Opinion

Chris Donnelly: Unrelenting relatives have ensured scale of collusion has been exposed

Chris Donnelly

Chris Donnelly

Chris is a political commentator with a keen eye for sport. He is principal of a Belfast primary school.

Relatives gather to meet the Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson on the release of the Operation Achille report into 11 murders and one attempted murder between 1990 and 1998.  Picture: Mal McCann.
Relatives gather to meet the Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson on the release of the Operation Achille report into 11 murders and one attempted murder between 1990 and 1998. Picture: Mal McCann. Relatives gather to meet the Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson on the release of the Operation Achille report into 11 murders and one attempted murder between 1990 and 1998. Picture: Mal McCann.

The first personal experience of the Troubles that I can recall from memory was my father hurriedly asking me to remove the Christian Brothers’ school tie from around my neck as our family car slowly approached a loyalist road block during the homeward school commute along Belfast’s Antrim Road.

Some distance away, an RUC Land Rover sat snug at the roadside providing tacit approval for the thuggish antics of the unruly gang.

It was March 1986. Loyalists had engineered a day of action to protest against the hated Anglo-Irish Agreement.

The fallout from the day largely focused on how the RUC facilitated the loyalist hordes intent on intimidating and harassing people, including my father, compelled to explain to and reason with loyalists so that we would be allowed to continue our homeward journey.

By mid-80s Belfast standards, it was a fairly unremarkable occurrence and was until recently buried in the deepest recesses of my memory. Yet it served as a reminder that there never really was any doubt as to whose side the RUC were on.

The Police Ombudsman’s report, released last week, provided a snapshot into the nature of the relationship between the British forces (including the RUC) and loyalist paramilitary groups which endured throughout the length of the Troubles, consistent with how loyalist groupings had been employed and directed by the British in Ireland for many centuries.

Time and time again, reports have been released and information uncovered exposing the extent to which loyalist groups were armed, manned and facilitated to kill Catholics - as well as republicans - to meet Britain’s strategic interests as determined by the authorities within RUC Special Branch, MI5, military intelligence and up the chain of command to the highest political offices.

Relatives of those murdered by loyalists colluding with elements within the RUC rightly felt a sense of accomplishment when this report was released. They fought in memory of their loved ones over many decades to ensure that these truths did not remain hidden.

Over the years, some within unionism and the British establishment targeted and attempted to besmirch the reputations of the many good people within the legal world who used their professional skills and expertise to aid these families in an effort to frustrate their campaigning.

In 1989, British Home Office Minister, Douglas Hogg, made his infamous comments about solicitors in the north of Ireland being “unduly sympathetic” to the IRA just weeks prior to the murder of Pat Finucane, a killing that has since been exposed as being a clear-cut case of collusion from planning to execution and cover up.

Ten years later, Rosemary Nelson would be killed by loyalists after a United Nations Special Rapporteur’s report into her treatment by the RUC concluded that the force had engaged in the “harassment and intimidation” of solicitors. One of Nelson’s most prominent clients was the family of Robert Hamill, a Catholic man beaten to death by loyalists in the centre of Portadown within yards of RUC officers who did nothing to intervene.

The outing of the truth in relation to collusion is a triumph against an adversary raised in the corridors of power in London and sponsored by compliant elements within the media and political cheerleaders on both sides of the Irish Sea over many years.

On the same day that the ombudsman’s report was released, the prominent DUP politician, Jonathan Buckley, railed on Twitter against “today’s rewritten narrative” vilifying an RUC of whom he claimed to feel “proud and grateful” due to their “diligent service in the protection of the citizens” of the north.

I am certain the relatives of those murdered by RUC Special Branch informants would not share the sense of pride and gratitude, nor appreciation for the endeavours as to which the RUC acted with care and persistence.

Exposing truths deliberately concealed by those in power and authority is not ‘rewriting’ history. Rather it reveals the fuller and inevitably darker picture hidden to justify simplistic and ultimately dishonest narratives.

Extensively reforming policing was essential to sustaining peace and building a stable and more equal society after the Good Friday Agreement. RUC members did suffer considerably during the conflict, with over 300 colleagues killed, and it is only natural that the extended RUC community would resist attempts to paint their loved ones in a wholly negative manner just as the families of deceased republicans would resent attempts to label their loved ones with a sense of responsibility or culpability with the worst acts associated with the IRA during the Troubles.

The journey travelled by relatives of victims of British/RUC collusion with loyalists has been amongst the longest and hardest because of the actions of the state and its forces prior and subsequent to each killing. For long they daren’t hope for truth never mind justice, but in their unrelenting pursuit of both they have established beyond any doubt the sheer breadth and depth of collusion, an accomplishment which does justice to the memory of those taken.