Bloody Sunday Archives - Village Magazine

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An appalling vista: disturbing indications of Kitson's foreknowledge of a third massacre of innocent civilians. Tragedy took fifteen lives including two children. By David Burke.

by admin 2 October, 2022 0 Comments

New evidence has emerged about the UVF’s bombing of McGurk’s Bar in Belfast in December 1971. The explosion caused the entire structure of the premises to collapse, killing fifteen Catholic civilians – including two children – and wounding seventeen more. It was the deadliest attack in Belfast during the Troubles. Brigadier (later General Sir) Frank Kitson commanded the British Army in Belfast 1970-72. He was a counter-insurgency guru who created havoc on the island before he was drummed out of it by William Whitelaw, the first British secretary of state for Northern Ireland. One of the conscious choices Kitson made while still in Ireland was to take on the IRA but not Loyalist terrorist gangs such as the UVF. This coincided neatly with the policy of the British government of Edward Heath which decided to intern members of the IRA but not Loyalist paramilitaries. On these grounds alone, the British state became indirectly responsible – through inaction – for the crimes of the UVF, including the McGurk tragedy. Worse still, there are indications that Kitson may have exploited elements of the UVF as a proxy assassination apparatus for the British state in Belfast. 1. Redaction of Evidence The sliver of new information about the massacre was recorded in a log by the 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (2RRF) approximately forty-two minutes after the bombing. It relates to the proprietor of the bar, Patrick McGurk, and the nearby Gem Bar. Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office has upheld a decision by Britain’s National Archives to withhold a section of the log from the families of the victims of the massacre. The Archive acted in consultation with the British Ministry of Defence (MoD). The 2RRF log reveals: Owner of pub a moderate RC [Roman Catholic] unlikely to have allowed people to use it as a mtg [meeting] place. Bar close to Gem Bar which is a [REDACTED]. 2. The Gem Bar The information relating to the Gem Bar remains withheld even though the venue no longer exists. When they were making their case for a full declassification of the log, the families of the victims of the attack presented archival evidence to the Information Commissioner’s Office that the Gem Bar was: The original target of the bombers; Known as an Official IRA bar; Recorded in British Army files as the local HQ of the Official IRA; Under British Army surveillance; And that the premises had been targeted by 2 RRF two nights before the bombing during which 2 RRF arrested and questioned six customers from the Gem Bar raid. Put simply, the perceived connections between the Gem and the Official IRA was a known fact and therefore any information pointing in that direction was not going to endanger anyone, especially as the pub has long since closed. Moreover, former known members of both wings of the IRA walk about Belfast without any concern for their safety. Some of them have published books about their paramilitary careers, others have been interviewed on the record by the press, radio and TV Despite this reality, the log remains redacted. 3. Reaction of the families Ciarán MacAirt is a grandson of two of the victims of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre and has been fighting for sight of the information – all of it – for five years. He said: After 50 long years fighting the British state’s lies, our families are outraged but unsurprised that it is withholding evidence relating to the mass murder of our loved ones in McGurk’s Bar. The British state has lied to us from the moment the bomb exploded up to this very day. Police Service Northern Ireland and the Office of the Police Ombudsman either failed to find this evidence or found it and buried it again as it has been left to the families to expose the truth about the McGurk’s Bar Massacre and its cover-up by the British state. Nevertheless, even when we discover new evidence, the British authorities withhold it from us and deny us access to the truth. In the meantime, many of our older family members are infirm or have gone to their graves without any justice. A video about the attack can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRLFnBxoWQ 4. The shape of an extremely disturbing state of affairs. The redaction is deeply disturbing. There is no good explanation for it. Why do the MoD censors want the redacted words withheld from public scrutiny, even after more than fifty years? The shape of an extremely disturbing state of affairs involving dirty tricks, collusive murder and black propaganda is swimming into focus. The following scenario is one that offers an explanation for what happened in 1971, and why the British State still feels it necessary to redact the document. 5. Kitson and the IRD Brigadier Frank Kitson was involved in a black propaganda operation that swung into action shortly after the bombing. He was almost certainly aided and abetted by Hugh Mooney who worked for the Information Research Department (IRD) of the Foreign Office. Mooney had been sent to Belfast to destabilise the IRA through the deployment of psychological operations (PsyOps). Kitson, who commanded the British Army in Belfast and its environs, was a meticulous planner who became deeply engaged in propaganda operations during his two years in Belfast. He was also the British army’s foremost counterinsurgency expert having honed and developed his skills in Kenya, Malaya, Oman and Cyprus. His infamous treatise about counterinsurgency, ‘Low Intensity Operations’ was published in 1971. One of the hallmarks of Kitson and Hugh Mooney was the meticulous manner in which they planned their operations in Ireland, invariably well in advance of their deployment. The black propaganda operation that swung into action after the bombing of McGurk’s Bar was up and running a little over four hours after the attack. The operation was a sophisticated affair, one that involved the coordination of senior British Army officers (including Kitson and his superior Lt. General Sir Harold Tuzo, General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland), the

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Vilifying the victims: two of the most vile British Intelligence smear campaigns of the Troubles blamed innocent murder victims for their own demise. By David Burke.

