First of all, credit where credit is due. The excellent military historian, Huw Bennett, now of Aberystwyth University, was the first person to discover this extraordinary document in the files at the Kew archives and to him should go the plaudits for bringing this important archive to light.

James Kinchin-White excavated it for thebrokenelbow.com during one of his many expeditions to Kew, and it was made available by myself to RTE for their recent documentary, ‘Collusion’, which was screened this week.

To call the Tuzo plan extraordinary seems somehow inadequate. In fact its brutality and cynicism makes perfect sense when viewed through the prism of Tuzo’s background and experience as a member of the British military elite during Britain’s painful, post-colonial retreat from world power to America’s junior military ally.

General Harry Tuzo, with escorts, circa 1972

Prior to his posting as General Officer Commanding (GoC) of British troops in Northern Ireland (where he took over from someone rejoicing in the name of Vernon Erskine-Crum, an Indian Army veteran and aide to Lord Mountbatten when he was Viceroy to India), Harry Tuzo commanded a Gurkha Brigade in Borneo during an insurgency in the late 1960’s, which the British claimed had been inspired by an Indonesian regime suspected of being under Communist influence.

Born in Bangalore, India in 1917, Tuzo was a child of the British Raj, the colonial class which ruled the sub-continent from the days of the East India Company in the late 18th century onwards. His father was a British officer in the Royal Sussex Regiment and civil engineer who also saw service in East Africa. His mother, a memsahib, was the daughter of the Raj, her father an official in the Indian civil service. As a child, Harry Tuzo was sent home to England to prepare for a life of imperial service and was schooled at Wellington College and Oriel College, Oxford.

As things turned out Tuzo reached the apex of his miltary service in the twilight of empire. Like so many of his contemporaries, Northern Ireland was to be the last hurrah of a generation whose like would never be seen again: Tuzo, Kitson, Ford, Freeland, King, Wilsey and Creasey. Such names to conjure with!

Sliding effortlessly after Oxford into a military career that was guaranteed to bring rank and honours, and, in the aftermath of World  War II, moving from one post-colonial skirmish to another, Tuzo was, in the summer of 1972, charged with devising a plan to combat and annihilate the Provisional IRA, in much the same way as his Gurkhas disposed of Indonesian rebels in Borneo, with maximum force and minimum fuss.

There are so many striking features of this episode that it is hard to know where to start, except to say that had Tuzo got his way, and had the IRA not pre-empted his scheme with its own piece of madness, Northern Ireland would almost certainly not be the place it is now; whether better or worse is a more difficult question to address.

To begin with, there is an assumption underlying the plan, which must have taken many days to prepare but which was presented to NI Secretary William Whitelaw only the day before the Lenadoon confrontation that brought the IRA’s ceasefire to a violent end; this was that the ceasefire was, in British eyes, never going to last and that the British were ready, even eager, for its end, and possibly conspiring to bring it to an end.

Whether that realisation dawned on the British after the futile meeting between the IRA’s leadership and Whitelaw at Cheyne Walk, just two days before, or that the ceasefire, dubbed ‘the Initiative’ by the British for some intriguing but unexplained reason, was never a serious proposition in their eyes, it is clear from Tuzo’s detailed and intricate proposal that the military had been anticipating a breakdown and the resumption of hostilities for some time before Lenadoon. And it is hard to read Tuzo’s plan and not think that the British military at least, were also eagerly anticipating such an outcome.

There are so many facets of the Tuzo plan worthy of discussion that it is hard to know where to begin. My inclination, however, is to let the reader absorb this document by him or herself rather than to steer them in any one direction. But a couple of features stand out.

One was that the British were prepared to kill on a massive scale. The contemplation in the Tuzo plan of using Carl Gustav recoilless rifles in built-up, heavily populated areas such as the Bogside or Creggan allows for no other conclusion, for instance – and that is before you read about the creation of free-fire zones, the suspension of Yellow Card rules and legal changes that would entirely remove criminal or civil liability for soldiers who killed during the operation.

Below, see a more modern version of the Carl Gustav in action in US army hands and imagine it in use in Derry or West Belfast:

The other striking and politically significant aspect of the Tuzo plan is his willingness to use the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), which in 1972 had started to kill Catholics just because they were Catholics, as a de facto ally in the plan to extirpate the IRA.

