[…] him was his second wife, Dame Ruth Railton, described by Edwards as ‘…jealous, merciless, fiercely manipulative and an inveterate liar and fantasist.’ A subsequent fantasy of the duo was a joint belief that they could solve the problems besetting Northern Ireland, at one point simultaneously courting Ian Paisley and IRA Army Council member David O’Connell.
[…] (See, for example, Sunday Times 28 January 1973) At various times the UCA were said to have been in discussions with the Peoples’ Democracy group, the Official IRA, the British and Irish Communist Group and the Communist Party. The truth of these reports is impossible to evaluate. This is an extremely complicated episode in […]
[…] explanation for something awkward. In The Daily Telegraph of 3 April, for example, Philip Johnston wrote: ‘A covert Army unit colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to target suspected IRA terrorists for assassination, according to an official police report to be published later this month. The report by Sir John Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, […]
[…] of firearms with intent to endanger life. Daly lived in Bristol at Southmead from 1969 to 1989. Before this he lived in Highbury Villas, Kingsdown, with an IRA leader known as Jim Flyn. He admitted to having been an informer in Bristol since the mid-seventies – which some of us had guessed – and […]
[…] MI5 advice on what to do about Soviet agents in Britain. Another recurring theme is the alleged link between Labour MPs and groups alleged to support the IRA – the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, Anti-Internment League, Troops Out Movement, British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Group, Irish Political Hostages Release Committee and the Campaign […]
[…] especially its clandestine forces, are almost completely missing from Bruce’s account. How important are the spooks in this story? How can we tell? In the end the IRA is still there — so they are not all powerful. Finer discrimination than that? In 1987 James Miller, sometime UDA ‘intelligence officer’, told Barry Penrose that […]
[…] well on the way to alienating the Catholic working class in Belfast and Derry. The conduct of the troops was effectively recruiting young Catholics into the Provisional IRA, something since acknowledged by military sources. A good case can be made that, by treating the events of 1970-71 as the first stage of a revolutionary […]
[…] CARACAS 1964 1ST SEC (INFO) 1967 FCO 1969 1ST SEC (INFO) 1973 FCO 1974 SECONDED TO DEPT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY 1976 CONSUL GEN BILBAO. OPERATIONS AGAINST IRA (F) 1978 FO 1979 1ST SEC (COMM) DUBLIN 1980 HIGH COMMISSIONER TO TONGA 1983 COUNSELLOR FCO 1984 AMBASSADOR ASUNCION COLVIN, IAN B 1913, D 20.4.75 1932 […]
[…] and Ross McWhirter had been ‘meeting with a small group of like-minded friends concerned about the relentless spread of subversion.’ (2) After McWhirter was shot by the IRA this group formed the National Association for Freedom. But ‘to avoid the delays implicit in formal council meetings, a small group of us decided to function […]
[…] that ‘the dissent generated by Catholic and Protestant differences is only a small factor’, reveals that ‘Sinn Fein does not know or govern the actions of the IRA’ and describes the Troops Out Movement as representative of the opinions of ‘English civilians’ (source: a poll carried out by the Troops Out Movement). More trivially, […]
