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13 March 2008 Edition

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Haughey’s hand in Gibraltar killings

THE truth will out. An interesting article in the Irish Daily Star last week confirmed what republicans and a few other voices claimed at the time of the Gibraltar slaying 20 years ago of IRA Volunteers Mairéad Farrell, Danny McCann and Seán Savage – information was passed from Garda Special Branch to MI5 about the movements of at least one of the trio, thus facilitating their killing as they walked, unarmed, in Gibraltar.
The 26-County political establishment likes to present its role in the conflict as that of a peaceful agency, unlike those unreasonable, warring entities, the IRA and the forces ranged against it (i.e. the British military and intelligence machine and the unionist paramilitary death squads they manipulated). But evidence of the Dublin Government’s collaboration with the British military apparatus emerges every so often in stories such as that detailing co-operation with MI5 in the Gibraltar executions.
Even more interesting is the explanation given by the Star’s ‘security source’ for the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey’s collaboration with British Intelligence at the time (yes, it was that lion-hearted republican and Fianna Fáil leader who sanctioned this murderous and ongoing collaboration with MI5).
According to the Star’s source, Haughey was told that loyalists would launch a bombing campaign in Dublin if the IRA mounted attacks on British forces on the continent and so he agreed to pass on intelligence to the British.
This begs a number of questions. Who exactly told Haughey that this was so? It was hardly a UDA brigadier who parlayed with Fianna Fáil ministers in a military information and bargaining session. And, despite their intense anti-republicanism, it was just as unlikely to have been Special Branch dialogue with loyalists that led to this message being delivered to the Taoiseach’s office. The inescapable conclusion is that the message about immediate and terrible loyalist violence came from British Intelligence.
Those masterful manipulators of local, armed militia in British colonies down the years advised Dublin – either through their contacts with those patriots in ‘the Branch’ or via ‘diplomatic channels’, as British spooks in Merrion Road like to call themselves – of the consequences of not playing ball. And MI5 could certainly (and unusually) be trusted when it came to dire predictions of loyalist violence, given that they were the puppet masters of the UDA, UVF and other sectarian murder gangs. If HMG told Haughey that these ‘out-of-control’ elements were likely to bomb south of the border, then such claims or predictions were likely to have been treated as very serious threats, even when delivered by those smiling, smooth diplomats in the language of constitutional democracy and the need for joint peace-keeping efforts.
To that extent, Haughey was correct to take such threats seriously and literally. The response – participation in the Gibraltar ambush – was despicable and scandalous. When people such as Martin Mansergh and other Fianna Fáil personalities attack Sinn Féin for their ‘unreasonable’ attachment to republican principles, just remember whose hands are stained and whose blood was spilled.


CAN readers of this column settle an argument?
Your columnist was moved to tears of laughter by Gerry Ryan on RTÉ Radio’s 2FM this week as he interviewed one of that lovable breed of super traitors, those paid perjurers who offered evidence against former comrades to escape prison themselves and for, well, money.
Ryan interviewed Raymond Gilmour, a good example of this degenerate genre, on Monday morning and the RTÉ man revealed depths of subtle satire that had this crude hack in stitches.
According to a long whine from Gilmour, he has not been paid enough down the decades by his masters and cannot keep himself and his family in the style to which touts have become accustomed. Why, he has not even been granted a proper pension (at what age do paid perjurers ‘retire’, one wonders).
As if this black humour were not enough for a rainy Monday morning, Ryan enquired of Raymond whether he could negotiate a new contract with his employers. Listeners waited for a discourse on partnership, double-time for grassing on Sundays and danger money but, instead, Ryan cut through such tedious red tape and came up with a brilliant solution. Why, he asked, does Raymondo not demand a pension from Bertie Ahern?
The mind boggles and then implodes. There was a time when Tan War IRA ‘terrorists’ were granted a pension but, as we move into a modern, more mature era, surely Irish people can see it in themselves to stump up for those informers who did so much for their country.
Where are Eoghan Harris and Ruth Dudley Edwards when you need them?
Are they going to bottle this one and abandon war heroes such as bondage fetishist Seán O’Callaghan and Gilmour to the scrap heap? Time was when Workers’ Party officials in the trade unions would have set up a special section entitled Hired Informers and Paid Perjurer Old Soldiers (HIPPOS) to negotiate on their behalf.
This issue has caused a split here in the An Phoblacht editorial office. The editor is incensed at Ryan’s lauding of that pioneering supergrass, Gilmour, but your columnist is convinced that Ryan was, as they say, ‘avin’ a larf. Can anyone settle this dispute - maybe phone The Ryan Line?


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