One of the first blogs I ever posted here on the “Czar” was a report on a Platform for Change event in the Black Box in Belfast (September 2011). The event took the form of monologues from five women who were telling their stories from The Troubles. The short Question & Answer session was very revealing. One person who seemingly had always lived in Norn Iron expressed his shock at not knowing about all this.
To me this is the really shcoking thing is that this middle class guy was shocked. This is the big con that Conflict Resolution and “Truth” actually is. People have known the “truth” about say Bloody Sunday since January 1972. But in the summer of 2010 David Cameron made the Truth official….and those who had slandered the victims expressed their shock. Likewise…..McGurks Bar or indeed Hillsborough. The Victims always KNEW the Truth. I am not sure the Victims really need someone else to tell them the Truth. In reality it is Officialdom that needs the “truth”. They NEED the Validation.
I lived in Ballymurphy on the night of the Ballymurphy Massacre 9th August 1971. I don’t need an Inquiry. On the other hand Officialdom and the middle class need the Truth. It is NOT about giving a voice to Victims……it is really about giving EARS or perhaps just San excuse to Officialdom and the middle classes who refused to hear the raised voices coming out of the Bogside, Kingsmills, or Ballymurphy.”if only we had known about your pain”. Sorry I am not buying that.
We all know what went on.The surprise is that people pretend to be shocked. As in the case of Ann Travers,it helps to be articulate. Geraldine Finucane and her family are intelligent and articulate.
Lets be frank here…the News has stated that the intelligence which led to Finucane,s murder was passed on by a police officer. Worse perhaps 85% of UDA intelligence originated with security forces. It is a reasonable conclusion that a lot of other victims have been victims of conclusion.
A Public Enquiry would bring this to light. There are British people enjoying state pensions…ex_RUC people living on pensions and holding medals …and they were involved in murder.
Of course many other people who were involved in murder are now in Government.
What is the lesson? Well what we lived thrust wasn’t about Law &Order…it was a War….a nasty brutal Civil War.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
After the De Silvia report into the state collusion in which the ‘can do no wrong’ RUC was in it up to the very top, The so called impartial Belfast telegraph editor in comment piece today condemned security forces four times in the editorial but couldn’t bring himself to write the name RUC in the entire text. What a joke paper. Afraid of their mostly unionist readers, that they might lose some.
I think it was interesting that Baggott apologised. If I was him, I would have said “RUC nothing to do with me”. We have the contradiction of pretending PSNI is actually the RUC revamped. That was a necessary lie at the time……but now surely we can say RUC is in the dustbin of history.
The only valuable thing Baggot could have said is, we’re going to find the names of these ROC, Special Branch and FRU people and go after them.
Compare De Silva or Saville to what happened so soon after the Hilsbrough report.
Paul,
Absolutely correct. Whatever the shortcomings of the report it has now been established that laws were broken and agents of the state were actvely involved in that. It is an imperative that the PSNI now investigate and prosecute those responsible. Properly.
‘it is imperative that the PSNI now investigate and prosecute those responsible’
BangorDub, that’s two hurdles instead of one to get over, since it’s the PPS whose job to prosecute and the police will only likely send the case to them if they get a private assurance from the PPS that, is not in the public interest. Nice work if you can get it.
Interestingly the report into the Russian (I cant spell his name) who was poisoned with tea in London in 2006, the British are claiming he was murdered by Russians….and they call it “state sponsored terrorism”
It was Alexander Litvinenko with polonium in the tea, the man alleged to have been the FSB agent sent to LDN to kill him/poison him is now a MP in the Russian Duma (probably for his OWN safety, better being out in the open etc.), that and Russia, like China or Japan, does not extradite their nationals for anyone.
Regarding the Finucane murder and some of the evidence we have seen, 85% of the murders perpetrated by the UDA was thanks to security forces providing intelligence? As someone else pointed out, that’s not collusion, that’s direction, they were in effect a quango of the state in many ways. Yet, not much of a peep from the MSM or elsewhere about this? It has proved what WE all knew and in many ways justifies a particularly republican narrative that the forces of the state and loyalist paramilitaries where one and the same and not particularly concerned with upholding the rule of law.
I actually pointed this decision out to my house mate here, an indigenous lawyer who works for a union here, very proactive in criminal legal matters and the union movement. She was honestly horrified at the thought of the state murdering or conniving in the murder of a lawyer. She was shocked for about 5 minutes and questioning me like I was on the stand and for me, that ties in with something pointed out elsewhere, how we are conditioned to these matters that should horrify normal society, why else has there not been marches on City Hall for this or genuine calls for a review of the RUC and security forces in the North? Well, this news an go in there with news that the Pope is Catholic or a bear shat in the woods tbf.
http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/periscope/the-truth-is-margaret-thatcher-likely-ordered-the-pat-finucane-murder—-british-can-never-reveal-the-truth-about-the-killing-of-civil-rights-lawyer–183328851.html?mob-ua=Y