Speech by Ross Hussey MLA, delivered in Monday’s Assembly debate regarding collusion. 

“Today we see Sinn Féin members attempting to cite the BBC and media investigations as evidence of widespread collusion between police and loyalist paramilitaries. They stoically refuse to recognise the role of agents and informers within republican ranks who may have survived the Troubles and may now be in key positions. Stevens, Stalker, Sampson etc, plus de Silva, Nelson and Ballast indicate that something was indeed going on between elements of the security services and some loyalist gangs. Given that the state faced a mass insurrection in the early 1970s and the fact that the use of informants and undercover agents has been a tactic used for hundreds of years, it is not surprising that the state had agents in loyalist and republican groupings.

“Let us look at the context of life in Northern Ireland. During the Troubles, we endured 3,500 deaths, 47,000 injured, 16,000 bombings and 36,000 shooting incidents. The RUC was stretched to breaking point, and it is entirely unfair to judge actions at that time from the relative comfort and safety of the present day. The state did what it did to end violence. It sought to penetrate terror gangs to gather intelligence and thwart their ability to mount operations and take lives. Agents and informers were a necessary part of that, just as they were a necessary part of the FBI's efforts to bring down organised crime in the USA. Terror groups, in contrast, had hundreds of members who, on a daily basis, set out to try to kill people.

“The existence of files created and held by the state with regard to the police, army and intelligence services means that the media and formal inquiries can gain access to them. The IRA, INLA, UVF and UDA, being illegal terrorist gangs, did not keep records or files — or, as far as we know, they did not. This very fact means that any attempt to investigate the past will inevitably be skewed to investigate the actions of the state, the police and the army. This completely misses the point that in the early 1970s thousands of terrorists spent their waking hours seeking to murder policemen, soldiers and civilians. The focus needs to be on the terrorist godfathers who sent young men and women out on murder missions, rather than on the police and security services who were doing their damnedest to stop them.

“However, just imagine for a moment that there was a conspiracy. If the might of the British state, ranging from the intelligence services such as MI5, acting alongside the SAS and many regiments comprising tens of thousands of well-trained and well-armed troops, backed up by the RUC, including the famous Special Branch, was indeed able to call on and direct thousands of loyalist paramilitaries to take on the IRA, some questions arise. The first is: how were they so ineffective? How did this vast array of forces managed to miss virtually everyone in the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership? How did so many senior figures manage to avoid jail or death? Some of them, it must be remembered, led curiously charmed lives for over 30 years. Surely the SAS, MI5 and Special Branch would have had ample opportunity to remove key players from the pitch.

“If they could not arrest and jail them, what about the allegations of shoot to kill by the security forces? Surely, if collusion was in operation, loyalist terrorists could have been directed to murder high-value targets in the IRA and the wider republican movement, rather than killing so many innocent people when there was no strategic military or political value. Why would the state risk so much for so little reward?

“One answer may be that there was no great conspiracy and that loyalist murder gangs were acting under their own direction when they targeted low-level republicans and innocent Catholics. Another explanation may be rather unpalatable to republicans: the IRA and Sinn Féin contained a large number of informants and state agents, and, as a result, the security services were protecting their men and women at the heart of the republican terror machine by directing loyalist killer gangs away from highly placed and valued British agents in the IRA and Sinn Féin. Certainly, if the state was able to direct and facilitate the UDA and the UVF, you would have expected loyalist gunmen in the 1970s and 1980s to manage to take out IRA and Sinn Féin leaders and bring terror to their door, rather than wasting time and effort killing innocent nationalists or the odd IRA foot soldier. The success in prosecuting loyalist terrorists also suggests that they were not acting in concert with the state. After all, if collusion with loyalists was widespread, surely the state would not have wanted their agents removed from the stage.

“Would Sinn Féin recognise the truth? Sinn Féin has proven in the past that it is selective in what it believes. What about collusion between the Republic of Ireland and republicans: the murder of the RUC officers, Mr Breen and Mr Buchanan; the murder of Lord Justice Gibson; the arms trial in the 1970s; the foundation of the Provisionals; the blind eye turned to on-the-runs, training camps etc in the Republic's jurisdiction; and the border campaign, particularly in my constituency of West Tyrone and the Castlederg area, and the relative ease with which the IRA could come and go across the entire region?

“And what of the collusion between the IRA and the civilians who identified part-time members of the security forces? Ms Ruane made a comment about truth for all victims: that is what we want. I would love there to be truth for all victims, but as long as people on your side of the House remain silent, Ms Ruane, we will not get it.”