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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
44 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 45
What was needed for the State to smash the
IRSP was a major criminal event followed by
irrefutable ‘evidence’ of IRSP involvement
from an acceptable Supergrass. Both had to
be, and were, manufactured
A
s Fair Trials International joins
every non-government human
rights organisation on the island
of Ireland to demand an
independent public inquiry into
the Sallins Case, the Irish government
continues to refuse it. Their fear is that the
State’s greatest secrets will come under the
microscope, laying bare shockingly egregious
corruption. In that refusal they are prepared
to circumvent the Irish Constitution and
international law and to fail to protect Irish
citizens and their rights to freedom of political
expression, to fair trials, to freedom from
torture, and to the right to Truth. In this case
the cover-up is worse than the crime.
The Se, ferful of rdicl orgnisions,
conduced ll-ou propgnd wrfre gins
hem in he s
The British and Irish States during the time
of the coalition of Liam Cosgrave’s Fine Gael
and Brendan Corish’s Labour (1973-1977)
adopted a joint ‘security’ policy against the
IRA and Sinn Féin, the Irish National Liberation
Army, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, and
all other radical organisations in the 1970s,
on both sides of the Irish border. Much of it
was illegal. The guts of it was based on the
all-out-war strategy published in ‘Low
Intensity Operations’ by General Sir Frank
Edward Kitson, GBE, KCB, MC & Bar, DL,
among other things an operational commander
in Belfast, 1970–2.
Kitson’s policy involved both governments
employing all their resources and institutions,
the media, secret services, the law, the police,
the courts, jails, the army, against their
mutual enemy.
Where this war ran contrary to the law,
information was supressed, re-interpreted
with misinformation, or conducted in secret or
Remembering the
securocrat takeover
of the State in the
1970s
By Osgur Bretnch
with ‘suitable deniability’. It necessitated
censorship, lying under oath, torture, illegal
bugging, and extortion, lies to Parliament and
the Dáil, kidnapping, internment, jailings,
killings, and assassinations, on both sides of
the Irish border. It also involved a sustained
campaign of misinformation and
misinterpretations of news events.
MI6 Captain Fred Holroyd slipped across the
Irish border in 1975, the start of his new role
as spymaster to his nest of agents in the
Garda. He was on a review tour commencing
with his top agent, Garda Commissioner Ned
Garvey.
Ironically some 40 years later Holroyd and I
would share the same solicitor, both of us
Time, after
fifty years, for
Justice and Truth
on Sallins
Ned Ryn: provided irrefutble
‘evidence’ of IRSP involvement
from n cceptble Supergrss
Ned Grvey: his Hevy
Gng tortured me until
“evidence” ws produced
POLITICS
44 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 45
The government feared the potential of this
new socialist and all-Ireland organisation
comprising community and trade union
activists embedded in local communities
in most Irish major cities — without the
traditional republican abstentionist policy
demanding justice from our respective States.
Holroyd was targeted by the British
Government when he ‘went native’,
disagreeing with illegal counter-insurgency
operations by Nairac and others, including
assassinations.
He was cashiered and framed, and illegally
institutionalised. Years later it emerged state-
concocted allegations from Holroyd’s wife and
a British Army doctor that led to his
institutionalisation were denied by both.
An army doctor also confirmed Holroyd’s
full health at the time and that he was ordered
to submit the false medical. Holroyd is
currently fighting the British state for pension
rights.
Included in the information Holroyd
accepted from Garvey were 150 files detailing
membership profiles of Irish citizens: a legal
political organisation, the IRSP, its members,
their families, social friends and acquaintances
and even fellow workers amounting to
thousands of files – “a suitcase full”, he told
Judge Henry Barron’s Dublin-Monaghan
Bombing Inquiry.
I ws n obvious rge
A file on me was among them. I was editor
of the IRSP’s Starry Plough newspaper at the
time*.
The plan, hatched together by MI6 and the
Irish State, to isolate, discredit, and smash the
IRSP was in operation by then.
The government too feared the potential of
this new socialist and all-Ireland organisation,
and its campaign — promoting a United
Ireland, for sharing economic wealth, for an
inclusive Peace Process, and for the
implementation of universal human rights.
