Dev: Eamon de Valera and Ireland in the 20th Century

Last week was the 35th anniversary of the death of the most prominent Irishman of the last one hundred years, Bono and James Joyce notwithstanding. His name was Eamon de Valera, the American born son of an Irish peasant woman and a Spanish artist. He is little remembered now and mostly reviled in the revisionism surrounding Michael Collins, yet de Valera’s story is nothing less than the story of Ireland for most of the 20th century. (pic of de Valera with Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies taken in London in 1941. Menzies Papers, MS4936. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.)

“Dev” dominated Irish politics for 60 years on both sides of the border, was a thorn in the British side for most of that time and also had a massive impact on American affairs over a crucial period between 1918 and 1945. Ireland was such a pain to successive White House administrations, the country was eventually punished for WW2 neutrality by being left out of the Marshall Plan that revitalised allies and enemies alike.

By the late 1950s de Valera’s economy naivete had landed the Irish economy in deep trouble. He was becoming an almost totally blind caricature of the remote and exotic president of the Irish Republic he helped create and then shape in his deeply religious image. Yet he used his aura to cling onto power until 1959 when aged 76 he was forcibly retired upstairs to “the Park”. There as a supposed ceremonial president, he continued wielding enormous influence for two terms and 14 years. He died in 1975 aged 92.

For one day short of 65 years he was married to Sinead de Valera who predeceased him by just three months. Sinead was a long-suffering wife who brought up a large family by herself but who yet held enormous power over her husband in their near-lifetime together. They met through their mutual love of the Irish language and Gaelic was mostly their lingua franca. But it is De Valera’s surviving letters in English to his wife from overseas we see a passion he kept mostly hidden in his public life.

Eamon de Valera’s owed his astonishing longevity of power to a combination of luck, charm and utter ruthlessness and bastardry Ireland has not seen before or since. He owed a large part of his fortune to his birthplace. His Brooklyn mother Cate Coll sent her boy home to her relatives in Ireland after his father the Spanish artist Vivion de Valero lived up to his lothario reputation and moved on. Cate's son grew up in Bruree, County Limerick steeped in west of Ireland culture fused with a British-style education. De Valera was Irish to his bootstraps and changed his birthname George to the Irish Eamon. Nevertheless he used his American birthplace to great effect on many occasions.

Naturally gifted in mathematics and strikingly tall he won a scholarship to one of Ireland’s premier schools, Blackrock College. His leadership qualities stood out and he was a natural captain of the prestigious rugby team. At Blackrock he also forged lifelong alliances with important Catholic prelates who would later rule the country with their croziers as he would with his political cunning.

An avid student of Machiavelli and a deeply Catholic man, he grappled with the rapidly changing political conditions in Ireland at the turn of the 19th century. Queen Victoria was dead and although the Irish still respected the monarchy there was a desire for change. As the Irish home rule movement grew in the south, a Loyalist force in the north grew in opposition. The Loyalists had the support of the top brass of the British Army and the Conservative Party and grew in belligerence and strength as the first decade of the 20th century ended. “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right,” was their battlecry.

Their cries reached fever-pitch after Westminster finally declared home rule for Ireland in 1912. With the north arming against this outcome with impunity, those wanting Home Rule in the South reacted in kind and set up their own militia groups to defend the likelihood of a Dublin Parliament. De Valera joined the newly constituted Irish Volunteers in 1913 as the Irish arguments threatened civil war in England with much talk of treason. The First World War broke out a year later temporarily putting all arguments on hold. Those on both sides of the Irish question signed up in large numbers to fight for the British Empire in the bloody fields of Flanders and Gallipoli.

Service was voluntary and many like de Valera could not bring themselves to put on a British Army uniform. With the Volunteers falling more and more under the influence of the Irish Republican Brotherhood secret society, a split began among those that stayed behind. De Valera joined the side that was pushing closer to aggression. He rose quickly through the ranks and though suspicious of the IRB was part of the leadership committee that approved the plans to stage an uprising in Easter 1916. De Valera was not one of the seven signatories to the Proclamation of Independence which stated “Ireland through us summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.” Yet he was one of the key military leaders and was one of the last to surrender a week later when the Easter Rising inevitably failed.

Because he was among the later captives he was held in a different jail to where the other rebel leaders were being summarily executed. By the time of his court martial, the revulsion at the 15 executions over 9 days had swung British public opinion against the execution policy. The William Martin Murphy Irish Independent newspaper was still baying for blood and De Valera was sure he was next. Murphy ensured socialist James Connolly would be the last to be shot while the humble “school-master” de Valera was shuffled off to jail first in Dublin and then four more in Britain. On arrival in Dartmoor he was greeted by other Irish as their leader, the “Chief” by virtue of being the most senior rebel to survive the death squad.

His one rival was Michael Collins who emerged as the new supremo of organisation determined not to repeat the open warfare tactics of 1916. De Valera struck for political status and within a year they were all realised. They went back to Ireland where they organised politically as “Sinn Fein” (Ourselves). With the war going badly and Britain considering conscription in Ireland, Sinn Fein quickly established itself and won most seats in Ireland in the 1918 election. De Valera was elected as the member for Clare.

