Interviews with police and soldiers reveal a widespread perception that only a minority of UDR soldiers are actively involved with extreme loyalism, although many sympathize. There is also broad agreement that the figures are still smaller in the RUC. Although many Catholics say they find the theory of a few ‘bad apples’ in the security forces unconvincing, recognition that the RUC has maintained higher standards of professionalism can be seen in various demands made by the non-violent nationalist parties. Their request that UDR patrols should be accompanied by police officers, to reduce the possibility of threats and other misbehaviour by the troops, is evidence of a measure of trust in the police as well as a concern about the UDR.
As the targets for republican terrorism, but with few opportunities to confront it directly, the rank and file of the police and UDR sometimes vent their feelings on Catholics whom they encounter at roadblocks or in holding cells. Republicans frequently complain that their lives have been threatened or that they have been beaten. Intelligence officers confirm that taunts of the ‘we’re going to get you’ variety do occur, giving them as the reason for the increasingly restricted dissemination of intelligence during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ordinary police officers and soldiers are told virtually nothing about forthcoming undercover operations because of the risk that they may taunt suspects with this knowledge.
Events like the murder of three members of a Catholic pop group, the Miami Showband, in 1975 implanted deep mistrust of the UDR among nationalists. The killers, members of the UVF, had been dressed as soldiers. Two UVF terrorists killed at the scene were UDR part timers and two of those later convicted for the murders were also UDR soldiers.
It is sometimes claimed that intelligence agencies have exploited loyalist sympathies to eliminate republicans of whom they cannot openly dispose, providing the information, weapons or freedom from arrest for loyalist paramilitaries to kill them. On this question a profound gulf opens between the views of those in the republican community and what those who have been involved in intelligence work say even in private – and even if they are being sufficiently candid to admit to other misdemeanours by the security forces. During the mid 1980s serious allegations of collusion between the intelligence services and loyalist paramilitary groups were made by Fred Holroyd, the former intelligence liaison officer who had worked in the border area during the mid 1970s. Colin Wallace, a former Army information officer who made allegations about ‘black propaganda’ campaigns directed at politicians against whom the security forces held a grudge (see chapter seven), also said that there were links between the intelligence apparatus and killings by loyalist terrorists.
Some of Holroyd’s allegations concern Robert Nairac, the young Grenadier Guards officer who had served as liaison officer for the 3 Brigade Detachment of 14 Intelligence Company, known by the cover name 4 Field Survey Troop. Holroyd says that Nairac told him he was involved in the killing in January 1975 of John Francis Green, a prominent republican, inside the Irish Republic. Holroyd says that Nairac gave him a photograph of the dead man, with fresh blood on the ground around him – evidence that the young Guards officer had been at the scene around the time of the shooting. Holroyd says that ‘the evidence suggests’ that Nairac was also involved in the Miami Showband killings. A pistol used in this attack was later matched ballistically with one used to murder Green. He believes that the Army and SB ‘worked closely’ with loyalist terrorists. He says that 4 Field Survey Troop had a stockpile of untraceable non-Army issue weapons which it could hand out for such crimes.
Captain Nairac returned to Northern Ireland in May 1976. He was apparently requested by Julian Ball who, promoted to major, was then serving with 22 SAS. Someone who knew the two men says that Ball wanted Nairac to fill a newly-created post, liaising with the RUC for the SAS squadron committed to south Armagh that year – similar to his previous role for the surveillance unit detachment. In May 1977 he was kidnapped from a pub where he may have been on an information-gathering mission, tortured and shot. He was later awarded the George Cross and lionized by the popular press. Captain Nairac was not a member of the SAS, even if he worked closely with it – his George Cross citation indicating that he was a member of the 3 Brigade staff.
Colin Wallace has also made allegations about connections of this kind. In 1986 he wrote to Peter Archer, a Labour MP, saying: ‘During the first six months of 1975 thirty-five Roman Catholics were assassinated in Ulster. The majority of these were killed by members of the security forces or loyalist paramilitary groups such as the UVF, UFF, PAF, UDA etc., working as agents of the security services and supplied with weapons by the security services.’
Albert Baker, a loyalist terrorist sentenced to twenty-five years in jail for involvement in a series of attacks in 1972 and 1973, has claimed that UDA killing squads were given weapons and told their targets by the RUC. His allegations are seen by many nationalists as supporting the claims of Holroyd and Wallace, although they do not specifically refer to the Green and Miami Showband incidents or the killings of early 1975 mentioned above.
Those who believe the Holroyd, Wallace and Baker allegations point out that the three men stood to gain little from making these claims but had much to lose by