The IRSP’s composition of community and
trade-union activists embedded in local
communities in most Irish major cities, and its
potential for growth, was deeply concerning,
particularly the party’s involvement in
electoral politics — without the traditional
republican abstentionist policy.
As many crimes, including robberies, were
wrongly blamed on the IRSP and an associated
fictional notion of an overlapping military
wing (the INLA), members were arrested to
feed false media narratives. But a hoped-for
coup de grace was on the way.
In the North the use of ‘Supergrass’ and
‘informant’ witnesses was controversial. It
was unlikely to be accepted in the republic
south of the border. Internment, considered in
1971, was o the table for the same reason.
The Se needed Sllins
What was needed for the State to smash the
IRSP was a major criminal event followed by
irrefutable ‘evidence’ of IRSP involvement
from an acceptable Supergrass. Both had to
be, and were, manufactured.
The Sallins Mail Train robbery of March 31,
1976, where over £300,000 was stolen from
the Cork-Dublin train, at the time known to
have been carried out by the IRA (which
acknowledged it years later) provided the
‘event’. Chief inspector Ned Ryan provided the
‘irrefutable’ Supergrass evidence- — a list of
IRSP names provided to a Dublin Castle
investigation conference. His small list grew
to some 18 and then 30 by the time the
conference was over.
Snatch squads were sent o to arrest them.
In the event, some 40 members, their families,
friends, and associates were detaineded. It
was the largest round up of suspects since
WWII.
I was kidnapped, illegally detained for three
days and nights, denied access to a solicitor,
abused, assaulted, battered, and tortured by
Garvey’s hand-picked Heavy Gang until
“evidence” was produced.
That evidence was an untrue Garda-
concocted statement signed by me.
It was enough to convict me in the Special
Criminal Court, after my fifth trial.
The court was devoid of justice and, at
times, even a judge that was awake, before he
died leading to a retrial. Along with the
following trial that sentenced me to 12 years
I was before courts for 108 days, breaking
another record — that of the longest criminal
trial in Irish history.
After embarrassing, hard-won concessions
down the years by the Sallins Men the State is
digging in again.
Now, 47 years later, the case is breaking
another record — that of the longest-running
criminal case in Irish history.
The campaign demanding a public inquiry
is now supported by all relevant non-
government human rights organisation and
the global criminal justice watchdog Fair
Trials International.
A recent RTÉ programme on the Heavy Gang,
Crimes and Confessions, attracted in excess
of 40% of the viewing public.
Public Inquiry
Among the citizens calling for an inquiry
across a spectrum of community, political,
trade-union and supporters are even a number
of ex-Irish presidents.
Imminent is a formal Petition to the Minister
for Justice for a public inquiry, which if ignored,
will strengthen the campaign’s journey to the
European Court of Human Rights. It is
expected that TDs will come together in the
next few months to support such an inquiry.
The State’s refusal to hold an inquiry
amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading
treatment and punishment of the Sallins Men.
Solicitor for many of the British
Government’s/Scappaticci murder victims
(and Holroyd), Kevin Winters of KRW LAW, said
that the Sallins Men he represents; Brian
McNally, Nicky Kelly, John Fitzpatrick, Michael
Barrett, Michael Plunket (RIP) and I, were now
elderly and vulnerable.
Our lives were irrevocably changed by what
happened following our wrongful arrests and
prosecutions for the Sallins Train Robbery.
Winters has noted: “The Irish State has
systematically failed to address their ill-
treatment and the failure of the systems which
enabled this treatment to occur. Financial
compensation does not equate to truth,
justice, and accountability which the Sallins
Men demand on their own behalf and on
behalf of wider Irish society”.
Information on the Sallins campaign is
available on sallinsinquirynow.ie
*While I was a founder member of the IRSP in Dec
1975, I resigned in 1982 as the party moved to
incorporate itself into an alliance with a military
organisation, the Irish National Liberation Army.
The alliance is known as the Republican Socialist
Movement. Up until then the IRSP was a fully
independent organisation according to its
constitution without connection or allegiance to
any other organisation or armed group. I also
believed that the party had by then been heavily
and irrevocably infiltrated by the Irish and British
states with agents provocateurs, and that
consequently it was headed for political isolation.
Time has proved me right. The IRSP’s innovative
inaugural political platform was long ago
hoovered up by Sinn Féin.
