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Justice at last for the forgotten victims of sectarian murder in Dundalk

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25 Years On.

Alleged Collusion

Magill Magazine article Sept. 2002

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The Barron Report

Collusion exposed by Oireachtas Committee

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Download the Oireachtas Report on the Dundalk bombing and other collusion attacks

 

Here continues our excerpt from the Joint Oireachtas Committee Final Report on the Dundalk bombing of 19 December 1975. The excerpt continues on a further page, with a link at bottom:

 

At the end of his investigation Judge Barron concluded that the bombing of Kay’s Tavern was carried out by loyalist extremists, most probably associated with the Mid-Ulster UVF. It was also accepted that some assistance must have been obtained from Belfast loyalists regarding the theft of the bomb car. Judge Barron was of the view that it is likely that the attack was carried out on the initiative of a group largely consisting of UVF members, possibly without the sanction of the UVF leadership.

54) In light of the information available to it and in consideration of John Weir’s background and character, Judge Barron said that he accepts Mr. Weir’s claim that the Dundalk bomb did not come from James Mitchell’s farm at Glenanne.

However, he believes that the attacks on Dundalk and Silverbridge were coordinated; that those who carried out the Silverbridge attack came from the ‘Glenanne group’, and therefore that members of that group must at least have known in advance of the plan to attack Dundalk. Judge Barron said that as the information available to the Inquiry suggests the involvement of some members of the security forces in the Silverbridge attack, this implies that the security forces may or should have known who was responsible for the Dundalk bombing.

55) Judge Barron said that the facts and circumstances of the bombing lead almost automatically to the suspicion that certain prominent loyalist subversives from mid-Ulster were involved. However, the best efforts of An Garda Síochána and the Inquiry had not obtained the quality of information to found a conclusion that those individuals were involved, even as a matter of probability. Taking into account also that the intelligence relating to the farm of a named person at Glenanne was not included in the intelligence provided to An Garda Síochána in January 1976 by the RUC, a suspicion remains that contemporary actions were designed to limit information relating to security forces collusion in terrorist activity from reaching the public domain, which in turn did nothing to counteract such activity.

56) Judge Barron attended before a private meeting of the Sub-Committee which was held on 5 July 2006 and made the following points. He said he was not able to establish the actual people involved in the incident. The evidence did not all hang together and therefore he had just set out the information received, without preferring one bit over another. He underlined that he had not tried to determine who was responsible, it was not his place to do that. He pointed out that the Northern Ireland Office have confirmed that as early as 1976 they knew that the farm at Glenanne was being used for terrorist attacks. In response to a question he said he was not positive if the original tape from the bomb with a print on it was available. However, there were photographs of the print and that would be sufficient.

57) Judge Barron confirmed that the meeting in Belfast referred to in this report was not the same as the meeting in Belfast that was discussed in the Ludlow report. Judge Barron said he had contacted the Northern Ireland authorities, he had been promised certain files, a date had been fixed for a meeting in Dublin, Northern Ireland kept postponing it and then it never happened. In response to a question he said he had a small team but he took a long time in doing his investigation and therefore he did not feel that resources were a problem.

58) In response to another question he said a prosecution at this stage in respect of the Dundalk bombing was highly unlikely unless one could get a match with the print that had been found on the timing device.

59) In respect of not naming certain names in the report, he said the Gardai did not want to put peoples’ lives at risk, that a person had right to his good name and that where people had been named in the report it was due to the fact that some names were in the public domain already and there was strong evidence that certain people were involved in criminal activity.

60) In response to another question, Judge Barron said he could not think of any witness at this stage who his investigation had not gone after. He made the point that there were a number of Gardai in Dundalk who were there at the time but they did not have much to say about the issues in his report. He noted that Mr. Courtney and Mr. Corrigan were the two members of the Gardaí who had contact with the RUC and were the key witnesses.

61) A number of persons who appeared before the Sub-Committee made observations about Judge Barron’s report and his methodology.

62) One of the points Mr. MacGuill, Solicitor for the Watters and Rooney families, made was that a shortcoming of the whole Barron process was that none of the material that he had in his possession was made available to the families.

63) Ms. Margaret Urwin expressed surprise that some information was not included in the Barron report. Justice for the Forgotten sourced two important photographs from the archives of The Irish Times, one of which was taken at the scene of the bombing in Dundalk and another taken at the scene in Castleblaney. The Dundalk picture was taken on the night of the bombing and the Castleblaney picture was probably taken the day after the explosion. Both photographs depict members of An Garda Síochána examining fragments of the bomb mechanisms without wearing gloves. In one of our later hearings Detective Inspector Joseph Kinsella from the Garda Technical Bureau explained that it is impossible to get finger marks off corners of objects and that the officers in the photos were holding the items in accordance with the common practice at the time.

