Plans by the Independent Monitoring Commission, which was set up in 2004 to vet the conduct of paramilitary organisations, publicly to name the membership of the IRA’s Army Council were “daft”, leading Irish and British officials believed.
The issue was raised at a meeting in Downing Street in May 2004 between British prime minister Tony Blair’s top Northern Ireland adviser, Jonathan Powell, and secretary general of the Department of Justice Tim Dalton.
“(Dalton) expressed strong concern that the Commission was apparently considering naming the membership of the Army Council in its forthcoming report. Such a course would be totally counter-productive. Powell agreed that such a naming would be “daft” and it was agreed that [civil servant Jonathan] Phillips would avail of contacts to let it be known that the British Government was averse to this course of action,” states an Irish note of the meeting.
Certain ‘State papers’ or official archives are declassified at the end of every year. This week, thousands of documents in archives in Dublin, Belfast and London are being made public for the first time, bringing new insights into events of times past. This year’s Dublin archives mostly date from 1994.
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Meanwhile, Dalton expressed concern that the four-strong commission that existed until 2011 might not fully understand the nature of the relationship between Sinn Féin and the IRA.
“It seemed to believe that the former could always deliver the latter. This was not necessarily the case. He felt it might be helpful if the senior officials on both sides might meet the commission to clarify this issue,” the file notes.
Meanwhile, the meeting highlighted “an interesting apparent divergence of approach” between number 10 Downing Street and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), according to a note prepared by Adrian O’Neill, later Ireland’s ambassador to the UK.
“Clearly reflecting the impatience of [Blair], Powell was pressing for a strategy that involved imposing a summer deadline on the republican movement to end paramilitarism or else move to an alternative (non-inclusive) approach.”
However, NIO official Jonathan Phillips’s success would require the Democratic Unionist Party to sign up to “an inclusive deal”, which he did not believe it would do in advance of European Parliament elections in June that year.
Meanwhile, Dalton hoped that Sinn Féin would act “as a useful lever” to maintain calm surrounding the upcoming marching season, though it highlighted the need for an agreement on the future of policing in Northern Ireland.
“In the absence of a policing service that is acceptable in republican areas, the local community expected the IRA to exercise the necessary “social control”.
Conditions for people living in Republican-controlled districts depended “heavily” on whether the IRA tried to incite, or control “the behaviour of young republican tearaways during the marching season”, he said.
Meanwhile, Blair expressed a desire to rush through upcoming meetings with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).
Blair himself was not present at the meeting, but his adviser Jonathan Powell said the then-British PM wanted to “race through” meetings with unionists the following week so he could concentrate on talks with Sinn Féin.
“The Governments would inevitably have to ‘listen to the whinges’ of the UUP and the DUP,” notes the file.
“Powell doubted that the latter would seriously engage on bottom line positions at Hillsborough. In terms of public presentation, we should not build up expectations; the message should be that the prime ministers were re-engaging with a view to moving things forward — they were not looking for a negotiation.”
At the time, a review of the Belfast Agreement was being carried out by Irish and British officials. Both governments were putting pressure on Sinn Féin to get the IRA to decommission its arms.
The IRA formally ended its armed campaign and decommissioned its weapons a year later in 2005.
In November 2024, Powell was announced as the UK’s national security adviser, serving under current British prime minister Keir Starmer.
In general, State Papers — official documents from government departments and the President’s Office — are declassified and released to the public 30 years after the fact.
However, some records are released before or after that timeframe for various reasons. For example, records related to the peace process in Northern Ireland are now typically released after 20 years.