by admin 4 September, 2022 0 Comments

The Information Research Department (IRD) of Britain’s Foreign Office sought to smear the victims of Bloody Sunday and the McGurks bar bomb atrocity. They even went so far as to attack a group of British politicians by linking them to a campaign for justice for the victims of Bloody Sunday. To the IRD, any association with the campaign for justice for the victims of Bloody Sunday was a shameful act. On 30 January 1972, British paratroopers murdered 13 unarmed civilians in Derry, none of whom posed any sort of a threat to the military – unless, that is, you consider the waving of a white piece of cloth in the air a potentially lethal act. Within minutes Britain’s black propaganda machine swung into action. The head of the Army’s PsyOps department, Col Maurice Tugwell, who had joined the British Army in Derry, was among them. Upfront, Col Derek Wilford, the cowardly commander of 1 Para (cowardly because he has sacrificed his own men by lying about the orders he gave them to save his own skin) spewed out a torrent of lies about an imaginary attack on his troops by the IRA. Later, the Information Research Department (IRD) of the Foreign Office took over the smear campaign against the Bloody Sunday campaigners. A man with deep Irish roots – Hugh Mooney – led the IRD charge. Mooney was a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He had once worked for the Irish Times. As an IRD officer, Mooney was complicit in a multiplicity of MI6-IRD smear campaigns. An indication of his mindset can be gleaned from the fact that when he later tried to smear leading members of the British Labour Party, he felt the best way to bring them into disrepute was to link them to the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. (This episode, and a forged document the IRD created to further it, are described more fully later in this article.) Mooney had assets in the British press. One of them was a Tory guru called Tom Utley. Ultley was a British intelligence ‘agent of influence’ or in modern parlance, an ‘influencer’. At the time of the Bloody Sunday massacre, Utley was working for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, both pro-Tory papers popular with middle and upper class Britain. Mooney and Utley discussed the Bloody Sunday problem together. It was ultimately resolved that Utley would write a paperback about it. According to a confidential letter dated 24 March 1972, the FCO reported to the MoD that Utley hoped to ‘complete the writing in about six weeks, though this may be a little over-ambitious’. According to the letter, he was ‘obviously’ going to ‘need a certain amount of help from Army PR, particularly on the propaganda aspect’. While Utley failed to produce the book, in 1975 he published the rather grandiosely titled ‘Lessons of Ulster’ which took a broader look at Northern Ireland and a litany of developments that had occurred in the meantime. An indication of his mind-set can be gauged from the fact that he objected to the use of the phrase ‘Bloody Sunday’, something he described as ‘slavish obedience to IRA mythology’. He argued that some of those killed were ‘fresh-faced boys who might otherwise have lived to swell the ranks of patriotic militancy’. In other words, they probably would have joined the IRA if they had not been shot. An indication of his mind-set can be gauged from the fact that he objected to the use of the phrase ‘Bloody Sunday’, something he described as ‘slavish obedience to IRA mythology’. He argued that some of those killed were ‘fresh-faced boys who might otherwise have lived to swell the ranks of patriotic militancy’. In other words, they probably would have joined the IRA if they had not been shot. The IRD demonised the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday and those who supported them. Clearly, they believed they had turned them into political untouchables. Hence, they felt they could undermine British Labour Party MPs by associating them with the Bloody Sunday quest for justice. Towards this end, the IRD forged a pamphlet based on a genuine Bloody Sunday campaign leaflet. The original is reproduced hereunder: Merlyn Rees, who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (and later as Home Secretary) was undermined – at least in the eyes of Mooney and his IRD colleagues – by linking him to the Bloody Sunday campaign. His name was added to the IRD forgery which appears under this paragraph. (See the bottom of the left hand column). A man called Stan Newens appears on the authentic pamphlet. He was supplanted by Stan Orme MP on the fabricated version. In a similar fashion, Tony Smythe became Tony Benn. David Owen MP was added to the list too. Owen, however, had the last laugh: when he became Foreign Secretary later in the 1970s, he abolished the IRD. Mooney deployed a similar tactic to smear Charles Haughey TD of Fianna Fail, i.e., he took an original document produced in Ireland and doctored it to include smears about Haughey before printing his own version in London. Mooney was also responsible for the smear campaign against the victims of the McGurks bar bomb atrocity. 15 innocent people were murdered when the UVF attack McGurks bar in Belfast in December 1971. The black propagandists issued a statement insinuating that at least some of the victims of the attack were responsible for their own demise. The propagandists alleged that the bomb had been brought inside the pub by an IRA unit and had exploded prematurely – a so-called ‘own goal’. The campaign was furthered by statements by politicians. See Alleged disappearance of UVF Bomb Massacre Files: MoD excuse for destruction of Brigadier Kitson’s logs is far from convincing. By David Burke. Despite the best efforts of David Owen, the black propagandists found other avenues through which they managed to smear their victims including Charles Haughey. David Burke is the author of

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Alleged disappearance of UVF Bomb Massacre Files: MoD excuse for destruction of Brigadier Kitson's logs is far from convincing. By David Burke.

