Soviets back IRA in war on Britain
By Mark Burdman
EIR
Sept. 9, 1988 Anno Domini
Days before the Irish Republican Army launched its August offensive against Great Britain, the Soviet magazine New Times published an unusually blunt statement of support for the IRA, in its July 1988 edition. Britain is being especially targeted for Soviet-backed irregular warfare because of its traditional close ties to the United States within the NATO alliance, and because of the Thatcher government's opposition to "New Yalta" superpower condominium arrangements for Europe, southern Africa, and other regions in the world.
Vladimir Zhitomirsky, described as Moscow's Belfast special correspondent of New Times, wrote the article entitled, "People and Bullets," which went way beyond a critique of British policy toward Ireland into a diatribe against British "terror" against Northern Ireland. Zhitomirsky dated the crisis to "eight centuries ago," when "the Anglo-Norman regular devastating raids on Ireland began," and when "Ireland was turned into the first English colony," with an "apartheid policy" used against the Irish.
Zhitomirsky traced the "present crisis" to the end of the 1960s: precisely the moment that the moribund IRA was revived as an organization by the Soviet intelligence services.
"In 1969, the British government sent its troops across the Irish Sea," he went on, claiming that the British used "as a pretext" the extremist actions of both the "so-called Provisional IRA, which had broken away from the main IRA in 1970," and the ultra-Protestants. The New Times author charged that, from 1972 on, "London, in effect, raised the terror against [the people of Northern Ireland] to a new level." He concluded by attacking the Tory government of the U.K. for having refused to implement social projects to help the Irish: "London has no funds for such things. Clearly, maintaining a British military contingent in Ulster costs too much."
'The IRA war'
Since the morning of Aug. 1, with its bombing of an army barracks near British Prime Minister Thatcher's home election district of Finchley, the IRA has been waging an offensive bloodier than any since the 1970s. On the night of Aug. 27-28 alone, British security forces in Northern Ireland reported almost 200 violent events in Belfast and Londonderry, including 27 incidents of shooting at police, 17 bombings, and over 50 hijackings of vehicles whose owners were then forced to drive their vehicles loaded with explosives to selected targets. On Aug. 30, a highly placed IRA source was quoted by France's Le Monde daily: "The struggle is entering its final phase. The next 18 months to two years will be crucial, because the IRA possesses the necessary resources to win the war."
Aug. 20. An IRA team using Czech-manufactured and Libyan-supplied Semtex plastic explosives blew up a bus carrying British soldiers returning from leave on a main highway in Northern Ireland: 8 killed, over 20 wounded.
Aug. 23. The IRA placed a 400-pound car bomb in the commercial heart of Belfast, which was blown up in a controlled explosion by the police: over $6 million in damage. The next day, the IRA issued a communiqué announcing a strategy of car bombings aimed at blowing up offices and commercial premises in Northern Ireland, a strategy last used in the 1970s. The communiqué stated that, in the future, such car bombings would be signaled by a small smoke grenade going off, so civilians could leave the area. However, it went on, when the smoke grenade would go off, a microswitch would "sensitize" the vehicle, to prevent bomb-disposal efforts.
Aug. 24. During the night, the British government went on the counterattack. Mrs. Thatcher held an emergency session with Northern Ireland Secretary Tom King to work out a secret package of special measures against the IRA. Experts speculated that the following options were being considered: increasing security co-operation with Dublin; tightening security along the border with the Irish Republic; stepping up covert action and intelligence-gathering activities by the elite SAS (Special Air Services); tightening security for off-duty service personnel; interning terrorist suspects without trial; cracking down on sources of IRA funding, which may be seized and confiscated like the cash of drug traffickers; and banning Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing.
Aug. 30: Three IRA men evidently in the middle of a planned terrorist action were ambushed and killed in Drumnakilly near Omagh in Northern Ireland. According to the Sept. 1 Daily Telegraph of London, the ambush was carried out by an Army undercover unit, the Intelligence and Security Group, who had been trained by the SAS. An IRA statement said the three men were "on active service," and were "committed Republicans." The men were carrying two AK-47 rifles and a .38 Webley pistol. One of the men, Michael Harte, has been known to the police since 1983 "as an active terrorist organizing attacks against the security forces," according to the Telegraph.
Sept. 1. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Express, Mrs. Thatcher commented on such operations: "You obviously set certain criteria and let the people operate within them. Things happen quickly on the ground, but that is what responsibility means." She said, "I think there are people in the IRA and maybe in Sinn Fein, maybe elsewhere as well, who think that if they step up terrorism, it will weaken our resolve to stay in the province. Quite the reverse is true. Terrorism will not win."
