It's new year's eve the 31st of December 2025. outside the world is getting ready to celebrate to let go of the old and welcome the new with fireworks and songs but inside a quiet house in county Armagh the air is thick with a silence that has lasted for decades an old woman sits by the window a faded photograph in her hands it shows three smiling brothers their faces full of the mischief and promise of youth taken just before they were cut down in their own home She doesn't mark the new year. For her, time stopped in 1976, the night the Glenanne gang came calling and stole her future. That night, the state, meant to protect its citizens, let loose the wolves. This is the reality for countless families across the north of Ireland. Their grief isn't a memory, it's a living, breathing thing that sits at the dinner table with them every single day. They are haunted not just by the violence that took their loved ones, but by the gnawing emptiness of not knowing the full truth. Who gave the orders, who pulled the trigger, and who, in the halls of power, decided that their son, their daughter, their husband, or their wife was an acceptable sacrifice? The questions echo in the long, dark nights, unanswered and deliberately ignored by the very institutions that should have provided justice.
This is the legacy of state-sponsored murder. The pain is passed down through the generations, a heavy cloak worn by children and grandchildren who never even met the person they mourn. They grow up in the shadow of a crime that has never been solved because it was never meant to be. They learn the names of secret army units like the MRF and the FRU before they learn their times tables. They understand the word collusion not as a political concept, but as the reason their grandfather isn't there to tell them stories. This is a special kind of torment, to know that the state itself was involved in the murder of your family and then used its power to hide the evidence and protect the killers. So, as the world counts down to midnight, these families are not looking forward. They are looking back, trapped in a moment of horror that never ends. Their fight is not for revenge, but for something far more fundamental. The truth. They want an acknowledgement of the wrong that was done. They want the names of the guilty spoken aloud, from the foot soldiers to the men in Whitehall who signed off on the dirty war.
Their vigil is a powerful, heart breaking testament to the human spirit's refusal to be silenced. It is a demand for justice that will not fade away with the passing of another year. Make sure to hit that like and subscribe button for more content like this. The troubles didn't just happen on the streets in plain sight, they were also fought in the shadows, in a dirty war directed from the highest levels of the British establishment. The strategy was brutally simple. to create and control loyalist paramilitary groups, turning them into unofficial death squads. These groups would carry out the killings that the state couldn't officially sanction, terrorizing the nationalist community and spreading fear. This wasn't just a case of a few rogue soldiers or police officers, it was a calculated policy, developed by military strategists like General Frank Kitson, who saw the law not as a shield for the innocent, but as another weapon in the arsenal of counterinsurgency. This dark alliance began to take shape in the early 1970s.
Secretive British army units, like the Military Reaction Force and later the Special Reconnaissance Unit, were formed. Their job was not to keep the peace, but to operate outside the law. They recruited informers and agents within loyalist gangs, but they didn't just gather information, they armed them, trained them, and gave them lists of targets. They effectively gave them a license to kill. Groups like the Glenanne gang, a horrific mix of RUC police officers, UDR soldiers, and UVF terrorists, were born from this unholy union. They were responsible for over 120 murders, all while being protected by their handlers in British intelligence. The methods were designed to be deniable. The state could always claim that these were just sectarian killings, the work of lawless paramilitaries. But behind the scenes, the hand of the state was everywhere. State agents provided the weapons, sometimes sourced from as far away as South Africa. They provided the intelligence, pointing out who to kill and where to find them.
They even participated directly in the attacks, manning fake checkpoints and planting bombs. It was a strategy of pseudo-gangs, where the line between the security forces and the terrorists was deliberately blurred until it disappeared altogether. The goal was to crush dissent through sheer terror, with the state's fingerprints wiped clean. This wasn't an accident, it was policy. It was approved at the very top, with prime ministers from Edward Heath to Margaret Thatcher being briefed on these clandestine operations. During Thatcher's time in power, the collusion became even more deeply embedded. The force research unit was running agents inside loyalist groups who were responsible for dozens of murders, all with the full knowledge of their handlers. The state wasn't just turning a blind eye, it was actively directing the violence. It created a shadow state, a killing machine that operated under the protection of the Union Jack, leaving a trail of devastation that Ireland is still grappling with today.
