Lyra McKee

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    JAMES MOLYNEAUX AND THE  KINCORA  SCANDAL

      UPDATE: Sir Jeffrey Donaldson is the new leader of the DUP. One of his mentors was James Molyneaux MP. Donaldson succeeded him as MP for Lagan Valley after Molyneaux retired in 1997. On 19 December 2019 Village exposed Molyneaux’s involvement with the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring. On his website Donaldson has stated that: “My involvement with the Ulster Unionist Party grew as I worked alongside two of the greatest names in Unionism in the 20th century. Between 1982 and 1984 [Enoch Powell and James Molyneaux]. .. In 1985 I was elected aged 22 to the Northern Ireland Assembly, with the distinction of being the youngest person to win a seat at Stormont with the majority of some 15,000 votes. Throughout this period I also served as the Personal Assistant to the then leader of the UUP, the Rt. Honourable James Molyneux MP. In 1988 I was elected Honorary Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council and in 2000 I was elected Vice President of the Council. My responsibilities included overseeing the UUP Bureau in Washington DC. A regular visitor to the United States, I often accompanying leaders James Molyneaux and his successor David Trimble on delegations that included several meetings with former President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and subsequently with President Bush.” The December 2019 profile of Molyneaux commences here:  James Molyneaux MP was one of the most significant figures in Unionist politics during the Troubles. He was first elected as a Westminster MP in 1970 for the then dominant Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and served as its leader 1979-1995. He was also an Orangeman and a member of the Monday Club, a right-wing pressure group which was associated with the Tory Party. According to Robin Bryans, the well-informed Kincora Boy’s Home whistle-blower, Molyneaux was part of the paedophile gang which preyed on vulnerable boys in care in Northern Ireland. MI5 did not hand over its files on Molyneaux to the Hart Inquiry which reported in 2017. Equally disappointing is the fact that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in London is not looking for MI5’s files on Molyneaux. It has shown no interest in him nor in other MPs and VIPs who abused boys as part of an Anglo-Irish Vice Ring. Richard Kerr, a resident at Kincora, was trafficked from Belfast to London in the 1970s aged 16 to be abused by an MP who was a friend of Molyneaux.  1.  ‘KINCORA AND PORTORA BOYS’ SCHOOLS WERE USED AS HOMOSEXUAL BROTHELS BY MANY PROMINENT FIGURES, INCLUDING LORD MOUNTBATTEN [AND] JAMES MOLYNEAUX.’ Robin Bryans tried to expose Molyneaux’s links to Kincora while he was still Leader of the UUP but without success. Bryans, however, did manage to expose Sir Anthony Blunt, the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, who had been a KGB mole while he served inside MI5. Byrans knew Blunt well from his frequent visits to Ulster where Blunt seized opportunities to abuse underage boys. Bryans tried to expose Molyneaux in a letter he wrote on 3 November, 1989, which also made reference to Blunt’s treachery. This was six years before Molyneaux would step down as Leader of the UUP. The relevant extract reads as follows: “Although Margaret Thatcher showed loyalty to those who had eased her path, by fair means or foul, to office, her forthrightness and inexperience enraged many. While (Sir Anthony) Blunt had a cosy relationship with the security services (based on his knowledge of incriminating political and sexual leanings among the Royal family), Thatcher showed herself to be unsympathetic to this delicate quid pro quo. She unbalanced the status quo by admitting that Blunt had been a Soviet agent [in the House of Commons in 1979]. This betrayal (as Blunt saw it) risked letting all sorts of other skeletons out of the cupboard. Not the least of these was the long-standing arrangement whereby Kincora and Portora Boys’ Schools were used as homosexual brothels by many prominent figures, including Lord Mountbatten, James Molyneaux, Leslie Mackie and Blunt’s coterie of highly placed friends. Blunt, however, kept his mouth shut, and Thatcher learned her lesson well. The establishment knows best”. 2. MOLYNEAUX’S MENTOR WAS SIR KNOX CUNNINGHAM WHO DESCRIBED HIM A ‘PRETTY LITTLE THING’ Molyneaux was the political protégé of the child rapist, Sir Knox Cunningham QC, MP. Cunningham was a senior Unionist MP at Westminster who rose to become Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, 1959-63, and as such was present at the deliberations of Macmillan’s cabinet. Macmillan recalled Cunningham fondly in his memoirs and awarded him a baronetcy in his resignation honours. Molyneaux acted as Cunningham’s election agent and succeeded to his seat in 1970 when the older man retired. According to Robin Bryans, Cunningham once described the young Molyneux as ‘a pretty little thing’. Cunningham was also a senior member of the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring of which the infamous Kincora Boys’ Home was a part. Richard Kerr, a former resident at Kincora has revealed that Cunningham was an abuser of Kincora boys. A memorandum prepared by Colin Wallace a PSYOPS officer at British Army HQ Lisburn in the 1970s stated that Cunningham was ‘closely associated’ with William McGrath, the brutal child rapist and Housefather at Kincora and was ‘aware of his activities’. Cunningham became involved in the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in 1947 and became Chairman of its National Council two years later, something which put him in charge of the YMCA in Ireland, Wales and England. Cunningham took boys from Kincora to the YMCA in England. His Wikipedia entry suggests that he became involved with the YMCA because of his “religious faith” but it is more likely he wanted to gain access to young men. Much of his interaction with the YMCA boys involved the sport of boxing. According to Bryans, he took Kincora boys to the YMCA in England. According to Bryans, Cunningham ‘always liked to appear as the great Queen’s Counsel who knew more than anybody about everybody, especially those in my books