So we read, for instance:

The major threat from the UDA is that their militant action will lead to widespread intersectarian conflict and eventually civil war, although strenuous military action against the IRA should prevent the latter…..It will be even more necessary to acquiesce in unarmed UDA patrolling and barricading of Protestant areas. Although no interference with security forces could be tolerated, it would be as well to make the best of the situation and obtain some security benefit from UDA control of their own areas. Indeed it is arguable that Protestant areas could almost entirely be secured by a combination of UDA, Orange Volunteers and RUC. It may even be necessary to turn a blind eye to UDA arms when confined to their own areas.

Shades of 1912, sixty years on, and a hint of an ambivalence towards Loyalist violence that would characterise British security policy thereafter and which now has returned to haunt British ministers and the search for a deeper, more firmly rooted peace in Northern Ireland.

General Harry Tuzo’s extraordinary plan to defeat and extinguish the IRA was never put into operation. We don’t even know whether William Whitelaw gave it his approval – the available documents say nothing about his response.

As it happened IRA militarism rendered the Tuzo scheme unnecessary. The bombs and carnage of Bloody Friday later that July turned the Catholic middle class and the SDLP decisively against the IRA and even sapped the enthusiasm of hardline IRA supporters; Tuzo was able to launch Operation Motorman with almost no Nationalist opposition, political or military.

The no-go areas of Derry were dismantled, Republican Belfast became one huge military base and the UDA returned to what it knew best, the random killing of innocent Catholics.

But in his ambitious plan, General Harry Tuzo revealed an essential truth about British policy in Northern Ireland: the British still would not take on the Loyalists.

There are so many new reasons in this recent article in Niall O’Dowd’s Irish Central website to abhor Irish media billionaire Denis O’Brien, apart that is from the sight of O’Dowd, via his flunkie, one James O’Shea, brown-nosing another member of the 0.1 per cent.

One is the praise heaped on O’Brien’s head by one William Jefferson Clinton, former president of the United States and husband of the Democratic Party’s  likely candidate in the presidential contest of 2016, Hillary Clinton.

It is of course just by chance that Niall O’Dowd’s publications, on and off-line, are unsparing in their praise of Hillary or that Mr O’Dowd’ ambitions to be the Clintons’ ambassador to Ireland in a couple of years can only be helped by such displays of obsequiousness. (The real O’Dowd wet dream, of course, would happen if at the same time that he took tenancy of the ambassadorial lodge, one G Adams became Taoiseach, or failing that Tanaiste! Now that’s what I call a threesome!)

According to Irish Central, Clinton praised O’Brien for a plan to make cash transactions available to poor people via cell phones, calling the plan “the number one idea in changing the world”.

Leaving aside the fact that O’Brien, via his vast ownership of cell phone companies, would take a nice slice out of every call, the mind boggles at the image of starving wretches in Calcutta checking their bank balances on their mobiles before collapsing lifeless in the gutter!

But here’s the humdinger line in O’Shea’s embarrassing blow job for O’Brien:

For a man described by Clinton as changing the world more than anyone else for the betterment of the poor, recent negative press provides a dizzying contrast.

What James O’Shea neglects to tell his readers is that Clinton has another, less than altruistic reason for thinking the sun shines out of Denis O’Brien’s rear end. It was revealed by the excellent McClatchy newspaper group back in February, 2015 in a piece devoted to identifying donors to the increasing controversial Clinton Foundation:

Mohammed Al-Amoudi, a billionaire businessman who lives in Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, retired German race car driver Michael Schumacher, and Denis O’Brien, the Irish chairman of Digicel phone company, each donated between $5 million and $10 million.

So O’Shea’s line really should have read:

For a man described by Clinton as changing the world more than anyone else for the betterment of Bill Clinton, recent negative press provides a dizzying contrast.

And, according to a recent expose of the Clinton Foundation in The New York Times, when O’Brien scratches the Clintons’ back, they scratch his:

……the Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, is a multimillion-dollar supporter of the Clinton Foundation and whose parent telecommunications company benefited from grants from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

None of this, of course, appeared or will ever appear in any of Niall O’Dowd’s publications. And quite right too. How else is the man expected to end up in the Phoenix Park?!

However, the really shocking fact unveiled by Irish Central, the Aha Moment of the story of O’Brien’s clawing journey up the greasy pole, that convinced me that we had all understated the billionaire’s skills in the financial black arts, was this revelation: “……(he) studied business at Boston College.” Of course! How could I have missed that?! Everything now becomes clear.

By any chance was Jack Dunn one of his chums at BC, I wonder?