64) Ms. Urwin also pointed out that Mr. Justice Barron does not make any link between the Dublin Airport bombing on 29th November 1975 and an earlier incident at Dublin Airport in which the son of a leading UVF member was detained. Two young loyalists were arrested at Dublin Airport on 10 September 1975 and charged with loitering with intent to commit a felony. They were held and questioned in the Bridewell Garda station and brought to court.

65) Judge Barron made it clear that he had a number of unanswered questions:

Page 59: questions he asked about UVF bases in the murder triangle have not been answered by the authorities in the North.

Page 60: he requested a statement which has yet to be provided from the person who owned the bomb car.

Page 61: there is a list of a series of requests on ballistics, to which there has yet to be a response.

Page 68: questions on fingerprints and proper DNA comparisons are listed as having failed to be addressed.

Page 90: questions put to the then Director of Public Prosecutions (now called the Public Prosecutions Service) have not yet been answered.

66) The Sub-Committee wishes to express its gratitude to Judge Barron both for his report and also for his attendance before us. It should be remembered that all of the Barron reports have been frustrated by the absence of any real co-operation they did not have much to say about the issues in his report. He noted that Mr. Courtney and Mr. Corrigan were the two members of the Gardaí who had contact with the RUC and were the key witnesses.

61) A number of persons who appeared before the Sub-Committee made observations about Judge Barron’s report and his methodology.

62) One of the points Mr. MacGuill, Solicitor for the Watters and Rooney families, made was that a shortcoming of the whole Barron process was that none of the material that he had in his possession was made available to the families.

63) Ms. Margaret Urwin expressed surprise that some information was not included in the Barron report. Justice for the Forgotten sourced two important photographs from the archives of The Irish Times, one of which was taken at the scene of the bombing in Dundalk and another taken at the scene in Castleblaney. The Dundalk picture was taken on the night of the bombing and the Castleblaney picture was probably taken the day after the explosion. Both photographs depict members of An Garda Síochána examining fragments of the bomb mechanisms without wearing gloves. In one of our later hearings Detective Inspector Joseph Kinsella from the Garda Technical Bureau explained that it is impossible to get finger marks off corners of objects and that the officers in the photos were holding the items in accordance with the common practice at the time.

64) Ms. Urwin also pointed out that Mr. Justice Barron does not make any link between the Dublin Airport bombing on 29th November 1975 and an earlier incident at Dublin Airport in which the son of a leading UVF member was detained. Two young loyalists were arrested at Dublin Airport on 10 September 1975 and charged with loitering with intent to commit a felony. They were held and questioned in the Bridewell Garda station and brought to court.

65) Judge Barron made it clear that he had a number of unanswered questions:

Page 59: questions he asked about UVF bases in the murder triangle have not been answered by the authorities in the North.

Page 60: he requested a statement which has yet to be provided from the person who owned the bomb car.

Page 61: there is a list of a series of requests on ballistics, to which there has yet to be a response.

Page 68: questions on fingerprints and proper DNA comparisons are listed as having failed to be addressed.

Page 90: questions put to the then Director of Public Prosecutions (now called the Public Prosecutions Service) have not yet been answered.

66) The Sub-Committee wishes to express its gratitude to Judge Barron both for his report and also for his attendance before us. It should be remembered that all of the Barron reports have been frustrated by the absence of any real co-operationfrom the British security forces. Obviously this denial of co-operation impacted adversely on Judge Barron’s ability to establish the truth. In addition Judge Barron had no powers to compel anyone to attend before him. This all necessarily limited the scope of what he could do. We are satisfied that within the scope of his powers and of the co-operation that he got, Judge Barron addressed the matters as fully as he was able to.

 

Chapter 3

Collusion

67) In our previous reports the Sub-Committee laid heavy emphasis on the role of collusion. Why do we continue to emphasise it? Mr. MacGuill, solicitor for the Watters and Rooney families, put it well when he said that: “We are not talking theoretically about cover-ups in the 1970s we are talking about a culture of secrecy and a grudging handing over of information that pertains to this day.

68) We note that in some of the incidents in question collusion seems to be almost beyond question. For example, in respect of the Miami Showband murders three serving members of the UDR were convicted and two other serving members of the UDR accidentally blew themselves up at the scene of the attack.

69) When he attended before us Judge Barron explained that he felt that he could not turn inferences into particular facts. However even on this cautious basis, we note that at page 113 of his report he found that there was no doubt that collusion between members of the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries existed in many instances. He stated that: “It was not just a matter of a few bad apples, as suggested by the Northern Ireland authorities.”

70) Judge Barron then proceeded to list various incidents that confirm that collusion was taking place during the time of the Dundalk bombings. These included the convictions of three UDR members for their part in the Miami Showband murders and the conviction of three RUC officers in connection to the attack on the Rock Bar. Judge Barron continued: “These and other incidents paint a clear picture of collaboration between members of the security sources and loyalist extremists.

