The Green Ribbon

Hardline security bills pose dilemma for Labour

Several bills going through the House of Commons at the moment demonstrate the Johnson's Government's commitment to the hard edge of state power, in both its overt and covert forms.

While this legislation raises significant human rights concerns, Labour has been cautious in challenging the Government so far. This may reflect Keir Starmer's strategy of attempting to prove his patriotism to British voters before engaging in any major policy moves. 

Divisions over this approach emerged two weeks ago at the second reading of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which would make it more difficult to prosecute British soldiers for war crimes.

Finucane family welcomes Council of Europe decision

The Irish Government and the family of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane have welcomed a decision by the Council of Europe, calling on the British government to fulfil its human rights obligations in relation to the 1989 killing.  

 

The Council has also expressed concern about the British Government's proposals to deal with the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

 

In a statement, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said: 

Victims and survivors have had to wait for far too long for a suitable and effective system in Northern Ireland to deal with the legacy of the Troubles.

We therefore believe it is necessary and appropriate that the Committee of Ministers should put on record its deep concern about the lack of progress in putting in place the urgently needed mechanism for conducting Article-2 compliant investigations in over 1,000 outstanding cases in Northern Ireland.

Turning to the case of the late Pat Finucane, Ireland continues to support the reopening of individual measures in the Finucane case.

Geraldine Finucane said:  

I am very pleased that the Committee of Ministers has made a firm request of the UK Govt for concrete proposals in the case of my late husband. 

 It is disappointing that the UK Govt must be compelled in this way, given the ruling of the UK Supreme Court in February 2019 that past investigations into the murder were legally deficient.

 A full investigation into the murder of Pat Finucane has still not been carried out. The UK Govt has simply adopted a continuing policy of delay and obfuscation. It would appear the Committee of Ministers has now run out of patience and, like me, is demanding clear answers. 

A description of the case is available via the Council of Europe website, as is the text of the decision by its Committee of Ministers.

Willie Carlin, MI5 agent-running and clandestine diplomacy in Northern Ireland

An intriguing new source on intelligence operations in Northern Ireland emerged this month with the publication of Thatcher's Spy by Willie Carlin, an MI5 agent who was active in Sinn Féin in Derry in the 1980s.

I haven't yet read the book, but Carlin's interview with Sam McBride of the News Letter provoked some thoughts which I will try to follow up when I can get hold of a copy. I was particularly struck by this passage on Carlin's role in Martin McGuinness's election to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982.

I relayed back to my new handlers how Martin had been reluctant to  stand, but Mitchel was working behind the scenes with Gerry Adams, Tom Hartley and others to bring McGuinness around and convince him.”

He  said that it became clear that the British agencies were keen to  facilitate – not stop – Mr McGuinness’s rise through the republican  ranks and then his move into politics. 

“A few days before the  election I had a routine meeting at Ebrington Barracks with my contact John. During the meeting he introduced me to a man named Alec from London (who was not military).

“He was very interested in how I  thought Sinn Féin would do at the election and was absolutely over the  moon when I told him of our plan to get Martin elected. Alec made it  clear to me that it was imperative that ‘Martin McGuinness gets elected  to the Northern Ireland Assembly’.

I have long been suspicious of suggestions that the political growth of Sinn Féin and hence the peace process was a result of intelligence manipulation, for reasons which I outlined in a 2012 openDemocracy article, The Conspiracy Theory of the Peace Process is a Dangerous Myth.

Supreme Court strikes down Finucane inquiry

The UK Supreme Court has today ruled that the British Government has failed to meet its obligation to hold a human rights compliant inquiry into the 1989 murder of solicitor Pat Finucane. The court ruled that the De Silva review, which established substantial state collusion in the killing, did not meet this test because it was unable to cross-examine witnesses.

Some early press reports nevertheless interpreted the ruling as a defeat for the Finucane family because the court declined to directly order a new public inquiry. However, in a statement, the family's solicitors said the Government would now be left with no alternative but to order a new inquiry, to meet it's obligations under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Will Stakeknife Inquiry defy the Stalker precedent?

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, of Bedfordshire Police, said this week that he has evidence to bring a number of prosecutions in relation to the activities of the alleged British Army agent inside the IRA known as 'Stakeknife'.

According to the BBC, the Stakeknife investigation, Operation Kenova, could recommend the prosecution of members of the IRA, MI5 and the Army's Force Research Unit.

It's worth recalling that this wouldn't be the first time that a police investigation had recommended prosecutions of MI5 officers in Northern Ireland.

Military Reaction Forces, Mobile Reaction Forces and 'FRED' Force

Researcher Ciarán MacAirt has done sterling work in the past few years in dismantling the official story in relation to the 1971 McGurks Bar bombing in North Belfast, an attack which security forces claimed at the time was an IRA own goal.

