BBC Northern Ireland
27 March 2024
By Brian Hanley
Reviewing John Bowyer Bell’s The secret army in January 1971, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh recommended the book ‘highly’, calling it ‘required reading’ for ‘all with a deep interest in Ireland’. Ó Brádaigh was a senior figure in the newly formed Provisional IRA, whose Belfast paper, Republican News, described the same work as ‘history by a historian … scholarly and beautifully-written … sympathetic and understanding’. Cathal Goulding, leader of the rival Officials, was just as effusive, calling The secret army ‘not just a book about the IRA, but a book for the IRA’. Bell, an American academic and artist, had first visited Ireland in 1965. Having made contact with republicans through his research on the Spanish Civil War, he began writing a history of the IRA. Significantly, Bell was given, in Ó Brádaigh’s words, ‘sanction for this work by [IRA] General Headquarters’. These contacts allowed Bell to paint a vivid picture of the republican movement, particularly in the post-Civil War era.
Though rumours about CIA connections circulated from early on, Bell continued to write prolifically about Ireland and remained well regarded by republicans. It was to him that the Continuity IRA gave their first public interview in 1996. After his death in 2003, An Phoblacht/Republican News asserted that Bell’s work remained ‘head and shoulders above other writers on the conflict’. This helps explain why during the spring of 1972 the American had been given co-operation by the Provisional IRA for his film, also called The Secret Army.
Footage from this formed the basis for BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight documentary. Presented by Darragh McIntyre, this interspersed clips of IRA volunteers training, engaging in gun battles and making bombs with speculation that Bell had indeed been a CIA asset. It was suggested that British intelligence gained access to the proofs of the film. Tim Pat Coogan, whose own book on the IRA was published in the same year as Bell’s, claimed that he had always suspected the American’s bona fides. The involvement of director Zwy Aldouby, an Israeli with Mossad connections, added a further layer of mystery. But more was made of the unquestionably vivid footage than was justified. In 1971 Ó Brádaigh had questioned Bell’s title, suggesting that describing the IRA as ‘secret’ ‘was questionable … as anyone who goes to Bodenstown or attends his local Easter Commemoration can testify’. Though perhaps hard to imagine now, there was a time when the IRA did not wear balaclavas. Indeed, until the 1970s colour parties paraded unmasked. The organisation’s leaders were also happy to be described as such. Ó Brádaigh was one of several of these, among them Seán Mac Stíofáin, Dáithí Ó Conaill and Martin McGuinness, who featured in Bell’s film (though only McGuinness was identified by Spotlight). Their appearance was also not as remarkable as suggested. The IRA leadership were public figures in 1972. Spotlight’s not-so-subtle subtext was that there was something suspicious about McGuinness allowing himself to be filmed, but the Derry IRA leader had already been featured on BBC television walking around the Bogside speaking to reporter Tom Mangold about the IRA’s bombing campaign during 1972. In April that year McGuinness had spoken to the Irish Times about his role as IRA commander in the city. Nor was it unusual for IRA volunteers to appear without disguising their identities. Photographs of Belfast IRA man Martin Meehan, in combat pose, holding an Armalite rifle were published in several newspapers during this period. P. Michael O’Sullivan’s 1972 book Patriot graves contained photographs of Tyrone activists Kevin Mallon and Brendan Hughes, armed and unmasked, ‘operating’ along the border. A documentary about Free Derry, No Go!, again featured IRA volunteers on operations, this time from the Officials.
It was the timing of Bell’s documentary that was crucial. For the Provisionals it seemed that 1972 could be ‘the Year of Victory’. Stormont was gone, the British embassy in Dublin lay smouldering and their leadership were being flown to London for talks with the British government. Young IRA volunteers prepared to engage soldiers in gun battles were perhaps not overly troubled by their faces appearing in a documentary. They, like their leadership, surely felt that victory was imminent. Though Bell’s film was never commercially released, it was shown in New York during August 1972 and reviewed for the Irish Times by Seán Cronin (himself a former IRA leader). Cronin’s verdict, that the documentary, narrated by Dublin actor Donal McCann, was neither ‘glorifying, denouncing nor moralising’, indicated perhaps more balance than Spotlight suggested. The film also featured loyalist Bill Craig, the SDLP’s Paddy Devlin and Tomás MacGiolla of the Officials along with ‘ordinary’ members of the public, some of whom expressed support for the IRA, others fears for the future.
Spotlight’s contention that the Israeli Aldouby’s interest might have been IRA links with Libya perhaps provided an extra frisson, but to presume that republicans during 1972 were automatically hostile to Israel would be mistaken. One IRA man held in Long Kesh in that period recalled among his comrades ‘a vociferous pro-Israeli minority [who] would not hear an anti-Israeli view’. That in itself is a reminder that 1972 was a different world. That world is key to understanding both how Bell could make this film and why the IRA would cooperate with him. Footage of IRA volunteers taking on heavily armed troops suggested a guerrilla army, not terrorists. But shortly after the film was completed, as Spotlight noted, came Bloody Friday and Operation Motorman. The nature of the IRA’s war went from insurrection to a different kind of armed struggle, a type much less likely to win popular admiration, particularly outside the North. The authorities, north and south, also began to impose much longer sentences for IRA membership and arms possession. History is complicated; contradictory things can be true at the same time and conspiracies often appear more attractive than perhaps mundane truths. Ultimately Spotlight’s Secret Army, despite the evocative footage, was less than the sum of its parts.
Brian Hanley is the presenter of the ‘Dirty War in Dublin’ podcast, supported by a Royal Irish Academy Decade of Centenaries bursary.