Republican IRA a significant threat to British rule

THE Continuity Army Council of the Irish Republican Army has spoken for the first time to J Bowyer Bell, the author of the definitive study of the IRA. Accounts of the meeting were given by Dr Bowyer Bell in the Irish Times on August 17 and in an RTÉ radio interview the following day. The Irish News in Belfast has since refused to publish Dr Bowyer Bell's account. SAOIRSE publishes the entire article here for the first time. The author refers throughout to the 'Republican IRA'.

The meeting took place at an "isolated rural location" which the American author of The Secret Army said he would be unable to find again. The military group said it was organically separate from the political organisation, Republican Sinn Féin but shared its political objectives of British withdrawal, the release of all political prisoners and the establishment of an All-Ireland federal state based on four provincial parliaments.

Dr Bowyer Bell referred to it as the ‘Republican IRA’ and said it had units in all 32 Counties. It posed a significant threat to the British forces and regarded the Provisionals as "misguided and illicit". The Republican IRA had "adequate gear" or firearms, which had not been taken from the Provisionals, and had a proven bomb-making capacity. A week earlier the group had claimed responsibility for the 1,250lb bomb which wrecked the Killyhevlin Hotel near Enniskillen, County Fermanagh.

Dr Bowyer Bell said that when asked about loyalist threats to end their ceasefire the Republican IRA spokespersons said there could be "no loyalist veto on the armed struggle any more than there can be a unionist veto to an all-Ireland accommodation".

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s News at One programme on August 18 Dr Bowyer Bell said that he knew "almost for certain" that the Republican IRA wants to pursue armed struggle at the highest level of intensity it can manage and will do so if it possibly can.

"They will choose their targets, for a while, individually for the specific response but the time may come when they can have a continuing action."

The single obvious difference between the Republican IRA and the Provisionals is that the Provisionals have been careful not to do operations in the Six Counties. "The Republicans have shown no restraint on that so far. The one or two things they have done have been specifically related to the Six Counties."

Relations with the Provisionals were non-existent "except distaste on the part of the Provisionals and disinterest on the part of the Republicans," Dr Bowyer Bell said. He suspected that the Provisionals would not take action against the Republicans as firstly, none of their arms had been taken and secondly, it would be counterproductive to begin a Republican feud that is not over arms. "I think both of them will ignore the other with contempt," he added.

In conclusion, Dr Bowyer Bell said of the Republican IRA "they are not easily moved, nor can they be easily discounted. If nothing more, this secret army, absolutely dedicated to the withdrawal of the British from Ireland, can greatly trouble an island already long troubled by the Republican dream."

Dr J Bowyer Bell, President of the International Analysis Centre in New York, has written over a dozen books on various aspects of revolutionary violence in addition to three works this year on Ireland: In Dubious Battle, the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings 1972-74; Back to the Future, the Protestants and a United Ireland; and the definitive work on the IRA – The Secret Army, the IRA 1916-1996, due out later this year.

Republican IRA, an emerging secret army

Those in the majority at the November 1986 Army Convention had chosen to ignore the political withdrawal of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill and the formation of their Republican Sinn Féin but had let it be known that any rival military organisation would be countered forcefully. And whether through intimidation, restraint or inability, for some years there appeared to have been no such rival despite the attractions of Republican Sinn Féin positions and the shifts in strategic directions of the leadership of the Provisional movement. The secret army of the Republic remained a secret seemingly without role or mission, without volunteers or prospects.

A recent meeting at a remote farm house with members of the Republican Army Council – the Continuity Army Council – revealed that this was not in fact the case: there had been a rival for legitimacy, another secret army. And this IRA, a seamless continuation of the legitimate IRA had, it was explained, in recent years an operational reality. The years had been spent in shaping a real army almost from ground zero. Thus in 1996 Ireland had another secret army now formally engaged in the armed struggle.

Those involved did not so much found the army at the end of the Army Convention of 1986 but claimed the legitimacy of the movement when the delegates of an unrepresentative convention violated the organisational constitution to vote for the Adams-McGuinness-Morrison supported resolution that would end abstention and so erode Republican legitimacy. The Army Executive with ten members voting – two slots had not been filled – had already turned down the resolution with six votes to four; but those who supported the new direction persisted at the Army Convention and so violated the Constitution.

