Alistair Kerr - Betrayal: The Murder of Robert Nairac GC

An oil painting of Captain Robert Nairac GC, painted by Valarie Chilton in 1982. The portrait forms part of the Royal Military Academy (RMA) Sandhurst Collection, curated by Dr Anthony Morton. Reproduced with kind permission of the Ministry of Defence/Crown Copyright, 2015.

Cover image by The Hon. Andrew Wigram, and used with permission. Press Association.

Some people are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young forever inpeoples memory. If he burns brightly before he

dies, his light shines for all time.
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn For Julian Malins QC, without whose encouragement and advice this book would probably never have been written.Second edition 2017 Alistair Kerr

Foreword...................................................................................................iPrologue, The Citation.....................................................................................iii1 | The Myths.....................................................................................................1 Appendix 3: Sex and the Single Spook......................................................443Appendix 4: The Nairac Affair by Michael Cunningham........................447 Appendix 5: Nairac and the SAS.................................................................451Acknowledgements.................................................................................455Chapter Notes................................................................................................457 Select Bibliography........................................................................................479 Index............................................................................................................483

Frontispiece: An oil painting of Captain Robert Nairac GC, painted byValarie Chilton in 1982.
The Three Steps Inn, Drumintee; Civilian volunteers search for Nairacs body in Ravensdale Forest........................................................................................................73Irish Republic Police stand on Flurry Bridge near the site where Robert Nairac was brutally interrogated............................................................................................74Robert Nairacs service pistol and holster; the revolver belonging to LiamTownson.............................................................................................................75Standish Court, part of which was the Nairac House in Gloucestershire; the impressive Gothic gatehouse entrance to Standish Court...................................101Another view of Standish Court; an illustration of a Northern Goshawk muchlike the one kept by Nairac............................................................................102Robert Nairacs uncle, Basil Dykes, circa 1940.....................................................179Robert Nairac with members of the Oxford University Amateur Boxing Club; Lincoln College, Oxford...........................................................................................180

Robert Nairac with a peregrine falcon; Philip Glasier; Julian Malins Q.C.......181
Ampleforth College; The War Memorial Chapel at Ampleforth........................182
A view of Dublin Castle............................................................................................185
Formal portrait of Robert Nairac in December 1975..........................................281

Bloody Sunday confrontation; Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford; Julian Tony Ball..................................................................................................................282

Sandhurst Rugby XV 1972; Salamanca Company 1972......................................283
Robert Nairac during his time at NITAT (NI); a view from Slieve Gullion......284
The IRA photo of Robert Nairac on patrol in Belfast...........................................435
A photo purportedly of Robert Nairac in the SAS bar at Bessbrook Mill........437
Robert Nairac, in scruffy clothing, inspects an automatic rifle........................438
Robert Nairacs identity card...................................................................................439
A formal photograph of Robert Nairac taken in 1975........................................440

A map depicting County Armagh, and showing Slieve Gullion amongst other relevant sites..............................................................................................................499
On Slieve Gullionfor Douglas Carson

On Slieve Gullion men and mountain meet,OHanlons territory, the rapparee,
Home of gods, backdrop for a cattle raid, The Lake of Cailleach Beara at the top That slaked the severed head of Conor Mor:

To the south the Border and Ravensdale Where the torturers of Nairac left
Not even an eyelash under the leaves Or a tooth for MacCecht the cupbearer To rinse, then wonder where the water went.

I watch now through a gap in the hazels A blackened face, the disembodied head Of a mummer who has lost his bearings Or, from the garrison at Dromintee, A paratrooper on reconnaissance.

He draws a helicopter after him,
His beret far below, a wine-red spotSwallowed by heathery patches and ling As he sweats up the slopes of Slieve Gullion With forty pounds of history on his back.

Both strangers here, we pass in silence For he and I have dried the lakes and streams And Conor said too long ago: Noble And valiant is MacCecht the cupbearer Who brings water that a king might drink.

by Michael Longley, used with permission fromhis publisher Jonathan Cape

Farewell to a name and a number
Recalled again
To darkness and silence and slumber
In blood and pain. (A E Housman)

The first edition of this book, Betrayal: The Murder of Robert Nairac GC, appeared in November 2015 and has in general been kindly received. Why therefore is a revised new edition appearing in 2017? Quite simply, because a good deal of new information about its subject has become available since 2015, much of it frompeople who read the book and took the trouble to write to me or my publishers, Cambridge Academic. I am most grateful to them.

Most importantly, some of this information has made it possible to exonerateCaptain Nairac from all of the serious charges of involvement in murder and other illegal actions that Irish Republicans have repeatedly made against him since his death in 1977. In most cases it was relatively easy to establish his alibi.However in 2015 one doubtful case remained: the murder on 10 January 1975 of John Francis Green, a senior PIRA Volunteer, in the Republic of Ireland. Itseemed at least feasible, although not very likely, that Nairac could have played a role in it; his own reported comments appeared to suggest as much, or at any ratenot to exclude that possibility. It is now clear that he could not have done so; two reliable sources have shown that he was in Londonderry on that night and thathe had been based there for some time before Greens murder.

The new information has also made it possible to ascertain the provenance and date of the well-known photograph of Nairac talking to Catholic youths in Ardoyne, copies of which the PIRA released to the media on 21 May 1977 with a misleading briefing about Nairac and his murder at the hands of some PIRA supporters, and which is reproduced in this book. However, as is often the casewith Nairac, one mystery is resolved, only for another to appear. The photo was taken in 1973 by one of Nairacs brother officers, who is still alive; it was never published but was used to illustrate a classified document. Yet somehow the PIRA got hold of a copy between 1973 and 1977; how they did so remains unknown. Possibly its being in their possession might imply that Nairac was of interest tothe PIRA long before his murder in 1977.

Next page