Read Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland Online
Authors: Ed Moloney
The key sentence in Gibney’s address read: ‘We know and accept that the British government’s departure must be preceded by a sustained period of peace and will arise out of negotiations involving the different shades of Irish Nationalism and Unionism.’
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Gibney’s remarks were remarkably candid, for they reflected the still-secret Reid–Adams proposals rather than the approach endorsed by the Army Council. The IRA leadership envisaged the all-Ireland conference happening as a result of a British declaration of withdrawal, not the other way round. In fact the Reid–Adams formulation contained no guarantee that British withdrawal would ever happen, merely that a period of political stability and amity between Unionists and Nationalists might create conditions favourable to unity by consent. Gibney’s speech had not been cleared by the Army Council beforehand and when the IRA’s Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, confronted Gerry Adams he was told that Gibney’s speech had been written in haste and that the deviation from IRA policy was a clumsy mistake on his part. Two days later Gibney ‘clarified’ his speech, saying that before peace could happen the British would need to declare their long-term intention to withdraw. Unaware of the IRA’s internal bickering, the UVF and the PUP took the Gibney speech at face value, judging it – correctly as it turned out – to be an accurate reflection of the Sinn Fein leadership’s intentions. In fact, so delighted were some in the UVF/PUP camp that they could hardly believe what they were seeing.
Q.
How significantly did the Jim Gibney speech play in the deliberations
of the UVF and PUP?
A.
Big style. Huge … the discussions were about the question,
‘Where does this stand up against everything we know about the
IRA?’ And that’s exactly the point that I’m making, that the UVF
Provo experts were struggling [to work out] what was going on
within the Republican movement, but eventually we all came to the
same conclusion: the game’s on. And it was hard to believe at first, it
really was, and for some [of us] very hard to believe, because it was
like, you know, an abandonment of the whole
raison d’être
[of the
IRA], which was something huge. I don’t think anybody would
suggest that an IRA ceasefire, one now that has held ten years, is of
little significance; it’s of huge significance, and the debate and
discussion process and indeed the elite management processes
[inside the Provos] that must have taken place to get to that point
were such that we were saying, ‘Good grief, you know, amazing’,
and we were amazed and fellas would be saying to you, ‘Fuck, this
is hard to believe’, people who had been watching for a lifetime, and
we all came to the same conclusion: the game was on and the Provos
were playing
…
By the end of 1991, Charles Haughey’s reign as Taoiseach was coming to a close. When an old scandal about the wiretapping of Dublin journalists by an earlier Haughey administration resurfaced, he resigned and in January 1991 was replaced by Albert Reynolds, a figure not known hitherto for his interest in Northern Ireland. Reynolds had inherited a peace process from Haughey that had slowed considerably and, with none of Haughey’s Republican baggage to hold him back, he relaunched it. The dialogue between John Hume and Gerry Adams had continued in the background with both governments aware of what was being discussed. In April 1993 the secret talks became public knowledge when, by chance or otherwise, Adams was spotted entering Hume’s home on the edge of the Bogside. The two men announced that despite protests from Unionists and the intense hostility of elements in the Dublin media, they would continue their dialogue.
52
Long before that, the UVF and the PUP had concluded that they needed to know much more and so they set out to rectify the deficit. The intelligence-gathering effort they launched involved dialogue with Nationalists, mostly Catholic priests known for their access to the IRA, the Irish government and with the Provos themselves. David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson, a former UVF prisoner who had been jailed for a double murder of Catholics in 1974, did most of the digging. Their
diplomacy mirrored the Republicans’ in striking ways; they had to tread carefully for fear of alienating their base and chose to employ intermediaries to talk for them, not least because of their status as independent witnesses.
