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Was the IRA Kingsmill massacre an act of false flag terrorism

  • 24-12-2021 6:37pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    Were the IRA really behind Kingsmill?

    Colin Wallace was a top British Intelligence Corps officer and psychological warfare specialist at the British Army's Northern Ireland headquarters. Since his resignation in 1975, he has exposed scandals involving the security forces, including state collusion with loyalists and was also the first person to bring light to the kincora boys scandal.

    In an August 1975 letter (roughly the same time as the massacre occurred) to Tony Stoughton, chief of the British Army Information Service in Northern Ireland, Wallace writes:

    There is good evidence the Dublin bombings in May last year were a reprisal for the Irish government's role in bringing about the [power sharing] Executive. According to one of Craig's people [Craig Smellie, the top MI6 officer in Northern Ireland], most of those involved – the Youngs, the Jacksons, Mulholland, Hanna, Kerr and McConnell – were working closely with [Special Branch] and [Military Intelligence] at that time. Craig's people believe the sectarian assassinations were designed to destroy Rees's attempts to negotiate a ceasefire, and the targets were identified for both sides by [Intelligence/Special Branch]. They also believe some very senior RUC officers were involved with this group. In short, it would appear that loyalist paramilitaries and [Intelligence/Special Branch] members have formed some sort of pseudo gangs in an attempt to fight a war of attrition against the IRA by getting paramilitaries on both sides to kill each other and, at the same time prevent any future political initiative such as Sunningdale.

    I was watching the new Netflix documentary about the Miami showband the other night and the survivor talks about the man who was in charge of the operation that day that he had a ''very crisp very posh English accent'' it was claimed that this man was captain Robert Nairac a high ranking officer of 14 intelligence company and he was overseeing the operation, although files claim he was elsewhere at the time it could have been a similar officer with a similar position.

    Another similar thing happened in the kingsmill massacre, when the ''IRA'' shot ten civilians, the lone survivor of that massacre also claimed the man in charge of the operation had a very crisp and posh English accent, both very similar operations fake checkpoints, paramilitaries pretending to be the British army.

    The evidence concerning British intelligence involvement that they had orchestratedthe Miami showband massacre is overwhelming and cannot be denied, the survivors and victims families believe it went right up to government level but the evidence concerning the Kingsmill massacre is not as obvious but it's still very plausible that Kingsmill was a false flag designed to drain IRA support and sympathy and draw the IRA away from its war against the state and into a sectarian conflict.



Comments

  • Posts: 18,749 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    You should chat with Gemma O Doherty



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,082 ✭✭✭enricoh


    Have you a link for the English accent at kingsmills? I wouldnt put it past them tbh. iirc kingsmills inspired Billy Wright to join up.

    Saw a documentary before where some loyalist claimed the Brits wanted them to attack a Catholic primary school and basically start a civil war but the loyalists said no.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    Is it that hard to believe? Which part are you denying? Kingsmill or Miami showband? There's a good Netflix documentary made recently about the Miami showband massacre which should clear up any doubts you may have about that one, it has overwhelming evidence that British intelligence had orchestrated the whole thing.

    Not as much evidence regarding Kingsmill but that's not to say it didn't happen.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,106 ✭✭✭✭elperello



    Do you really think you are going to get to the bottom of this case by posting that about what is still a very sensitive issue ?



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    I was just watching that documentary about the showband the other night when the survivor claimed the man in charge had a very crisp, very posh English accent and it brought back a memory of an article I read about Kingsmill the man in charge of that very similar operation also had a very crisp, very posh English accent, we only know about this because one man survived despite being shot something like 20 times.

    I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning events it's a very plausible theory, even likely in my opinion, most of us know now that British intelligence were using loyalists as proxies to commit killings like in the Miami showband massacre, it's very plausible they would have committed a false flag act to place blame on the IRA and drain their support, it's classic psychological warfare techniques, that massacre done major damage to the IRA at the time even though they denied any involvement.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,608 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    shinners always trying to rewrite history , then again they have so much to be ashamed of


    it was an act of terrorism that disgusted even terrorists ,



    mary lou and her party still sheltering and protecting those who carried it out mind ,



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,663 ✭✭✭20silkcut


    Well they couldn’t fight the IRA by conventional methods and were sick to the back teeth of Northern Ireland by 1976.

