Red Action No. 72: Autumn/Winter 1995.
Though the Cold War is long over the intelligence services retain
a significant influence over the British media. Given that their trade is lies
falsification and propaganda it would be remiss of them not to
do so. Irish Republicans have long suspected that in fact large sections of
the free press are directly controlled by MI5/MI6. Now it appears that a large
number of Irish and Irish based journalists agree with them. In an article in
the Guardian (7/7/95) they finger not just a particular journalist but a whole
paper as being part of a conspiracy to derail the peace process. Of course speculation
as to the extent of M15 infiltration within the media is not new. Jon Snow anchorman
for Channel Four News confirms that he was approached in the 70's with an offer
to double his salary. He turned it down. But how many would have done so? According
to Peter Wright, MI5 had always about twenty senior journalists working for
it in the national press. "They were not employed directly by us",
he explained "but we regarded them as agents because they were happy
to be associated with us".
There has been disquieting evidence of MI5 intrigue before. Much
surfaced during the Scargill/ Windsor/ Gadaffi affair. When The Cook Report
who along with the Mirror made the sensational allegations of Moscow gold etc.
in 1990 had hardly come off the air, when the rest of the media and whole sections
of the establishment joined the fray clearly working off the same menu. Tory
and Labour MP's, Scargill's opponents inside the NUM, the Fraud squad, the courts
,the government appointed Certification officer and Commissioner for Trade Union
Rights, the UDM and the maverick right-wing electricians union, Cabinet ministers,
the TUC the Inland Revenue etc. In his book Enemy Within Seamus Milne comments;
"With the special exception of Britain's corrosive `security' role in
the north of Ireland, there have been no clearer cases of covert action, of
such comprehensive mobilisation of the normally submerged power centres of the
Whitehall empire, than in the history of the secret war against the miners."
Thatcher herself had made the same connection in a slightly different
context six years earlier, an analysis that set the tone for the subsequent
events. "At one end of the spectrum are the terrorist gangs within our
borders and the terrorist states which finance and arm them. At the other are
the hard left operating inside our system, conspiring to use union power...to
break, defy and subvert the law." This was a call for `a common front'
against Scargill and the NUM. As the evidence shows the call was heeded. The
apparent uniqueness of the campaign allowed those startled by it to find grounds
for dismissing it from their minds, not by exploring the vast conspiracy against
the NUM, but instead by focusing on former NUM officer Roger Windsor's role
within it. Like the lone gunman theory liberals sought and found comfort in
the idea of the `bad apple' rather than the rotten orchard.
One example of the `bad apple syndrome' that occurred during
the ongoing Colin Wallace saga is indicative of the rot. Wallace who had been
employed as a spook in the Six Counties in the early seventies subsequently
made a number of allegations regarding MI5 attempts to destabilise the Labour
Government of Harold Wilson. Serious attempts were made to discredit him until
eventually he was convicted of the murder of a friend and jailed for ten years.
On his release the opportunity, presented itself and he began to try and clear
his name with some success. Immediately the counter allegations resurfaced.
The most prominent being that he was a `Walter Mitty' type fantasist. David
McKittrick the Irish correspondent for The Independent wrote a scathing article
along those lines. He quoted as evidence the fact that Wallace photographed
in the early seventies wearing a para Red Beret had claimed that he was in fact
an ex-para. As proof he offered a cutting from a local paper in 1974 which carried
a quote from Wallace claiming as much. The crusading journalist Paul Foot who
had taken an interest in the affair asked McKittrick on television how it was
he a journalist based in the north of Ireland had come to unearth such damning
evidence- in Wales? `Damning evidence' that lay buried in an obscure local paper
for 16 years? McKittrick offered no reply. Of course the other question
that lay unanswered was who planted it?
