Taylor-made `Provos'
Danny Morrison finds food for thought in the flawed but
fascinating Provos, the new book and television series by
journalist Peter Taylor
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Taylor is too English to see the deliberateness or carelessness
behind government decisions which led to the pogroms, the curfew,
internment, RUC brutality, etc., as anything other than mistakes
or individual excesses
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Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein
by Peter Taylor
Published by Bloomsbury
Price £16.99 (hardback)
When republicans walked out of the IRA Convention in late 1969,
supposedly over the dropping of abstentionism, they organised
their own Convention which elected a new `provisional' Army
Executive which in turn elected a new `provisional' Army Council.
However, the split wasn't just over recognition of Stormont and
Leinster House - historical turnarounds though these were. The
split involved many issues: ideological orientation, dictatorial
yet poor leadership, personality differences, and major, major
differences about the political realities of the North,
especially the violent reaction of unionism to the demand for
civil rights. The real crime, however, was that the IRA had been
deliberately run down so that when August 1969 came there was
little or no defence. There was much burning of homes but it was
the burning sense of humiliation felt by nationalists that
provided the exponential growth in support for those republicans
who declared, `Never Again!'
Name changes are nothing new in Irish republican history,
otherwise out of consistency the Young Irelanders should have
called themselves the United Irishmen, or the Fenians the Young
Irelanders, or the IRA the IRB. Even though the `Provisional'
Army Council organised an IRA Convention in September 1970 and
regularised its constitution and organisation, dropping the word
`Provisional', it was too late. Republicans on the ground,
especially young people, increasingly wanted to distinguish and
distance themselves from the failures of the previous leadership,
`the Officials'. In 1970 slogans appeared on walls: ``Out of the
Ashes of August `69 Arose the Provisionals,'' and ``Out of the
Ashes of Bombay Street Arose the Provisional IRA''.
The book and television series show what I for one know to be
true. No organisation is going to be able to wage again a
guerrilla war with the tempo of that fought so tenaciously by IRA
Volunteers for almost three decades
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At Easter 1970 (or 1971) there were two types of Easter Lilies on
sale. The `Officials' sold gum-backed (sticky-backed) Lilies and
the `Provisionals' gave out Lilies with pins. And though the
nickname `Sticky-back' (then `Stickies', then `the Sticks') stuck
- if you'll pardon the expression - to the `Officials', attempts
by them to christen their opponents, `Pinheads', failed.
In the vernacular the IRA and IRA supporters were called
`Provisionals', but mostly `Provies'. British army officers,
British MPs and fleeting English journalists, unable to pronounce
Provies, invented the word `Provos'.
If it took that much time and space just to explain the
derivation of the name, how much more would be required to tell
the history of the IRA over the past 28 years? It is an
impossible task. The IRA, still a secret organisation despite the
scrutiny of a thousand periodicals and books and that
contradiction known as British Intelligence, is like an iceberg,
three-quarters of which lies hidden.
Yet, veteran television broadcaster Peter Taylor has distilled
from what is known and what he has observed in over 25 years of
covering the North a comprehensive picture of the Republican
Movement's men, women and supporters, and why they proved
invincible during the longest guerrilla war fought this century.
The book accompanies the television series of the same name which
began on BBC1 last Tuesday night. And whilst the series is more
accessible the book is reader-friendly, though it cannot be
relied upon for punctilious historical record. Some dates and
locations are wrong and he refers to Stormont (which opened as
the northern parliament around 1932) as being extant in 1922.
About a month after the IRA split, Sinn Féin also split at the
ard fheis of January 1970 along the same ideological, personal
and emotional lines. Banned in the North until 1975 (and censored
in the 26-counties) it was always in the shadow of the IRA. Sinn
Féin never became the concerted object of the
delightfully-entertaining British and unionist hysteria on a par
with the IRA, until the late `seventies. Republican publicity was
on its way to being professionalised, identifiable spokespersons
were emerging (usually from the prisons) to argue the republican
case on the national question and social and economic issues, and
the complacent SDLP was being challenged, its monopoly
threatened.
Much has subsequently been made of the relationship between Sinn
Féin and the IRA, and material published in this book - none of
it new or revealing - was actually used by poor David Trimble
last Tuesday to try and have Sinn Féin excluded from the talks.
However, most of Taylor's book, to be fair, concentrates on the
development of the IRA from a defensive organisation at the time
of the loyalist attack on St Matthew's and the Falls Curfew in
1970, right through the raging `seventies, reprising internment,
Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, Narrow Water, and the incredible
struggle in the prisons which culminated in the H-Block hunger
strikes. He quotes from escapees, former blanket men, active
service Volunteers and Sinn Féin activists (but not Gerry Adams,
Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly who declined to be
interviewed).
Though it has been done better (by David McKittrick and Eamonn
Mallie in `The Fight for Peace') his detailing of the
machinations and secrecy behind the snail's-pace peace process is
still fascinating, and his interviews with senior British army
and RUC officers, many of whom have retired, are candid - and
infuriating - because they more or less now admit that this
conflict was built on a lie, the lie that republicans, and behind
them the nationalists, had no justification for resorting to
physical force.
Taylor is too English to see the deliberateness or carelessness
behind government decisions which led to the pogroms, the curfew,
internment, RUC brutality, etc., as anything other than mistakes
or individual excesses. Thus, the British army ``were at times
driven by a mixture of ignorance, lack of discipline and
imprudent political and military direction.'' Bloody Sunday was ``a
dreadful mistake'' and there was ``no master plan'' behind
criminalisation, he quotes Merlyn Rees as saying.