by admin 3 September, 2022 0 Comments

On 4 December 8:45 p.m., a UVF gang set out on a bombing mission. One of those involved was Robert James Campbell. The UVF bomb exploded outside a small pub in Belfast called McGurk’s, a cosy place where Catholics and Protestants from the same neighbourhood – all of whom knew each other well – met for a few drinks. The UVF unit left the bomb outside the pub, not inside it. It consisted of forty to fifty pounds of gelignite. It was ignited by lighting a fuse, not a timer. A paper boy saw the UVF car pull up and a man deposit the bomb outside the pub before fleeing. He spotted the fuse sparking and warned the man not to go up the road. According to Robert James Campbell, his unit had originally wanted to attack another establishment which they believed was frequented by the Official IRA and its supporters, but it had two guards posted outside. After waiting for an hour for them to go inside, the UVF unit decided to go elsewhere. They drove to McGurk’s. The British Army had two Ammunition Technical Officers, i.e., bomb disposal experts, circulating around Belfast on standby in case a bomb was detected. They attended at the scene in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Because of the darkness and the debris, they were unable to determine the exact location of the detonation. They decided to carry out a further inspection at daylight the next day. Following the daylight inspection, the Army’s 39 Brigade HQ in Lisburn recorded in its Ops Log at 11.10am: “ATO is convinced bomb was placed in the entrance way on the ground floor. The area is cratered and clearly was the seat of the explosion. The size of the bomb is likely to be 40/50 lbs”. This information corroborated what the paperboy had witnessed. The bomb killed fifteen people, two of whom were children. Another seventeen were badly wounded. The building was demolished. A knowingly and thoroughly dishonest statement was issued stating that the bomb had been brought inside the pub by the IRA and detonated prematurely. The insinuation was that the bar was a safe haven for the IRA to stage operations, and that at least some of the victims were IRA sympathisers. The disinformation charge was led by Frank Kitson. Kitson is still alive. At the time, he was in charge of British military activities in Belfast and its environs. He was also an expert in counter-insurgency (i.e. dirty tricks, collusive murder, torture and black propaganda). Paper Trail, a charity which helps victims of atrocities such as McGurk’s, has been digging into Britain’s National Archives to try to understand what happened. The work it has undertaken has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bomb was not an ‘IRA own goal’. Aside from a few die-hard Unionist bigots, no sane and respectable commentator bothers to recirculate Kitson’s lies any more. But there is more, a lot more to this scandal, than meets the eye. Paper Trail uncovered military logs relating to the attack which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had failed to release when it made other logs available. Happily, the same logs were available elsewhere. Paper Trail submitted a complaint about this development to Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO has just announced that it accepts the MoD’s explanation, namely that the relevant logs were in the process of being scanned before allegedly being destroyed and that the crucial logs were accidentally omitted during the scanning process. This explanation is trite. The time has long since passed for a full judicial inquiry. A full breakdown of the Information Commissioner’s conclusion and the evidence unearthed by Paper Trail can be found here: https://mcgurksbar.com/ico-accepts-mod-excuses-for-missing-massacre-files/ The Paper Trail website can be accessed here: https://www.papertrail.pro/ David Burke is the author of Kitson’s Irish War, Mastermind of the Dirty War in Ireland which examines the role of counter-insurgency dirty tricks in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s and the template it set for the Troubles. His next book, An Enemy of the Crown, the British Secret Service Campaign against Charles Haughey, will be released at the end of September 2022. Both books can be ordered/purchased here: https://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/kitson-s-irish-war/ https://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/an-enemy-of-the-crown/ Other stories about British Intelligence black propaganda operations, dirty tricks, Bloody Sunday, the Ballymurphy massacre, McGurks bar bombing, Brigadier Frank Kitson and Col Derek Wilford on this website include the following: Bloody Sunday murderers operated a mobile torture chamber. By David Burke. Soldier G – real name Ron Cook – the Bloody Sunday killer with ‘the sadistic edge’ over his ‘partner’, Soldier F. By David Burke. Bloody Sunday: Brigadier Frank Kitson and MI5 denounced in Dail Eireann The covert plan to smash the IRA in Derry on Bloody Sunday by David Burke Soldier F’s Bloody Sunday secrets. David Cleary knows enough to blackmail the British government. Learning to kill Colin Wallace: Bloody Sunday, a very personal perspective Lying like a trooper. Internment, murder and vilification. Did Brigadier Kitson instigate the Ballymurphy massacre smear campaign? Where was Soldier F and his ‘gallant’ death squad during it? Another bloody mess. Frank Kitson’s contribution to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 300,000 have died in Afghanistan since 1979. Lying like a trooper. Internment, murder and vilification. Did Brigadier Kitson instigate the Ballymurphy massacre smear campaign? Where was Soldier F and his ‘gallant’ death squad during it? A Foul Unfinished Business. The shortcomings of, and plots against, Saville’s Bloody Sunday Inquiry. Kitson’s Private Army: the thugs, killers and racists who terrorised Belfast and Derry. Soldier F was one of their number. Soldier F and Brigadier Kitson’s elite ‘EFGH’ death squad: a murderous dirty-tricks pattern is emerging which links Ballymurphy with Bloody Sunday. A second soldier involved in both events was ‘mentioned in despatches’ at the behest of Kitson for his alleged bravery in the face of the enemy. Mentioned in Despatches. Brigadier Kitson and Soldier F were honoured in the London Gazette for their gallantry in the face of the enemy during the internment swoops

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Bloody Sunday murderers operated a mobile torture chamber. By David Burke.

