Films, clips, documentaries etc on Norn Iron/Troubles etc
- Thread starter DaveCinzano
- Start date
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
This Week, ‘Inside Terror’, ITV, 1987.
Very ropy partial digital camera copy of a VHS screening of a 1987 Peter Gill report on the ITV current affairs show This Week, hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby.
The occasion is the INLA-IPLO feud, and the murders of Gerard Steenson and John O'Reilly. Each had been members of the Official IRA before then joining the nascent INLA; Steenson then went on to found the INLA splinter which later became known as the IPLO in 1986. INLA Chief of Staff O'Reilly, along with Thomas ‘Ta’ Power, were killed after being lured to a hotel on the pretext of ‘peace talks’ in January 1987. Steenson was gunned down with fellow IPLO member Anthony McCarthy in an INLA ambush in March 1987 as retaliation.
Interesting perspectives, as the programme treats this period as one of intra-INLA feuding, rather than a struggle between two discrete ones, per the later Holland/McDonald orthodoxy of Deadly Divisions (yes, that book is considered as problematic, but still...), and Gill states that the INLA is “in a state of collapse”. Gill describes the 1983 Darkley Pentecostal Church massacre, claimed under the flag of convenience ‘Catholic Reaction Force’ but involving at least one INLA member and gun, as the turning point which led one group, the ‘Army Council faction’, to call for the organisation to disband. Steenson ally Jimmy Brown states that the INLA has failed, and that it has degenerated into a criminal enterprise.
Gill reports from Derry, where “INLA men live off the spoils of terror; their strategy is extortion, kidnapping and the physical injury of those who get in the way.”
Interviews include:
Power struggle convulses the INLA
Left Wing Urban Guerrillas in Ireland: the Irish National Liberation Army's Bloody Feud and the Saor Eire episode
Belfast Fallen
From the 'Derry Journal' of Friday Morning, September 7th, 1984.
INLA deadly divisions
Irish National Liberation Army - Wikipedia
Irish People's Liberation Organisation - Wikipedia
Gerard Steenson - Wikipedia
Jimmy Brown (Irish republican) - Wikipedia
Thomas "Ta" Power - Wikipedia
Harry Kirkpatrick - Wikipedia
Very ropy partial digital camera copy of a VHS screening of a 1987 Peter Gill report on the ITV current affairs show This Week, hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby.
The occasion is the INLA-IPLO feud, and the murders of Gerard Steenson and John O'Reilly. Each had been members of the Official IRA before then joining the nascent INLA; Steenson then went on to found the INLA splinter which later became known as the IPLO in 1986. INLA Chief of Staff O'Reilly, along with Thomas ‘Ta’ Power, were killed after being lured to a hotel on the pretext of ‘peace talks’ in January 1987. Steenson was gunned down with fellow IPLO member Anthony McCarthy in an INLA ambush in March 1987 as retaliation.
Interesting perspectives, as the programme treats this period as one of intra-INLA feuding, rather than a struggle between two discrete ones, per the later Holland/McDonald orthodoxy of Deadly Divisions (yes, that book is considered as problematic, but still...), and Gill states that the INLA is “in a state of collapse”. Gill describes the 1983 Darkley Pentecostal Church massacre, claimed under the flag of convenience ‘Catholic Reaction Force’ but involving at least one INLA member and gun, as the turning point which led one group, the ‘Army Council faction’, to call for the organisation to disband. Steenson ally Jimmy Brown states that the INLA has failed, and that it has degenerated into a criminal enterprise.
Gill reports from Derry, where “INLA men live off the spoils of terror; their strategy is extortion, kidnapping and the physical injury of those who get in the way.”
Interviews include:
- Frank Steenson (father of Gerard)
- Jimmy Brown (Irish Republican Socialist; OIRA then IRSP/INLA then Republican Socialist Collective/IPLO)
- Unnamed Derry transport company owner facing INLA extortion demands
- Paddy Bonner (bouncer at bar kneecapped by INLA for refusing entry to its members)
- Pat Baker[?] (manager of Derry Super Fayre[?] supermarket)
Power struggle convulses the INLA
Left Wing Urban Guerrillas in Ireland: the Irish National Liberation Army's Bloody Feud and the Saor Eire episode
Belfast Fallen
From the 'Derry Journal' of Friday Morning, September 7th, 1984.
INLA deadly divisions
Irish National Liberation Army - Wikipedia
Irish People's Liberation Organisation - Wikipedia
Gerard Steenson - Wikipedia
Jimmy Brown (Irish republican) - Wikipedia
Thomas "Ta" Power - Wikipedia
Harry Kirkpatrick - Wikipedia
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Untitled Story (Dominic McGlinchey Jnr interview), 2013.
Electric interview with Dominic McGlinchey, the youngest son of murdered INLA Volunteers Dominic ‘Mad Dog’ and Mary McGlinchey. In 1987, with their father in Portaloise prison on remand, young Dominic and his brother Declan were being bathed by their mother at home when two men burst in and shot her to death. The boys were 8 and 11 at the time. A few years later young Dominic was with his father, then released from prison, when they were set upon by another two armed men at a phone box; the older McGlinchey was killed outright.
