Memoir: DUP kept secret link with SF

THE Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) opened its own secret back channel to Sinn Féin in 2003 despite the fact it was publicly refusing to deal with the republican party because the IRA was still active.

In a new memoir, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, tells of various back channels that existed with Sinn Féin and the IRA during the Troubles.

The British government had had a secret route to the IRA since 1973, but when this back channel was revealed 20 years later in 1993, DUP leader Ian Paisley condemned the then British prime minister, John Major, for allowing it.