The ‘Unforgivable’?: Irish Republican Army (IRA) informers and dealing with Northern Ireland conflict legacy, 1969-2021

Eleanor Leah Williams; Thomas Leahy

doi:10.1080/02684527.2022.2104000

The ‘Unforgivable’?: Irish Republican Army (IRA) informers and dealing with Northern Ireland conflict legacy, 1969-2021

Eleanor Leah Williams^*, Thomas Leahy

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

593 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The case of Northern Ireland and ex-IRA informers demonstrates the difficulty of dealing with the informer legacy post-conflict. We explain why Sinn Féin and the UK state have dealt with some conflict legacy cases involving informers but not with others. Contemporary political and reputational reasons are an important explanation, but there are also legal considerations and communal pressures at play. Divisions amongst alleged and self-confessed informers further facilitate this unstructured approach to legacy. These difficulties with informers’ legacy are not unique to Northern Ireland. Similar challenges in reconciling former state agents with paramilitaries are evident across other conflicts.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	470-490
Number of pages	21
Journal	Intelligence and National Security
Volume	38
Issue number	3
Early online date	03 Aug 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2022.2104000
Publication status	Published - 16 Apr 2023

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10.1080/02684527.2022.2104000Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

The ‘Unforgivable’?: Irish Republican Army (IRA) informers and dealing with Northern Ireland conflict legacy, 1969-2021
Copyright 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits distribution and reproduction for non-commercial purposes, provided the author and source are cited.
Final published version, 770 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Were the state’s intelligence activities during the conflicts in Northern Ireland (1969-1998) and Colombia (1978-2016) ethical?
Williams, E. L. (Author), Thomson, A. (Supervisor) & English, R. (Supervisor), Jul 2023
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy

Cite this

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The ‘Unforgivable’?: Irish Republican Army (IRA) informers and dealing with Northern Ireland conflict legacy, 1969-2021

Abstract

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Student theses

Were the state’s intelligence activities during the conflicts in Northern Ireland (1969-1998) and Colombia (1978-2016) ethical?

Cite this