Dancing With the Shadows – by Michael Lagan

General Harry Tuzo was appointed as General Officer Commanding and Director of Operations ‘Northern Ireland’ on 2nd of March 1971 along with a promotion to Lieutenant General.  He is the person who ordered Operation Motorman which let loose 30,000 troops into Republican areas in Derry and Belfast.  The same Lieutenant General Harry Tuzo, according to secret government documents, made the decision to turn a blind eye to Loyalist weapons so long as they were kept confined to Loyalist areas.  It is clear the UDA was given a role, almost akin to an auxiliary to the British security forces.  Also from secret government documents, it is stated that Tuzo recognised that the British military infrastructure could use Loyalist paramilitaries as allies, almost as a 5th Column in their campaign against the IRA.  

Such was the usefulness of Loyalist paramilitaries to the RUC and British army that only the UFF was declared a proscribed organisation in 1973 while it took until 1992 for the state to proscribe the UDA.  The UVF was deemed a proscribed organisation in July 1966 but the ban on the organisation was then lifted in 1974 by Merlyn Rees in an effort to bring the UVF toward peace.  In 1975, Colin Wallace, a cog in the intelligence infrastructure in the North, stated in secret documents that MI6 and RUC Special Branch had formed a pseudo-gang within the UVF designed to engage in violence in an effort to undermine the work being done within the UVF to move into a political process.  Not ironically Captain Robert Nairac of the 14th Intelligence Company was said to be heavily involved in the undermining of political efforts toward peace.  The UVF was subsequently proscribed again in 1975.

Indeed these very same paramilitaries may have been in the UDR by night and UDA and UVF by day or vice versa.  The UDR went on to be the largest regiment in the British army in the smallest part of the United Kingdom.  Indeed Margaret Thatcher, through a secret briefing as leader of the opposition four years before she became Prime Minister, knew the UDR was deeply infiltrated by “Protestant extremists”.  It was also stated in the briefing that elements of the RUC were very close to the membership and leadership of the UVF.  During Thatcher’s period as British Prime Minister, allegations of security force collusion with loyalists came to a head in August 1989 when the UVF murdered 28-year-old father-of-four Loughlin Maginn in Rathfriland, Co Down.  Loyalists showed a reporter pictures of alleged IRA suspects acquired from British security sources.  Loughlin Maginn’s picture was included in the photos and led to the then Deputy Chief Constable of the Cambridgeshire Police Force, John Stevens being sent to the North to head up an inquiry into collusion.

Even while the Steven’s inquiry was ongoing the UDA was posting top secret files within graffiti in an attempt to taunt Stevens.  Agents such as Brian Nelson who helped target supposed IRA men for assassination, derived much if not all his intelligence from his Force Research Unit, the secretive FRU which was later revealed to be nothing but a covert group designed to start an all-out civil war by killing innocent Catholics under the guise of loyalist paramilitaries.  Most of those targeted for death by the FRU had absolutely no connection to the IRA or any other paramilitary grouping.  It was later found that the FRU had advised Brian Nelson that were he to be arrested by the Stevens inquiry team and questioned, he was to remain silent and say nothing.  Indeed it was also later revealed that Brian Nelson had received SAS special forces anti-interrogation training such was his value to the FRU.  When Stevens was on the verge of arresting Nelson he fled to England and suspiciously on the night Nelson fled, the Stevens team’s HQ at the secure complex at Seapark, Carrickfergus was set alight destroying most if not all the evidence they had gathered, including Brian Nelson’s finger prints on top-secret intelligence documents.

When I think about this subject my thoughts almost immediately swing to the case of Human Rights Solicitor Pat Finucane and his assassination.  The RUC along with the Special Branch had started a whisper campaign toward Pat’s clients.  They were told such things as ‘Your solicitor won’t be around much longer’ and even more direct assertions such as ‘Vour solicitor is a dead man’ were whispered.  The British army and the RUC couldn’t directly break into Pat’s house and kill him – that would be too overt and damaging so they directed their proxy army to do that for them.  In doing so it gave the British military and intelligence elements plausible deniability…or so they thought.  Pat was seen as part of the enemy, therefore he had to be eliminated.  Within days of being directed by RUC Special Branch to kill Pat Finucane, secret documents show the UDA had already begun to plan his assassination.  

When UDA leader Tommy ‘Tucker’ Lyttle met with a senior Special Branch officer, Lyttle stated the Special Branch officer “signaled his approval” at the plan to kill Pat Finucane.  MI5 was made aware of Pat’s impending assassination which it now claims it knew nothing about as does the FRU even though their agents have admitted they made their respective handlers aware of the assassination attempt.  The hatred for Pat within security forces circles went so far that they had actually nicknamed Pat “IRA solicitor Pat O’Cocaine” in an MI5 propaganda campaign.  The RUC High Command briefed a Home Office Minister that Pat was “in the pocket of terrorists” knowing full well the Minister would make the claim public.  Pat was subsequently shot in the head so many times, in front of his wife who was also injured, and three children, that he was almost unrecognisable.  Pat was shot 14 times in all.  In September 2004, Ken Barrett, a UDA member who was also an RUC Special Branch agent pleaded guilty to Pat Finucane’s murder.

These are just some of the reasons the British Government’s legacy bill is being pushed through.  Killers are being protected by the state.  Terrorists which the British Government, the British army, MI5 and MI6 allowed to go unchallenged because they were employed by the state.  The murder of journalist Martin O’Hagan is another example. Everyone and their dog knows he was killed by the LVF.  indeed the police knew who killed him within hours of his death, everyone in Lurgan knows who killed him yet no one has been arrested for his murder with the only logical explanation being those who carried out Martin’s murder are being protected by the state.

Many reports by the Police Ombudsmen have been delayed because the police have refused to hand over vital documents for examination.  Crucial intelligence files have disappeared, others ‘found’ only after the PSNI were compelled to hand them over by courts.  In fact, the PSNI has refused to hand over intelligence files connected to over 60 killings, and more worrying is the fact those killings are thought to involve state agents.  So to put it bluntly, the British state has been complicit in and indeed directed political assassinations and murder.  The RUC…our ‘trusted’ police force, Special Branch, MI5, MI6 the FRU, and more were all involved in the murders of largely innocent people and that is why they want to push the bill through Parliament and the House of Lords because it would give murderers an amnesty.  It would stop any attempt at the prosecution of people who went out into our communities under the policy of Britain, in the shadows, and murdered people in the name of the British government by proxy.  Mark my words, these murders go right to the top at 10 Downing Street.

Out of 210 people the Stevens inquiry interviewed, only 3 were not British agents.  That makes 207 of those 210 British state agents who were all involved in murder and criminality.  They all danced with the shadows…and we are to believe these people deserve an amnesty?

In the words of Denis Bradley – “If the British Government thinks that the past is going to go away mysteriously, it’s not going to happen.  In this modern world, the media and victims will keep after those records from now to kingdom come.”