Pira and the Paramilitary Opposition Faced During the Troubles Dissertation

PIRA and the British Government's Response

The war between the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and the British State from 1969 to 1998 was a complex situation in which various entities pursued similar and dissimilar aims through various channels (political as well as militaristic/terroristic). Even in the midst of the most violent clashes, secret talks were held between leaders of the PIRA and the British State, with the political face of Republican beliefs (Sinn Fein) gaining popular support over the years and to some degree undermining the aims, objectives and capacity of the PIRA to operate effectively (O'Brien, 1999; Tonge, 2002). The PIRA's strategic effectiveness, however, was also complicated by its own inability to overcome specific problematic features of its own organization -- such as the factors of security and territoriality. Likewise, the British State had enacted a program of using informants and infiltrators to undermine the PIRA from within. The tension between engaging in peace talks with the PIRA and refusing demands, such as withdrawal and the denial of Special Category Status for "political" prisoners, stemmed from the dramatic history of repression and resistance that had characterized the relationship between Ireland and Britain since the 1500s. Making sense of that tension and exploiting weaknesses within the Republican movement as a whole (via legal, political, police, intelligence, and collusion) allowed the British State to meet and overcome certain challenges faced throughout this ordeal.

Since the 16th century when the Catholic King of England Henry VIII separated from the Roman Pontiff and declared himself head of the Church in England, there had been, by extension, tension and conflict in Ireland between the Catholics and the Protestants. For more than four hundred years, this tension brewed and simmered, boiled over and burst into fits of violence and war. There was the hanging and quartering of Thomas FitzGerald who had publicly repudiated his loyalty to the English monarch in 1534, following Henry's infamous Act of Succession; the rebellion against Elizabeth in 1594 and the commencement of the Nine Years' War in Ulster; the Irish Rebellion in 1641; the Confederate Wars; the Rebellions and Battles of 1798.

In spite of these decades of fighting, the Acts of Union in 1800 bound the two islands together in one United Kingdom with Catholic Emancipation permitting Catholics the right to hold seats in Parliament. For a century, union was the order of the day, until in 1916 the Easter Rising led to the establishment of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Dublin, where the Irish Republic as a single, self-governing entity was proclaimed. This was the seed that sprouted into Ireland's Declaration of Independence in 1919 and the Irish War of Independence, which ended in 1921 and culminated in the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the partitioning of Ireland, with Britain acknowledging the Irish Free State while reserving Northern Ireland for itself.

In 1969, the Troubles began (also known as the Northern Ireland Conflict). This was the continuation of the war between Irish nationalists (mostly Catholics) and the unionists or loyalists (Protestants/British). Prejudice and discrimination against the nationalists had taken place in Northern Ireland where unionists were the majority, prompting "a wave of sectarian violence" to break out (Bamford, 2005, p. 582). The Provisional Irish Republican Army split from the Irish Republican Army in order to carry out its own violent protest against the systematic marginalization of the Catholic nationalists in the North. At the same time, British intelligence was determined to crush the PIRA and put an end to the threat of its rule on the island just as it had done in centuries past.

The PIRA waged a destructive and oftentimes brutal war of retaliation against the British state, attacking the British economic infrastructure within Northern Ireland and undermining the political-social order through targeted assassinations. So successful was the PIRA that in its early days, victory and the aim of a British-free Ireland seemed not only possible but within the group's grasp. However, the British state did not relent. In early 1972 it doubled down on the dissenters and demonstrators when British soldiers fired upon protestors in what became known as Bloody Sunday. The war intensified and on both sides efforts were made towards better security and the organization and protection of intelligence.

In 1977, the PIRA changed itself in terms of organization, transitioning from the model of a British army brigade system to the cell structured system more suitable to guerrilla style warfare. This transition facilitated the need to avoid infiltration from security agents/informants working for the British state and to lessen the risk of capture as group. Up till then, the British had been able to arrest a great many volunteers within PIRA, including founding member Sean MacStiofain. Following the changes in the organizational structure of the PIRA, the British essentially now had to develop a new method of countering the PIRA and attenuating its aims.

The questions posed in this study are the following: How did the British government respond to these new ways of terrorism of the Provisional Irish Republic Army? What were the measures used in combating these waves of violence against the British State from 1977 to 1998 when the settlement was negotiated? This study will answer these questions by concentrating on the following areas in the subsequent chapters.

Chapter One will provide the historical context of Northern Irish terrorism (the Troubles in Northern Ireland) and examine how the Troubles began with a discussion of what led to Bloody Friday, which touched off the campaign. Chapter Two will examine how the PIRA operated and discuss its method of terrorism within the British State. Chapter Three will show what processes the British Government used to combat Irish terrorism, such as legislation, intelligence (the use of informants within the IRA), the use of special branches with special attention on counter-terrorist intelligence in Northern Ireland, surveillance, interrogation, etc. Chapter Four will illustrate the difficulties encountered by the British State while combating the PIRA and what it did to overcome these difficulties. Chapter Five will focus on the control, accountability, the unmeasured actions of the security forces and collusion between security forces and loyalist paramilitaries.

Chapter One: The Troubles

Discrimination against the Catholic nationalist minority had been brewing for years in Northern Ireland. A number of non-violent groups had organized to protest job, housing, and voting discrimination. In areas where Catholic nationalists were a majority in Northern Ireland, electoral boundaries had been devised in such a way as to limit the power of the nationalists -- another bone of contention among the civil rights advocacy groups. The police of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) were essentially completely Protestant unionist and had authorization under the Special Powers Act to perform search and seizures without warrant, to imprison without due process, and to prevent public demonstrations -- all of which were exercised against the Catholic nationalists leading up to the Troubles (Tonge, 2002).

At the same time, a growing Republican faction within the IRA promoted a "more extreme militant" viewpoint in which violence served as the viable means of establishing a solution to the discrimination in Northern Ireland, with the ultimate aim being the total reunification of Northern Ireland with the Republic (essentially a repudiation of the British mandate in the province) (Bamford, 2005, p. 582). PIRA embodied this militancy and their actions demonstrated their belief. Out of revenge for Bloody Sunday (January 1972), in which British soldiers fired upon and killed 13 unarmed civilian demonstrators, PIRA set off 40 bombs in a single afternoon (car bombs timed to explode within minutes of one another and designed as an attack on the British economic infrastructure in Northern Ireland) -- this was Bloody Friday (July 1972). The British response to this terrorist attack, which killed seven, was Operation Motorman -- a strategy designed to give control of Catholic centers in Belfast and Londonderry back to the British (Bamford, 2005, p. 583). Thus, while Bloody Friday delivered a blow to the Crown, it also angered British forces in the process and provoked a fight with a much bigger opponent. The deed, however, was already done and the PIRA had left an indelible mark in the history of Northern Ireland. The response was predictably aggressive, as blowback aimed at Catholic civilians was delivered by Protestant unionist militants, and the British crackdown began in force.

Bloody Friday was also a concentrated (and violent) effort to ignite the stalled talks between the IRA and the British. The IRA had been in negotiations with William Whitelaw of the British delegation in charge of hammering out a truce in the wake of Bloody Sunday. The IRA wanted the British to agree to leave Northern Ireland entirely within three years and it wanted republican prisoners to be freed as well. A ceasefire between the British and the IRA had been in effect but when Whitelaw's delegation refused to meet the conditions offered, the negotiation process came to a halt. The response of the PIRA was to launch an all-out assault on the British commercial…