The death through illness of a former Provisional IRA commander who masterminded the organisation’s bombing campaign in England has raised questions about the future of its “Army Council”.

Brian Keenan, the son of a Royal Air Force member who grew to become the Provos’ “chief of staff”, was once described as the single biggest threat to the British State.

He died early yesterday of cancer after a long illness that had prompted his retirement from the Provos’ seven-member ruling body in 2005. Now with the Rev Ian Paisley’s demand that in return for the completion of the devolution of powers from Westminster to Northern Ireland, the Army Council be abolished, its demise cannot be far behind that of one of its most totemic figures.

Keenan is one of the paradoxes of the IRA’s thwarted campaign to force the Government out of Northern Ireland: a perceived Marxist hard-liner who issued dire threats throughout the course of the peace process, he nevertheless was present in the Stormont Parliament last year to witness the previously inconceivable sight of Sinn Fein administering British rule in partnership with the republicans’ nemesis, Mr Paisley.

Keenan was responsible for arming the Provisionals with serious firepower, via his contacts with Colonel Mua-mmar Gaddafi, of Libya, and other Middle Eastern and Iron Curtain networks. Yet he was also the man who negotiated their destruction on behalf of the IRA as one of the final pieces in the peace jigsaw, despite publicly vowing that “not an ounce” of Semtex would ever be surrendered.

His death has drawn attention to the anomalous situation of the continuing existence of a body that for decades ran one of the world’s most effective and ferocious terror campaigns but which, with the new political dispensation in Northern Ireland, apparently has no role.

This is not entirely true. Security and government sources have for years argued that the Army Council has a place in guaranteeing the durability of the peace process. If it were to dissolve, dissident groups would claim its mantle as the “true” inheritors of Irish republicanism.

The Army Council is responsible for setting strategy and is appointed by the 12-strong IRA army executive, a body of trusted veterans. The executive has the power to sack or appoint army council members but otherwise stays in the background.

It is an intriguing prospect, whether Keenan’s death will now clear the way for a smooth “standing down” of the organisation’s leadership this summer, allowing the creation of a justice minister at Stormont and the devolution of policing and justice powers to Northern Ireland.

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