The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

On 17 October 1979, the Panorama team received a telephone call at their Dublin hotel telling them they would see something of interest if they went to Carrickmore. The anonymous caller was telling the truth. For in the same sense that the Chinese saying, ‘May you live in interesting times’, is regarded as a curse, Carrickmore proved extremely interesting. The Panorama team discovered a hooded IRA unit manning a roadblock and carrying out inspections of driving licences in the name of the Irish Republican Army. The BBC men filmed these proceedings. As a result, ‘a wave of fury swept the Commons’.46 The fury was caused by two factors, one practical, the other ideological. On practical grounds the incident was extremely embarrassing for the security forces and the NIO. These groups had two settled lines of policy. One, that the situation on the ground was secure. The IRA were being defeated. This was why the publication of the Glover Report, in May of that year, was so unwelcome in some quarters. The second major propaganda claim, by both Unionists and British apologists, was that a root cause of the violence in the Six Counties was the lax security policies of the Republic, which allowed the IRA to strike at will across the border. In fact, as Garret FitzGerald, one of the most committed anti-IRA prime ministers in the history of the Republic, pointed out to the British, only 3 per cent of the total amount of violence committed occurred in the border region.47 But in Octobe...