The content of the handful of pages of the Stevens Report cannot have come as a surprise. We all knew that many killings were carefully crafted official political acts.
On the day of Pat Finucane's funeral there was a press conference in which we demanded a public inquiry into who was responsible for his death.
We all knew that again and again murders were organised by government agents and under their direction.
While we know this and suspect who was responsible, we may never have enough proof to bring them to trial. That is a pity but we must keep on trying.
All this killing and using ‘civilians’ to do it fitted neatly into the way the British state works. If it goes to war it claims the right to confiscate your house, your property, to use your taxes for waging their war, whether you assent to their war or not.
It claims the right to take even your body, the bodies of your sons and fathers and turn them into killing machines for them.
This has been British government policy and practice for centuries.
The British Royal Navy was manned during its most aggressive years by unfortunates who were dragged senseless out of taverns and flung aboard their majesty's ships.
One of the few occasions when Irish people of many shades of opinion stood together and said No to that government was when having flung its own and other nations' soldiers into futile and deadly battles London claimed the right to hijack Irish men against their will and make killers of them too.
The people stood together and defeated both the British government and the politicians like Mr Redmond who should have been preservers of our people's lives and instead were willing to barter them for shady promises of future Home Rule.
So when the London administration created its war in Ireland from 1969 it was not surprising that it used all the coercive powers it already had to try to win it.
But following the suggestions and philosophy of Mr Kitson it went even further, it demanded that everything should be flung into its Irish war effort.
Property was seized, people imprisoned and tortured, taxpayers' money used and squandered, church members corrupted, everything was to be put into the service of the war effort. Judges cooperated, the courts, such as they were, were spoiled, the police were made even more politically active than they were before, the universities and the press were put under pressure to conform to the war aims of the London administration.
The London administration if it was going to be true to itself was absolutely bound to cast its net even further than this to see whom it could use, community associations, friendly societies, political groups of all kinds, for their war effort.
That they did use all these means is not the strange thing — the strange thing would be if they did not use them.
And corrupt them if they were not corrupted already.
We used to note three broad kinds of organisations among the Protestant civilian population.
One was those set up as citizens' associations for social or religious purposes and which were infiltrated by British agents for their war effort.
The second was those which were not natural growths from the Protestant population but had been set up specially by British spying services, for example the Red Hand Commandos.
Those of the third kind were those which had been set up by citizens for social or other benign purposes and had not been infiltrated by these agents.
It is likely that not many, or even possibly none at all, of the third kind existed after a couple of years of the British war in Ireland.
When the Gardai were infiltrated, who could escape? Military always use civilians to do their work for them and to protect them.
They nest beside schools, on top of nurses homes, in crowded streets, in the grounds of a hospital, or in the city centre surrounded by civiliian gatekeepers, searchers and guardians.
They are protected by civilians and use them from the start of their wars.
If judges had taken a firm line with police in the courts, if church people had taken a stand against the infiltration of associations set up by their own members, if all of them had objected to what the military were doing, damage could have been prevented and the war could have been ended. But not only did many people like these not object, some of them even condoned and encouraged what the military and police were doing in their abuse of people. Part of any inquiry we should make in the future must be the way some of the bodies set up to protect us in fact connived to help destroy some of us. And it was not only police and military who were to blame.
Respectability has a habit of hiding behind their paid servants and washing hands.
It is unlikely that any British inspired report will examine this or place the blame where it really belongs. And tragically, if the regime is baulked and thrown out of here, it will try to shift its appalling misbehaviour to some other set of unfortunate people. That is yet one more reason why every move towards a new British war in any country should be opposed.