Well, there was a series of conduits, I mean it was done in a number
of ways. We would have been talking to a few priests; I spoke to
[them] on a fairly regular basis. One then would find oneself in
Dublin as a community worker, touching base with people, trying to
make sense and get an understanding of what the mood music was,
what the attitudes were, and hopefully be able to assess what the
government attitude was. So those things were going on; they were
all genteel enough because they had to be, to be brash at all would
have placed people in, I think, specific and serious danger, and not
just from the other side but from our own side. ‘What the fuck are
they doing there?’ would have been the question, you know. ‘What’s
he doing talking to them?’ I think people have got to remember that
as time moved on the degree to which contacts had to be made
intensified to the point where there was clear requirement to talk
to church emissaries on both sides and even indeed as far up as the
Archbishop. It was clear by that time there was a game on, [but]
what was that game, what was it about? Was the integrity of Northern
Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom under threat or
challenge? All Unionists at some point or another, if not constantly,
believed that the British government was betraying them; people
were very nervous about what the British government might be
doing and that had to be seen against the backdrop of commentaries
by Conservative Secretaries of State, constantly playing megaphone
diplomacy with the Republicans, and in that respect, you know, the
more that the game intensified, the greater the risks associated with
trying to find out what the hell was going on … What you found
was that you were painting almost by numbers. People were coming
back and they were giving their little tuppence worth but it was not
a process that you could … sit down and say in what sequence this
happened and who said what where and how. It would be very
difficult. You’ve also got to remember that you were functioning on
behalf of an illegal organisation so it was never documented, which
is a tragedy, a lot of it was not documented, that is who went where
and saw who and when and all of that, and it’s a pity we didn’t
do that
.
In 1993, as the process accelerated, the UVF and the PUP recruited a Dublin-based trade unionist to be their contact, or ‘touchstone’ as Ervine called him, with the Reynolds government. On the face of it, Chris Hudson was an odd choice as a conduit. His father had been in the Old IRA, as the veterans of the 1919–21 Anglo-Irish War were called, and he had helped Eamon de Valera found Fianna Fail. His mother, the daughter of a mixed marriage, had fled Belfast in the 1920s with her family after a death threat from Loyalists while one of his closest friends, Fran O’Toole, the lead singer in the Miami Showband, had been killed by the UVF in 1975. But Hudson was an active member of the Peace Train organisation, which had been set up in 1989 to protest at repeated Provisional IRA bombings and bomb scares which closed the Belfast– Dublin railway line. Prominent in the Peace Train group leadership were activists in the Workers Party, the old Official IRA with which the UVF had such cordial relations inside Long Kesh. In addition, the UVF/PUP, either by themselves or in co-ordination with the UDA via the CLMC, used two other conduits, the Reverend Roy Magee, a Belfast-born Presbyterian minister who had a history of supporting Loyalist causes, and the Church of Ireland primate, Archbishop Robin Eames. All three mediated with both governments and the Loyalists were able to examine their reports for inconsistencies or to confirm their intelligence. Of the two governments, the UVF and the PUP found the Dublin government, first of Albert Reynolds and then his successor, Fine Gael leader John Bruton, the more helpful. That was hardly surprising since Dublin had a greater interest in securing a Loyalist ceasefire than the British since the UVF and the UDA were far more likely to bomb and kill in Dublin than in London. As far as any threat presented by the
process was concerned, the test for the Loyalists was whether their views would be incorporated in the modified Hume–Adams Document that the British and Irish were working on during most of 1993. When the Downing Street Declaration was unveiled in December that year Article 5 outlined five pledges from the Irish government underpinning the principle of consent, much to the satisfaction of Ervine and his colleagues.
I remember going to Dublin and a very senior UVF member was
with me. We were both community workers, speaking on the platform
in Dublin at a community affair and getting to know people
and starting to talk to people and we met a guy … who had been a
fairly outspoken advocate for peace in the Republic of Ireland, someone
who we felt carried his own integrity. Whilst he could hardly be
described as a rampant Loyalist, coming from an IRA background,
his family had an IRA background, Old IRA background, in the
Republic of Ireland, [and] it was clear that he wasn’t a kindred
spirit of ours, maybe [he] was someone with integrity who could be
a touchstone with the Irish government. He was headhunted, the
UVF headhunted him; there are those fools who think that he somehow
ingratiated himself with the UVF and then did a great job
[but] it’s exactly the opposite way round. The UVF headhunted that
man … We’re talking 1993 here [and we did this] because I’m not
so sure we fully understood the game, and we had many, many
concerns, one being the attitude of the British government. Since
we weren’t breaking a whole lot of Delph with the British government
… we felt it was a safe option to guarantee that you never
ever, ever satisfied yourself with one answer and that therefore there
had to be other sources and other touchstones that you could touch
to assess the veracity of the information that was coming in to you.
