Just A Normal Party

 

Killing Rage

Eamon Collins was a man of many parts: a customs official; a critic of Sinn Fein; a would-be Sinn Fein councillor; a member of South Down PIRA; a member of PIRA's infamous internal security unit; a prisoner turned supergrass (who later retracted his statement); a critic of PIRA and ultimately a murder victim.

Collins led a complicated life that ended in a horrific death at the hands of his former PIRA associates. Some may say that was a fitting end for someone who had been actively involved in terrorist activity, including his likely involvement in several murders, and they may be right, but Collins' life does provide a window into the life of a PIRA terrorist, the personalities and tensions within the "republican movement" at that time, and the costs that can come from being part of that violent sub-culture.

I'll have to assume that there was genuine disillusionment, doubts and regret, from being complicit in murders and other terrorist activity. It's fair to say that writing an unflattering book (Killing Rage) about his time in PIRA, and appearing in a related TV documentary, was hardly the actions of a dedicated supporter. So, I think that I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that he underwent some kind of transformation.

Eamon Collins' book covers his time as a member of PIRA, in the late 1970s and early 80s, but I only intend commenting on a few pages that I think are quite revealing about PIRA and Sinn Fein in the early 1980s.

John Joe and Scap

Collins was a member of South Down PIRA, which for people unfamiliar with Northern Ireland, is as the name suggests, operated primarily in the south of County Down. Collins was employed as a customs official in Newry at the time, working for the British Crown whilst also acting as an intelligence officer for the local PIRA unit.

At the beginning of chapter 16 of his book, Collins details a meeting in the early 1980s with another IRA member from his unit named 'Hardbap', during which he is informed that he has been chosen to be part of the IRA's internal security, commonly known as 'the Nutting Squad'. The name of the unit refers to shooting people in the head.

Collins is then taken by 'Hardbap' to meet two members of internal security, known as 'John Joe' and 'Scap'. John Joe was the now deceased John Joe Magee, a former British soldier who was in-charge of the unit. 'Scap' was John Joe's second-in-command and Collins states he was small, barrel-chested with Mediterranean looks. There has in recent years been commentary on Scap's identity and there is an ongoing police investigation into the activities of PIRA's internal security unit, so I'll just move swiftly along and not dwell any further on Scap.

During the meeting, Collins is informed that he'll be continuing in his normal duties for South Down PIRA, as well as performing his security duties. He's also informed that the security role means he is part of the 'northern command staff'. The 'northern command' was the command team and staff for running day to day operations of PIRA in Northern Ireland and along the border counties south of the border.

Although Martin McGuinness was dabbling in politics in the early 1980s and had to step down as PIRA Chief of Staff, he did remain on the Army Council. After he had finished campaigning for elected office, McGuinness became Officer Commanding (OC) of northern command and during his time in that role, John Joe and Scap would have been under his command. Therefore McGuinness was well aware of what John Joe, Scap and others in the Nutting Squad were doing, up to and including their involvement in multiple murders, none of which occurred without authorisation of an IRA member at Army Council level, such as McGuinness.

When people now speak of McGuinness as being a man of peace, just bear in mind that below the fluffy PR image, the reality is someone who was probably on the psychopathic spectrum and besides his involvement in numerous terrorist atrocities, he was also complicit in brutal interrogations and murders of suspected informers.

I've provided the above information, to help you understand the type of people and environment within which Collins was operating, as it helps illuminate what comes next.

 

Rumblings in South Armagh

At another meeting Collins attended with South Armagh PIRA, a high ranking member referred to as the "Quartermaster General" was present, and a "south Armagh Sinn Fein politician" that Collins respected. Collins states in the book that the politician, "was a man who realised that Sinn Fein had a limited role to play in the armed struggle to remove the Brits."

Collins is informed by the quartermaster that the meeting was arranged, as they are aware of his opposition to the growing power of Sinn Fein and that Sinn Fein was "the IRA's Achilles heel." The quartermaster and politician state that Sinn Fein's growth, showed that PIRA's current leadership were at best inept, and at worst on the verge of ending the military campaign, by stealth. The two men are of the view that the best resources are being directed to Sinn Fein and "that the IRA was taking a back seat for the first time in the modern history of the physical-force Republican movement." They want Collins to "help stop the rot."

The quartermaster tells Collins that he wants him to join Sinn Fein in Newry and the politician says that he will put Collins on the list of candidates for the next council elections. The two men want Collins to take over Newry Sinn Fein "and run it as an extension of the IRA." This was to be part of a strategy across the country "to prevent Sinn Fein developing independently," that "the needs of the IRA came first and Sinn Fein had to exist for the convenience of the IRA." Collins states he was told to "take over the local Sinn Fein branch and to organise, run and develop it in the way that I would run, organise and develop any other IRA unit. The IRA and Sinn Fein had to become one and the same." Collins later states, "What I had just been told was nothing less than an IRA strategy to turn Sinn Fein once more into a puppet organisation."

Armalite and Ballot Box

I can advise that Collins was not selected as a Sinn Fein candidate for the council elections, due to two issues: his employment as a customs officer may have become problematic if he was also a Sinn Fein councillor; and prior to the Sinn Fein selection process, he had publicly criticised Gerry Adams during an argument at the funeral of an IRA terrorist named Brendan Watters.

Looking back on events nearly four decades ago, it is interesting and amusing to see, with the benefit of hindsight, how factions and indeed senior players within PIRA viewed one another. It's amusing because in later years, public statements did not necessarily reflect what people actually thought of one another. It's also interesting to see how PIRA, including hardliners in south Armagh and ultimately the PIRA Army Council, shifted their position over the years. This shift of course was expedited by the activities and successes of the security forces and intelligence services.

Most interesting of all, is that many within PIRA, including people at Army Council level, viewed Sinn Fein as not only being a threat to "physical-force Republicanism" (or terrorism to be more precise), but also that it should be subservient to PIRA. Sinn Fein was considered to be something that was to be used, "once more" as a "puppet organisation." The "once more" reveals a lot about the past relationship and that by the early 1980s, there were people within PIRA who felt that the balance of power had shifted. The comment, "to prevent Sinn Fein developing independently," suggests that at the time, Sinn Fein wasn't operating independently and that people within PIRA intended to ensure that remained the case.