She stressed: "When you are faced with terrorists you obviously do not let the terrorists know precisely what steps you are taking to counter their terrorism. Nor shall we. But my message to them is this: Do not doubt our resolve to defeat terrorism."
Target: NATO
On Aug. 31, West German customs police arrested two IRA men who had come into the Federal Republic from Holland. The two are believed to have been involved in bombings, during May-July 1988, of pubs frequented by British soldiers in Holland near the West German border, and of the British military facility near Duisburg, West Germany. German officials had been tipped off by British intelligence officials about the duo's entrance into the Federal Republic. The British wanted the interception to take place in the F.R.G., because of the notoriously soft policy of the Dutch toward the IRA.
These arrests underscore that the IRA is an arm against NATO as a whole, deployed against the British military component of NATO.
On Aug. 31, the Danish paper BT reported, citing Danish military sources, that there would be increased security at all the Danish military compounds during the "Bold Grouse" maneuvers in Denmark Sept. 12-16, because IRA terror actions against the British troops participating in the exercises are anticipated. British secret service agents, the paper reported, had already arrived in Denmark, and the terror threat was described by high-level sources as "serious and substantiated."
On Aug. 30, a member of the British Parliament from the Ulster Unionist Party, Gregory Campbell, charged that official maps of the British army bases in West Germany had been abandoned on a garbage ship in Northern Ireland. The maps were officially categorized as "restricted."
On the same day, British Army officials discovered 25 pounds of the Czech-made explosive Semtex, and four mortar tubes, of the type used in numerous serious incidents in Northern Ireland in recent weeks, during a routine check of a bus near the border near Londonderry. Up to now, the British response to the Semtexprovocations has been to appeal to the Czech government to crack down on distribution of the explosives, and to focus international attention on Libya as the source of Semtex supply. Given the increasingly angry mood in London, that approach could be transformed into a more overt focus on the Russian origins of IRA terrorism.
U.S. intelligence reports that 27 IRA terrorists have been trained in Syria, should also draw attention in London, especially in light of reports of the Soviets' building a naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus, and given past years' diplomatic brawls between Britain and Syria over Syrian support for international terrorism.
The secret IRA–Soviet agreement, 1925
Published in 20th-century / Contemporary History, Features, Issue 3 (May/Jun 2009), Volume 17
![Moss Twomey, IRA chief-of-staff, 1926–36—‘these people [the Soviets] are so shifty . . . they are out to exploit us . . . Except for our urgent need of cash, I would not be so keen on this [agreement]’. (Maurice Twomey Jr)](https://i0.wp.com/www.historyireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/137.jpg?resize=250%2C330&ssl=1)
Moss Twomey, IRA chief-of-staff, 1926–36—‘these people [the Soviets] are so shifty . . . they are out to exploit us . . . Except for our urgent need of cash, I would not be so keen on this [agreement]’. (Maurice Twomey Jr)
In the summer of 1925, just two years after the IRA’s defeat in the Civil War, the organisation sent a delegation to Moscow to solicit finance and weaponry from the Soviet Union. According to Tim Pat Coogan, the Russians asked their guests, ‘How many bishops did you hang?’, and when the answer was none, they replied, ‘Ah, you people are not serious at all’.
The group was led by the well-known Cork gunman P.A. Murray, who met privately with Joseph Stalin. Though Stalin expressed reservations about the IRA’s determination and competence, soon afterwards both parties made a secret agreement: the IRA would spy for the Soviets in Britain and America, as well as support their strategic goals, and in return receive a monthly payment of £500.
Soon after approving the pact, Frank Aiken (a loyal lieutenant to Eamon de Valera) was ousted as chief-of-staff and replaced by Andy Cooney, who in turn handed over command to Moss Twomey. For the next few years Twomey, in collaboration with his close associate Cooney, oversaw the IRA’s relationship with the Soviet Union. This remained one of the organisation’s most closely guarded secrets, and reference to it was rarely made in writing, except in secret code, and even then often in a very cryptic manner.
The IRA was in contact with Red Army intelligence officers in London and New York, and it was in the former that the monthly stipend was handed over. The IRA’s senior officer in London passed along military intelligence, including specifications of British submarine detection sonar and aeroplane engines for bombers, military journals and manuals, and gas masks. In addition he arranged false passports for Soviet agents and even for a communist operative to travel to Romania in the guise of an Irish woollens salesman! It was in New York, however, that the Soviets got the most valuable information, from an IRA agent code-named ‘Mr Jones’. Jones’s sources likely included serving members of the US military, as he was able to provide reports of the army’s chemical weapons service, state-of-the-art gas masks, machine-gun and aeroplane engine specifications, and reports from the navy, air service and army. In Jones’s estimation, Soviet intelligence in the US would have been ‘helpless’ without the information he supplied.