This talking head interview, conducted by former PIRA hunger striker-turned playwright Laurence McKeown, is short but compelling.
Accounts of the Conflict - v2.4 | Untitled Story, by Dominic McGlinchey (story details)
Dominic McGlinchey - Wikipedia
Arrest fears may keep son of INLA chief Dominic McGlinchey from funeral of brother - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
Declan McGlinchey's wife says paramilitary funeral 'respected his wishes'
Declan McGlinchey was on path to peace before his sudden death, say family
Ex-INLA leader shot 14 times in phone kiosk
Laurence McKeown - Wikipedia
A former IRA gunman and hunger striker tells his story
Electric interview with Dominic McGlinchey, the youngest son of murdered INLA Volunteers Dominic ‘Mad Dog’ and Mary McGlinchey. In 1987, with their father in Portaloise prison on remand, young Dominic and his brother Declan were being bathed by their mother at home when two men burst in and shot her to death. The boys were 8 and 11 at the time. A few years later young Dominic was with his father, then released from prison, when they were set upon by another two armed men at a phone box; the older McGlinchey was killed outright.
This talking head interview, conducted by former PIRA hunger striker-turned playwright Laurence McKeown, is short but compelling.
Accounts of the Conflict - v2.4 | Untitled Story, by Dominic McGlinchey (story details)
Dominic McGlinchey - Wikipedia
Arrest fears may keep son of INLA chief Dominic McGlinchey from funeral of brother - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
Declan McGlinchey's wife says paramilitary funeral 'respected his wishes'
Declan McGlinchey was on path to peace before his sudden death, say family
Ex-INLA leader shot 14 times in phone kiosk
Laurence McKeown - Wikipedia
A former IRA gunman and hunger striker tells his story
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Spotlight, ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, BBC Northern Ireland, 1996.
Report by Stephen Walker tells the intriguing story of two Lurgan paramilitary activists from across the political divide - Republican Colin Duffy and Loyalist Lindsey Robb. Robb came from the mainly Protestant Mourneview estate, was a member of a flute band, worked as a prntworker at the Lurgan Mail, and - uh-oh - “a regular visitor to Scotland”. Duffy, meanwhile, lived in the predominantly Catholic Kilwilkie area, and in 1991 had been charged with conspiracy to murder before the case was dropped by the RUC.
In 1993 a former Ulster Defence Regiment soldier, John Lyness, was shot dead near his home in Lurgan. A purported eyewitness, ‘Witness B’, came forward and fingered Colin Duffy as the shooter having been driving in the area at the time. Duffy, despite alibi witnesses placing him elsewhere at the time of the murder, and a lack of forensic evidence connecting him to the shooting, was almost immediately pulled in as the prime suspect, and charged soon thereafter. Later the same day Robb called an RUC tip-line, and claimed to have witnessed Duffy cycling away from the murder with an accomplice. At the trial in 1995, Robb gave evidence from behind a screen as ‘Witness C’. Duffy was convicted and sentenced to life plus twenty years for possession of a firearm.
Duffy's lawyer Rosemary Nelson (yes, that Rosemary Nelson) lodged an appeal over the use of hidden identity witnesses. In interview she picks apart the eyewitness evidence of ‘B’ - too far away; driving at a speed of around 20mph; said there were two men at the scene which was contradicted by other witnesses; said gunman he claimed was Duffy was not wearing sunglasses, despite other witnesses saying he was; and making the identification through a dirty tinted windscreen. There's also a deconstruction of Robb's evidence, which was based on him claiming to recognise Duffy from a pool tournament in a pub a few years earlier (the mid-1980s!).
There's also another eyewitness who saw the two cyclists escaping after the shooting who emphatically denies that either was Colin Duffy.
Scroll on and after the trial the RUC told Robb that - despite giving evidence anonymously - his life was in danger. So, as is obviously done in cases like this, they, ah, gave him a couple of grand, a “personal protection weapon” (yes, they gave him a gun!) and moved him to Scotland. Nothing fishy there, guv! Robb established himself as a point man for Scottish Loyalists around the Airdrie/Falkirk area, attending Loyalist Prisoners' Welfare benefits, Orange marches and the like. Barely two weeks after the end of the Duffy trial Robb was conspiring with others in Scotland to smuggle guns to Northern Ireland in a sting set up by the security forces to ensnare the UVF Mid-Ulster UVF chief Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright. Oh, didn't they mention that before? That Robb was involved with the UVF and pally with the ruthless leader of its most brutal unit? Strange!
