Loyalists with links to former DUP leader Ian Paisley were responsible for a series of ‘false flag’ bomb attacks in the early 1970s, newly uncovered British Army intelligence documents have confirmed.

While the series of attacks across the North were initially blamed on the Provisional IRA, it has now emerged that at the time the British Army knew loyalists were to blame - but chose to blame the IRA.

Paisley, who died in 2014, was linked to several loyalist paramilitary groups throughout his life, such as the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the 1980s with Ulster Resistance, which took part in joint smuggling operations with British intelligence to acquire weapons later used to kill dozens of innocent Catholics.

In 2019 it was revealed that Mr Paisley also supplied cash to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to carry out several bomb attacks in a bid to undermine then-Stormont Prime Minister Terence O’Neill.

The unionist leader, who resigned in April 1969, later said the attacks “quite literally blew me out of the water”.

Unredacted British military intelligence files for the first half of 1970 now confirm the British Army believed several unclaimed bomb attacks targeting unionist politicians and businesses were carried out by unionist paramilitaries, but allowed the blame to fall on the emerging Provisional IRA.

The files, unearthed by research charity Paper Trail, reveal that in late March and early April 1970, 12 attacks were carried out. Details of each are listed in a military intelligence summary from the time.

Unionist election candidates were attacked, allowing Ian Paisley’s party to make electoral breakthroughs.

Military intelligence documents spelled out two reasons: “a, to intimidate [Paisley’s rivals] possibly by an apparent IRA blow, and b, to gain support for Paisley candidates who could only benefit by a swing to the right in reaction against the so-called terror campaign.”

Five other attacks were pinned on the UPV/UVF, according to the records, but the British Army deliberately and falsely blamed the Provisional IRA.

“The locations of the others (bombs), and especially the viciousness of [one], make more sense if the IRA Brady group [Provisional IRA, Ruairí Ó Bradaigh group] are provisionally blamed,” intelligence files say.

“The latest wave of explosions and the failure by the security forces to apprehend those responsible, continue to give cause for concern,” one document adds.

“The facts would suggest that they are primarily the work of an extreme Protestant organisation intent on inflaming the sectarian issue and on causing the downfall of the present N. Ireland Government…”

An obviously bogus statement, reported to be from the “Provincial Army Council” [sic], claimed responsibility for one of the 12 bomb attacks at a shop on Royal Avenue in Belfast city centre.

These were angrily dismissed as false by the Provisional IRA at the time, while nationalist political leaders were also unconvinced.

The documents also show some concerns about collusion, including the ‘disappearance’ of weapons held by the B-Specials reserve police, as well as the ‘failures’ of the RUC Special Branch.

One senior British Army figure noted: “The lack of progress on the bomb explosions and a complete absence of worthwhile Special Branch information generally emphasises either their weaknesses, or their reluctance to impart information to the Security Forces, or both.”

The ‘false flag’ attacks display a pattern that continued in the early 1970s with the McGurk’s Bar atrocity. The attack resulted in the deaths of 15 innocent Catholics after a bomb was detonated at the north Belfast bar in 1971. At the time, the Crown forces blamed the IRA, a claim later shown to be untrue.

Researcher Ciarán MacAirt, whose grandmother was killed in the McGurk’s Bar explosion, said the “the short-term success of their false-flag bomb attacks cannot be understated”.

“They blew O’Neill out of office in 1969 and blew Paisley into office in 1970,” he said.

“At the time, the IRA had limited capacity, so we could argue that the greatest paramilitary threat to the stability of the Unionist government from 1966 to 1970 was actually the UVF.

“Paisley and his ilk benefitted from this immensely, of course.

“The false flag bomb attacks by British extremists also began a pattern of wilful collusion and cover-up of loyalist paramilitary violence by the British armed forces and a capitulation by Ulster Unionist politicians to loyalist threats.

“This led directly to the highly discriminatory internment of Irish Catholics in 1971 and, for my family, collusion and cover-up of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre by the British armed forces.”