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.

A decade on, however, the DUP itself opted to establish its own secret link after the party won the 2003 assembly elections.

The DUP was at the time still publicly refusing to meet Sinn Féin because the IRA remained active.

Mr Powell writes: “They [the DUP] were no different from the British government at the time of John Major or Margaret Thatcher saying they never had contacts with the IRA — but actually doing so as well.

“It did play an important role in making possible that extraordinary meeting between Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. They had never met, they had never spoken until they sat down for that photo opportunity in March 2007. If you hadn’t had that back channel building confidence over time, it would have been difficult.”

Extracts of the memoir, Great Hatred, Little Room — Making Peace in Northern Ireland, are being published in the Guardian newspaper this week.

Mr Powell writes that a Derry businessman, Brendan Duddy, was the key link in the British government’s channel to the IRA. Mr Duddy dealt with the government through an MI6 handler, Michael Oatley.

“It is very hard for democratic governments to admit to talking to terrorist groups while those groups are still killing innocent people,” Mr Powell writes.

“Luckily for this process, the British government’s back channel to the Provisional IRA had been in existence whenever required from 1973 onwards.”

The channel was used on three occasions: to negotiate an IRA ceasefire in the 1970s, to discuss the hunger strikes in 1980 and to negotiate tentative steps in the peace process in the 1990s.

When Oatley retired in the early 1990s, an intelligence officer known as “Fred” took over the link.

Difficulty arose in November 1993, when Fred brought back a message purporting to come from Martin McGuinness offering a “total end to violence”.

It caused consternation on the republican side, with the IRA denying sending the message. But it convinced the British Government there was a real possibility of peace, Mr Powell writes.

The link went down at the end of 1993 when its existence was leaked.