THE NORTHERN IRISH CONFLICT was a 30-year irregular war involving the government of the United Kingdom and an assortment of paramilitary groups. By the mid-1990s, when most of these groups had declared ceasefire, over 3,600 people had been killed and over 40,000 injured.
The major paramilitary groups that
participated in the conflict were the separatist Provisional Irish
Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), and the
pro-UK, or ‘loyalist’, Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence
Association (UDA).
Although the bloody conflict has been the
subject of numerous studies, its intelligence component is still
obscure. This is especially so when it comes to the legacy of the spies
who —by all accounts— were central to the day-to-day progression of this
persistent conflict, which came to be known as “the Troubles”. In an
insightful paper, Eleanor Williams, a PhD candidate at Queen’s
University Belfast, and Thomas Leahy, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff
University, examine this little-studied aspect of the Northern Irish
conflict. The article,
“The ‘Unforgivable’?: Irish Republican Army (IRA) informers and dealing
with Northern Ireland conflict legacy, 1969-2021”, was published on
Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence and National Security.
The authors list the substantial number
of UK security agencies that had a role in recruiting and running
informers during the Troubles. They include: the Security Service (MI5);
the Metropolitan Police Special Branch; the Royal Ulster Constabulary
Special Branch; and the Northern Irish Police Special Branch. Informants
were also recruited by a host of intelligence organizations belonging
to the British Armed Forces, such as the Military Reaction Force and the
Force Research Unit. Although these agencies coordinated their
intelligence activities to some extent, cooperation was not close.
Consequently, there were hundreds of informants recruited by numerous UK
state elements of the throughout the 30-year conflict. Their exact
number remains unknown to this day.
Williams and Leahy agree with the bulk of
the research on the topic, which suggests that “[t]he use of informers
was a crucial part of UK intelligence and security strategy against
paramilitary groups” during the conflict. Informers used against the
IRA, in particular, which is the subject of the article, can be
classified into three types. First, IRA members who were convinced or
coerced by the authorities to provide information. Second, agents who
did not initially belong to the IRA, but were “carefully maneuvered”
into joining by UK intelligence agencies. Third, intelligence officers
who infiltrated the IRA in an undercover capacity.
The effectiveness of IRA informants is a
contested subject. Although some informers did enable UK government
agencies to score tactical victories against the IRA, the group’s upper
echelons were not infiltrated. As a result, Williams and Leahy argue
that the intelligence war between the IRA and the UK government ended in
something resembling a “stalemate”. Yet, much of the information about
the role of informants during the Troubles remains obscure, and it is
difficult to draw foolproof conclusions.
The authors point out that part of the
reason for the lack of data is the absence of a “clear legal mechanism
[…] encouraging the state and Republicanism [i.e. former IRA leaders] to
address all informer legacy cases in a systematic way”. In other words,
the UK does not have anything like South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, which has helped uncover the hidden legacy of
Apartheid and the struggle against it. This “haphazard way of
approaching informers’ legacy” has meant that some cases of informants
are openly discussed and focused on, while others are ignored, or remain
completely unknown.
There is therefore a “mixed approach” to
this issue, meaning that some informants have essentially been given
“amnesty” by the IRA or its political heirs, while others have been targeted
in what appear to be punishment killings. The choice, the authors
suggest, depends on “[c]urrent political calculations, but also the
suspected motivations behind some informers’ legacy cases and community
perspectives”. Looking into the future, a unified response toward
alleged informants from the UK government or from republican militants
is unlikely, Williams and Leahy conclude.
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