1 6 December - January 2017
O
N 1 December 1972 a car bomb exploded
beside Liberty Hall in Dublin. Fortunately no
one died but George Bradshaw, a CIE bus
driver, and Thomas Duffy, a bus conductor,
perished in a second explosion at Sackville
Place. No one has ever been charged with these crimes.
The UVF belatedly claimed sole responsibility for them
but there are legitimate doubts about the veracity of this
claim. These bombings were part of four bombings in
Dublin's north city centre at the end of 1972 and begin-
ning of 1973 and are to be distinguished from the even
more horrific bombings in the same general area in 1974.
A State In Denial
Margaret Urwin has just published 'A State in Denial'
which unravels a web of intrigue connecting the British
Secret State (BSS) to loyalist paramilitaries at a variety
of levels. No objective reader of this impressive work
could doubt that London focused the might of its coun-
ter-insurgency arsenal against Republicans while turning
a knowing blind eye at loyalist wrongdoing and also
arming and colluding with them. Irwin’s book is fascinat-
ing for its dissection of official papers to discern what
was going on behind closed doors.
The Man with the
English-Belfast Accent
The publication of 'A State in Denial' is timely as yet
another anniversary of the 1972 Dublin bombings comes
around. On that fateful evening a man with a mixed Eng-
lish-Belfast accent parked a car bomb beside Liberty
Hall. After he alighted, he asked someone who had just
left the building when it was likely to empty out for the
night. One of the cars used by the bombers to get to
Dublin was a Ford Zephyr which had been stolen in
Antrim from an Englishman called Joseph Fleming the
previous August, along with Fleming’s driver’s licence.
Fleming’s licence was put to use on two occasions in
November 1972 by an imposter posing as Fleming, to hire
cars in Belfast. The imposter was either extraordinarily
reckless or had good reason to believe Fleming’s licence
was not detailed on the lists circulated by the RUC to car-
rental companies. He obtained a number of cars over the
space of a week, a timespan which underlines his confi-
dence about the use of a stolen licence; and all this at a
time when an epidemic of car bombings was bringing
Belfast to a standstill. In addition, he left his fingerprints
and handwriting on the forms he completed. Another
significant fact was that he spoke with a mixture of a Bel-
fast and English accent.
Offence
Against a
State in Denial
No one ever charged with
murderous 1972 Dublin
bombings
by Joseph de Burca and Frank Connolly
The MRF could have arranged
for the details about Fleming’s
licence to be erased from
RUC watchlists. Then the
loyalist gang that would have
confidently hired and driven
the cars to bomb Dublin.
NEWS
December - January 2017 1 7
Kitson’s Military Reaction Force
The UVF would have us believe that its volunteers:
• Stole Fleming’s car in August 1972 and hid it for three
months, and;
•
Drove it across the Border with its original registration
plates on display, and;
• Proceeded to Dublin at the same time – and possibly
as part of a convoy of cars, parked it with explosives,
and
•
Faced an extremely high risk of detection because the
rental cars had been acquired using a stolen licence
which the gang must have believed was on an RUC
watchlist;
•
Yet all the while possessed the confidence to proceed
without any high-level protection from the BSS.
It is unlikely this is what happened.
On the other hand, the highly secretive Military Recon-
naissance Force (MRF) of the British Army had the nerve,
skill and high-level protection in place to undertake just
such an operation. The MRF was literally above the law.
It was a sprawling organisation established by Brigadier
Frank Kitson in 1971 to engage in agent-recruitment; sur-
veillance; drive-by shootings (deploying the type of
weapons the IRA were known to carry); laundry collec-
tion, to detect the residue of explosives on clothing; and
even brothel management, to collect gossip and obtain
blackmail material. It had access to loyalist agents
recruited by the British Army and M15. Stealing vehicles
and hiding them at its Palace Barracks HQ for use later
was one of its known practices. The MRF could easily
have arranged for the details about Fleming’s vehicle
and licence to have been erased from the RUC watch lists.
With this backing, the loyalist gang that bombed Dublin
(or at least some of them) would have enjoyed the confi
-
dence to hire the cars and drive them to Dublin.
Albert Ginger Baker
Albert Ginger Baker, an alleged British Army deserter,
who joined the UDA in the early 1970, ticked all the boxes
as an MRF agent. His family have claimed that he was
involved in the 1972 bombings. In 1976 the Sunday World
published an article exposing his links to a ‘Captain
Bunty’, a mysterious figure who can only have been his
handler. The pair met regularly in a Belfast coffee bar.
Baker was involved in a string of gruesome sectarian
murders in Belfast. During one of them, James Patrick
Doherty told the
Barron Inquiry
that no one in
authority had ever
approached him
about information
which had come
from members of
Baker’s family
Explosion outside Liberty Hall, November 1972
Kitson is on right
1 8 December - January 2017
McCartan, a 22-year-old forklift-
truck driver, was stripped naked,
hung up by his ankles and
punched, kicked and beaten with
a pickshaft, while a dagger was
used to stab him in the hands and
thigh over 200 times. He was
threatened with castration and
dropped head first from the ceiling.
Eventually one of Baker’s UDA superiors
gave him a pistol and told him to kill McCa-
rtan. Baker put a hood over his head, and
blasted into his skull three times. A grenade Bak-
er’s gang used in another attack was standard
British Army issue, which raises questions about
how they acquired it.