    They had cleared the no go areas in 1972 and 4 years later were still no closer to ending the troubles. Militarily they had no tactics left in such a delicate political situation. So yes it is very plausible that they would use any means necessary to bring about the end of the IRA. And the British army have often used far worse tactics in various conflicts around the world.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,717 ✭✭✭✭Larbre34


    Absolutely it was an IRA action, but it was unsanctioned and caused ructions in the upper echelons.

    Yes, some of the local UVF did want to instigate a school massacre in response, but it was ruled out by the top level of the UVF high command. The mention of British Intelligence as being behind the suggestion is widely regarded now as utter bull, concocted to save the bacon of the local unit members who had actually suggested it, from both republicans and from their own commanders.

    Had an attack on a school or on school goers taken place in that fashion, it is quite likely the whole island would have blown up. Hundreds of thousands, if not a million men in the Republic would have gone north with whatever they had to hand in whatever vehicles they could find and attacked loyalist communities. The outcome would have resembled something you'd have seen in Rwanda or the Former Yugoslavia and who knows where we would have got to by now.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,990 ✭✭✭✭Danzy


    There was a UDR and RUC gang in mid ulster that were running a very active murder campaign against random Catholics.


    Kingsmill was the IRA saying, 2 can play that game.


    After Kingsmill the military handlers of the loyalist Glennane gang signed off on an awful lot less killing.


    Same happened in Birmingham and Guildford.


    Bars were being blown up in Belfast in a campaign driven by RUC officers.

    Their security force handlers got the message that their job over there could have consequences at home.

    That was the cold logic of it, doesn't matter what people think if it as an approach.


    Both certainly led to a severe reduction in sectarian killings as it became politically inconvenient for Whitehall.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,990 ✭✭✭✭Danzy


    Did the local Army man take your punctuation and give it one behind the ear?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,608 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    you sound happy it happened danzy 🤮🤮🤮



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    I don't know if that claim is true or not there is no evidence apart from the word of a member of the Glenneane gang John Weir who to be fair has made quite a lot of claims decades ago which have turned out to be true in the last ten years or so.

    That's very unlikely how things would have went if they did shoot up a school, although it likely would have caused a civil war.

    John Weir said the alleged British military intelligence plot was to foment a “civil war”.

    “From their vision such a war would be quite short; they thought they could have a quick, short and sharp process of cleansing out the IRA.

    The conflict would have turned completely sectarian with any half decent person turning away from the war after a week or two and bringing IRA support down to níl quite quickly.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,106 ✭✭✭✭elperello


    So basically you have nothing to add to our knowledge of the truth about what happened and think picking at the sore will help to effect some sort of cure.



  • Posts: 2,725 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    The IRA murdered 12 men based on their religion in a barbaric sectarian atrocity. Anything else is just the usual attempts by barstool republicans to engage in historical revisionism.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,216 ✭✭✭✭listermint


    Interesting topic all the same. Never heard about part of the story. Did any of the rest of them talk?

    Were the IRA known for this type of format and execution style at the time?

    No idea myself hence the question.

    These types of things are discussed on podcasts and Netflix all the time. Unsure why people try to make them off topic here...



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    I think he was just explaining the logic behind it, The British military intelligence assessment claimed that the attack was carried out by local IRA members "who were acting outside the normal IRA command structure" doing a solo run off their own back, assuming that's true that would have been their logic behind doing the massacre rather than simply being blood thirsty.

    What I was theorising is that maybe that did not happen at all and maybe the intelligence services got an elite army unit to carry out the attack so the IRA would get the blame, or if they had a semi senior agent in the IRA in the area and got him to convince a few lower ranking IRA members to work together with him and commit the massacre themselves on the down low or something of that nature.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,597 ✭✭✭tdf7187



    This is the kind trollish response that passes for debate here.

    The OP raises a perfectly valid issue. I cannot say that this specific incident was likely false flag, I think it probably unlikely, but there were undoubtedly false flag incidents on both 'sides'.

