Informers as the Architects: MI5’s Role in Framing Modern Ireland
Word count: 2,468 words
Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Summary: Denis Donaldson’s exposure as a British informant revealed how deeply MI5 infiltrated the republican movement. Thomas O’Reilly argues that the peace process was not just negotiated — it was engineered through covert control, raising lasting questions about sovereignty, trust, and the legacy of modern Irish statecraft.
Informers as the Architects: MI5’s Role in Framing Modern Ireland
Rather sardonically, Gerry Adams had one eye on his own grave as he left Dublin High Court, fresh from prosecuting a defamation case against the BBC. The retired Fenian was aiming to set the record straight for posterity, countering a 2016 BBC claim that he had sanctioned the murder of senior republican Denis Donaldson.
Rumbled as a twenty-year-long British informant, Donaldson was found murdered in the weeks following a deeply unsettling press conference in which he admitted to being compromised by MI5.
In short, Donaldson was no small-time tout, but a trusted confidant of Gerry Adams — arm-in-arm with Bobby Sands during the H-Block years, and head of Sinn Féin's administration in post-bellum Stormont. His downfall was a clear sign that beneath the handshake politics of the Good Friday Agreement lay an invisible victory for British securocrats.
Donaldson was central to the 2002 ‘Stormontgate’ affair, culminating in the storming of the Northern Assembly by the PSNI. Allegations swirled that his murder was orchestrated by — and for the convenience of — MI5 and a reformist Sinn Féin, to protect a wider web of republican snitches.
His exposure raised fears that no level of the republican movement was immune to penetration, suggesting the omnipresence of spy games — even as Sinn Féin stood in theatrical defiance of London. Amid all the bodies and betrayals of the Troubles, Donaldson, as much as Stakeknife, showed that British spooks didn’t just fight the war in Ireland — they quietly ran parts of it from within.
The betrayal revealed how deeply British intelligence had infiltrated the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, hinting that, from the 1980s on, the armed struggle had been, at key levels, compromised and effectively stage-managed.
The symbolism of Donaldson’s death lies in what it reveals about the overlap between statecraft and insurgency. If peace was partially built on containment, then its foundations are more fragile than often assumed. Worryingly, the story behind the Adams trial suggests a broader architecture of control in post-bellum Belfast that could explode in the not-too-distant future, given the right revelations.
How many other Donaldsons were, or still are, in place?
If the peace process was driven, in part, by manipulation, this raises doubts about the agency and authenticity of political actors — especially within Sinn Féin and the broader republican movement.
Was Denis Donaldson sacrificed by his handlers? And if so, why?
More importantly, the Donaldson case arguably exposes a permanent and coercive "deep state" operating beneath the smiles of the Northern peace settlement. The Dennis McFadden spy scandal of 2020 — involving another long-term MI5 agent embedded in the New IRA and Saoradh — shows that similar subterfuge may still be at play. This is no relic for the history books. In that context, the peace process must be seen not as a gradual meeting of minds between republican, loyalist, and British government negotiators, but as a construct of control.
The Architecture of Amnesia
For those uninitiated in Ulster’s political culture, Denis Donaldson's murder is not just unsolved — it’s designed to stay unsolved.
The killing shattered the romantic myth of a clean republican victory or even a mutual compromise. Instead, it suggested that the entire 1990s peace process was shaped, at critical junctures, by backroom dealings — not only to end the war, but to ensure acceptable outcomes.
If republican actors were controlled and blackmailed, then the Good Friday process becomes strategic containment — not heartfelt reconciliation.
Therein falls a civic cornerstone of modern Irish life.
The Donaldson case is where the already fading dream of 1990s national liberation collided with the cold machinery of modern statecraft. It teaches that in long, morally grey conflicts, ideology without strategy is naïve — and strategy without ethics is monstrous. Only movements that merge moral clarity, structural resilience, and strategic foresight endure.
The Provisional movement surely failed that test.
What looked like a republican ascent — from Adams brokering peace to standing beside Kneecap last month — is, in fact, a long arc of PR and containment.
Even in the context of recent post-Brexit electoral wins for nationalists, Donaldson’s story shows that British state power remains sovereign — even within institutions meant to reflect Irish republican legitimacy. It affirms that Stormont was never truly autonomous. It was — and is — structurally penetrated.
