A continuing military enigma

It was an open secret that the public upheavals in the republican movement caused by the politicisation process also caused ructions in PIRA’s ranks. Dissension over practicalities centred on the relationship between peaceful political campaigning and the armed struggle. As PSF took on a more active role and rose to a position of more equal status with PIRA, it became clear that the two organisations would be in close competition for resources. The streamlining of the military organisation had reduced PIRA’s operational costs, but PSFs political activities made heavy demands on the movement’s finances. In the 1982 assembly elections, for example, PSF spent more money on its election campaign, over £27,000, than any of the rival parties. ¹ Bishop and Mallie have said that by 1983 the cost of the party’s advice centres was in the region of £300,000 per annum, while the general election campaign of that year had cost £30,000, ² though other estimates have put the figure even higher at £137,000. ³ Either way, the financial burden was considerable. Suspicion of the politically go-ahead radicals was greatest among local PIRA activists who feared that the armed struggle would be run down and resources diverted to cater for PSF’s schemes. According to Liam Clarke, this caution was shown in the spring of 1983 when a meeting of ASU operatives in Belfast gave the Northern radicals two years in which to demonstrate the continued effectiveness of their approach. ⁴ In the intervening years there were periodic press reports of arguments within PIRA about the lack of money to maintain a guerrilla war and particularly about the diminishing level of operations in Belfast. ⁵ In April 1985, four activists, including Ivor Bell, a former Army Council member and delegate to the 1972 talks with William Whitelaw, were expelled from PIRA after allegedly opposing the diversion of funds away from PIRA to finance PSF’s campaign in the up-coming May local council elections, and for subsequently trying to mobilise support against the armalite and ballot box strategy. ⁶ There was even a suggestion that the explosion outside Harrods in December 1983, which killed five people, was the work of a faction deliberately out to disrupt contacts with the political left in Britain which Adams was trying to cultivate. Speculation was raised when PIRA said that the attack was ‘not authorised by the Army Council’. ⁷ There was little proof that this or any other attack was intended to undermine Adams’ position. PIRA later claimed that its statement was meant to convey that the Harrods bomb was a mistake caused by ‘extremely difficult communications’ and was not a repudiation of the bombing team concerned. ⁸