Irish Republicans still talk to McKittrick so presumably he can't
be all bad. One journalist they will not touch is Liam Clarke. Recently he has
been the subject of a withering attack not by republicans, but by other Irish
and British based journalists. He is accused of "bias and falsification
of planting patently false stories". This is extraordinary enough
but what's exceptional is that the same charge of "bias and falsification"
is laid at the door of a whole paper The Sunday Times. Since the IRA
cease-fire on August 31 last year, the ST has carried a series of stories questioning
its sticking power. On October 16 the papers NI correspondent, Liam Clarke,
wrote about Sinn Fein's difficulty in holding the IRA in check. Christmas, he
claimed was the moment when the IRA "would review its cease-fire...and
could abandon it". He added: "However , intelligence sources
believe the cease-fire will be extended until Easter, when a final decision
will be taken." A month later Clarke alleged that, "the IRA
is on the brink of an internal war". A week after that, he wrote: "The
danger period for the cease-fire will be the three months between Christmas
and Easter."
A front page news story- headlined "Rebel IRA units threaten
new war"- suggested the danger was already present. It claimed that
a hard-line faction of more than 50 terrorists are preparing to split the IRA
to begin a bombing campaign The breakaway group has given the IRA's army council
an impossible deadline of next March to achieve the total surrender of the British
Government in NI. All of this was attributed to,"senior security officials
and later to senior RUC detectives". Most of these stories were published
in the Irish edition but some appeared in a shorter version in Britain. It is
evidence like this that convinces some journalistic critics "that the
ST is hell bent on derailing the peace process". (This ignores the
fact that other British papers have carried similar stories, Clarke is simply
the most blatant). According to Roy Greenslade former Daily Mirror editor writing
in the Guardian: "one phrase betrayed the writers [Clarke) agenda. The
[breakaway] groups emergence confirms growing fears that the peace process is
in serious jeopardy." Greenslade asks "Whose fears? The papers? The
people's? The army's? Sinn Fein's?" As most off, these stories were published
in the Irish edition only, it is safe to assume that it was intended for consumption
in Ireland. And who in Ireland is likely to be most paranoid about the
intentions of the IRA? Who in Ireland is likely to be most impressed by senior
security officials and the RUC? It is not republicans as Greenslade tentatively
suggests- it is loyalists. Indeed MP Ken Maginness is one Unionist leader,
incidentally also thought to be close to MI5, who has repeated word for word
the ST propaganda. In June he predicted that the IRA had planned "a
rolling resumption of violence."
If for instance MI5 wanted to derail the peace process it would
be necessary to prepare the ground in this fashion by constantly feeding the
inherent suspicions in the loyalist and republican communities: the fear of
capitulation to the IRA matched by a fear of capitulation by the
IRA respectively. It would be necessary to keep the pot simmering, so that at
an opportune moment the pot could be quickly brought to the boil. In the last
couple of months prominent figures in both the INLA and the UVF; organisations
shown to have been vulnerable to MI5 manipulation in the past, have been arrested
either moving or attempting to procure weapons. In July there was also the emergence
of a previously unknown loyalist grouping threatening to renew hostilities with
nationalists. Similar claims had been made by a `pro-republican group the INRA'
a few months earlier. In such a situation all that would be required is for
`masked men' believed to be republican/loyalist to initiate some violent action
against their political opponents.
The intention would be to provoke a response, real or imagined.
tat...tat...tat- tit. Once that had occurred the situation would quickly escalate.
As an anarchist called Malatesta once observed: "Organ and function
are inseparable terms. Take away from an organ its function and either the organ
dies or the function is re-established. Put an army in a country in which there
are neither reasons for, nor fear of war...and it will provoke war ...a police
force where there are no crimes to solve or criminals to apprehend will invent
both or cease to exist." It is important to note
here that such a strategy though devised by MI5, and in line with their thinking,
may actually be counterpoised to the governments own agenda such as it is.
The essential requirement is that a political vacuum exists to allow for that
kind of manipulation. So while it is clear that at least a section of the establishment
genuinely want to disengage; they must rely on MI5 etc. for advice on what is
likely to prove the most advantageous and least damaging, circumstance. If they
are advised that a surrender of some republican armoury is guaranteed - if -
they take the hard line on decommissioning, `if they make Adams sweat' they
might stall etc.
Republicans of course have their own different and distinct paranoia's.
