Martin McGuinness - In Conflict and Peace - From the Archives

The recent stepping away from active political life by Martin McGuinness and from his role as Deputy First Minister, signalled a polemic shift in the political landscape in Northern Ireland, His passing today, aged 66, has further intensified the consideration of his life and role in Northern Ireland, and his journey from conflict to peace, over many decades.

The perhaps unknown role that Martin McGuinness played, over many years, in negotiating a peaceful and sustained end to conflict in Northern Ireland can be seen within the archive of mediator Brendan Duddy. Brendan Duddy was born in Derry on 10 June 1936. He became a businessman in his native city, and by the early 1970s he owned and managed two fish-and-chip shops, one in Beechwood Avenue (Creggan) and another in William Street. Duddy knew Martin McGuinness in the 1960s when McGuinness worked for a supplier company delivering burgers to Duddy's shops - at a time when McGuinness's interest in politics was not yet kindled.

Screenshot of "Walter" material, Duddy Digital Archive, NUI Galway

At the time it would have been impossible for anyone to predict the central roles both men would play over the course of the following decades.

One section of the Duddy papers pertain to a figure known as ‘Walter'. These items, now digitised and available from the Hardiman Library, reveal the extent of efforts by "Walter"  - the active code-name for Martin McGuinness - and particularly his and Duddy's period of close co-operation in 1993. The files include detailed draft and final correspondence and memoranda sent by Brendan Duddy to McGuinness, which show the level of tense and prolonged discussions regarding the Peace Process of the early 1990s and the later Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The files also include other items such as relevant newspaper cuttings focusing on McGuinness.

Telex from Duddy to McGuinness, 1999

Examples include a dossier of three letters from Brendan Duddy to Martin McGuinness, previously sent 21 March - 19 June 1999, copied by telefax to an unidentified recipient in September 1999, detailing the central role and importance played by McGuinness in peace talks. As key mediator in this long process, Duddy, here codenamed as “June”, writes to McGuinness, stating “The War is indeed over and I sincerely hope you can deliver the peace.”. Further letters from Duddy to McGuiness discuss the problematic process of decommissioning of weapons and as recent as June 2006, a letter from Brendan urges McGuinness to “keep driving the Peace Process forward as you have been doing over the last twenty years.” (pol35_585)

Typescript of letter from Duddy to McGuiness, 1999

The Duddy archive offers an indispensable account of understanding and of previously unknown information about the arduous and lengthy and also at times unsuccessful attempts at stabilising peace in Norther Ireland over nearly forty years. The role of Martin McGuinness in this process can be understood in a broader capacity as this archive is digitally available:

https://digital.library.nuigalway.ie/islandora/object/nuigalway%3Aduddy

Launch of Digital Archive Relating to Northern Ireland Peace Process - Brendan Duddy: Peacemaker

The Brendan Duddy Archive

This new online resource contains digitised items from the archive of Brendan Duddy, the Derry businessman who maintained and operated a secret channel of communication between the British government and the IRA Army Council for twenty years. Duddy was a key figure in the 1975 ceasefire negotiations, the 1981 Republican Hunger Strikes, and ceasefire talks between 1990 and 1994 and was the subject of Peter Taylor's BBC documentary 'The Secret Peacemaker'. The digital archive makes available documents such as secret communications concerning the 1975 ceasefire; 'the Red Book', being Brendan's diary of transcribed phone negotiations to help bring a resolution to the 1981 Hunger Strikes and also documents relating to critical moments from the Peace Process of the early 1990s.


Venue: Tuesday, 25 October, 2016, Room G010, Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway

Programme:           Venue: G010

17:00                       Interviews with Duddy family members: Shaun, Larry and Patricia Duddy, and Éamonn Downey, with Dr.                                           Niall Ó Dochartaigh

18:00 - 18:30           Questions and Answers/ Discussion

18:30 - 18:40           Launch of archive and introduction: John Cox, University Librarian,          
                                 with Professor Lionel Pilkington speaking on the digital archive and its value                                        to scholarship

18:40                       Demonstration of digital archive by Aisling Keane, Digital Archivist

18:50                       Reception - Venue G011


To Register please book here: http://tinyurl.com/zwj2pfc

Dr. Niall O'Dochartaigh, Professor James Browne, President, NUI Galway with Brendan Duddy

Duddy, 'Fred' and Brokering Peace in Northern Ireland

Dr. Niall O'Dochartaigh, Prof. Jim Browne, President, NUI
Galway and Brendan Duddy

Throughout over twenty years of violent conflict in Northern Ireland a secret channel of communication linked the IRA to the highest levels of the British government. At the heart of this channel was a single intermediary, Brendan Duddy. His house was the venue for secret negotiations between the British Government and the IRA throughout 1975. He managed the intense negotiations over the Republican hunger strikes in which ten men died (1980-1981) and he was at the heart of the contacts (1991-1993) that culminated in a secret offer of a ceasefire that was a precursor to the public IRA ceasefire of 1994.

Deposited at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, the archive of Brendan Duddy provide a unique insight into this channel from the perspective of an individual who operated at the intersection of the two sides. 

The papers include coded diaries of contact kept by Duddy throughout 1975 and early 1976 and a diary kept for several months in 1993 when communication between the British Government and the IRA was at its most intense, as well as documents exchanged between the British Government and the IRA. Taken together with the Ruairí Ó Bradaigh papers, also at NUI Galway, these archives  provide a window on the secret back-channel negotiation that was one of the most intriguing aspects of the Irish peace process.