The Deep State in the Soft Republic
The Irish cause must learn from Donaldson that statecraft, ethics, intelligence, and, above all, truth are inseparable from liberation. Romantic myths almost always fail in an era of biometric surveillance. Vigilance, moral clarity, and security awareness must guide any future movement worthy of Ireland — republican or otherwise.
In most insurgencies, betrayal is personal: someone flips for money or safety. But Donaldson’s case hinted at a systemic culture of compromise in play since the 1970s, where key actors on all sides may have entered into tacit agreements. His betrayal feels less like personal failure and more like a necessary function in a decaying, directionless struggle limping toward the 21st century.
For British patriots, with one eye on the ‘Ulsterification’ of domestic unrest, the Donaldson case represents the dark calculus of the UK security machine.
London may have succeeded in placing a long-term agent at the heart of Sinn Féin — but the cost was trust, legitimacy, and moral standing. A United Kingdom held together by covert operations and community management is never truly united.
For Dublin, the Good Friday Agreement is a bedtime story — tidy, depoliticised, and stripped of its paramilitary and spooky ghosts. It's one of the Irish state’s few foreign policy USPs, showcasing a pathway to peace for Washington, the Global South, and the post-Soviet space.
While Dublin hoped to gain renewed global prominence by exporting this model to the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere, this Whig narrative neglects the hard realities of how peace was won — and why peacemakers sat at the table in the first place.
Donaldson’s exposure wasn’t just a scandal — it was psychological destabilisation. It instilled distrust, divided communities, and cast doubt on the authenticity of political actors — for good reason.
If the British government was willing to plant, run, and perhaps sacrifice someone like Donaldson to manage republicanism, what else has it hidden? From its citizens? From Parliament? Even from its own ministers?
The Donaldson case is not a footnote in British counterinsurgency. It is a warning:
That covert control, however effective, corrodes trust.
That a state addicted to secrecy becomes incapable of reform.
And that peace secured through manipulation creates silence, not settlement.
You cannot spy your way to stability — in Ireland, Southport, or Rotherham.
The Donaldson affair seeded long-term mistrust within republican ranks. In our own fractured, post-Southport UK, the intelligence services may aim for horizontal distrust rather than vertical suppression.
In the absence of a unifying state narrative, the security services become the ghostwriters of national stability.
During the Troubles, British intelligence often acted as a substitute for political strategy. It managed crises in the absence of deeper solutions, perpetuating cycles of violence inherent in the occupation of the region.
For any would-be right-wing populists, the Donaldson case emphasizes the perils of reform — both small “r” and capital “R.” Infiltration isn’t just about operations; it’s about story. The state can co-author your history through disclosures, provocations, or strategic media leaks.
In modern conflict, belief moves people — but intelligence moves outcomes.
Surveillance and tradecraft will exploit the gap between principle and practice. MI5 did not act from ideological loyalty to the Crown, but from strategic calculation: disrupt, penetrate, neutralise. This gave spooks flexibility, long-term vision, and a ruthlessness that republican and loyalist counterparts could rarely match — producing an almost nihilistic direction of travel, born out of pragmatism.
Just as Donaldson helped usher Sinn Féin into Stormont, the state grants legitimacy selectively — not as a concession, but as a control mechanism.
Not every platform, funding stream, or handshake is a win.
Final Reflections
Irish republicanism underestimated the enemy — not in force, but in weaponised foresight. Through Donaldson and others, British counterinsurgency pioneered the postmodern security state. Irish conflicts became a petri dish for British securocrats. We should be mindful of these tactics returning home.
Liberation movements that ignore surveillance, psychological operations, and narrative warfare will be reshaped by them. Nationalism without strategic depth is easily absorbed or neutralised. No state or movement — republican or otherwise — achieves sovereignty unless it understands intelligence not as a threat, but as a terrain.
Ireland lacked, and still lacks, serious domestic counterintelligence — through inertia or by design. As a result, British services ran operations deep inside Irish politics, even south of the border, with limited oversight. The lesson for Dublin is clear: if your security is outsourced, so is your politics.