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Following the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British Government established an office dedicated to gathering the views of political groups there, below the level of the state. By the end of 1971, the Office of the UK Representative (UKREP) was actively seeking contacts that would allow them to communicate with the Provisional IRA. By looking at the numerous other contacts, conduits and intermediaries that existed (however temporarily) before the 1975 ceasefire, this article illustrates an almost continuous conversation between the Office of the UK Representative (UKREP) and the IRA. It also demonstrates that these contacts were centred around Dáithí Ó Conaill (then Sinn Fein Vice President), and that these contacts, when taken as a whole, can better explain the events which culminated in the 1975 ceasefire.

Sabotage! The origins, development and impact of the IRA's infrastructural bombing campaigns 1939-1997. At various moments in the twentiethWhile the IRA used attacks on electricity distribution infrastructure throughout the Northern Ireland Troubles, two particular examples will be highlighted in this paper. The first, a short campaign in the summer of 1971 against the 275kw main lines that circled the province almost completely cut Belfast's electricity supply. A second, in 1996 was an attempt by the IRA to do a similar job in London, cutting the lines at key points around the M25 that, had it not been foiled, would have had a profound and crippling effect on the capital's electricity supply for many weeks.The attacks would have followed a series of high-profile attacks on Britain that had included the massive 10 February Docklands bomb (that had ended the IRA's 1994 ceasefire) and the 15 June Manchester city centre truck-bomb attack on the Arndale centre. However, just as 1996 did not mark the first time that the IRA had attempted to move its bombing campaign to Britain, so too

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