Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Politics: The Provos Have Second ThoughtsAuthor(s): Robert BradfordSource: Fortnight, No. 187 (Jul. - Aug., 1982), pp. 4-5Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25547024 .

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4/Fortnight

Politics

THE PROVOS

HAVE SECOND

THOUGHTS

After last year's hunger strike crisis and the rash of attacks culminating in the assassina tion of Rev. Robert Bradford last November, the Provisional IRA has been deceptively quiet. A Fortnight special correspondent ex amines the tensions inside the organisation.

Rev. Ian Paisley. The decision had not been

approved by the leadership in Dublin or Belfast, and there was no question of the IRA sanctioning an

'open season' on loyalist leaders ? in fact in

Paisley's case the IRA has been keener to keep him alive. The decision had been taken under the 'local commander's prerogative' rule, which dictates that the commander of the IRA in any locality always has the final say on military operations in his area; he can initiate operations without sanction from above and can cancel operations which have been organised by senior IRA officers in Dublin or Belfast.

In this instance it seems that regional rivalries within the IRA strongly motivated the decision: Belfast had just pulled off a 'coup' with Bradford's assassination and South Armagh felt obliged to show that they could go one better. The plan to kill

Paisley was based on local intelligence that the DUP leader was planning a political visit to Belleeks, a

village not far from the South Armagh border. IRA leaders in Dundalk were given 24 hours notice of the

visit and gave the go-ahead to shoot him. A 'hit team' was hurriedly put together, a plan devised and safe houses for the gunmen's escape earmarked.

The attack on Paisley never took place, of course, and the reasons why have become part of a bitter

controversy within the IRA over military tactics and

organisation. The debate has inevitably spilled over

into politics, with the divisions within the republican movement over the decision to stand for the Northern Irish assembly elections and the general leftwards drift now becoming increasingly open.

Paisley survived his visit to South Armagh for the

simple reason that the IRA could not organise the

plan in time to execute it: it took 48 hours for the IRA to get its gunmen together, armed and across the border, by which time Paisley was safely back in

Belfast. Senior local activists put the blame for the failure on cumbersome deficiencies in the cell structure system adopted by the IRA from 1977

onwards; they and others are now calling for a

drastic rethink.

The IRA reorganisation into cells was forced on the movement by RUC and Army successes and in

particular by the interrogation rooms at Castlereagh and Gough Barracks. The old brigade/battalion/ company system had been thoroughly infiltrated by the RUC Special Branch, the names of IRA members had become well known and all the police had to do was to arrest suspects and force confessions out of them.

For a while it looked as if the IRA had been beaten. During 1976 and 1977 however, a number of

young Northern IRA men were released from the Maze prison with ideas about changing things. They had spent the previous four or five years in an intensive debate about the IRA's political direction and had drawn up political manifestoes and plans for the organisation's future. They were all convinced that the IRA should become more political, that it should identify strongly with left wing politics, and above all that it should gear itself for a long war of attrition against the British. They recognised that the IRA would never experience the success of the

early 1970s again and that the emphasis in the future should be on destabilising the Northern Ireland state.

They faced one major problem however: if they wanted to put their ideas into practice they would have to capture the IRA Army Council. Under IRA rules, the Army Council and the Chief of Staff are appointed by the IRA Executive, a 14 or 15

strong body which traditionally has been composed of older republicans, and which acts more or less as a

repository of republican thinking. The Executive in turn is elected by an annual IRA Army convention

consisting of local commanders throughout the

country.

However when the IRA is engaged in a campaign the convention does not meet and the last Executive elected stays in office until the campaign is over. Thus the Executive in existence in 1977 was the same as had existed in 1969 just after the split from the Official IRA. Its members were old and conservative and the Army Council members it

appointed, and replaced when necessary, reflected their old fashioned values. The first target for the

young Northerners therefore was to overturn the

executive, and during 1977, at the point of a gun, a

majority of the Executive was ousted. Before long new appointments to the Army Council were made, and although strongly resisted, the young Northern ers had, by the end of 1979, achieved their aim. They controlled the Army Council, controlled the IRA and controlled the IRA's politics.

The military reorganisation which they put into effect has been praised by experts in guerrilla war and has even drawn grudging admiration from the British Army. The cell system successfully stopped the Special Branch infiltration and rescued the IRA from defeat ? but at a price. It robbed the IRA of the sort of flexibility and ability to react quickly

which in the early Seventies had posed such a threat. In an IRA cell, members can be brought together from a fairly large pool for a specific operation and then disbanded ? the chances are high that they will never see each other again and they will certainly not know the names of all the other potential cell

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Fortnight/5

The IRA strategy since 1977 has meant a larger role for women. Is Sat strategy on the way out?

members. The only people who do know are the local commander and some of his senior aides. The job of.

assembling a cell team can therefore take some time, and the capacity for spontaneous action is virtually non-existent. It was this factor which probably saved Ian Paisley's life.

The emphasis in IRA operations since the *

reorganisation has been on well planned 'spectac ulars', bombing or ambushes which can take five or

six weeks to plan. Such a tactic is prey to disruption and there are estimates that for every ten military operations planned by the IRA only two or three are

actually carried out because of this. The military

profile of the IRA can sometimes appear deceptively low by dint of the stress on secrecy.

The reorganisation also isolated the IRA from their home bases and support. Under the old system the IRA could expand or contract almost at will ?

for instance, after 'Bloody Sunday' in January 1972 it had no real problem accommodating the flood of

angry new recruits. The cell system not only discourages that but, because of the high standards now demanded by the leadership, actively discrim inates against expansion. Dissidents in the senior ranks of the IRA are now blaming this factor for the IRA's inability to capitalise on the anger created by the hunger strike deaths last year.

Above all, the cell system is coming under

increasing internal criticism because it smacks of

caution, a quality whose absence in the early Seventies accounted for much of the IRA's success. It is in this light that the moves to 'go political' and

'go left' ? popular as they are with only a score or so

of senior officers ? are also being attacked with

growing vigour. The IRA and the bulk of their

supporters are either apolitical or deeply conserv

ative. The militarists in their ranks see the

reorganisation and the political activity as a substitute for real action ? the conservatives see those moves as the start of a process that will lead to the same 'constitutional' path now trodden by (Sinn

Fein) The Workers' Party. Both seem agreed that changes should come and

that in the first instance the changes should be

military: that the cell system should be scrapped and the IRA revert to the old style of organisation. Should they win the day, not only will any chance of

the IRA remaining political disappear, but the IRA

itself, flushed as it is with money and arms after the

hunger strikes, will pose a greater military threat than it has for some years.

The Law_

THE PEOPLE

AGAINST DIPLOCK

Norman Shannon, a Belfast barrister, outlines the findings of a pilot survey carried out under his coordination in Belfast and

Derry to inquire into public attitddes to the administration of justice in Northern Ireland, with particular reference to the no-jury Diplock court

system._

have called for the repeal ^^^^^^ sfi^^^=aa^?

of emergency legislation and/or the reform of the

no-jury Diplock courts, which deal with 'terrorist

type' offences. The government has responded by appointing Lord Jellicoe to conduct a review of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and announcing a

forthcoming inquiry into the operation of the

Emergency Provisions Act.

Against this background a group of lawyers and law students carried out a pilot survey in mid-June in which they asked 132 people in Belfast and Dairy their attitudes to the Diplock court system, the use

of confession evidence, the desirability of juries, independent complaint procedures against the

security forces, a Bill of Rights, and the use of

plastic bullets. We presented our findings to a

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