The murder was only the first part of the crime, the second, and in many ways the more insidious part, was the cover-up. For every life taken by a state-backed death squad, a mountain of lies was built to hide the truth. This was a systematic and deliberate campaign of obstruction, designed to ensure that the killers and their handlers would never face justice. It involved every level of the state, from the local RUC constable who falsified a report, to the senior civil servant in London, who ordered files to be shredded. The goal was total impunity, to erase the state's involvement from the official record and leave the victims' families lost in a fog of confusion and deceit. One of the most common tactics was the destruction of evidence. Police files on crucial informers would mysteriously go missing. Intelligence reports that detailed the planned attacks would be buried or destroyed. In the case of the Glenanne gang, key ballistics records that linked RUC and UDR weapons to dozens of murders were lost.
This wasn't just shoddy police work, it was a coordinated effort to break the chain of evidence that led back to the state. When investigators, years later, tried to piece together what happened, they were met with empty filing cabinets and blacked out documents. The truth had been officially disappeared along with the victims. Another part of the cover-up was protecting the agents and informers who did the killing. Men like Robin the Jackal Jackson, a notorious loyalist gunman linked to as many as 50 murders, was also a prized agent for the RUC's special branch. Despite the mountain of evidence against him, he was shielded from prosecution his entire life. He was untouchable. Whenever he was arrested, a call would come from his handlers, and he would be released. He was more valuable as a killer for the state than he was behind bars. This sent a clear message, if you worked for the state, you were above the law, no matter how much blood was on your hands. This web of deceit was held together by a culture of silence and denial.
Inquests were delayed for decades, investigations were deliberately botched, focusing only on the lowest-level players while ignoring the evidence of state direction. When brave individuals like former Army intelligence officer Colin Wallace tried to expose what was happening, they were smeared, discredited, and punished. The state turned its full force on anyone who dared to pull back the curtain. The cover-up was as ruthless and as calculated as the murders themselves, creating a legacy of impunity that has poisoned the peace process and denied generations the right to truth. On a dark, lonely road in County Down on the 31st of July 1975, the music died. The Miami Show Band, one of Ireland's most popular cabaret bands, were driving home to Dublin after a gig in Banbridge. They were known as the Irish Beatles, young men whose lives were about music, not politics. Their van was flagged down at what looked like a routine British Army checkpoint, but the men in uniform were not who they seemed.
They were members of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Regiment, working together as part of the Glenanne gang. They ordered the band members to line up by the side of the road while they pretended to search the van. What happened next was an act of unimaginable evil. Two of the gang members placed a bomb in the back of the band's minibus, but it exploded prematurely, killing them instantly. In the chaos and panic that followed, the remaining gunmen opened fire on the defenceless musicians. Three members of the band, Fran O'Toole, Brian McCoy, and Tony Geraghty, were murdered in a hail of bullets. They were shot multiple times as they lay wounded on the ground. Two other members, Stephen Travers and Desman Alia, were badly injured but miraculously survived by playing dead. The plan had been for the bomb to explode later, framing the innocent band as IRA terrorists carrying explosives. The massacre sent a shockwave of horror across Ireland. These were not political figures. They were beloved entertainers who brought joy to people on both sides of the community.
The attack was designed to terrorize, to show that no one was safe. For years, the official story was that this was simply a sectarian attack by loyalist paramilitaries, but the survivors and the victims' families knew there was more to it. The sophistication of the fake checkpoint and the military precision of the operation pointed to something far more sinister. They began a long and painful fight for the truth, refusing to let the official lies stand. Decades later, the truth began to emerge, thanks to the tireless work of journalists and legal teams. It was revealed that a captain in the British Army's Special Air Service, Robert Nairac, a man linked to MI5, was directly involved in planning and executing the massacre. The weapons used were traced back to state sources. In 2021, the UK's Ministry of Defence and the Police Service of Northern Ireland paid a significant sum in compensation to the survivors and families, a tacit admission of the state's role. The Miami show band Massacre stands as one of the most chilling examples of collusion, where the state armed and directed a death squad to murder innocent artists in cold blood.
Pat Finnegan was not a man who was easily intimidated. He was a Belfast solicitor, a husband and a father of three, known for his fierce commitment to human rights law. He took on the cases that others were afraid to touch, defending people from across the community and challenging the state's abuse of power in court. He successfully challenged the government over interrogation techniques and exposed misconduct by the RUC and the British Army. His work was not about taking sides in the conflict. It was about upholding the principle that everyone, no matter who they were, deserved a fair legal defence. For this, the state decided he had to die. On the evening of the 12th of February, 1989, as Pat was having Sunday dinner with his wife and three children, two masked men from the loyalist UFF smashed their way into his home with a sledgehammer. They cornered him in the kitchen and shot him 14 times in front of his family. His wife, Geraldine, was also wounded in the attack. It was a brutal, calculated assassination designed not only to silence Pat Finucane, but to send a terrifying message to any other lawyer who dared to challenge the state's authority.