The British became convinced they were in league with Germany and launched a swoop against of Irish leaders in May 1918. Collins used his spy network to get advance warning but most of the other leaders including De Valera ignored his advice and were arrested. De Valera was sent to Lincoln Prison while Collins began his asymmetric war against Britain striking deadly blows against their vast network of informers which bedevilled Ireland for hundreds of years.

Collins biggest coup was getting de Valera sprung from Lincoln Prison. De Valera was spirited back to Ireland where the pair rowed about tactics. De Valera realised his primary value was as a propaganda weapon and he was smuggled away to the US as the “First Minister” would he would spend 18 months on an awareness and fundraising campaign.

De Valera was treated as a hero by Irish Americans and somewhere along the line his title was inflated to "President of Ireland". But he blundered with his own entry into US politics. He supported the isolationists against President Wilson because he (Wilson) would not recognise Ireland as a participant in the Versailles Peace Conference. He split the Irish-American organisation failing to realise his allies were Americans first and then Irish a long way behind in second. Yet he raised large amounts of money and lots of equally valuable publicity as the war of attrition raged back in Ireland.

Collins was directing that war for the Irish Republican Army against British power with no holds barred on either side. By the time de Valera got back to Ireland both sides were wearying of the bloody stalemate with the Black and Tans offering a particularly savage form of reprisal attacks the Nazis would copy 20 years later. The Protestants in the north used the chaos of the south to form their own administration. Partition of Ireland was first mooted in 1912 Liberal Unionist T.G.R. Agar-Robartes but was rejected at the time but it never went away. The new parliament in Belfast was given the blessing of George V in 1921.

In his speech the King appealed for “forbearance and conciliation” in the South. De Valera was invited to London where he met the Prime Minister Lloyd George. They discussed a possible peace treaty which was only possible because de Valera gave defacto approval of partition. But de Valera knew his countrymen would have difficulty accepting this position. So he cleverly stayed at home for the actual treaty discussions which Collins led with full plenipotentiary powers.

Collins knew just as well as de Valera what was the best compromise he could get. Sure enough in December 1921 he signed a Treaty with Lloyd George that confirmed the existence of Northern Ireland and a new parliament in Dublin with wide powers but one which would have to take an oath of allegiance to the crown. Collins called it the “freedom to achieve freedom”. But he also knew the price he would have to pay. At the signing ceremony senior British Minister Lord Birkenhead told Collins he (Birkenhead) may have signed his political death warrant. “I may have signed my actual one,” Collins replied prophetically.

With Collins and his network exposed, any return to war against Britain would have been doomed to failure. Yet De Valera pretended to be livid with Collins for signing the Treaty to create the Irish Free State. Arguments raged hot over the Oath while the more substantive matter of partition was ignored. The IRA favoured rejection of the treaty while the Church, the newspapers and most of the population wanted peace. De Valera refused to see it as a stepping stone and lent his considerable weight to those against it.

When the Treaty was narrowly carried in the Dail, de Valera held in his hands the fate of Ireland. He resigned as President and offered himself as the leader of the “true Republic”. Hardliners took their cue from “the Chief” and within months Dublin was ablaze again this time in civil war. The war was a hopeless mismatch with Republican idealists no match for British artillery in the hands of Collins’ new army. Collins himself was assassinated in County Cork by a sniper’s bullet while De Valera hid near by.

De Valera never admitted he was wrong but when he indicated that the struggle was unwinnable it quickly ended. He was imprisoned a third time, this time by the Irish. Another year in jail made him realise he could not win by the revolutionary path. He renounced the IRA and Sinn Fein and set up Fianna Fail “the soldiers of destiny”.

After six years of fighting the Oath, he took it himself in 1927 and entered parliament with his new party. The De Valera name had mystique and it did not take long for Fianna Fail to establish as a force. Never forgetting the lesson of the Irish Independent working against him, de Valera went to the States again on another large fundraising mission. On his return he created a new newspaper empire: the Irish Press.

With the power of his name and his new propaganda machine, he was able to form government in 1932. His bitter enemies from the civil war handed over power though rising fascist movements like the Blue Shirts were less accommodating. De Valera ruthlessly dealt with them and later destroyed the IRA when it too looked like causing him problems. He used Collins' stepping stone approach he hated so much in 1921 to gradually remove the Crown from Southern Irish affairs.

Now at the peak of his powers De Valera was Prime Minister (Taoiseach) and Foreign Minister, ably representing the “Irish Free State” at League of Nation conferences. De Valera used the constitutional crisis in England over the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 to give Ireland a new constitution of his own a year later. It deeply stamped Ireland as a Catholic nation and formally claimed the North as part of Ireland. But like China and Taiwan, this was a fight Dev never wanted to win, he just wanted to keep it going.