At this time the Russians feared a British-supported invasion of the Soviet Union and they asked Jones to plan for the sinking of British merchant ships sailing from New York to England in the event of war. Jones reported to Moss Twomey in Dublin that ‘under the excitement of war conditions we could get almost all our men to do anything, but could not give any guarantee that we could avoid casualties in killed and captures [sic]’. In Twomey’s opinion, ‘destruction may be feasible, if it could be done secretly and without capture of our agents’.
Jones threw himself selflessly into his work:
‘My job is getting very hard . . . wine and women. I am onto the right people now and can produce material of a high order, but I have to bring good whiskey along and stay up all night drinking with whores and the people who give me the stuff . . . I may not last long at this pace.’
One of the more bizarre consequences of the agreement was the IRA’s attempts to support Soviet interests in China. The Russians were heavily committed to Chiang Kai-shek, who was allied with the Chinese communists and engaged in a struggle with the warlords, who in turn were supported by Japan and Britain. The IRA army council resolved that ‘the principle of [IRA] volunteers going to China was approved, provided conditions of service [and] cost of travel were satisfactory’. Meanwhile, the Scottish IRA battalion claimed that it had sent 200 bombs to China, and Twomey ordered the IRA unit in Liverpool to destroy arms ships sailing from there with munitions for the warlords.
Though the Soviets had little intention of supplying weaponry to the IRA, individual Red Army intelligence officers continued to hint that they could be provided. Jones reported that his contact promised ‘to give us all the material we needed’. Additionally, the Russian officer passed along to Jones information on mustard gas.
Both the Russians and the IRA had different reasons for consummating the relationship. Moss Twomey saw the agreement as a way of getting money and possibly weapons. Although there were a number of influential Marxists among the IRA leadership (most notably Peadar O’Donnell), Twomey’s interest was utilitarian rather than ideological. The Russians for their part wanted information on British and American weapons technology and hoped that the IRA would help promote pro-Soviet policies in Ireland and abroad. They avoided arming the IRA lest the weapons be captured and traced back, as they both feared Britain and needed to keep it as a trading partner. Moss Twomey wrote of the Russians: ‘these people are so shifty . . . they are out to exploit us . . . Except for our urgent need of cash, I would not be so keen on this [agreement]’. Frank Aiken referred to the Soviets as ‘hopeless bunglers’.
In November 1926 the Russians abruptly decreased the monthly payment to £100, having complained about the quality of work the IRA were doing for them in London, but also blaming the financial crisis in their own country. Considering that it took £400 a month to run the IRA, this was a major catastrophe. With Moss Twomey imprisoned in Mountjoy, Andy Cooney rushed to London to meet with the Soviet intelligence officer there, but to no avail. In the coming months the IRA had to let go most of its full-time officers, while many of those who remained at GHQ were unpaid. In order to put pressure on the Russians, ‘Jones’ was ordered to hold back on the intelligence he supplied in New York. Eventually in May 1927 the Russians handed over £1,000.
![Clann na Poblachta leader Seán MacBride during the general election campaign of 1948; 21 years earlier he was a senior IRA officer and agent code-named ‘Ambrose’. In September 1927 the IRA’s commander in London reported (in secret code) to Moss Twomey: ‘I received another letter from our friend [a Soviet intelligence officer]. He is in Amsterdam. He wants to see “Ambrose” immediately. He gives the name of a café where he can be met in. Says he has a present, which he is anxious to get rid of’. (Getty Images/Time Life Pictures)](https://i0.wp.com/www.historyireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/225.jpg?resize=280%2C491&ssl=1)
Clann na Poblachta leader Seán MacBride during the general election campaign of 1948; 21 years earlier he was a senior IRA officer and agent code-named ‘Ambrose’. In September 1927 the IRA’s commander in London reported (in secret code) to Moss Twomey: ‘I received another letter from our friend [a Soviet intelligence officer]. He is in Amsterdam. He wants to see “Ambrose” immediately. He gives the name of a café where he can be met in. Says he has a present, which he is anxious to get rid of’. (Getty Images/Time Life Pictures)
https://www.historyireland.com/the-secret-ira-soviet-agreement-1925/