So the Irish government became vital and Chris Hudson was actually
headhunted by the leadership of the UVF for a specific role in
mediating with the Irish government and was tested in late 1993 in
terms of insertion of material provided by Loyalism for the Downing
Street Declaration. The six key principles that were included
verbatim in the Downing Street Declaration was our indicator very
clearly that we were being heard, that not only was the conduit in
place but it was open and working
.
Q.
What type of things were being sent back and forward?
A.
Well, I think that from our own point of view it was probably a
mixture of ‘What is happening?’ and ‘This better not be happening’.
I would say that’s the simplistic way to put it, but it would be pretty
accurate. ‘What’s going on? What really is happening here? What’s
the outcome going to be? What about the principle of consent?
Where are the democratic imperatives?’ Those types of things, plus:
‘I hope to fuck this is all above board and honourable, because you
see if you play games here, this is deadly, this is very dangerous.’ It
was a hard time, I mean, it was heady days in some respects and
sometimes I look back on them and wonder why I’m not more grey,
but I have to say I’m delighted to have taken part in it and delighted
to have had the experience. I learned a lot, but, you know, the relationship
between the UVF and the Irish government was hardly
going to be particularly cordial, but the conduit worked. It was
created by the UVF, the UVF forced its way in … to take part in the
game and if the game was about peace and stability, why shouldn’t
they? Indeed you could argue that governments should have been
trying to encourage them into that position, but they were not,
absolutely not
.
The Irish government embraced it, I have to say, much more
readily than the British. In terms of understanding the need for the
conduit and understanding the need for integrity and honour in the
use of the conduit, I think the Irish were much more attuned to that
… you could argue that they saw the UVF as dangerous and
wanted to mediate and defuse whatever difficulties there may have
been but the British government would have seen the UVF as less
dangerous because it was not likely to be expressly damaging the, the
British exchequer
.
…
there had been already a conduit, the Reverend Roy Magee,
who was our conduit to Robin Eames and also was partially used to
test out the Irish government to check constantly to see was he getting
the same feedback … Robin Eames also became important in
both jurisdictions in terms of talking directly to the senior people,
but again it was all about the remeasuring and measuring and
remeasuring of what we already had been told … [The UVF] was
never satisfied with the answers that it got back unless it got a series
of answers that all concurred from different touchstones, and even
then there was a risk of being wrong. It was a very nervous time;
you could be lied to, you could be getting shafted, and they were very
conscious of that, but in the main they operated a very simple copper-
fastening process. It came down to Chris Hudson’s integrity, it came
down to Robin Eames’s integrity and [having] someone who could
call the truth if in the event you were shafted, someone [who] would
stand up and say, ‘No, this is shameful and ridiculous, this did not
happen or this was said or that was said.’ It was all the UVF had,
but it was relatively comfortable, I think, in that the UVF had done
everything that it could to get to the nitty-gritty and it was then a
question of: ‘Well, OK, and if this is true and if this is right, what is
our fallback position, what is, what is our capacity for redress apart
from violence
?’
At that stage the UVF was not offering a ceasefire. It was trying
to understand what the fuck was going on in terms of the constitutional
position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom and
what deals were being made with the IRA … The bit that worried
us all to our backbone was what is the position of the British administration
and the British were about as helpful as a fart in a spacesuit
in terms of our explorations and deliberations; indeed the Irish
government were much more forthcoming. The IRA, remember, has
diametrically opposed desires for the outcome of the political struggle
in Northern Ireland than does the UVF. None of us trusted the
British government because we had the debacle of the Anglo-Irish
Agreement, which was clearly a steamroller of the democratic rights
of the Unionist community. They’d done it before, and one could
imagine they could do it again. I remember in separate conversations
with two Taoisigh, or whatever you call them … [John]
Bruton and [Albert] Reynolds, and as far as they were concerned,
without the principle of consent nothing was possible, and they
meant it, and at least one believed that they meant it, and that was
important, absolutely vital. Their assertion [was] that central to
anything would be the principle of consent, and we were getting
that similarly from Robin Eames directly from the British prime
minister, and, and though it turned out to be that was the case,
we didn’t know whether to believe or trust them. But when you’re
getting it from two separate Taoiseachs and you’re getting it from a
British prime minister and you have, if you like, whistleblowers in
the event of dishonour, then I think it was all we could get. It all had
to fit … it all did fit and that’s why there was confusion in the UVF.
