[…] a ‘Beirut style’ situation. What led to his transformation into peacemaker? The key, one suspects, is the realisation by the end of the 1980s that the Provisional IRA had been effectively contained by the security forces and were coming under increasingly effective pressure from the loyalist paramilitaries. These two factors led to the Provisionals’ […]
[…] was a Republican from a fiercely Nationalist family. He was generally recognised as a shadowy paramilitary activist by the security forces. He had identified himself with the IRA in South Armagh in the early 1970s, but in later years he was involved with the INLA. He was questioned on a variety of occasions by […]
[…] ‘Death on the Rock’, Lisburn, Ballygawley and other bombs) had led, only a month previously, to Mrs Thatcher appealing to the British media to withhold publicity from IRA sympathisers. A spokesman for the IBA said, ‘The fact that After Dark is a live programme means there is no editorial control over remarks Mr Adams […]
[…] the spy-watchers have become anti-terrorists. The brochure tells us that an astonishing 70% of MI5’s resources are now devoted to terrorism. So that’s the end of the IRA then, right? Probably not; in any case, with or without the IRA, if 70% of MI5’s resources are engaged in ‘anti-terrorism’, it means expanding the number […]
[…] him. A more sinister person whom Riley was close to was a man called Pat Jordan,(5) who now serving a long sentence for being a spotter for IRA bombers.(6) Jordan wrote to Searchlight from prison recently. Searchlight ignored his letter, having no interest in communicating with terrorists or their helpers, but I wonder what […]
[…] about to be announced. The authorities (in fact, the ‘leakers’) were also keen to spin that the terrorists (bar the use of video) were analogous to the IRA (again, in order to get the Iraq insurgents to be seen as enemies of the people on terms the people would understand). The real conclusion, which […]
[…] army briefing paper titled ‘Army Plain Clothes Patrols in Northern Ireland’. The briefing states: ‘Plainclothes teams, initially joint RUC/army patrols, have operated in Northern Ireland since the IRA bombing campaign in Easter 1971. Later in 1971 the teams were reformed and expanded as Military Reaction Forces (MRFs) without RUC participation. In 1972 the operations […]
[…] disk and maybe it will be useful one day; and I wonder who compiled it and why. But before these MI6 lists, Cryptome published a list of IRA members which included Clare Short MP. Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it? (1) Even if I knew the list was genuine – though how would […]
[…] ‘surveillance operations by soldiers in plain clothes ……initiated by Frank Kitson when he commanded the brigade in Belfast, some of them exploiting ex-members or supporters of the IRA, of which I was aware, and for which I had obtained Ministerial approval.’ (Out of Step, Memoirs of a Field Marshall, Michael Carver, Hutchinson London 1989 […]
[…] Wallace/psy-ops One of the lines Colin Wallace at Information Policy tried to get the media to run about Northern Ireland in 1973/4 was the one about the IRA hiring US Army veterans to do their fighting for them. One such story was planted on Chapman Pincher who ran it in the Express. See Lobster […]
