Donaldson, Denis Martin

by Patrick Maume

Donaldson, Denis Martin (1950–2006), republican and informer, was born in Seaforde Street, Belfast; he had at least three brothers and one sister. Educated at St Malachy's grammar school in north Belfast, he grew up in the Short Strand, a small catholic enclave in (overwhelmingly protestant) east Belfast. The enclave's isolated position left it vulnerable, and it experienced extensive sectarian violence during the 'troubles'. The Donaldsons were a traditionally republican family; Denis joined Fianna Éireann (the IRA youth wing) in the mid 1960s, graduated to the IRA, and supported the Provisional IRA (PIRA) when it seceded from the Official IRA in 1969–70. On the night of 27 June 1970 he was one of a small group of PIRA volunteers who for several hours fired from the churchyard of St Matthew's church (on the edge of the Short Strand) against loyalist rioters threatening to attack the church and invade the district. Two protestants and one catholic were killed, and several on both sides wounded. The 'battle of St Matthew's' was widely seen by Belfast catholics as vindicating the PIRA's claimed role as community defenders, and Donaldson's participation contributed to his heroic reputation among republicans.

By October 1971, when Donaldson (described as an 'unemployed clerk') was convicted of explosives offences (bombing a shop, and conspiring to bomb a distillery and government buildings) and sentenced to ten-years' imprisonment, he was IRA commanding officer in east Belfast. He served five years in the Maze prison, where he befriended Bobby Sands (qv) from 1973, and briefly undertook a hunger strike. After Sands went on hunger strike, one of his few images available for publicity purposes was a photograph taken clandestinely in prison in 1974 showing him with his arm around Donaldson's shoulders.

On release Donaldson returned to the IRA as an explosives expert but soon became prominent in the H-block campaign (addressing meetings across Europe) and the developing Sinn Féin organisation. He was detained for some time in France in 1981 after being detected returning from Lebanon on a false passport. It has been alleged that he was the major link-man between the IRA and such organisations as the PLO and the Basque group ETA; he was also regarded as a significant political strategist, situated just outside the inner circle that developed policy, but with a major role in its implementation, and was regularly present during sensitive conversations. Donaldson was Sinn Féin candidate for Belfast East in the 1983 Westminster general election, polling 682 votes (1.8%), and by 1984 was Sinn Féin's official representative in Short Strand. In December 1987 he returned to Lebanon with the Sinn Féin councillor Joe Austin in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate the release of the Belfast man Brian Keenan, who was held hostage by Islamic guerrillas.

From the early 1980s Donaldson acquired a reputation as a smart dresser, wearing tailored jackets and fashionable shirts when most republicans were notably scruffy in appearance. This was not entirely due to his role as a political spokesman. Donaldson married his wife Alice in the 1970s; they had two sons and one daughter. At the same time, he acquired a reputation as a particularly notorious womaniser, even turning up one night with a bottle of wine at the door of a community activist well known to be a lesbian. When politely rebuffed, he replied 'I know, but I thought it was worth a try', and remained on good terms with the woman (Sunday Tribune, 9 April 2006). His role as a Lothario was greatly assisted by his considerable reputation as a charmer, wit and raconteur, which compensated for his small size.

As the Northern Ireland peace process developed, Donaldson strongly supported the strategy pursued by the Sinn Féin leadership, contending that their hardline opponents regarded the IRA campaign as an end in itself. In 1985 he was a member of the first Sinn Féin delegation to meet official British Labour Party representatives, and from 1988 was described as Sinn Féin's official spokesman on foreign affairs. From 1991 he participated in contacts between unionists and Sinn Féin at Clonard monastery in north Belfast.

Donaldson lived in New York in 1988–9 as Sinn Féin's representative in the USA with the task of reorganising its American support organisation, NORAID, and moving away from its traditional 'ghetto' working-class support base to one more capable of appealing to corporate Irish-America (a development that culminated in the creation of Friends of Sinn Féin). Donaldson travelled widely in the USA, emphasising his IRA and H-block record. Complaints from the hardline NORAID leaders Martin Galvin and Gabriel Megahey that Donaldson was marginalising committed activists, sabotaging plans for a Hollywood movie about the 1981 hunger strike, and using lies and manipulation to spread divisions within the organisation, were met by messages from Belfast stating that he enjoyed the leadership's full support.

In the late 1990s, Donaldson oversaw a similar shake-up of the Sinn Féin organisation in east and south Down, with traditional activists being pushed out and more presentable new recruits brought forward. After the establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly he became chief of the party's administrative staff at Stormont, liaising with the other parties about the progress of the legislative agenda, and widely regarded as the eyes and ears of the leadership among the assembly party. He gave the impression of being everywhere, and was particularly noted for cultivating the cleaners, staff and civil servants whom some politicians treated with disdain. Less publicly, he is alleged to have been a senior member of the IRA's intelligence-gathering operations. Less publicly still, Donaldson had been a paid informant for British intelligence and RUC special branch since the mid 1980s.