A recent article published in the London Review of Books and written by BBC journalist Own Bennett Jones, explores in detail the effect a single coded message, whose origins and author are still highly contested today. Owen Bennett Jones tells the story of how Duddy, MI5 operative, codenamed 'Fred' and a note to the British Government headed by John Major, said to have been authorised by Martin McGuinness, declared, "The conflict is over".

You can read the full story here.

An online exhibition of selected material from the Duddy Archive, including extracts from the 1974-75 ceasefire talks and pages from 'the Red Book' kept by Duddy as he tried to broker an end to the 1981 Hunger Strikes is available here.

The Curious Eye - An Exhibition About Noticing

TAKING NOTE OR THE CURIOUS EYE

Exhibition at NUI Galway Gallery

In association with NUI Galway Arts & Theatre Office

Organised by Robin Jones

23 November to 20 December 2013 | Open 12pm to 4pm Tuesday to Saturday

Contributors include Silvia Bächli, Will Self, Joe Fyfe, Merritt Bucholz, Olwen Fouèré,

Karin Ruggaber, John Rocha, Jürgen Simpson, among a wide range of people.

This exhibition explores the idea of the note, the notebook and the idea of noticing.

Noticing and recording are very human activities. Whether noticing comes in the form of a

sketchbook or written notebook, on a scrap of paper or via a laptop or maybe iPhone, whether

these notes are for some type of personal research, or come from a general curiosity to

register “noticing”, or perhaps even drawings made to explain something to another person,

they are all about developing a contact with the world.

While writing is woven into the fabric of a huge part of human life and has an acknowledged

position as such, drawing too can be thought of in a similar way - though far less

acknowledged - in everyday life. It is integrated into an enormous range of human activity.

Both drawing and writing - and the use of digital media - can be thought of as registers of

complex moments of experience. This exhibition possibly allows a glimpse into the variable,

semi-visible processes of human thought.

Irit Rogoff said that “ curiosity implies a certain unsettling, a notion outside the realm of the

known - of things not quite yet understood or articulated...the hidden or the unthought,” which

is followed then by the optimism of finding out something you had not known or been able to

conceive of before.

Virtually all the work in the show tends towards the quiet and modest, the ruminations of the

mind at some stage before an object is made or a conclusion has been drawn, the necessary

exploration, searching and grasping towards an often undefined and indefinable end point, or

perhaps exploration and examination with no end point in mind at all.

The show brings together a variety of works, written, drawn and digital forms of note-taking –

sketchbooks, notebooks, diagrams, the archetypal note on the back of an envelope, digital

code, mobile phone photos, sketch models, sound recording, short films and marginalia from

writers’ manuscripts. It will include some powerful and interesting work from the NUI Galway

archives, such as mediator Brendan Duddy’s notebook, Kevin Doyle’s handwritten ‘Document

on Civil Disobedience” sketches from Jack B Yeats and items from the John Huston archive.

Further information
Exhibition - http://takingnoteorthecuriouseye.wordpress.com/
Robin Jones - www.robinjones.ie
Contact - fjonesrobin@gmail.com

Digitised items from the Duddy archive

In the intense and tragic state of modern conflicts, few were as severe as the conflict in Northern Ireland that grew into The Troubles. Lines were drawn which staunchly divided families, communities and cities and which resulted in violence, deaths and a history between Ireland and Britain that would forever be remembered solely as a dark time in our shared consciousness.

Throughout twenty years of violent conflict in Northern Ireland a secret channel of communication linked the IRA to the highest levels of the British government. At the heart of this channel was a single intermediary, Brendan Duddy. His house was the venue for secret negotiations between the British Government and the IRA throughout 1975. He managed the intense negotiations over the Republican hunger strikes in which ten men died (1980-1981) and he was at the heart of the contacts (1991-1993) that culminated in a secret offer of a ceasefire that was a precursor to the public IRA ceasefire of 1994.

Deposited at NUI Galway in 2009, the papers of Brendan Duddy provide a unique insight into this channel from the perspective of an individual who operated at the intersection of the two sides. They include coded diaries of contact kept by Duddy throughout 1975 and early 1976 and a diary kept for several months in 1993 when communication between the British Government and the IRA was at its most intense, as well as documents exchanged between the British Government and the IRA. Taken together with the Ruairí Ó Bradaigh papers, also at NUI Galway, these archives  provide a window on the secret back-channel negotiation that was one of the most intriguing aspects of the Irish peace process.

To mark the launch of this incredible collection of papers, the James Hardiman Library has digitised a selection of items from the Duddy Archive. Three documents are taken from three key times in Duddy’s intervention between the IRA and the British government. The first item dates to 1975 as an initial cease fire was negotiated. Second, from 1980/81 marks a period when Duddy listed code words used during telephone conversations between the British Government, the IRA hungerstrikers in the Maze prison and the IRA council. The third represents a period of the early 1990’s when Duddy was again called upon as discussions focused on the Provisional IRA and Sir Peter Brooke, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

To view these documents in full from the Duddy Archive held at the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, please click here: http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie/duddy/web/

This video is an interview with Brendan Duddy discussing the role of an intermediary: 

For more on the Archives of James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway click here.