What now for the fighting men of Crossmaglen?: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2005/07/03 > What now for the fighting men of Crossmaglen?

What now for the fighting men of Crossmaglen?
Sunday, July 03, 2005 - By Toby Harnden
What about South Armagh? That is the question Sinn Féin leaders put to British government officials when IRA disbandment, full decommissioning or any statement that the war is over is suggested.

Almost since the day Tony Blair took office, the question has also been on the mind, if not the lips, of the British prime minister. Yet the definitive answer, if one exists, has remained shrouded like the top of Slieve Gullion, which dominates the borderland, on a misty day.

For 35 years, South Armagh and north Louth have been central to the Provisional movement's struggle. Its notoriety was established when Merlyn Rees, then Northern Ireland Secretary, branded it “Bandit Country'‘ in 1973.

Thomas ‘Slab' Murphy, a multimillionaire smuggler - whose farm at Ballybinaby, near Hackballscross, straddles the border - remains the undisputed feudal lord of the area, as well as being IRA chief of staff.

It was the IRA's South Armagh brigade which was behind the Canary Wharf and Manchester bombings of 1996 and virtually every other major operation in Britain in the six years beforehand. If the Provisional ceasefire, declared in 1997, were to end, then it is a fair bet that South Armagh men would be entrusted with the job.

South Armagh was the engine room of the IRA's war. Its snipers picked off British soldiers from hundreds of yards away, smuggling and racketeering filled IRA coffers and its undulating terrain was a testing ground for every new guerrilla weapon or prototype that came into service.

There has always been tension between this rural heartland and the Belfast-based Republican leadership. While the slick-suited Shinners of Belfast and Derry have dominated political negotiations since Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were flown to Cheyne Walk in 1972, South Armagh volunteers have remained the country cousins, kept away from polite company.

The leaders of Sinn Féin have been happy for this division to become an entrenched part of the thinking of their British adversaries. Hawks versus doves.

Good cop, bad cop. Hardliners versus moderates. IRA and Sinn Féin. These are concepts readily understood around Islington dinner tables or at news conferences in The Guardian offices.

In reality, however, the division is an integral part of the “tactical use of the armed struggle'‘ strategy that has prevailed since the early 1990s. Political progress, it was calculated, could only be achieved by the careful use of violence.

That included, and continues to include, the threat of violence, which can be as potent as the act itself.

Brendan Behan used to say that the first item on the agenda of any IRA meeting was “the split'‘. Despite the Provisionals' extraordinary unity since Michael McKevitt and company defected in 1998 to form the Real IRA, it is “the split'‘ that is invariably top of the list for discussions at Downing Street, Stormont or wherever the latest production déja vu political talks are being staged.

Since at least 1994, Adams has been arguing that he and McGuinness are the acceptable face of republicanism, while people in South Armagh are the uncompromising zealots who will replace them if they are not seen to get results. To reinforce the message, on occasion senior Sinn Féin men with a public IRA pedigree have been used to play the part of the tough guy in political talks.

Remember Gerry Kelly outside Stormont in 1995? Or Martin Ferris in 1998? I wonder how they kept a straight face as, clad in their raincoats, they took up their positions behind Adams and aimed steely glares at the cameras. The press lapped it up, with breathless reports of the IRA hardliners who were pulling the strings of ‘Gerry the puppet'.

Anyone in the know, however, recognised that Kelly was about as close to Adams as it was possible to be, while Martin Ferris TD had always been with the programme. It was Adams who gave the orders. His underlings - and Brian Keenan has also played this role, though he has not hammed it up quite as much in public - were there as the purported representatives of the South Armagh strain of the Provos.

While South Armagh's military prowess became central to the Provisionals' strategy for most of the modern Troubles, it was not this way at the beginning.

Indeed, South Armagh was late on the scene, not claiming its first victims until August 1970 when two RUC men were blown up by a booby-trapped car.

Proximity to the border, the absence of Protestants, the rugged terrain and the powerful sense of rebellion through the ages all combined to make South Armagh an ideal operating ground for the IRA.

Its hostility towards authority stretches back centuries and its staunch republicanism is essentially just the latest manifestation of its lawlessness. It has remained a place apart - not just from the Six Counties but within republicanism.

Its rebel pedigree predated the Provisionals and always gave it a degree of independence from Adams and his cohorts. This separateness has apparently increased since 1997.

The British and Irish governments have acquiesced in this. This, of course, suits Adams too. South Armagh had a key role in the Northern Bank robbery, an audacious heist that boosted the morale of the IRA and placated ordinary volunteers, despite the political fallout and hypocritical condemnation from Dublin and London.

In South Armagh, the IRA has become factionalised.

Some, like “the Undertaker'‘, who left the Provisionals after a shoot-out at Cullaville crossroads in March 2003, have drifted away in disillusionment.

Others, like Murphy and the current commander of the South Armagh Brigade, have held onto or been promoted into senior roles. But their positions are dependent on agreeing with Adams and bringing the bulk of South Armagh with them.

Many are simply tired. They can lay claim to have been undefeated, though the arrest of a sniper team in April 1997 was a major blow to their prestige and indicated they had been infiltrated. They could have carried on the fight, but those in Derry and Belfast had pretty much given up.

Their place in history is secured, not least by my own book. “The Surgeon'‘ denounced me using a four-letter word, but privately revelled in his new nickname.

They know that, after an eight-year pause, it will be difficult to mount successful military operations. Ceasefires have always weakened the IRA. The top South Armagh men are getting old and creaky, as well as rich. Their wives were tired of security force raids and harassment. Their sons are untested.

There is a political sophistication, too, that makes them realise that there have been genuine gains from Adams' “peace strategy'‘ and that there is now no alternative but to remain on the path he has set. There is bitter disappointment that unification has not been achieved but then South Armagh – which would be sullenly disrespectful of any state in which it found itself - is being allowed to do its own thing.

One by one, the shibboleths have been ditched. Before the Good Friday Agreement, I stood in Crossmaglen Rangers Hall nervously clutching my pint of Guinness and listening to Jimmy McCreesh, a Sinn Féin councillor, tell the crowd that the party would never, ever participate in a partitionist parliament at Stormont.

Patrick Thompson, a former prisoner and senior IRA man, told me that South Armagh would not accept decommissioning. “No. Absolutely not.

“In no form,” he said.

In this context, predictions of South Armagh republicans deserting en masse have a distinctly hollow ring. At every important juncture, commanders such as Murphy have sided with Adams. As Tom Hartley, the former Belfast Sinn Féin councillor and a bete noire of South Armagh is said to have remarked a decade ago, the only principle the Provisionals still have is that of being determined to win.

The hunger striker and republican Bobby Sands said that “everyone, republican or otherwise, has his or her part to play'‘. For South Armagh IRA members, that part is currently to provide the dark menace that springs from doubt about their intentions.

The problem for the Provisionals is the South Armagh question, and the threat of violence is nothing new. For a threat to be effective, there has to be an acceptance that there is both the will and the means to carry it out. Sooner or later, even the likes of Blair might decide the time has come to call the IRA's South Armagh bluff.

Toby Harnden is chief foreign correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph and author of Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh, published by Hodder & Stoughton.