Churchill sometimes chose not to act on Enigma Code intel... so by the Police Ombudsman’s standards he was colluding with the Nazis

A letter from Alan Madill:
By Letters
Published 17th Feb 2022, 06:00 BST
The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London; during the war Churchill’s government sometimes allowed Nazi attacks against Allied units to take place, to prevent the enemy discovering that Enigma was crackedThe statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London; during the war Churchill’s government sometimes allowed Nazi attacks against Allied units to take place, to prevent the enemy discovering that Enigma was cracked
The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London; during the war Churchill’s government sometimes allowed Nazi attacks against Allied units to take place, to prevent the enemy discovering that Enigma was cracked

The recent Police Ombudsman’s report into the shooting at Sean Graham’s bookies on the Ormeau Road and others has used the term collusive behaviours. What does this mean in reality?

To me, this is: “I found nothing, so I’ll throw this in” – and is a wide sweeping condemnation of a very fine force of which I was very proud to be a member of during the 70s, 80s and 90s.

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This is despite the Ombudsman stating in her report that no evidence has been found to show that the police were in possession of any intelligence which, if acted on, could have prevented any of the attacks investigated.

Letter to the editorLetter to the editor
Letter to the editor

I am sorely disappointed that our Unionist politicians are like pussy cats and unable to take

on the Ombudsman with the same vigour that Sinn Fein are able to take on the establishment and get the investigations they want conducted, and by someone who does not seem to have a clue about ‘big picture’ policing during those dark days, or indeed any day.

Let us look at a couple of other events in history and to do that we will go back to World War Two.

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After the British cracked the Nazi Enigma code, Churchill ordered that information gleaned solely by this method should not be acted upon so as to protect the source – in this case Enigma.

Is this not akin to what the Ombudsman has suggested the RUC is guilty of? Imagine alleging that Sir Winston Churchill and his wartime cabinet were guilty of colluding with the Nazis because they did not act upon information in their possession.

In a similar vein, Air Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding ordered that not all the RAF fighters should go up at once to intercept the German Luftwaffe, but rather in a piecemeal way so as to keep a constant supply of RAF fighters in the sky.

Had all the RAF gone up at once they would have all had to land to re-fuel and re-arm at around the same time, making them very vulnerable to attack when they were on the ground.

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Is this not “collusive behaviour” as defined by the Ombudsman by Dowding and the RAF, as many German aircraft were able to get through and press home their attack, but the overall strategy worked to keep constant fighters in the sky.

Surely, if we take the Ombudsman’s view then just about every police force, Government, and all military services in the UK are, or have been in the past, ‘guilty’ of collusive behaviour. Hardly, I don’t think.

What a pity the Ombudsman is unable or unwilling to look at the wider picture, and has shown no understanding of how policing and intelligence gathering works at the coal face with the associated necessary prioritising of which intelligence to act upon, and what action to take.

Alan Madill, 21 years in the RUC, Co Fermanagh

More opinion:

Click here: This is no time for unionist weakness on the Irish Sea border

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Click here: The RUC did not help in the aftermath of the McGurk’s bar bomb

Click here: Ruth Dudley Edwards: Doug Beattie’s engagement policy gets a boost from Alliance

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