These
days, hardly a week goes by without an article
appearing in the newspapers in the north of Ireland
about the high level of criminal collusion, which
is alleged to have taken place between members
of the British security forces and Republican
and Loyalist paramilitaries. Greg Harkin, who
co-authored the best selling book Stakeknife with
the former British Army Intel NCO, 'Martin Ingram',
wrote the
latest piece to catch my eye.
In
it he alleged that the murders in 1981 by a unit
of the PIRA of the Reverend Robert Bradford, Ulster
Unionist MP for South Belfast, and Ken Campbell,
the 29 year old caretaker of the Hall in which
the Rev Bradford was holding a political surgery,
took place despite the British Security Forces
having been fore-warned, three days prior to the
shootings were to take place, by an informer within
the Provisional IRA of the exact time and place
that these killings were to occur. Mr Harkin went
on to claim that according to his sources, the
security forces chose to allow these killings
to take place as they wished to protect their
informers within the Provisionals. To quote one
of Greg Harkin's sources, a former soldier in
the British Army Intel Regiment, "I believe
the hit went ahead to save agents' lives."
If
true, it is a preposterous justification for the
State to allow two of its citizens to be murdered
—not least because if the Security Forces
truly wished to maintain the safety of their informers,
all that would have needed to happen was for the
agencies who handled them to pull them out; after
all they had three days before the assassination
took place to do so. That they chose not to implies
that they were playing a deadly political game,
not just using their highly placed informants
to gain actionable information. Surely the raison
d'être of running informers should be that
the general public's safety should be paramount,
not that of informers, agents of influence or
security service personnel.
Like
most of the information which has come into the
public domain of late and which centers on the
criminal collusion which took place between northern
para-militaries and officers of the RUC Special
Branch, MI5 and British Army Intel, [FRU], Harkin's
latest article has been all but been ignored by
the politicians, whatever their political persuasion
and whether they are based in Belfast, London
or Dublin.
As
far as the northern political parties are concerned,
their silence is sheer political opportunism.
The leading Unionist party, the DUP, in the process
displays gross hypocrisy, as it has built its
support base on support for the police and rule
of law. Yet it seems when it is the forces of
the UK State that breaks the law, it raises not
a squeak. This is from a party whose leader declared
that the litmus test for Sinn Fein would be its
support for the PSNI and the rule of law.
As
for SF, a party that has undoubtedly lost members
to the criminal collusion that has taken place
between the security forces and paramilitaries,
and whose MPs and MLAs have had countless constituents
murdered in such circumstances down the years,
their sudden silence on this issue can only be
described as grubby opportunism and political
cowardice. In the past they were at the forefront
of the campaigns to highlight any wrongdoing on
the part of the British security forces. Now that
they are a leading component of the Stormont administration
and it has become self evident that their own
organization was infiltrated up to leadership
levels by various organs of the British security
services, they are less keen for any inquiry to
take place for fear of what might emerge.
What
of the politicians who were the Rev Bradford's
parliamentary colleagues at Westminster, and sit
as MPs for constituencies in the rest of the United
Kingdom? One would have thought they might at
least show some interest when a leading newspaper
within the UK publishes an article that states
that members of MI5, the British army and the
RUC Special Branch were aware that one of their
number was to be murdered, yet they failed to
warn him and allowed the crime to happen, using
the excuse that the safety of an informer in there
pay was paramount, a man, I might add, who may
well have played a role in the MP's murder. But
no, not a word is heard from the noble members
in defense of one of their own who was brutally
slain whilst going about his business as a member
of the House of Commons. Workers in a pickle factory
would have shown more concern were it to have
been one of their number who had been brutally
gunned down on the day in question.
As
to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland,
Peter Hain, in the week following these revelations
he chose to go before the UK Parliament's Northern
Ireland Affairs Committee and tell them: "We
are spending an awful lot of money on the past."
He went on to tell MPs that more than £200m
was being spent on investigations and around half
of that was on lawyers' fees. While agreeing that
inquiries had to be carried out, he questioned
whether the province wanted to continue paying
out to examine events over recent years or if
it wanted to invest in the future instead. It
seems as far as Mr Hain is concerned it is better
to draw a curtain across the past and allow those
who have committed crimes up to and including
murder to get away stock free, otherwise something
nasty might emerge. So here we have Mr Paisley,
Mr Adams and the representative of the UK State
in the north east of Ireland, Peter Hain, all
siding with the criminals against their victims,
and they are the very people who have recently
demanded of the people of the north of Ireland
that they must all respect and obey the rule of
law.
One
does not have to be a conspiracy theory geek to
conclude that there is a centralized plan of silence
amongst the British government, Unionist politicians
and the leadership of SF, with self interest being
the motivating factor, the purpose being to convince
the people of the six counties and to a lesser
extent the rest of the United Kingdom that any
inquiry into State Collusion in criminality or
indeed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would
be against their best interest.
As
someone posting under the handle 'The Dubliner'
wrote on the Slugger O'Toole web site, "the
vested interests have convinced the people that
truth and reconciliation is not in their best
interests and so they to are opposed [to any
inquiry]." Perhaps, but it is early days
and one can but hope these revelations about UK
State collusion in criminality which are appearing
in the media will continue, and politicians will
eventually emerge with the courage to stand against
the aforementioned powerful forces who wish to
consign all talk of an inquiry or Truth and Reconciliation
to the shredding machine or the vault deep within
the bowels of MI5's new Irish HQ.
This
is not only a matter of history, as important
as that is. Without a Truth and Reconciliation
Inquiry, how can people truly move forward? It
is difficult to see how the two communities within
the north can be reforged in friendship and tolerance
if truth and reconciliation is not in their best
interests. The simple answer of course is they
cannot be. I am not suggesting people should be
legally punished, but they need to go before the
people who will be represented by a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission and admit and answer
for their past mistakes and crimes. If there is
no Truth and Reconciliation, to put it bluntly
the stables will not be cleaned and that will
in all probability mean the very people who carry
a grave responsibility for the death, destruction
and human suffering of the last four decades will
be responsible for administering the northern
Statelet for the next twenty years, whether they
be politicians or members of the secret state.
The very thought should enrage all decent people.
Mick Hall's blog: Organized
Rage
