I
MPORTANT NEW evidence is emerging
about the covert activities of the Brit-
ish police in Northern Ireland during
the Troubles. One of f icer, ‘Sean Lynch’,
who infiltrated the Northern Ireland
Civil Rights Association may have precipi-
tated Bloody Sunday.
Recent revelations of the secret activities
of British police in the North make it
“imperative” that the Undercover Police
Inquiry (UCPI) now sitting in London is
extended to Northern Ireland, according to
Kate Nash whose brother was killed and
whose father was seriously wounded in the
Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in Janu-
ary 1972 when members of the parachute
regiment opened f ire on a Nor thern Ireland
Civil Rights Association demonstration in
Derry.
“I was overjoyed that Saville found that
my brother and my father had been inno-
cent people out marching for civil rights”,
she said. “But I still want to know who was
ultimately responsible for the paratroopers
bursting onto our streets and shooting to
kill”.
“We knew that Northern Ireland was
crawling with MI5, MI6, Military Intelli-
gence, Special Branch, etc, around the time
of Bloody Sunday. Now it’s emerged
because of Jason Kirkpatrick’s case that
they weren’t the only ones”.
Kirkpatrick, a US environmental activist,
was monitored by a secret unit from the
Metropolitan Police Force in the mid-2000s
because of his involvement in the anti-glo-
balisation campaign. Kirkpatrick had been
under sur veillance in Belfast and Britain by
an officer from the National Public Order
Intelligence Unit known as Mark Kennedy
who among other unsavoury betrayals for
six years dated a woman he was covertly
monitoring. Seven women were compen-
sated for the deception, by five officers
from two undercover units over a 25-year
period starting in the late 1980s.
Another campaigner, Kim Bryan has said
she went to Belfast in 2005 with Mark Ken-
nedy at his suggestion.
"Mark Kennedy organised the travel – he
paid for the trip and we went in his vehicle
2 0
July-August 2018
Who organised the Bloody
Sunday massacre?
After evidence emerges of a covert British
police unit operating in NI and of police
infiltrations of campaigns dating back to
1970, it is time to reopen all the inquiries to
see whether covert British police officer ‘Mark
Duffy’ arranged for the parachute regiment to
run amok in 1972
lambs
NEWS
By Eamonn McCann
July-August 2018
2 1
so he drove us around Ireland when he
came to visit”, she said.
"We did three events in total when we
were in Belfast.
"I don't know exactly what he was doing,
but I suspect he used the opportunity to
spy on activists in Ireland – in Belfast and
Dublin and in County Clare where we were.
I suspect that information was fed back
to his superiors, but again, I think what's
highly problematic is that we would not
have gone to Ireland if Mark Kennedy had
not paid for us to go to Ireland”.
Jason Kirkpatrick, said he also accompa-
nied Mark Kennedy to Belfast where they
ran anti-globalisation events.
He said one was at a bar in University
Street and another was at a church in the
Holyland area that offered its premises at
the time to various groups involved in com-
munity work.
In the High Court in Belfast in February
last year Kirkpatrick was given the go-
ahead to bring judicial review proceedings
against a ruling by the current inquiry into
covert policing confining its investigations
to events in England and Wales, and so
omitting the North.
The Inquiry was set up in March 2015 by
then Home Secretary Theresa May after it
had emerged that officers from the Metro-
politan Police’s Special Demonstration
Squad had formed relationships and even
fathered children with members of political
groups which they had inf iltrated. The unit,
and/or its predecessor, the Special Demon-
stration Squad (SDS), had also spied on at
least a dozen justice campaigns, including
the family-led campaign on the racist
murder of black teenager Stephen Law
-
rence in 1993.
The inquiry is aired by Sir John Mitting,
replacing Sir Christopher Pitchford, who
resigned in May last year after having
been diagnosed with motor neurone dis-
ease He died in October.
“It seems there has been no fundamen-
tal change”, says Kate Nash. “When the
State kills its citizens, it has to be held
to account. I want the full truth, includ-
ing how far up the military and political
chain responsibility goes. Jason Kirkpat-
rick is likewise entitled to the truth”.
In July 2014, an earlier inquiry – by the
police - into the allegations of misbehav-
iour by clandestine police, headed by
Derbyshire chief constable Mick Creedon,
reported that, in addition to the Lawrence
family, 17 other campaigns may have been
inf iltrated or disrupted between 1970 and
2005. These concerned deaths at the
hands of police or in police custody or
after contact with the police, or related
to murders which, it was claimed, had not
been properly investigated by the police.
Apart from Stephen Lawrence, the cases
included the deaths of Cherry Groce,
Rolan Adams, Wayne Douglas, Harry Stan-
ley, John Charles de Menezes, Joy Gardner,
Michael Menson and more.
In a related development,
The Times
reported in June that an undercover SDS
agent, “Sean Lynch”, had, between 1968
and 1974, targeted organisations active
in the early days of the Troubles, includ-
ing the Northern Ireland Civil Rights
Association. Darragh Macken of Belfast
law firm KLR Law, which represents both
Kirkpatrick and a number of the Bloody
Sunday families, told the
Times
:
“The period falls squarely into the time
that NICRA was organising the Bloody
Sunday march.
This is an element of undercover work
that has fallen completely under the
radar. The legacy investigations into the
Troubles have been effectively operating
with one eye closed. This could have
implications for other legacy investiga-
tions, including the Saville Inquiry into
Bloody Sunday”.
In 2015 the PSNI told the BBC the National
Public Order Intelligence Unit "did not oper-
ate in Northern Ireland".
At the same time, a spokesperson for the
Met said, when asked if the unit worked in
Northern Ireland, "we neither confirm nor
deny".
Calls for extension of the UCPI to the
Nor th have come from Amnesty, two former
Northern Ireland Ministers for Justice, David
Ford and Claire Sugden, and many others.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland
has also expressed concern. Two years ago,
af ter details of the British undercover oper-
ations in the North had become public,
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton
told the Policing Board that the PSNI had
been “completely blind” to the fact that
undercover British units had been operat-
ing in the North, much less what they had
been up to. He described their posting to
the North as “madness”.
“All we know is what we didn't know –
that they were here”.
Kate Nash says: "Even after 12 years of
the Bloody Sunday inquiry and expenditure
of close on £200m, potentially crucial evi-
dence was missed, or deliberately hidden.
The same seems to be happening again.I
want to know whether ‘Sean Lynch’ played
any part in Bloody Sunday”.
Kirkpatrick commented: “I was under
surveillance in Northern Ireland and in
Britain. The inquir y cannot omit the Nor th
from its remit. If they hid ‘Sean Lynch’
from the Saville Inquiry, I wonder what
they are now hiding from the UCPI”.
The inquiry had been expected to com-
plete its work this year, but has been
delayed, mainly by applications for ano-
nymity by police witnesses.
Its report is not now expected until
2020.
“We knew that Northern Ireland was crawling with MI5, MI6, Military
Intelligence, Special Branch, etc., around the time of Bloody
Sunday. Now it’s emerged because of Jason Kirkpatrick’s case that
they weren’t the only ones…there were British police too”
A 2014 police inquiry into the allegations of misbehaviour by
clandestine police reported that, in addition to the Lawrence family,
17 other campaigns may have been infiltrated or disrupted between
1970 and 2005
Mark Kennedy, shady

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