Secret government documents have revealed that senior British officials worried the mastermind behind one of the UK's largest bank robberies was too clever to be caught. The concerns emerged in high-level discussions about the impact of the £26 million Northern Bank raid in Belfast in December 2004 on the fragile peace process in Northern Ireland.
High-Stakes Talks in Downing Street
The fears were laid bare during a crucial meeting between British and Irish officials at Downing Street on 5 January 2005. A memo from that meeting, now released by the National Archives in Dublin, details the frank exchange. Jonathan Powell, then Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair, told the Irish delegation that while the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) hoped to make arrests, he personally "feared that the 'top man' involved would be clever enough to avoid being arrested".
Mr Powell stated British authorities were "pretty certain that it was the IRA" and that the operation was carried out by individuals "very close to the Sinn Fein leadership". This assessment came despite Sinn Fein's ongoing involvement in negotiations aimed at securing a lasting political settlement.
A Heist That 'Knocked Up the Price' of Peace
The officials agreed the audacious theft would not derail the peace process entirely, but it fundamentally altered the negotiations. Jonathan Powell bluntly stated that "the republican movement had knocked up the price" of a deal. In the aftermath of the robbery, plans for a bilateral deal were shelved, and a scheduled meeting with Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams in Dublin was cancelled.
The memo notes two outstanding issues were now paramount: paramilitary criminality and the transparency of IRA weapons decommissioning. Powell insisted that "something categoric on criminality would now have to be part of the deal". He also made clear the British government would not demilitarise simply in exchange for decommissioning, but would scale back its military presence in Northern Ireland as part of a broader "house-keeping" exercise.
Unity and Anxiety in the Aftermath
On the Irish side, civil servant Michael Collins expressed shared "deep anxiety" about the robbery. He found it "almost incomprehensible" that such a major criminal operation could be planned while Sinn Fein leaders were engaged in talks. The Irish assessment was that the IRA remained a unified organisation and the bank job was "not a solo run" by a rogue faction.
Both governments noted that while there were "fissures" in the IRA ceasefire, the organisation was no longer recruiting in the Republic of Ireland and was becoming a "more concentrated group of able people". Despite the "serious set-back", Tony Blair was determined not to give up on the peace process. British civil servant Jonathan Phillips, however, expressed scepticism that third-party mediation, suggested by the Irish side, would succeed in breaking the new deadlock.
The documents underscore the immense pressure the robbery placed on the political negotiations, with officials bracing for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to "go on the rampage" once the PSNI publicly attributed responsibility. The released file, labelled 2025/127/90, provides a stark glimpse into the crisis management undertaken at the highest levels of government following one of the most notorious crimes in British history.
