Most people who joined the Provisionals were deeply influenced by their environment. Mark Lennaghan entered the IRA in the late 1970s after his family was bombed out of its house by loyalists. He was subsequently convicted of an attempt to ambush an Army patrol in 1982 and while in the Maze prison renounced violence. In an interview for the BBC’s Newsnight, Lennaghan told me: ‘At that time [the IRA] was very popular, everyone was in it, it was a peer thing … there was a lot of identity, status, prestige, ego-tripping – all that sort of stuff … the whole sub-culture of west Belfast is very political, it gives a great sense of “1916” [the republican Easter rising against British rule], of your identity’.
Although many volunteers shared his sense of being heir to a long history of violent republicanism, few were as intellectually accomplished as Lennaghan, who passed his Queen’s University finals exams while on remand in the Crumlin Road jail. According to one lawyer who has spent much of his career dealing with republicans in police custody, ‘The ordinary volunteer is pretty stupid, he’s not terribly political’. But the Provisionals became adept at providing recruits with what they were seeking: there was a coherent ideology for those who might otherwise have pondered the morality of killing, and there was plenty of action for those who were ready to use violence without question.
The standard of bomb-making in the early years had been low. From 1972 to 1973, dozens of IRA men and women were blown up by bombs which had gone off prematurely. But competent explosives experts had survived this gruesome form of ‘natural selection’. They began to incorporate safety devices in their weapons, as well as introducing other modifications to catch out those sent to defuse them.
Shipments of weapons had improved the standard of firearms available too. In the early days they had relied on a handful of ancient Thompson machine guns and other weapons. IRA members had stepped into streets and engaged patrols with wildly inaccurate fire. The incidents were often poorly planned and prepared, leading to the apprehension or death of those involved.
In 1970 sympathisers in the United States sent several hundred Armalite rifles. In many ways it was a weapon superior to the Self-Loading Rifle (SLR) issued to British Army troops. The Armalite could fire fully automatic like a machine-gun, which the SLR could not. Its smaller, lighter bullet – 5.56mm compared to the SLR’s 7.62mm – was less likely to go right through its target and injure the innocent. The weapon became an important propaganda symbol. It manifested itself in painted murals and in the argot of republicanism.
In 1976 more supporters in America raided a US Army National Guard armoury, stealing seven M-60 machine-guns. The weapons, which fire belts of 7.62mm rounds, were too big to be easily concealed and using them carried a high risk of civilian casualties. But the display of M-60s, like the appearance of Armalites before, had propaganda value in showing nationalists that the IRA could obtain the most up-to-date military firearms.
With the reorganization, the IRA set itself new targets. Attacks on businesses in city centres, common in the early 1970s, were reduced, the leadership realizing rather late in the day how unpopular they had become. In the early days of the Troubles there had been qualms about attacking soldiers and policemen off duty. These attacks, some members believed, ran counter to the principles which the IRA as an army should uphold. But the increasing difficulty of carrying out successful attacks on patrols and the desire to intimidate members of the locally raised security forces led them to put aside such considerations.
Increasingly, members of the RUC and UDR were shot or blown apart at home, often in front of their families. Such attacks were often accompanied by statements in republican newspapers which sought to justify such actions, often by vague references to alleged crimes against the nationalist community or suggestions that the victim had been associated with a loyalist paramilitary group.
Attacks against armed troops and police were more often carried out in rural areas where surveillance was less intense and government forces more dispersed. South Armagh and Tyrone, the biggest county stretching across the south west of Ulster, became more important to the Provisionals as security improved in the cities.
Reorganization, new strategy and improved weapons compounded the problems faced by the security forces. Although some steps had been taken to unify intelligence-gathering activities, by 1977 it had become apparent to senior Army and police officers that there was a real danger that it would not be possible to make further progress against the IRA. This growing realization of the seriousness of the situation prompted moves to make further improvements in intelligence co-operation.
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The growing professionalism of the IRA and the security chiefs’ desire to intensify information-gathering activities were to spawn several ‘undercover’ units – groups whose activities and even names were shrouded in secrecy. At the time of the IRA’s adoption of a cellular structure only one specially selected and trained observation unit existed. The Army’s élite undercover surveillance unit is without doubt its most secret body of soldiers.
In 1987 its members gained the same privileges as those belonging to the SAS and the Special Boat Service, the Royal Marines Special Forces. The members of all three groups qualify for extra pay and are under the administrative control of one brigadier known as Director Special Forces (DSF). Prior to that there had been a brigadier who ran the Army’s special forces known as Director SAS, but it was decided that the different elements should be more closely woven