Collins’ comments would seem to support the often stated opinion during the Troubles, that Sinn Fein was “the political wing” of PIRA.

Collins’ meeting with the PIRA quartermaster general and Sinn Fein politician was in 1984, in the post hunger strike days when Sinn Fein was in the ascendant thanks to its boost in the polls from the death of ten terrorist prisoners. The “military wing” sensed the Adams camp was taking over the Republican movement. This ties-in with the claim that in 1984, Ivor Bell was a senior member of PIRA and the subject of a court martial, resulting from an attempted move against Adams. Bell had for years been a friend and associate of Gerry Adams, but it is claimed he came to resent the direction that PIRA was taking and opposed plans to spend increased amounts of money on election campaigns.

An interesting side note is that a supporter of Bell at the time, was a fellow hardliner named Danny McCann, who was killed in 1987 by the SAS in Gibraltar, whilst he was engaged in a plot to detonate a car bomb.

 

Return to South Armagh

In chapter 18, Collins is taken again by John Joe to meet ‘the quartermaster general’ in south Armagh. It becomes apparent the subtext to the conversation is that the quartermaster wants his own security officer as he feels the internal security unit was under the control of PIRA’s Belfast Brigade. This reveals the internal politics of PIRA and an ongoing power struggle. The quartermaster doesn’t like Belfast PIRA having any power over what happens on his turf. The quartermaster feels that the movement’s power is becoming concentrated in Belfast and as Collins puts it, “among aspiring politicians who were stealthily moving towards political compromise and abandonment of the armed struggle”.

At the time of this conversation with the quartermaster, Eamon Collins agrees with his analysis and sees his role as a security officer, as an opportunity to travel to Belfast and “subvert the growing power of the Gerry Adams group”. Again, this is an unflattering perspective of Belfast Brigade and the Sinn Fein leadership, but as we now know, years later, south Armagh PIRA eventually fell into line with the Sinn Fein / Adams strategy.

 

End Game

Whilst there will obviously be many within Irish Republicanism who dismiss Eamon Collins’ account of his time in PIRA, I think it provides a valuable perspective of life inside a terrorist group, including the internal politics and relationships of people operating in a sub-culture, that necessitates the rationalisation and participation in mass murder.

Eamon Collins’ account of the PIRA Sinn Fein relationship is an interesting backdrop to current events and public utterances about Sinn Fein’s supposed normality in the 2020s. In what is now supposedly a post-conflict period, we are told by Sinn Fein and others that PIRA has gone away, but intelligence assessments state that the PIRA Army Council still exists and “influences” Sinn Fein strategy.

On the one hand we are told that PIRA has gone away, but yet security assessments say otherwise. If reports of PIRA’s demise are factually inaccurate, can we be sure that Sinn Fein is just a normal political party? When we are told that there are no “shadowy figures” from the PIRA Army Council controlling Sinn Fein, it is not unreasonable for us to recall Eamon Collins’ account of how senior members of PIRA viewed Sinn Fein as a “puppet organisation”, that shouldn’t be allowed to operate independently.

We are therefore left to judge for ourselves, what happened inside a secretive, subversive movement. We are left to wonder if everyone in PIRA has retired and left to tend to their gardens, leaving Sinn Fein alone on the playing field, or did Sinn Fein simply take the dominant and public role in the relationship? Did PIRA opponents to those “aspiring politicians”, become converts to the new, rebranded and repackaged death cult? Did the obvious penetration of PIRA by agents and the increased likelihood of imprisonment, help with their conversion and usher them into new roles?

We can only wonder, but the inability of Sinn Fein to unambiguously condemn PIRA terrorism including murders, and their eulogising of PIRA members, does nothing to dispel any notions that observers may have about how little some things have changed since the 1980s.

 

The IRA's Heart of Darkness ~ Part 2

Legitimate Targets

In the first part of this blog, we looked at the IRA’s collaboration with the Nazi regime from the mid 1930s onwards. Eight decades later, despite everything we know about the IRA’s activities, followers of the Provisional IRA death cult still leap to the defence of former IRA leader Sean Russell, if anyone labels him as a Nazi collaborator. So let us judge Russell on the charge of collaboration, based on what is apparently PIRA’s own idea of collaboration.

During the recent conflict known as ‘the Troubles’, PIRA’s list of targets was not confined to police officers, soldiers, judges and politicians. The ever expanding list of so called “legitimate targets” would include people considered to be ‘collaborators’, such as: contractors doing building or maintenance work on police and military buildings; civilians making a living working as cleaners or in the canteens of their local police station; shop owners serving police officers; businesses that supplied goods or services to the police or military, and anyone else that PIRA deemed suitable for murdering. The brutal reality is that everyone was potentially a legitimate target, the only thing required was an excuse and if an excuse didn’t already exist, one could be conjured up.

Now let us look at Sean Russell. He was a leading member of the IRA and spent three months in Berlin, meeting with senior ranking Nazis, before being placed on a U-boat and sent home to assist in attacking a country that was the last hope for millions across Europe. The Germans had already invaded a number of countries and the Panzers were rolling across France whilst Russell was in Berlin, but that did not deter him. Although the pogrom against Jewish people was already underway, Kristallnacht for example having occurred in November 1938, the IRA looked the other way. The IRA were actively assisting Germany in time of war and they were willing to sacrifice everyone in occupied countries.

I would argue that if PIRA considered a civilian working in the canteen of a British military base, to be a collaborator, then by their rationale it is an unarguable fact the IRA were collaborating with the Nazis.

 

The Horror

Martin McGuinness joined the IRA in 1969. After two periods of imprisonment in the Republic of Ireland, related to terrorist offences, this senior member of PIRA’s Derry Brigade supposedly left the group in 1974. 

