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From International Socialism (1st series), No.58, May 1973, p.25.
Transcribed & marked up by by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA
Maria McGuire
Macmillan, £1.95
Having ploughed through 157 pages of Miss McGuire’s revelations about her flirtation with the Provisional Republicans (and one of their leaders), I was amazed to read on page 158 that it was ‘aimed first of all at the great many honest and sincere members of the Republican movement.’
Rank-and-file Provisionals – many of whom are indeed honest and sincere – will know what to think of that claim, if and when, they get to page 158. They will recall that Miss McGuire never bothered to aim anything at the ordinary membership while she was in the movement. She was never a rank-and-file member until her ‘demotion’ to that status caused her to leave.
It’s certainly a strange way of influencing Republicans to write articles in The Observer and publish a book in London at £1.95. No doubt they will be touched by Miss McGuire’s concern to inform them that CIE is ‘the Irish state transport company’ and that ‘MISE Éire’ means ‘Mr Ireland’ (actually, ‘I [am] Ireland’). Above all they will be impressed by the fact that Miss McGuire’s connections with top people were so good that she was able to get a train from Donegal to Dublin (p.98) when there’s not been a train into, or out of, Donegal for many years.
Miss McGuire and her ‘ghost-writer’ have done a lousy job. They could not even contrive to bring the rank-and-file Provisionals into the book. From the earliest days of her association with the movement, Miss McGuire hob-nobbed with the leaders. Within weeks of joining, she was on that much-publicised arms-from-Czechoslovakia-through-Amsterdam adventure.
It is that which causes concern and resentment – not the stories about rivalries between the Provo leaders. Republicans are angered by the apparent ease with which this trendy lady got into the movement and became a confidante of the leaders, even on military matters. But the Provisionals have only themselves – and their quest for respectable, middle-class fronts – to blame for letting McGuire earn £20,000 (or more) from her scribblings and for giving British intelligence an easy means of information and disruption.
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Last updated on 10.3.2008