Anyway, so this was not the most sophisticated gun running plan - six Loyalists have a few beers in the bar and decide to get hold of some gear for Billy; the very next day three of them head down to Liverpool in a taxi to buy a couple of guns and some ammo off some Scouse criminals in a deal set up by a local publican. All the while they are under surveillance by MI5 and Special Branch; on their way back to Scotland they are intercepted and arrested with the steel in the boot. Robb himself wasn't there, but he was arrested at his girlfriend's house. Despite a lack of forensic evidence, and being miles away from the actual deal, he gets charged. The three blokes from the taxi, the pub landlord and another man were all convicted. Robb got ten years for conspiracy.
Then Walker rewinds to the Loyalist ceasefire of 1994: it was around that time that Robb became involved in the Progressive Unionist Party, considered the political wing of the UVF. Robb was soon “hand-picked” to join the PUP's negotiating team at the Stormont talks, because he was “bright, articularte, and from outside Belfast, and unlike his colleagues...did not have a paramilitary past”.
There's an astonishing interview with the PUP's David Ervine. He hedges, and as usual is somewhat circumlocutory, but he baldly (LOL!) notes his incredulity that someone under investigated by the security forces for gun running is afforded a pistol by said same security forces for his personal protection. Fair point, David, fair point. He mentions the ‘C’ word, too. Walker takes up the thread: “Those who suggest there was a conspiracy against[!] Lindsay Robb believe [Stormont] is where it started...” In early 1995 the PUP and the UDP had a joint meeting there with government officials, at which Robb produced a bellicose statement from Billy Wright's Mid-Ulster UVF. Journalist Severin Carroll says the decision was taken at a very high level to keep the Mid-Ulster UVF and Robb under “extremely close scrutiny” (though there's no detailed timeline on when on this) as their position could threaten the peace process. Carroll's view is that the Stormont statement was the reason for the scrutiny Robb faced, leading to the surveillance on him that scooped up the gun running gang within 24 hours. Ervine on the other hand smells a rat. Even Carroll acknowledges that the calibre of the men involved in the gun plot was “not of the highest”, and moots the idea that this was not an official UVF leadership-sanctioned operation.
Back to Nelson, who points out that his troubles in Scotland would rather seem to raise issues of reliability, credibility and impartiality with respect to his evidence against Colin Duffy.
The programme ends with the postscript that both Duffy's and Robb's legal teams have lodged appeals.
Interviewees include:
Lindsay Robb - Wikipedia
UDR Association: London Branch - The Roll of Honour
From graphic designer to gun runner to MI5 agent . . . the strange life and ugly death of Lindsay Robb CRIME: DEATH OF A LOYALIST
Republican guilty of Army murders
The Secret Life of Lindsay Robb on JSTOR
The Loyalist Ceasefire: Savage killers who marked hatred in blood:
Report by Stephen Walker tells the intriguing story of two Lurgan paramilitary activists from across the political divide - Republican Colin Duffy and Loyalist Lindsey Robb. Robb came from the mainly Protestant Mourneview estate, was a member of a flute band, worked as a prntworker at the Lurgan Mail, and - uh-oh - “a regular visitor to Scotland”. Duffy, meanwhile, lived in the predominantly Catholic Kilwilkie area, and in 1991 had been charged with conspiracy to murder before the case was dropped by the RUC.
In 1993 a former Ulster Defence Regiment soldier, John Lyness, was shot dead near his home in Lurgan. A purported eyewitness, ‘Witness B’, came forward and fingered Colin Duffy as the shooter having been driving in the area at the time. Duffy, despite alibi witnesses placing him elsewhere at the time of the murder, and a lack of forensic evidence connecting him to the shooting, was almost immediately pulled in as the prime suspect, and charged soon thereafter. Later the same day Robb called an RUC tip-line, and claimed to have witnessed Duffy cycling away from the murder with an accomplice. At the trial in 1995, Robb gave evidence from behind a screen as ‘Witness C’. Duffy was convicted and sentenced to life plus twenty years for possession of a firearm.
Duffy's lawyer Rosemary Nelson (yes, that Rosemary Nelson) lodged an appeal over the use of hidden identity witnesses. In interview she picks apart the eyewitness evidence of ‘B’ - too far away; driving at a speed of around 20mph; said there were two men at the scene which was contradicted by other witnesses; said gunman he claimed was Duffy was not wearing sunglasses, despite other witnesses saying he was; and making the identification through a dirty tinted windscreen. There's also a deconstruction of Robb's evidence, which was based on him claiming to recognise Duffy from a pool tournament in a pub a few years earlier (the mid-1980s!).
There's also another eyewitness who saw the two cyclists escaping after the shooting who emphatically denies that either was Colin Duffy.
Scroll on and after the trial the RUC told Robb that - despite giving evidence anonymously - his life was in danger. So, as is obviously done in cases like this, they, ah, gave him a couple of grand, a “personal protection weapon” (yes, they gave him a gun!) and moved him to Scotland. Nothing fishy there, guv! Robb established himself as a point man for Scottish Loyalists around the Airdrie/Falkirk area, attending Loyalist Prisoners' Welfare benefits, Orange marches and the like. Barely two weeks after the end of the Duffy trial Robb was conspiring with others in Scotland to smuggle guns to Northern Ireland in a sting set up by the security forces to ensnare the UVF Mid-Ulster UVF chief Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright. Oh, didn't they mention that before? That Robb was involved with the UVF and pally with the ruthless leader of its most brutal unit? Strange!
