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.
Steven McCaffery and Aeneas Bonner, Irish News | 16 October 2000
Relatives of the victims of a series of loyalist sectarian attacks in the 1970s have come together in a concerted campaign to prove their claim that the murders of their loved ones are linked by security force collusion.
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)’.
An internal military Staff-in-Confidence memo on UDA membership of the UDR suggests that a 'moderate line' should be taken towards UDA members because of the role of the UDA as a 'safety valve'.
Memo of meeting between Attorney General and British Army
Two pages of a memo (AG 1971 p2 and AG 1971 p3) concerning the visit of a J.M. Parkin, Head of C2 at HQNI (British Army HQ) in the North to the then Attorney General Basil Kelly, a Unionist MP. In reference to any potential prosecutions of soldiers for the murder of civilians Parkin notes,
A diary of the meeting between J.M Parkin, Head of C2 and HQNI and Attorney General Basil Kelly and additional confirmation that the Attorney General fully understood that HQNI was telling him that he should not prosecute soldiers. In effect the military tail was wagging the legal dog. This meeting took place less than two months before Bloody Sunday
Brief for the British Attorney General (AG) in preparation for the 'Irish state case' (the Hooded Men) from September 1972 from DS10 (the Defence Secretariat at the MoD in London). Of interest is the disinformation provided to the AG, the most senior law officer in Britain, by the Ministry of Defence. At para 4 it is claimed that Ballykelly only...
Memo to Lt Col Pownall, MoD from JF Howe, Civil Adviser to GOC re UDR - Membership of UDA, 31 July 1972
In this memo examples are given of possible joint membership of the UDR and UDA. Howe goes on to state: 'One important (but unspoken) function of the UDR is to channel into a constructive and disciplined direction Protestant energies which might otherwise become disruptive...it would be counter-productive to discharge a UDR member solely on the grounds that he was a...