Was Martin McGuinness an MI6 Agent?

A very interesting article by David Sharrock in today’s Times on allegations by Martin Ingram, a former British Army agent, that Martin McGuinness was secretly working for MI6. There will of course be a great deal of scepticism surrounding these allegations but Ingram is not the first to have made them. They have also been made in the past by sources in the then RUC, although I must say I cannot remember them being published before. The first question to ask is how would RUC officers and British Army intelligence agents get to know if McGuinness was an MI6 agent. That sort of information would have been very tightly held, and what was MI6 doing in Northern Ireland anyway. It is the foreign intelligence service so in theory should not be involved in northern Ireland. McGuinness himself has refused to comment but the story has been predictably dismissed by Sinn Fein, who said: “We have heard this all before,” a spokesman said. “It is rubbish. It is nonsense.” Indeed we have heard this before. But it is unlikely to go away and strange as it may seem there is interesting evidence that some might see as backing up Ingram’s claims.

Firstly, MI6 was heavily involved in northern Ireland in the 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s, in the early stages of the peace process. John Major and Tony Blair tend to get most of the credit for the secret talks that led eventually to the current situation in Ireland where – despite the existence of a good deal of dissent among Loyalist and Republican hardliners - there is general acceptance on both sides of the divide that politics is the way forward. But in fact the credit for starting the process should go to Ted Heath, something that was sadly lacking from the obituaries that marked his death last year. It was Heath who sent the experienced MI6 officer Frank Steele into Northern Ireland in early 1971 to “talk to the street communities” – a euphemism for contacting the terrorists and finding a way out of the deteriorating situation.

Why an MI6 officer? Well during the retreat from empire, MI6 became expert at “parallel diplomacy”, setting up secret backchannels to the terrorists/liberation movements who were attempting to secure independence from Britain. The use of backchannels by MI6 is described in detail in my book The Spying Game, but this quote from a senior MI6 officer published in the book sums it up:

“Firstly, if you have an undeclared back-channel, which carries with it the kind of trust which a front channel of politicians meeting openly in order to move one step forward in negotiations can’t possibly carry - because each knows the other has his own agenda - it is easy to develop that to the point where you can have some basis for trusting what the other person’s telling you. Because they’re not completely committed to it. If they say, ‘Look, this is the way it’s going to be as far as our party’s concerned. I’m telling you this off the record. There is no comeback on me if it doesn’t turn out as well,’ then it’s much easier to develop a concept of both sides going a little further than it is possible to go in an open negotiation. Secondly, you can verify what is being said because you have got the intelligence. So when you are in quasi-negotiation with the other side in fact you are also running intelligence sources into them and penetrating them, and when they say, ‘This is the situation,’ you also have some means of judging whether or not they’re telling you something that isn’t a lie. It makes it a little more solid foundation to help to resolve conflicts.”

There is some evidence that Steele had previously been involved in similar talks with the Mau Mau in Kenya. At any event, his real purpose for being in Northern Ireland was to set up a backchannel to the IRA. In early 1972, a year after arriving there, and only days after Bloody Sunday, Steele made contact with Frank Morris, a senior member of the Provisional IRA’s Derry Brigade, with whom he had a number of meetings during which they discussed the IRA’s aims and what they would be prepared to accept as a solution. UK government officials went so far as to express concern that these talks were “too close to negotiations”, against which the government had of course set its face.

In June 1972, the IRA called on the British government to hold talks. The suggestion that the IRA did this came from the young commander of the Derry Brigade Martin McGuinness, who had joined the Provisionals from the “stickies”, the Official IRA. McGuinness had spent six months in the Official IRA before defecting to the Provos because they were far more effective. The offer of talks was dismissed in public but privately followed up and Steele, accompanied by a senior UK official Philip Woodfield, the deputy secretary in the Northern Ireland Office, met Gerry Adams and another senior IRA member secretly at an IRA safe house in County Donegal to set up talks in London at the Cheyne Walk home of the then junior Northern Ireland Minister Paul Channon which were attended by among others, Adams and McGuinness.

Those talks led nowhere. But the contacts continued and Steele was succeeded in his role as the main UK contact by another MI6 officer Michael Oatley, known to the IRA as Mountain Climber, who remained the trusted contact point throughout the Thatcher era, even when publicly Thatcher was insisting “we do not talk to terrorists”. There was of course deep scepticism within the British Army, MI5 and RUC Special Branch over the worth of such contacts. Oatley’s main contact within the IRA was Martin McGuinness and it was McGuinness and Oatley who met in 1990 and again in 1991 at what is now - to my mind wrongly - perceived as the start of the peace process. So not only was it McGuinness who first publicly suggested talks, he was also the main IRA contact for the two MI6 officers - Steele and Oatley - who set up and nurtured the backchannel from the 1970s to the 1990s. That is why there has been so much suspicion over the years – always denied by Sinn Fein - that McGuinness was an MI6 agent.

Comments

[Frank Schnittger]

Where does being an agent end and being a double agent start? Does facilitating back channel discussions constitute acting as an agent? Obviously if money for personal use changes hands, or if details of planned operations are leaked, the answer is yes. Has there been any allegation that money changed hands?

Otherwise we are forced to the conclusion that just as the Government engaged in talks with terrorists whilst officially denying same, so the IRA was doing the same thing - perhaps even feeding the British Government a few sweeteners in the form of operational information to build trust.

The conflict has always been a lot more complex and in some ways sophisticated than many have given it credit. The question is just what are they at now - and what are the real objectives behind the obviously farcical attempts to revive devolved Government in Northern Ireland.

Does anyone have a plan to move the peace process forward - or have we all settled for low level sectarian conflict to continue ad infinitum?

[peter nelson]

Unfortunately there are people out there like Martin Ingram aka Ian Hurst who will do anything and say anything to sell copy and ultimately books. Pieces of fiction such as Stakenife and the non-sensical allegations against Martin McGuinness are the figment of an over active imagination with no facts to back them up. Rent-a-whistleblower is quite a lucrative job these days.

[rocky margin]

Unfortunately the path of peace is being blocked by such outrageous articles that imply that a murderer like Martin McGUINNESS was an agent of the state. That Ex Int Corps SSgt Ian Hurst ( now Martin Ingram) could possibly believe such a ludicrous scenario speaks for itself really. Rocky Hurst's book STEAKNIFE and the nature of his collaboration with every Police investigation and public Inquiry, is a curious epitaph to such a sad person. Those soldiers who risked their lives on a daily basis for the people of Northern Ireland and their work colleaugues did so without any political motivation or financial gain.
[Edited for legal reasons]

[Jack Grantham]

Another website on Martin Ingram and Jack Grantham and British Imperialism in Ireland.

http://jackgrantham.blogspot.com/

[Jack Grantham]

Martin Ingram and Jack Grantham and British Imperialism in Ireland.or more news of Martin Ingram and Jack Grantham go to

http://jackgrantham.blogspot.com/