The IRA’s mythic ‘men of peace’

It was from the Northern Ireland conflict that I first learned how language — like everything else — can be warped utterly. Take the late Martin McGuinness, not to mention his still-living, libel-hungry comrades.

For almost three decades they put bombs in public places, shot random people in the head and tortured others to death. After thirty years of this they received a wonderful career-end bonus. They became “men of peace.” Suddenly McGuinness and co were not to be criticized. Instead they were applauded for laying down their weapons. Before long they were traveling the world talking about “conflict resolution.” They won elections by pushing aside all those who had been against shooting people in the head from the start. Now if you condemned these killers you were “anti-peace process.”

Since we are going through the celebrations for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, it seems worth remaking this unpopular point. Last week we saw Joe Biden in Ireland chumming up with Gerry Adams. Soon afterwards, the Clintons were in town to celebrate the peace process. So a dissenting note is overdue.

Earlier this month somebody wrote to the Spectator letters page to stand up for former British PM John Major. I didn’t know he had fans. But this well-meaning reader claimed that I should not be so down on Sir John because, after all, he “was instrumental in establishing the foundations of peace in Northern Ireland.” What Major should in fact be credited with is rescuing Sinn Féin-IRA at the exact moment it had lost. He proved a master at resuscitating terrorists.

Suddenly McGuinness and co were not to be criticized — but applauded for laying down their weapons

As any historian of the conflict must know, by the time the IRA came to the negotiating table they had become operationally incapable. They had been penetrated by the British army and British and Irish intelligence agencies at almost every level. Their Army Council had been infiltrated, not least by my much-missed friend Sean O’Callaghan. IRA recruiters such as Denis Donaldson were working for the UK security services. Even the head of the IRA’s internal “nutting squad” (who interrogated and murdered suspected informers) was a British agent. Freddie Scappaticci, who was named as the secret agent “Stakeknife” twenty years ago, died of natural causes at his home on the mainland last week.

So as I say, a tougher man than Major might have snuffed out the IRA all but completely. Instead, at the very moment it was at its weakest, the British government helped to elevate that gang of murderers to positions they could never have dreamed of. Suddenly the Nationalist moderates like John Hume lost all the clout they had, as surely as David Trimble and moderate Unionists ended up losing to the awful Ian Paisley.

The peace that Major and Tony Blair helped to bring about had undoubted benefits. For twenty-five years Northern Ireland has been relatively peaceful. Sectarian violence is still commonplace and the province remains a tinderbox. But at least the daily killings and bombings have slowed down. That we haven’t had another 3,000 dead deserves notice, and credit.

Nonetheless, this needs to be seen alongside some ugly truths — such as the fact that the men of violence were rewarded, given portfolios in government and made international statesmen, while people who never took up guns were left by the political roadside. Worse, the actual sources of the conflict were not put to rest. They were put on hold.

It has always been my view that the IRA would be back, as they were at intervals throughout the twentieth century. And not just because of “British occupation.” In my opinion, Northern Ireland should be governed by whoever it wants to be governed by. At present its people want to remain within the United Kingdom. The problem is that the ghastly story Sinn Féin-IRA preached throughout the Troubles is preached still.

Take the current Sinn Fein president and leader of the opposition in the Irish Parliament. Some years ago Mary Lou McDonald could be found at Fairview Park in Dublin. That park contains one of Europe’s few statues to a Nazi collaborator. The IRA leader Sean Russell was returning to Ireland in 1940 from a training session laid on by Nazi Germany when he died of a perforated ulcer on the U-boat carrying him home to his native land. (Because remember that when the Luftwaffe were bombing British cities, so was the IRA. In 1939 and 1940 the IRA were busily setting off bombs in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester.) He was then buried at sea.

So after the war who did the peace-loving Republicans in Ireland put up a statue to but this IRA terrorist and Nazi sympathizer? It has stood there ever since. I have visited it myself. When it has been vandalized (which has happened a few times) the Dublin authorities always make sure it is repaired. Unlike, say, the statue of the unforgivable Edward Colston in Bristol.

McDonald paid her respects to Russell in Fairview Park, at a ceremony to celebrate him, because that’s what you have to do to rise within Sinn Féin. You have to praise Nazi collaborators, terrorists and other “men of peace.” Because the poisonous folklore of Irish Republicanism remains.

Of course it has some poisonous opposites on the Unionist side. But the acts of violence stretching from well before 1916, though the Nazi collaboration, to the civilian bombings and the disappearance of innocent mothers of the 1970s to 1990s (here’s looking at you, Gerry) all happened because the poison tree has never been uprooted.

These days it can be seen in the youths who don’t remember the Troubles but nevertheless go out in the Creggan with petrol bombs. It can be seen in the sputterings and smiles of American Democrats like Joe Biden, the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the disgusting former congressman Peter King

The poison tree is not currently in full flower. But it will be again, seeing as the conditions are all there. Everybody thinks it’s gone, but its bloody bloom will break out again some season — because youths brought up with the worst stories and heroes will have forgotten what their grandparents learned the hard way. That heady Irish cocktail of romance, lies and boredom is still intoxicating. And those of us who oppose it will continue to be called “anti-peace.”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.