It was an IRA with few resources, few volunteers, and faint prospects. Many sound men stayed with the Provisionals who controlled the arms, the support nets, the money, the international contacts. The faithful were left with little but the faith. Republican Sinn Féin might represent nostalgia and legitimacy, might even be a centre-in-waiting if the Provisionals faltered but the secret IRA remained a secret. Republican Sinn Féin was a visible and legitimate friend sharing the same grievances, assumptions, agenda and aspirations and some of the same members but was quite independent. Ó Brádaigh was President of a political party as independent as Sinn Féin had been before the IRA take-over of the old party in 1950 to create a political wing for the IRA. The continuity of the underground IRA did not include a political wing: the focus was on the army as an army.

Everything was difficult – their prisoners had a difficult time, especially the nine in Limerick, their volunteers were impatient, their arms were acquired only slowly, money was always, always hard to acquire whatever the means, contacts in the Irish Diaspora and elsewhere required time. Time passed, however, and the investment began to pay returns: operational capacity existed and the Army Council felt that the climate was promising – the peace process had not worked, even the Provisionals return to bombing could not hide the enormous damage done to Republican aspirations and assets since 1986.

There was increasing visible evidence that another IRA was active – small operations and then a firing-party at the grave of Republican Sinn Féin icon General Tom Maguire on January 21, 1994. After the Provisional IRA ceasefire of August 1994, there were increasingly rumours of an Irish National Republican Army or an Arm na Poblachta circulated by security forces.

Then, in November 1995, came the reality of a van bomb containing 1,300lbs of explosives seized near Carrickmacross in County Monaghan. The device was primed and apparently targeted on the British army base at Crossmaglen. A member of Republican Sinn Féin’s Executive Committee was among those arrested. At the least there was a Republican faction in action and many assumed the reality of a more coherent force.

Finally, on January 6, 1996, a statement received by the SAOIRSE newspaper of Republican Sinn Féin announced the existence of an Irish Republican Army under the leadership of the Continuity Army Council that had been engaged in "consolidation, reorganisation and preparation" for action that would be taken at an appropriate time.

The most striking action was the car bomb that badly damaged the Killyhevlin Hotel in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh on July 13. This operation, claimed after a tactical and analytical delay on Friday, August 9, had been planned before the confrontation at Drumcree in anticipation of just such an event. The claim that the bomb was in retaliation for the death of Dermot McShane knocked down by a RUC Land Rover on July 13 was merely a symbolic tag to the operation.

The IRA leadership had chosen an economic target indicating, as had the Monaghan van bomb, that the Republican IRA’s armed struggle would not as yet reveal novelty of operations nor increase in capacity.

The Army Council, however, was content. Their analysis of the Irish situation had, not unexpectedly, reached the conclusion that the armed struggle was the only way forward and that their organisation had the means to pursue that struggle. There were units in all thirty-two counties and a geographically balanced Army Council and leadership. There were new arms painfully acquired and volunteers, some new and some veterans who need no longer wait on action. And there was the evidence of Drumcree to concentrate nationalist minds – the peace process had been illusion just as had the Provisionals’ new political direction. What was crucial was the existence of a Republican army dedicated to the armed struggle. And after ten years such an army existed.

What this army possessed was crucial: an assumption by those involved that the moral authority of the Republic had passed to them – they held the vital mandate to deploy physical force. The others, the Provisionals like the Officials, had taken the wrong road, had recognised illegitimate if entrenched governments, had chosen to take something and therefore had lost their legitimacy, lost the right to act for history and the Republic.

From this revealed faith the survivors of the split had built an Irish underground, organised, recruited, imported arms, set up all the vital basics for an armed struggle. And they did so while the visible Republican movement of the Provisionals, finding their original assumptions invalid, gave up the armed struggle for a peace process, gave up the Republic, seemingly sought an accommodation within the context of Northern Ireland and without demanding a British withdrawal.

The Republican IRA does not see their army as rival to or greatly concerned with the Provisionals – no matter their renewed armed struggle. What others do is less important than what their army intends. What they want is what Republicans have wanted for a generation: a British intent to withdraw, the release of Republican prisoners, and an Irish solution achieved by all the Irish – one that might well have a federal context and will surely involve the concerns and fears of the Protestants. In time the tangible British assets will be eroded by the Irish will, by the armed struggle. Then there will be withdrawal and a release of prisoners and the Irish Protestants who should find their way of life more easily protected in a new federal Ireland than by London.

