“Please don’t ask for credit, as a refusal may often offend” (4/2012)
Hung on Sinn Fein shops, this is a sterling message to those young militants who took up arms against the state in the 1970s and 1980s.
From distant recall, the British Operations Handbook which I handed over to Pat Doherty’s nominees, "Jim" (Derry) and Raymond Smith (Ballyboden,Rathfarnham,Dublin), contained the following political directions at the beginning before I moved on to the detail of what I called the Peace Process by way of forcing the English to a sincere negotiating position in Ireland by bombing Thatcher’s financial backers in the 1987 election.
My instructions for what I termed a "peace process" was inspired by the glasnost revolution of the social democratic leader Mikhail Gorbachev. They were
1. reconciliation with unionists and a return to Stormont
2. taking seats in Stormont as part of a power sharing arrangement
3. the end of the armed struggle and eventual destruction of arms and dissolution of the IRA when there was real progress on funding
4. recognition of the southern parliament (1983)
Taken together these formed the leitmotiv of a movement which reached fulfilment in 1998.
As a secret leader in those days, I can take the responsibility for the positive developments in republicanism but abhor their subservience in our times to MI 5 monitors in their ranks as part of “confidence building measures” (Adams) and “reciprocal arrangements” (McGuinness).
Joseph Paul McCarroll