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    Robert Bradford MP murdered weeks before McGrath trial. By Joseph de Burca

    Lyra McKee’s book ‘Angels With Blue Faces’ is the result of a five-year investigation into what Robert Bradford MP was digging into before he was murdered. It is quite possible that she uncovered one of – if not – the  most putrid British Intelligence dirty-tricks operations of the entire Troubles. If not for her, the truth about this grotesque event might have remained buried forever. Bradford, a Unionist MP,  had campaigned against child pornography. What was going on at Kincora Boys’ Home clearly appalled him. He was ideally placed to inquire into the shadowy world that lurked  behind Kincora as he was not merely a senior Unionist politician but also a British Israelite. The paedophile ring that preyed on the boys at Kincora – and other homes – included William McGrath, an Orangeman, friend of James Molyneaux MP, Ian Paisley MP, and other political figures. More importantly, McGrath was also a British Israelite. Once McGrath was arrested by the RUC’s Criminal Investigation Division, Bradford was in a pole position to pick up on the decades of gossip which had surrounded McGrath in Unionist political circles. The UVF, UDA, Red Hand Commando and other  paramilitary groups also knew of his links to British Intelligence. The UDA even had Kincora under surveillance, an easy task as it was located at a cross roads. McGrath had also dug a hole for himself by boasting of his links to Britain’s spy agencies. By late 1981 hundreds if not thousands of Loyalists knew of McGrath’s bragging. In the very early 1970s the UVF had been allied to McGrath’s paramilitary organisation Tara but had distanced themselves precisely because of McGrath’s links to Britain’s spy agencies. Publicly, they walked out as a group from a Tara meeting on the basis that McGrath was a homosexual not a British asset because they did not want to highlight the intelligence connection. (See ‘Her Majesty’s Hatchetman’ on this website for the wider story of the UDA’s knowledge of Kincora.) Bradford and thousands of others knew all of this. Would MI5 possibly have deployed its Provisional IRA agent to murder him merely because of this? Hardly. Did they do so  because as a sitting Westminster MP he could raise the issue in the House of Commons and had discovered a lot more? McGrath’s trial was set for December 1981 along with that of two other Kincora staff members. Bradford was clearly not going to interfere with a looming trial. But after it, the gloves would come off. Bradford was rubbed out a few weeks before the trial commenced. Lyra McKee’s investigation will add greatly to our knowledge of these murky events and uniquely, what Bradford was probing. Her book is now available for pre-purchase from Excalibur. —

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    Lyra McKee’s forthcoming  book may raise questions of the State-sponsored assassination of a sitting Westminster MP by an MI5 agent inside the Provisional IRA.