by admin 1 August, 2022 0 Comments

Introduction. The brutality displayed by David Cleary (Soldier F) and Ron Cook (Soldier G) of 1 Para on Bloody Sunday in Derry on 30 January 1972 was not an aberration. After murdering a string of unarmed civilians, they were taken to Fort George where they beat up a group of innocent prisoners including a priest. They then returned to Belfast. What is revealed here for the first time is how they used the armoured personnel carrier or ‘pig’ assigned to them as a mobile torture chamber to electrocute people in Belfast in the weeks after Bloody Sunday. 1. Murder Cleary is alive and may yet face criminal charges for his actions on Bloody Sunday when he and Cook (who is dead) were conveyed in their ‘pig’ into the Bogside at speed. They leapt out of the vehicle and took up positions behind a low wall adjacent to a ramp on Kells Walk from where they shot Michael Kelly. Kelly was unarmed and standing at a nearby rubble barricade, a threat to no one. Cleary, Cook, ‘Corporal E’ and ‘Private H’, [the EFGH unit] moved into Glenfada Park North, where their killing spree continued. The Saville Inquiry found that Cleary or Soldier H shot William McKinney dead; also that this unit was responsible for the shot that wounded Joe Mahon; and that either Cleary or Cook fired the shot that wounded Joe Friel. Saville opined that the EFGH unit also murdered William Wray; injured Joe McMahon, Joe Friel, Michael Quinn and Patrick O’Donnell; and possibly injured Daniel Gillespie. There was no excuse for their behaviour. According to Saville: In our view none of the soldiers fired in the belief that he might have identified a person in possession of or using or about to use bombs or firearms. Saville also found that: The last gunfire casualties were Bernard McGuigan, Patrick Doherty, Patrick Campbell and Daniel McGowan, all shot in the area to the south of Block 2 of the Rossville Flats within a very short time of each other. We are sure that Lance Corporal F fired at and shot Bernard McGuigan and Patrick Doherty, and it is highly probable that he was also responsible for shooting the other two casualties. This soldier fired across Rossville Street from the Rossville Street entrance way into Glenfada North. Cleary was a cruel, cynical and clinical killer. He shot Patrick Doherty in the buttock while he was on the ground crawling away from him. As Doherty lay crying out in pain, his life draining away from him, Barney McGuigan, an exceptionally brave and humane man, stepped forward with a white handkerchief looking to help Doherty. Cleary dropped to one knee, aimed his rifle and shot McGuigan in the head. 2. ‘Beasting’ of prisoners After the shootings, Cleary and Cook led the ‘beasting’ of prisoners at Fort George in Derry. According to a local priest, Fr Terence O’Keeffe, who was among the prisoners, G had “scary eyes” and an “almost psychotic look”. The pair “roamed” among the prisoners, stamping on their feet, kneeing them in the groin, forcing their faces up against electric heaters, spitting in their mouths and engaging in other acts of “idle brutality”. Fr O’Keeffe recalled Cook as having had “the sadistic edge” on Cleary. See also: Soldier G – real name Ron Cook – the Bloody Sunday killer with ‘the sadistic edge’ over his ‘partner’, Soldier F. By David Burke. 3. Torture and mutilation When they got back to Belfast they showed no remorse. Byron Lewis (Soldier 027) was a radio operator who accompanied them on their patrols. In 1975 he provided an account which was discovered by Tom McGurk in 1997. This key discovery led to the establishment of the Saville Inquiry as it constituted new evidence. Some passages from it were published in The Sunday Business Post, and later at Saville. The unpublished passages – quoted here for the first time – reveal that a few weeks after Bloody Sunday, Cleary and Cook and others were briefed by ‘Lieutenant 119’, another veteran of Bloody Sunday, for an operation at the Divis Flats on the Falls Road. According to Lewis “several blokes”, by which he means young Catholic residents of the area were “beasted severely”. He was in a pig parked in between the main tower and the annex 30 or 40 metres away was [Redacted] pig on waste ground among some derelict buildings. Beyond that could be seen the glow of the fires. Then I noticed [Cook] and [Cleary] running towards the pig with a bloke bent double between them. They kept him going head first into the armour plating. The bang was quite audible where I was. He was temporarily knocked out but was revived and thrown into the back of the pig. There was a purpose in hauling the prisoner to the back of the ‘pig’. Cleary and Cook had prepared it for the torture of any prisoner they brought back to it. Lewis wrote: The most fiendish screams and squeals then let loose [Cleary and Cook] had wired [the captive] to the batteries and were electrocuting him. Lewis and his comrades in 1 Para referred to other regiments of the military as ‘crap-hats’. The ‘crap-hats’ on duty with them let the torture session continue. As Lewis has revealed: Meanwhile during this racket the [Commanding Officer] of the crap-hats had walked over to where I was standing. He remarked about what was happening. [Soldier H] and I passed it off lightly. He then went on to ask if we had been in Derry the previous month. On answering, yes, he turned and walked away with an air of turning a blind eye. This deplorable behaviour was not confined to F and G. Lewis reveals that: At this point the other pig disappeared for ten minutes. The bloke inside had been castrated, electrocuted, the features of his face sliced with a knife and generally kicked and beaten. Lt 119 was also aware of what was going on but

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New evidence about Bloody Friday ignored by the mainstream media. By David Burke.

