Republican News · Thursday 27 June 2002

Collusion at the heart of British occupation

BY LAURA FRIEL

Collusion is not the act of renegades or a few bad apples. It has been an integral element in the armoury of the British military, financed and endorsed by successive British governments and was under political as much as military control

It was an emotionally charged occasion. Beneath the crystal chandeliers in the oak panelled Grand Ball Room in one of Belfast's most prestigious hotel venues, some of the North's most marginalised and silenced people gathered to meet the press and present a detailed account of the British state's collusion in the deaths of their relatives.

Calling for a fully independent international public inquiry, the families of 200 people killed by loyalists dismissed the notion that Crown force collusion in the deaths of so many could be explained away as the actions of 'renegade' individuals.

"The history of collusion demonstrates the institutionalised nature of collusion as a policy objective on the part of successive British governments," said Relatives for Justice spokesperson Mark Thompson. "Crown force collusion was not only allowed to take place, it was also supported at the highest levels of government.

"Relatives for Justice, represented here today by many of the families affected by collusion, demands that the gravity of this situation should not be dealt with by internal police investigations, nor by investigative television documentaries drip feeding information," said Thompson.

The collusion controversy could only be addressed, he said, "by a full independent international judicial inquiry into the arming, controlling and directing of loyalist death squads by the British government".

Calling for the current and previous two reports by John Stevens to be made public, Thompson said he was confident that the findings would add weight to the relatives' case.

Dismissing the notion that collusion arose from 'rogue' or 'renegade' agents or units, RFJ argues that as a counter insurgency option, collusion had been employed in the interests of British occupation "from the very beginning".

British Army Brigadier Frank Kitson was posted to the North of Ireland in 1970. Prior to his posting in Ireland, Kitson had been a military intelligence officer in Kenya in the early 1950s, a company commander in Malaya in 1957 and second in command of a battalion in Cyprus in the early 1960s.

In each of these conflicts, Kitson had been deeply involved in counter insurgency actions and in his manual, "Army Land Operations", he openly advocated British Army collusion with "friendly guerrilla forces" against a "common enemy" as an effective strategy "to defeat subversion and insurgency".

"Kitson's role here led to the setting up of the Military Reaction Force, mostly made up of serving members of the British Army, who infiltrated loyalist paramilitaries and recruited agents," says the RFJ. "The MRF was directly responsible for numerous actions which included abduction and torture, shootings and bombings."

The RFJ document identifies the MRF as a forerunner of the Force Research Unit established by Brigadier Gordon Kerr in the late 1980s. Through agents like Brian Nelson, the FRU rearmed, reorganised and redirected loyalist death squads.

In 1987, Brian Nelson travelled to South Africa and met representatives of the arms manufacturer Armscore, in order to procure weapons for the loyalists. "Nelson had the full authority of the FRU for this trip and its purpose," says RFJ.

The weapons known to have been procured and imported by Nelson during his tenure as a British agent included 200 AK47 automatic rifles, 90 Browning 9mm pistols, 500 fragmentation grenades, 30,000 rounds of ammunition and 12 RPG7 rocket launchers. These weapons have led directly to the deaths of at least 102 people.

In addition, it is estimated that almost 3,000 Crown force 'security' files were handed to loyalists between 1986 and 2001. "The distribution of these weapons and files has allowed loyalists a capacity to kill in an unprecedented and unparalleled way," said Thompson, "and those weapons and files are still being used today."

Drawing upon Kerr's own statements, made during the trail of FRU agent Brian Nelson, RFJ identifies the chain of command. As the unit's commanding officer, Kerr gave evidence under the pseudonym of Colonel 'J'.

According to the document, the FRU is answerable to the Task Coordinating Group (TCG), which is comprised of the Heads of Special Branch, the RUC/PSNI Chief Constable and various British intelligence services. The TCG has responsibility for deploying the SAS and other covert operatives.

In turn, the TCG is answerable to the Joint Security Committee (JSC) in London. The JSC is comprised of senior political figures and military attaches and is directly accountable to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

The JIC is comprised of members of the British Cabinet and senior military figures and is directly answerable to the British Prime Minister. During the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher chaired the JIC.

"Collusion has existed as long as the conflict itself," said Mark Thompson. "It is not the act of renegades or a few bad apples. It has been an integral element in the armoury of the British military, financed and endorsed by successive British governments and was under political as much as military control."

By highlighting the pattern of loyalist-attributed killings and its relationship to the shifts and turns of political initiatives by successive British governments, RFJ argues that through collusion, British Crown forces could turn loyalist violence on and off and did so to meet the imperatives of their political masters.

For example, in the mid to late 1970s, to enable the British government's Ulsterisation strategy to succeed, loyalist violence had to be de-escalated. In 1976, killing attributed to loyalists numbered 114. The following year the figure dropped to 19 and remained low for several years.

d again, negotiations between the London and Dublin governments leading to the Anglo Irish Agreement in the mid 1980s were augmented by a de-escalation of loyalist violence.

In 1994, an Amnesty International report into Crown force collusion criticised the British government. A European Court ruling in 2001 also criticised the mechanisms used by the British state to 'investigate' the cases of people killed as a result of alleged collusion.

Amnesty said: "Amnesty International has not been convinced that the government has taken adequate steps to halt collusion, to investigate thoroughly and make known the full truth about political killings of suspected government opponents to bring to justice the perpetrators and dismantle 'pro state' organisations dedicated to political violence or to otherwise deter such killings."

Citing Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which obliges a state to protect the right to life "whenever and wherever it is or may be at risk within its own jurisdiction", the European Court was critical of "not only the failure of the British government to adhere to this", but it added that "the British government has actively plotted assassinations and directed loyalists to take the lives of its own citizens".