Ivor Bell

Ivor Bell ( Irish Éibhear Mac Giolla Mhaoil , * 1936 or 1937 ) is a former senior member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) from Belfast . Within the IRA he climbed up to the IRA's chief of staff on (Chief of Staff). He was a close confidante and ally of Gerry Adams for a long time before Bell fell out with him and was expelled from the IRA in 1985.

Belfast Brigade

Beginnings

Bell joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during their so-called Border Campaign (1956-1962). When the IRA laid down its arms in 1962 and announced the end of the Border Campaign, he left the underground organization in disappointment. When the violence escalated in Northern Ireland in 1969 and the Northern Ireland conflict began, the IRA split into the politically and socially oriented Official Irish Republican Army and the initially almost purely militaristic Provisional Irish Republican Army. Bell then joined the Provisional IRA in Belfast in 1970. There he first became the commander of B Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade . This company was active in the area of ​​Kashmir Road. Soon after, he was deputy commander of the 2nd Battalion behind Gerry Adams .

After the internment policy of the Northern Irish and British governments was introduced on August 9, 1971, the then commander of the Belfast Brigade, Joe Cahill, gave a public press conference the following day at a school in the Ballymurphy neighborhood in which he claimed that the internment would not cause the IRA has been weakened. Nevertheless, after this propaganda coup, Cahill had to flee to the Republic of Ireland to avoid possible arrest. So Seamus Twomey took over Cahill's position as brigade commander. Twomey has now appointed Bell to the brigade's staff as operations officer. He became Twomey's deputy the following year, after previous deputy Gerry Adams was arrested and interned by the British Army on March 14, 1972 .

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On June 26, 1972, the IRA declared a temporary ceasefire, whereupon an IRA delegation met with a British delegation under the leadership of the then Northern Ireland Minister William Whitelaw on July 7, 1972 for secret talks in London . Bell was among the IRA leaders in attendance, as was Gerry Adams, who was specially released for this meeting. The other IRA leaders were Seán Mac Stíofáin , Dáithí Ó Conaill , Seamus Twomey, and Martin McGuinness . The talks were not very constructive, so that the IRA lifted the ceasefire just two days later.

Bell, along with the other IRA commanders on Belfast's staff such as Twomey, Adams and Brendan Hughes , was responsible for planning and organizing several major bomb attacks in Belfast. These included the attack on the Abercorn restaurant on March 4, 1972, in which two people were killed and over a hundred injured; the attack on Donegall Street on March 20, 1972, in which seven people were killed and over a hundred injured again; and Bloody Friday on July 21, 1972. In this series of attacks on July 21, between 19 and 22 car bombs exploded across Belfast in just over an hour - nine of them within 18 minutes and six within three minutes. Nine people were killed and over a hundred injured again. Among the injured in all these attacks, there were many seriously injured, some of whom were horribly mutilated. While the IRA claimed that it did not intentionally kill civilian victims and that the British security forces often did not respond properly to the warnings, these attacks, particularly Bloody Friday , sparked not only the general public, but even most IRA- Sympathizers express disgust and indignation. Until 1972, the IRA had control of many areas in West Belfast, but now the British Army marched into such areas in a major operation called Operation Motorman on July 31, 1972, and built permanent fortified posts there to significantly increase the IRA's freedom of movement to restrict. After this setback, Seamus Twomey, like Joe Cahill before, was relieved of the position of brigade commander and sent to the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Dublin to represent the Belfast IRA there. He was succeeded by Gerry Adams and his deputy Ivor Bell.

Assassination of Jean McConville

In July 2016, a judge in Belfast ruled that there was sufficient evidence for Bell to stand trial for his involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville and for membership of the IRA. Jean McConville was the first of the so-called " disappeared " accused by the IRA of treason and buried in unmarked graves after their murder.

Long Kesh

On July 19, 1973, Adams and other senior members of the IRA were arrested and interned in Belfast. As a result, Bell became the brigade's new commander. In February 1974, however, the British security forces also arrested him. Although he escaped from Long Kesh internment camp on April 15, 1974 by swapping places with a visitor, the security forces managed to arrest him again two weeks later in South Belfast on Malone Road.

Back in Long Kesh, he was imprisoned with Gerry Adams and Brendan Hughes. When the IRA leadership again declared a ceasefire in February 1975 and again negotiated secretly with British representatives, Bell and his two comrades were skeptical. The armistice ended in January 1976. Adams, Bell and Hughes accused the leadership of incompetence and the weakening of the fighting strength and morale of the IRA. In the internment camp, they designed a new structure for the IRA. For example, so that its units would be as difficult to infiltrate as possible, the underground organization should in future have a cell structure and an internal security service with overall responsibility . In addition, the IRA should be divided into a Northern Command and a Southern Command. The IRA should also focus on a long war rather than a quick military victory and develop a so-called Green Book .

The group sought out allies with Brian Keenan and Martin McGuinness outside the prison, who also advocated a reorganization. In the end, the suggestions were adopted by the IRA leadership. When the Irish police, Garda Síochána, arrested then IRA chief of staff Seamus Twomey in Dublin in December, the latter had a written copy of the restructuring plans with him.

Army Council

After his release in 1977, Bell was soon appointed to the seven-member Army Council, the highest governing body of the IRA. There he was later commander of the Northern Command and later the deputy chief of staff Martin McGuinness. When the IRA and Sinn Féin began to politicize themselves in the course of the hunger strike in Maze Prison in 1981 and to vote in elections, Bell first supported this. Together with Adams, he maneuvered the old southern Irish leadership around Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill, so that the IRA and Sinn Féin rejected their éire-nua policy (mainly federalism ), which had been in effect since 1972 , and made a shift to the left. In the fall of 1982 Bell was elected the new chief of staff by the Army Council. However, in September 1983, the British security forces arrested him again after he was betrayed by key witness Robert “Beano” Lean, then deputy commander of the Belfast Brigade, along with 27 other senior IRA members. After Lean withdrew his statements, the authorities had to release Bell, whereupon he resumed his place on the Army Council. He had lost his position as chief of staff to Kevin McKenna . His new task was to acquire weapons for the IRA in Europe and to act as an ambassador for Libya , which supplied the IRA with weapons in the 1970s.

IRA exclusion

At the same time, he began to criticize the increasing politicization of the Irish Republican movement under Adam's leadership, as this was damaging the armed struggle. He began rallying allies from Northern Command and the Belfast Brigade, including his partner Anne Boyle, Sean McIlvenna (Northern Command Operations Director), Eddie Carmichael (Brigade Commander in Belfast), Anto Murray and Daniel McCann , around unwanted people to deselect in the leadership. When they noticed the planned "coup", the IRA expelled Bell, Boyle, Carmichael, McCann and Murray from the underground organization for treason in late 1985. However, the latter two were later resumed. McIlvenna died a year earlier in an exchange of fire with the Northern Irish police Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Bell and Boyle still live together, withdrawn in West Belfast.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} B. O'Brien: The long war: the IRA and Sinn Féin . New York 1999, p. 130
2. ^ E. Moloney: A Secret History of the IRA . New York 2002, p. 14 f.
3. ^ A Secret History of the IRA , p. 106
4. ^ A Secret History of the IRA , pp. 101 ff.
5. ^ Adams and IRA's secret Whitehall talks . bbc.co.uk. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
6. ^ E. Moloney: Voices from the grave: Two Men's War in Ireland . New York 2010, p. 102 ff.
7. ↑ Henry McDonald, Ivor Bell to stand trial for involvement in Jean McConville murder , in: The Guardian , July 7, 2016, accessed July 7, 2016
8. ^ A Secret History of the IRA , pp. 133 ff.
9. ^ A Secret History of the IRA , pp. 133-161
10. ^ A Secret History of the IRA , p. 157 f.
11. ^ E. Moloney: A Secret History of the IRA . New York 2002, p. 166
12. ^ E. Moloney: A Secret History of the IRA . New York 2002, p. 189 ff.
13. ↑ A Secret History of the IRA , p. 242 f.
14. ^ A Secret History of the IRA , pp. 242 ff.