by admin 27 July, 2022 0 Comments

On Bloody Friday, the Provisional IRA detonated 19 bombs across the city of Belfast, killing 9 people and injuring 130 – most of whom were women and children. Paper Trail discovered secret British military logs in London and “secured their release following prolonged information battles and Public Interest Tests. The organisation made the secret files and newspaper archives available to victims and survivors – research that otherwise would have taken them years of delay and hundreds of hours of work.” One of the most interesting discoveries by Paper Trail relates to a mistake made by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) about disputed warnings given about the bombs, one of which was at Limestone Road. The report explains that: The Limestone Road bomb exploded 36 minutes after these warnings and without the civilians in the area suspecting a bomb was in the vehicle. It is miraculous that many more civilians were not massacred at this bomb site although many suffered horrific injuries including a woman who lost both legs and a child who lost one. The HET records both of these explosions as “no-warning” bombs and that is how they were reported at the time. This is wrong and we need to interrogate why the authorities did not even attempt to clear these two specific locations. Despite the desperate actions of the British armed forces on Bloody Friday – which undoubtedly saved scores of civilian lives – the families may consider the Oxford Street Bus Station, Cavehill shop and Limestone Road explosions terrible missed opportunities to save lives. The families may also question why they and the Coroner were given false information by the authorities. It goes without saying, that the greater questions lie with the perpetrators of every explosion on Bloody Friday, the IRA. In powerful interviews with the BBC, Robert Gibson said: “The truth is something everybody deserves.” He knows there are Irish Republicans still alive today who can help the families. “I would like to know what my father and his colleagues went into that day… Were the warnings they had given inefficient?” The Paper Trail report can be accessed here: Bloody Friday – the Missing Warnings (papertrail.pro)

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Was revenge the cause of the ferocity on Bloody Sunday? By Brian Lacey, author of 'Siege City: the story of Derry and Londonderry'.

by admin 24 May, 2022 0 Comments

The 2010 Report of the Saville Enquiry describes much of what happened in Derry on Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972). Various commentaries and later publications have added further information, some of it of a nature that the authorities must have hoped would never be revealed. It seems however that the ferocity of the slaughter that day has still not been adequately explained. Could ‘pure’ revenge be that explanation, as it had been on several other occasions in the past when the British army committed similar atrocities in Ireland. In the late 1980s while living in Derry and in the course of doing research for my book ‘Siege City: the story of Derry and Londonderry’ (published 1990), I became aware that as well as the terrible deaths in the city on Bloody Sunday, on the same day Major Robin Alers-Hankey, an officer in the Royal Green Jackets, had died also – but in London. Major Alers-Hankey was the first British army officer to be killed in the Troubles. He died of an injury sustained several months earlier while on duty in Derry’s Bogside, at a location that figured prominently in the deaths of the civilians on Bloody Sunday. There are slightly differing accounts of the incident but, apparently, he was shot while providing security cover for the fire brigade which had been called out to a burning building in Abbey Street. It is possible that the fire had been started deliberately with the intention of luring the soldiers into an ambush. I was struck by the coincidence of the major’s death on the same day as the terrible events in Derry itself and wondered if there could have been any connection between the two tragedies. However, I didn’t know what time of the day the major had died and in those pre-googling days I had no easy way of finding out. Clearly his death would have had to have occurred before the slaughter in Derry if there was to have been any connection. I mentioned the subject to various people in Derry from time to time, but I never met anybody who seemed to know much about the incident. Most times I spoke about it I got the distinct impression that people thought I’d be better not to enquire too much into the matter; at best it would be seen as a distraction from the main unresolved issues, at worst I might even be accused of providing a ‘reason’ or possibly an ‘excuse’ for the actions of the paras. The latter, of course, was the last thing on my mind; but as an historian I felt that the question was worth pursuing or, at very least, worth asking. I was asked by the Bloody Sunday Trust to chair a fairly large public meeting in the Pilots’ Row Community Centre in the Bogside on the weekend of the 25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, in 1997. In the course of my introduction, I mentioned the Alers-Hankey affair and although some of my other remarks were responded to by those attending and reported, for example in the Derry Journal, my reference to the officer’s death seemed to fall totally flat and was not mentioned again. On 25 January 2002, however, the Irish Times reported that Martin McGuinness “was under pressure to state all he knows about 34 murders carried out by the IRA in Derry during 1972”. Among those listed was the killing of Robin Alers-Hankey. On 8 February 2002, the Irish Times published a letter from Jonathan Stephenson, a trades union official in Belfast and a former chairman of the SDLP (1995-8). It appeared under the heading ‘Remembering Bloody Sunday’. In the letter Mr Stephenson (who was English) mentioned that Major Alers-Hankey was ‘a member of my family’. He went on to refer to Martin McGuinness’s role in the IRA in Derry saying: ‘it is entirely possible that Mr McGuinness might have a fair idea who killed him [Major Alers-Hankey].’ I didn’t pursue the matter in any way subsequently although my curiosity about it remained. I assumed that it would be dealt with by the Saville Enquiry. By then living in Dublin, I made a preliminary check of the Saville Report immediately on its publication on 15 June 2010. The Report does mention the major’s death on Bloody Sunday as background to the situation in Derry at that time but (as far as I know) it does not mention the time of his death or suggest any link with the atrocity. There also seems to be some discrepancy in the dates given for the original wounding of the major: Saville states 2 September 1971, while a number of army-related sources (e.g. Holywood Palace Barracks website) suggest 16 October. On the day of the Saville Report publication (15 June 2010) and over the next few days I made attempts to contact a well-known journalist who I thought might be interested in what I had to say about the matter and who might mention it in his own coverage.* Having failed to make contact I wrote a short letter to the Irish Times, still indicating that I was unaware of the time of the Major’s death. The letter was published on 17 June and among those who contacted me as a result (18 June) was a female reporter from RTÉ/TG4 Nuacht who wanted to interview me. Unfortunately, I cannot now remember the reporter’s name. On the phone, I explained to her that my hypothesis that there might be a connection between the two events was dependant on the time of the major’s death and if it was possible that news of it could have reached Derry prior to the attack on the marchers. An hour later the interview crew arrived in my office in Dublin. In the meantime, the reporter had done a bit of googling and had found a relevant reference in ‘Those are real bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972’ by Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson (published 2000). The following is the relevant