We didn’t believe the Provos were going there; we didn’t see the
Provos pulling their people to that position, and we struggled with
that, but eventually you had to take it on face value. If it walks like
a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a fucking duck, and
we knew the game was absolutely, absolutely on
.
The Downing Street Declaration was another indicator of the
game being on, but eight months for the Provos to respond to the
Downing Street Declaration was a serious confusion, and I remember,
about April of 1994, big questions about whether the Provos
were going for it or not, whether it was really going to happen or
not, and shortly thereafter there were rumours of ceasefire from
the end of April 1994 and that ceasefire didn’t come till August,
and the UVF leadership was watching and listening and all of a
sudden then you started to see that there was the odd Unionist
politician who started to know a wee bit about it. Now whether
we were ahead of them, I think we were. I think we were way ahead
of them
.
I can remember going down to Armagh to meet [Archbishop]
Robin Eames along with military people from the UDA, UVF and
Red Hand [Commando] … They had built a relationship with him
in the first instance through Roy Magee, then with him directly
about his bona fides as a monitor, in other words: ‘If this all goes
belly up maybe you can just tell the truth here.’ I refuse to think of it
as a confidence-builder, but a barrier-diminisher. One of the most
fundamental issues for the UVF was a single issue, it was the
principle of consent, that was a simple requirement, also that …
Northern Ireland be a separate [unit] for the principle of consent,
that it wasn’t going to be exercised on an island-wide basis and it
wasn’t a United Kingdom or British Isles-wide basis; it was expressly
the people of Northern Ireland. There are some people who chastise
us for having the audacity to discuss the issue [but] for me it’s the
epitome of democracy. Others say, ‘Well, what happens if they
outbreed you?’ Well, I think we needed to be dealing with very
straightforward democratic concepts, and there is no greater democratic
concept than self-determination by the people of Northern
Ireland. And that principle of consent was enshrined not only in
legislation in the United Kingdom parliament, but legislation in the
Republic of Ireland’s parliament. Forget about Articles 2 and 3; for
me the insertion into Irish government legislation of the principle
of consent for Northern Ireland was fundamental, absolutely fundamental.
The UVF got what it wanted; the UVF effectively got what
it wanted
…
I think released prisoners were important, some very important
[in all this]; they were coming out [of jail] with attitudes that were
more liberal, and I think they had an effect on the ground in the
communities that they came from. But then there were others who
had a direct role or relationship with the [UVF] leadership, and
they were significant. I think one of them in particular was hugely
significant and a second one was slightly less so; the first one was
Gusty Spence, and the second was Billy Hutchinson. Billy Hutchinson
was in a role, a very unofficial role in liaison across the wall
[with Republicans], which was of significance … I think the [UVF]
leadership would probably have felt bolstered [by all this], felt confirmed
in the direction that they were travelling, because it was
travelling, it was an exploration, it was a process of exploration, it
had all the hallmarks of horror, but behind that horror was a clear
search to find out what was going on … There was confusion on
many occasions; the UVF had its own Provo experts, and then you
had the political analysis, and very often the political analysis was
at absolute variance with what anybody believed the Provos would
or would not do. They were very intense discussions and quite
brilliant discussions … but you could have the UVF Provo experts
saying, ‘Well, this doesn’t add up, they’re not going there’, and the
political analysis we were getting and the feedback we were getting
was saying, ‘They are going somewhere and it is to a better place,
potentially a better place. The question for us is what price did they
get for it, and is the dealing between the British and the Provos
detrimental to Unionism?’ So when the UVF finally arrived at a
position in 1994 it was a relatively comfortable position; it knew it
had no choice because the game was on, and the game was going on
with or without them, and indeed the IRA wanted the game to go
on most definitely without Loyalists
.