In the 1930s he also declared an Economic War with Britain refusing to pay land annuities due to buy out absentee landlords. It lasted six years crippling the Irish economy but caused discomfort in London too. In 1938 he agreed with Chamberlain (whom he greatly admired for his compromise approach) to end the war and resume payments. In return Ireland got back three ports (Cobh and Castletownbere in Cork and Lough Swilly in Donegal) it had given the British Navy in the Treaty. The far-sighted and conservative Churchill (who sparred with Collins in 1921) condemned the deal as he knew the consequences to the defence of the realm in the coming war. It meant De Valera could more easily keep Ireland out of the war that was brewing with Nazi Germany.

When war did arrive, it wasn’t just the British that were exasperated, Roosevelt was equally unhappy. He sent Eleanor Roosevelt’s uncle David Gray as the American Minister in Ireland for the duration of the war. Gray made no bones about openly supporting Britain with the full support of FDR. De Valera hated Gray as an "insult to Ireland" and wanted him replaced. Roosevelt would have none of it.

Particularly in the early days of the war, the lack of availability of the Western Approaches was a bad blow to the British Navy. With the Germans controlling waters in France and Norway, British naval convoys were forced to take a narrow and dangerous channel north of Ireland. Throughout it all de Valera never called it a war. It was an “Emergency” and his young state was on life support. He knew Ireland would have no chance against Nazi bombardment and watched as Belfast across the border suffered some of the worst of the Blitz. De Valera sent the Dublin fire brigade to help put out the fires but never complained to Germany about them bombing "Irish soil".

Despite the efforts of Churchill and the meddling Gray, de Valera refused to bend and as the war progressed, Ireland became less strategically important. Roosevelt's successors did not forget Ireland’s lack of friendship and left the country to muddle economically through the post-war years. De Valera was an economic illiterate and utterly unmaterialistic to the point he promoted hardship as necessary to wellbeing.

By the 1960s he was yesterday’s man despite his enormous status. Managerial types like Sean Lemass and T.K. Whitaker would take Ireland in a new direction that would eventually take fruit in the rise of the Celtic Tiger in 1990s. It was the success of the south that eventually steered the north in the path of peace. Today conditions in the Republic of Ireland are not too dissimilar to what de Valera faced as Taoiseach, rising unemployment, a stagnant economy and mass immigration. But expectations have changed drastically.

The Civil War generation are now long dead. The Irish Press is gone and the Catholic Constitution is almost completely discredited. Even Fianna Fail are in decline though they remain in power 85 years after Dev founded them. Partition of Ireland is entrenched with no prospect of change.

Despite being littered with pettiness, failure and missed opportunities, Eamon de Valera's legacy is immense. Almost single-handedly he developed a positive sense of being Irish to the world that millions both in Ireland and in the diaspora now take for granted. For that and his sheer longevity in power he must still be considered an unrivalled giant of Irish politics.

Brighton bombing - 25 years on

On the 25th anniversary of the Brighton Conservative Party conference bombing, British media announced that the man behind the attack would attend a reconciliation ceremony at the House of Commons. Patrick Magee served 14 years for the bombing before being released as part of the peace process. But he was now been invited to a reconciliation and forgiveness event at Westminster on the 84th birthday of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a day later on 13 October. Baroness Thatcher would not be there but Magee would renew acquaintance with Jo Tufnell (nee Berry) the daughter of one of the five people killed in the explosion. (photo of Grand Hotel after the explosion from Wikipedia)

Patrick Magee is a former IRA operative who was born in Belfast in 1951 but moved with his family to Norwich when he was two. He returned to Belfast at the age of 18 in 1969 and joined the Provisional IRA soon afterwards just as the Troubles began to escalate. Magee had an aptitude for bomb making and rose to become the IRA's Chief Explosives Officer. He was imprisoned from 1973 to 1975 for being a member of the IRA before returning to active service and leading a massive mainland bombing campaign in 1978.

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in a landslide election win. Within two years she was deemed public enemy number 1 by the IRA for her strong stance against the Maze hunger strikes which led to the deaths of Bobby Sands and nine other prisoners. Brighton would be the IRA’s revenge dish served cold.

The then 34-year-old Magee planted the bomb three and a half weeks prior to the explosion. He checked into the Grand on 14 September 1984 under the name of “Roy Walsh” and stayed there for three days. The receptionist allocated him Room 629 “because it was a nice room facing the sea”. There he put his Libyan bomb making skills to good use and primed a 30 pound (13 kg) explosive. He hid the bomb in a bathroom wall with a timing device set for 24 days ahead during the Conservative Party annual conference held at the hotel.

At 2.54am on 12 October, the bomb went off and blasted a massive hole through the hotel's facade. Five people died in the blast. They were Sir Anthony Berry, 59, the MP for Enfield Southgate; Roberta Wakeham, 45, wife of Tory Chief Whip Lord Wakeham; Conservative North West Area Chairman Eric Taylor, 54; Muriel Maclean, 54, wife of Scottish Chairman Sir Donald Maclean (the Macleans were in room 629); and Jeanne Shattock, 52, wife of the Western Area Chairman. Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Norman Tebbit, was rescued from the rubble but his wife was left paralysed for life.

Margaret Thatcher was awake and working on her conference speech at the time of the explosion. It was a day before her birthday. She was on the same floor as the blast but she and her husband Denis were uninjured. Afterwards, the IRA famously released their chilling message. "Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once; you will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no war."

