According to the article ‘Reg’s Working Class Party‘, Roy Greenslade was still a member of the CPB (ML), the Maoist Communist Party in Britain, when he went to Sussex University in 1974. The relevant section reads:
….the Party was not without its share of intellectual talent whose names entered the public arena: ‘Bill’ William Franklin Ash, the writer, married to Ranjana Sidhanta Ash, freelance lecturer and writer of South Asian literatures, Roy Greenslade , an experienced tabloid news sub before going to Sussex University in 1974, and its share of teachers, Dorothy Birch and lecturers, Fawi Ibrahim at Willesden College of Technology, and the former LSE lecturer Nick Bateson.
We also know from his own writing that he was converted to the cause of physical force Irish republicanism, i.e. support for the Provisional IRA, in 1972 when he was in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday, some two years before he went to Sussex University. So, presumably, he was a Maoist at the time. Also presumably, the IRA in Derry, then as later with Martin McGuinness as one of its leaders, regarded him then as a fraternal comrade at least.
And also presumably, the Provos in Derry continued to regard him in that favorable, dare one say comradely light in the intervening years, even when he became a full-time journalist, perhaps going so as far as opening doors to him closed to others – and granting him access to figures like Pat Doherty, one time Army Council member, IRA intelligence chief and the man whose job it was to locate venues in Co Donegal for high level IRA meetings, including the 1997 Army Convention, who became his friend.
That would make Roy Greenslade a very well connected man. Interesting, yes?
The Broken Elbow 
Am I the only one thinking this ,,,?
Nope