Donaldson's motives for becoming an informer are unclear; he later claimed he was blackmailed 'at a vulnerable time in my life'. The duration of Donaldson's spying activities indicates, however, that he was not a mere passive victim. According to journalists briefed by anonymous security-force sources (who should not be accepted without caution), Donaldson's principal role was as a 'human listening device' reporting on republican political discussions and strategy, and he refused to supply military information. These sources also indicate that Donaldson became less active as an agent after the IRA ceasefires of the late 1990s, and this paved the way for the last and most conspicuous stage of his career.

Early in 2002, in response to a number of incidents ascribed to the IRA (including the theft of a large sum of money from the Northern Bank in central Belfast, the removal of confidential documents from the RUC station at Castlereagh in east Belfast, and the cover-up of the murder of Robert McCartney, who was assaulted in a Belfast pub), the security forces mounted 'Operation Torsion', an investigation into IRA spying activities. An informer notified them of a large cache of stolen documents (including British cabinet-level position papers and correspondence), which was bugged and surveilled in the hope that it would lead to the arrest of a senior IRA operative. Instead, the cache was moved to Donaldson's house in Altnamona Crescent, west Belfast; when Donaldson failed to notify his handlers of its presence, it was decided he had forfeited his claim to protection.

At the beginning of October 2002, high-profile raids were mounted on premises including Donaldson's home and the Sinn Féin offices at Stormont. Donaldson and three others were charged with possessing confidential documents and documents likely to be of use to terrorists. Amidst unionist protests that Sinn Féin had shown themselves untrustworthy, the Northern Ireland Assembly and its associated institutions were suspended. Republicans claimed the accusations had been fabricated by 'securocrats' (senior figures in the security forces allegedly seeking to sabotage the peace process), and represented efforts to shore up Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble against growing support for Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party. These accusations were reiterated when some of the charges were dropped early in 2004.

On 8 December 2005 the remaining charges against Donaldson and his co-defendants were dropped 'in the public interest' – a decision later attributed to the fact that disclosure rules would have required Donaldson's co-defendants to be told of his role as a spy. Donaldson attended a Stormont press conference with Sinn Féin leaders and denounced the accusations as a fabrication by 'securocrats'. There was already widespread suspicion that an informer had been involved in exposing the spy ring, and Donaldson had complained to a journalist some months previously that 'everyone believes I'm the spy' (Ir. Times, 5 January 2006). According to the most widely credited account, however, his exposure was precipitated a week after his release by a phone call from his handler followed by a high-profile visit from uniformed detectives warning that his life was in danger. Donaldson chose to throw himself on the mercy of his former colleagues, and, after admitting his guilt at a meeting in Belfast Sinn Féin headquarters, he was expelled from the organisation before appearing at a press conference in Dublin to make his position public.

This revelation – following on the claim in May 2003 that Freddie Scappaticci of PIRA's 'internal security' unit had been a British agent – that such a trusted and senior figure was an informer, caused widespread panic, dismay and paranoia among republicans. While Donaldson denied that there had been a Stormont spy ring and endorsed the Sinn Féin claim that the scandal had been engineered by 'securocrats' to block Sinn Féin's political advance, other commentators argued that Donaldson had been used to assist the Adams leadership's move away from violence by undermining his hardline opponents; others suggested that his exposure was intended to mask the presence of a still more senior informer. After his confession Donaldson went into 'internal exile', apparently believing his safety was guaranteed. He took up residence in a remote cottage, with no mains water or electricity, at Cloughgor in Glassey townland between Glenties and Doochary in south-west Donegal which had been purchased as a holiday home some years previously; his nearest neighbour lived two miles away. Donaldson was visited regularly by his wife (to whom he remained close) and family. He had a car, and regularly went into Glenties for shopping and silent visits to a local pub and hotel. The family home in Belfast was put up for sale, and Donaldson allegedly planned to move abroad. On 19 March the Sunday World ran an impromptu interview with Donaldson, including photographs of the cottage; in the light of subsequent events, this was variously described as legitimate journalism and as 'felon-setting' (i.e., marking him out for punishment).

On the afternoon of 4 April 2006 a passer-by discovered Donaldson's body in the cottage; he had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range. His death created a new crisis in the peace process; a meeting at Armagh between representatives of the British and Irish governments attempting to restore the assembly was preoccupied with its repercussions. There was widespread speculation about the identity of his killers. Claims by the Sinn Féin leadership and an IRA spokesman that they had no connection with Donaldson's death were widely disbelieved. In April 2009, however, the Real IRA claimed responsibility in a statement juxtaposing Donaldson and Martin McGuinness as traitors and suggesting that the IRA's failure to kill Donaldson showed their subservience to the British government; it is now generally accepted that the Real IRA were indeed responsible.

Donaldson was buried in Belfast City Cemetery after a funeral attended only by 100 friends and family. His family blamed the media and British intelligence services for his fate. They denounced as exploitation the publication by Sorj Chalandon, formerly Belfast correspondent of the French newspaper Libération, of two novels based on the case, My traitor (2008) and Return to Killybegs (2011) (the latter won the 2011 grand prix of the Académie Française). TG4 devoted a progamme in 2008 to Donaldson in its documentary series Brathadoirí. Donaldson symbolises the murky and only partially disclosed role of intelligence and counter-intelligence in the Northern Ireland conflict, and is often compared to James Carey (qv) for both the scale of his betrayal and for his fate.