TALK SUBSCRIBE HOME
There's a turn of speech in Ireland, "the dogs in the street know" For example, "the dogs in the street know the police and the British Army are hand-in-glove with Loyalist death squads."
For some strange reason, the knowledge common to "the dogs of the street^Ô is always a lot more accurate than what is carried in the major media in the US or Britain. In those countries the bourgsoie media presents the British occupation force in Northern Ireland as a neutral "rescue mission" standing between the "warring tribes" poor misunderstood peace keepers reviled by all the "men of violence."
In Ireland, that shit doesn't fly, the reality ( obvious to those "dogs in the street" ) is in too sharp contrast with the propaganda for it to be believable.
However, there is a great deal of difference between common knowledge (or well-founded suspicions) and legal proof. If, say, you were a member of a bereaved nationalist family whose son, brother, child, husband had been "murdered by British-controlled terrorist gangs, you need more than common knowledge" to launch a suit for wrongful death.
And if you are a British TV journalist being sued for libel --for your exposes of police and terrorist collusion and the involvement of local businessmen, lawyers and politicians, like the Prentice brothers, Robert Moneith and David Trimble (yes, that David Trimble ) as the funding source for the terrorists-- you need hard evidence for your defense in court.
Up until now --thanks to the killers' code of silence, a complicit media, and (especially) sheer terror-- such hard evidence has been hard to come by.
Enter John Weir, a former death squad operative and Northern Ireland policeman, who, after apparent abandonment by his superiors, decided to talk to several honest journalists. Weir named names and pointed fingers. He even agreed to do it again in a sworn depositon.
He now lives, for fear of his life, in Nigeria.
John Weir's deposition was given in support of TV producer Sean McPhilmey and British TV Ch. 4, who are being sued for libel by a group of pro-British terrorist conspirators. (Under UK law you can commit libel even though you are telling the truth.)
In the UK, it is illegal to publish testimony in a legal proceeding, and so the journalist who released this material needs to conceal his identity. In the cover message of the original posting from Ireland, the journalist, by way of explaining his need for anonymity, wrote "Rosemary Nelson had this file and look what they did to her."
On my work station top there is a photo that I took two years ago in Portadown, in Northern Ireland. In the background is a white one-story building, rather like an army barracks, the Garavaghey Road community center. The building is surrounded by a high spiked security fence to defend it from Orange Order rioters. In front of the open security gate, a dozen or so "international observers" are packing their belongings into several white Hondas, before being driven to the families that were hosting them.
In the foreground are four people, all smiling into the camera. On the left, the very large man is my pal Gerry, an Irish-American activist from nearby New Jersey. On the right, the large woman is my pal Linda, an Irish-American activist from nearby Pennsylvania. In the center, the young man (who will remain nameless) who was my host and, on his right, a petite woman with short red hair and a print blouse--her name Rosemary Nelson--who was taking my pals into her home.
Rosemary Nelson was a barrister ("lawyer" in the US), after the senior partner in her law firm, Patrick Finucane, was murdered in 1989 (the dogs in the street knew the RUC was responsible). She became the firm's chief litigator in human rights and police brutality cases and campaigned for an international investigation into Pat Finucane's murder. (A few minutes before the picture was taken, Rosemary had finished briefing the international guests on the campaign to reopen the investigation into the Finucane murder.)
In the next year and a half, her investigation led to some police officers ready to give testimony and, eventually, to a UN resolution condemning British policing in Northern Ireland and a US Congressional resolution of the same type.
A few days after returning from the USA, Rosemary Nelson set out for the office on a Monday morning and never arrived. The bomb blast mangled her badly and she died three hours later while undergoing surgery in the local hospital. Those dogs in the street say that she was murdered by the police -- and of course they are right.
The document that follows, the deposition of former RUC sergeant John Weir, may say nothing about the murder of Patrick Finucane, or of Rosemary Nelson, but it does describe--in detail--how the British apparatus of state terrorism functions in Ireland.
The Weir deposition is essentially a worm's eye view of British state terrorism in action. After all Weir was active in a limited area, mostly South Armagh, and met only a few of the major figures in the Loyalist paramilitary groups.
Still, it would be difficult to overestimate the political importance of these revelations. Just go to paragraph three and Weir's account of how, when citizens turned guns over to the police during an arms amnesty, the police then redistributed the arms to Loyalist paramilitary groups. (With this in mind, can anyone be surprised that the IRA is unwilling to disarm?)
Consider Weir's account of his initial involvement in Loyalist terrorism [paragraphs 7 - 14]: the RUC Assistant Chief Constable, Charles Rogers, visits Weir's police unit and urges them to carry out illegal actions. Later, the same senior officer takes part in discussions where the Special Patrol Group decided to start a campaign of bombings and assassination against the Catholic population.