    Of course the fact that innocent people were stitched up for atrocities such as the Birmingham pub bombings, genuine Provo atrocities, suited both the corrupt British establishment and the Provos.

    Interesting how vocal a former minister for justice in Dublin is regarding why a Truth Commission would be a very bad idea and we should get over ourselves.....almost as though he doesn't want anyone probing into his own role and those of his political allies..



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    Well I'm a bit different to you, I'm sure you never question anything until the evidence becomes so overwhelming that the BBC are forced to make a documentary of out of it.

    Most of the stuff coming to light in the last ten or fifteen years regarding collusion I would have already believed/known to be true I wouldn't have needed to watch any BBC documentary to know what was going on.

    I'm less sure about this one than I was about many things but it's a plausible theory at the least and I just felt like putting it out there.

    As the old saying goes, ''there is none so blind as those who do not want to see''.



  • Posts: 3,801 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Why. There’s plenty of evidence that MI5 were involved in terrorism, directly or indirectly. Not sure about this case.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,990 ✭✭✭✭Danzy




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,608 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    can the shinnerbots not take a few days off from the party business of rewriting history,

    brolly is getting socks of his deranged rewriting already do ye really need to double down ?


    fact is the ira did it and sf are still to this day hiding the perpetrators



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,990 ✭✭✭✭Danzy


    They are hidden in the same bunker with your punctuation.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,426 ✭✭✭✭EmmetSpiceland


    Wasn’t something like half of the senior figures in the IRA in the pocket of the crown during The Troubles anyway? Would they have needed a “false flag” when they could have just got them to do it themselves?

    “It is not blood that makes you Irish but a willingness to be part of the Irish nation” - Thomas Davis



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,589 ✭✭✭touts


    The IRA murdered those men (and hundreds of other innocent men women and children) and the constant attempts by Sinn Fein then (using a made up terrorist name to take responsibility rather than the IRA) and now (claiming that the British did it) is repugnant and does little but demonstrate the shamefully low moral compass of you and your organisation.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,608 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    i see you have the feeling as gerry and the rest of the gang towards the innocent victims of terrorist scum ,

    they are good for a laugh 🤮



  • Posts: 18,749 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]






  • Without any evidence this is just a conspiracy theory.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 72,203 ✭✭✭✭FrancieBrady


    From what we now know of what the British were up to, any accusation has valididty and should be investigated. Haven't read yet but I see the Village doing a story on the British having the intention to try to wipe out the IRA on the day that turned into Bloody Sunday.

    The valiant defenders of the British have some awkward times ahead, truth will always out.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,084 ✭✭✭✭Esel
    Not Your Ornery Onager


    It was a direct retaliation for the killing of five Catholics in the locality the previous night (another died from his injuries a month later).

    Post edited by Esel on

    Not your ornery onager



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    Extremely doubtful at the time of this massacre in 1976.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 648 ✭✭✭MakersMark


    It was another IRA war crime.


    Remember Fenians, if it was a war, then there were war crimes!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 757 ✭✭✭generic_throwaway


    Noted IRA supporter tries to whitewash IRA atrocity.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    Well according to British military intelligence it was done by rogue IRA members doing a solo run so it was no more of a war crime for the IRA than it was when any rogue UDR/RUC members who went and killed Catholics off their own back.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,990 ✭✭✭✭Danzy


    You think that the people shot were good for a laugh.


    Cold.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 72,203 ✭✭✭✭FrancieBrady


    Well shouldn't it be looked at in a court?

    Why are they not too keen to make charges of 'war crimes' you'd have to wonder...afraid of what might tumble out, maybe?. Same reason they resist a truth recovery process.





  • The British were up to stuff.

    This is stuff.

    Therefore the British were up to it.