Martin McGuinness

                                             

The truth of course was that McGuinness continued in his terrorist career and in 1978 became PIRA’s Chief of Staff. Although he would step aside as Chief of Staff in the early 1980s to run in an election as a Sinn Fein candidate, he was still on the ruling Army Council and soon after became the Officer Commanding of PIRA’s ‘Northern Command’. He also remained a high profile member of Sinn Fein. During the Troubles, Sinn Fein was commonly referred to as “the political wing of the IRA” and it was viewed by many as being inextricably linked and subservient to its military wing, PIRA. McGuinness is an example of the overlap between the two wings.

It is unlikely you will find anyone in PIRA Sinn Fein who will accept all of this as fact. If I may paraphrase Martin McGuinness, they have their own interpretation of the past, in the same way they have their own interpretation for Sean Russell’s collaboration.

In his role as OC of Northern Command, McGuinness was regularly briefed on planned terrorist attacks and he authorised atrocities such as the bombing of Enniskillen’s war memorial on Remembrance Day in 1987. Three years later he also authorised the murder of Patsy Gillespie, a civilian chef in a military canteen. 

Patsy Gillespie

                                                               

In October 1990, PIRA terrorists chained Patsy Gillespie to the seat of a van containing a 1000lb bomb and forced him to drive towards a military border checkpoint in Coshquin, County Londonderry. It was one of three similar attacks that evening and this reveals coordination, a central controller in the form of Martin McGuinness.

As Patsy Gillespie neared the checkpoint, he courageously tried to get out of the vehicle to warn the soldiers but the terrorists had rigged the vehicle so that the bomb would detonate if the door was opened. Patsy Gillespie and five soldiers were murdered in a huge explosion. Martin McGuinness and his fellow PIRA terrorists viewed Patsy Gillespie as a collaborator, working for what they would call, “Crown forces”.

Coshquin

 

During an event in Oxford in 2013, whilst playing the role of peacemaker, McGuinness refused to condemn the murder of Patsy Gillespie. When an interviewer asked if the attack at Coshquin was anything other than cold-blooded murder, McGuinness replied: “Other people will have their own interpretation of that”. Ah, of course, their own interpretation about murders. Well, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, had his interpretation of the attack. He called it the work of Satan. That sounds about right.

McGuinness the “peacemaker” who had supposedly been on “a journey”, not only felt the Coshquin murders were justified, he saw Patsy Gillespie as a ‘collaborator’ who deserved to die and he had no regrets about authorising the attack. There was little if any dissent within PIRA Sinn Fein on this matter, indeed when McGuinness died a few years ago, many hailed him as a friend, a great leader and an inspiration. We can only wonder if they all concurred with their hero’s interpretation of the Coshquin bombing. 

Although the McGuinness “peacemaker” narrative has been pushed hard, he was really just a pragmatist who knew PIRA was being defeated in an intelligence war and that it was time for the leadership to cut a deal. There was no epiphany on the road to Damascus. No regrets about his complicity in mass murder, torture, the intentional targeting of civilians for murder, including children. It is hard not to view him as sitting somewhere on the psychopathic spectrum, but yet, as with his predecessors such as Sean Russell, the true believers within Irish Republicanism cope with their cognitive dissonance, by rationalising away awkward facts and embracing the reimagined and Disneyfied propaganda.

PIRA Sinn Fein members and supporters are heavily invested, psychologically, in their relationship with their cult. Despite any doubts that they may have had, they internalised the propaganda. They cannot afford to accept the truth about IRA terrorism as that would mean accepting their own complicity in mass murder. All those who supported violent Irish Republicanism during the Troubles and before, were enablers for killers satisfying a hate-filled bloodlust.

The IRA did not act alone. Others in society provided assistance to PIRA. Whatever form of support people gave, they have their own share of the blame for the horrors that occurred. It is therefore easier to sing rebel songs, attend IRA commemorations or funerals, and wallow in victimhood, rather than admit their own guilt, or repent for their sins. It doesn’t matter if it is something from 1990 or 1940, they have to believe the IRA mythology, the lies told by the cult’s leaders. If they allow themselves to doubt the validity of what the cult has been telling them over the years, their entire belief system could start to unravel.

 

The Niedermayer Family

As you may recall from the first instalment of this blog, in 2003 the PIRA Chief of Staff, Brian Keenan, spoke at a commemoration event for Sean Russell. Keenan praised Russell and called him a patriot, glossing over the problematic issue of Nazi collaboration.

As with Martin McGuinness, Keenan is also considered a hero within the PIRA cult. To any right minded person it is almost incomprehensible that degenerates such as this are held in high esteem, but when we look at the horrors that have been rationalised, it is easier to understand how the true believers within the PIRA cult, willingly fall into line with the narrative about Sean Russell.

One of Keenan’s many victims was Thomas Niedermayer, the director of a Grundig factory in Belfast and the West German honorary counsel in Northern Ireland. PIRA terrorists kidnapped Mr Niedermayer from his Belfast home in December 1973. His two young daughters witnessed the abduction. That was the last time they saw their father. In 1980, based upon information received, plain clothes police officers posing as workmen found Mr Niedermayer’s remains buried under a refuse dump. He had been bound and gagged and forensic examination revealed that he had received severe injuries to the head from a blunt instrument. Two members of PIRA were later imprisoned in relation to the murder. One of the killers said that their victim was buried face down so that, “he could dig himself deeper”.

Although Brian Keenan was never held to account in court for the murder, intelligence suggests he planned the kidnapping. Keenan was a former employee and union activist at the Grundig factory managed by Thomas Niedermayer.

The intention behind the kidnapping was to hold Mr Niedermayer hostage, in return for the release of two PIRA bombers named Dolours and Marian Price. A month earlier, the Price sisters had been imprisoned for their role in the March 1973 detonation of car bombs in London. Two out of four car bombs exploded, killing one person and injuring two hundred. Some people would say Brian Keenan had responsibility for controlling the bombing campaign in England. He had been the Quartermaster for PIRA’s Belfast Brigade in the early 1970s and had risen quickly to the role of Quartermaster General. The kidnapping of Thomas Niedermayer was his attempt to free some of his team, although it clearly didn’t go according to plan.

