Book review: A sobering book and a reality check

A significant and disturbing contribution to the ever-growing library focused on the three decades of terror that ravaged communities in Northern Ireland

Sat, 24 Feb, 2024 - 01:00

Jack Power

This book is a significant and disturbing contribution to the ever-growing library focused on the three decades of terror, the three decades of murder, and Semtex deployed as political levers that ravaged communities in Northern Ireland and left toxic legacies that resonate today.

That legacy, in the two decades following the end of the Troubles, saw many people take their own lives in Northern Ireland on top of the 3,720 people killed during those wild, dystopian years.

This book focuses in forensic detail on three lead players and the eternal dilemma of the morality around espionage, protecting spies and allies or how one life might be traded to save others.

Frank Hegarty was a Derry man who loved greyhounds and in 1980 was beguiled by British security officers to join the IRA so he might gather information and use his influence to encourage the paramilitaries to reject violence and embrace politics — M15 as peacemakers. Six years later, he was murdered by the IRA.

After three arms dumps Hegarty knew about in the Republic were raided when British spooks gave the details to the gardaí (as a peace offering to try to rebuild strained relationships), he fled to England.

Four Shots in the Night A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice in Northern Ireland, by Henry Hemming

Derry IRA chief Martin McGuinness exerted relentless pressure on Hegarty’s mother to convince her to ask her son to return to Derry, assuring her time and again that he would be safe, that he had his full protection.

Eventually, he did return. It proved a fatal error. His killers had the thoughtfulness to cover his eyes with tape as they were using a new type of powerful pistol which, in an earlier “nutting”, made it look like the victim’s eyes had been gouged out by his interrogators. The Provo killers drew the line at leaving the impression they were brutally indifferent to their victims’ families’ sensibilities. After all, they might want an open coffin.

Henry Hemming, in details that are truly chilling, records that McGuinness was one of three IRA men present when Hegarty was shot. So too was one of the most notorious figures of those dreadful times — Freddie “Stakeknife” Scappaticci, an enthusiastic IRA interrogator and just one of many long-time British agents in the Provos’ officer class.

That Scappaticci is suspected of the murder — he falls just short of admitting it in a BBC interview — leaves an irony almost beyond comprehension: One British spy murdering another to protect their credibility and convince the IRA of their fealty. Immorality made alive.

That British security agencies regarded McGuinness and his inner circle as essential in the slow process of marginalising IRA hardliners meant that for a time at least, they were untouchable. However, that immunity was put under unsustainable pressure by Operation Kenova, which opened in 2019.

It was led by Jon Boutcher, who was appointed chief constable of the PSNI last October. He had gathered enough evidence against Scappaticci to send a comprehensive file to the North’s DPP, but Scappaticci dodged that bullet when he died last April.

Two pieces of legislation endorsed by the House of Commons also confounded any prospect of what might be imagined as justice. One, for the first time, set out what espionage operatives might or might not do without incurring the wrath of the law. That it has become known as the ‘Licence to Kill Bill’ is sobering.

Alfredo 'Freddie' Scappaticci, codename 'Stakeknife', at a republican funeral in 1987.

The second piece of legislation, one welcomed equally by veteran soldiers, spymasters, and ageing terrorists, has decreed that anyone involved officially or otherwise in the gory details of the Troubles cannot be prosecuted.

This is a sobering book even if it is no more than a reality check, a foil to the romanticism beloved by those happy to pontificate but lucky enough not to have been touched by atrocity.

These are the kind of dark and distasteful things that happen in bitter conflicts and there’s more than enough accusations to go around.

However, one lasting impression is that the Provos were essentially fascists happy to murder anyone who disagreed with them and brave enough to try to undermine their activities without resorting to violence.

BOOKS & MORE

Check out our Books Hub where you will find the latest news, reviews, features, opinions and analysis on all things books from the Irish Examiner's team of specialist writers, columnists and contributors.

more books – non fiction articles