International Human Rights Delegation to Probe Collusion Allegations
PFC | 28 May 2004
An international delegation arrived in the North this weekend to probe allegations of collusion highlighted earlier this week in a BBC Spotlight Programme.
It’s September 1975. Opposition leader Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative spokesman on the North, Airey Neave, meet with Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and Northern Secretary, Merlyn Rees. Two weeks earlier, two loyalist ambushes at fake security force checkpoints had resulted in five murders.
This note concerns the UVF only by this stage, 1979, Thatcher is the Prime Minister. In a hand written note she urged mention of the ‘Volunteer Ulster Defence Regiment (? Is that the name)’.
At point 1 (apologies for the quality of the copy) reference is made to a meeting at Stormont Castle on November 29 1972 where the GOC (General Officer Commanding - the British army) was asked to "draft an arrest policy covering the UVF and other extreme loyalist elements, though not the UDA per se."
De-proscription of unlawful organisations (added May 2018)
Declassified 1974 NIO discussion doc on de-proscription of UVF and Sinn Fein. The juxtaposition of Sinn Fein (as opposed to the IRA) with the UVF tells us much about British government attitudes to loyalist paramilitary organisations. At the time the UDA remained legal and it would be another 18 years before London finally accepted that the UFF was nothing more...
Official memo on weapons seized on both sides of the border between 1969-1976 with a breakdown of types of weapons and a summary of key seizures. The information was supplied by the RUC Data Reference Centre which carried out intelligence analysis under the aegis of Special Branch. This February 1977 memo highlights the involvement of republican and loyalist organisations in...
CJ4-1919 - First page of notes from meeting between Minister of State Stan Orme with UVF leaders on 15 May 1974
The meeting of Stan Orme with UVF leaders on 15 May was just one of several that took place between the NIO and UVF during the month of May 1974. This particular meeting took place as the UVF was being de-proscribed and made a legal organisation. Orme informed the delegation that the order had been taken through the House of...
This is a visiting permit for HM Prison, Maze (Long Kesh), signed by the prison governor, Robert Truesdale allowing Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Stanley Orme and Donald Concannon, Ministers of State, to visit Gusty Spense, UVF leader, on 12 July 1975.