It’s also worth noting that another member of the PIRA gang, also convicted for his role in the bombings, was the then 19 year old Gerry Kelly, now a leading Sinn Fein MLA in Stormont and the party’s spokesman on policing.

 Gerry Kelly Under Arrest 

                                                               

Dolours Price claimed in 2010, that prior to her time in PIRA’s England department, she had been a member of a secret unit called ‘the Unknowns’. This unit was responsible for the abduction, murder and secret burials of the PIRA victims subsequently named ‘the disappeared’. Price also claimed that Gerry Adams commanded the Unknowns, but Adams has refuted this allegation. It is an interesting turn of events that as a result of PIRA’s attempt to free Dolours Price, Thomas Niedermayer became one of the ‘disappeared’. 

Dolours Price

                                                                 

The aftershock of Thomas Niedermayer’s murder continued to take its toll on his family for over two decades. In 1990, Thomas’ widow, Ingeborg, returned to Ireland and within a few days committed suicide by walking into the ocean. The following year their daughter Renate also committed suicide, as did their second daughter Gabrielle in 1996. A few years later, Gabrielle’s husband also committed suicide.

The  Normalisation of Mass Murder

In May 2008, following the death of Brian Keenan from cancer, men with interesting backstories such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness carried the coffin at his funeral. During an oration in West Belfast prior to cremation at Roselawn, Gerry Adams praised Keenan for his “pivotal” role in the peace process. Five years earlier, Keenan had stood in a Dublin park and called a Nazi collaborator a patriot. It’s the narrative that matters.

Also in attendance were other notables that the news media like to call “senior Republicans”, such as Pat Doherty, Sean Murray, Brian Gillen, Martin Ferris, Gerry Kelly and Bobby Storey. All were there to pay homage to a terrorist.

I suspect no-one present at Keenan’s funeral mentioned the Niedermayers and the horror Keenan visited upon the family. The truth tends to be the first thing that is jettisoned in the manufacture of PIRA mythology. It’s hard to extol the virtues of someone, whilst picturing one of their victims buried face down under a dump, or the victim’s family committing suicide, one by one.

It appears that no act of depravity is beyond rationalisation in the PIRA cult. Anything goes. The ends always justify the means.

The nearly three decades long campaign of terrorism has in recent years been reimagined by PIRA into a human rights struggle. Of course the true believers are fully on board with the narrative, despite the fact PIRA’s retrospectively designated human activists, murdered over 1700 people and injured thousands more; intentionally targeted civilians; ‘kneecapped’ and exiled teenagers; murdered and ‘disappeared’ victims; used torture; groomed and recruited child soldiers; covered up child abuse and rape by PIRA members and on and on and on...

Decades of conditioning and social learning within a corrupted sub-culture produced people who were morally adrift. An authoritarian secular political religion preached hate and condoned violence, warped values and social norms. Daily indoctrination based around a victim / oppressor narrative, beguiled unlawful souls, removing their natural restraint to savagely killing fellow human beings.

The arrival of a peace process did not result in retrospection and repentance. People are still in thrall to the death cult and its mythology. They talk of looking forward, moving on, but they are trapped by a bloody past, much of which is a lie. Many of them possibly sense that the past is a fabrication, but they all engage in a conspiracy of self-deception rather than face the horror of ‘disappearances’, ‘human bombs’, Nazi collaboration and all the rest

And into a community in which murder has been normalised and the criminal is idolised, another generation is born.

First part of this blog is available here.

 

 

 

 

 

The IRA's Heart of Darkness

“I tried to break the spell, the heavy, mute spell of wilderness that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the bush, towards the gleam of the fires, the throb of the drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.”

Joseph Conrad ~ Heart of Darkness

 

Into The Darkness

As the Nazis swept across Europe with Teutonic efficiency, Sean Russell was living the good life in Berlin. He was ensconced in a private villa, courtesy of Mein Fuhrer, with the status of diplomat and an Austrian aristocrat acting as his interpreter and chauffeur. Sean Russell was the IRA’s man in Berlin and a Nazi collaborator with a beguiled, unlawful soul.

Sean Russell

                                                                   

Eighty years later, Irish Republicans are still in deep denial about IRA collaboration with the Nazis. There has been a mass disconnect from reality. It’s hard to put a positive spin on Nazism, what with the occupation of numerous countries, a global military conflict and the Holocaust. The IRA command had leapt enthusiastically into bed with a totalitarian regime, but later when the Third Reich was in tatters, they opted for a damage limitation strategy, playing down their relationship with Mr Hitler. The IRA’s support base clung onto the propaganda and didn’t let go. Internalising a nonsensical narrative was better than accepting the disturbing, morally bankrupt truth.

Over the years any Irish Republican commentary on Sean Russell and his merry band of rosy cheeked IRA compatriots, has emphasised how un-Nazi they were. We are told their relationship with the Nazi regime was not, repeat NOT collaboration, no matter how much it might look, sound and smell like collaboration. The party line is that the IRA were not Nazis and that there were justifiable reasons for a non-collaborative, no strings attached relationship with Nazis.

An alternative perspective is that it’s irrelevant if Sean Russell or the rest of the IRA command were card carrying Nazis, or completely uninterested in European politics. They were seeking support from the Nazis and offering to help them in return with their invasion plans for Britain, whilst other countries were toppling like dominoes during the Blitzkrieg. This can only be described as collaboration, no matter how many coats of gloss you apply to the IRA’s reimagined past.

After the war, Sean Russell was considered so un-Nazi by the IRA’s true believers that in 1951 a statue was erected in his honour, in Dublin’s Fairview Park. A crowd of five thousand turned up for the statue’s grand unveiling. Throughout the decades, when the IRA and its cheerleaders have been forced to choose between awkward facts that show ’the boys’ in an unfavourable light, or a mythology so heavily sugar coated it should come with a health warning for diabetics, they’ve reached for mythology every time. 

