Last
Wednesday, on the third anniversary of the death
of Sunday World journalist Marty O'Hagan,
his colleagues from the NUJ observed a minute's
silence in the room in Transport House where the
Lurgan man regularly conducted union business and
in which he spent a number of hours the day of his
murder. There was nothing ethereal about the event;
journalists, if they are experienced, as many there
were, can be hard nosed, preferring the solid to
the spiritual. The meeting was business like. Throughout
it ran not a thread but a rope of determination
never to allow the murder of Marty O'Hagan to disappear
into the archives. After the meeting the NUJ called
on Paul Murphy, the British Secretary of State,
to ensure that all resources would be used to apprehend
the killers. But if there are foundations to the
suspicions of many of Marty's colleagues, apprehending
those responsible may lie nearer to the floor than
the ceiling of PSNI priorities.
Six
weeks after the murder, Jim McDowell the editor
of the Sunday World complained, 'my main
concern is that once again a tout is being protected.’
This sentiment was reinforced in yesterday’s
Sunday Business Post which alleged the killing
was carried out by an agent of the Special Branch
operating within the LVF. It was also reported in
the paper that a former contact of the dead journalist,
Barry Bradbury, alleged that O'Hagan was working
on a story regarding collusion between loyalists
and the police. Mick Brown, a journalist currently
working with the Irish Star, last year alleged
that one of the police assigned to help find those
behind the murder was himself the subject of O’Hagan’s
investigations into links between the police and
loyalists. Jim Campbell, a staff colleague of the
dead Sunday World man, who was himself seriously
injured in a loyalist gun attack twenty years ago
after he had reported on UVF activity, claimed that
‘the LVF was set up with the knowledge and
help of the Special Branch.’ That there has
been more than a passing familiarity between the
two bodies was confirmed by the judge at the trial
of Philip Blaney - convicted of involvement in the
LVF pipe bomb death of Portadown mother Elizabeth
O’Neill - when he pronounced that, 'it is clear
that prior to the offences with which he was charged
and, indeed, at the time those offences were committed,
the accused was acting as a Special Branch source.'
But
such disclosures continue to play second fiddle
to the needs of the British state's security apparatuses.
That old unconquered wall of police silence remains
as formidable as it did in the days when the force
termed itself the RUC. Two years after the Lurgan
writer was gunned down, Index On Censorship
reported that the police were still denying running
an agent in the LVF gang. That Blaney is believed
to have been on the payroll of RUC Special Branch
since the late 1980s is a matter that the police
prefer to kick into touch. When Mick Brown, who
accompanied Marty O’Hagan the day prior to
his death on a story about collusion, met with police
shortly after the September 2001 killing, he felt
an attempt was made to physically intimidate him
during interviews. The police who for long routinely
employed intimidation to obtain information are
now, seemingly, applying it to prevent information
emerging.
Although
the PSNI have met with the NUJ to discuss the lack
of progress in the case, the force has been less
than frank. In the wake of the first meeting, a
year after the murder, the PSNI claimed that Marty
O’Hagan’s seized notebooks were illegible
and that nothing could be obtained from them that
might throw light on the identities of his killers.
Yet in correspondence with a relative of one of
those killed in the Omagh bomb, the PSNI stated
that the notebooks had been deciphered at great
cost. While nothing conclusive emerges from this,
a clear inference can be drawn – the police
are back to doing what they do best, covering for
someone or something.
The
journalist community is in no doubt about the identities
of those who murdered their colleague. Nor is the
PSNI. Despite a long history of involvement in drug
dealing, extortion and administering beatings, the
cops maintain that the evidence is simply not there
to press charges against them. An alternative view
is that the evidence is there but the PSNI don’t
want it to surface as it might lead to the removal
of their agents from the streets. That society may
need protection from police agents intent on murder
seems to weigh only lightly, if at all, in the mind
of officialdom.
Shortly
before he died Marty O'Hagan penned an article for
a journal, The Philosopher. In his tabloid
columns he had revealed little of his philosophical
side. He was a deep thinking person given to serious
reflection on his life and the circumstances in
which he lived it. In The Philosopher he
wrote:
His
disapproval of state violence led him to embrace
the Official Republican Movement and its armed republicanism.
His philosophical reflections linked to a probing
independent mind caused him to part ways with it
- 'there was a split: me and the rest of the party.
Someone had decided that I had a disruptive attitude
- whatever that was.'
His
critical stance towards state authority coupled
with his disruptive attitude was sustained up until
agents in the pay of the state pumped bullets into
him from the safety of their car. Three years after
his death there is a strong suspicion that the PSNI
would be more than happy to let the inquiry slip
into the cold case files. The challenge to journalists
and writers is to bring it to the boil beneath the
fundaments of those who wish to sit on it - and
scald the truth out of them.
