DUP MP Gregory Campbell asks Priti Patel to investigate Roy Greenslade’s IRA support

Mr Campbell has asked the Home Secretary to investigate Mr Greenslade’s comments that he backed the IRA while working as a journalist during the Troubles.

Writing in the British Journalism Review at the end of February, Mr Greenslade, a former Daily Mirror editor and Guardian media commentator said he was “in complete agreement about the right of the Irish people to engage in armed struggle”.

Gregory Campbell said: “We know from Roy Greenslade’s own comments that he was a supporter of the IRA. He has talked of his support for others carrying out acts of terrorism.

“He was happy to support others using “physical force” as he euphemistically calls it, but of course not to make it public at that point as it might cost him his job or impact his mortgage application.

“That private support for terrorism whilst working as a senior journalist, has provoked much media coverage and concern. His absurd claim that the IRA never intentionally hurt any civilians demonstrates wilful blindness to the reality of IRA’s bombing, abduction, murder and torture.”

Earlier this week he widow of a journalist who worked with Roy Greenslade has said she wants answers over what he knew about IRA death threats against her husband.

Kathryn Johnston said she had been left wondering if Mr Greenslade helped make her husband Liam Clarke a target. Mr Clarke was told of an IRA plot to kill him in 1988.

At the time Mr Clarke, who died in 2015 , was a senior journalist with The Sunday Times and Mr Greenslade was his line manager.

Gregory Campbell said: “Whilst working at the Sunday Times, he (Greenslade) was line manager to the late Liam Clarke at the time Mr Clarke and his family were forced to flee their home due to an IRA death threat. Mr Clarke’s widow has rightly raised the important question of whether Mr Greenslade had knowledge of this at the time.

“There have also been suggestions that whilst he was editor of the Daily Mirror in the 1990s, he was privy to highly classified government briefings. In that role he would have had some information in certain specific circumstances about some police operations in advance.

“Any such knowledge and what transpired following deserves to be properly investigated. It is important the Home Secretary does seek to establish whether Mr Greenslade was privy to sensitive information.”

The Guardian has launched a “review” into articles concerning Northern Ireland written by Mr Greenslade.

He has also resigned from his post as a journalism lecturer at City University in London.

Mr Greenslade told the Press Gazette that he “did nothing more than the scores of journalists who keep their political views to themselves”.