North of Ireland Politics

razzmatazaz wrote:  Absolute drivel. http://www.thejournal.ie/tanaiste-sinn-fein-should-apologise-for-iras-actions-during-troubles-stakeknife-report-6320944-Mar2024/ And not a word about the loyalist death squads in Belfast going around butchering Catholic civilians with assorted butcher's tools unimpeded by the army and police, lads like Davey Payne and Coco White slicing a Protestant woman's breasts off and torturing her because she was with a Catholic man, army shooting women and children in the back several times, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders murdering two random Catholic farmers with pitchforks in retaliation for a previous attack on soldiers by the IRA, constant firebombings on Catholic homes culminating in the Quinn children being burned to death and the various civil rights abuses against the Catholic community. I could go on.

South Armagh and East Tyrone didn't report to Northern Command - which is why they were so effective, because their operations didn't get compromised. 

Roberto Baggio wrote: Yes Scap was at a meeting in a safe house in south Armagh and picked up a letter and read the name on it A short time after a house nearby of a family with the same name was raided  East Tyrone Brigade didn’t trust him either

horsebox wrote: Roberto Baggio wrote: Yes Scap was at a meeting in a safe house in south Armagh and picked up a letter and read the name on it A short time after a house nearby of a family with the same name was raided  East Tyrone Brigade didn’t trust him either  It's not that they didn't trust him - they just operated independently. Slab Murphy was the main commander behind both, before focusing on SA.

Some great reading in this. Though I could've done without the image of Mountbatten 69ing a Sri Lankan boy in a hotel in Sligo.

1. Gardai collusion is highly likely, there was a tip-off. Breen and Buchanan were regarded as high level “dirty cops” even by the debased standards of the RUC at the time.
2. The guns used in the UDA attempted assassination of Adams were “clean”, ie not used before, and the bullets were real. The spin about doctored ammunition put out by the late journalist Liam Clarke came from British intelligence psyops. Check out Paul Larkin@brehonisbest on Twitter, he has produced receipts. The Police Ombudsman had an independent investigation done. Danny Morrison spoke to the surgeon who operated on Adams, he confirmed that he was lucky to have survived death by inches. The UVF planned hit on the same day was frustrated by the UDA attack. I don’t think Adams had anything to do with the Loughgall attack though there may have been a locally based tout involved.
Re McGuinness, the allegation you have mentioned came from the late informer Willie Carlin, not the most reliable of sources. Neither Adams nor McGuinness were ever touts in my opinion. Some people close to them certainly were ( eg Denis Donaldson, Scappaticci, John Joe Magee, Roy McShane, etc ) and they may have had some influence on them. The truth is that Adams and McGuinness were invaluable to the peace process and led the movement away from war. It could not have been done without them, perhaps for another generation.
3. Tom Murphy aka “Slab” could be described as many things but cerebral is perhaps not one of them. Like most combatants he was from a working class background and had little in the way of formal education. You would not seek out his company for a debate about quantum mechanics or existentialist philosophy. He was on the other hand a former IRA chief of staff, on the Army Council and leader of the most effective brigade in the country. His leadership abilities are beyond question. South Armagh had the advantages of close knit and supportive rural communities and a core of long established Republican families. Read Toby Harnden’s book “ Bandit Country” if you get the chance, he had some very good sources.
4. I think Billy Wright was indeed set up, he had become a problem and even behind bars was exercising disproportionate influence. You will recall that his deputy Mark “ Swinger” Fulton , who suffered a similar demise to Epstein, was also conveniently eliminated. Wright’s actual assassins, Crip McWilliams and a couple of other guttersnipe INLA desperados, were not British agents but opportunists who got to make names for themselves. Wright and Fulton were agents who had got out of control. Recent papers emerging from the Sean Brown inquest suggest that all of the LVF’s Army Council were agents or informers except for Dungannon based ex kick-boxer Stuart Kirk, who is rumoured to have had involvement in the shooting dead of Portadown UVF chief Richard Jameson during the feud between the two loyalist groups.
5. I do not think Colm Murphy was ever a British asset despite carefully orchestrated suggestions to the contrary. He was always a very ordinary wee guy who like many such others would have lived a quiet and uneventful life but for the “ Troubles.” Politically though he was dyed in the wool, and remained so all his life.

Edited by Green Cockade - 25 Mar 2024 at 4:16pm

My understanding was that South Armagh and East Tyrone didn't report to Northern Command which is why both of them were so successful.

horsebox wrote: My understanding was that South Armagh and East Tyrone didn't report to Northern Command which is why both of them were so successful. John Crawley touched on this in his book - anything NC got wind of got compromised. Adams and McGuinness both spoke and dealt with the Brits at a high level, so I always felt it was lazy that they were considered agents, usually by Loyalists or dissidents to smear their names.

irishmufc wrote: http://www.farminglife.com/country-and-farming/livestock-in-ni-can-no-longer-bear-uk-ear-tags-thanks-to-protocol-allister-4565570 This is the cutting edge issue that most concerns Jim Allistersaurus.