On 15 April 1981, Paul Whitters was shot by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) with a plastic bullet in Derry and died ten days later. One year later, on 16 April 1982, Stephen McConomy was shot by the British army in the head with a plastic bullet in Derry and died three days later. Then on 14 April 1994, the UDA murdered Theresa Clinton in Belfast.
Whitters and McConomy were 15 and 11 years old respectively. And justice campaigners claim the UDA colluded with the RUC in Theresa Clinton’s murder. These cases still remain unresolved.
It’s now time for the British establishment to come clean about its role in Ireland. And it finally needs to admit that it was never an “honest broker”.
Collusion
Justice campaigners claim the RUC gave “free passage” to the UDA the day it murdered Clinton. But reports of collusion are not new. A human rights group in Ireland has documented several instances of collusion between the UDA and British security forces during the conflict in Ireland.
Clinton’s husband, Jim, was a Sinn Féin election candidate. Clinton’s lawyer believes he was the loyalist terror group’s real target that day. His lawyer says Sir Desmond de Silva’s report into British state involvement in the murder of human rights solicitor Patrick Finucane provides;
official confirmation for the first time that the security forces knew Jim Clinton was targeted
As The Canary reported, de Silva’s report showed “shocking levels of state collusion”.
Ceasefires and peace talks
The UDA murdered Clinton just days after a three-day IRA ceasefire ended. And just months before an 18-month IRA ceasefire began. Loyalist terrorists, including the UDA, followed with their ceasefire six weeks later. But that came too late for Theresa Clinton.
Prior to these ceasefires, Margaret Thatcher insisted she would never talk to terrorists. Thatcher insisted the IRA was both criminal and terrorist. But she approved talks with the IRA in 1990. Nor was this the first time the British spoke with republicans. MI6 met the republican leadership in the 1970s. So the British establishment’s stance on so-called ‘terrorists’ isn’t plausible.
Come clean
As the IRA talked peace with the British establishment in the 1990s, loyalists almost doubled their killing rate. Weapons from apartheid South Africa assisted them in this terror campaign.
And while the IRA was responsible for terrorist atrocities, so too was the British establishment. Collusion with loyalist terrorists and murdering innocent men, women and children is terrorism.
It’s time for the British establishment to release the documents on Whitters, McConomy and Clinton and to come clean about their murders and collusion with terrorists in Ireland.
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