My investigation into prison conditions raised an additional and even more acute moral dilemma. One of the people I interviewed was the Secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, Desmond Irvine. I met him in 1977 at Belfast’s Europa Hotel, and talked to him at length a few days before the interview to make sure he would be happy to be filmed despite the fact that the NIO was strongly opposed because of the risk, given that the IRA were targeting prison officers. I decided to go ahead, however, because Mr Irvine wanted to do the interview and I believed that it was important that his message got across, not least because it was coming from a Protestant prison officer. Remarkably, in the interview he described the IRA protesters not as common criminals, which was the NIO’s spin, but as men who had been fighting a war. He believed that he and his members were dealing with an army. Astonishingly, he said he understood why the prisoners felt the way they did.
After the programme he wrote me a letter thanking me for representing his views responsibly, and for giving ‘an accurate description of life at the Maze’. Two weeks later the IRA shot him dead. I was shattered when I heard the news.
At the funeral I stood at his graveside and silently cried. One Belfast journalist rang me at home and asked me how it felt to have ‘blood on my hands’. The pain and loss suffered by Desmond Irvine’s family, friends and colleagues, hit me hard, and I seriously considered packing up reporting Northern Ireland and ‘terrorism’. I later confronted the IRA about why they had shot dead a man who had given an interview expressing views that were consistent with the IRA’s own. I was told that he was killed not because of my interview, but because he was the Secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association. It was no consolation.
In Northern Ireland, the final recognition of reality was the British government’s realisation that it would have to talk to the IRA, and make the compromises necessary to bring the conflict to an end. This it ultimately did as the result of a long, sensitive and secret process played out over many years, in which the key link between the British government and the IRA was a remarkable man from Londonderry – or Derry. His name was Brendan Duddy, codenamed ‘the Mountain Climber’.
Chapter One
Talking to the IRA
There are moments that stick in the memory forever. At the time you may sense their significance, but it’s only long afterwards that their real importance sinks in. Standing by a public telephone in a new shopping mall in the centre of Derry in 1998 was one of those moments.
I’d made sure that I had enough coins in case the conversation was long, but I suspected I wouldn’t be needing them. I remember the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. The reason for my apprehension was that I thought that, after months of trying, I’d finally identified the shadowy figure, known only as ‘the Mountain Climber’,b who for almost a quarter of a century had been the key link between Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and the IRA. I was about to ring him to see if he would meet me. His name was Brendan Duddy.
I put the coins in the slot, and remember hearing them go ‘clunk’ one after the other. I held my breath as I heard the ringing tone. Then someone at the other end picked up the phone. I suspected it would be in an office, and tried to sound as composed as I could. I asked if I could speak to Mr Brendan Duddy. ‘Can I say who’s calling?’ replied the person on the other end of the line. I thought it best to be open and say who I was. There was a pause, and I was asked to hold. The wait seemed endless, as lunchtime shoppers filed past me. Then another voice came on the line. ‘Brendan Duddy speaking.’ I took a deep breath and told him who I was, again trying to sound composed and calm. I expected to hear a ‘click’, marking the end of the conversation, but I didn’t. ‘I’ve been waiting to hear from you,’ he said. I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. To my surprise, he was familiar with my work in Northern Ireland over the years. I asked if I could come and see him to have a chat. He said that would be fine. When? ‘Today?’ I asked. He suggested I go to Rafters, one of the restaurants he owned, and someone would come and get me.
I put down the receiver, let out a huge sigh of relief that must have been audible to the shoppers, and went off for a cup of tea to collect my thoughts. I had to work out what I was going to say, and how I was going to present myself, to a man whose identity and top-secret work were known to no one apart from the handful of IRA men and spooks with whom he had dealt over so many years. The identity of ‘the Link’, as Brendan became known, was one of Northern Ireland’s most closely guarded secrets.
I drove to Rafters, a modern, barn-like steakhouse on the edge of the city, sat down at a table and ordered some food, although I wasn’t hungry. I had too much on my mind. My meal arrived, and so did a young man who introduced himself as one of Brendan’s sons and asked me to follow him downstairs. That was the first time I set eyes on Brendan Duddy. He was discussing finance with a banker from Dublin. He stood up, greeted me with a warm smile and a handshake, and introduced me to the banker, his wife Margo and others sitting at his table as if he had known me for years.
His financial business done, Brendan suggested we go to his home, where we could talk in private. In the hallway we were met by Tara, a Great Dane of Baskervillian dimensions. We adjourned to Brendan’s ‘wee room’ at the back of the house, with a peat fire smouldering in one corner. Margo brought us cups of tea and biscuits – as I was to learn she had done on many occasions for IRA leaders and assorted spooks. Then Brendan began to talk, a facility he has in abundance. I stressed that anything he said would be off the record, and that I would never repeat or publish any of it unless he gave me the green light to do so.
His story was extraordinary – the stuff of fiction. But as I was to discover, this was fact, not fantasy. He said that the seeds of peace had been planted in the very room in which we were sitting. They had been ripped up and then replanted on numerous occasions down the years before they finally grew into what became known as the peace process. He told me how IRA leaders had been smuggled across the border for secret meetings with the British at the height of the IRA’s campaign; how his family had learned never to ask questions about what was going on in their home, and never to utter the names of some of the most wanted IRA men who had taken tea with the British under the Duddy family roof; and of how he’d known Martin McGuinness for around thirty years. As the night wore on, Brendan produced a bottle of Irish whiskey and started to pour. I don’t normally drink whiskey, but under the circumstances it seemed both impolite and impolitic to refuse. As the alcohol hit home, I struggled to keep my mind clear: I did not want to miss anything. I seldom use a tape recorder – I usually take notes – but in these exceptional circumstances I feared that the presence of a notebook and poised pen might inhibit the conversation.
At about 4 a.m. I must have been visibly flagging, unlike Brendan. I thought it was time to go, but after several whiskeys I did not want to drive back to my hotel. Brendan said his son would take me, and I could pick up my car later that day. He also said that I should meet his family and, crucially, his close friend and accomplice in the Link, Bernadette Mount, so I could get the full picture. I woke up in my hotel room, not surprisingly, with a headache, scarcely believing what I had heard the night before, and started to make notes of my recollections. Brendan rang and asked if I’d like to have dinner at Bernadette’s house that evening.
We ate roast lamb. Bernadette is not only a very good cook, but a remarkable woman. She later told me of how she had given bed and breakfast to IRA leaders like Billy McKee and Seamus Twomey, and their less notorious counterparts in the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Féin, like its President Rory O’Brady.1 Brendan’s wife Margo and one of their sons were also at the dinner. It was a bitterly cold evening as we talked round the fire. I asked if there was