Ciarán's latest research at Paper Trail reveals that the British Army's undercover Military Reaction Force was active in the area of the bombing:

Paper Trail can now prove that the MRF operated with the resident 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (2RRF) which attended the scene of the massacre in its immediate aftermath. The archives evidence, in fact, that the MRF was active in the area the day and night before the attack but is absent from 39 Brigade Operations Logs on the day of the bombing.

Therefore, the families have been correct all along to query where was the MRF when their loved ones were killed as they have questioned whether its operatives were involved either directly or through agents it ran within the UVF paramilitary bomb team. Successive investigations by the British state up to the present day have either failed to locate the MRF in North Belfast at this time or have hidden the information from the families.

The mention of agents in the UVF refers to the Army's practice of this time of running agents recruited from paramilitary organisations, known as 'turned terrorists' or 'Freds'. Rory Cormac's recent book on British covert action, Disrupt and Deny, argues that the Freds were run separately from the MRF, but were taken over by its successor organisation, the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) formed in late 1972.

When I put this conclusion to Margaret Urwin, author of a pamphlet on the MRF and SRU, she was sceptical, pointing out that it was a leak from 'Freds' that led to the IRA targeting the MRF in the Four Square Laundry incident, one of several controversial episodes that contributed to the MRF's replacement by the SRU.

Ciarán took a similar view, tweeting a document in which then MOD Minister Ian Gilmour referred directly to a 'turned terrorist' within the MRF.

I decided to go back to Cormac's source which he very kindly confirmed was a file in the National Archives. The relevant document is a minute of 17 November 1972, from the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Michael Carver to the Defence Secretary Lord Carrington, entitled Special Reconnaissance Squadron - Northern Ireland.

The opening paragraphs read as follows:

You are aware of the request made by HQ Northern Ireland for an organisation to command and control what have been called 'FRED' force and 'Mobile Reaction Forces' both of which have been employed for surveillance patrols, consisting of soldiers in plain clothes, in some cases also being used to effect arrests.

2. You will recall that, after the 4 Square Laundry incident, I issued orders, on your instructions, governing the employment of soldiers in plain clothes. It was recognised then that these two forms of plain clothes patrol needed to be brought under closer, ore coordinated and more centralised control; that the soldiers employed on them should be more specifically trained both for the task and for their personal security; and that their administration should be regularised.

On the face of it, this justifies Cormac's statement that 'Freds and MRF's were separate plain-clothes units lacking proper co-ordination', but there is still the question of how this can be reconciled with the other evidence.

My guess is as follows:

A. There were two distinct types of team conducting separate patrols, army plain-clothes soldiers and 'Freds.'

B. There was a single unit within each of the three army brigades in Northern Ireland responsible for both types of team.

One might posit that the army patrols at A. were Mobile Reaction Forces and the units at B were Military Reaction Forces, but this is probably to neat a conclusion. The picture of wheels within wheels and MRFs within MRFs may owe as much to the cowboy atmosphere of the time as to army security.

Perhaps the most interesting implication of Carver's statement is that FRED force was operating its own plainclothes patrols. This doesn't sound like a description of an informant in the back of an armoured car, and might even be taken to suggest that Freds were not just individual agents but operating in groups. Accounts such as Martin Dillon's The Dirty War have suggested that Freds did not associate freely with each other, although Dillon notes that one Fred, Seamus Wright was able to identify another, Kevin McKee, to the IRA, which secretly killed and buried both men.

The question of what form FRED force patrols took leads us back to the issues raised by Ciarán MacAirt . Was FRED Force part of the MRF activity in North Belfast around the time of the McGurk's Bar bombing?

Update 17/12/18: Margaret Urwin of Justice for the Forgotten suggests that simplest explanation for FRED force patrols is that individual Freds were being escorted by plainclothes soldiers in unmarked cars.

The Walker report: How MI5 shaped RUC Special Branch

The 1980 Walker report on RUC Special Branch has been something of a holy grail for documentary researchers of the Troubles. After a long-running campaign, the Committee for the Administration of Justice has published a redacted version (PDF) released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The Rights NI blog has a valuable analysis of the document by Brian Gormally:

All in all, the Walker Report is a blueprint for how to turn a police force into a conflict-fighting weapon where victory against the “subversives” is the overriding priority and traditional functions such as preventing crime and upholding the rule of law are sidelined. 

As Gormally notes, there is no mention in the report of Walker's own organisation, MI5. 

Justice for the Forgotten to speak on Troubles Legacy in London

The legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland is unusually high on the Westminster agenda at the moment, so it worth taking note of a very timely meeting being organised by the Labour Party Irish Society next Monday:

 We want to alert you to an extremely important event we are organising for MONDAY 2 JULY, 7:30PM at the IRISH CULTURAL CENTRE in Hammersmith. 

