In today’s (15/9/23) Irish nationalist newspaper, ‘The Irish News’, the following headline appears.
Stakeknife: British intelligence may have been aware of every IRA operation in Belfast
The secretive world of anti-terrorist undercover operatives and their activities will never be fully known. It would be to the endangering of many and the shaming of high officials who sanctioned what amounted to unlawful actions on many occasions.
If there is an ounce of truth in the above headline then the question must be asked, ‘Why were not more terrorist attacks stopped in Belfast?’
Away back in 1971, 52 years ago, British Tory Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, a cabinet minister during Edward Heath’s infamous premiership, spoke of an “acceptable level” of violence in the Northern Ireland conflict.
This took place in a December 1971 press conference in which he stated that the British government could not eliminate the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s terrorist attacks but only reduce them to an “acceptable level”. Critics maintained that any violence was unacceptable. Nevertheless, the concept influenced the British government’s strategy in dealing with Northern Irish terrorism, and continues to be used in discussions of ongoing political violence in Northern Ireland.
What Maudling said was an unmitigated lie and the disclosure of a policy of mere containment of the IRA while the terrorist organisation carried out what had become British policy. That policy was gradually to move Northern Ireland out of the UK into a united Ireland by using the terrorism of the IRA to weary the Ulster unionist population of the turmoil and make them ready to sue for a ‘peaceful’ solution! (more…)