The inquiry would be shutting its eyes to reality if it accepted that such collaboration was limited to the cases in which collusion has been proven”.

71) Despite this acknowledgement, Judge Barron reached the following conclusion in respect of collusion in the Dundalk Bombing:

“Clearly, if what Mr. Wylde says is correct, then it is possible that some members of the security forces could have supplied loyalist paramilitaries knowledge of the security forces.

Both of these scenarios place a certain level of responsibility for what happened in Dundalk with the security forces in Northern Ireland – at best through an inadvertent failure to clamp down on the source of the explosives used; at worst through deliberate collusion between certain members of the security forces and the extremists who planned and carried out the bombing.

But without further information, the issue of whether collusion took place in relation to the Dundalk bombing cannot be resolved by reference to the nature of the explosives alone.” (page 132 of his report)

72) A number of the persons who addressed the Sub-Committee took a different view and felt that Judge Barron had been too restrained in his findings on collusion. For example, Ms. Margaret Urwin of Justice for the Forgotten stated that:

“The committee heard such compelling evidence from all of the witnesses present yesterday that members could be left in no doubt that collusion was forces.”

Ms. Urwin pointed out that Judge Barron had set the bar very high in respect of collusion and reminded us that in a legal sense and in international law the provision of cover for terrorists would be regarded as an act of collusion. In his report on the murder of Pat Finucane, Judge Peter Cory stated that collusion includes the pretence of ignorance or unawareness of something one ought morally or officially or legally to oppose and to fail to take action against a known wrongdoing or misbehaviour. Judge Peter Smithwick, in his opening statement at the public tribunal of inquiry set up to inquire into an allegation of collusion into the murders of RUC officers Breen and Buchanan, said that the issue of collusion would be examined in the broadest sense of the word. He said that while it generally means the commission of an act, he was of the view that it should also be considered in terms of an omission or a failure to act. Ms. Urwin continued:

“Mr. Justice Barron in his conclusions seems almost Jesuitical in his arguments on collusion. He accepts that collusion occurs between have absolute proof that collusion occurred in the case of Silverbridge.”

73) Mr. Alan Brecknell and Mr. Paul O’Connor from the Pat Finucane Centre also addressed the Sub-Committee on the topic of collusion. They offered invaluable insight to the Sub-Committee by providing a ballistics report that charted the links between guns used in various terrorist attacks on both sides of the border. Before proceeding to address the committee on several points relating to collusion, they summarised their position as follows:

“It is our submission, first, that the fatal bomb attacks in Dundalk on 19 December 1975 and in Castleblayney on 7 March 1976 were carried out in Glenanne, County Armagh. Second, the British Government facts surrounding these incidents.”

74) They complained that in written submissions to the European Court of Human Rights the British Government had tried to downplay the role of collusion. The Pat Finucane Centre outlined that this clearly suggests that the British Government had deliberately failed to admit the reality of the situation.

75) At the outset of his address to the Sub-Committee, Mr. O’Connor summarised the outcome of the investigation conducted by the British authorities in 1978:

“… according to Mr. Justice Barron, he has been informed by the Public Prosecution Service in the North that out of the 1978 investigation were to included bombings, murders and so on. I am not going to name anybody.

We have to ask ourselves what actually occurred and actually came out of the 1978 investigation. What actually emerged was one conviction for sentences in court.”

76) In response to Mr. O’Connor’s submissions Deputy Lynch asked how early the British Government knew of infiltration of the UDR. The Pat Finucane Centre outlined that in the Public Record Office it had discovered a number of documents marked ‘weapon losses’. They detailed each occasion on which weapons were lost, beginning in 1971. Behind a significant number of those documents on the right hand side the words ‘collusion suspected’ were marked.

According to them, it appears that by 1973 the British Government was aware at a most senior level that it had a serious problem with the UDR. However, by 1974 proposals were made by the Ministry of Defence to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to increase the intelligence gathering role of the UDR. In other words, just one year later, it was official policy to increase the UDR’s role on the ground in gathering intelligence, despite the fact that up to 15% of the regiment’s members were believed to be loyalist paramilitaries.

77) The Sub-Committee was referred to an original British army intelligence document for the Ministry of Defence entitled Subversion in the UDR and dated 1974 (it is likely to have been from the first half of that year), which was from the National Archives in Britain. According to this document “It seems likely that a significant proportion (perhaps 5% - in some areas as high as 15%) of UDR Volunteers or UVF”. It further states that following an arms raid on a base in Belfast at Lisley Drive in October 1972 where a substantial number of weapons came into the hands of loyalist paramilitaries that it subsequently transpired that the guard commander on the night of the raid had nine previous convictions for deception, had spent a period in jail and had been arrested in September 1972 for riotous behaviour outside Tennant Street RUC station following the shooting of two men by security forces in the Shankill and the arrest of a UDR-UDA leader.

