Margaret Urwin - A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries

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Margaret Urwin and the Pat Finucane Centre, 2016

ISBN: 978 1 78117 462 3

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 463 0

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 464 7

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Abbreviations

ACC Assistant Chief Constable

AP Arrest policy

AUS Army Under-Secretary

BGS Brigade General Staff

CESA Catholic Ex-Servicemens Association (also CEA)

CID Criminal Investigation Department, RUC

CGS Chief of the General Staff

CLF Commander of Land Forces, Northern Ireland

DOW Down Orange Welfare

DPP Director of Public Prosecutions

DS10 Defence Secretariat 10 of the MoD

DUP Democratic Unionist Party

DUS Deputy Under-Secretary

ECHR European Commission of Human Rights

ECtHR European Court of Human Rights

FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office

FRU Force Research Unit

GOC General Officer Commanding

HET Historical Enquiries Team

HMG Her Majestys Government

HQNI British Army Headquarters Northern Ireland

ICO Interim Custody Order

INC Irish National Caucus

INLA Irish National Liberation Army

IPU Information Policy Unit, British Army Headquarters

IRA Irish Republican Army

IRSP Irish Republican Socialist Party

JFF Justice for the Forgotten

LCC Loyalist Coordinating Committee

MoD Ministry of Defence

MRF Military Reaction Force

NAI National Archives of Ireland

NAUK National Archives UK

NIAC Northern Ireland Advisory Commission

NIO Northern Ireland Office

NUPRG New Ulster Political Research Group

OIRA Official Irish Republican Army

OV Orange Volunteers

PAB Public Affairs Branch, NIO

PAD Public Affairs Division, NIO

PAF Protestant Action Force

PD Peoples Democracy

PFC Pat Finucane Centre

PIRA Provisional Irish Republican Army

PONI Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland

PRONI Public Records Office Northern Ireland

PSF Provisional Sinn Fin

PSNI Police Service of Northern Ireland

PsyOps Psychological Operations

PUL Protestant Unionist Community

PUP Progressive Unionist Party

PUS Permanent Under-Secretary

RHC Red Hand Commando

RID Republic of Ireland Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

RSR Review Summary Report of Historical Enquiries Team

RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary

RUCR RUC Reserve

SAS Special Air Service

SDLP Social Democratic and Labour Party

SLR Self-loading rifle

SMG Sub-machine gun

SitRep Situation Report

TAVR Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve

UAC Ulster Army Council

UCD University College Dublin

UDA Ulster Defence Association

UDR Ulster Defence Regiment

UFF Ulster Freedom Fighters

ULDP Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party

USC Ulster Special Constabulary

USCA Ulster Special Constabulary Association

UUP Ulster Unionist Party

UUUC United Ulster Unionist Council

UVF Ulster Volunteer Force

UWC Ulster Workers Council

VCP Vehicle checkpoint

VPP Volunteer Political Party

YCV Young Citizen Volunteers

Acknowledgements

This publication is the result of years of collaborative research by the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) and Justice for the Forgotten (JFF) (now part of the PFC) at the National Archives in both London and Dublin, the National Library of Ireland, the University College Dublin Archives, the Linen Hall Library in Belfast and the London School of Economics.

I would like to thank my colleagues, Anne Cadwallader, Sara Duddy and Alan Brecknell, for their assistance in plundering the archives and for their helpful suggestions. Thanks also to PFC board members Paddy Hillyard, Stuart Ross and Robin Percival for their crucial editorial input. I particularly wish to acknowledge the enormous contribution of PFC Director Paul OConnor. His guidance, advice and suggestions throughout the project were invaluable. I am also grateful to London-based journalist Tom Griffin for helping with the London end of the research and Raymond Walker for his assistance. The final product is the collective responsibility of the editorial board of the PFC/JFF.

I wish also to thank those families who kindly agreed to allow details from their case files to be included. A special thank you to Ian Knox for creating a cartoon for the picture section.

Finally, I hope that even those who disagree profoundly with me will take the time to examine the evidence and reflect on the conclusions.

Foreword

In 1989 the deputy head of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch, Brian Fitzsimons, submitted two documents to the Stevens investigation, which had been set up to examine allegations of collusion between the British Army, the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries. In a cover note an unnamed official commented: the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the loyalists which is similar in scale (if not greater in some respects) to that of the UDR [Ulster Defence Regiment]. Since the UDR was a British Army infantry regiment, the primary purpose of which was to aid the RUC, this shows just how deep the relationship between the RUC and loyalist organisations was thought to be.

The declassified official documents discussed in this book show more than a decade of official toleration, and at times encouragement, of loyalist paramilitaries throughout the 1970s, which would have horrifying results. According to Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles , between 1969 and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, in all but two years, more Catholic civilians than Protestant civilians died each year.

This is not to trump one communitys suffering over another the entire conflict was a desperate waste of human life and clearly the high level of casualties, including those of serving and retired members of the RUC and UDR, had a profound and devastating effect on the Protestant and unionist community.

But it is important to remember that the main focus of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) assassination campaign was the Catholic civilian population. As this was happening, the British government, the RUC, the British Army and the criminal justice system were living in a state of denial about the true extent of the assassination campaign and who was carrying out these assassinations the fictional Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) or the still-legal UDA, as well as the illegal UVF. was the fiction that collusion, if it existed at all, was limited to a few bad apples. The evidence shows that successive British governments turned a blind eye and sometimes encouraged the actions of the UDA and UVF. Church leaders were too often silent. Senior unionist political figures from 1969 onwards flirted with the men of violence as it suited them, and abandoned them just as quickly.