Following the Loughinisland Police Ombudsman report confirming collusion in a sectarian gun attack, it has got me thinking once more about the Kingsmill massacre, another sectarian gun attack. The key difference is the police know who committed the Loughinisland attack, but have chosen to cover it up to protect state agents and what murky dealings and acceptable levels of violence were permitted in pursuit of their war against the IRA. For the state were not an impartial police force but one side in a bloody conflict that took a covert and dirty road to conceal the fact there was a conflict taking place within the UKs home turf as they would see it. Easier to admit you are struggling with a terrorist threat than admit you are fighting a civilian army and losing. Losing in terms of hearts and minds. The more the British attacked the community, the more support the IRA gained.In the middle east, they could get away with large scale collateral damage to defeat their enemy, not so easy when the conflict is closer to home.
In Kingsmill, the only evidence was an eye witness survivors report of an English accent and the guns tracing back to other verified IRA actions. There were definitely IRA weapons involved. That was enough for many to condemn the IRA who always denied the shootings. And it may well have been, but one survivor of the attack seems to believe that state agents were involved and the Loughinisland report lends weight to his suspicions.
Should we be more objective I wonder?
The IRA were on ceasefire at the time, there were efforts being made to end the conflict at the time, surely all sides would have known attacks in this period would scupper all chances of success. Yet during this time we had the co-ordinated sectarian shootings of the Reavey and O’Dowd families, allegedly perpetrated by the Glenanne gang and organised by Robin Jackson. Jackson worked closely with the RUC inner circle and was managed by Robert Nairac of 14 Intelligence Company and part of the Military Reaction Force who led the Glenanne gang which consisted of RUC, UDR and UVF members.
On 3 April 1975, Martin McVeigh a Catholic civilian was shot dead near his home at Ballyoran Park, off the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, as he cycled home from work which was believed to be the work of the Glenanne gang, agent Robin Jackson was later arrested and found to be in possession of the murder weapon, but the RUC did not question or charge him with the murder. We know Nairac was opposed to the peace talks according to his colleagues, he wanted an escalation of the violence and the SAS to become involved in pursuit of a military victory. The MRF due to its collusion with the RUC, covert nature and use of terror, was given a very loose reign.
Were the shootings of the Reavey and O’Dowd families designed to provoke a response, to escalate the conflict, collapse peace talks and bring the SAS into the conflict, all things that Robert Nairac had been asking for? Many ex Glenanne gang members claim Nairac had infiltrated the IRA and through Jackson was playing the two sides off one another.
Did he organise the attack under the cover and use other state agents within the IRA to carry out the attack? It would explain why he was comfortable speaking with an English accent during the attack.
What would the chances be of an IRA man in South Armagh being of English origin and speaking with an English accent? I would imagine they would have stuck out a mile and would have been arrested pretty damn quick not to mention the people of south Armagh would have known right away who it was.
Through convicted ex Glenanne gang members, the gang apparently had planned to kill at least thirty Catholic schoolchildren in the St Lawrence O’Toole Primary School in the South Armagh village of Belleeks as the next step. The plan was aborted at the last minute on orders of the UVF leadership, who ruled that it would be “morally unacceptable”, would undermine support for the UVF, and the UVF leadership allegedly suspected that military intelligence were seeking to provoke a civil war.
Ian Paisley always said he would provide the political cover for such attacks through the DUP, he died without retracting his allegations that the Reavey family was involved in planning the kingsmill attack to justify the previous murders, claims he made under parliamentary privilege and said to be quoting from a “police dossier”.
Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the RUC said there was “no evidence whatsoever” to connect Reavey with the massacre, and that no police file contained any such allegation. In May 2010, the HET released a report which exonerated the three Reavey brothers and their family of any links to paramilitarism, leading Eugene Reavey to demand an apology from Paisley for his comments which never came.
RUC officer Billy McConnell admitted taking part in the Reavey killings and accused RUC reserve officer James Mitchell of being involved too. According to Weir, UDR Corporal Robert McConnell was the lead gunman in the Reavey killings and Robin Jackson was the lead gunman in the O’Dowd killings.
The Kingsmill attacks needs to be given the same scrutiny as Loughinisland. And why not follow the guns trail there as with Kingsmill? Oh wait, it leads back to the DUP via Ulster Resistance who were totally not responsible for any part of the conflict.
What a dirty little sectarian state Northern Ireland remains in 2016.
http://www.judecollins.com/2015/12/collusion-is-not-an-illusion-part-1-by-jessica-mcgrann/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsmill_massacre#Ian_Paisley.27s_claims
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Action_Force
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Reaction_Force
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14_Intelligence_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nairac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Weir_(loyalist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenanne_gang#Reavey_and_O.27Dowd_killings_and_the_Kingsmill_massacre
Willie Frazer still thinks Eugene Reavey was responsible for Kingsmills.
“Willie Frazer still thinks Eugene Reavey was responsible for Kingsmills.”
The truth could shatter Willie Frazer’s whole world Ciaran.
There is a reason this stuff is locked behind national security.
How do you think unionism will react when they find their whole narrative of the troubles is one big lie, and that their nationalist neighbours have been telling the truth all along?
They don’t want to know the truth because they know that they wont like it,
There is a stark and startling reality we are going to have come to terms with.
And that is, that the British state through their MRF, had authorised and were prepared to murder indiscriminately, more than 30 catholic primary school children to escalate the conflict into a civil war, which would have proceeded had it not been for the leadership of the UVF.
The identities of all of the state agents involved in working with Robin Jackson whether they be RUC, UDR, UVF or British state intelligence services, remain protected under national security with only those caught in the act to date have been questioned or given statements.
It seems you are only bad apple if you got caught, if you didn’t the British state has got your back.
Exactly. What a dirty little sectarian state Northern Ireland remains in 2016! After all that, they still expect us to stand for GSTQ and worship the sectarian “Ulster” flag. When we refuse to do so we are branded as being narrow minded and living in the past.
It never was a case of a couple of bad apples.The whole barrel has always been rotten with the British government deploying tons of perfum to hide the stench.