This was not a random sectarian killing. It was a state-sanctioned execution. The evidence of state collusion in Pat's murder is overwhelming and undeniable. The man who supplied the weapon was a police informer. The man who headed the Loyalist unit that carried out the attack, Brian Nelson, was a British Army agent working for the Force Research Unit, or FRU. Nelson had even provided information to his handlers about the plan to kill Finucane, but nothing was done to stop it. In fact, evidence suggests that state forces actively encouraged the targeting of the solicitor. Years earlier, a government minister, Douglas Hogg, had stated in Parliament that some solicitors in Northern Ireland were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA, a comment seen as giving a green light for such an attack. The fight for justice for Pat Finucane has become a global symbol of the struggle for truth about British state collusion. For over 30 years, his family has campaigned tirelessly for a full, independent public inquiry.
In 2012, a review by Sir Desmond de Silva confirmed that state employees had actively facilitated the murder and that successive governments had covered it up. The UK Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that past investigations had failed to meet human rights standards. Yet, to this day, the British government refuses to hold the public inquiry the family was promised. The refusal to grant one speaks volumes, a clear sign that the state still has secrets it is desperate to keep buried. The architects of Britain's dirty war in Ireland understood that bullets alone were not enough. To truly succeed, they needed to control the legal system itself. They had to create a framework of impunity that would protect their soldiers, their police officers, and their agents from any meaningful accountability. General Frank Kitson, a key British military theorist, openly wrote about using the law as a weapon. This meant twisting the legal process, creating special powers, and manipulating the courts to serve the interests of the state's counterinsurgency strategy, rather than the interests of justice.
This cynical approach ensured that those who killed for the state would never have to answer for their crimes. One of the key tools was the use of special non-jury diploc courts. Introduced in the 1970s, these courts removed the right to a trial by jury for certain scheduled offenses. The official reason was to prevent jury intimidation, but the real effect was to put justice in the hands of a single judge who was often more sympathetic to the state's narrative. This made it much harder to challenge the evidence presented by the police or the army. At the same time, inquests into state killings were systematically delayed, sometimes for decades, and were prevented from returning verdicts of unlawful killing. They became a tool for managing information, not for finding the truth. Furthermore, the state created a system to protect its agents and informers. These individuals, often deeply embedded in paramilitary groups and responsible for horrendous crimes, were given a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Their handlers in the RUC Special Branch or Army Intelligence would ensure that evidence against them was suppressed or that charges were dropped. This protection racket went all the way to the top. When former RUC special branch head Raymond White was reportedly asked about the handling of agents, he was told by Margaret Thatcher's office to carry on, but don't get caught. The law was not a restraint. It was a convenience. In recent years, this policy of impunity has taken a new form, amnesty legislation. The British government's proposed legacy bill aims to shut down all Troubles Era investigations, inquests, and civil actions. It would effectively grant a blanket amnesty for all killings, including those carried out by state forces and their agents. This move has been condemned by every political party in Ireland, North and South, as well as by international human rights groups. It is seen, for what it is, the final act in a long and sordid history of state cover-up, a desperate attempt to lock the door on the truth forever and ensure that the guilty men of the dirty war die peacefully in their beds.
The fight for truth about state collusion has not just been a battle in the courtroom. It has been a political war against a wall of official denial. For decades, successive British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have adopted a consistent strategy. Deny, delay, and deflect. They have treated the families of victims not as citizens deserving of answers, but as a political problem to be managed. When confronted with irrefutable evidence of collusion, their response has been to commission-limited, toothless reviews instead of the full independent public inquiries that are so desperately needed. It is a cynical game played with people's lives and their right to justice. The case of Pat Finucane is the most glaring example of this political stonewalling. Despite a promise made at the Weston Park talks in 2001, and despite rulings from the UK's own Supreme Court, the government has repeatedly refused to hold a public inquiry into his murder. They commissioned the Da Silva Review instead, which confirmed state involvement but was not a full inquiry with the power to compel witnesses and evidence.
This pattern is repeated over and over. They offer apologies for failings but refuse to admit the underlying policy of collusion. It is an attempt to appear accountable, while ensuring that true accountability never happens. The Irish government and international bodies have often added their voices to the calls for justice, but the British state has proven remarkably resistant to pressure. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974, which killed 33 people, in the single greatest loss of life in the Troubles, are a case in point. A 2006 Irish parliamentary inquiry found strong evidence of collusion involving the Glenanne gang, yet the British government has consistently refused to release key files related to the attacks. This refusal to cooperate with a neighbouring state on a matter of such gravity shows the lengths to which they will go to protect their secrets. This political obstruction is not just about hiding the crimes of the past. It is about protecting the reputation of the British state today.