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UPDATED: Newly discovered evidence of a secret Kitson-RUC plot to safeguard the UVF. By David Burke.

by admin 30 April, 2022 0 Comments

The campaign for the truth about the infamous McGurk’s bar bombing has uncovered the existence of a covert intrigue hatched by the British Army’s counter-insurgency (i.e., dirty tricks) guru, Brigadier Frank Kitson, and the RUC, to conceal the truth about the UVF’s bomb attack massacre at McGurk’s bar fifty years ago. Kitson and the RUC conspired to blame the attack on the IRA. The explosion caused the building to collapse, killing fifteen Catholic civilians—including two children—and wounding seventeen more. It was the deadliest attack in Belfast during the Troubles. The Ministry of Defence has told the campaign that it has no record of the scheme to switch blame from the UVF to the IRA. The PSNI (as successor to the RUC), is being non-committal. They undoubtedly know full well that (a) there was a secret arrangement and (b) precisely what it entailed, but don’t want to admit the deeply shameful truth. The reason for believing the PSNI knows what happened is because the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland has details of the secret compact. It is not prepared to provide them to the families of the deceased, at least not at this stage. What are the MoD and PSNI/RUC trying to hide? What is so controverdial that it merits a cover-up 50 plus years after the event? What are the MoD and PSNI/RUC trying to hide? What is so controverdial that it merits a cover-up 50 plus years after the event? The British Army was deployed in Northern Ireland in 1969 to protect Nationalists from organised Loyalist attacks involving attempts to burn them out of their homes. The Army was sent to their rescue. The soldiers were welcomed by the Nationalist/Catholic community. Their arrival ushered in a ‘honeymoon’ period during which relations between the Army and Catholics were harmonious, if not warm. At the time, the threat to the Army and police emanated from Loyalists. In October 1969 Loyalists rioted and murdered Victor Arbuckle, the first police officer to die during the Troubles. The honeymoon period began to peter out as 1970 dragged on. The reasons for its decline are complex, multifaceted and controversial. What is crystal clear, however, is that Brigadier (later General Sir) Frank Kitson, who had been sent to Belfast in September 1970, chose to abandon peacekeeping and go on the offensive instead. He decided he did not want to take on both Nationalist and Loyalists and opted to attack the IRA (then consisting of the Officials and Provisionals). He used ancient dirty trick tactics which he had brought up to date in colonies such as Kenya and Malaya. In a nut shell, he used Loyalist terror gangs as proxy assassins to kill IRA members. I set out the evidence that Kitson and elements within the RUC were using the UDA assassination squad commanded by Tommy Herron of the UDA’s Inner Council as proxy assassins in my recent book on Kitson. It includes a chapter on Herron and one of his top killers, Albert ‘Ginger’ Baker. If the UVF attack on McGurk’s had sparked the internment of the UVF, it was likely that figures in the UDA such as Herron and Baker would have become targets too. When internment was introduced in August 1971, Kitson’s Loyalist cats’-paws were not interned. The McGurk’s bar bomb atrocity of December 1971 – four months later – threatened to change this set of affairs. Had the truth about the bomb attack emerged, i.e. that the UVF was responsible for the bomb in the bar – not the IRA, it would have amplified calls to intern members of the UVF and UDA. Who would carry out Kitson’s assassination programme if the Army and RUC were ordered to intern Loyalist gunmen? At the time, Kitson and the SAS were also training a secret army, the MRF. Its personnel were drawn from the Army. The MRF had an assassination wing. When the MRF was deployed on shoot to kill missions in 1972, they wore civilian clothing thereby inviting the public to conclude they were Loyalist terrorists when the circumstances so demanded. If Loyalists were to be interned in a widespread and effective manner, it had the potential to strip the MRF assassins of their cover i.e., the public perception that MRF hits were the work of the UVF and UDA. Overall, the McGurk bar bombing was a threat to Kitson’s various lethal strategies. Hence, the McGurk attack was portrayed as an IRA ‘own goal’. Kitson, a black propaganda expert, saw to it that the attack was blamed on a non-existent IRA unit which was meant to have carried the bomb into the pub en route to its final destination, but that it exploded prematurely. Kitson knew that this was a lie. Kitson’s template for the exploitation and manipulation of Loyalist gangs as proxy assassins was pursued for three decades by MI5, the MRF, RUC Special Branch, the FRU and a host of other secret departments. The UVF was deeply involved in these clandestine programmes. Robin ‘the Jackal’ Jackson of the UVF featured prominently in collusive murders during the 1970s and 1980s. The newly discovered Kitson-RUC arrangement by the McGurk’s bar bomb campaign for justice threatens to reveal some of the early roots of this practice. UPDATE 2 May 2022: The following information is from a press release from the campaign for the truth about the McGurk’s bar massscre Chief Constable Snubs Massacre Families and Withholds Evidence The Chief Constable of Police Service Northern Ireland has yet again snubbed the families of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre despite a protest at the Policing Board to mark the 50th anniversary of the atrocity and an official request to meet with him. Instead, a police representative of the Chief Constable has informed the families that PSNI is withholding critical evidence of the police and British Army cover-up of the massacre. On 2nd December 2021, families of those killed and injured in the McGurk’s Bar Massacre were left out in the cold at the Policing Board when Chief Constable Simon