In 2003, Mary Lou McDonald, the then Sinn Fein EU MEP candidate and now Sinn Fein president, spoke at a commemoration for the reimagined and Disneyfied Sean Russell. That would be the same Mary Lou who has been insisting more recently that Sinn Fein is just a normal political party. Sharing the platform that day with Mary Lou was Brian Keenan, who happened to be the Chief of Staff of the PIRA Army Council. Obviously Mary Lou was unaware of this, so we can only imagine her surprise if someone subsequently mentioned that fact to her.

Keenan of course praised Sean Russell and called him a patriot. As with all senior members of PIRA, when you have a catalogue of atrocities in your own past, it’s best not to set a precedent by critiquing other members of your death cult. It’s important for members of a terrorist group responsible for mass murder, maiming and wanton destruction, to circle the wagons and form a mutual appreciation society. There are reputations and an IRA mythology to protect, so you don’t dump on those who came before, and in later years the next generation of murderers will stand in front of microphones and eulogise you. 

Brian Keenan

                                                                    

The IRA Nazi Mating Dance

Now for some details about the collaboration that wasn’t really collaboration... apparently.

The IRA had their first direct talks with the Nazi regime in 1937, when the then Chief of Staff, Tom Barry, travelled to Germany to seek support for attacks against the British army in Northern Ireland. Barry’s plans were rejected the following year at an IRA convention when his successor, Sean Russell, put forward his own grand plan for an alliance with Germany.

Russell sought the help of his IRA comrade James O’Donovan, to produce a plan for a bombing campaign in England. An objective of the bomb attacks in English cities was to display the IRA’s capabilities to the Germans. What became known as the ‘S Plan’ was to be the IRA’s mating call to Berlin.

James O'Donovan

                                                                

In January 1939 O’Donovan sent a formal declaration of war by letter to the British Foreign Secretary. The letter included an ultimatum for the British military to withdraw from Northern Ireland within four days. The bombings that followed soon after had the desired effect on the Germans. Early in February 1939 an agent from the Abwehr (Military intelligence) named Oscar Pfaus, was dispatched to Ireland for talks with Russell and O’Donovan. Pfaus informed the two men that his superiors would be keen to meet IRA representatives and discuss assistance.

James O’Donovan set sail for Germany and held a series of meetings in Hamburg with his new best friends in the Abwehr, discussing IRA resources, capabilities and various issues of mutual interest. The Germans also set up a means of coded communication and provided contact details for Abwehr agents.

As no money was forthcoming from Germany, Sean Russell set off on a fundraising trip to America, meeting up with Joe McGarrity, the leader of Clan na Gael. It was through McGarrity that Russell had initially made contact with German intelligence. It was the prospect of financial and military assistance from Germany, that had earlier helped Russell secure the role of IRA Chief of Staff. Whilst Russell was in America, Stephen Hayes was appointed the new Chief of Staff.

In April 1939, O’Donovan returned to Hamburg for further discussions with the Abwehr, hoping to secure the promise of weapons and radios, but the only outcome from the trip was the setting up of a courier route.

In the middle of August 1939, two weeks before Germany invaded Poland, James O’Donovan was back in Hamburg for his third and final meeting with his Abwehr contacts. On this occasion O’Donovan stated that the IRA was seeking German support for the occupation of Northern Ireland. Whilst this was not ruled out by the Abwehr, they requested that the IRA focused for the time being on British military targets in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the UK. O’Donovan also requested weapons, ammunition and explosives, but these failed to materialise. Germans agents did however transport money to the IRA and a radio link was established.

In the closing days of August 1939, as Britain edged closer to war with Germany, the IRA continued to detonate bombs in England. On the 25^th August 1939, an IRA bicycle bomb exploded in Coventry, killing five people and injuring over seventy. Meanwhile in Dublin, the IRA stole truckloads of weapons and ammunition from the Irish army, but then managed to lose it all when police discovered where it was concealed. The Coventry bombing and Dublin arms theft led to the introduction of emergency powers in Ireland and the internment of IRA leaders.

It may be worth noting at this juncture that Northern Ireland was created in 1921 and virtually from the outset was under attack from the IRA. For now, I will leave it to readers to consider how IRA activity, including their plotting with Nazis and campaigns of terrorism, impacted not only on relations between Northern Ireland and its neighbour across the border, but also on relations between people living in Northern Ireland.

 

What Did You Do During The War?

In the summer of 1940, Sean Russell spent three months in Berlin having meetings with his German allies, including a conference in early August with the Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Admiral Canaris the head of the Abwehr and his deputy Erwin von Lahousen. Also present was Edmund Veesenmayer of the SS, who had previously been involved in the invasion plans for Czechoslovakia and Poland. In March 1940 Veesenmayer was given the responsibility for trying to move neutral Ireland into war against Britain. Veesenmayer was a specialist in what we now euphemistically call “regime change” and his presence at the meeting points to the intentions of the Nazis and the nature of their collaboration with the IRA. The ultimate goal was not merely the invasion of Northern Ireland, but the domination of the entire United Kingdom and the IRA were viewed as collaborators in this enterprise.

Edmund Veesenmayer

                                                              

Within a few days of the conference, Russell was on board a U-Boat, setting sail for Ireland. He was accompanied by Frank Ryan, a member of the IRA who had been captured by government forces whilst fighting in the Spanish Civil War. The Abwehr chief Admiral Canaris had secured his release in July 1940, to bolster IRA support for Germany. 

Frank Ryan

                                                                  

On the 14^th August, with the U-boat one hundred miles off the coast of Ireland, Sean Russell’s voyage home ended prematurely when he died as the result of a burst gastric ulcer. The German submariners buried Russell at sea and with that, his war was over. Frank Ryan returned to Germany and replaced Russell as the IRA’s contact with Germany. This was a peculiar turn of events, bearing in mind that Ryan had been on the anti-Fascist side in the Spanish Civil War, but as with Russell, he too willingly collaborated with the Nazis. 

Whilst the IRA and its supporters have been keen to portray the actions of Ryan, Russell, O’Donovan and the rest of the IRA as a tactical move rather than sympathy for Nazism, a July 1940 statement from the IRA, issued whilst Russell was still in Berlin, referred to the Nazis as, “friends and liberators of the Irish people”. The following month, the IRA was stating that with the help of their “victorious European allies”, Ireland would achieve absolute independence within the next few months”. Some IRA publications were also peddling anti-Semitic propaganda that claimed the Irish government was under the control of Jews and Freemasons, the “new owners of Ireland”.

