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.
In 1978 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that the British government had violated Article 3 of the European Commission on Human Rights in their treatment of 14 men in 1971. These "Hooded Men" had been selected for 5 techniques of "Deep Interrogation" - white noise, wall standing/ stress positions, sleep deprivation, bread and water diet, and hooding...
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...