The enemy within

In the first objective and comprehensive survey of its kind, Dillon examines the IRA bombing campaign in Britain before and after the Second World War; the IRA's flirtation with Nazism and Eire's wartime neutrality, and how that conditioned subsequent British policy towards Ireland; and the bombing campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s. Dillon applies his extensive knowledge to provide new evidence of the political and military mistakes that made British cities the most vulnerable in Europe to terrorist attack. He explains why the various Government agencies combatting the IRA failed to eradicate the terrorist threat and uncovers the internecine rivalry between elements of the security apparatus in Britain, and how the IRA benefited from that problem. The first to reveal the existence of what the IRA called its 'England Department' (which has been responsible for the bombings in English cities since 1990), Dillon provides new material on how that IRA cell functioned; why the British government held secret talks with the IRA/Sinn Fein amid the carnage of Warrington and other atrocities, and what was behind the IRA's reluctance to denounce the Downing Street Declaration.