 

In the next part of this blog, we will examine the IRA’s propaganda narrative regarding their collaboration with the Nazis, in the light of more recent events during the so called ‘Troubles'. We will compare the IRA narrative about their wartime collaboration, with the narrative used to justify and excuse Provisional IRA terrorism.

The second part is available here.

Sinn Fein's Dark Shadow Called PIRA

They Haven’t Gone Away You Know

It has been over twenty years since the signing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and much has changed in Northern Ireland, but one constant has been the existence of a terrorist group called the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).  Whilst PIRA has certainly changed over the last couple of decades, a ceasefire and peace process did not signal its demise. As all systems do in order to survive, it adapted to change within its environment.

Although people who are euphemistically known in the news media as “senior republicans” (or senior terrorists to everyone except members or supporters of PIRA) have told us in recent years that PIRA had gone away, intelligence reports and a modicum of common sense say otherwise. The most recent intelligence assessment in November 2019 was that PIRA’s ruling ‘Army Council’ still exists, retains ‘oversight’ of Sinn Fein and there had been no change to the 2015 assessment on the relationship between PIRA and Sinn Fein.

The Dark Shadow

According to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, everyone has a ‘shadow’, often referred to as a ‘dark shadow’, that is an unconscious or unknown aspect of our personality. Jung believed that the shadow was perhaps linked to our dark, primitive animal instincts and that it personified everything that people refuse to acknowledge about themselves.

PIRA could be viewed as Sinn Fein’s dark shadow.

Throughout the so-called ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein was regularly referred to as “the political wing of the IRA”. Whilst membership of Sinn Fein did not necessitate membership of PIRA, there was overlap with members of PIRA in Sinn Fein and the “military wing” was the dominant partner in the relationship, controlling Sinn Fein. The organisational structure was helpfully spelled out in secret IRA documents that were seized by Irish police in the 1970s. This could hardly be called a surprise, as the same relationship existed as far back as the late 1940s. 

In 1949 IRA members were ordered to join Sinn Fein and the party recognised the supreme authority of the IRA Army Council. Sinn Fein would maintain the same abstentionist policy as its IRA masters, refusing to take seats in either the southern or northern parliaments. The IRA also refused to recognise that the southern state was the ”Republic of Ireland” and even today, the hard core within the PIRA Sinn Fein death cult have difficulty referring to the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland by their correct names. It was also around this time that the IRA leadership decided to avoid ‘military’ activity in the Republic of Ireland and focus it’s campaign of terrorism in Northern Ireland. This was partly due to the death of several Irish police officers (Gardi) in clashes with the IRA and the resentment that this created.

When the IRA split in 1969, followed soon after by a split in Sinn Fein, the breakup resulted in the same type of power structure within the new ‘provisional’ IRA and Sinn Fein.

Double Jobbing

A number of informed commentators have stated that throughout the recent ‘Troubles’ of the 1970s to 1990s, Sinn Fein was represented on the PIRA Army Council by one or more individuals. No-one in Sinn Fein rushed forward to admit their membership of a terrorist group, never mind admit being one of its leaders, but it’s safe to say that Martin McGuinness was one of those people. McGuinness of course twice served time in prison, south of the border, for IRA related activities, but he would later claim to have left the IRA around 1974. As with many things McGuinness said, his claim about leaving PIRA was a lie.

McGuinness would eventually become PIRA’s Chief of Staff in early 1978, although he would reluctantly have to give up that role when he stood for election to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982. All was not lost however, although no longer Chief of Staff, McGuinness retained his seat on the Army Council and he would later become the Officer Commanding (OC) of PIRA’s ‘Northern Command’. This in effect meant that whilst McGuinness was a high profile member of Sinn Fein, he was also on the ruling PIRA Army Council and in control of the day to day running of PIRA’s terrorist activity in Northern Command. Part of his role included the allocation of weapons and explosives that PIRA had acquired from Libya and this endeavour led to the murder of an alleged informer named Frank Hegarty, a murder in which McGuinness has been accused of having a personal involvement... but more of that perhaps in a later blog.

As OC of Northern Command, McGuinness was being regularly briefed on planned terrorist attacks and was authorising atrocities such as the 1987 Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen and the use of ‘proxy’ or ‘human bombs’ at border checkpoints in 1990, that the Roman Catholic Bishop Edward Daly described as the work of people who follow Satan. It’s worth noting at this juncture that the ‘Adjutant’ in the Northern Command, who was also complicit in multiple murders along with the dearly departed McGuinness, is still alive and apart from being a professional “senior republican”, somewhat amusingly dabbles in human rights activism and spinning conspiracy theories about the British security forces.

Through The Looking Glass

This is just a glimpse of what you will find if you step through the looking glass and enter the morally bankrupt world of militant Irish Republicanism. A place where there has been a reimagination of the past and a Disneyfication of terrorism to help the members and followers of a death cult rationalise their support for decades of mass murder, maiming and wanton destruction. A place where members of a political party prefer to engage in verbal gymnastics, rather than condemn murders committed by a terrorist group. A place where Sinn Fein claim to be a normal political party, but all right minded people can see its ever present dark shadow called PIRA.

Bloody Friday

The Reimagined Past & Disneyfication of PIRA Terrorism

Bloody Friday is one of the worst atrocities of the Northern Ireland troubles, but you will seldom hear it mentioned. It was the deliberate targeting of civilians by the Provisional IRA (PIRA), with approximately twenty bombs, detonated in eighty minutes of horror around Belfast (others were defused or failed to explode), murdering nine people and injuring one hundred and thirty, but yet, there is virtual silence. Media and political attention tends to be directed to those with an effective propaganda machine.