They are not concerned with the breakdown of the cease-fire but with the decommissioning
of weapons, surrender, and betrayal. It is logical that these are catered for
as well. A former editor of the Times, Simon Jenkins, maintains that there is
no peace process, just peace - nothing but the truce.
Now consider these statements: "Sinn Fein is now compelled
to put disarmament on the agenda: Adams will have to negotiate with the IRA
on demilitarisation: In return for demilitarisation, Sinn Fein will push for
an amnesty for Republican Prisoners: Sinn Fein will have to participate in any
`power sharing' assembly: [the leadership] are prepared to hand over arms accumulated
by the IRA provided that there is demilitarisation on the British side: To enter
talks the IRA will be made to surrender much of its weaponry: Sinn Fein will
argue that demilitarisation by the IRA is the price that must be paid for the
release of prisoners, the reform of the RUC and the dismantling of Army observation
posts: The barriers within the Republican movement against Adams implementing
his side of the bargain are at the moment very weak. They consist of the republican
hard-liners- the one third or so of the IRA army council that opposed the cease-fire
and marginal elements like Republican Sinn Fein and Bernadette McAliskey."
Liam Clarke again? Nope. Wishful thinking by British analysts
or the nightmare scenario outlined by hard line republicans? Neither actually.
These statements were taken from Class Struggle no 24, the journal of the Irish
Workers Group. Oh', you may think, the very hard left who are bitter about the
betrayal of republican aspirations and the abandonment of the armed struggle?
Yes and No. Yes, they are against the cease-fire. No, they do not, nor have
they ever during a quarter century of resistance supported The armed struggle.
So, during the war they condemned the armed struggle, and since then have condemned
as petite bourgeois renegades those who suspended it? Yes. Bonkers in a nutshell
(forgive the pun) yes.
There is however another explanation. For many republican POW's,
the unsolicited gifts of Brit. Left propaganda is treated like refuse and despatched
to the nearest bin- unread. As one explained: "It is designed to demoralise
us." Designed is the key word here. There is a suspicion among republicans
that like the British media much of the British Left is under the influence
to one degree or another of the British state. Though the example provided would
be of little significance on its own, the theme of republican capitulation and
defeat is a thread common to almost the whole Anarchist and Trotskyist Left.
But why would they bother? The Brit. Left has no influence. Exactly.
And whose fault is that? The American Left is hardly less feeble but that didn't
stop the FBI placing agents in the Socialist Workers Party over there. These
revolutionaries eventually settled for $7,000,000 in compensation ; on condition.
That they in turn would not seek to have the provocateurs identified! According
to former South African BOSS agent Gordon Winter MI5 like to boast that, "If
there is a left wing movement in Britain bigger than a football team our man
is a captain or vice captain or else he is the ref and can send any man off
the field and call our man on any time he likes."
So even to say that the `Left' has no influence is hardly correct.
By maintaining a constant barrage of anti republican propaganda over a quarter
of a century they have denied to the republican movement not only their own
organisations and platforms but an invaluable political periphery and immediate
access to tens of thousands of potential allies both here and in Ireland. An
entirely negative influence from a republican point of view but an, impressive
record in maiming minds nonetheless. During the war, the Brit Left poured
scorn on nationalist, aspirations and unhesitatingly condemned the armed struggle.
After August 31 alarmed by the possibility of finding themselves by, default
on the same side as republicans for the first time in 25 years they immediately
condemned the cease-fire and poured scorn on working class nationalist hopes
in it. In preference to working with republicans in a united front against
the `common enemy' their own ruling class, they castigated the IRA for `making
deals with imperialism'. With weasel words they resumed their position
as the radical wing of the `common front' sponsored by the ruling class against
the IRA. An MI5 success story then? Even in this `badly lit hall of
distorting mirrors' there cannot be a shadow of doubt. From an MI5 perspective
it is hard to see how matters could be improved. Of course whether they are
directly responsible or it happened in spite of them, who can tell. But it would
be remiss of them not to have tried. Ultimately what's worse? Accepting the
possibility that the Left's policy on Ireland may be influenced by MI5; or recognising
that it probably doesn't have to be?
