There’s a huge amount of denial within Unionism and Loyalism and indeed the British government, that British forces had anything whatsoever to do with the war here in the North Eastern 6 counties of Ireland. That, of four men arrested over the weekend after the PSNI raided and searched residential and business properties in East Belfast, two were ex-British soldiers, seems far from the minds of those hell-bent on focusing on the IRA, which even British intelligence chiefs claim are now wedded to peace.
Eight handguns and three pipe bombs were discovered in the searches along with copious amounts of UVF emblems and paraphernalia. We have arrived at a point for Unionism where the IRA, which is wedded to peace and is no longer any kind of threat, is regarded as worthy of greater emphasis. We have arrived at a juncture where ex-British soldiers are literal terrorists, in possession of loaded weapons and explosives in 2022, and there is little said by either political Unionism or the usual commentators who dragged on the ‘Ooh, ah, up the RA’ from the Ireland women’s football team.
Bear with me here, dear reader, as I get to the part where terrorists are not being charged with being members of an illegal proscribed organisation. Where two ex-British soldiers, who Catholics and nationalists were assured were here to keep us safe from the bad men in the IRA, are actually UVF terrorists. The men are to appear on a number of charges including possession of a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life and possession of a firearm and ammunition in suspicious circumstances. Three of the men have also been charged with possession of explosives in suspicious circumstances and possession of explosives with intent to endanger life. The 49-year-old man has been charged with possession of articles for use in terrorism.
None of these men are being charged with being a member of a proscribed organisation, and few Loyalists are ever charged with this offence when they are arrested and charged on drugs charges, money laundering charges, or indeed weapons and explosives charges, even when they are blatantly members of a proscribed terrorist organisation.
With the news now coming out that the pipe bombs recovered were to be used in the UK or the “Republic of Ireland”, one has to wonder where their target might have been in the UK. Would they have had the balls to attack their own government? Would they have attempted some kind of false flag attack and with this in mind…what was that all about Strabane and Derry? Not for one minute am I saying that the UVF attacked Strabane or Derry (or am I?) but when the PSNI deem a bomb attack a hoax and then 2 days later say it wasn’t a hoax but a viable device, you can be sure something is rotten. The PSNI and the army bomb disposal don’t make that kind of mistake. What they’re actually saying is ‘We took our time disarming this thing, took it away claiming it was a hoax device and now, taa daa, we have found it is a viable device’. Kind of convenient in the current climate.
I’m not the only one who thinks there are games being played in NEI akin to the likes that were being played by British intelligence throughout the conflict here. We’re not stupid, we know when things don’t add up and we’ve heard all the spin and accusations before. The McGurk’s Bar bombing is a prime example of when, ironically, the UVF along with the RUC and the British army PR machine went into overdrive in a bid to implicate not only the IRA but an innocent family, in their bid to demonise and embarrass the IRA in what they called an “own goal”.
There are too many occurrences and jigsaw pieces in these actions that don’t add up at the minute and it’s becoming blatantly obvious that those who ‘served’ in the British army in NEI were, and most likely are the very terrorists we were being told we needed protection against.
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