Compare and contrast the lack of attention that Bloody Friday attracts, with the tsunami of media coverage devoted to every PIRA Sinn Fein allegation of wrongdoing by the British state. Cold blooded murder by Irish Republicans does not fit the post ceasefire, reimagined past and Disneyfied version of terrorism that PIRA Sinn Fein has manufactured. The media, British government and others, seem willing not only to accept PIRA Sinn Fein's reimagined past, but to indulge them by propagating the lies for them. 

Bloody Friday did not happen in isolation. As I have written in a previous blog (Read it here), in the months leading up to the terrorist atrocity on 21st July 1972, PIRA had inadvertently developed the car bomb, whilst trying to dispose of a batch of home-made explosives without wasting it, by placing it in a car and driving it into the centre of Belfast, for detonation. 

The birth of the car bomb, led to carnage, with an explosion in March 1972 in Donegall Street, with multiple casualties including seven dead. This attack clearly involved the cynical shepherding of pedestrians into the vicinity of the bomb. The intentional targeting of civilians was also apparent two weeks earlier, with a bomb explosion inside the Abercorn Restaurant, that again caused multiple casualties, including two deaths. These two attacks display, not just a willingness to endanger civilians by placing bombs in public places, but a calculated strategy of terror that accepts civilians will be killed and maimed. It was designed to weaken the resolve of the public and force the British government into negotiations, ultimately leading to withdrawal from Northern Ireland.

PIRA's strategy of terror was emboldened by the development of the car bomb and newly acquired high powered Armalite rifles, smuggled across the Atlantic on the QE2, in an operation run by leading PIRA terrorist Brendan Hughes. This was allegedly done at the behest of his friend and OC, Gerry Adams, despite the objections of PIRA's leadership in Dublin. A younger, more militant faction of PIRA from north of the border, was gradually taking control of the terrorist organisation.


The Final Push

Although he claims to have never been a member of the IRA, Gerry Adams has been identified repeatedly by informed commentators and PIRA personnel, as being a leading figure within Belfast PIRA in the early 1970s. It has been said that he was part of a triumvirate, along with Brendan Hughes and Ivor Bell, that quickly came to the fore, rising through the ranks in the first few years of the troubles. 

Hughes was also a close friend of Adams who acknowledged that he not only respected Adams, but that he was like a brother, who once helped save his life by arranging medical treatment for him after he had been shot by the British Army. You can read about the early days of their relationship including the acquisition of Armalite rifles from America, here.


In March 1972, Gerry Adams was on the run, evading arrest during the era of internment. His luck ran out when he returned home to visit his wife and the army swooped in an early morning raid. Adams was interned, but his time as a guest in Long Kesh prison was short lived. Negotiations were under way between PIRA and the British government, regarding a ceasefire and secret talks. One precondition for a ceasefire was made clear by Ivor Bell, Adams' comrade and fellow member of the Belfast triumvirate. Without the release of Gerry Adams there would be no ceasefire. This was a turning point in the life of Gerry Adams. His moment had arrived. Without this release, he may have spent years in prison whilst events outside continued on without him. 

A few days after Adams was released from prison, he accompanied senior PIRA member Daithi O Connail to a pre-ceasefire meeting on the Derry Donegal border. Also in attendance was a Northern Ireland official, Phillip Woodfield and Frank Steele from MI6. It is worth remembering that Adams was still only twenty-three years old at the time, but PIRA valued him so much that they had secured his freedom and included him in secret meetings with the British.

The PIRA ceasefire started at midnight on 26th June 1972 and less than two weeks later, a PIRA delegation was flown by the RAF to London, for a meeting with the Home Secretary William Whitelaw and various officials. The PIRA delegation consisted of the Chief of Staff, Sean MacStiofain; his Adjutant Daithi O Connail; Belfast Brigade Commander Seamus Twomey; Ivor Bell; Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and a lawyer. By all accounts, the meeting achieved nothing, with no willingness displayed by PIRA for compromise on their position, including British withdrawal from Northern Ireland by the start of 1975.

Although Gerry Adams denies being a member of PIRA and that his involvement in the secret talks was only as a representative of the Irish Republican movement, the PIRA Chief of Staff at the time said in a BBC documentary on the IRA, that everyone on the delegation including Adams was PIRA. You can view a short excerpt of that interview with Sean MacStiofain here. 

This photo of a 1972 PIRA press conference, shows four members of the delegation that went to London and gives you some indication of the circles within which Gerry Adams was moving.

From the left: A young Martin McGuinness, the commander of PIRA's Derry Brigade, who would several years later become OC of Northern Command and the Chief of Staff; PIRA Adjutant General and political strategist Daithi O Connail; Chief of Staff Sean MacStiofain; Belfast Brigade Commander Seamus Twomey.

This is a picture of Ivor Bell, another member of the PIRA delegation to London. Bell was a leading player in PIRA's Belfast Brigade and insisted that the release Gerry Adams from Long Kesh prison, was one of the preconditions for the 1972 ceasefire. Bell would eventually become a member of the PIRA Army Council and briefly it's Chief of Staff in the early 1980s. In a subsequent turn of events, he became an opponent of Gerry Adams and was expelled from PIRA. 

This is a picture of Brendan Hughes with his friend and Comrade Gerry Adams, in happier times as prisoners inside Long Kesh. Even before this, Hughes had a fearsome reputation and figured highly on police / army wanted lists. 

During the same visit to Long Kesh, Adams, Hughes and friends including Bobby Sands on the far right.

Chain of Command

The ceasefire ended after twelve days when a dispute between Protestant and Catholics in the Lenadoon area of Belfast, fuelled and exploited by extremists on both sides, descended into rioting and then gunfire from PIRA. Brendan Hughes, along with two other PIRA members, were the gunmen involved in the shooting incident that day, acting under orders from Seamus Twomey.

PIRA's Belfast Commander Seamus Twomey was a leading player in the Lenadoon dispute and it would not be unreasonable to suppose that the stand-off was viewed by PIRA as an opportunity to end the ceasefire, whilst blaming others. A theme that runs through PIRA's history is that they shift the blame for everything onto someone else, completely ignoring their own responsibility. It is a script that terrorists around the world follow. They play the role of victims, but to do so they need to assign the role of aggressor and / or oppressor onto others. 