But peace was the last thing on authorities’ minds. Sussex Police launched their biggest ever investigation to solve the crime. They meticulously tracked down 800 people from 50 countries who had stayed at the hotel in the month before the attack. Just one man could not be accounted for: Roy Walsh. The direction of the explosion pointed to his room. After three months, police finally matched a palm print on a hotel registration card to a print taken from Magee years earlier when he was arrested as a juvenile in Norwich. Police did not reveal their find hoping he would eventually return to the country.

But Magee did return to Britain without police knowledge. Their breakthrough came when Glasgow police tracked another IRA suspect Peter Sherry to an IRA safe house in the city. Magee was sprung. At his trial in June 1986 Justice Boreham recommended Magee serve a minimum of 35 years after an Old Bailey jury found him guilty. Boreham called him "a man of exceptional cruelty and inhumanity" who enjoyed "terrorist activities". In September Magee received eight life sentences, seven of them (planting the bomb, exploding it, and five counts of murder) were for Brighton.

Magee served thirteen years during which time he studied for two university degrees. He was transferred from Britain to the Maze jail in Northern Ireland in September l994, just after the start of the first IRA ceasefire. He was released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement after serving a third of his sentence. Then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman said early prisoner releases were "the most unpalatable and awkward part" of Northern Ireland's peace process. But they were crucial to its success and so Magee was released along with many others despite the howls of protest by Tories and Unionists.

Magee met Jo Tufnell a year later. Tufnell had been profoundly impacted by the death of her father Sir Anthony Berry in the blast and was determined to find out more about the Northern Ireland conflict. After recovering from the shock of Magee’s early release, she decided she had to meet him. They initially met in secret at the house of a friend of Magee, a woman who runs a Belfast peace group called Seeds of Hope. The pair started talking immediately and did not stop for three hours.

Tufnell described the reaction of her 7-year-old daughter: “[She] got very angry when she found out I was going to meet the man who had killed grandpa. She wanted to come too. When I wouldn't let her, she asked me to tell Patrick that he's a bad man. She later asked if he was sorry. When I said yes, she asked, 'Does that mean grandpa can come back now?'”

Tufnell and Magee have since met many times. Magee still believes in the justness of his cause but says Norman Tebbitt's continued crusade against him was "understandable". Tufnell said her meetings with Magee have put a human face on this conflict. “I now see men like him as people with their own struggles, no longer as a faceless enemy, and that helps me,” said Tufnell. “I think it's been quite a struggle for Patrick to see me and my dad as real people rather than as justified targets.”

RIRA and CIRA bring grief back to the front pages in Northern Ireland

Northern Irish police arrested two men, aged 17 and 37, yesterday in connection with Monday’s killing of a police officer blamed on IRA dissidents. Constable Stephen Carroll was shot dead in Craigavon, Co Armagh and his death followed the murder of two British soldiers as they collected pizzas at their army base northwest of Belfast. The incidents have rocked the province which has not seen violence on this scale in ten years. Two different IRA splinter groups claimed responsibility for the attacks; the Real IRA (RIRA) for the soldiers and the Continuity IRA (CIRA) for the policeman.

Stephen Carroll was shot in the back of the head when he responded to a distress call from a woman in the Lismore Manor area of Craigavon. A sniper in nearby Drumbeg estate executed him with a single bullet to the head. Drumbeg is a staunchly republican estate and the Northern Irish boom has largely passed by the place. On the walls nearby is a mural of a tricolour decorated with the letters CIRA and graffiti which reads “Don't join the Sinn Fein sell-out”. More graffiti announces that the Continuity IRA are “still at war”. The victim of their war, 48 year old Catholic Stephen Carroll was just two years away from his retirement.

Carroll’s death came just 48 hours after army sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and Patrick Azimkar, 21, were gunned down in an attack on Massareene Barracks in Antrim on Saturday. Four others were injured when gunmen attacked members of 38 Engineer Regiment waiting at the front gate. The regiment was due to leave for Afghanistan within hours when the ambush occurred. The pair were the first British soldiers to be killed in Northern Ireland since 23-year-old Stephen Restorick was shot dead by a sniper as he manned a checkpoint in South Armagh in February 1997.

The Times claims that RIRA and CIRA co-operated over the two killings but offered no evidence to back up the claim other than a throwaway quote from an unnamed security official. The paper says the rifles used to murder the soldiers are newer, more sophisticated weapons imported illegally into the province. Of more interest was the fact that security forces have very little intelligence about the renegade organisations but do say there is “no unified command structure” linking the two groups.

The Real IRA are the most well-known of the two and were responsible for the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 people. The group was born out of a split in the mainstream Provisional IRA in October 1997 over the direction of the peace process. The Continuity IRA is the smaller but older of the two. The group has a few dozen active members with its leadership based in Limerick. They split from the Provisional IRA in 1986 but did not come out in the open until the Provos declared a ceasefire in 1994. The day-to-day modus operandi of both groups is criminal activity such as assaults, drug dealing, robbery, kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling.

