Watch Henry McDonald’s interview below about how the PSNI’s move against the Boston College archive in 2011 sabotaged a similar project he was organising dealing with various security forces’ handling of paramilitary informers and then read what I had to say about the consequences of the PSNI’s move to kill off the Boston initiative. Interesting, yes?:
The Broken Elbow 
So it worked as intended.
What’s interesting is that you (Ed) have said on this blog that there were plans to hold an archive for the security forces (RUC, British Army etc) once the paramilitaries one was complete. I wonder if McDonald knew about this and wanted to beat BC to it, or whether this would have been in conjunction with the intended one at BC.
It all depends when they started work on the project, before or after the BC project became known about….
I can answer that question fairly bluntly – our decision to seek out a parallel archive if you like to the Belfast Project came AFTER the Boston College tapes were known about. We simply felt there would have been an interesting contrast between the voices from the grave of ex IRA and UVF activists to those of the security forces both in NI and the ROI, and that our project would compliment the pioneering work of Ed and his team. But to repeat what I said at the West Belfast Festival within hours of the news breaking that the PSNI had won its battle to seize the Boston College/Belfast Project material our fledgling project collapsed with potential participants telling our researcher in the north that they would no be taking part now under any circumstances. So yes in effect the PSNI action did work in terms of a wider chill factor among people speaking out for the benefit of history and truth.
Thanks for clearing that up, Henry. Another genuinely fascinating way to study our history gone forever.