It is doubtful the prospect of bombing Dublin
could have troubled the conscience of those in
the BSS who ultimately controlled men like
Baker.
Baker suffered some sort of a crisis in 1973,
and fled to England where he confessed to a
string of sectarian murders to the police in
Warminster, in Wiltshire. As far as the BSS was
concerned, some rather nasty cats were now
peeping out of the bag. Damage limitation
became the order of the day. Hence, while Baker
was convicted and sent to prison in 1973, his
secret link to the MRF was kept under wraps. The
Baker-MRF connection reared its horrible head
again when the Sunday World report appeared.
It revealed that Baker had informed members of
his family that Belfast UDA men had driven the
bomb cars to Dublin and that the explosives
used in the attack had been “supplied by a lead-
ing member of the UDA in Derry – who also
provided weapons and explosives for operations
in Monaghan and Donegal”. This man “had a
close association with British Intelligence”.
According to the article, the planning for the
attack took place “in the Rangers Club, Chadolly
Street in the Newtownards Road area of Belfast.
One of the cars which exploded in Dublin had
been rented from a Belfast car firm by a "well-
dressed Englishman"… The "well-dressed
Englishman" was a member of the UDA Inner
Council. At least two others have since gone to
jail in Belfast for other offences, while a third has
been shot dead”.
The suspect the Gardai ignored
The report caused a stir at Garda HQ. According
to the Barron Report, on 19 January 1976 a memo
emanating from Parkgate St requested that
inquiries be made with Frank Doherty, the author
of the piece. Decades later Doherty told the
Barron Inquiry that no one in authority had ever
approached him. He revealed that his informa
-
tion had come “from members of Baker’s family,
whom he had traced and interviewed” in the
North of England. He identified “the well-
dressed Englishman” to Barron as a senior
member of the UDA who hailed from England but
was living in East Belfast in 1972 and was an
associate of Baker. Barron did not name the man
in his report.
In 1976 neither Garda Commissioner Ned
Garvey nor the head of Garda Intelligence, Larry
Wren, nor any of their subordinates, bothered to
pick up the phone to call anyone at the Sunday
World to get the imposter’s name despite the
facts:
•
They had the fingerprints of the Fleming
imposter on file, and attempts could have
been made to obtain the suspect’s finger
-
prints to see if they were a match.
• They also had samples of his handwriting.
•
They could also have checked to see if the sus-
pect looked anything like the photofit they had
made up (but which Wren never circulated to
the media).
The suspect’s fingerprints have since vanished
from Garda files.
The Offence Against the State
Act
Throughout 1972 the British Government had
lobbied the Irish Government to enact anti-par-
amilitary legislation. The bombs exploded on
the very night the controversial Offences Against
the State Bill was limping through the Dáil
towards its certain doom. The bombs shocked
and transformed opinion inside Leinster House
and it was passed into law. If the MRF was truly
involved in the attack, Liberty Hall must have
been targeted to rock Labour Party TDs who
were opposing the Bill. Suffice it to say the M16
station at the British Embassy in Dublin had the
political sophistication to pinpoint such a target.
An Act of State?
Combined, all of the available evidence points
to the likelihood that the 1972 attacks were car-
ried out by Loyalist puppets to ensure the
passage of the Bill but that ultimate responsibil-
ity lies with their BSS puppet-masters. Indeed,
the claim made by the UVF that it acted alone
may have been designed to distract attention
from the involvement of Baker and his UDA asso-
ciates; moreover and most especially, ‘Captain
Bunty’ and the ‘well-dressed Englishman’.
Frank Kitson is still alive. Although he left Bel-
fast months before the attack, there is much he
could tell the world about Baker, the MRF and the
manipulation of Loyalist paramilitaries.
Albert Baker is also believed to be alive and
living in Belfast. His MRF codename may have
been ‘Broccoli’, a moniker inspired by another
Albert, Albert Broccoli, then a famous movie pro-
ducer responsible for making films about a
British agent with a licence to kill. According to
official British papers, someone code-
named 'Broccoli' became an issue of concern at
the highest ranks of the British Army at the time
Baker was falling apart.
No one in authority in the Republic seems
interested in talking to either Kitson or Baker.
Baker could yet clarify whether:
• He was an MRF agent and, if he was:
•
If he warned his handlers that the UDA was
planning to bomb Dublin, or alternatively;
•
If the BSS manipulated the entire operation
from start to finish;
• If anyone from the UVF assisted at any stage
during the Dublin bomb operation?
• What the level of UDA-UVF co-operation, gen
-
erally during his time as a paramilitary, was.
As the creator of the MRF, Kitson could reveal a
lot more. While he has written extensively about
his counter-insurgency experiences in Malaya,
Cyprus and Oman, he has had very little to say
about Ireland. It is doubtful this is merely
because he is ashamed of what he did did: more
likely it is because he fears facing criminal
charges or at the very least severe opprobrium.
He is currently being sued by relatives of some
of his Irish victims.
Once Kitson and Baker have died, it may prove
impossible to establish the full truth about the
1972 attack. In the meantime, Margaret Urwin’s
book provides many insights into a nasty subter-
ranean world where collusion with paramilitary
killers became an acceptable, albeit clandestine,
technique of government.
Baker informed members of
his family that Belfast UDA
men had driven the bomb
cars to Dublin and that the explosives
had been provided by a Derry UDA
member with a close association to
British Intelligence
NEWS
Albert Ginger Baker

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