Los Angeles-based academic and writer Chris Bray – one of the few in the United States to have followed the Boston College saga from the outset – pens a few penetrating and caustic thoughts on today’s (Thursday’s) decision by Barra McGrory’s PPS to prosecute Ivor Bell for aiding and abetting in the disappearance of Jean McConville.

And he asks: aiding and abetting precisely who?

After more than a year of bumbling indecision, the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland has taken a bold stand: They are beginning to prepare to think about discussing a way to begin. Franz Kafka, call your office.

Fourteen months ago, using questionable evidence obtained from the archives at Boston College with the assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecutors in Northern Ireland filed charges against Ivor Bell, who is now 77 years-old. Bell is reputed to have been chief of staff to Gerry Adams during the period when the latter was allegedly the Belfast commander of the Provisional IRA, and he was charged in the 1972 kidnapping and murder of the Belfast widow Jean McConville. But he wasn’t charged with that kidnapping and murder; rather, he was charged with having aided and abetted in that crime.

Today, forty-three years after McConville was killed, no one has been charged with killing her, or even publicly identified as a suspect; Ivor Bell is accused of aiding a crime committed by ghosts. News stories have alleged that Adams ordered her killing, but even those claims lack the most basic facts: Who took her out of her home? Who drove her to the beach where her body was found? Who killed her? In the police version of events, which must necessarily underlie an allegation of aiding and abetting, what was the name of the person who pulled the trigger? In short, if Ivor Bell aided and abetted, who did he aid and abet? Did Bell assist a self-firing gun?

After Bell was first charged last March, the PPS began a long delaying action that saw them returning to court every few weeks to ask for one continuance after another. Finally, this May, a judge in Belfast gave the prosecutors an ultimatum: Make a decision in June, or have the case thrown out of court. So they did. On Thursday morning, the PPS marched back into court to announce that they had decided to proceed with the prosecution of Ivor Bell. They return to court in six weeks.

They are not, however, returning to court in six weeks to begin to prove their case. Here’s how the Irish Times describes the next court date in its story on the most recent developments:

“Mr Bell was released on continuing bail and ordered to come back to court in six weeks when a date will be set for a preliminary inquiry to establish whether the case will proceed to trial in the Crown Court. While the PPS lawyer said six weeks was needed before prosecutors would be in a position to set a date due to extensive prepartory work required, Bell’s solicitor Peter Corrigan questioned the timeframe.”

If “extensive prepartory work” is required, what  have they been doing for the last fourteen months? Never mind that: They will now begin to prepare. In another month and a half, we’ll know if prosecutors in Belfast are able to set a date for an initial hearing that might then, at some future point, lead to an actual trial. Perhaps at the hypothetical future trial someone in Northern Ireland’s system of law enforcement will be able to whisper the name of Jean McConville’s actual supposed murderer. But perhaps not.

The murder of Jean McConville has become a can to be kicked endlessly down a road. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston must be very proud to have helped with this important effort.

So, now it is official. When the Irish media decided, almost en masse, to censor Catherine Murphy’s Dail remarks about Irish media billionaire Denis O’Brien, they had no way of knowing whether the High Court injunction at the centre of the affair claimed supremacy over Dail privilege.

This means that The Irish Times, RTE and other mainstream Irish media, not knowing if the injunction was intended to over-ride Dail privilege, decided to play it safe and crumbled in the face of O’Brien’s massive wealth.

Rather than risk irritating the great man and prompting him to launch a legal action, which a first year law student could have told them he could never win, they chose to silence an elected representative and deny their readers access to words she spoke in their parliament.

Not one significant Irish media organisation opted for the principled alternative: publish Catherine Murphy’s remarks, let O’Brien challenge the action in the courts, if he dared, and mobilise public and political opinion against the arrogance and hubris of Ireland’s 0.01%.

Reports today arising out of a belated legal action taken by RTE say that the judge at the centre of the legal controversy, Mr Justice Donald Binchy, will make public tomorrow (Wednesday) the reasons he granted O’Brien an injunction preventing RTE from broadcasting a documentary dealing with the billionaire’s acquisition of SiteServ.

None of the Irish media therefore knew what the judge had said about the scope of his injunction before they blacked Catherine Murphy’s speech.

The thirty-some years of the Northern Troubles saw the Irish media hit some low points, involving both the acquiescent acceptance of State censorship and the enthusiastic practicing of self-censorship, but the O’Brien-Murphy affair is its own, unique, sad and shameful chapter in the narrative of Irish journalism.