(by Eamonn McCann, Sunday Tribune)

Much of the evidence at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry last week---dealing with the role of the British Security Service MI5 and with the impact of the appointment of a London police officer as chief of police in the North---ran parallel with present-day political developments.

At Derry Guildhall on Monday, barristers for Mr. Martin McGuinness and for the Bloody Sunday families strongly opposed an application from MI5 that two agents, "A" and "B", and the former agent Mr. David Shayler, be allowed to give their evidence behind closed doors and that MI5 be itself allowed then to vet their evidence before it is made public. Tribunal chairman Lord Saville said that he will rule on the application "in due course".

The potential evidence relates to a claim by the MI5 informer code-named "Infliction", allegedly a former senior member of the Provisional IRA in Derry, that McGuinness had confessed to him in 1984 to having fired the first shot on Bloody Sunday. Saville ruled on Monday that "Infliction" himself will not be called to testify, as "to call or indeed to make any attempt to call (him)" would put his life at risk.

The ruling followed a private meeting in London the previous Friday between the Tribunal and MI5 officers.

Barrister Peter Cush, for McGuinness, told the Tribunal that the ruling had rendered his client "deaf, dumb and blind in the face of a very serious allegation."

The role of MI5 arose last week outside the Inquiry with the appointment on Wednesday of the Metropolitan Police commander Hugh Orde as Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Orde has been leading the probe into the 1989 murder of solicitor Pat Finucane. His report is expected to be delivered in about six weeks time. Among allegations he has been examining is that an agent of the British Army's Force Reaction Unit, Brian Nelson, intelligence chief of the Loyalist Ulster Freedom Fighters, was complicit in the killing. MI5 officers based permanently at FRU headquarters at Thiepval barracks in Lisburn were involved in all major FRU decisions during the relevant period. One former FRU member has described it as "inconceivable" that MI5 would have been unaware of the Nelson connection.

A senior barrister for one of the Bloody Sunday families commented last week: "Here we have an agency currently under investigation for alleged collusion in the highly controversial killing of a prominent nationalist meeting with the Tribunal in secret and asking for bizarre secret arrangements to be made for hearing its evidence on the killing of 14 nationalists 30 years ago. It's almost surreal."

Orde has also been investigating the alleged more direct role of the RUC Special Branch, through its agent the late William Stobie, in the Finucane murder. Unionist politicans fear that his report will provide a basis for Orde, as Chief Constable, to implement the Patten Report recommendation that the Special Branch be amalgamated into the Criminal Investigation Department, with the consequent ceding of its primacy in intelligence matters to MI5. Democratic Unionist Party MLA and member of the Policing Board Sammy Wilson has suggested that this would result in "demoralisation" within Northern police ranks generally.

An editorial in The Times on Friday reflected these fears, declaring that Orde "inherits a deeply demoralised force" and suggesting that the proposed "downgrading of Special Branch (has) precipitated an exodus of the force's most experienced officers....The expectation that (Orde) will facilitate the transfer of anti-terrorist operations out of the hands of Special Branch and over to MI5 would lead to a permanent and irrevocable downgrading of criminal prosecution as a priority in combating terrorism."

There were 30-year echoes of these concerns in evidence on Tuesday from Robert Ramsey, Principal Private Secretary to Stormont Premier Brian Faulkner in 1972, about the effect on the RUC of the appointment in 1969 of City of London Police Commissioner Sir Arthur Young as Chief Constable of the RUC. Young had been transferred to the North by Labour Home Secretary James Callaghan to supervise the implementation of reforms recommended in the Hunt Report on the policing of the early civil rights disturbances.

In his evidence, Ramsey described Young as "a very distinguished English police officer and a buffoon...His approach was basically to bring Dixon of Dock Green to Northern Ireland...During his six to eight months the force became not only further demoralised but also disorganised." Ramsey claimed that a number of changes advocated by Young were "the sort of thing which was not likely to inspire a great deal of confidence in his leadership."

Ramsey also told that the Unionist leadership of the time had "always resented" the establishment of the UK Representative Office at Laneside, Cultra, in 1969. The Laneside office was widely alleged to be a MI5 facility. It was headed in 1972 by Howard Smith, who was to be appointed Director of MI5 in 1976. Smith sat on the Stormont Government's Joint Security Committee. Ramsey told the Tribunal that the "special collective attribute" of Smith and other Laneside operatives "was that they had all served in a country which had solved its inter-community problems, namely the Lebanon."

A pattern has been emerging in evidence over the past few weeks of former RUC officers, Unionist politicians and senior Stormont civil servants emphasingand disparaging the role and responsibility of British army and security service officers in shaping the security policies which led to the Bloody Sunday operation. Much of the evidence has harmonised uncannily with attitudes expressed in current political controversies.

This article appeared in the June 2, 2002 edition of the Sunday Tribune.

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