Taylor balances his recounting and analysis of the IRA's armed
struggle, the selflessness and courage of Volunteers, with the
enormous human cost in death and suffering of those who died or
were injured at the hands of the IRA and the continuing grief of
the relatives. It is something we should never forget, or omit
from consideration when calculating the achievable, which
unfortunately is always an amended form of what is one's
entitlement. He also poses the great question which republicans
face and has yet to be resolved: despite the injustices inflicted
by unionism, how do republicans propose to win over major
sections of the unionist people, given the bloody past and given
that the full realisation of republican objectives is also
seriously circumscribed by, among other imperatives of
realpolitik, constitutional nationalists North and South?
In my opinion, a peace process - if not the present peace process
- is the only way forward. There are those who disagree,
believing, mistakenly, that you can merely re-run the film from
December 1969 and you end up with a happier ending. You actually
come around to this ending.
Taylor's book and television series show what I for one know to
be true. No organisation is going to be able to wage again a
guerrilla war with the tempo of that fought so tenaciously by IRA
Volunteers for almost three decades. And the cost of dignity and
self-esteem has been paid at a very high price. One of the
photographs in this book is a poor-quality snapshot of six young
men standing around hunger-striker Martin Hurson's memorial in
County Tyrone in 1986. Five of them, Declan Arthurs, Seamus
Donnelly, Tony Gormley, Eugene Kelly and Martin McCaughey, would
be killed on active service, and the sixth, Dermot Quinn, the
only one to survive, would be sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.
It sums up the poignancy, the tragedy and the sorrow of war.
About her son, Taylor quotes Mrs Amelia Arthurs simply saying:
``Declan died for his country and I'm very proud of him. He was
caught up in a war and he died.''
After internment a British army colonel declared that he had ``the
IRA on the run''. Now, another officer, Colonel Derek Wilford, the
Para responsible for Bloody Sunday, says: ``I hear people saying,
`Troops out of Ireland'. It's like `Troops out of Aden'. There we
did make a positive decision and I think we need to make a
positive decision now about ending the war in Northern Ireland.''
We started out downtrodden and the irony is that the real
impoverished souls in the North are the second-class
intellectuals picketing the Catholic Church at Harryville.
Never again will there be a brainless Secretary of State like Roy
Mason, who actually believed that the SDLP were `Provos', and who
boasted he was squeezing the IRA ``like a tube of toothpaste''.
Never again will there be a Thatcher - here or in Britain. Never
again will there be an August 1969. Never again will the
nationalist people be left undefended. Throughout the North
nationalists have a drive and a confidence which is palpable. It
is a tide which can raise many ships - and it is a tide which
should be used to sink none.
Related article:
1798 in black and white
The Wexford Rising in 1798: Its Causes and Course
Revolt in the North: Antrim and Down in 1798
Both by Charles Dickson
Published by Constable
Price £15.95 each (hardback)
``The object of this institution is to make a United Society
of the Irish nation; to make all Irishmen Citizens - all Citizens
Irishmen.
``In thus associating, we have thought little about our ancestors,
much of our posterity. Are we forever to walk like beasts of
prey, over the fields which these ancestors stained with blood?
In looking back, we see nothing ... but savage force, ... savage
policy ... an unfortunate nation, 'scattered and peeled, meted
out, and trodden down! ... But we gladly look forward to brighter
prospects; to a people united in the fellowship of freedom; to a
parliament the express image of the people; to a prosperity
established on civil, political and religious liberty; to a peace
- not the gloomy and precarious stillness of men brooding over
their wrongs; but the stable tranquility which rests on the
rights of human nature ...''
The republication of Charles Dickson's The Wexford Rising
in 1798 (1955) and Revolt in the North (1960) is long
overdue, and these handsome editions - although quite expensive
in hardback - will certainly find a place on many republicans'
bookshelves.
When first published, The Wexford Rising marked a welcome change from the interpretation of the 1798 rebellion as a sectarian jacquerie. Similarly, Revolt in the North was the first attempt to write a history of the rising in Antrim and Down from primary sources.
The Wexford Rising is by far the better researched of the two books. Concerned exclusively with the events of the rising - it gives too little background information - it traces developments in the southeast from the preparations of spring 1798 to the final scattering of the croppies in late June.
Revolt in the North gives a similar account of the risings in Antrim and Down. However, while The Wexford Rising suffers from an absence of background information, half of it is devoted to a lugubrious survey of Irish history from the Norman invasion. Still, the account of '98 is quite sound and includes biographical notes on key participants which local historians will find useful.
Before rushing out to buy a copy, remember that these books are old and a bit jaded in style and substance. Reading them now is a bit like watching some old black-and-white movies. A simple story pitched at the heart more than the head. More engaging than engaged.
Of course, there's nothing like an old movie on a wet weekend and these books have their good points. There is something elegantly heroic about the men of property and no property facing British cannon with pikes and fowling pieces.
Still, physical courage was not what made the late eighteenth century a period of profound importance in Irish history. Rather, it was political courage, a willingness to debate, discuss and develop new ideas and work out a new future.
The men and women of diverse social, cultural and political backgrounds who pushed the political programme of the United Irishmen were leaving behind the dead-end certainties of settler-native conflict. Some croppies were forgetting all they had heard about confiscations and plantations in the 1600s. They were forgetting the priests and raparees hunted down in the early 1700s and the petty insults heaped on themselves in their own day. Others were forgetting the pamphlets, sermons and stories about the bloody massacre of 1641. They were forgetting the tory and raparee raids in the early 1700s and their own fears of being overwhelmed by the majority religious group.
Unfortunately, Dickson conveys little sense of the courage and political skill required to build an inclusive national identity and a radical republican agenda in a colonial society where all had suffered and inflicted suffering. Most historians do. Pity. That would be a good read.
By Micheál O Riain
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