He had one UDA trace and three separate reliable reports indicated that he was a member of the UVF. That was the UDR guard commander in one of their important armouries in Belfast. It further states that there can be little doubt that subversion in the UDR has added significantly to the weapons and ammunition stocks of Protestant extremist groups. In many cases ex-UDR weapons are the only automatic and semi-automatic weapons in their possession. What makes this document so significant is that it is a Ministry of Defence evaluation.

78) The Sub-Committee was also referred to the minutes of a meeting held in September 1975 shortly after the Miami Showband murders and the murders of two GAA supporters at Altnamackin. By that stage it was known that the Miami Showband massacre had been carried out by UDR members. A briefing was held with Airey Neave, opposition spokesman for the Conservative Party on the North;

Margaret Thatcher, the future Prime Minister; Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State, and Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister. At the meeting the future Prime Minister was informed that the RUC was not to be trusted. The minute of Mrs. Thatcher’s call on the Prime Minister on 10 September 1975 is dated 11 September of that year. It sets out on page 3 that the Secretary of State was more worried about sectarian murders than about the bombings in Belfast and that it was unfortunate that certain elements in the police were very close to the UVF and prepared to hand information to, for example, Mr. Paisley. It states the army’s judgment was that the UDR was heavily infiltrated by extremist Protestants who could not be relied upon to be loyal in a crisis. The regiment which could not be relied upon in a crisis was mobilised in south Armagh in the wake of the attacks at Donnelly's Bar, Kay's Tavern, on the Reavey and O'Dowd households and the Kingsmills massacre.

79) In response to a question from Deputy Lynch the Pat Finucane Centre said that memos from the British side had not disclosed any vigorous questioning of British officials by officials from this jurisdiction around the issues of infiltration of the security forces.

80) Justice for the Forgotten sent the Sub-Committee a number of documents which it had obtained in respect of the allegation that four members of the RUC in Portadown were also members of the UVF. These were as follows:

(i) Telegram dated 20 August 1975 from Callaghan at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the British Ambassador to Ireland, Sir Arthur Galsworthy. It recorded that the Irish Ambassador, Dr O’Sullivan, had called that day on the Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office and stated:

“Dr O’Sullivan’s main purpose was to transmit orally a quote highly confidential unquote report which had reached the Commissioner of Portadown area were also members1 of the UVF and had been actively engaged in recent terrorist operations in the so-called murder triangle (Portadown – Dungannon – Aughnacloy). He said that he had no names or further details to offer. The Commissioner had to be careful to avoid disclosing what was obviously a particularly delicate source: and it was for this reason that he had decided against passing this information direct to the Chief Constable of the RUC. As it was, knowledge of the report was being closely restricted in Dublin to the Ministers for Justice and Foreign Affairs and one or two officials.”

The telegram records that a Mr Orme had replied that this allegation came as a complete surprise, that it would be investigated immediately but that it would be helpful if some supporting details could be passed on.

(ii) Telegram dated 22 August 1975 from Sir Arthur Galsworthy to FCO which states that he had called on Garvey that morning and told him that they were very anxious to follow up the report but needed further details to enable them to do so. The reply from Garvey is indistinct.

(iii) Telegram dated 28 August 1975 from Sir Arthur Galsworthy to FCO which states that Donlon had called that morning to say that the Irish government wanted the matter dealt with through diplomatic channels rather than police channels. Donlon is recorded as saying that there were no further details that could be made available. It continues:

“When I probed as to whether they had further details Donlon stuck to this formulation, giving me the impression that they have some detail could see precious little that we could do without some further detail.

This was why I had sought it on instructions.”

The telegram speculates as to the reason for what it describes as “the coyness of the Irish” about revealing any of the details and suggests that in case the Irish try to make capital out of any alleged failure to pursue the matter the Irish Ambassador to London should be informed of the need to provide detail.

1 This correction to the telegram was made in one sent the following day. The first version had merely described them as supporters of the UVF

I Top I  I More I  I Oireachtas Report is Published I

Produced in association with the Ludlow Family.

Last edited: 25 July 2008 06:24:43

 Visit the Ludlow family's websiteVisit Justice for the Forgotten  Statement by John Oliver Weir

Download the Barron Inquiry Report into the 17 May 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, (pdf file)

Barron Report: on the Dublin Bombings of 1972 and 1973, can also be downloaded in pdf form

Download the Barron Report into the murder of Seamus Ludlow from the Oireachtas website (pdf file)

Download the International Report on Collusion

Download the Oireachtas Report on the Dundalk bombing and other collusion attacks

Copyright © 2007 the Rooney, Watters and Ludlow families. 

All rights reserved. Revised: July 25, 2008 .