Ben Lowry: Republican terrorist atrocities are increasingly being partly blamed on the security forces

The claim was that police had known about the planned explosion in advance from an IRA informant, and had failed to act on it.

Ten people were killed in that massacre.

It struck me as the latest in a number of claims in which the blame for IRA killings was being subtly shifted to the security forces.

I penned what I intended to be a satirical article about this trend towards trying to blame the state for not preventing an attack, and so to imply that the authorities shared culpability with the terrorists.

“It is easier to look ahead at what could yet happen,” I wrote. “Enniskillen and La Mon and Teebane, for example. Don’t be surprised to hear coming reports of collusion or heroic informants thwarted by the security forces. Expect probes into state responsibility for what we had always naively assumed were straightforward sectarian IRA bloodbaths.”

I was trying to be blackly humorous. But I did not in fact know a deeply unfunny fact: that the RUC had already been accused of having advance warning of Teebane.

Later I learned of some claims that shadowy state figures had allowed the 1987 Poppy Day massacre to proceed.

Think also of the 1998 Omagh bomb, the worst republican atrocity of the Troubles — which is saying something, given that there were so many of them. It is in the headlines after yesterday’s court ruling that a new investigation is needed to examine claims that the security services could have stopped the republican atrocity.

But cast your mind back to the police ombudsman report, which was highly critical of the RUC handing of the Omagh investigation.

It was published 20 years ago and the police failings have been cited ever since in connection with the atrocity.

Thus for most of the last 23 years there has been a pall over the RUC’s role, and almost an implication that police and terrorists are to blame.

The ombudsman then was careful to emphasise that the bombers were in fact to blame.

A later police ombudsman similarly emphasised that the IRA was to blame for the ‘Good Samaritan’ bomb in a house in the Creggan when three friends were killed as they went to check on a neighbour.

The ombudsman made that point about IRA culpability in a report in which police were criticised for not warning residents of the possible danger.

However, the lingering sense over time was of yet another incident in which the security forces, for whatever reason, shared some blame in the outcome of an IRA attack.

It was not unreasonable for the judge yesterday to say a new Omagh investigation could look at “whether a more proactive campaign of disruption [of dissident terrorists], especially if coordinated north and south of the border”, could have prevented the bombing.

And the Omagh families cannot be faulted for their determination to get the full truth as to what happened in 1998, and what could have been done to stop it.

What I find contemptible however is some of the republican voices who emerge from the woodwork to join in these increasingly common retrospective attacks on the security forces for, in effect, not having been tougher on republicans.

In fact it is not just republicans who are hypocritical. More moderate nationalists are often as quick to blame state investigations, yet furiously resisted any efforts to give the state forces some of the powers that they need to disrupt terrorists.

This newspaper has been almost alone in criticising the shockingly slack bail and sentencing policies that have applied to republicans facing serious terror charges or convicted of such offences.

But if, for example, there is a dissident atrocity next year (let us hope not), will we in future years criticise the police for not doing enough in 2021 to thwart those terrorists? It will be unpardonable if so, given the reluctance to get tough now on republicans who plot death.

Ideally past police probe failings would be rigorously examined, yet that is hardly feasible given the number of past investigations.

But in some quarters there is a determination to blame UK state forces not only for colluding in loyalist killings, but for somehow acquiescing in republican ones too. It is a bid to dilute the fact that republicans killed 60% of Troubles dead.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

• Ben Lowry: Hot weather ought to be welcome in NI but this is extreme

Other articles by Ben Lowry below, and beneath that information on how to subscribe to the News Letter:

• Ben Lowry July 17: UK has tipped into an amnesty after a long approach to IRA that lacked bite

• Ben Lowry July 15: We should be honest as to how we have arrived at a Troubles amnesty

• Ben Lowry July 10: We will find soon if UK is for once going to criticise Ireland

• Ben Lowry July 10: I once always wanted England to lose, now I want them to win

• Ben Lowry July 3: The mild DUP response to the protocol will cause Boris little concern

• Ben Lowry July 3: The extreme heat in Canada shows why we might come to like Northern Ireland’s mild weather

• Ben Lowry June 26: Neither Dublin nor IRA have been put under any pressure on legacy

• Ben Lowry June 26: A slight sense of sadness as the days again begin to shorten

• Ben Lowry June 19: Somehow the appeasement of Sinn Fein got worse

• Ben Lowry June 12: Now above all, when unionists are winning the argument on the Protocol, is time to stand firm against it

• Ben Lowry June 5: It is clear that Edwin Poots is not taking the DUP in a remotely hardline direction

• Ben Lowry May 29: There is much confusion in unionism, so here are some suggested core pro Union principles

• Ben Lowry May 22: Instead of ‘moving on’ from IRA funeral, we still need proper answers

• Ben Lowry May 22: If Joel Keys, 19, wants to help unionism he should get a law degree

• Ben Lowry May 15: Edwin Poots and Doug Beattie will offer two distinct shades of unionism

• Ben Lowry May 8: Formal UK ideas for an amnesty are almost exactly 20 years old

• Ben Lowry May 8: Let us hope that the brilliant Eoghan Harris keeps on writing

• Ben Lowry May 1: Unionism can’t just be about managing long-term defeat

• Ben Lowry May 1: Arlene Foster was given huge opportunity by DUP after her exit helped ruin UUP

• Ben Lowry April 24: NI seems to rely increasingly on just one pollster for data on attitudes to a border poll

• Ben Lowry April 17: DUP still has to choose between managing this disaster or total rejection of it

• Ben Lowry April 10: His enduring marriage to the Queen was key to our understanding of Prince Philip

• Ben Lowry April 3: Radio grilling of UUP leader exposed folly of unionists blaming Simon Byrne for funeral

• Ben Lowry Mar 27: There should not be an Irish language act, but it is too late — the DUP has agreed one

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: We have made it through the worst of the dark, dreaded winter lockdown

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: MLAs lost control of abortion by rejecting modest law reform

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Whatever future Boris Johnson adopts for Northern Ireland seems set to lead to a crisis

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Scotland tunnel isn’t fantasy, but something kids of today might see

• Ben Lowry Mar 6: The cost of victims’ pension has ballooned without explanation as to why 


• Ben Lowry Feb 27: Unionists have fully turned against Irish Sea border because they’ve seen the scale of disaster

• Ben Lowry Feb 20: We still lack answers as to why IRA funeral got special treatment at Roselawn

• Ben Lowry Feb 13: Peter Robinson has long experience of what is and is not politically feasible

• Ben Lowry Feb 6: There is barely any unionist support for violence, despite justified anger at sea border

• Ben Lowry Jan 30: At last, clear reason for UK and unionists to stop being weak towards Ireland/EU

• Ben Lowry Jan 23: Lockdown sceptics have been undermined by crazy theories, but sensible criticisms haven’t gone away

• Ben Lowry Jan 16: The Irish Sea border was imposed because UK knew unionists would take it

• Ben Lowry in 2020: Last night unionists celebrated a move towards Irish unity

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