Ed Moloney
Penguin Books
2002
600 pages
The Irish Republican Army has been fighting for Irish Independence from the United Kingdom for much of the twentieth century. The organization first emerged as an armed guerrilla force against English occupiers in 1919, after the Irish Volunteers, an organization that, in turn was composed of earlier fighting forces dedicated to Irish nationalism, dissolved. An organization operating under the IRA banner has existed continuously since 1919. The first fought for Irish independence, and then for unification and sovereignty of the Irish Republic following the 1921 partition by the English of the six counties that make up Northern Ireland, from the rest of the island nation. The IRA as an organization, has experienced a number of splits in its long history, and has developed a complex internal structure as well as relations to numerous other Irish and nationalist organizations situated around the world.
A Secret History of the IRA charts the course of the organization, with the career of current Sinn Féin (the political party that represents the interests of the Irish nationalist movement) president Gerry Adams as its central axis. The book’s author, Ed Moloney, is an Irish journalist who has based his career around following ‘the troubles’, the period of sectarian conflict between Irish Republican-Catholics and Protestant-Unionists in Northern Ireland between the years 1969 and 1998. In 1999, Moloney was named Irish Journalist of the Year. Moloney had also, in 1999, refused to hand over his interview notes to state authorities, an issue that was resolved when a Belfast High Court judge ruled in the reporter’s favour. Much of the information contained in Moloney’s Secret History is based upon interviews with IRA personnel, including former senior members, and it is unlikely that Moloney would be able to continue his profession if it were known that he was willing to collude with authorities.
The introduction to the book describes the IRA’s connections to Libya during the mid-1980s when Libyan leader Omar Kadaffi supplied the subaltern nationalist movement with weapons. In 1987 the IRA and the libyans conspired to clandestinely ship what was to be the largest illicit weapons shipment ever to enter the United Kingdom, except that their ploy was discovered. Moloney's introduction described a pivotal point in IRA history, where the armed struggle could have been escalated as the paramilitaries would have been supplied with decades worth of armaments, but because of the discovery, the organization was crippled and without showing their hand, the leadership embarked on the road to peace.
Moloney’s book is comprehensive in its coverage of the IRA history, and it achieves this sense of completeness through a jagged narrative structure. His chapters move through the history of 'the troubles' chronologically, although when some critical issue is introduced in his telling, he reaches back to find the origins of this issue and describes its genealogy up to his current point in history. This structure gives the reader a consistent flow of historical events that end close to the time of the books publication, with the IRA Good Friday Peace Agreement, but also describes all of the conditions and legacies that produced the situations of The Troubles.
Moloney’s work is also fairly even handed with regards to its portrayal of the Irish Republican Army, he maintains a critical distance throughout his text without showing any particular sympathy for the IRA, its splinters, or their various Protestant-Loyalist enemies. Moloney does however write with a great deal of sympathy for the population of Northern Ireland, as well as an understanding of the popular support these organizations engaged in sectarian armed struggle often received. The Catholics are a minority in Northern Ireland, and in the cities the Catholic neighborhoods have been subject to cruel abuse since the partition. Meanwhile Moloney describes the IRA as initially intending to be a defensive force against marauding Protestants, he also described numerous cases of outright cruelty the IRA dealt to wayward Protestants.
The primary focus of Moloney’s text is the career of Sinn Fein politician Gerry Adams. Adams was born in 1948 into a Belfast family with long roots in the Republican movement. According to Moloney, he was involved in the IRA since he was a young man, although he had a reputation of being distant from violence. Adams served time in prison during the early 1970s where Moloney states that the young nationalist developed the ideas that carried the IRA into the 1980s. Moloney charged Adams with restructuring the organization into a more rigidly hierarchical structure from its earlier constitution as a network of armed cells. Furthermore, according to Moloney, Adams innovated other subtle changes, such as invisible special operations units, referred to in the text as ‘the unknowns’, that reported directly to the nationalist leader. Adams denies having ever been a member of the IRA although the main thrust of Moloney’s text is how deeply intertwined Adams life was with the organization, and how Adams was dedicated to the struggle for Irish independence, but also to a struggle for power over the movement that lasted for decades.
Much of Moloney’s text describes Adam’s successful climb to the top of the IRA, and then to Sinn Fein. Adams attained a position of such prestige that, in the late 1990s, he had the ear of President Clinton with regards to negotiating an Irish peace. Allegedly, a number of strategies were deployed to distance Adams from the appearance of any connection to decision-making that resulted in violence. Moloney describes how some senior IRA members with combat experience distrusted men like Adams who held power but had no experience in armed struggle to make choices for the army. It is unknown how widespread this attitude actually was within the IRA (possibly not widespread considering Adams success and popularity) but it casts doubt upon the nature and scope of the politician’s involvement in the organization.
A Secret History of the IRA, of course, covers all of the major events of ‘the troubles’, from the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, to the 1981 H Block hunger strikes, to numerous bombing campaigns, weapons drives, and peace negotiations. What makes the book a ‘secret’ history, however, has already been alluded to. This is the continual ‘behind the scenes’ struggles for power that took place within the Provisional IRA (the IRA organization most active during this period) and its associated organizations that made up the Republican movement. Secret shifts in policy towards informants, interpersonal rivalries, private attitudes towards actions that contradict public statements, the goings on of countless meetings and conventions; there was a vast amount of activity that took place within the organization, behind the public spectacle of terror and street fighting. Moloney has made the details of these subcutaneous struggles into the bulk of his book. Much of this information he owes to his unidentified, but often IRA affiliated, interview subjects. There is no one, really, to hold accountable for these facts, although it is likely that Moloney interviewed ex-IRA personnel at a moment when they were ready to discuss the specifics of the organization’s inner workings because so many of them were frustrated by the terms of the 1997 peace agreement.
All important names for organizations and individuals are indexed and annotated in a series of appendices at the end of the book. Moloney’s appendices are so comprehensive and sufficiently detailed that they that they may be useful to researchers, on their own, as quick reference guides to the Irish Republican movement. Additional appendices include important documents such as the Post 1996 IRA Constitution, and a chart that displays the organizational structure of Irish Republican Army. A chronology of events is featured in the back and maps of Ireland detailing sectarian geographies appear through the book. Moloney’s dedication to making his book useful as a research tool and not just a journalists account of a time and place is evident in these informational extras to his text.
The Provisional IRA entered a cease-fire agreement in 1998, but the terms of this agreement caused a split within the organization, giving the nation the Real IRA who continues the struggle. As of July 12, 2011 (the day I write this) sectarian riots broke out in Belfast following a Protestant parade. The Troubles continue?
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