Truly sad affair. State complicity all in the name of ‘saving face’ is low. Just as the soldiers of the ime have been proven to have displayed disproportionate violence, so the same process should be carried ou for those on the side of the IRA. Hopefully, the families involved can experience some closure now.

I was broadly sympathetic to the republican cause too, though I had family on both sides of the divide. I had no sympathy *at all* for the way the ‘struggle’ was conducted by Republicans, Unionists or the British State.

Chesney was a terrorist and should have been prosecuted whatever the risk of ‘reprisals’ against the Catholic church: those reprisals would be the responsibility of *those who carried them out*, charged atmosphere or not, not those who made Cheaney’s actions public. You might as well cover up pedophilia among the priesthood, or the involvement of Islamist clerics in more recent terrorism.

Have you chosen the right tree up which to bark?

What the Police Ombudsman’s report describes (see especially paragraphs 4.23 to 4.30) is that, on 30 Nov 1972, “Police Officer 3″ wrote directly to the Northern Ireland Office. Based on that, bells seem to have rung at the NIO. William Whitelaw, Heath’s Secretary of State, had a pre-arranged meeting with Cardinal Conway (5 Dec 1972). Note the convenient and expeditious timing there. Whitelaw must have been — shall we say — forceful. Conway responded that Chesney as “a very bad man”, the Cardinal adding that he would seek to contrive Chesney’s transfer to Donegal. There was a further meeting between Whitelaw and Conway on or before 4 Feb 1973, which seems to refer to Chesney having been up before his diocesan bishop, Farren of Derry.

I read all that to mean that a Minister of the Crown was complicit in, if not the instigator of the whisking of a prima facie terrorist out of the British jurisdiction. Certainly the RUC Chief Constable was less than happy about a transfer to Donegal (in the end to Convoy, at most 20 minutes down the road from Strabane): he initialed a comment on the report: I would prefer a transfer to Tipperary [paragraph 4.25].

That was, north and south of the Border, a febrile time. Jack Lynch’s government was still pulling through the Arms Crisis. Whatever the court’s verdict then, evidence since attests of Blaney’s and Haughey’s deep involvement: Lynch’s rôle, sitting on his hands as long as possible, remains questionable. The Fianna Fáil Balubas (the grassroots) were rampant for intervention in the North. Patrick Hillery, Jack Lynch’s loyal (and decent) Minister of External Affairs, who had negotiated Ireland’s entry into the EEC, was one of the few cooler heads around. It would be interesting to know whether Hillery, at least, was discreetly made aware of the bundle of fun Whitelaw, Conway and Bishop Farren of Derry were translating into the other jurisdiction.

I have enough Irish friends to understand that my knowledge of Irish history and politics is insufficient for me to interject in their debates. I may occasionally chip in when the topic is reconciliation or making peace happen.

On a tangent, WikiLeaks has been in the news recently; WikiLeaks publishes stuff that companies and governments wish to keep secret. Should WikiLeaks acquire the papers surrounding the Claudy bomb inquiry, they would probably publish them.

In 2010, that makes sense. What happened 28 years ago is largely history, except for family and friends of the dead and injured. Some content would need to be redacted to protect informers, but 99% should be available.

In 1972, publication of this information would have been irresponsible. It would have undermined civil politics.

It’s life! it’s what governments do, and the dead have to understand they have died or have been injured in the name of government.

Hitler was nasty man ain’t we lucky to have so many clean politicians.

Was he a terrorist? Maybe he was, but maybe not. The police said the Guildford Four were terrorists, but they weren’t. He probably was, but who knows?

He was innocent until proven guilty, and unfortunately/scandalously he was never charged. And of course, since he’s dead, he can’t defend himself now.

But please, at least use the weasel word “alleged” rather than just accept a policeman’s word that someone was a mass murderer.

“Surely full disclosure in the name of reconciliation is the least the survivors have a right to expect”

Absolutely, which is why you’ve all been asking Chris Mullin to cough up the names of the Birmingham pub bombers for the last 30 years – haven’t you ?

Does anyone not wonder what the evidence for the Ombudsmans report into Claudy comprised? It is conveniently referred to in the report as consisting of a “compelling intelligence picture” and forgive my cynicism here but is this not the same intelligence that saw hundreds of Nationalists interned? Comments is free but facts are sacred and “intelligence” is not fact.