Anyway, so this was not the most sophisticated gun running plan - six Loyalists have a few beers in the bar and decide to get hold of some gear for Billy; the very next day three of them head down to Liverpool in a taxi to buy a couple of guns and some ammo off some Scouse criminals in a deal set up by a local publican. All the while they are under surveillance by MI5 and Special Branch; on their way back to Scotland they are intercepted and arrested with the steel in the boot. Robb himself wasn't there, but he was arrested at his girlfriend's house. Despite a lack of forensic evidence, and being miles away from the actual deal, he gets charged. The three blokes from the taxi, the pub landlord and another man were all convicted. Robb got ten years for conspiracy.
Then Walker rewinds to the Loyalist ceasefire of 1994: it was around that time that Robb became involved in the Progressive Unionist Party, considered the political wing of the UVF. Robb was soon “hand-picked” to join the PUP's negotiating team at the Stormont talks, because he was “bright, articularte, and from outside Belfast, and unlike his colleagues...did not have a paramilitary past”.
There's an astonishing interview with the PUP's David Ervine. He hedges, and as usual is somewhat circumlocutory, but he baldly (LOL!) notes his incredulity that someone under investigated by the security forces for gun running is afforded a pistol by said same security forces for his personal protection. Fair point, David, fair point. He mentions the ‘C’ word, too. Walker takes up the thread: “Those who suggest there was a conspiracy against[!] Lindsay Robb believe [Stormont] is where it started...” In early 1995 the PUP and the UDP had a joint meeting there with government officials, at which Robb produced a bellicose statement from Billy Wright's Mid-Ulster UVF. Journalist Severin Carroll says the decision was taken at a very high level to keep the Mid-Ulster UVF and Robb under “extremely close scrutiny” (though there's no detailed timeline on when on this) as their position could threaten the peace process. Carroll's view is that the Stormont statement was the reason for the scrutiny Robb faced, leading to the surveillance on him that scooped up the gun running gang within 24 hours. Ervine on the other hand smells a rat. Even Carroll acknowledges that the calibre of the men involved in the gun plot was “not of the highest”, and moots the idea that this was not an official UVF leadership-sanctioned operation.
Back to Nelson, who points out that his troubles in Scotland would rather seem to raise issues of reliability, credibility and impartiality with respect to his evidence against Colin Duffy.
The programme ends with the postscript that both Duffy's and Robb's legal teams have lodged appeals.
Interviewees include:
- Sarah Keegan (mother-in-law of Colin Duffy)
- Susan Duffy (Colin Duffy's wife)
- Rosemary Nelson (Colin Duffy's solicitor)
- Gerard O'Hanlon (eyewitness to the two cyclists)
- Colin Duffy (audio only, speaking from HMP Maze)
- Det Ch Supt John Ogg (Strathclyde Police)
- David Ervine (PUP, former UVF prisoner)
- Severin Carrell (The Scotsman)
Lindsay Robb - Wikipedia
UDR Association: London Branch - The Roll of Honour
From graphic designer to gun runner to MI5 agent . . . the strange life and ugly death of Lindsay Robb CRIME: DEATH OF A LOYALIST
Republican guilty of Army murders
The Secret Life of Lindsay Robb on JSTOR
The Loyalist Ceasefire: Savage killers who marked hatred in blood:
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
This Week, ‘The Very British Terrorists’, ITV, 30 April 1992.
Reporter Margaret Gilmore and producer Ed Braman take a pre-ceasefire look at Loyalist paramilitaries, or more specifically the UDA - which at this point was still legal - and its covername the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
Starts unpromisingly with some tourist board-style footage of “sleepy” Donegal resort town Buncrana on Lough Swilly, complete with flutey Oirish music over the top. But wait! In 1991 the tranquility of this beautiful town was SHATTERED...Etc.
Sinn Féin councillor Eddie Fullerton was murdered in Buncrana by the UFF/UDA. There's interviews with his daughter, the police officer investigating it, and a reconstruction of the incident. Oh, and a handy 30 second summary of the difference between Republicans and Loyalists for anyone not previously paying attention.
Next, a quick burst of stats: the murder rate at this point in 1992 is twice that of the same time in 1991, and for the first time since the 1970s the UDA/UFF is outkilling the PIRA (13 for 11 since January). (It's a reminder of how a particularly bloody and sectarian chapter in the story of the Troubles played out actually at the time - a period we can now see as one where the likes of the Adair milieu in the UDA and the Wright contingent in the UVF were actively playing tit-for-tat-and-then-tit-again in the murder stakes, almost completely divorced from any political strategy beyond make them pay, make them scared.)
SDLP councillor Feeney notes that whilst the UDA/UFF does kill some PIRA members, most of its victims are innocent Catholic civilians. He asserts that there is no difference between the UDA and the UFF: “Same men, different balaclavas.”
