The Sunday Business Post reports Justice for the Forgotten's public meeting about collusion.

Irish government `helped the British' during Troubles

29/06/03 00:00

By Paul T Colgan

The Irish government and the Garda Special Branch cooperated with Britain in its "dirty war" in Ireland, it has been claimed.

Film-maker Paul Larkin told an audience at the Gresham Hotel last Friday night that the authorities in the Republic had assisted "an extreme right-wing and unaccountable oligarchy" in the North throughout the Troubles.

Larkin, who has made several films detailing British "dirty tricks", said he believed the Dublin and Monaghan bombings that claimed the lives of 33 people in 1974 were orchestrated by an unaccountable British military cabal. He was speaking in a personal capacity at a meeting organised by the Justice for the Forgotten group.

The Dublin and Monaghan bombings coincided with the Ulster Workers' Council strike in the North which was designed to bring down the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement. The attacks represent the biggest loss of life in the 30 years of the Troubles.

The loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) claimed responsibility for the bombings, but is widely believed to have been assisted by the British army. Larkin said the Special Branch had cooperated with the British authorities, who sought to prevent a proper follow-up investigation.

Inquests into the deaths of six people killed in Monaghan were held in 1974, but the Dublin inquest was immediately adjourned at the request of the Garda Siochana. An inquest into the atrocities was formally re-opened earlier this month, with full inquests set to follow publication of the Barron Inquiry's report in September.

"I believe that what happened in those dark days of 1974 was nothing short of a military coup," Larkin said, "which inserted an extreme right-wing and unaccountable oligarchy into power in the six counties. This oligarchy then set about constructing the apparatus for a dirty war against the Irish.

"Based on what I believe is thorough research, `our' government, if you like, and our guardians of the peace chose to cooperate with - and sometimes even assist - the perpetrators of the `dirty war'.

"We now know, more or less, the individuals - both within loyalism and British intelligence - who were involved in collusion at that time. What we now need to find out is who exactly within Garda Special Branch, and possibly within the government itself, were working with them."

Former British intelligence officers Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd also spoke at the event. Wallace, a former senior British Army intelligence officer in the North in the early 1970s, has given evidence to the Bloody Sunday inquiry in Derry. Holroyd, a military intelligence officer based in Portadown in the early 1970s, has also gone on the record about British "dirty tricks" in Ireland.

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