During Bill Rammell’s visit, we got a insight into the dirty games of the British. But, here in Ireland, whole books can be found, dedicated to the unconventional tricks employed by Her Majesty’s subjects in the North.

If the Prime Minister smelled a “filthy rat“ in the affair of the Trochetia, then, in Northern Ireland, the stench of rodents must be nauseating. The civil war in the North, more commonly known as the “Troubles”, claimed over 3,600 lives. Despite the 1998 Peace Process, the legacy of the conflict means that lives are still lost, kneecapping, punishment beatings and criminality continue to this day, though to a lesser degree.

Northern Ireland’s history is one of a disastrous colonial rule. The civil war is often seen as one between the Republicans and the Loyalists paramilitary organisations, along a sectarian divide. But the role of the British State in the violence cannot be underestimated. If Mauritius thinks that ‘Orders in Council’ and changing the rules of the Commonwealth were treacherous, then Northern Ireland and, particularly the Republicans, must feel particularly hard done to.

Last year, a journalist, Greg Harkin, and a former intelligence officer (codenamed Martin Ingram) in the Force Research Unit (FRU) published a book. Titled Stakeknife: Britain’s secret agents in Ireland, it makes a litany of revelations about the role of agents during the civil war. It shows the extent of the British dirty war in Ireland and how its agents, on the payroll of the government, murdered and tortured.

In the Troubles, the British State assumed a partisan role in the conflict. It is true that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was also waging a war against the British army. But the latter responded by using the loyalist forces as an extension of its armed forces, according to Ingram. During the war, though some lives were saved by the use of agents and informers, the FRU was also making decisions on who would live and who would die. So as not to compromise its agents, it allowed them to kill to reinforce their credibility among the paramilitary organisations. This dangerous tactic also led to the death of innocent people.

Collusion in murder The case of Pat Finucane indicates how the dirty war spilled out and reached civilians. On Sunday 12th February 1989, the human rights lawyer, who had defended clients on IRA charges, was dining with his wife and three children when three gunmen burst into his Belfast house and shot him fourteen times. He died on his kitchen floor while his family watched in horror. The issue revolves around the involvement of Brian Nelson, an FRU agent in the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the loyalist paramilitaries who carried out the killing. It is claimed that he was assisted by the FRU in compiling an intelligence dossier for the UDA on Pat Finucane.

The murdered lawyer’s family have urged the British government to carry out an independent public inquiry into the killing. This course of action has been refused by the Blair government, allegedly because of an ongoing investigation into collusion between the security forces and the paramilitary. The Finucanes are worried that all the relevant information about the murder will disappear if an inquiry waits too long. The British do not seem to be in a hurry to find out the exact circumstances of the killing and who were really behind it on that fateful Sunday. Paul Bérenger would surely smell an exceptionally “filthy rat” in this case.

Brian Nelson was also involved in the attempted murder of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein MP, in 1984. As an agent, he passed on the information to the security services, who manipulated the weapons used to reduce the charge. They had decided that Adams should live but that the attack should go ahead to preserve the cover of Nelson inside the paramilitary group. The gamble could not have been bigger. In the end, Adams luckily survived the attack, despite being hit three times. Any other outcome could have sparked massive sectarian violence in the province during these very uncertain times.

Agents were also used by the FRU on the Republican side, in many cases to save lives or to seize weapons smuggled by the paramilitaries. While the IRA bought its weapons from Libyan President Muhamar Qadafi, the Loyalist paramilitaries traded with the apartheid government of South Africa. The gunrunner on the loyalist side was Brian Nelson, the FRU agent, according to Ingram. The former intelligence officer says that the weapons were obtained with the knowledge and help of his former colleagues. The idea was that once obtained, the weapons could be traced by electronic tagging. But, in the hands of the paramilitaries, no amount of tracking would stop some of the murders.

Gagging the press

The actions of the British government do not stop with the FRU (later renamed the Joint Services Group). Harkin started reporting on the security services and was close to revealing some of the high profile agents of the British and their handlers in the intelligence organisations. But, before he could go to print in 2000, People, the newspaper he was working for, was served with two injunctions (later overturned in court). The first banned the newspaper from reporting on the security forces. The second goes beyond belief as it prevented the paper from mentioning that it had been the subject of an injunction. The ministry of Defence was prepared to use repression, and £100 000 of taxpayers’ money, to protect the secrets of the dirty war of its Northern Ireland campaign.

But all this could be the tip of the iceberg. Many more deaths and secrets may never be known. In the light of Britain’s dirty war in Northern Ireland, it comes as no surprise that they would apply such ugly expertise thousands of miles away, where they are even less accountable. The Trochetia affair is relatively mild compared to what went on in Ireland. Though Mauritius would be better served by a pragmatic approach, sometimes we cannot allow our sovereign territory to be taken for granted.

Diren VALAYDEN