This story was updated on 6 September 2019. The original content is reproduced underneath this update. UPDATE The imminent revelation by BBC NI’s Spotlight programme that Ian Paisley financed the infamous UVF Silent Valley bombing of 1969 will come as no surprise to Village readers. While the BBC disclosure provides another piece of the jigsaw and is of enormous historical value, it doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of Paisley’s deeply disturbing partnership with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and – equally important – the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV). In December 2017 Village published an article entitled “Blackmailed” which outlined Paisley’s links to the UVF/UPV bomb campaign of 1969 and showed how, as a result of it, he was compromised in his dealing with another of the conspirators, William McGrath, the notorious and brutal child rapist who was “Housefather” at Kincora Boys’ home in the 1970s. Paisley was nearly ten years younger than McGrath. He first met the sexually insatiable and lecherous pervert McGrath when he – Paisley – was 22 or 23 in 1949 through his involvement in the Unionist Association in the Shore Road area of Belfast. Paisley had moved into the locality to study at a bible college. McGrath perceived the Catholic Church as the instrument of the Antichrist and was determined to expunge it from the four corners of island of Ireland so that the Protestant community – which he believed was descended from the Tribe of Dan of Caanan, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel – could prevail. He perceived himself as a soldier in what he called the ‘battles of the Lord’. His self-anointed duty was to prevent the Pope ‘enslaving the people of God’, not just in NI but throughout Britain. Paisley came to share these bizarre views and took a step closer to his involvement with McGrath and others in the infamous 1969 bomb campaign. It is an indisputable fact that McGrath, Paisley and others such as John McKeague (another paedophile who was involved in the Kincora scandal) and Gusty Spence of the UVF instigated the violence that lit the sectarian firestorm that became the Troubles. The fact that Paisley financed the Silent Valley bombing demonstrates just how central he was to the entire affair. Paisley used to visit McGrath at Kincora long after 1973 when he had been told by Valerie Shaw that McGrath was a paedophile. One of the former residents at Kincora, James Miller, who was at Kincora between 1976 and 1978, told the Hart Inquiry on 8 June, 2016, about these visits. Miller thought it “just seemed strange that he was so friendly with Mr McGrath, you know”. [Day 210 page 75.] Yet, after the eruption of the Kincora scandal in 1980, Paisley would pretend to have difficulty even remembering who McGrath was. Readers interested in learning more about Paisley’s links to the UVF and UPV can read “Blackmailed” (see below) which first appeared in December 2017. Further details about Paisley’s support for McGrath after he was arrested by the RUC for the rape of children at Kincora can be read by visiting ‘Kincora Survivor‘ also on this website. It shows how Paisley bullied a former Kincora resident lest he might give evidence at McGrath’s trial about “Englishmen” who had abused Kincora boys. See: https://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2017/11/kincora-survivor/ A question for historians now is to establish what role William McGrath played in {i} the formation of Ian Paisley’s bigoted, violent and hate-filled religious and political beliefs; {ii} what was the true nature of the Paisley-McGrath personal relationship; {iii} to what extent did Paisley wield his power and influence to cover-up McGrath’s brutal rape of children at Kincora and elsewhere; {iv} did McGrath implicitly or explicitly blackmail Paisley over the latter’s involvement in the UVF/UPV bomb campaign of 1969 {v} since McGrath worked for MI5 and MI6, what did those intelligence services know about Paisley’s financing of the UVF and why was neither man arrested? The source of the BBC’s forthcoming revelation about Paisley is David Hancock, a former British army officer. Hancock served as a major in NI from 1968 to 1970. He told the BBC that an RUC District Inspector in Kilkeel, Co Down, advised him that Paisley had supplied money for the bombings. Hancock is to be applauded for bringing this scandal to light. But why did the RUC not act on the information, then or later? Were MI5, MI6 and RUC Special Branch (who were all involved in running the Kincora operation ) afraid that if they acted on this information, McGrath would be exposed? McGrath, of course, was convicted in 1981. So why did no one at the Cabinet Office, NIO, MI5, MI6 or RUC – then led by Sir John Hermon – insist that the police act on the information after his conviction? Was it because McGrath had kept his mouth shut about their collective involvement and they wanted to ensure his silence by letting sleeping dogs lie? Is there now any good reason why the PSNI should not declassify the file it inherited from the RUC on Paisley and the Silent Valley bombing? Will Andrew Parker, the incumbent Director-General of MI5 who likes to pontificate on ethics, release his organisation’s file on the Silent Valley bombing? The original December 2017 article about Paisley is set forth below: As the Democratic Unionist Party rises to notoriety across the UK and EU for scuppering poor Theresa May’s first effort at a deal in Brussels, it’s timely to consider a hidden side of the party’s charismatic, and always notorious, progenitor, the Reverend, Dr Ian Paisley. Last month, Village revealed that Ian Paisley, First Minister of Northern Ireland (NI), 2007-2008, had participated in the coverup of the rape and abuse of children at Kincora Boys Home. It may have been that he had been forced into doing this because John Dunlop McKeague, a sadistic Loyalist terrorist, and his confrere, William McGrath, knew some of his darkest secrets, and had blackmailed him into coming to their assistance as they faced
