"We have worn down their will"

Ed Moloney speaks to a leading member of the Provisionals who has been authorised to speak on behalf of the IRA Army Council.The Provisional IRA and its campaign of violence have been going on for nearly 10 years now. The British are-still in the North despite that. Why go 'On?

First of all the IRA is not 10 years old, it's over 60 years old. As for why we continue the campaign, nothing has changed in the occupied Six Counties, but there is a lot of evidence that 'things can be changed. We have been wearing down successive British administrations; we have worn down their will. There are indications now of changes taking place within the British political scene. The Young Liberals for example, have come out in support of a policy of disengagement from Ireland and there are at present, discussions going on within the National Executive of the Labour Party. There is also evidence that a lot of British soldiers are, 'fed up with what's going on in the North and document 37 shows that the present commander of Land forces in the North, Brigadier General James Glover, knows that we are not a spent force and that we will continue. And he also admitted the cause of the trouble was the presence of British forces.

The object of our armed struggle is two fold; further destabilise the inherently unstable Six Counties and also to wear down the will of the British government. Either the British Government itself comes to the conclusion that it must leave, or that conclusion will be forced on them by British public opinion. We can make the occupation of the North extremely expensive. Present costs are running at £1000 million annually and of course we will be hitting at their soldiers continually and causing their morale to be so low, that the Brits will find that they are incapable of maintaining any sort of order in the North.

First of all, we're not at all dismayed by what we have achieved this year. We have to maintain a certain level of armed activity to effect political change within the Six Counties, to make "political progress" impossible. We have effectively done that this year. For example the Atkins' proposals are getting nowhere and the SDLP, who have risen to power on the back of our armed struggle, and the Loyalists have mutually incongruous political manifestos which we have helped to temper on both sides, although saying that the Loyalists are inherently sectarian anyway. The other aspect of our armed struggle is to affect the morale of the British Army and to create an impact on the British people. We have not managed to match last year's performance this year. That is because circumstances have been forced upon us and there have been some material problems. But we are totally confident that we can overcome these short term problems. The British are sliding into their 1977 mistake of predicting our defeat. They're fighting a statistical war, we're not. We're fighting a political war. The Brits are saying the Provos are beaten, operations are down, there's less poundage of explosives used, four soldiers less have died this year, etc. That's a false confidence and that's OK with us because we will wreck it when we choose to.

No. The majority of our operations are carried on by personnel who live within the Six Counties. Belfast for instance, is the spearhead of our campaign. People there don't run back across the Border. The volunteers who set up road blocks in Carrickmore last October, didn't run back across the Border. Our people are based in the North and our attacks occur there. What is happening is that Charles Haughey, without the sanction of the Irish people, is spending over £80 million of their money, making sure that attacks from his side of the Border on occupation forces, are inhibited. These occupation forces infringe the sovereignty of the 26 Counties, these are the people who have fired, 'across the border and killed people, these are the people who go over in plain clothes and are blocking off border areas, hindering the farming communities there. The 1000 troops and Garda Special Task Force are there on the Border to suppress the people and to collaborate with the Brits. But that is not the reason for the lower level of operations this year.

What effect did the appointment of Sir Maurice Oldfield as security coordinator, have on the IRA?

Well there was a feeling of expectancy whenever Oldfield was appointed; after all, this was what Thatcher offered after the massive demoralisation on British forces of Warrenpoint and the execution of Mountbatten. Some of us thought internment might come in, but instead they produced Oldfield at the time, and we know this, he said that he would have the IRA beaten within six months. Now he's gone without any success except the much lauded detente between the RUC and British Army.

In the RUC Constabular gazette of June 1979, they admitted that the UDR and RUC Reserve were the eyes and ears of the Crown forces in the North. We don't shoot anyone because of his religious beliefs. There have even been a few Catholics in the UDR killed by the IRA, there was one killed by a landmine at Castlewellan this year. We have given notice to UDR men that if they contact us and assure us they are no longer members of the UDR, we will not touch them. The problem has been because of the difficulties the UDR has in recruiting members because of declining morale, the turnover has been so high and occasionally our intelligence has been mistaken and we have shot by mistake former members. In rural areas, it is the UDR and RUC, not so much the British Army, which is repressing people, so our attacks on them will continue. But nobody can show there is a sectarian pattern to our attacks on the UDR.

