Video: British state collusion with UVF death squads 'went all the way to the top', says author Anne Cadwallader

» Mark Moloney

"As far back as 1972 the word 'collusion' was being used by the British themselves in their own documents"

ANNE CADWALLADER, author of the explosive new book, Lethal Allies - British Collusion in Ireland, has told An Phoblacht that collusion between the British military, the RUC and unionist paramilitaries went "definitely all the way to the Chief Constable, and definitely all the way to the British Cabinet".

Lethal Allies focuses on over 120 murders carried out by a loyalist death squad known as the Glenanne Gang during the 1970s. The group included members of the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment and the RUC police.

"As far back as 1972 the word 'collusion' was being used by the British themselves in their own private documents, so collusion is now a modern invention," says Anne.

Anne points out that, in the early 1970s, internal British military documents show that they were aware that between 5% and 15% of soldiers from the notorious UDR were active loyalist paramilitaries. The main source of weapons then, and the only source of modern weapons, for loyalist death squads was the UDR and British Army arsenals.

Anne says the Irish Government is as bad, if not worse, at releasing documents:

"Our campaign group in Dublin is called Justice for the Forgotten, and they have largely been forgotten by the Irish state. The relatives there are, if anything, even further from establishing the truth than relatives in the North," she says.

Anne says she has been amazed with the reaction to her book and says it shows that people are hungry for the truth:

"I don't know if the dam is going to burst in as much as I don't know if the British government is going to yield up its secrets. It guards those secrets very jealously . . . They will resist to the bitter end. I think because Ireland is so close to Britain, and Ireland was Britain's first colony, there is a kind of reluctance [on the part of the British] to tell the truth"

•  See the November edition of An Phoblacht (in shops this week) for more on this story and collusion.