[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
The idea that the Security Service, MI5, colluded with British fascism in the inter-war years is not to be found in the existing literature on the subject. On the contrary the fascists are depicted as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries of MI5’s attentions. MI5, it is generally argued, viewed fascism as a potential danger … Read more
[…] John Baird visited England at a house on the Old Hollywood Road in Belfast. The house was a Brit-intelligence base used as a pickup point for Provisional IRA leaders during the peace talks in 1976 which led to the setting up of Republican ‘Incident Centres’ paid for by the British. England was then C(Int)NI […]
[…] of Algiers, to get a feel for what we may be in for. From threat to movement? Some are now saying the unsayable: that, as with the IRA, talks will eventually be required with Al-Qaeda. That would be a sign of failure. My view is that talks should long ago have started with the […]
‘I know nothing about it. I don’t want to say I didn’t at the time, but today I have no knowledge of it.’ Former US Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara on the attack on USS Liberty. ‘As with the assassination of John F. Kennedy four years earlier, the official version [of the attack on … Read more
Organisation, History and Politics In the early years of the Thatcher decade, the radical or ‘new’ right was generally treated as though it was a united palace guard for libertarian Conservatism. More recently it has become clearer that the radical right in Britain was, at best, an ‘anti wet’ alliance between authoritarian/ nationalist and libertarian/radical […]
On July 23 the Court of Appeal overturned the convictions of Noel Molland, Steve Booth and Saxon Wood (the GAndALF 3). The three had been convicted at Portsmouth Crown Court in November 1997 and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for conspiring with two others to ‘unlawfully incite persons unknown to commit criminal damage’ by reporting […]
