitably lead to certain capture and/or summary execution of members of the Army Council. Likewise, Sinn Féin would be foolish to sponsor IRA Army Council control by its own leadership. That would tempt major public embarrassment by sooner or later enabling governmental authorities to show the world clear evidence of their illegal activities in direct support of armed revolution.
Consider also the long running Unionist efforts to exclude Sinn Féin from negotiations and/or government at every stage in the process by demanding that the IRA decommission some or all of its weapons. If Sinn Féin actually had control of the IRA, why wouldn't they produce some token weapons, or at least a schedule for partial decommissioning? That would make them heroes in the minds of much of the misinformed world, willing champions of the ballot box without the armalite. Certainly the decommissioning of a small amount of semtex would not seriously deplete the IRA's capacity to wage war. Neither would it be equivalent to surrender, no matter how some Unionists might portray it. One possible reason that Sinn Féin doesn't deliver is because they themselves have insufficient control over the IRA to prevent such an action from destabilizing the IRA cease-fire. This possibility, in fact, is most likely to be the true case. This is so because of the decentralized nature of the IRA and the concomitant decentralized control of its weapons dumps.
It is clear from the scattered weapons dumps uncovered by the RUC, Garda, and/or British Army that the weapons of the IRA and all other Republican groups are spread about the northern counties in a fashion that is probably unknown to any singular group of people. At any given point in time, only individual members of individual cells know the precise locations of many dumps. Yes, Quartermasters evidently have some handles, but not enough for even them to be said to be in complete command of the dumps. This essentially unavoidable feature of this particular conflict provides the opportunity for newly dissident IRA volunteers to bring along weapons (as well as knowledge and training) whenever they form or join splinter groups. Peacemakers should ponder what actions would be most apt to cause some IRA volunteers to become new dissidents. High on the list would have to be token decommissioning by some other IRA volunteers. That is because many Republicans still firmly believe that compliance with one precondition not explicitly required by the Good Friday Agreement (e.g. token decommissioning) would inevitably lead to further such preconditions at succeeding stages. Those Republicans argue that any token move on decommissioning would hand Unionists a precedent which Unionists would then exploit repeatedly to stall and effectively veto the Good Friday Agreement as they have vetoed all previous proposed power sharing arrangements. Thus, it is reasonable to suspect that at least some IRA cells would not support any move on decommissioning until such time as the real democracy, power sharing, and equality of treatment promised by the GFA have actually been achieved. This may be why Sinn Féin says that it cannot convince the IRA to produce at least some decommissioning at the present time. Sinn Féin must be very aware that at least some in the IRA would be tempted to break the cease-fire if any move were made to begin decommissioning prematurely. Moreover, the decentralized nature of the IRA and its arms dumps explains why it is probable that there is little that either Sinn Féin or the IRA Army Council could do to prevent at least some IRA cell(s) from taking such action.
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