The Kenova Report: brazen beyond words

I expect you’re still glowing with satisfaction over the recent Kenova report, which had things to say about Stakeknife, the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and the Glenanne gang. In the  face of some  robust criticism, we had the refusal of authorities to name Stakeknife as Freddie Scappaticci. Like, as if we didn’t know.

George Bernard Shaw once declared that all the professions – law, medicine,education – were in a conspiracy against the ordinary man and woman. GBS, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

A few points that only scratch the surface of these matters.

Stakeknife. Does it matter two balls of roasted snow whether officialdom names him or not? We all know he was Scappaticci, but that changes nothing.The idea that he may have been responsible for more deaths than lives saved is the usual big lie, because it suggests that it was a close thing. Total fucking rubbish. Scappaticci became an informer because he was fond of money and, very likely, the ‘security’ forces had information on his personal life that they could threaten to reveal if he didn’t play ball.  Scappaticci played ball all right, with the knowledge and support of the ‘security’ forces. In short, Scapattici worked with the aforesaid forces to torture and kill people. Which we already knew.

Dublin-Monaghan bombings.  The Kenova report found no evidence that ‘security’ forces played any part in these four explosions – three in Dublin, one in Monaghan.No wonder the relatives of those killed that day talk about ‘Justice for the Forgotten’.  We’re asked to believe that the UVF created the bombs, brought them over the border, set them off and escaped to the safety of the North with nobody seeing them. The insult to public intelligence is beyond brazen. If the UVF had developed this extremely high level of explosives expertise, wouldn’t it have featured throughout the Troubles?  You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to smell a rat. It was to the advantage of the ‘security’ forces in the North that the public in the south be convinced that this was a bloody, cruel conflict and if they didn’t behave themselves, it’d spill over the border and engulf them. It worked.

The Glenanne Gang.  If you’ve read Anne Cadwallader’s book on this lot, you don’t really need any more commentary. If you haven’t, it amounts to a detailed account of some of the 120+ Catholics/nationalists who were killed by this outfit, which the report concedes was composed of loyalists, UDR, RUC and a variety of other ‘security’ forces people who happily took part in the killing. You didn’t have to be a danger to the state to be selected as a target. Just one example: Jim Devlin, who played with such skill for the Tyrone GAA football team in the 1950s. He was a hard-working, progressive family man, a Catholic. That was enough for the Glenanne monsters to shoot him dead in the driveway of his own home. You can multiply Jim Devlin by 120.

Mercifully, I and my family circle didn’t suffer from monsters like the Glenanne gang. But as with all the killings of the Troubles, especially those involving state forces, the relatives of those murdered go on suffering for decades, until they die and can suffer no more. And to think that the state which we sustain with our taxes colluded in killing its own citizens, worked with loyalists as in the Glenanne gang or with republicans as in the case of Scappaticci – it is beyond corruption.

If the British state hopes to win Catholics/nationalists to support of UK unity, it can stop hoping. With Kenova, it’s just pushed us further away, beyond recall.