The Independent said the trigger for the latest burst of violence was the announcement the Armed Forces Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) was returning to Northern Ireland. Founded in 2005 the SRR has a specific aim of targeting international terrorism. It is the inheritor force of the notorious secret 14 Intelligence Company known as “The Det” (for detachment) which was instrumental in undermining IRA activity in the 1980s and 1990s. According to the SocialistWorkeronline the SRR was involved in the 2005 London killing of Jean Charles de Menezes (mistakenly believed to be a 7/7 tube bomber) and also “ran death squads in Iraq targeting supporters of the resistance to the US-British occupation.”

The two incidents have spawned a series of rallies across the province of people determined to show their revulsion at the murders. A peace vigil will to be held in Craigavon and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are organising silent protests in Belfast, Derry, Lisburn, Newry, and Downpatrick. Peter Bunting, the congress's assistant general secretary, said workers had to unite to ensure the peace process was not derailed by a sectarian agenda. "They must be faced down with a massive display of the unity of the people of Northern Ireland,” he said. “We are determined not to be assigned into tight sectarian boxes.”

Brits – The war against the IRA

Former head of the British Army Sir Michael Jackson has admitted last month innocent people were killed in Derry’s Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972. Jackson made the admission in an interview with BBC Northern Ireland's flagship current affairs program, Spotlight. However the former army chief, who was a captain with the parachute regiment in Northern Ireland at the time, said people should wait for the outcome of the latest Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday before making judgements.

Bloody Sunday was one of the defining moments of Northern Ireland’s 30 year conflict. British troops shot dead 14 unarmed Catholic civilians (13 died immediately, and one later from injuries) on 30 January 1972 ending any lingering hopes in Nationalist community the British army were anything other than an occupying force. The incident is covered in detail in an excellent book “Brits: the War against the IRA” by British journalist Peter Taylor. Brits is the third book in his trilogy on the war. The first, “Provos”, told the story from the nationalist side, the second “Loyalists” told story of Protestant unionism and Brits takes the army perspective.

The book chronicles its involvement, and most intriguingly, its intelligence operation, during the 30 year conflict. The book tells how the army’s most secret undercover surveillance unit in the province, 14 Intelligence Company, known as the Detachment, or ‘Det’, played a major role in bringing the IRA to the negotiation table. With the help of technology, surveillance and undercover operators, the ‘Det’ almost crippled the IRA by the end of the 1980s and made its leadership see only a political settlement could win the war.

Northern Ireland was created by Westminster’s Government of Ireland Act 1920. Ireland was divided into two partitions each with its own home rule government. The north was to be a Protestant state for a Protestant people. A new boundary was drawn around the ancient province of Ulster but with the three Catholic majority counties (Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan) removed. In the new state of Northern Ireland, discrimination was endemic. Derry council was gerrymandered so 14,000 Catholic voters elected eight councillors while 9,000 Protestant voters elected 12. Harland & Wolff, builders of the Titanic, employed 10,000 workers on its Belfast dockyards but only 400 were Catholic. Northern Ireland had its own Protestant-dominated parliament at Stormont while Westminster devoted just two hours a year discussing Northern Irish issues.

Decades of Catholic resentment blew up in the seminal rebellion year of 1968. A new breed of charismatic leaders like Bernadette Devlin and John Hume demanded change and universal civil rights. The Protestants saw the civil rights movement as an IRA front and treated it with suspicion. In October, TV news brought pictures of a civil rights march baton charged by police. The incident confirmed the Catholic belief the Royal Ulster Constabulary were another sectarian force. Violence grew in Derry and spread to Belfast by the summer of 1969. The Protestant Apprentice Boys march in August caused a full scale riot in Derry that lasted three days and found the RUC ill-prepared to deal with the problem. With the situation deteriorating on the third day, the First Battalion of the Prince of Wales Own Regiment of Yorkshire was drafted in. It was the first deployment of troops on the street.

The troops were welcomed by the Catholics who saw the army was there to stop them from being bashed by police. But just as the situation calmed in Derry, large-scale violence broke out in Belfast along sectarian lines. Vicious street fights broke out between nationalists and police and nationalists and loyalists. The IRA got involved and shot dead a policeman Herbert Roy. The RUC shot dead three Catholics as loyalist mobs torched Catholic houses in streets they shared. After several days, police admitted defeat and called in the army. Troops were flown in and needed to buy maps of Belfast at the airport. Most soldiers saw their mission as stopping Protestants from burning out Catholic homes.

Meanwhile the IRA was in turmoil. While some members fought in the riots, the official line was to steer clear of the trouble having declared a ceasefire. Graffiti appeared saying “IRA – I Ran Away”. Divisions in the IRA hierarchy were formalised and a new group called the Provisional IRA (“Provos” for short) re-affirmed the right to achieve a united Ireland by violent means.

