>>>I don't think HMG ever quite knew what to do about the IRA. I certainly wouldn't. If they were, as they said, soldiers that implied they had to be treated as POWs. If they were criminals they had to be accorded British justice. And of course the result was an ever shifting a somewhat schizophrenic policy that satisfied few. And then there was the fact that the IRA, the Provos, the UVF etc were all engaged in truly criminal activities both in and out of the UK.
>>>
>>and was financially supported in part by some Catholic Irish-Americans...
>
>An Irish friend informed me on that matter.. It seemed that the US government was directly involved in financing the IRA. He mentioned Ted Kennedy . Only after 9/11 this stopped for self-explanatory reasons.

With respect to your Irish friend - that's nonsense. Irish Americans were directly involved in financing the IRA. The US government was not. Ted Kennedy was of course sympathetic to the Irish just as his father had been anti-British (and pro-German) while ambassador to the Court of St. James.

One of the big problems was that the IRA here was romanticised to those of Irish heritage (with some justification given the history of IRA) and there was enough distance that those putting money in the jar for the Boyos in the bars in Boston with the harps on the door could believe their money was going to send chocolates to the boys in the Maze prison or rifles to defend the Post Office in the Easter Rising rather than to buy C4 from the Libyans to blow up pubs or bandstands.

I believe it is true that because of the political power of Kennedy, Tip O'Neil and others there was not a lot of effort to close down the pipeline of private funds going to the IRA. (of course much of the transfer was cloaked as support for Sinn Fean - the political arm)