Margaret Urwin of the Justice for the Forgotten campaign will be our speaker. Margaret is a founder member of the group, which represents the victims and families of the bombings of Dublin and Monaghan in the 1970s.

In recent weeks there has been much debate and discussion about the legacy of the troubles and the correct response to achieving truth and justice for all involved. Margaret is coming over to speak to LPIS members about JFF and to inform and educate from the perspective of the families of those innocents killed in these particular terrorist attacks. Margaret has published a book about the investigations into the bombings and state collusion: ‘A State in Denial’.

LPIS is proud to be supporting Margaret during her visit, which will include meeting MPs, many who are LPIS members.

For more information, please visit http://www.dublinmonaghanbombings.org/home/

Please let us know if you are attending by emailing [email protected]

The head of steam building at Westminster around legacy prosecutions of British soldiers was illustrated today by the publication of a House of Commons Library Report on the subject. Patrick Maguire of the New Statesman recently suggested that the issue was part of a cocktail of defence concerns amongst Tory backbenchers that could even cost Theresa May her position as Prime Minister.

That pressure may explain why May has repeatedly made false statements from the despatch box, claiming that only members of the security forces were facing legacy investigations.

Against that backdrop, the victims of state violence in Northern Ireland have gone largely unheard in the Westminster debate. The demise of the SDLP as a parliamentary force is one factor in this. Sinn Fein are remarkably active at Westminster within the constraints of 'active abstentionism', but that policy intrinsically limits their impact on the Commons. 

Many Labour MPs with an interest in Ireland have also been constrained by elevation to the frontbench, leaving a handful of backbenchers with deep knowledge of the issues to speak up in a difficult political environment.

Hopefully, next week's event will be a step towards redressing that balance.

Army doctor backs whistleblower Fred Holroyd

The BBC is today reporting important developments in relation to Fred Holroyd, a key British Army whistleblower on covert activities in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

Holroyd is suing the Ministry of Defence over allegations that he was falsely diagnosed with a mental illness in for political reasons. His account is being backed by a former military surgeon, Dr Hugh Thomas, who told the BBC:

The first I knew about it was when a senior physician colleague of mine came into the theatre and sought sanctuary, and he sought sanctuary because he had been ordered to section Fred, and had found that an abhorrent request, which it was.

A number of Holroyd's claims have been verified over the years. back in 2006, I reported on a document uncovered by the Pat Finucane Centre and Justice for the Forgotten at the National Archives in London. The document proved the existence of a covert 'Special Reconnaissance Unit' operating out of Castledillon, Co. Armagh, closing matching a unit described by Holroyd. It also showed that SAS members in the unit had been 're-cap badged' to facilitate denials of an SAS role in Northern Ireland.

 

The new evidence of dirty tricks against Holroyd puts the questions we asked then into sharper focus.

Holroyd claimed that an SAS troop led by Captain Julian Ball and Captain Robert Nairac was operating at Castledillon in Co Armagh under two cover names, 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers and NITAT.

In response to a question from Ken Livingstone in 1988, ministers denied that the NITAT unit existed, and claimed that records relating to 4 Field Survey Troop were no longer available.

The emergence, two decades later, of records confirming the existence of a unit corresponding closely to the one described by Holroyd raises two questions: was the British Parliament misled? And if Holroyd was right about this unit’s existence, was he also right about its involvement in collusion? (Irish were lied to about SAS, Daily Ireland, 5 June 2006).

The UVF's message to Charlie Haughey

The New Year archival releases have produced an outstanding nugget this year in the shape of a purported letter sent by the Ulster Volunteer Force to Irish Taoiseach Charlie Haughey in 1987.

The Guardian reports:  

The loyalist group claimed it had been exploited and manipulated by MI5, MI6 and British special forces from 1972 to 1978 and again in 1985.

“In 1985 we were approached by a MI5 officer attached to the NIO [Northern Irelandoffice] and based in Lisburn,” the UVF letter said. “He asked us to execute you.”

Justice for the Forgotten, which represents victims of a number of cross-border loyalist attacks, has since been into the National Archives in Dublin to view the letter, and reports additional details in a Facebook post today: 

The letter purportedly sent by the UVF (M.U. unit, Mid-Ulster?) to Charles Haughey, dated 5th August 1987, begins by claiming that Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd were telling the truth about British Intelligence bring 'behind killings, kidnappings and a smear campaign against Haughey.'
The author says they were given photos of IRA men and were provided with explosives and they killed 17 men on information supplied.  (Read the full post)

Clearly, it is early days in assessing the provenance of this document, but despite the letter's spelling errors, the accounts above imply something sophisticated enough that a hoax would raise significant questions of its own. The timing might suggest one motive for the UVF to produce such a letter.