Andersontown News, September, 9, 2002, http://www.irelandclick.com/
Collusion
Part five of the serialisation of Ardoyne: The Untold Truth
Today in the fifth part of our serialisation of the book Ardoyne: The Untold
Truth, we look at security force collusion in the murders of Ardoyne
residents. It is an area which has long been shrouded in controversy and
secrecy.
North Belfast is synonymous with collusion. Files with details of republican
ex-prisoners, and those suspected by the security forces of being involved
with republican groups, were supplied in huge quantities to army informers –
the most notorious being Brian Nelson.
Nelson passed them on to UVF and UDA killer gangs who then targeted their
victims.
The UDA and UVF obtained a large shipment of arms from South Africa in
January 1988. The army handlers of Brian Nelson knew he was buying the
weapons.
Their deadly legacy would cut a swathe of slaughter through Ardoyne and
other nationalist communities.
Guns from the South Africa cache were used in ten cases of people from the
district who were shot dead by loyalists between January 1988 and the 1994
ceasefire.
Guns that MI5 had full knowledge of and allowed into the north of Ireland
killed Paul McBride, Seamus Morris, Davey Braniff, Paddy McKenna, Hugh
Magee, Liam McCartan, Martin Lavery, Alan Lundy, Sean Hughes and Martin
Bradley from Ardoyne. Collusion stuck with high profile murders such as
Laurence Marley, but other families have now raised the issue in their
testimonies in the book.
The ‘80s and early ‘90s were awash with collusion that struck out of the
centre of British administration in the north of Ireland. At the helm was
British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Former republican prisoner Larry Marley was shot dead by the UVF at his home
in Havana Gardens on April 2 1987.
In the hours before his killing he had commented to his wife how it was
strange he had not been stopped and harassed by the RUC and the army, as was
usually the case.
“He was away a couple of hours…. When he came back he said that it was
strange because he hadn’t been stopped. I remember him saying that he had
been passed by the British Army and the RUC loads of times but he hadn’t
been stopped. That was very unusual. He was always stopped as soon as he
walked out the door,” recalls his wife Kate.
The IRA man’s son Joe also tells how his father was brought to Castlereagh
and his life threatened by the RUC on several occasions after his release
from the Maze prison.
“On one occasion there he was told by a senior RUC detective that they would
feed his name and the names of two other local republicans to a loyalist
death squad in the Ballysillan area.
“Only two weeks before his murder he was told by a British Army major that
he wouldn’t live much longer,” he said.
Alan Lundy was a lifelong republican and like Larry Marley had served a
prison sentence in the H-Blocks. Loyalists gunned him down as he worked on
the Andersonstown home of Alex Maskey – now Mayor of Belfast. His death has
always carried the tag of collusion.
Widow Margaret Lundy says: “Alan was clearing up the job they’d been doing.
Brits were sitting outside. Alex went into the house and the next minute the
Brits disappeared.
“Alan saw his killers coming. As Alan was running through the house they
opened up and he was killed outright. The UFF claimed responsibility but
nobody was ever charged.
“I think they found the car and the gun in it. I was angry because the
British Army knew what was happening the day Alan was killed.”
As well as obvious security force presence in the moments before murders
such as Alan Lundy’s, the loyalist killing machine in North Belfast was
gunning down Catholics in cold blood, while covert military personnel looked
on.
By 1989 it was clear how freely files were given to loyalists and they
appeared like confetti posted along walls on the Shankill Road.
A number of loyalists had been arrested at the opening stages of an
investigation into collusion led by John Stevens.
Loyalists protesting at the arrests put up thousands of security montages
compiled by the RUC and the British army’s Force Research Unit.
For nationalists it reinforced what they already knew about security force
collusion with loyalist death squads.
The most notorious involved the so-called ‘Angel of Death’ incident after
the murder of Paddy McKenna on September 2 1989.
UVF man Brian Robinson – in full view of undercover British Army soldiers –
shot Paddy McKenna dead on the Crumlin Road. Robinson was on the back of a
motorbike and shot the 43-year-old eleven times.
The killer was able to carry out the murder, and was only then followed and
shot dead by a woman soldier.
The murdered man’s brother Joe says while the British Army had known
loyalists were going to murder a Catholic that day, they looked on as his
brother was gunned down.
“Two undercover soldiers sat and watched the whole thing. The woman soldier
who was dubbed the Angel of Death was sitting at Brompton Park in an Astra,
the other undercover soldier was sitting at the roundabout covering the
Shankill.
“The two of them watched the whole thing happening. When Robinson and the
other guy sped off on the motorbike, the Angel of Death went after them.
“Her car hit the bike and they came off and she shot Robinson as he lay on
the ground at the bus stop.
“The British army had information that a UVF squad was going to hit somebody
at the front of the road that morning, but instead of preventing it, they
decided to let them kill someone,” Joe McKenna says.
Also to fall victim to security force collusion with loyalists was Trevor
‘Dandy’ Close.
He had once been active with the IRSP and was murdered as he delivered milk
to Hunter’s shop on the Cliftonville Road.
His widow, Marie Close said the RUC was at the shop just minutes before her
husband was shot 17 times by loyalists.
“The day Dandy was murdered he went to Hunter’s shop. The RUC had been in
there just five minutes before, getting their football pools.
“They had just left the shop when two loyalist gunmen got out of a car and
walked into the shop. They singled Dandy out and shot him 17 times.
“The RUC jeep was parked up at Cliftonville Circus so they must have been
able to hear the shooting.
“They came in just after the gunmen left. The first RUC man who walked in
the shop said, ‘It’s all right, it’s only Trevor Close’,” she said.
Martin Bradley was another person killed by a combination of state collusion
and mistaken identity.
Martin who was 23 was sitting in his aunt Patricia McAllister’s house when
he was gunned down by the UFF.
His cousin Fra Shannon who lived in the house had been arrested by the RUC
two weeks earlier. Fra Shannon was later shot dead by the INLA.
Patricia McAllister recalls his murder: “Two weeks before Martin was
murdered, my son Fra (Sparky) was arrested for the shooting of a loyalist.
“That was two weeks and one day before Martin was killed in my house. When
Fra was in Castlereagh interrogation centre the RUC told him they would give
him two weeks and a top loyalist would be out to kill him.
“Local people told us that a well-known loyalist had been spotted driving up
and down the road around our house.
“In Crumlin Road jail that night loyalist prisoners boasted to Fra Shannon’s
brother in the mistaken belief that Shannon had been killed shouting:
“ ‘They got Sparky, they got Sparky’,” she said.