For most in Ireland, for the sensible, the responsible, such an analysis seems at best too simple and in fact criminal. Ireland does not need one more secret army – more bombs, more provocation. It is in 1996 the provocation that seems most dangerous. The reaction of the loyalists to a renewed campaign would surely bring sectarian war and not only to Northern Ireland. And as for the rest, the British show no visible inclination to withdraw nor the governments in London and Dublin to release prisoners. Violence has not moved them before. How could an armed campaign by an emerging faction impose a Republican wish list?

Such a campaign, on the other hand, surely would end the loyalist ceasefire, produce the havoc that the pessimists like Conor Cruise O’Brien have long and inaccurately predicted. These fears by the sensible who have anticipated that any further perceived Republican provocation of the Irish unionists will lead to a truly lethal Protestant paramilitary backlash are discounted by the Republican Army Council.

Republican orthodoxy has an answer that satisfies them, their volunteers and their faithful. These fearful Protestants have been manipulated and bemused by the British – the Army Council feels that most paramilitary activity if effective is directed by the British and if not is unsavoury and criminal. Thus the nationalists are in less danger from Protestant paramilitaries than imagined – and a responsibility for the IRA will be to deploy a defence against the criminal and unsavoury and most important any agents of the Crown despatched to intimidate and so inhibit the Republican armed struggle.

An armed struggle cannot be curtailed by an excess sensitivity to risks and costs. There can be no loyalist veto of the armed struggle any more than there can be a unionist veto to an all-Ireland accommodation. The faithful cannot be deterred by the fears of others, by threats of havoc or the arguments of the analysts..

As always for militant Irish Republicans, the key is the British, the British presence, and as always the response is persistence with an armed struggle until London is truly willing to discuss withdrawal not adjustment or compromise or devolution. Possessed of the revealed truth, the capacity to act, an Ireland, no matter the changes of the last 25 years, is still not free or united or Gaelic. The continuity of assumption and conviction is absolute: they have no doubts – the faithful never have had doubts.

The sensible can only see one more secret army as one army too many, a provocation to the Protestant paramilitaries, an arrogant rival to democratic institutions, a fanatical and unneeded piece in a game that nearly all on the island had hoped, still hope, will through the peace process lead to an accommodation. What most want is not still another armed struggle, still another secret army, but peace and quiet. Twenty-five years on the sensible and responsible whatever the grievances have long despaired of those who would use the gun in Irish politics. What has physical force wrought – not the Republic but endless graves, a generation ruined.

Sitting on a darkening summer day in a cold front room at the end of a long lane talking to those absolutely convinced that the vision of generations was valid, that they need not be troubled by the reasons of others, by councils of moderation, not by the dangers to all and the distaste of most, can be a sobering experience. Such men are not easily moved nor can they be easily discounted.

If nothing more this secret army, absolutely dedicated to withdrawal of the British from Ireland, can greatly trouble an island already long troubled by the Republican dream. So far their armed struggle has not boded well for the easy life: the car bomb at the Killyhevlin Hotel was reactive in motive, provocative in the choice of target, inelegant in execution – seemingly an operation no different from those of the Provisionals who still have not undertaken action in Northern Ireland. Rather it was a bomb seemingly indicating a return to the past instead of a means into the future, a bomb that could lead to extended sectarian violence.

None of this troubles the Republican IRA: their faith is valid, their analysis done, their hidden army marshalled, their armed struggle the only effective means forward, and the cold front room as good a command post as any. Revolutions in the end are made by commitment not tangible assets – the state has those, what the secret army has is faith.

This Republican secret army ten years on now has more than mere faith, has if limited capacity more important a role and a mission: and this should trouble us all, will trouble us all and so trouble Ireland.
© J Bowyer Bell

THE text of the IRA statement issued through the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau and received by SAOIRSE on August 9 is printed below.

"The action near Enniskillen on July 14 was carried out by Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army under the direction of the Continuity Army Council.

"This military operation against an economic target was an immediate reprisal for the killing of an Irish citizen by British troops the previous night and the general campaign of terror by British Forces against the nationalist population at that time.

"As was indicated in our statement of January 6 last military action will continue to be taken against British occupation in Ireland until such time as the British government withdraws finally from our country.

"Signed: B Ó Ruairc, Rúnaí."
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