Adams meets Blair over NI collusion
Gerry Adams is today meeting Tony Blair at Downing Street to discuss collusion between British police and loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
The Sinn Fein leader said he wanted the prime minister to “be courageous” and acknowledge the level of collusion between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and loyalist groups during the Troubles.
The meeting comes ten days after the Northern Ireland police ombudsman published details of collusion between members of the RUC Special Branch and their informers in an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) unit in north Belfast.
Over the course of the 1990s, Special Branch officers protected their informers from investigations into at least ten murders in the province, by destroying evidence, conducting mock interviews or obstructing inquiries.
It also comes at a sensitive time in the efforts to restore power-sharing to the Northern Ireland assembly at Stormont. At midnight on Tuesday the interim assembly was dissolved to make way for new elections – and hopefully a new executive – in March.
Ahead of today’s meeting, Mr Adams said the ombudsman report had simply shone a “little light” on the level of police collusion in the province, and said he hoped Mr Blair would now acknowledge what had happened and deal with the families affected.
“Collusion is part of what the British state employed, part of the tactics that were employed to keep the union and as bad as collusion is, it’s only symptomatic of a bigger problem which is British involvement in Irish affairs,” he told reporters.
He added: “We would like to think that before Mr Blair leaves this office that he will be courageous about that, that he will feel the hand of history on his shoulder and will admit to precisely what happened and what was done in the name of the people of this island of Britain.”
Nuala O’Loan’s report last week said prosecutions of those responsible for protecting loyalist paramilitary informers were unlikely, as most of the evidence had been destroyed. However, Mr Blair has promised those responsible would be “dealt with”.
Questioned about the issue in the House of Commons yesterday, the prime minister said that of course any form of collusion or improper activity by the police or security services was “completely wrong” and “deeply to be regretted”.
But he said: “It is, however, important to emphasise – as I think the report itself did – that this concerns a minority of people, who obviously should not have been engaged in the activities that they were engaged in.
“But that should not take away from most of the work that officers did, in both the police and the security service, which was of enormous benefit to the local community.
“So it is important, while we deal with the wrongdoing, not to have a completely unbalanced picture of how the police and MI5 operated in Northern Ireland.”