    The British Establishment transformed itself into a lightning conductor to harness the visceral anger generated by the senseless killing of Lyra McKee in Derry on 18 April. It then redirected that energy  as a debilitating shock into the heart of the New IRA. No less a figure than Britain’s PM Theresa May turned up for Lyra McKee’s funeral in Derry to highlight the disgust felt by the UK. Leo Varadkar performed the same task for the people of the Republic. Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill were given a dressing down from the pulpit for not getting together, before shuffling up next to each other on a pew at the funeral and a new lease of life was injected into the talks to reinstate powersharing at Stormont. The much derided Secretary of State for NI must have thought all her birthdays had come as one. Lyra’s courageous friends took up her cause and were much admired on TV screens around the world as they daubed the walls of the political offices associated with the New IRA in Derry with blood red palm prints. An anti-paramilitary slogan was sprayed across the famous Free Derry mural. ‘Not in our name. RIP Lyra’, it read. While the New IRA reeled in shock, the  PSNI and MI5 reaped a propaganda windfall they could never have dreamt of. All told, the riot on the night of 18 April not only failed to goad the Northern State into an overaction likely to alienate Nationalists in Derry as the New IRA hoped, it resulted in the latter organisation shooting itself in the foot. The fact that Lyra McKee was a LGTB campaigner hoping to marry her partner was seized upon by the mainstream media, and raised her international profile to higher levels.  The fact she came from a state where gay marriage is not permitted, generated more headlines. No one anywhere had a single bad word to say about her. Her friends have kept her LGBT flag flying. They recently appeared on Channel 4 News where they criticised the failures of the NI state to do anything to advance LGBT rights (aside from spend a miserable few hundred pounds). On a professional level McKee was deservedly lauded on all sides for her journalistic instincts.  She was described as an award-winning writer chosen  as one of Forbes 30-under-30 most promising young journalists. It couldn’t have looked better from an anti-paramilitary propaganda perspective for the Establishment until suddenly this week news of the content of her book began to leak out. While no one at Village has seen it yet, it looks very much like it is going to open a door on the clandestine links between the Robert Bradford MP murder and the Kincora child sex abuse scandal. What an irony therefore that the British Establishment is going to have to tear Lyra McKee’s reputation apart or weather the fallout from her book. It is sure to become a bestseller. Will the Tory yeomanry who came out to defend Ted Heath after the Wiltshire police exposed him as a child abuser in 2018 now form up to villify Lyra as a gullible  conspiracy theorist? The Bradford murder may yet prove to be every bit as egregious as the infamous State sponsored murder of the solicitor Patrick Finucane in February 1989. Why was Bradford really murdered? Lyra McKee’s book may be about to shine a light over British State involvement in the killing and add a gruesome new chapter to the Kincora scandal. Kincora is arguably  the most atrocious British excess of the Troubles. It is a hydra-headed monster that incorporates a multitude of crimes including decades of child abuse, blackmail, proxy terrorism and the perversion of justice. In more recent times MI5 and MI6 have lied to the Hart Inquiry (which swallowed the lies whole). Kincora is a scandal that will not go away.  Will Lyra McKee’s forthcoming  book raise uncomfortable questions of the State-sponsored assassination of a sitting Westminster MP by an MI5 agent inside the Provisional IRA? We have only weeks left to find out precisely what Lyra McKee discovered, or more precisely what she unravelled about the lines of inquiry  Bradford was probing. What was it he found out that led to his death? All of the plaudits heaped on Lyra McKee may soon turn out to be an underestimation of her talent.

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    Lyra McKee to expose Kincora-driven murder. By Joseph de Burca

    Lyra McKee’s book on the assassination of Robert Bradford MP is to be released within a matter of weeks. The book will explore the deeply sinister  links between the slaying of Bradford and the Kincora Boys Home scandal. Village readers will be familiar with the scandal on account of the  reports we have been publishing about it since 2017. While we await the publication of the book, readers are invited to scour our archive to view our revelations about  Kincora. The archives of Ed Moloney’s ‘Broken Elbow’ blog are also well worth a visit. Moloney was crucial in breaking a series of revelations about Kincora in the 1980s and has never lost interest in the scandal. A recent entry in his blog concerns the death of Valerie Shaw who tried to end the suffering of the children at Kincora by telling Ian Paisley about it. Paisley did nothing for the boys and lied about his knowledge of Kincora to his last breath. The work of the late Liam Clarke in the Belfast Telegraph provides further insights and is readily available online. Further details about Kincora can be found in the following books: Who Framed Colin Wallace by Paul Foot The Kincora Scandal by Chris Moore Also of note is Martin Dillon. He is the author of a series of books which are worth their weight in gold for anyone who wants to learn about what really happened in the shadows during the Troubles including Kincora. His book, The Dirty War, is essential reading. Village will be posting further short articles on the ramifications of Lyra McKee’s book, ‘Angels with Blue Faces’  over the next few weeks.

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