NORTHERN TROUBLES:THE IRA sent a message to the British government in 1978 claiming it was willing to end the violence and talk, according to a sensitive document released in the latest batch of British state papers at the National Archives in London.
Controversy still surrounds the IRA's message to the British government of February 1993, in which the organisation was purported to have said, "The conflict is over but we need your advice on how to bring it to an end".
Republicans have since denied making the statement and there is reason to believe that intermediaries embellished the message. However, prime ministerial files for 1978 describe an IRA message 15 years before "to the effect that it was time to talk and end the present violence".
The message is described in a letter from Sir Brian Cubbon, permanent under-secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, to Roy Mason, the secretary of state.
It explains how Martin Ennals, a senior figure in Amnesty International, had passed the message to Merlyn Rees, the Labour home secretary. Ennals had himself been contacted by an intermediary from the World Council of Churches. He had managed to pass news of the contact through his brother David, the Labour secretary of state for social services.
Cubbon believed it was a "credible channel of approach by PIRA" and linked the development to the recent involvement of Rev William Arlow with the World Council of Churches.
Rev Arlow, a member of the Irish Council of Churches, had previously acted as an intermediary between the British and the IRA and had been instrumental in the Feakle talks which had led to the truce of 1975. He had recently been in contact with the World Council of Churches about the condition of prisoners in the Maze.
After the breakdown of the 1975 truce, the British government had steered away from private communication with the IRA. In 1977, Roy Mason had ended payment to "the contact" who had acted as an intermediary between the two sides and closed down the Laneside offices through which he had operated.
For many republicans, the truce of 1975 had also been seen as a mistake and it had undermined Ruairí Ó Brádaigh's leadership of the republican movement. Nonetheless, Cubbon believed it was "credible that PIRA should start a fishing expedition of this sort now". It was true that some republicans increasingly "see the campaign as a long haul". At the same time, "others may wish to use the present level of violence to demonstrate that PIRA are a force to be reckoned with and therefore in a strong bargaining position".
In the context of the dirty protest, it was also noted that the "position of their prisoners is in the final analysis one of their most fundamental concerns".
In line with the new policy, Cubbon was insistent that it was "essential that we should not say or do anything in reply that gives any hint that we have considered their message or are taking it seriously". What they might be looking for is some hint of a possible dialogue, he stated, recommending "that no further communication at all is made to Martin Ennals". He believed that the most that "can be inferred at this stage is that they are testing the water entirely without any commitment of any sort". Prime minister James Callaghan agreed that Ennals should be told "to forget it".
There should be a "positive rejection of any offer" and "no inclination whatsoever that we were interested in this".
There is also reason to believe that the IRA tried to contact the British government later in the year, again through intermediaries. In the second volume of his recently released Downing Street Diary, the prime minister's press secretary, Bernard Donoughue, describes how he visited Cubbon in October 1978, having received a message from his "Irish friends", suggesting "a compromise over the prisoners in Long Kesh who are striking for political status".
In reply, Cubbon reiterated that "the government's policy was never to talk to the IRA and never to talk to intermediaries".
Donoughue told Cubbon he believed he was on "a sterile course". The latter replied that the strategy had been "enormously successful" in reducing levels of violence. There were 81 deaths resulting from the Troubles in 1978, compared to 116 in 1977 and 297 in 1976, a continuation of the downward trend during Mason's tenure as secretary of state.