The Green Ribbon Books

The Squad and the Intelligence Operations of Michael Collins

T Ryle Dwyer
Mercier Press
2005

Historian T. Ryle Dwyer has written several studies of Michael Collins and the War of Independence. In this book, he re-examines the subject in the light of new material from the Bureau of Military History.

Dwyer stitches together these first-hand acccounts from members of 'the squad' into a coherent narrative of Collins' activities as the IRA's director of intelligence.

One thing this reader found striking was how closely Collins methods conformed to the theories of US military strategist John Boyd, which emphasise cutting an opponent off from their environment, and paralysing their ability to make effective decisions.

The Politics of Englishness

Arthur Aughey
Manchester University Press
2007

University of Ulster Professor Arthur Aughey turns his attention to the English question in this new study inspired by the ubiquity of the flag of St George across England during the 2002 and 2006 World Cups .

As in his 2001 study of the impact of devolution on the UK, Aughey's approach is to conduct an exhaustive survey of the literature on the subject.

Much of this literature is preoccupied with the 'peculiar lack' of any politically significant sense of English nationality, The most important examples being the work of Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson.

Unfinished Business: State Killings and the Quest for Truth

Bill Rolston
Beyond the Pale
2000

One in ten of those killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland was killed by the state.This book tells some of the stories behind that statistic.

22 chapters are each devoted to a single incident, beginning with Bloody Sunday in 1972, and ending with the case of Robert Hamill, who was murdered by loyalists in 1997 while nearby RUC officers refused to intervene.

Each chapter contains a substantial account of the case, alongside interviews with relatives of the victims and campaigners. Three further chapters include extended interviews with human rights campaigners Fr Raymond Murray, Clara Reilly of Relatives for Justice, and Fr Denis Faul.

Unfinished Business is an extremely valuable record of the cases it documents, but above all it is powerful testimony to the often untold story of how ordinary familes have fought for the truth about the deaths of their loved ones.

Buy this book at Amazon: UK - US - France - Deutschland - Canada

Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: US Covert Action & Counterintelligence

Roy Godson
National Strategy Information Center 1995
Transaction Publishers 2001

Roy Godson may be a Georgetown University Professor, but his knowledge of the intelligence world is clearly more than academic.He was himself implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal, an episode that informs the analysis in this book.

Godson divides intelligence into four main elements, collection, analysis, covert action and counter-intelligence. The latter two areas, arguably the murkiest of all, form his subject matter. Each has two sections devoted to it, one considering the history of the discipline since 1945, and another setting out its basic principles.

Covert action is essentially the art of clandestine political intervention in the affairs of other states. (It's worth noting that the author's father, Joe Godson, has been accused of covert intevention in British politics during his time as Labour attache in London in the 1950s.)

The Irish: A Photohistory: 1840-1940

Sean Sexton and Christine Kinealy
Thames & Hudson
2002

Sean Sexton has spent a lifetime collecting old Irish photographs, and it shows in this collection of 271 images documenting every aspect of Irish life from 1840 to 1940.

Insightful captions provide the context to each of the pictures, which are presented alongside an extended narrative by historian Christine Kinealy in four chapters.

Land, Landlords and The Big House, looks at the life of the aristocracy, a subject which was heavily represented in early photography.

The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism

Robert Kee
Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1972
Penguin 2000

A widely read history of Irish nationalism, that has been published both as an omnibus, and as three separate volumes: The Most Distressful Country, the Bold Fenian Men and Ourselves Alone.

In the opening chapters, Kee surveys the Medieval and early modern background to Irish history. The bulk of the book, however, consists of a sustained narrative of the years from the rise of the United Irishmen in the late Eighteenth Century to the Civil War of 1922-23, an eventful period which included the Act of Union, the struggle first for Catholic emancipation, and then for Home Rule, the Great Famine and the Land War, the emergence of the Fenians, the War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty that created the modern Irish state.

Kee concludes with an epilogue which considers events up to the time of writing, during the earliest and most intense years of the Northern Troubles. It's clear thoughout that his sympathy is with constitutional nationalism and the Home Rule movement, rather than with the republican tradition. Nevertheless, The Green Flag is an obvious choice for anyone looking for a well-written narrative history of the period.

Buy this book at the Green Ribbon aStore: UK - US - France - Deutschland - Canada

The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings

Don Mullan
Wolfhound Press
2000

At 5.30pm on May 17, 1974, three car-bombs exploded in the centre of Dublin. 90 minutes later, another bomb exploded in Monaghan Town. Between them, the attacks killed 33 people, one of the worst death-tolls of the Troubles.

The bombings occured at a crucial political moment, in the midst of the Ulster Workers Strike which brought down the Sunningdale Agreement, the last attempt at power-sharing between the two communities in the North of Ireland for decades. A veil of silence soon descended over the episode, in spite of widespread suspicions that British intelligence had assisted loyalist paramilitaries in carrying out the attacks.

In this meticulously researched book, Don Mullan provides the accounts of eyewitnesses, survivors and the bereaved, and documents the struggle to uncover the truth about the bombings.

Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer

Peter Wright
1987

The MI5 website specifically denies one of the most eye-catching allegations in Peter Wright's notorious insider exposé of the service - that MI5 officers were plotting to bring down Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Ironically, that must be one the best-attested claims in the book. Writers like David Leigh, Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril have documented extensive evidence, independent of Wright, that this is exactly what was happening.

Neither Leigh not Ramsay and Dorril believe that Wright was telling the whole truth in Spycatcher. They conclude that his involvement in the Wilson episode was much deeper than he lets on.

The one thing that everyone is agreed on, therefore, is that Wright was not a particularly trustworthy witness. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of interesting material in the book.