The ACC is the number-two man in the British police administration in Northern Ireland. Does anyone have any doubt that the state terrorist policies, the bombings and killings, were authorized at the highest government levels? That they were not the actions of "rouge cops?"
Then take the Dublin and Monaghan bombings [paragraph 13], the bloodiest atrocity in the last thirty years of struggle- 33 killed and several hundred wounded.
The car bombs were parked along College Green, the busiest intersection in Dublin. The intersection contains the main gate into Trinity College, the National Bank of Ireland, about 8 transit bus stops, dozens of book shops, fast food restaurants, art galleries^Åall to service the many students, tourists and office workers. The bombs were set for twelve noon, to catch the lunch crowd emerging from the university and the bank.
There was no phoned warning.
The intention was to kill -- and to terrify the 26 County government into banning the Republican Movement.
It worked.
>From 1974 on, the dogs in the street have known that the British Army and the British intelligence service, MI5, were behind the bombing. Now, after 25 years, the 26 County Government is opening an judicial probe of the Dublin car bombings, and the families of the dead are pressing a wrongful death
The impact of the Weir deposition will be very important to those proceedings and will lead to a parade of further witnesses who will trade immunity for their testimony against the state that employed them to do murder. Note carefully that all the main organizers of the attack were either field grade officers of the British Army's Ulster Defense Regiment or, in the cases of Capt. Robert Nairac and Robin (The Jackal) Jackson, agents of the British intelligence service, MI5 [paragraph 13 (i)]
In the mass media, Britain is often referred to with such terms as " the oldest democracy," "the mother of parliaments" and so on. Of course the actual functioning of the British state is a little bit different than the media image. The area where Weir spent most of his police career is South Armagh; a land of green rolling hills, tiny quaint villages--the houses clumped around the Church and the pub--isolated stone farmsteads with high hedges around the pastures and miles of twisty narrow roads, perfect for ambushes. The British Army calls this land "bandit country" or "Indian territory" just like the US Cavalry in an old western. The Irish and British tabloid press refer to the same land as "the murder triangle." The people who live there and work the rocky soil call their bit Ireland "the Peoples" Republic of South Armagh" and fight for the day the last British occupier boards the ferry boat to that other island.
The role of British policing in South Armagh--and all Ireland--can be summed up in two short quotes from Weir's long confession. Both quotes are from Weir's paragraph 13, detailing police terrorism in Armagh. The first, after describing the bombing of a Catholic pub tells "that no one has ever been prosecuted for these murders but that the RUC has known the truth for many years."
The second, after listing the five men who murdered a Catholic family, remarks" one of McClure's brothers who, alone, was not a member of the security forces."
I hope this is clear enough -- dozens of murders in South Armagh remain unsolved because the police choose not to prosecute those who murder Catholics ... and because the murder gangs are made up of members of the police and other ^Ñsecurity" agencies.
It will be a good day for Ireland and a good day for humanity when the last British "peace keeper" boards the ferry to Scotland.
Reading and circulating John Weir's depostion can help bring that day a bit closer.
Is mise le meas, Roger Collins
A glossary of terms
1. RUC, Royal Ulster Constabulary, the British police in occupied Ireland.
2. Chief Constable, the British police chief in Ulster; Assistant Chief {ACC], the second in command.
3. SPG, Special Patrol Group, heavily armed groups ( 20 - 30 strong ) of ^Óanti-terrorist^Ô police, for many years have functioned as anti Catholic terrorist gangs.
4. Special Branch, the name of the secret political police in both Britain and the 26 county Irish State.
5. UDR, the British Army^Òs Ulster Defense Regiment, a locally recruited and exclusively Protestant unit of the British Army, with a long record of anti-Catholic violence.
6. UDA, UVF, LVF, Ulster Defense Association, Ulster Volunteer Force, Loyalist Volunteer Force, three of the larger pro-British terror gangs, basically controlled by either the Special branch or British intelligence.
7. MI5/Army Intelligence, Britain^Òs historic espionage service^ÅJackson, Irwin, and Nairac were all agents of this force.
8. Gardi, in English ^Ñthe Guards^Ò, police in the 26 County Irish State.
9. Sinn Fein, the Irish republican party that is the main political organizer of opposition to British rule in Ireland.
10. IRA, ^Ñthe Volunteers^Ò, the main armed force resisting British occupation of Ireland, currently on cease fire/truce with British, pending outcome of ongoing peace process.
11. Orange Order, Apprentice Boys, secret oath bound anti-Catholic groups, rather like the Ku Klux Klan in the USA