FROM OUR COLD WAR EDITOR NED STAPLETON

A RUSSIAN HISTORIAN is alleging that one reason the Troubles in Northern Ireland lasted as long as they did, was that British Foreign Intelligence Service MI6 was using Irish Revolutionary Marxists to penetrate the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.

“Most people know of the Provisional Irish Republican Army,” says Dr Grozny Potemkin of the Volgograd Institute of the Double Cross, whose new book Eyes On The Prize is published by Pyongyang Press next month. “Fewer are aware of the Official Irish Republican Army, its Marxist twin. The Officials, as they were popularly known, having reluctantly joined the fight, declared a ceasefire in 1972, but – as Gerry Adams would say – they didn’t go away. Convinced that all that was needed was the working class in Northern Ireland to join together, they considered the Provisional IRA sectarian and fascist. However, by the time of their ceasefire they still had a substantial arsenal, some of which came from the KGB. Which attracted the attention of MI6.

“From 1972, the Officials lay dormant, providing a sort of security blanket for their political wing, Official Sinn Fein, and its multiple later incarnations. There was a feud with the Provisional IRA in the mid-1970s, and then another split giving rise to the Irish National Liberation Army, which itself split and split and split. But that’s a whole other story.

“Anyway, while the Provisional IRA fought its war against the British along standard nationalist insurgency lines, the Officials – who saw the conflict as wholly sectarian due to the fact that the majority of those supporting the British were Protestant – focused themselves on promoting hard left politics in both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, mostly to limited effect. Even changes of name were not very successful. Official Sinn Fein became Sinn Fein The Workers Party, then The Workers Party, until, finally, Democratic Left emerged wiped clean of all paramilitary stains. By that stage the remaining revolutionary Marxists were a very thin minority, and those who had left them behind by shedding much of what they once held dear, actually got into government in Dublin before finally merging with, and leading, the Irish Labour Party.

“In the background, over the decades, as I have said, providing funds and protection for their politicians – remember, the Provisional IRA and its politicians hated these people as much as they hated the Provisional IRA – was the dormant military wing.

“Also providing the Officials with a certain protection, was the British Government, with whom the Marxists co-operated, and which loved the Officials because they were so actively opposed to the Provisional IRA and its campaign, even to the point of being against Irish unity, unless it was achieved under international socialism, which, of course, was never going to happen as we have seen. But for the duration of the Troubles, My enemy’s enemy prospered, so to speak.

“However, the British also loved the Officials for another reason: they were a way through to the KGB and its Warsaw Pact allies by a convenient back door. MI6, charged primarily with obtaining intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain in those days, cut its own little key using the Officials, who, of course, still maintained contacts with Moscow. It’s worth noting that the Officials, whatever they called themselves when they ran for election, North or South, always had funds when others struggled. How was that?

“But to keep the Officials where they were most needed, so to speak, the chaos in the North of Ireland had to continue, to some degree at least. The Officials had to feel threatened so they would keep looking for all that British Government friendship and patronage. And so the Provisional IRA campaign persisted, fought against but never defeated, while the Cold War persisted. The Cold War was always London’s chief focus while it lasted. Ireland was a small irritation. Sometimes no more than a live firing exercise for the British Army. At least until the Provisional IRA upped its game in the late 1980s.

“And it was then that the Cold War ended, O so suddenly; and, O my God, just as suddenly, MI6 no longer needed its Marxist stooges in Ireland. A year later, the then British Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke made that speech about British interest in Ireland that signaled a white flag of truce to the Provisional IRA. But by that stage – despite the current British Intelligence spin peddled by its friends and various useful idiots – the Provisional IRA was actually in the driving seat, causing significant damage – which increased in the following years – especially to London’s financial district, and other similar places. It took four years to convince them to cease fire after Brooke’s invitation to talk, and that only lasted about eighteen months before they blew Canary Wharf to bits in 1996. It was eight years after Brooke’s speech that peace finally arrived in Ireland. By that stage, MI6 was chasing around the Middle East and such places searching for fundamentalists and rogue nuclear weapons. We Russians were now allies in a strange sort of fashion. We were fighting the Chechens, who were Muslim, remember. By this time, much of the remains of the Officials had settled into Dublin officialdom – that’s a Russian joke.

“It is quite likely none of those used as pawns in this game ever knew they were being so used. So they will always deny all this. How many in the British establishment knew, it’s difficult to tell. There are so many wheels within wheels in London. But MI6 have never really trusted MI5, and visa versa. MI6 was technically stepping on MI5’s toes in Ireland. And the only reason it tried to recruit agents in the South was to make sure the Dublin Government kept up its supposed advocacy for a united Ireland. It was the Dublin Government who asked the Americans to ask the British not to withdraw from Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. That scared MI6 shitless. Britain didn’t need agents to keep the Irish state on its side in the fight, it needed them to make sure the Irish state didn’t just run away and hide. As it was the Irish state feared the Provisional IRA far more than the British ever did, so there was no problem there. Which, of course, allowed for penetration of its agencies by friends of the Officials, who were working to an agenda they did not recognize. They may not have been able to gain power but they had influence, at least until the Cold War ended. When it all went away.

“So are they gone away too, these Marxist pawns? I believe there are still Official IRA weapons dumps around Ireland in case of a doomsday scenario where Protestant turns on Catholic in Northern Ireland. Curiously, it was because of their failure to do this kind of thing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that the Provisional IRA split from them. Now the Provisional IRA’s politicians are in power in Northern Ireland, and kicking at the door of government in the South, and Catholics are in a majority everywhere, except they have mostly ditched their old faith for God knows what. You could say to the Officials guarding those weapons dumps: Late again, guys. Like all communists, you were always terrible with numbers.”