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Lord Widgery, the judge who covered-up the murders of Bloody Sunday. How and why he did it.

by admin 21 April, 2022 0 Comments

By David Burke. This article was first published on 2 July 2021. It is republished to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Lord Widgery’s infamous report which defamed the victims of Bloody Sunday and exculpated those who murdered them. 1. Brigadier Frank Kitson subverts the law. Brigadier Frank Kitson of the British Army was a so-called counterinsurgency guru. He was sent to Northern Ireland in 1970 to tackle the IRA. The following year his astonishingly indiscreet book, ‘Low Intensity Operations’ was published. In it he explained that there were two ways of administering the law during a counterinsurgency, the first one being that: the law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of the legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible … The other alternative is that the law should remain impartial and administer the laws of the country without any direction from the government. [Kitson (1971), p. 69.] The first tribunal investigating the events of Bloody Sunday – Widgery – is a good example of how the law was used as “just another weapon in the government’s arsenal”. On Monday 31 January 1972, Tory Home Secretary Reginald Maudling announced in the House of Commons that there would be a judicial inquiry into the Derry massacre. That evening British Prime Minister Ted Heath and Hailsham, his Lord Chancellor, asked Lord Chief Justice Widgery to chair it. Widgery had been a surprise appointment as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales by the Tories the previous year. He was not viewed as a jurist of the first rank by his peers. His career was one which would ultimately descend into bedlam. Private Eye magazine would report that “he sits hunched and scowling, squinting into his books from a range of three inches, his wig awry. He keeps up a muttered commentary of bad-tempered and irrelevant questions – ‘What d’you say?’, ‘Speak up’, ‘Don’t shout’, ‘Whipper-snapper’, etc”. [Private Eye Issue 436, 1 September 1978.] These comments were published two years before he stepped down from the bench. The view expressed by the Eye is reflective of Widgery’s reputation for having been ‘difficult’ by members of the Bar in Britain. ‘Difficult’ in this context is a polite euphemism. Widgery was despised by the legal profession which viewed him as a second rate political appointee who strove to conceal his shortcomings in the traditional manner of the lower tier judge: by hectoring, pelting and bullying. 2. Judicial compromise The night before Heath asked Widgery to conduct an inquiry, he had expressed his belief to Taoiseach Jack Lynch that Kitson’s paratroopers had behaved properly in Derry. If Heath truly believed what he had said to Lynch, he had an unusual way of showing it. He chose Widgery – a safe pair of hands – and left him in no doubt that he was to pervert the course of justice. At the meeting on 31 January Heath told Widgery that it “had to be remembered that we were in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war”. It is hard to conceive of a more compromising comment made by a British prime minister to a senior member of the judiciary, let alone the man at its pinnacle. No matter what way one looks at it, the comment demonstrates a breath-taking lack of esteem on the part of Heath for the independence of the judiciary. Yet Widgery did not rise to his feet and leave the room in protest. Instead, he did what his master bid him to do. 3. An Allegedly Independent Judge pre-judges the Murder Victims by Attending a Meeting at which they were referred to as ‘the other side’ At the same meeting at which Heath had given Widgery his riding orders, the parties to the discussion had also referred to the victims as the ‘other side’. [Para (viii) of minute of meeting of 31 January 1972.] Moreover, according to confidential notes by a Widgery associate, the “LCJ” [Lord Chief Justice] could be counted on to “pile up the case against the deceased” even though the evidence provided “a large benefit of the doubt to the deceased.” [‘Hidden Truths’ (1998), p. 95. 4. Threats to Muzzle the Ever Compliant British Media In the days after the massacre, the journalist Murray Sayle and his colleagues completed a report which was submitted to the Sunday Times. There was internal opposition to its conclusion, namely that Colonel Derek Wilford, who had led 1 Para in Derry on Bloody Sunday, had set out to provoke the IRA into coming out into the open so his troops could wipe them out. Harold Evans, the editor of the paper, decided to ring Widgery. “I said we had done a great deal of interviewing and proposed to publish this Sunday. We also had compelling photographs. I told him I presumed contempt would not apply since nobody had yet been accused. It would be an exaggeration to say he was aghast, but he made it very clear it would be ‘unhelpful’ to publish anything and yes, he would apply the rules of contempt. .. I withheld the article, but that week I took the chance of publishing the shocking photographs by Gilles Peress of unarmed men being shot”. [Harold Evans, ‘My Paper Chase, True Stories of Vanished Times’ (Little, Brown and Co, New York, 2009), p 474.] On Sunday 6 February, the paper reported that, “The law is that until the Lord Chief Justice completes his enquiry nobody may offer to the British public any consecutive account of the events in Derry last weekend”. [Sunday Times 6 February 1972.] Heath’s press office rowed in declaring that anything which anticipated the Tribunal’s findings would amount to contempt. This was a highly contentious assertion without

