Deniable Contact: Back-Channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland - The dangerous, secretive path to peace

Deniable Contact: Back-Channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland

Author: Niall Ó Dochartaigh

ISBN-13: 978-0192887535

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Guideline Price: £30

Niall Ó Dochartaigh, professor of political science and sociology at University College Galway, has produced a fascinating account of the secret and sometimes dangerous games that were played to bring peace in Northern Ireland.

It contains information that during the Troubles journalists would have hocked the family silver and their grandmothers to get sight of. It is centrally based on a treasure trove of documents to which the late Derry businessman Brendan Duddy gave Ó Dochartaigh access. It records Duddy’s role as a clandestine intermediary between the IRA and MI6 and MI5 – and up the chain to 10 Downing Street – at key periods of the conflict: the 1972 and 1975 IRA ceasefires, the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 and, most effective of all these contacts, the period leading up to the 1994 IRA cessation.

Also involved with Duddy were Denis Bradley, former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, and another Derry businessman, Noel Gallagher.

The most remarkable elements of this intriguing account of covert meetings and spooks explain how Duddy, Bradley and Gallagher in February 1993, with breathtaking chutzpah, were conduits for a message from Martin McGuinness to the British government on behalf of the IRA saying, supposedly verbatim, “The conflict is over but we need your [British] advice on how to bring it to a close”.

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All that is missing, as Duddy suggested, is the answer to his suspicion that MI6 and/or MI5 had other secret lines to the IRA

McGuinness did not use those words but the largely unsung go-betweens of the peace – Duddy, Bradley and Gallagher – felt justified in interpreting McGuinness’s message to them as tantamount to his saying the war was over. There was truth there regardless, as a majority in the IRA was up for quitting. This triggered intense contacts that, along with the work of John Hume and Gerry Adams and the British and Irish governments, secured the IRA ceasefire of 1994, which led to the Belfast Agreement four years later. The trio’s intervention was critical.

Also disclosed are details of the MI5 agent known as “Fred” or “Robert” or Colin Ferguson, who, against the orders of his superiors, went to meet McGuinness and Gerry Kelly in Derry to advance the chance of the IRA ending its armed campaign, with Duddy, Bradley and Gallagher also in attendance.

It is all here in this restrained but extraordinary read. All that is missing, as Duddy suggested, is the answer to his suspicion that MI6 and/or MI5 had other secret lines to the IRA. That might be revealed too, eventually.