Admitting to a state-sponsored murder campaign would shatter the official narrative of Britain as a neutral peacekeeper in the conflict. It would expose a dark truth about the nature of the state and its willingness to use terror to achieve its political aims. And so, the Stonewall remains. Ministers express deep regret and offer sincere apologies, but these are empty words without action. For the families, this political theatre is just another layer of pain, another betrayal by a state that murdered their loved ones and then lied about it for 50 years. After decades of darkness and denial, small but significant cracks have finally begun to appear in the wall of state secrecy. These victories have not been handed down from on high. They have been won through the sheer, dogged determination of the victims' families and their legal teams. They have fought for every scrap of information, every declassified file, and every day in court. Each small win is a testament to their resilience and a blow against the impunity that has protected the perpetrators for so long.
The dam of lies is beginning to break, and a trickle of truth is starting to flow through. In recent years, the courts have become a key battleground. In December 2023, a Belfast court awarded substantial compensation to the families of the Miami Show Band massacre victims, a judgment that finally acknowledged the deep level of state collusion in the attack. This followed an earlier settlement where the Ministry of Defence paid out millions without admitting liability. While money can never replace a life, these legal victories serve as a powerful, official recognition of the state's guilt. Similarly, the high court's order for a comprehensive overarching investigation into the crimes of the Glenn Ann gang was a landmark moment, forcing the authorities to look at the pattern of collusion as a whole, rather than as isolated incidents. Public reports have also chipped away at the official narrative. The police ombudsman's Operation Greenwich report in January 2023 was a bombshell. It officially confirmed that RUC's special branch had colluded with loyalist paramilitaries in a series of 19 murders between 1989 and 1993.
The report found that police had passed intelligence to killers, protected informers, and failed to warn victims who they knew were in imminent danger. This was not a journalist's allegation or a family's suspicion, this was an official finding from a statutory body, making the truth of collusion impossible for the state to deny. Yet, for every step forward the pain remains. For every family that gets a measure of legal vindication, there are hundreds more still waiting in the dark. The recent developments, while welcome, are bittersweet. They confirm what the families have known in their hearts for 50 years, that their loved ones were not just killed by terrorists, but by a conspiracy involving the state. This knowledge brings a cold comfort. The fight is far from over. The British government's continued push for an amnesty bill threatens to slam the door shut just as the light is beginning to get in, leaving the vast majority of families permanently without answers and without justice.
What does justice mean for a family whose world was shattered by a state-sponsored death squad half a century ago? It is not about revenge. It is not even primarily about putting old men in prison, though accountability for those who gave the orders is crucial. Real justice for the hundreds of families left behind by Britain's dirty war is about three things. Truth, acknowledgement, and legacy. It is about replacing the silence and the lies with a full public account of what was done in their name. It is about ensuring that these dark chapters of our history are never forgotten and never repeated. First and foremost, justice means truth. This requires full, independent, and properly resourced public inquiries into key cases like the murder of Pat Finucane and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. These inquiries must have the power to force the release of all government files, no matter how sensitive, and to compel witnesses, from former prime ministers to intelligence handlers, to give evidence under oath.
Only by following the chain of command all the way to the top can we understand the full extent of the policy. The piecemeal reports and limited reviews of the past are not enough. The whole unvarnished truth must be put on the public record for all to see. Second, justice means acknowledgement. It means the British state must formally and unequivocally accept responsibility for its policy of collusion. The carefully worded apologies for failings are an insult to the victims. The state must admit that it armed, directed, and protected terrorist gangs who murdered its own citizens. This official acknowledgement is vital for the families. It validates their long struggle and lifts the cloud of suspicion that the state's lies often cast over the victims themselves. It is a necessary step in healing the deep wounds that this policy has inflicted on the entire community in Ireland. Finally, justice means creating a legacy of truth for future generations. We must support the work of organizations like the Pat Finucane Centre and Justice for the Forgotten who have been at the forefront of this fight.
We must demand that our political leaders, both in Ireland and abroad, continue to press for the full implementation of legacy mechanisms that are human rights compliant, not the shameful amnesty proposed by London. The story of state collusion must be taught in our schools and remembered in our public spaces. By supporting these groups and demanding the truth, we honour the victims and take a stand for a future where no government can believe it has the right to murder its own people in the shadows.
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