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Updated: The very best (and worst) of British. Simon Danczuk is one of a number of courageous British individuals who has tried to tell the truth about British government crimes in Ireland. He joins the ranks of Colin Wallace, Fred Holroyd, John Stalker, Byron Lewis and John Stevens

by admin 11 April, 2022 0 Comments

Dolphin Square VIP sex abuse. Dolphin Square was opened in London’s Pimlico in 1936. It soon became a magnet for all sorts of scandal and intrigue: espionage, political, sexual, not to mention mysterious deaths. ‘Scandal at Dolphin Square’ provides a riveting account of the lives of a rolling maul of fascinating and complex characters. As publicity for the publication accurately proclaims, it was ‘a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century’. It was also a cesspit where Prince Andrew’s friend Lord Greville Janner abused children. The two most important chapters in the book, both of which describe the activities of members of a VIP child abuse network, have been ignored by the British press. Cut from the same cloth: the Russian and British press Consumers of the media in the UK, have no appreciation of the extent to which they are kept in the dark about British Establishment scandals. They are completely unaware of the role Buckingham Palace played in suppressing the Jeffrey Epstein scandal for years before it broke in the US media. See: Palace of Discord and Deception. [Updated] Prince William’s officials covered-up his uncle’s involvement in the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking scandal. By Joseph de Burca. At the moment, many in Britain are exasperated at the ignorance of the ordinary Russian citizen who is misled by a corrupt Putlin-led media spouting nonsense about Nazism in the Ukraine. If the average Brit knew about what has been going on in Ireland, he and she might not laugh with such disdain at the typically ignorant Russian newspaper reader. The Dolphin Square book will help open a few eyes in Britain about the wretchedness of their ruling classes. However, before I return to Dolphin Square, it may be helpful to look at a few examples from recent history to understand the wider picture which explains how the ordinary British newspaper reader has been left to wallow in ignorance about British establishment crimes in Ireland. The tactic is: injure, insult and ignore. There is a deep well of hurt in Ireland felt by many as a result of the lethal misbehaviour of the British army and intelligence services on this island, a history now more than fifty years in being. Fresh evidence of transgressions continue to emerge with depressing regularity. In recent times, they include reports from the Northern Ireland Ombudsman about collusion between Loyalist paramilitaries and the State involving the murder of Catholics, many of them non-combatants who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The murder of Irish citizens by British State actors is no more news in Britain than Putin’s war crimes in the Ukraine are for ordinary Russians. Astonishingly, there was little or no coverage of the fact that the State paid out £1.4 million to the families and survivors of the Miami Showband massacre. There has been – and continues to be – a pattern of State sponsored injury followed by insult. The insult takes the form of the cover-up after the event. If the cover-up falls apart, then the British press and TV go into ‘ignore’ mode. John Stalker who refused to back down when he discovered RUC-MI5 murder of a teenager. It cost him his career. The late John Stalker, the former Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester, investigated the RUC’s shoot to kill programme in Ireland in the 1980s. He discovered, for example, that the RUC and MI5 had murdered a teenage boy who had stumbled across an IRA arms dump in a hay shed. Stalker refused to back off and was stabbed in the back by his own side. The deepest wounds were those inflicted by his boss, James Anderton, a man who believed that God spoke ‘to him and through him’. In reality Anderton became an accessory after the fact to the murder of the boy at the hay shed. Stalker was smeared by a corrupt press in Britain, linked to criminality and taken off his inquiry. The killers got away Scot free as did all of those involved in shafting Stalker. Few in Britain could have cared less. Although he cleared his name, Stalker retired from the police early a demoralised man. Byron Lewis, intimidated and vilified for telling the truth about Bloody Sunday David Cleary (better known as Soldier F) was responsible for a large number of the killings which took place on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. Byron Lewis was beside him on the day of the massacre. Lewis killed no one – he was a radio operator. The journalist and broadcaster Tom McGurk conducted an investigation into Bloody Sunday and uncovered a written account by Lewis. He published it in The Sunday Business Post in Dublin. Privately, he supplied additional information to the Irish Government. This, finally, provided the ‘new evidence’ the British government required to establish a fresh inquiry. And what happened to Lewis? Although McGurk was careful not to name him, his identity was leaked – probably by the Ministry of Defence in London to a gang of soldiers who tried to persuade him not to talk to the Savile Inquiry. The soldiers found where he was living. In a case of mistaken identity, his housemate was beaten so badly he was taken to hospital. That same night Lewis’ life was threatened and he had to go into hiding. When he appeared at the Saville Inquiry, attempts were made to tear his character apart. Lewis has never emerged from hiding. And what of Cleary? The British government of Boris Johnson is presently trying to enact legislation so that he and others like him will not have to face murder charges. Fred Holroyd: smeared and vilified for exposing Robert Nairac and the Dublin and Monaghan bombers of 1974 When Fred Holroyd, a former undercover British soldier, refused to go along with MI5’s murderous collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries in