This year marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which largely brought peace to Northern Ireland. The story of how that historic agreement came to fruition, though, is as complex and astonishing as the conflict itself. In Operation Chiffon, veteran author and documentary maker Peter Taylor offers a fascinating account of the figures in the shadows from MI5 and MI6, the UK’s intelligence agencies, and their back-channel dealings over many decades with those connected with the IRA to broker a peaceful resolution.
Taylor’s first experience of Northern Ireland came at the age of 29 when he was sent to report on the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, in which 26 unarmed civilians were shot by British soldiers during a protest march in Derry. Thirteen of them died. Like many British people, Taylor admits he was ignorant of much of what was happening in Northern Ireland before that assignment and was reporting for an audience that did not really care.
For decades, working for British television, he was a witness to “the Troubles” – a conflict that left more than 3600 people dead and thousands more injured by paramilitaries and the security forces – and the subsequent peace. He recounts the events that marked the period and the growth in anti-Irish sentiment in Britain as the IRA took its campaign of violence to major English cities in retaliation for the British forces and unionist paramilitaries’ treatment of Irish nationalists.
Although MI5 and MI6 are given prominence in the book’s title, there is little doubt that the hero of the story is Derry chip shop owner Brendan Duddy. Though he grew up Catholic and was closely connected to prominent players in the IRA, Duddy was a pacifist and long held the belief that peace could be achieved only through dialogue. The affable and hospitable businessman became a pivotal link between the IRA and the British intelligence service.
These secret dealings came at great personal risk to him, his family and his businesses. There is a heart-stopping moment in the book when, in trying to keep the back channel open, Duddy is suspected of being a spy for the British.
Also featured heavily are MI6 agent Michael Oatley and an MI5 agent known only by his first name, Robert. Taylor proves his investigative chops in tracking down Robert many years after he was the agency’s man on the ground in Northern Ireland through an inscription written on a book.
It is through their accounts that we learn more about the manoeuvring needed to get the British to engage with the nationalists. Desperate to progress peace, Oatley and later Robert on many occasions turned a semi-deaf ear to their government’s instructions that there was to be no contact with the IRA or its intermediaries.
They both kept the back channel warm when the political air was decidedly chilly. In fact, without their determination to keep dialogue going it is likely the eventual start of the peace process would never have happened.
Although the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement was evidenced by photos of US President Bill Clinton, Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, it was many years of meetings around a peat fire in Duddy’s sitting room where peace was forged.
Though power sharing in Northern Ireland is still a work in progress, it is a mark of how far things have come that sworn enemies from the unionist and nationalist sides, including the Democratic Unionist Party’s Ian Paisley and the IRA’s Martin McGuinness, became firm friends through the process. Twenty-five years on, there is an entire generation of young people in Northern Ireland who have not grown up with the threat of daily violence that their parents and grandparents experienced.
Operation Chiffon is a compelling account of the figures in the shadows who enabled talks that led to the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement and “the freedom to achieve freedom”.
Operation Chiffon: The Secret Story of MI5 and MI6 and the Road to Peace in Ireland, by Peter Taylor (Bloomsbury, $38.99), is out now in ebook and audiobook, and in print on August 1.