It is debatable whether PIRA had entered into the secret talks with the intent of compromise and a deal, but I would suggest it unlikely. From PIRA's perspective they were in the ascendant and victory was achievable. They would have seen the imposition of direct rule earlier in the year as a victory over Unionism and Stormont Rightly or wrongly, this move by the British had sent PIRA a signal that one final push would be all it would take to force British withdrawal. The hardliners within the PIRA leadership therefore felt no need to compromise and with the end of the ceasefire, a plan for multiple car bombs in Belfast was put into play. 


The operational commander for what became known as Bloody Friday, was Brendan Hughes. Whilst he was not responsible for the creation of the plan, it was his job to implement it. He used a number of teams to construct the bombs and PIRA members, or 'volunteers', from the three Belfast battalions, to transport the bombs to their targets. Hughes would later state that he hadn't intended killing anyone, but he also said, "And I knew... that there was going to be casualties. It was a major, major operation, but we never intended to kill anyone that day." 

I would suggest that if you are involved in leaving over twenty bombs in Belfast, all due to detonate in public places within eighty minutes, you have accepted some of there casualties may be civilian fatalities. Saying otherwise was simply a reluctance to admit foreknowledge of what would likely happen. 

Hughes' regret and guilt, decades later, may have been genuine but I do not believe PIRA acted without knowing civilians would probably die. Bloody Friday was intended to shock the British. It was part of the final push. Civilian deaths and injuries was part of the price for victory. A means to an end. 

As detailed in previous blogs, such as this one about the Abercorn bomb, or this one about the Donegall Street bomb, PIRA knew only too well about the risks to civilians from bomb attacks, but this did not deter them. I would contend that what occurred on Bloody Friday, was not a mistake. Bloody Friday was the continuance of a PIRA strategy of terror against the civilian population. The propaganda template had already been created. They would blame the actions of the security forces for civilian casualties. The same would happen again following Bloody Friday, even suggesting that it was a British strategy to allow civilians casualties, despite PIRA warnings. 

During his taped testimony for Boston College, Hughes made it clear that it Bloody Friday was not solely his responsibility. He was the operational commander for the wave of bombs but the entire Belfast Brigade staff planned and approved the bombings. Hughes claimed that included Seamus Twomey the Brigade Commander, his Adjutant Gerry Adams and the Brigade Operations Officer, Ivor Bell. Hughes went on to say that whilst Twomey was the Brigade Commander, in effect, ".... Gerry was the real OC. Twomey was practically out of it by that stage, to the extent that eventually we sent him down to Dublin. Gerry was always the OC. Even if he was not OC in name, Gerry was the man who made the decisions." Gerry Adams refutes any allegation that he was a member of PIRA.

Hughes would go to his grave feeling bitter and betrayed by PIRA and his former friend Gerry Adams, for taking the organisation down the political road. Hughes saw this as selling out the cause for which he had fought, served time in prison and ruined his health on hunger strike. He also expressed anger that Gerry Adams claimed to have never been a member of PIRA, therefore leaving the likes of Hughes and Bell to take responsibility for violence such as Bloody Friday.

As the bombs started to explode across Belfast on that Friday afternoon, PIRA supporters in Republican areas cheered every explosion. With a mixture of so many bombs in such a short space of time and hoax bomb alerts, the security forces and emergency services were stretched. That was possibly the intention of PIRA. This made it difficult, if not impossible to respond on time to every bomb alert. Due to the close proximity of the bombs, people were also being unknowingly evacuated from one bomb, towards another as yet unreported bomb. The horror that followed was inevitable.


The reality of PIRA terrorism against civilians in Belfast on Bloody Friday. 

***WARNING***  Some of these images are graphic and you may wish to avoid looking. I have included them as I think people should see the reality of terrorism, rather than the Disneyfied version portrayed in PIRA Sinn Fein propaganda.

Victims

The nine people murdered on Bloody Friday, 21st July 1972, were killed by bomb blasts at two of the locations; the Ulsterbus depot in Oxford Street and on the Cavehill Road.

Jackie Gibson, 45, Ulsterbus driver. 

William Crothers, 15, employee of Ulsterbus

William Irvine, 18, employee of Ulsterbus

Thomas Killops, 39, employee of Ulsterbus

Stephen Cooper, 18, soldier, killed at the Ulsterbus depot whilst trying to clear the area.

Philip Price, 27, soldier, killed at the Ulsterbus depot whilst trying to clear the area.

Margaret O'Hare, 34, married mother of seven children,
killed inside her car by the Cavehill Road bomb. Margaret's eleven year older daughter, was with her in the car and was badly injured.

Brigid Murray, 65, killed by the Cavehill Road bomb.

Stephen Parker, 14, schoolboy, killed whilst trying to warn others in near-by shops, of a car bomb he had spotted on the Cavehill Road. Stephen was identified by his father at the mortuary, by a box of trick matches that he had been carrying in his pocket, and the shirt and Scout belt that he had been wearing. Stephen was posthumously awarded the Queen's Commendation for bravery. 

Another 130 people were injured by the bombs, many of them sustaining horrific, life changing injuries.


In closing I will simply say that in my view, despite what PIRA Sinn Fein may claim, the outcome of Bloody Friday was intentional. PIRA terrorists set out to murder, maim, destroy and terrorise. It was not the first time that they had employed a strategy of terror and it would not be the last time. Only ten days later, PIRA would detonate three more car bombs in the village of Claudy, near Londonderry, murdering nine civilians. Again we are meant to believe that ten days after Bloody Friday, PIRA could not foresee the risk of leaving car bombs in busy streets.

The only positive note from this horror is that the PIRA strategy of terror against civilian targets, designed to be the final push against the British, was probably the beginning of the end for PIRA. The unintended consequence of PIRA's actions, was to provoke a feeling of revulsion amongst the majority of Protestant and Catholics that ensured PIRA could not achieve the level of support they had hoped for.

The tragedy is that it would take another quarter of a century for PIRA to finally accept 'physical force' Republicanism was the road to nowhere. They of course, would spin that rather differently.