David Trimble

Opportunists and tacticians, but poor strategists

On the back of the dust cover there proudly appears the following quote from the Sunday Times towards the end of last year: ‘Ed Moloney’s authoritative and devastating Penguin History of the IRA is just around the corner.’

Well, up to a point. Ed Moloney is a well respected journalist writing for a Dublin newspaper who, for many years, has specialised in making a close study of Irish republicanism. As far as I can tell he is a reliable guide to the machinations within the republican movement. These apparently different organisations respond to a single leadership group of about a score of persons, many of whom appear in various positions in the two structures, but it also includes some that are not in the apparent leadership of either. All this enables republicans to spread confusion, especially among those who want to believe in hawks and doves.

Obviously we cannot be sure that Moloney’s account of what went on within the republican leadership is accurate, but subject to comments below it will do as an account of who did what and when. Certainly I was reassured by his depiction of Brian Keenan. Not the Beirut hostage, but a gentleman from South Londonderry, nurtured within the wilder elements of British trade unionism who became notorious for his outburst that the only thing that would be decommissioned would be the British state in Ireland. Keenan was depicted as a hardliner. Here he emerges as a long-time supporter of Adams’s quasi-political strategy, whose apparent positioning as one of Adams’s opponents was tactical, a view with which I concur.

I am less certain of his analysis. It is that from around 1986 onward Adams was following a peace strategy which culminated in the 1998 Agreement and that, long before any formal inter-party talks began, the form and outcome of those talks had been prefigured by secret exchanges between Adams, Alex Reid, a Catholic priest based mainly at Clonard monastery in West Belfast, and the British government.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in