It was the night the music died: July 31, 1975. Exactly 30 years ago today. By 1975, the North might have imagined it had endured all possible horrors.
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.
Orwellian legal advice on UDA roadblocks from 1972 Advice note from Ministry of Home Affairs dated 22 August 1972 (by this date the duties of this Ministry had been taken over by the Northern Ireland Office) which seeks to retrospectively justify UDA roadblocks which were frequent throughout Belfast and elsewhere in the summer of 1972. The advice note states that...