How Did The Dublin Govt Rate The Loyalist Threat On The Eve Of The Hillsborough Deal?

5 responses to “How Did The Dublin Govt Rate The Loyalist Threat On The Eve Of The Hillsborough Deal?”

1. Terrytonic (@terrytonic) | February 6, 2021 at 2:05 pm | Reply

   Considering only two years after this document was published that loyalist paramilitary killings began to increase it would appear to be rather modest review of their capabilities.

   Believing that both the UDA and UVF could not mount campaigns ‘because there were infiltrated by the police’, Would it be cynical to say that this was the very reason they could mount campaigns?

   John McMichael is generally regarded as not being very bright. Is this the case Ed? Any interviews I can recall with him he seemed articulate enough.

   Did Bunter Grahman ever get is his caravan back? That has to be the funniest thing ever to appear in an intel report!!.

2. pvnevin | February 10, 2021 at 7:05 am | Reply

   The Irish bourgeois state is completely sanguine about the butchers in the Loyalist gangs. Or Counter-Gangs, according to Brigadier Kitson.
   The report dismisses with a nonchalant wave of the hand the role of the state in running these gangs.

   However, it is significant that they believe the gangs have no organic mass support in the protestant working class.

3. balaclavastreet | February 16, 2021 at 4:06 pm | Reply

   I went through this document – and a number of other Irish intelligence docs – with the man who was second-in-command of the UVF at the time.

4. balaclavastreet | February 16, 2021 at 4:12 pm | Reply

   Pressed enter too soon. He didn’t think much of the assessment, nor did I. In his opinion, Dublin was always poorly informed regarding LPM intentions. Hence, probably, their eagerness to reach out to the UVF via Hudson in the early 90s (which the 2IC was also involved with). Particularly since the UVF liked using explosives and tended to go for maximum casualties. If they were relying on the likes of those present they were unlikely to get an informed, objective picture, particularly from the likes of Frank Millar, who was related by marriage to William McGrath (of Tara) and loathed the UVF as a result.

   The 2IC’s comment on the story about John’s caravan was “That’s not true. It’s a lot of shit. That was a story in the Sunday World at the time”.

   His guess, which I agreed with, was that McKittrick was the most likely candidate for the unnamed journalist.

5. Pingback: “They told the police everything they know”? Or, what UVF leaders actually said in the Budgie Allen supergrass case | Balaclava Street

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