    Sorry but without any proof its meaningless speculation. If they did do it I wouldnt be surprised, but just because theyre capable doesnt mean they did.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 72,203 ✭✭✭✭FrancieBrady


    We need to know what Nairac and his like were up to at the very least.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    There is no hardcore evidence but in light of the hardcore evidence in relation to sectarian killing on the loyalist side at the time, there is strong reason to believe it could be true, the goal of all the sectarian killing on the loyalist side was mostly to provoke an IRA reaction and draw them into a sectarian conflict and away from it's war against the state thus draining it's support leading to a quick British victory, they weren't getting the reaction they wanted so maybe they decided to take matters into their own hands. During 74-76 loyalists killed about 300 innocent Catholics while republicans killed about 60 innocent protestants and loyalist paramilitaries in retaliation.

    There was also a man with a strong English accent overseeing the operation at the Miami showband massacre which is as good as proven now to have been orchestrated by British intelligence, the same thing at Kingsmill, now even if they didn't expect all the victims to be dead anyway in the next two minutes why would he have put on a posh English accent? They were posing as a UDR checkpoint where everyone would have had Irish accents anyway.

    There was a Catholic man there at the time who was told to run away when they pulled over the bus, the man with the English accent never spoke until he had already gone so if he was putting the accent on why would he have not spoken before he left?

    Alan Black the lone survivor says there was a cover up for what reason he does not know, he claims there was never any investigation into it and that all the files were lost in floods and fires, he says at least one of them was a double agent, a former British soldier who they still won't name to this day.

    Maybe the whole cover up was just to protect the informer I don't know but I personally believe there was more to it than that.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    We may not ever know what the Brits had him doing but at least we know he got what he deserved in the end.



  • Posts: 864 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    There was no war, just a long series of terrorist incidents hai



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    Hh



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,622 ✭✭✭El Tarangu


    A former Sinn Féin MP famously commemorated famously the massacre on its anniversay; given that he was so proud of the association between Sinn Féin/IRA and this massacare, it would seem unlikely that he would do so if it had been a British intelligence operation designed to discredit his organisation.

    I don't think that a British accent is necessarily a smoking gun either, there were a number of members of the IRA who would have been brought up in Britain.

    As another poster pointed out, just a lot of hot air from the usual suspects who, although they are proud of the murder and mayhem caused by their terrorist heroes, still find it expedient to muddy the waters on the question of responsibility for SF/IRA's most heinous acts of barbarity.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    That Sinn Féin MP made an idiotic mistake he always used to post weird pictures of himself like that one on social media.

    Even the official British intelligence line released years later was that it was done by rogue IRA members.

    I don't think there were many people with posh English accents in the IRA at the time, Investigators from the PSNI's Historical Enquiries Team (HET) who briefed relatives of the 10 Protestant victims drew a blank on his identity

    "We have asked everyone we can think of who served in the security forces at the time who this could have been but we have been unable to put a name to him."

    The same thing during the Miami showband massacre by loyalists, there was a man with a posh English accent who was overseeing the operation, both operations almost identical fake British army checkpoints, bus brought to a halt with a posh English man in charge of things, it's said it could have been Captain Robert Nairac who was a high ranking member of a shadowy intelligence unit at the time, records show that he was elsewhere at the time but I still wouldn't rule it out.

    According to John Weir, members of the glenanne gang began to suspect that Nairac was playing republican and loyalist paramilitaries off against each other, by feeding them information about murders carried out by the "other side" and ordering them to carry out more sectarian attacks with the intention of "provoking revenge attacks by the IRA'' members of the IRA did carry out some revenge attacks but very little compared to what the Brits would have wanted, maybe they decided to take matters into their own hands.

    Post edited by Harryd225 on


  • Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators Posts: 10,605 Mod ✭✭✭✭Jim2007


    Group think does not amount to evidence. Actual evidence is thin on the ground.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,037 ✭✭✭Harryd225


    Actual evidence was thin on the ground for most cases regarding British state collusion with loyalists up until the last 15 years or so, it doesn't mean a lot of people didn't put 2 and 2 together and realise what was going on, up until 15 years ago the survivors of the Miami showband massacre I mentioned in the OP didn't believe any collusion took place and claimed that it was just a few rogues, now he has a documentary on Netflix claiming the massacre went right up to the top.

    Some people only believe or question something when the evidence becomes so overwhelming the BBC are forced to make a documentary out of it, the theory is more than plausible in my opinion.



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