RUC suspected Hume of spying for Irish Government

FORMER SDLP leader John Hume was suspected by RUC Special Branch of spying for the Irish Government at the time of Bloody Sunday, it was claimed yesterday.

Mr Hume and three other senior members of the party were acting as agents for Dublin, according to a secret document which was handed over to the Saville Inquiry investigating the January 1972 killings.

The Foyle MP immediately denied the allegations: “The document just showed how out of touch the police were with the nationalist community at the time. It is incredible they would say something like this. We were elected representatives, keeping in regular touch with the Irish Government and all the parties in the Dáil in order to get what we did get, an agreed approach to the North.”

The intelligence assessment, for the period up to February 3, 1972, also claimed that Taoiseach Jack Lynch had promised funds to groups dedicated to overthrowing the Stormont Government. It claimed Mr Lynch had secretly made payments to the nationalist SDLP and Catholic Ex-Serviceman’s Association.

It also implicated Mr Hume and other leading SDLP figures, Ivan Cooper, Austin Currie and Paddy O’Hanlon in providing intelligence to the Dublin administration. It stated: “It is also worth recalling previous intelligence to the effect that Mr Lynch’s Intelligence Officers in Northern Ireland are Messrs Cooper, Currie, O’Hanlon and Hume, the latter having now publicly stated that only a United Ireland now will satisfy the minority.”

The document said that, before Bloody Sunday, there had been a hardening of attitude by the Irish Government towards the IRA, but the shootings had changed its view.

After the killing of 13 civilians in Derry, the Government recalled its ambassador from London, while in Dublin a crowd burned down the British Embassy.

The dossier said opposition to the IRA “has now been offset by official Éire Government expressions of sympathy for the victims of the Londonderry shooting coupled with the denunciation of British Army tactics on that occasion and promises of support to all those working for the overthrow of the Stormont Government. In this connection, the intention of Mr Lynch to make public funds available to any such groups is an overt expression in line with covert payments already made to SDLP and through them to the Catholic Ex-Serviceman’s Association.”

Referring to Bloody Sunday, the document said there had been reliable intelligence that the IRA had intended to use the presence of large crowds of people on the streets to attack the Army.