Firstly, the majority of people assassinated by Loyalists have been totally innocent Catholics. This year they have attempted a certain degree of discrimination. They have attacked Republicans and also fellow Protestants, close to the Irish nationalists' tradition, in an attempt to provoke the IRA into blind or frustrated retaliation. We have absolutely no intentions of getting involved in such a war. They distract the IRA from attacks on Crown forces and help the British to foster the idea of being brokers, between two factions. That's not to say that we wouldn't take retaliatory action against Loyalists we knew were specifically in the UVF or UDA, and were in an influential position with regard to these attacks.

The Brits are very, very good at undercover work. This is what they are into now. Nevertheless, we are totally satisfied that we know why our active service units are caught. While the British are good, we always know where they operate and why they operate. Because the population is hostile to them and sympathetic to us, they tell us about them. They're not that effective, but they're a hindrance and they probably perceive their role as that.

The position of the IRA on Federalism is that, for a long, long time, we promoted as the best way of solving the problem by marrying the Unionist tradition, to the Irish tradition in a transitional situation. However, within these last number of years and especially since the Loyalists started to promote 6 county independence which they had anyway for 50 years. We began therefore, to examine Federalism again and the dangers involved. It wouldn't break the back of Loyalism in Ireland and get rid of the bar to solving the national question and opening the possibilities of establishing a democratic socialist republic.

What we now advocate, is a single national Government, but with much decentralisation as possible. On the question of Eire Nua, we totally support the way Sinn Fein is progressing and the way it has handled these problems because certain people do cherish certain ideas and even though there are only minor differences between us, on the majority of points we are agreed.

We have carried out bombings and shootings in Germany over the last two years as well. Last Spring, we executed Sir Richard Sykes. He was involved in intelligence gathering against our organisation, but he was also leading propagandist in the same way as Peter Jay was in America. Sykes was also the man who conducted the investigation into our attack on the British ambassador to Dublin, Ewart Biggs. Sykes was a very important person. What that and other attacks have shown is the IRA's capability to operate abroad and against the enemy, not the host country, and gained our struggle attention there.

We're often asked this question and the standard reply whether we are bombing England at the time, or not or planning to bomb England, is no comment.

Yes. As I've explained the importance of these people, like British ambassadors abroad, is that they put off false propaganda. They are part of the British military machine. It would be stupid and morally wrong for us to attack an ordinary British person, but for us to attack a pillar of the British establishment, like Mountbatten, or Quintin Hogg, or for us to attack the likes of Roy Mason, who we will never forget for what he did to the Irish people, gains us more attention and political effect. Yes we do intend to carry out more of those attacks.

Well unfortunately, the PLO are in a bad situation. They have found it necessary to adopt certain policies. Some would say in order to ingratiate themselves with the EEC Governments for recognition; we do not question or judge them because we know the position of their people is very bad. They're denied their homeland and live in deplorable refugee camps. They're also subjected to frequent Israeli attacks and from Haddad, on Southern Lebanon. We sympathise with them, but we cannot dictate their relationships with other people. That's just unfortunate. There are only solidarity links between the IRA and the PFLP, but the Brits have used that to try to embarrass us, as they did with the Marxist smear, with those links. The IRA is a national liberation organisation.

No. But these negotiations are causing a lot of anxiety, although by the time this interview appears in print, there might be some conclusion to those negotiations. It is the men in the H Blocks and their comrades in Armagh to decide. It's not even up to us to decide. They are the sole negotiating body. They are undoubtedly political prisoners. In February and March this year, we privately decided to suspend attacks on prison warders, but the beatings meted out by them to the prisoners continued. It wasn't until June this year after prisoners had been continually beaten, after there was no progress in Cardinal 0 Fiaich's 'initiative', that we decided to resume attacks.

Since June, there has only been one IRA attack on the warders, but we have said it is open season on them again. We want the H Blocks settled, we don't want to see warders killed and the H Blocks are of no propaganda purpose to use. Our people in the jails are suffering real deprivations and we want that resolved.