Then we get the farce of the six Brigadiers who make up the UDA's Inner Council sitting in silhouette for a group interview. There's also South East Antrim's Joe English; South Belfast's Alex Kerr
Library footage from the attack on the Sean Graham's bookie's massacre in Belfast
Gilmore notes that whilst the UDA was generally known for its tit-for-tat sectarian murders of Catholic civilians, it had recently managed to kill a number of active Republicans, notably Sinn Féin politicians.
There's a bit with SF councillor Gerard McGuigan, whose home was attacked by the UFF. Then it's over to the Shankill Road, where we see footage of the UDA's HQ above Frizzell's, and some history voiceover about the birth of the UDA, the UWC strike, and 1986 street protests against the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Gilmore summarises the current state of play as the UDA being Europe's biggest paramilitary organisation with 2,000 supporters and around “a hundred gunmen in a reorganised military wing”.
There's an interesting segment with Ken Kerr, who previously had served as Brigadier of the UDA's Londonderry/North Antrim Brigade, one of the organisation's weakest, before moving on to lead the UDP following the murder of John McMichael. Here he claims that hardliners took over control of the UDA. (Kerr later left the UDA/UDP, joined the Ulster Indepdencne Movement, and later was a source for Sean McPhilemy's film and book on ‘The Committee’, having also claimed to be an agent for British Army Intelligence.)
Now we get to Brian Nelson. Ex-British Army, joins the UDA, rises through the ranks, becomes main intelligence officer for the group, tasking and targeting and infamous for his dossiers on more than a thousand Republicans. There's discussion of the Gerard Slane murder, for which Nelson eventually copped a plea. Gilmore states Slane was one of 18 people murdered by the UDA whilst Nelson was informing. There's a précis of the collusion inquiry up to that point, following the brazen release by the UDA of intelligence material sourced from the RUC and Army to back up its claims that it was targeting hardened Republicans, with the appointment of Cambridgeshire Deputy Chief Constable John Stevens. The prosecutions that followed (including Nelson's own) led, posits Gilmore, to a reorganisation within the UDA to a more cellular structure around its military activities, and “a more deadly and determined leadership emerged”. Alex Kerr claims that Stevens' investigations alerted the UDA to informers in its midst, and facilitated a tightening up of security.
Feeney claims that the UDA has learnt lessons from PIRA's operational protocols, to the point of being forensically aware. “Now they go out to commit murder wearing surgical gloves, with ordinary gloves over them, with elastic bands around their cuffs, with ear plugs and nose plugs and overalls,” he says.
Next up: rundown of the Adrian Guelke affair - a South African-born academic in Belfast, set up for assassination by the UDA as “an IRA arms dealer” by South African intelligence, who in turn were supplying the UDA with guns in exchange for British military secrets stolen from the Province's factories and shipyards. The three-way UDA-UVF-Ulster Resistance arms procurement operation is covered.
Where's the money come from? Extortion, protection rackets, ‘subscriptions’, drinking clubs.
We see footage of UDP chairman Ray Smallwood lecturing UYM kids at Frizzell's on John McMichaels' ideas. Footage from some kind of schoolkid-led peace protest. Gilmore notes mood for banning UDA. Alex Kerr says it wouldn't bother him if the UDA was banned. (The UDA was eventually proscribed in August.)
Interviewees include:
"This Week" The Very British Terrorists (TV Episode 1992) - IMDb
Eddie Fullerton - Wikipedia
Joe English (loyalist) - Wikipedia
Alex Kerr (loyalist) - Wikipedia
Ken Kerr - Wikipedia
Ulster Resistance – Unapologetic British Terrorism In Ireland
The underbelly of a city of assassins
Loyalist Murder Weapon Found at IWM
Adrian Guelke - Wikipedia
Brian Nelson (Northern Irish loyalist) - Wikipedia
Stevens Inquiries - Wikipedia
Reporter Margaret Gilmore and producer Ed Braman take a pre-ceasefire look at Loyalist paramilitaries, or more specifically the UDA - which at this point was still legal - and its covername the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
Starts unpromisingly with some tourist board-style footage of “sleepy” Donegal resort town Buncrana on Lough Swilly, complete with flutey Oirish music over the top. But wait! In 1991 the tranquility of this beautiful town was SHATTERED...Etc.
Sinn Féin councillor Eddie Fullerton was murdered in Buncrana by the UFF/UDA. There's interviews with his daughter, the police officer investigating it, and a reconstruction of the incident. Oh, and a handy 30 second summary of the difference between Republicans and Loyalists for anyone not previously paying attention.
Next, a quick burst of stats: the murder rate at this point in 1992 is twice that of the same time in 1991, and for the first time since the 1970s the UDA/UFF is outkilling the PIRA (13 for 11 since January). (It's a reminder of how a particularly bloody and sectarian chapter in the story of the Troubles played out actually at the time - a period we can now see as one where the likes of the Adair milieu in the UDA and the Wright contingent in the UVF were actively playing tit-for-tat-and-then-tit-again in the murder stakes, almost completely divorced from any political strategy beyond make them pay, make them scared.)