The army enforced an uneasy peace line between the Catholic and Protestant communities. But the marching season would change all that. At Easter 1970 a group of Orangemen began their day out by marching past the Catholic Belfast community of Ballymurphy. The Catholics were waiting for them and a two-hour full scale riot ensued. Confused soldiers stood hapless in the middle. The following day, the army decided on a show of force in expectation of a continuation of the riot. They arrived in armoured cars loaded with rifles, riot shields and CS gas. The Catholics redirected their missiles to this new enemy and the army hit back firing CS gas. With rioting continuing all night, the army baton-charged and the Protestants followed in their wake, confirming suspicions the army was on their side. Army leader General Sir Ian Freeland confirmed there was a ‘get tough’ policy. The Ballymurphy riots were the real starting point of the war. The provisional IRA now had an enemy they could fight.

On 27 June, they sprang into action after another Protestant march in Belfast. Missiles were exchanged and the IRA brought out their guns killing three Protestants. They fought a gun battle later that night in East Belfast and killed two more. They could now claim to be the defenders of Catholic areas. The new Tory government in Westminster demanded strong action and imposed a 35 hour curfew in the Falls area while the army conducted house-to-house searches. While the military objective was successful and discovered a hoard of weapons, the IRA had won the hearts and minds of the occupants who now knew the British Army as the sworn enemy.

The two sides kept up a dialogue despite the violence. In February 1971 Major-General Anthony Farrar-Hockley, the commander of British land forces, went on TV and named the leaders of the IRA as Billy McKee, Frank Card, Leo Martin and Liam and Kevin Hannaway. The “named and shamed” men immediately went into hiding. The day after, the IRA shot its first British soldier in a riot, Gunner Robert Curtis from Newcastle. On the day after, Stormont Premier James Chichester-Clark declared Northern Ireland was at war with the IRA. The IRA soon shot three more soldiers. They were off-duty, wearing civilian clothes and drinking at a bar. They were invited to a party and then shot on a lonely road. It was the end of détente between the army and the community.

By August 1971, ten soldiers were dead and the IRA had launched over 300 explosions. The government began to look at internment as a solution. They found an old army depot used to store Land Rovers and trucks at a place called “Long Kesh” outside Belfast. The place was spruced up and turned into an internment camp. Operation Demetrius was put into place to swoop through Nationalist areas in a dawn raid. Dustbin lids banged through the city as women warned the men the army was coming. The army arrested 341 republican suspects but no loyalists. The last vestige of even-handedness was shattered.

Some of those arrested were subject to torture. They were guinea pigs of what was called the Five Techniques, imported from the Army’s experience in counter-insurgency in the colonies and learned from the North Koreans. The techniques were: making suspects stand against a wall with arms spread-eagled for hours at a time, placing hoods over their heads to produce sensory deprivation, subjecting them to continuous ‘white noise’ to disorientate, and depriving them of sleep and food. But the problem was that although the techniques were successful, internment wasn’t – most of the IRA leadership had evaded the search.

The death toll soared. The IRA killed two people and the army killed 16. The army ended no-go areas in Belfast but they still existed in Derry. The IRA had 29 barricades set up, 16 of which were impassable to one-ton armoured vehicles. Despite Protestant outrage, the army maintained a policy of containment. But a secret army memo was about to change that. The army looked for a way to penetrate hostile areas and restore ‘the rule of law’. The excuse was an anti-internment march planned for Sunday 30 January 1972. 20,000 people marched into the city but was blocked from getting to city council buildings. Marchers threw missiles at the army; an IRA man fired one bullet and the army fought back. By the end of the day 13 unarmed Catholics were dead and another was dying. The soldiers’ actions were exonerated by the whitewashing of the Widgery Report and it wasn’t until 1998 that Tony Blair instituted the Saville Inquiry. That report has yet to be handed down.

Bloody Sunday was the pivotal event of the war. It gave the Provos a huge propaganda victory and a new moral authority to fight their war. It also ended the Protestant regime. In March 1972 Britain suspended Stormont and introduced Direct Rule. That same month, the IRA exploded its first car bomb in Belfast, a 112kg bomb which killed seven people in Donegall Street and injured 150. Yet the two sides also conducted talks. Gerry Adams was released from internment and he and fellow IRA man David O’Connell met two British intelligence officers in June. There followed a second meeting in London between top officers including IRA president Sean MacStiofain (originally an Englishman named John Stephenson), and the newly appointed Northern Ireland secretary Willie Whitelaw. The meeting was an impasse and the IRA re-intensified its campaign.

On 21 July, the IRA planted 22 bombs in Belfast and killed nine people on a day that became known as Bloody Friday. The army began a new campaign in response; an intelligence operation to get under the IRA’s skin. They ran a bogus laundry service known as “Four Square laundry”. Its drivers drove around republican areas and returned washing to its clients. While the laundry was genuine, other activities weren’t. Clothes were tested forensically for traces of explosives. The operation was undone when the IRA ‘turned over’ an informer who spilled the beans. They ambushed the van and killed the driver. The army knew it needed more sophisticated techniques to break the IRA.

