[…] 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 […]
[…] loyalist killer gangs, the FRU also provided some of their arms, apparently believing that this was the only way to redress the balance of forces after the IRA received arms from Libya. (p. 191) The behaviour of Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair and his gang goes some of the way to illustrate the claims of […]
[…] – if ‘good’ is the right word. In June’s Searchlight this paragraph appeared; ‘Seasoned political observers in Northern Ireland say that the UDA and parts of the IRA are jointly controlling some of their criminal activities and use the same drug traffickers.’ This is classic disinformation (see also ‘IRA Godfathers’ et al, ad nauseam) […]
[…] explanation for something awkward. In The Daily Telegraph of 3 April, for example, Philip Johnston wrote: ‘A covert Army unit colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to target suspected IRA terrorists for assassination, according to an official police report to be published later this month. The report by Sir John Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, […]
[…] of firearms with intent to endanger life. Daly lived in Bristol at Southmead from 1969 to 1989. Before this he lived in Highbury Villas, Kingsdown, with an IRA leader known as Jim Flyn. He admitted to having been an informer in Bristol since the mid-seventies – which some of us had guessed – and […]
[…] MI5 advice on what to do about Soviet agents in Britain. Another recurring theme is the alleged link between Labour MPs and groups alleged to support the IRA – the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, Anti-Internment League, Troops Out Movement, British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Group, Irish Political Hostages Release Committee and the Campaign […]
[…] especially its clandestine forces, are almost completely missing from Bruce’s account. How important are the spooks in this story? How can we tell? In the end the IRA is still there — so they are not all powerful. Finer discrimination than that? In 1987 James Miller, sometime UDA ‘intelligence officer’, told Barry Penrose that […]
[…] and Ross McWhirter had been ‘meeting with a small group of like-minded friends concerned about the relentless spread of subversion.’ (2) After McWhirter was shot by the IRA this group formed the National Association for Freedom. But ‘to avoid the delays implicit in formal council meetings, a small group of us decided to function […]
[…] well on the way to alienating the Catholic working class in Belfast and Derry. The conduct of the troops was effectively recruiting young Catholics into the Provisional IRA, something since acknowledged by military sources. A good case can be made that, by treating the events of 1970-71 as the first stage of a revolutionary […]