SDLP councillor Feeney notes that whilst the UDA/UFF does kill some PIRA members, most of its victims are innocent Catholic civilians. He asserts that there is no difference between the UDA and the UFF: “Same men, different balaclavas.”
Then we get the farce of the six Brigadiers who make up the UDA's Inner Council sitting in silhouette for a group interview. There's also South East Antrim's Joe English; South Belfast's Alex Kerr
Library footage from the attack on the Sean Graham's bookie's massacre in Belfast
Gilmore notes that whilst the UDA was generally known for its tit-for-tat sectarian murders of Catholic civilians, it had recently managed to kill a number of active Republicans, notably Sinn Féin politicians.
There's a bit with SF councillor Gerard McGuigan, whose home was attacked by the UFF. Then it's over to the Shankill Road, where we see footage of the UDA's HQ above Frizzell's, and some history voiceover about the birth of the UDA, the UWC strike, and 1986 street protests against the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Gilmore summarises the current state of play as the UDA being Europe's biggest paramilitary organisation with 2,000 supporters and around “a hundred gunmen in a reorganised military wing”.
There's an interesting segment with Ken Kerr, who previously had served as Brigadier of the UDA's Londonderry/North Antrim Brigade, one of the organisation's weakest, before moving on to lead the UDP following the murder of John McMichael. Here he claims that hardliners took over control of the UDA. (Kerr later left the UDA/UDP, joined the Ulster Indepdencne Movement, and later was a source for Sean McPhilemy's film and book on ‘The Committee’, having also claimed to be an agent for British Army Intelligence.)
Now we get to Brian Nelson. Ex-British Army, joins the UDA, rises through the ranks, becomes main intelligence officer for the group, tasking and targeting and infamous for his dossiers on more than a thousand Republicans. There's discussion of the Gerard Slane murder, for which Nelson eventually copped a plea. Gilmore states Slane was one of 18 people murdered by the UDA whilst Nelson was informing. There's a précis of the collusion inquiry up to that point, following the brazen release by the UDA of intelligence material sourced from the RUC and Army to back up its claims that it was targeting hardened Republicans, with the appointment of Cambridgeshire Deputy Chief Constable John Stevens. The prosecutions that followed (including Nelson's own) led, posits Gilmore, to a reorganisation within the UDA to a more cellular structure around its military activities, and “a more deadly and determined leadership emerged”. Alex Kerr claims that Stevens' investigations alerted the UDA to informers in its midst, and facilitated a tightening up of security.
Feeney claims that the UDA has learnt lessons from PIRA's operational protocols, to the point of being forensically aware. “Now they go out to commit murder wearing surgical gloves, with ordinary gloves over them, with elastic bands around their cuffs, with ear plugs and nose plugs and overalls,” he says.
Next up: rundown of the Adrian Guelke affair - a South African-born academic in Belfast, set up for assassination by the UDA as “an IRA arms dealer” by South African intelligence, who in turn were supplying the UDA with guns in exchange for British military secrets stolen from the Province's factories and shipyards. The three-way UDA-UVF-Ulster Resistance arms procurement operation is covered.
Where's the money come from? Extortion, protection rackets, ‘subscriptions’, drinking clubs.
We see footage of UDP chairman Ray Smallwood lecturing UYM kids at Frizzell's on John McMichaels' ideas. Footage from some kind of schoolkid-led peace protest. Gilmore notes mood for banning UDA. Alex Kerr says it wouldn't bother him if the UDA was banned. (The UDA was eventually proscribed in August.)
Interviewees include:
- Det Insp Tom Long (Garda Siochana)
- Amanda Fullerton (daughter of murder victim Eddie Fullerton)
- Dr Brian Feeney (SDLP councillor, Belfast)
- Michael Mates MP (Conservative Northern Ireland Minister)
- Gerard McGuigan (Sinn Féin councillor, Belfast)
- Ken Kerr (former UDA Brigadier)
- Teresa Slane (widow of Gerard Slane)
- Adrian Guelke (shot by UFF/UDA)
"This Week" The Very British Terrorists (TV Episode 1992) - IMDb
Eddie Fullerton - Wikipedia
Joe English (loyalist) - Wikipedia
Alex Kerr (loyalist) - Wikipedia
Ken Kerr - Wikipedia
Ulster Resistance – Unapologetic British Terrorism In Ireland
The underbelly of a city of assassins
Loyalist Murder Weapon Found at IWM
Adrian Guelke - Wikipedia
Brian Nelson (Northern Irish loyalist) - Wikipedia
Stevens Inquiries - Wikipedia
petee
no gods, no malarkey
hot air baboon
Well-Known Member
well to the extent he ever did he went through quite a few elocution factories to get to where he got - grammar school, Cambridge & army commission - you wouldn't come out the other end sounding like Ozzy Osbourne tbf
these are a gold mine of old docos btw - 4 vols - must be a few NI ones I'dve thought
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
Interesting US made one here from 1980. Features an interview with the late Daithi OConaill , a determined opponent of Adams for many years . I had my first proper kiss behind that bus shelter the soldiers are running past about a year after that doc was made . It was with a girl . And she put her tongue in my mouth too
Had to chuckle at the clipped tones of the rupert insisting the locals were British ..interspersed with footage of surly locals looking on and a soldier saying nobody even speaks to them .