The army began recruiting spies. The ‘Det’ was established with a hand-picked elite to staff it. There were three detachments, based in Belfast, Derry and Armagh. The ‘Det’ relies on paid informers from within the Nationalist community. The IRA was in crisis in 1973 as improved relations with Irish police saw the arrest of leaders such as MacStiofain, Martin McGuinness, Martin Meehan and John Kelly. The IRA planted its first bombs in England, exploding two car bombs in London after which one person died from a heart attack. The ‘Det’ had its first major victory when it arrested three leaders; Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes and Tom Cahill in an IRA safe house. Hughes later escaped from prison wrapped up in a mattress left out for rubbish. He returned incognito to Belfast where he directed IRA operations until ‘Det’ surveillance nabbed him a second time.

There was movement too in the political sphere. The Irish and British governments met in December 1973 in Sunningdale, Berkshire and created a power-sharing executive for the North. The new government came into place in 1974 but was immediately opposed by Protestant hardliners. Workers who ran the province’s economy and public utilities organised a general strike under the banner of the Ulster Workers Council. They manned barricades and intimidated opponents as well as shutting down the power grid. Prime Minister Harold Wilson vilified the strikers on TV which further hardened attitudes. Three days later the executive resigned and Direct Rule was re-introduced. The Sunningdale agreement was destroyed; the UWC had won.

While the strike was in progress, MI6 appointed a new man in Northern Ireland Michael Oatley who would become a key, if unrecognised, figure in the years to come. Oatley's job was to make contact with the IRA leadership. One contact was called a ‘pipe’ which linked with the IRA’s new leader Ruari O’Bradaigh. Through the pipe, the British were getting indications that the Provos wanted to talk.

The pressure was building as the UVF stepped up their anti-republican campaign. On 17 May 1974, they planted car bombs in rush hour in Dublin and Monaghan which exploded without warning. They killed 33 people and injured 160 others. The IRA was also active in England. They bombed two pubs in Guildford, Surrey used by off-duty soldiers. Four soldiers and a civilian were killed. They then bombed two pubs in Birmingham killing 21 and injuring 182. Britain was outraged and introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act under which suspects could be held for seven days and ‘exclusion orders’ could keep people out of mainland Britain.

The IRA Active Service Unit continued to cause havoc in the 12 months that followed, bombing indiscriminate targets in London and causing terror in the population. They killed Guinness Book of Records founder and outspoken IRA critic Ross McWhirter before finally being caught in a siege in Balcombe St which lasted six days before they surrendered. The four members of the Balcombe St gang were released as part of the Good Friday agreement in 1998.

Harold Wilson sent in the SAS in a blaze of publicity in 1976. Their actions were immediately controversial as they followed suspects across the border. They also kept a covert observation post on the Irish side of the border. Eight SAS officers in two cars were arrested by Irish police in what the British authorities called as a “map reading error”. But it was their ‘shoot to kill’ policy which saw the IRA rename them as “Special Assassination Squad”. Among their victims was Patrick Duffy, an unarmed IRA man who was shot dead with a dozen bullets in his own home.

On 27 August 1979, the IRA struck two devastating blows in return. The Queen’s cousin, Earl Mountbatten, was blown up on a boat at his holiday home in Sligo. A few hours later two massive explosions at Warrenpoint, County Down they killed 18 soldiers, 16 of them members of the Parachute Regiment 2nd battalion. It was the regiment’s biggest loss since Arnhem in World War II.

Under Labour in 1976 the political status of IRA prisoners was revoked and they were to be treated as ordinary criminals. They were sent to the newly constructed H Blocks of the Maze Prison at Long Kesh. The prisoners launched a ‘dirty protest’ in response, refusing to wear prison issue clothes or leave their cells. They also smeared the walls of their cells with excrement.

By 1979, Margaret Thatcher was in power. She was disinclined to deal with the demands of the prisoners. The prisoners launched a hunger strike which ended without a deal. They launched a second hunger strike in which ten prisoners died. Bobby Sands, the first of those to die, was elected MP in a sudden by-election on the 40th day of his strike. The result gave the IRA a new political impetus it was to exploit in the decades to follow. 100,000 people attended Sands’ funeral. The IRA called off the strike after it was obvious it was not changing Thatcher’s mind. Within a few years they got all their demands anyway.

In October 1982, three RUC officers were killed in a bomb after they were called to investigate a suspicious hayshed. The shed was under surveillance by M15 but the officers had not spotted the bomb. An informer named the two IRA men responsible and they and another man were shot dead by police who were exonerated by the courts for ‘bringing three IRA men to the final court of justice’. After intelligence forces shot an innocent 16 year old at the same hayshed, John Stalker, deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester was brought in to investigate the shoot to kill policy. He wanted to see a copy of the tape at the hayshed but was denied access. He was removed from the inquiry due to his association with a Manchester businessman Kevin Taylor who was erroneously thought to be a criminal. Though Stalker’s replacement recommended charges be brought, Attorney-General Sir Patrick Mayhew said there would be no prosecutions “in the national interest”. The prospect of MI5 officers in the dock was avoided.

Throughout the eighties, the ‘Det’ continued their stranglehold on the IRA. The IRA was forced to act in Britain where the intelligence network wasn’t as strong. But the IRA needed to acknowledge a change. In 1981, Danny Morrison made a famous speech at a Sinn Fein conference that “with a ballot box in one hand and the Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland”. His speech would define Sinn Fein policy for the next 15 years. Adams, McGuinness and Morrison all won seats in the new Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 with 10 per cent of the vote. The main nationalist party the SDLP took 18.1 per cent.

