The Stevens Inquiry & the state
ONLY 19 PAGES of the 3,000-page Stevens Report were made
public in April, but even this provides a revealing glimpse of the murderous
collusion between British intelligence forces and loyalist paramilitaries in
Northern Ireland’s ‘dirty war’. The third report of London’s Metropolitan Police
Commissioner, John Stevens, confirms that the British state was responsible for
a series of illegal assassinations.
The report drew up evidence of collusion between
middle-ranking members of the RUC Special Branch, MI5, army intelligence and
figures in the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the largest Loyalist
paramilitary force. Hundreds of people may have died as a result.
The Stevens’ Inquiry was set up in 1999 under the Good
Friday Agreement, which established power-sharing structures in Northern
Ireland. No doubt as part of the British government’s attempts to bring Sinn
Fein firmly onboard the ‘peace process’, Stevens was asked to investigate the
controversial circumstances around the murder of the prominent Belfast lawyer
Pat Finucane and other issues concerning the state’s relationship with
loyalists.
Pat Finucane, a lawyer who had a reputation for defending
people on paramilitary-related charges, was shot dead in 1989 by the Ulster
Freedom Fighters (UFF), which acts as a cover name for the UDA. For months
before the attack RUC officers had boasted to republican suspects that Finucane
would be ‘taken out’.
According to Stevens, a RUC Special Branch agent in the UDA,
William Stobie, had told his handlers an attack was planned against the lawyer
shortly before his death. This information was kept hidden from the subsequent
murder investigation. Stobie was arrested by the Stevens team in 2001 and
charged with the murder of Finucane and also the killing of Brian Lambert (a
young Protestant ‘mistakenly’ killed in retaliation for the IRA Remembrance Day
bombing in Enniskillen in 1989). The case collapsed, however, and weeks later
Stobie was shot dead by loyalists.
Brian Nelson, another agent who worked for the ‘Force
Research Unit’ (FRU), a covert unit of the British army, was also linked to the
murders of Finucane and Lambert. It has been alleged that Nelson was part of the
UFF team that targeted Finucane. This was done either on instruction from his
army handlers or they decided to let the attack go ahead
Nelson was one of hundreds of agents recruited by the FRU to
provide information and to influence targeting and policy in both loyalist and
republican groups. He was an important agent for the British, rising to head of
the UFF’s intelligence wing. Stevens has also identified over eighty other
people in loyalist circles with access to classified British army documents and
has made over 100 arrests.
Nelson’s role as a tool of the British army is very clear.
When he was arrested, British Army intelligence documents were found in his
possession, indicating targeting of individuals for assassination. During
Nelson’s trial a ‘Colonel J’ appeared as a witness on his behalf. ‘Colonel J’
has since been identified as Brigadier Gordon Kerr. For his services to the
state, Kerr was awarded the OBE in 1991 and is currently the British military
attaché in Beijing.
Serving half of a ten-year sentence for conspiracy to
murder, Nelson was released in 1997 and fled Northern Ireland. Just days before
the release of the Stevens report, Nelson reportedly died suddenly, from cancer
or a brain haemorrhage.
Throughout his investigations Stevens faced continual
obstruction from the army and RUC (now renamed the Police Service of Northern
Ireland). Twice the inquiry team’s attempt to arrest Nelson was thwarted. First,
when Nelson was tipped off by the FRU that Stevens was after him. Second, when
the night before another arrest attempt the Stevens Inquiry HQ in Belfast was
burnt down, in what Stevens concluded was a "deliberate act of arson".
The Stevens Report conclusions, however, are really an
exercise in damage limitation. Although conceding there was collusion in the
Finucane and Lambert killings, Stevens asserts these murders and possibly
hundreds of others were due to a lack of "effective control" of the FRU and
other sections of the state. The truth is the use of agents to kill
‘troublesome’ figures, like Finucane, was part of a conscious policy of the
state.
Neither does the report reveal anything about the role of
the upper ranks of the security forces or the role of various politicians,
including at government cabinet level. The Report merely says that Douglas Hogg,
a former Tory Home Office minister, was ‘compromised’, when he made a statement
in parliament in 1989 attacking lawyers "unduly sympathetic to the cause of the
IRA", shortly before the shooting of Finucane.
The British state has a long record of going well beyond the
‘law’ in defence of its interests. In the early 1970s internment without trial
was introduced in Northern Ireland. The army was responsible for many shootings,
including murdering over a dozen civilians on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972.
The Birmingham Six and Guildford Four suffered long years in prison for crimes
they did not commit as a result of a cover up by the state. British army holding
centres in Northern Ireland, such as Castlereagh, became by-words for places of
torture and the extraction of false ‘confessions’. Non-jury ‘Diplock’ courts
sentenced many people to prison sentences. In the 1980s hundreds were imprisoned
on the word of ‘super grasses’ and the state introduced a policy of
‘shoot-to-kill’, against the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
All this was intended to defeat republicans and to cow the
Catholic population. The IRA did not pose a serious threat to the rule of the
British capitalists but their campaign did seriously destabilise Northern
Ireland and damaged profit making.
The Stevens report, like the long running Saville Inquiry
into the events of Bloody Sunday, indicates a desire by the British state to
‘normalise’ Northern Ireland, now that the ‘Troubles’, in their view, have come
to an end. The government wants to reduce public spending and to free up its
military machine for other overseas operations. But the end of the war on the
IRA does not mean the issue of state repression will no longer apply in Northern
Ireland or Britain. After all, the Blair government proudly admits that
‘techniques’ developed by the British army in Northern Ireland (ie mass scale
repression and covert operations) are being used in Basra and other parts of
imperialist occupied Iraq.
The British army and police in Northern Ireland continue to
use methods of repression against the population, including the use of
intelligence services, although at a much lower level than previously. This can
change, however, and the role of the state can widen dramatically, depending on
circumstances and the ‘needs’ of the ruling class. The Good Friday Agreement is
built on the shaky foundations of institutionalised sectarian power-sharing and
the implementation of neo-liberal policies. This can only lead to deepening
sectarian polarisation and volatility and conflict in society.
The British state has also used repressive measures against
trade unionists and left wing activists. Thousands of police were mobilised
against the miners during the strike of 1984, and more recently Tony Blair
threatened to ban fire-fighters from taking industrial action. Anti-capitalist
protests have already seen a brutal police response, in Britain and around the
world. Since S11, the US, Britain and a host of other countries have introduced
a raft of repressive measures to conduct a ‘war on terror’. These can be used to
attack minority communities, opposition voices to the system and the entire
working class.
Serious social struggles will face similar state repression.
It is therefore vital for activists and working people to draw the full lessons
from the experiences of Northern Ireland and to put forward a clear class
approach on these issues.
There can be no faith in inquiries established by
government. The Stevens Inquiry has only made partial and limited conclusions.
Likewise, the Saville Inquiry, which is proving highly lucrative for a few
lawyers, is likely to leave more questions unanswered than are addressed.
Socialists demand the full publication of the Stevens
Inquiry and a full independent public inquiry into collusion between the state
and loyalist paramilitaries. The majority of these panels of inquiry should be
made up of trade unionists with a record of opposing state repression and
paramilitary activities, and people from the communities most blighted from the
conflict. Investigations must go to the highest level of the British state.
Those guilty must be made to stand trial and all evidence should be made public.
Niall Mulholland
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