Last edited:
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Superb - many thanks
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Insight, ‘Michael Stone: Portrait Of A Killer’, UTV, October 2000.
A runner up in the Regional Current Affairs category at the 2000 RTS Awards (pipped by Spotlight's ‘Life And Death Of An IRA Quartermaster’ - see above), this features the first television interview with Loyalist gunman Michael Stone, who had a few months earlier been released from the Maze under the terms of the GFA. Stone was the maverick Loyalist who took the fight to the enemy with his attack on mourners at Milltown Cemetery in 1987, killing three and injuring (depending on the source( between thirty and sixty. He had previously murdered three Catholics.
Anyway, here reporter Trevor Birney almost immediately skewers the mythology around Stone - that he was some kind of single-minded Protestant übermensch. First goes into the Milltown attack in some detail, then works back through the murders of Paddy Brady, Kevin McPolin and Dermot Hackett. Then there's a summary of Stone's involvement in Loyalism, from his days running a teenage gang, through to his being talent-spotted by Tommy Herron of the UDA. Doesn't go into his purported involvement in the RHC, UVF or Tara, though. Oh, and there's an epilogue about his interest in art, borne of thirteen years in prison.
Interviewees include:
INSIGHT - PORTRAIT OF A KILLER - MICHAEL STONE
CAIN: Media: Guide to Web Sites Containing Transcripts of Television Programmes
Michael Stone (loyalist) - Wikipedia
Michael Stone – Loyalist Hero or Psychopath? (Documentary)
A runner up in the Regional Current Affairs category at the 2000 RTS Awards (pipped by Spotlight's ‘Life And Death Of An IRA Quartermaster’ - see above), this features the first television interview with Loyalist gunman Michael Stone, who had a few months earlier been released from the Maze under the terms of the GFA. Stone was the maverick Loyalist who took the fight to the enemy with his attack on mourners at Milltown Cemetery in 1987, killing three and injuring (depending on the source( between thirty and sixty. He had previously murdered three Catholics.
Anyway, here reporter Trevor Birney almost immediately skewers the mythology around Stone - that he was some kind of single-minded Protestant übermensch. First goes into the Milltown attack in some detail, then works back through the murders of Paddy Brady, Kevin McPolin and Dermot Hackett. Then there's a summary of Stone's involvement in Loyalism, from his days running a teenage gang, through to his being talent-spotted by Tommy Herron of the UDA. Doesn't go into his purported involvement in the RHC, UVF or Tara, though. Oh, and there's an epilogue about his interest in art, borne of thirteen years in prison.
Interviewees include:
- Michael Stone
- Frankie Gallagher (Gae Lairn Centre)
- Danny Morrison (former Publicity Director, Sinn Féin)
- Gary McMichael (Leader, UDP)
- Revd John Dunlop (former Presbyterian Moderator)
- Mark Thompson (Relatives for Justice)
INSIGHT - PORTRAIT OF A KILLER - MICHAEL STONE
CAIN: Media: Guide to Web Sites Containing Transcripts of Television Programmes
Michael Stone (loyalist) - Wikipedia
Michael Stone – Loyalist Hero or Psychopath? (Documentary)
hot air baboon
Well-Known Member
Profile - University of Huddersfield
looks like Stephen Dorril's long awaited new work is finally going to see the light of day
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Counterpoint, ‘Unlocking The Maze’, UTV, 1993.
Reporter Chris Moore looks at the mass break out from the Maze prison, in which thirty-eight PIRA prisoners were able to escape (albeit very briefly for some of them). Three prison officers were stabbed, with one dying, and a further four (or two, depending on the source) were shot and wounded. At the time of the programme's broadcast, twelve escapees remained at large.
Interesting whistlestop tour through the events of the escape and its aftermath.
Interviewees include:
"Insight" Unlocking the Maze (TV Episode 1993) - IMDb
Maze Prison escape - Wikipedia
Brendan McFarlane - Wikipedia
Bobby Storey - Wikipedia
Gerry Kelly - Wikipedia
IRA letters: Despite the denials, at the heart of this remains a grubby, secret deal - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
Nicholas Scott - Wikipedia
James Hennessy - Wikipedia
The Fugitive / In 1983 accused murderer Jimmy Smyth escaped from prison in Ireland. Later he fled to San Francisco where he lived underground for eight years before he was re-captured. Finally free, Smyth talks about creating a new life for himself and th
IRA suspect released on bail by US judge
IRA extradition case will test Clinton's nerve
Mr. James Smyth (Extradition) (Hansard, 17 December 1993)
Reporter Chris Moore looks at the mass break out from the Maze prison, in which thirty-eight PIRA prisoners were able to escape (albeit very briefly for some of them). Three prison officers were stabbed, with one dying, and a further four (or two, depending on the source) were shot and wounded. At the time of the programme's broadcast, twelve escapees remained at large.
