Bobby Storey

Bobby Storey, known affectionately in republican circles as Big Bobby, was a long-serving member of the Irish Republican Army who later became chair of Sinn Féin in Belfast and a close confidant of Gerry Adams. The book presents him at once as a figure of organizational continuity and as a visible contradiction in the peace-process era: a former prisoner and reputed intelligence operative standing beside a mural that celebrated Adams as a peacemaker. At a rally in 2014, Storey’s deliberately familiar words revived the movement’s armed past just as its leaders defended their political future.

Identity and Career

Storey joined the Irish Republican Army as a teenager in the early 1970s and ultimately spent twenty years in prison. After the peace process, he became chair of Sinn Féin in Belfast. His career thus crossed two sharply different public settings: the armed organization of his youth and a political party presenting itself as a central participant in a new settlement. The book does not treat that transition as a clean break. Storey remained closely associated with the Irish Republican Army, and his presence later gave visible force to the question of how far the organization and its methods had changed.

The account gives him a formidable public image. At the 2014 Falls Road rally, he stood beside Martin McGuinness: a large man with close-cropped grey hair, a high forehead and a knitted brow, chewing gum while holding the script McGuinness was reading. Those concrete details place Storey not at the margin of the event but at the speaker’s elbow, physically close to the party’s public presentation. Later, he took the microphone himself. His appearance and position made him a conspicuous counterpoint to the rally’s language of political leadership and peacemaking.

Influence and Alleged Operations

Storey was often described as the Irish Republican Army’s top spymaster, and was reputed to have been the architect of the 2002 break-in at Castlereagh Barracks. His home was raided after that break-in. These claims are presented as reports and reputation, rather than as settled findings; the book’s account places Storey within the atmosphere of suspicion surrounding intelligence work and the conflict’s legacy without converting those allegations into proven facts.

He was also widely believed to have been involved in the Northern Bank robbery, in which thieves took twenty-six million pounds. The robbery occurred in December 2004, years after the Good Friday Agreement, when the Irish Republican Army was giving up its weapons and the decommissioning process overseen by Father Alec Reid was nearly complete. That timing sharpened the political significance of the theft: the group no longer needed money to buy weapons, and critics took the robbery as evidence that it had become a mafia organisation. Dolours Price challenged the apparent contradiction in a published response, asking, “The War is over, we are told … so what is all this money needed for?” The book connects Storey to the controversy through widespread belief about his involvement, while keeping the distinction between belief and proof intact.

Adams, Bell, and Republican Networks

Storey was a close confidant of Gerry Adams. The book places their relationship against the public defence of Adams in 2014, when Sinn Féin’s leadership portrayed his arrest as an attack on the party itself. That closeness helps explain why Storey’s own words at the rally carried more weight than a generic expression of support: he spoke as a figure associated with the Irish Republican Army, not merely as a party representative repeating its official position.

Storey also appears in the account of Adams’s former ally Ivor Bell. In the 1990s, Storey went around asking former Irish Republican Army members what they knew about the disappearance of Jean McConville. Bell, who had once worked closely with Adams but had later fallen out with the movement’s direction, would not help him. Bell’s reply, “Go and ask Gerry,” echoed a line Dolours Price had also used. The episode makes Storey an intermediary in the movement’s effort to find out what former members knew, while the answer redirected attention from Storey’s inquiry to Adams. It does not establish what Storey knew or what followed from the exchange.

The 2014 Rally and Its Echo

The rally took place after Adams’s arrest, with local government and European elections approaching. Martin McGuinness called the arrest politically biased and blamed an embittered remnant of the former police force for seeking old scores. A new mural on the Falls Road depicted Adams smiling beneath the words “PEACEMAKER, LEADER, VISIONARY”; supporters nearby held placards demanding his release and defending the peace process. Storey stood beside McGuinness holding the script, an imposing presence within a scene organized around Adams’s public image.

Storey then took the microphone and warned of the arrogance of anyone who might “dare touch our party leader.” He addressed the British and Irish governments and what he called a cabal, before declaring, “We ain’t gone away, you know.” The wording was an intentional echo of a famous exchange from nineteen years earlier. When a heckler interrupted Adams with “Bring back the IRA!”, Adams had answered, “They haven’t gone away, you know.” Storey’s version therefore carried a double meaning: it echoed the phrase associated with Adams while sounding, to listeners, like a reminder of the Irish Republican Army’s continued presence.

Reception and Significance

The speech unsettled people connected to the Belfast Project and to the McConville family’s campaign for access to its recordings. Michael McConville felt a chill; the family had been encouraged by Adams’s arrest, but Storey’s words seemed to them an unmistakable threat. Mackers understood the warning as referring not to Sinn Féin but to the Irish Republican Army. Ricky O’Rawe likewise interpreted it as a message to people considering whether to tell their stories: in his view, they had challenged not only Adams but the organization. O’Rawe feared that such rhetoric could embolden an individual seeking to please the leadership, even without a direct order. These were the listeners’ interpretations and fears, not proof that Storey issued an operational threat or that any action followed.

The scene gathers the book’s central tension into a single public performance. The mural and rally presented Adams as a political leader defending a peace process; Storey’s presence recalled his prison history, reputation for intelligence work and continuing association with the Irish Republican Army. By reviving Adams’s old phrase in a voice many heard as menacing, he made the boundary between political reassurance and paramilitary warning seem unstable. His significance in the narrative lies not in a confirmed account of what he privately intended, but in the way his position and words exposed how the movement’s armed past continued to shape the meaning of its public language.