In 1984, the IRA had its highest profile hit with the Brighton bombing. The ruling Tories were staying at the Grand Hotel for their annual conference. The IRA planted a 9kg bomb which exploded during the night collapsing four floors of the hotel. Five Tory party members were killed including Sir Anthony Berry MP. But Thatcher survived and received an eight minute ovation at the conference in the morning. The IRA issued a chilling message which read partially “Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always”. After an astonishing piece of detective work, the bomb was traced to Patrick Magee who was arrested in Glasgow ten months later. Magee was released as part of the Good Friday Agreement with a doctorate in Irish studies after a dissertation on how Gerald Seymour, Tom Clancy and others fictionalised the conflict.

The SAS continued their operation against the IRA with victories in Loughgall which killed an ASU about to hit a RUC station and then in Gibraltar where three IRA operatives were gunned down. At their funeral in Belfast, a Loyalist gunman Michael Stone opened fire and killed three mourners. British TV investigated the Gibraltar deaths and concluded the three had been shot with their hands up. Thames TV showed the program despite Thatcher’s fury.

The IRA received a boost in the late 1980s, when Libya’s Gaddafy donated four shipments of armaments such as surface-to-air missiles and Semtex high explosive. At Ballygawley village, the IRA detonated a Semtex bomb which killed eight soldiers in 1988. Home Secretary Douglas Hurd announced new restrictions to prevent broadcasters from transmitting voices of members of banned organisations or those that support them. Broadcasters got round this by lip-synching interviews using actors. One double of Gerry Adams made a small fortune during this time. The restrictions were useless and abandoned in 1994.

In any case, by the 1990s, the IRA were beginning to look to peaceful alternatives. Gerry Adams won the seat of West Belfast in 1983 and held it with an increased majority in 1987. In 1988 he held discussions with the SDLP’s John Hume which agreed on a common goal of ‘self determination’. Events elsewhere were also having an impact. The fall of the Berlin Wall gave the impression that Northern Ireland might be the last unsolved problem. While the IRA began to initiate talks, they also kept up the military pressure. During the Gulf War of 1991, they fired three mortars at Downing Street, one of which landed in the backyard of Number Ten while a cabinet meeting was in progress. In 1992, they killed eight Protestant workmen in a landmine explosion.

But the bomb with the largest economic impact was the Baltic exchange in the City of London. Three people were killed including a 15 year old schoolgirl. But the bomb caused £800 million of damage, eclipsing by £200 million the entire damage of the conflict to date since 1969. If repeated, it raised the prospect of devastating the British economy. The British made coded messages to the IRA that if they were prepared to call off the violence, anything might be possible. Through the early 1990s, there were talks and bombs in equal measure. In December 1993, Prime Minister John Major and Irish premier Albert Reynolds agreed the principles of what was called the Downing Street Declaration which insisted Britain had no interest in Northern Ireland but would only agree to a united Ireland if the majority of its citizens so wished.

In August 1994, the IRA announced a ceasefire. The Protestant paramilitaries followed suit. Talks got bogged down on the thorny issue of ‘decommissioning’, the process of what would happen to IRA guns. But it was progress. 1995 was the first year in a quarter of a century where no members of the security forces were killed. In February 1996, the IRA bombed Canary Wharf in London killing two in protest at what it saw as British intransigence in the peace process. They would launch further assaults on the mainland in the run-up to the 1997 election including a threat that caused the cancellation of the Grand National at Aintree.

Tony Blair’s landslide win in that election gave the peace process new impetus. He offered talks once more and the IRA re-established a ceasefire in July 1997. At Easter 1998, Blair forced through the Good Friday Agreement where all parties agreed to share power in a devolved assembly. Extremists within the IRA were unhappy and splintered off. One of the splinter groups called the “Real” IRA exploded a bomb in Omagh that caused the single largest casualty list of the entire conflict. 29 people died and 300 were injured. No one was charged for the bombing.

But Omagh did strengthen the resolve of the Good Friday Agreement participants. Prisoners from both sides were released. The decommissioning argument put the assembly on hold. Worse was to follow for the unionists when an independent commission on policing led by Chris Patten recommended a new police authority to replace the sectarian RUC. Arguments raged back and forth until 9/11 threw a new spanner in the works. Nationalists were worried Bush would put the IRA back on his terror list. Meanwhile three IRA suspects were arrested in Colombia on charges of conspiring with rebel group FARC. The two events caused the Republican movement irreparable damage in the US. Despite this, they were now the leading Nationalist party in Northern Ireland after the June 2001 election. In October 2001, the IRA announced it had started the process to ‘put its weapons beyond commission’.

While the “farewell to arms” was not complete at the time of Taylor’s book, it was mostly complete by 2007. Last month saw a historic moment as bitter enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness sat down next to each other to do business in the new Northern Ireland assembly. The hatred continues but the war was officially over.