Opinion

Documentaries confirm collusion was not an illusion

Jim Gibney
Jim Gibney Jim Gibney

'Collusion is not an illusion' was one of the very early campaign slogans that the families of those killed by loyalists and organisations like Relatives for Justice (RFJ), the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) and Sinn Féin rallied around in their efforts to garner political support for an international public inquiry into collusion between the British government's armed forces and loyalist paramilitaries in the UDA and UVF.

Recently four television documentaries have been shown – the most detailed and comprehensive one on RTE last week – exposing the scale of collusion over a forty year period and confirming the accuracy of this campaign theme. It was shocking to watch even for people with detailed knowledge about collusion.

The documentaries starkly displayed the deadly scale of collusion and the levels at which it was knowingly practised by the British government.

The revelations in these documentaries complement the court cases that solicitors are taking on behalf of families seeking the truth about the death through collusion of their loved ones.

These court cases are revealing a new form of what could be termed `peace-time collusion' being practised by the prosecution service and the police who are colluding in their attempts to block the truth about those killed through collusion from coming out, spuriously claiming 'national security'.

The court cases and documentaries are considerably bolstered by incontrovertible investigations which all of the documentaries drew off: the three reports into collusion by Lord Stevens, a former senior British police officer; by Justice Barron's inquiry into the Dublin/Monaghan bombings; by the Canadian judge Peter Cory's report; the former Police Ombudsman's Nuala O'Loan's 'Operation Ballast' report; De Silva's review into the killing of Pat Finucane in which he said that 85 per cent of all intelligence in loyalist hands came from the British Army and RUC; the report by RFJ into the ballistic history of the weapons imported illegally from South Africa by MI5 into the north which loyalists used to kill 229 people and the book 'Lethal Allies' by Anne Cadwallader and the PFC which investigated the killing of 120 people in Mid-Ulster/Armagh by the notorious Glenanne Gang.

The well-researched RTE documentary took its time – some 95 minutes – to tell the deadly collusion story that may have claimed the lives of several hundred defenceless nationalists and Catholics.

A former RUC sergeant, John Weir set the scene, mood, direction and conclusion of the documentary in a chilling sentence: “If ordinary Catholics were killed no one was worried about it.”

He was involved with UDR personnel and the infamous Glenanne Gang.

From collusion's crude genesis in the UDR in the 1970s to the sophisticated and hidden hand of MI5/6, the Force Research Unit, FRU, the RUC's Special Branch and their allies in the UDA and UVF it was open season on the uninvolved defenceless nationalist/Catholic population of the north.

The Irish government raised collusion concerns with British Prime Ministers Heath and Thatcher and were told it did not exist. Sean Donlan, a senior Irish diplomat said the British government “denied, covered up, then apologised” for it.

The former major in the sectarian UDR, Ken Maginnis boasted that he personally gave the names of three republicans he believed were in the IRA to Thatcher at a meeting. The SAS shot them dead nine days later at Drumnakilly, Co Tyrone. No collusion!

Lord Stevens recommended the arrest and charging of the UDA's intelligence officer Brian Nelson and Brigadier Gordon Kerr who ran the FRU. Catholic killer Nelson was awarded a medal by the British Army for his services; Kerr was promoted. Sir Hugh Orde, one time PSNI chief constable, told the programme: “Justice would have been better served by the trial of Kerr”.

The former GOC of Britain's troops in the north, John Wilsey, said of the relationship between Kerr and Nelson there was “no shame in this matter”.

The head of the RUC's Special Branch, Raymond White, said requests for tougher laws in handling agents were spurned by Maggie Thatcher and that a culture of 'carry on but don't get caught' prevailed.

Collusion clearly was not an illusion nor is the belief that the British government was at war here – a combatant – not a peacemaker as it likes to promote.