Interesting whistlestop tour through the events of the escape and its aftermath.
Interviewees include:
- Sir James Hennessy (former Chief Inspector of Prisons)
- Nicholas Scott MP (former Stormont Prisons Minister)
- Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane (PIRA prisoner, escapee, co-planner)
- Bobby Storey(PIRA prisoner, escapee, co-planner)
- Kevin Barry Artt (PIRA prisoner, escapee, one of ‘H-Block 3/4’)
- John Hall (Prison Officers' Association)
- Gerry Kelly(PIRA prisoner, escapee, co-planner)
- Tony Mastrogiorgio (Irish American supporter of ‘H-Block 3/4’)
- Karen Snell (Jim Smyth's American lawyer)
- Jim Smyth (PIRA prisoner, escapee, one of ‘H-Block 3/4’)
- Special Agent Rick Smith (FBI)
- Mark Zanides (US Federal Attorney)
- Dermot Finucane (PIRA prisoner, escapee)
- Anonymous escapee (identity hidden)
"Insight" Unlocking the Maze (TV Episode 1993) - IMDb
Maze Prison escape - Wikipedia
Brendan McFarlane - Wikipedia
Bobby Storey - Wikipedia
Gerry Kelly - Wikipedia
IRA letters: Despite the denials, at the heart of this remains a grubby, secret deal - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
Nicholas Scott - Wikipedia
James Hennessy - Wikipedia
The Fugitive / In 1983 accused murderer Jimmy Smyth escaped from prison in Ireland. Later he fled to San Francisco where he lived underground for eight years before he was re-captured. Finally free, Smyth talks about creating a new life for himself and th
IRA suspect released on bail by US judge
IRA extradition case will test Clinton's nerve
Mr. James Smyth (Extradition) (Hansard, 17 December 1993)
petee
no gods, no malarkey
i saw this last night in a theater
Elephant (1989 film) - Wikipedia
i read afterwards that most or all of the scenes were taken from police files. this was impotant for me to read, as about halfway through i was no longer shocked because it's a piece of filmaking austere to the point of elegance. I'll be watching it again now, as it's on youtube.
Elephant (1989 film) - Wikipedia
i read afterwards that most or all of the scenes were taken from police files. this was impotant for me to read, as about halfway through i was no longer shocked because it's a piece of filmaking austere to the point of elegance. I'll be watching it again now, as it's on youtube.
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N_igma
Epistemic nuisance
Documentary here on the Loughinisland massacre 1994. 6 innocent men gunned down in a pub watching Ireland play at the World Cup.
Officers promised one of the victims’ wives that they would leave ‘no stone unturned’ in the search for the perpetrators.
Nearly 25 years on and the family are still seeking justice in a case that goes right to the heart of police collusion during the troubles.
Officers promised one of the victims’ wives that they would leave ‘no stone unturned’ in the search for the perpetrators.
Nearly 25 years on and the family are still seeking justice in a case that goes right to the heart of police collusion during the troubles.
petee
no gods, no malarkey
ed moloney just posted about this
‘No Stone Unturned’ – The Lawyers Speak Out To Irish-America, Blame PSNI For Arrests
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
I am deeply surprised that I didn't drop the obligatory plug for this post:
The elephant in your living room…
I’ve been watching Alan Clarke films lately, as I’ve managed to grab hold of some of his TV work which isn’t so widely available. I’m sure many of us know him best from thin…
bristle.wordpress.com
This follow up includes a video interview with AFN Clarke, the ex-squaddie whose memoir was the basis for Contact:
On Alan Clarke (revisited)…
Ages back I wrote about director Alan Clarke and some of his films. Recently I found a couple of interesting videos about his work – one featuring an interview with former soldier AFN Clarke,…
bristle.wordpress.com
petee
no gods, no malarkey
I am deeply surprised that I didn't drop the obligatory plug for this post:
The elephant in your living room…
I’ve been watching Alan Clarke films lately, as I’ve managed to grab hold of some of his TV work which isn’t so widely available. I’m sure many of us know him best from thin…
This follow up includes a video interview with AFN Clarke, the ex-squaddie whose memoir was the basis for Contact:
On Alan Clarke (revisited)…
Ages back I wrote about director Alan Clarke and some of his films. Recently I found a couple of interesting videos about his work – one featuring an interview with former soldier AFN Clarke,…
thanks for the tip about Contact, that looks worthwhile.
I can't at all remember now seeing Elephant in a theater.
I've also seen Christine in the meantime.
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petee
no gods, no malarkey
Superb - many thanks
the Broken Elbow link is dead but it seems to be on the youtube
