Description
The proposed presentation is based on Chapter 6 of my PhD research, analysing “British Labour and building the back-channel legacy: Labour ministers and advisors assert intelligence authority in Northern Ireland, 1995- 1996”. The presentation will examine British Labour’s party-political approach to building its back-channel legacy as it approached government. Key to this assessment is analysing whether British Labour used existing back-channel architecture to shape its understanding of republicanism after the movement gained new public political standing from 1993, following Chiffon’s exposure. Back-channel architecture is taken to include a spectrum from Hume-Adams, the formal MI5-mandated Duddy back-channel and a series of informal British Labour-Sinn Féin channels which emerged more concretely in this 1995 – 1996 period. Around four channels are known to date, as well as several accompanying efforts which were closed off as the UK state developed its handle on back-channel politics in Northern Ireland. Instigation of informal channels was achieved privately to protect bipartisanship as the British state experimented with how such cross-party cooperation might contribute to counterterrorism at the political level. Informal channels protected British Labour’s political reputation where public opinion on, and the political cost of, Labour back-channel use remained unpredictable.