Fortnight Publications Ltd.

We've Been This Way beforeAuthor(s): Mary HollandSource: Fortnight, No. 277 (Oct., 1989), pp. 16-17Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25552092 .

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1 FEATURES

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Amidst the bizarre sequence of security leaks last month, the Intergovernmental Conference met in the familiar atmosphere of an Anglo-Irish crisis. MARY HOLLAND reports on the exasperation in Dublin about the perceived failure of the British to honour the agreement. Right?LIAM CLARKE tries to make sense of the shower of disclosures and has some thoughts on the Stevens inquiry.

We've been this way before

EVEN BEFORE the security leaks story

began to gather momentum, there was

an uneasy feeling in Dublin and Bel

fast that the first meeting between Gerry Col

lins and Peter Brooke was likely to be rather

less pleasant than the relaxed exercises in mutual

admiration which had, from time to time, occu

pied the energies of Tom King and Brian

Lenihan.

Whatever Dublin's initial jeering reaction

to Mr King, by the time Fianna Fail came to

power in 1987 and Mr Lenihan took over as co

chair of the Intergovernmental Conference he

had won a high degree of, rather surprised,

respect from Irish officials. The sheer length of

time he had spent in Belfast meant that he had

a firmer grasp of the workings of most govern ment departments in Northern Ireland than any of his predecessors. More important, as far as

Anglo-Irish relations were concerned, Mr King had worked hard at trying to understand public sensitivities south of the border, particularly on

issues relating to security, which is the only

thing most people in the Republic care about.

The NIO had anticipated a difficult time when Charles Haughey finally became taois

each in 1987. Instead it found that Mr Lenihan,

who felt no great personal involvement with

the Anglo-Irish Agreement, was much less

prickly than Peter Barry and also less inclined

to nag. As important, Mr King and Mr Lenihan

shared an instinctive sympathy for the political

problems the other faced. In both cases there

was a problematical leader to be dealt with?

and, sometimes, pacified?particularly in

Downing Street. Realistically there was little

hope of the political progress within Northern

Ireland to which the agreement aspired. Nonetheless it was important to keep it afloat, to give the impression that some advances were

being made under it and that both governments still found it useful.

In the rich drama (soap opera?) of Anglo Irish relations that common purpose may still

hold true, but the cast has changed. It is still

early to pass judgement on Mr Brooke, but

Dublin has not been too impressed by his first

stumbling steps centre stage. Besides, Mr

Collins is a very different proposition from

Brian 'No Problem' Lenihan. To take the most

obvious political point first, he is still in mid

career and looking with keen interest to the

future. The leadership of Fianna Fail is in

serious contention and he is seen as a front

runner for the job. The fashionable view is that nobody in the

Republic cares about the north and that the

main impact of the the agreement has been to

assuage any residual guilt south of the border

about northern nationalists. That may be true of

public opinion as a whole but Mr Collins knows

that the green grassroots of Fianna Fail still

care a great deal about the north and worry that

the Republican Party has abandoned its historic

duty to resolve the National Question. Fianna

Fail activists care particularly about issues

which are seen to cast the British in their

traditional role as oppressors of the nationalist

minority. One obvious way of courting the rank

and file is to be seen to fairly bullish, whenever

possible, on these issues.

There are other less cynical reasons why Mr

16 October Fortnight

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Collins is likely to take a ... well... rather more

critical line on British attitudes to law and order

than his predecessor. As minister of justice in

the last government he was ultimately respon sible for very tough and highly successful action

against the IRA?the arms seizures, intelli

gence gathering and so on. This was praised

regularly in the Commons by, among others,

Mrs Thatcher. But, it is beginning to be said

publicly in Dublin, why should the Republic's government deliver on issues like extradition

and cross-border security co-operation when

the British are not prepared to honour either the

spirit of the agreement or the pledges on spe cific issues that were given when it was signed? In particular, how can the Garda Sfochana be

expected to pass on confidential intelligence to

the RUC when it seems quite possible this may fall into the hands of loyalist assassins?

That is how the aftermath of last month's

Brooke/Collins encounter is seen in Dublin.

The row about the UDR is particularly impor tant because it feeds the growing suspicion that, once again, Dublin has been conned and

that Perfidious Albion is up to the same old

tricks as in the bad old pre-agreement days. Even before the accord was signed the future of

the UDR was regarded by the Republic's side

as a fundamental obstacle to the common ob

jective of winning the confidence of the north

ern minority. Garret FitzGerald wanted the

regiment disbanded but settled for a British

promise that it would be accompanied by the

RUC whenever it patrolled Catholic areas.

