Declassified files: ex-SF man expressed concern for Protestants

Files declassified at the Public Record Office in Belfast show that in March 1991 civil servants travelled to Carrickmore, which they described as “not wealthy”, with “a run-down air” and an area with “high levels of unemployment and emigration”.

The impressions of the officials from the NIO’s political affairs division were conveyed to colleagues in a memo. They noted that there were “very few Protestant families” and that the area was “staunchly nationalist with a very strong Sinn Fein presence”, adding that it was “difficult territory for the security forces”.

The memo referred to Seamus Kerr, a former Sinn Fein councillor who “has now apparently severed his links with that organisation and is developing a number of business interests”.

Officials who attended a meeting of the Carrickmore Development Association, of which Mr Kerr was a member, said that “one or two of those present did say to us that the reputation of Carrickmore as a Sinn Fein/PIRA stronghold belied the reality and that most people there were simply anxious to improve the quality of their lives.

“That the possibility of change exists illustrated by the fact that at the meeting Seamus Kerr, the former Sinn Fein councillor, was keen on a plan to build a footpath to a group of houses inhabited by some of the few local Protestants on the grounds that it would serve to integrate the Protestant community into the town and gives them the easy access ‘which they should have had years ago’ to its facilities.”