Collusion has a long history

SURELY your columnist Steven King (Irish Examiner, January 31) does not expect us to believe there was no collusion between British state forces and loyalist paramilitaries during the Troubles in the North.

His criticism of Nuala O’Loan’s collusion report bordered on the ridiculous.

It is widely accepted that collusion between British forces and loyalist paramilitaries was encouraged and facilitated in the North since partition. It is as simple as that.

Perhaps Mr King might like to answer the following questions:

1. What is his understanding of the Force Research Unit (FRU) established within the British army’s intelligence corps in 1982? It is well known the role of the FRU was to obtain intelligence from terrorist organisations in the North by recruiting and running agents and informers.

2. Was Brian Nelson recruited by the FRU?

3. If there was no collusion, perhaps Mr King can say why Brigadier Frank Kitson was sent to Belfast in 1970?

While serving with the British army in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus during the 1950s and the ’60s, Kitson applied his belief that “everything done by a government and its agents in combating insurgency must be legitimate. But that does not mean the government must work within exactly the same set of laws during an emergency as existed beforehand. The law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, in which it becomes little more than propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public.” (From Kitson’s ‘Low Intensity Operations’ which became the textbook for how the British army operated in the North.

4. Can Steven King explain how Brian Nelson succeeded in organising the importation of vast amounts of arms into Northern Ireland from South Africa, if there was no collusion?

Nuala O’Loan’s report was just the tip of the iceberg.

Liam Burke

Dunmore

Ballyfoyle

Co Kilkenny