Officials in Dublin claim they understood that, as far as practicable, the UDR would be with

drawn from such areas altogether?I remem

ber being told, as evidence of how well the

agreement was working, that UDR rr^n had

indeed been removed from certain checkpoints. Now, of course, it seems clear there is no

question of winding down the UDR. On the

contrary, the regiment is essential to the British

government's policy of Ulsterisation. The plan is to increase the full-time members of the

regiment, with the long-term objective of

removing British soldiers from the streets of

the province. But the row over the UDR is only one factor

in the growing political indignation in the

Republic. There are other issues on which

Dublin has expressed concern through the struc

tures of the agreement and feels it has been

fobbed off by delaying tactics?reform of the

Diplock courts and security-force harassment

spring immediately to mind. And old griev ances have been dusted down and displayed.

The appointment of a senior British police officer to investigate the leaks of confidential

security files is seen as a black joke: John

Stalker's advice to any British policeman in

vited to conduct such an inquiry?'go sick'?

was the most quoted comment of the month.

Most of the weekend after the Brooke/

Collins meeting was spent in the familiar exer

cise of parsing the fine print of government statements to assess what they meant for the

future of the agreement. The consensus is that

it will survive, partly in the hope of better times, but mainly because neither government wants

to be seen as the first publicly to call its useful

ness into question. Yet the divisions that have

opened up on security?in particular the funda

mental difference of approach to the UDR?

have left it looking very tattered indeed.

Whoops again THE MOST extraordinary thing about the recent spate of leaks from the security forces, culminating in the super-leak of

60 names and photographs to the Independent, is that they all came to light through the actions of the loyalist paramilitaries or by chance. Together

they reveal an intelligence system like a

sieve, in drastic need of reform.

The first leak to be disclosed was of an intelligence file on Loughlin Maginn, a

Rathfriland man murdered in August by the UFF, which showed the file to a BBC reporter a few days later. Two UDR men

from Palace barracks, former members of

the regular army, have been charged in

connection with both episodes. The next leak to come to light was a

montage of nine photographs which had

disappeared from Ballykinlar UDR base, also in south Down. This time the Sunday Times revealed the ten-day-old loss?-the

document had not even been reported

missing to the police before the paper was published on September 10th.

The third disappearance was of an A1

size poster taken from the parade room of

Dunmurry police station in south Belfast

between August 11th and August 14th.

Although its absence was noticed almost

immediately, RUC headquarters was only informed a month later?after one picture

on it had been plastered on the walls of a

Protestant estate near the station.

The finger of suspicion in this case?

where yet another leak followed from the same station?pointed towards the

regular army which, along with the UDR

and civilian staff, had access to the room

during that 20th anniversary weekend.

Yet there have been still other leaks

and losses in recent months: a policeman dropped the notes on that

morning's briefing on IRA suspects on to a street in Antrim;

in January a regular soldier handed over

montages of photographs as an act of

bravado in a Derry bar;

the IRA recovered a montage and

details of police procedures from an

unlocked police car.

Still more montages have been posted to individuals named on them, as Seamus

Mallon revealed, and last year one was

handed to a contractor as a means of

inducing him to pay protection money. What collectively the leaks and losses

indicate is not high-level collusion but a

system for handling information which is

slack and flawed. Even the Garda

documents delivered to the Independent were of a type frequently exchanged between uniformed constables stationed

in Fermanagh and Donegal.

Huge numbers of intelligence docu

ments are produced every month and are

distributed to thousands of people,

including low-ranking security-force members and contractors working on

installations. Those who have access are

not strictly vetted: regular soldiers are

hardly vetted at all and police objections to UDR recruits are frequently overridden.

The distribution of these documents is in theory tightly controlled but in practice they can be photocopied or photo

graphed easily and when they are

updated a strict check is not always kept on the disposal of old versions. Instances

of classified documents being simply dumped by the army have come to light?

although potentially lethal they are regarded as low-level intelligence and

treated as such.

John Stevens, the deputy chief constable of Cambridgeshire, was at first

asked to take over the criminal inquiries into the loss of the Dunmurry and

Ballykinlar documents and the murder of

Loughlin Maginn. The subsequent allega tions were later added to his brief.

Yet if he is to assuage the widespread

public concern his terms of reference will

need to be encompass the whole area of

the handling of intelligence and the vetting of those who receive it.

Grim news?Seamus Mallon (right), the lawyer Rory McShane and a montage of 18 suspects received by one of his clients

PACEMAKER Fortnight October 17

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