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SINN FÉIN SAID the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was engaging in “propaganda” when republicans were accused of hiding “spiked metal weapons” ahead of the annual 12 July parade in Ardoyne in 2002 – and photos backed up the party’s stance.
A previously confidential file and photos, released as part of the State Papers this month, shed light on the disagreement between Sinn Féin and the PSNI at a crucial point in the peace process.
Every year, the Orange Order and marching bands take part in hundreds of parades to mark the Battle of the Boyne, when Protestant William of Orange (King Billy) defeated Catholic King James II in 1690.
The parades now typically pass off peacefully, but violence has previously broken out at events – particularly in mainly Catholics areas such as Ardoyne. In 2002, a review of the Good Friday Agreement was underway and tensions were high.
On 16 July 2002, Irish official Tom Lynch sent a fax to colleagues detailing what had happened the previous Friday.
In the run-up to the parade, the PSNI said they had found “spiked weapons” on the roofs of shops in the Ardoyne area of Belfast.
In the fax, Lynch said he was examining a claim by then-Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan that the PSNI “had information that republican paramilitaries were planning a large scale attack on the parade as it passed the Ardoyne shops at the Crumlin Road/Ardoyne Road intersection”.
The PSNI claimed to have “discovered an array of weapons”, including 20ft-long iron pipes and 80 “spiked metal missiles” on shop roofs. Police said they also found several crates of bottles, “which they believed were to be used as petrol bombs”, at the rear of the shops.
Commenting on the discovery, then-Chief Inspector Colin Taylor said the missiles seized in the area would have been used by republicans in an attack on the police.
It appears that these items had been stashed there for an attack on the police, army and possibly the general public.
“There are things there that have been specifically made for nothing other than to injure members of the security forces. The discovery of the spiked metal implements is especially sinister,” Taylor is quoted as saying.
However, Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly gave a different version of events.
Speaking to Lynch, Kelly accused the PSNI of engaging in “black propaganda” over allegations of a planned attack by the IRA.
Lynch informed officials that Kelly gave him photographs purportedly showing members of the British Army at 5am on 12 July dismantling anti-theft security barriers on the shop roofs. Kelly said there were no “spiked metal weapons”, that the items were anti-theft barriers.
“At the time, in the absence of any details of the weapons which the PSNI were claiming to have “discovered”, I was of the view that the photographs of themselves were not conclusive,” Lynch wrote.
“However, photographs appeared in yesterday’s Irish News which show Inspector Colin Taylor displaying the “weapons discovered” by the PSNI on the roofs of the Ardoyne shops.”
Lynch said the “weapons” in the photos were “clearly” the same iron pipes the British Army were seen dismantling from the roofs of the shops. He said it “seems to me” that the photos backed up Kelly’s stance and that no such weapons had been “stashed there for an attack”.
The Journal has asked the PSNI for comment on the content of the files.
State Papers reference number: 2022/49/23
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Colonial imperialist terrorists doing what they do!
@joe moody: Protecting people from terrorists that planted bombs in Shops , Pubs , Restaurants, Hotels . They didn’t care who they killed .
@Jack Moss: Balkymurphy massacre, Derry Bloody Sunday hasn’t really covered your comrades in arms in Glory. Don’t try to come here and claim some sort of moral high ground while defending British forces in Ireland or rest of world. Your national is currently supplying the means of genocide in Palestine.
@Jack Moss: how is that protecting people? It could’ve damaged the peace process and cost people their lives
@North Phone Bowe: Your hero McGuinness and his Derry brigade murdered 51 innocent from the Derry area . 28 of them Catholics . People like Catholic teen Kathleen Feeney shot through the head by the IRA . Spares us your crocodile tears for those killed on Bloody Sunday .
@Jack Moss: shankill butchers , loyalist collusion…etc etc.. U LOL crew only see one side always and it’s orange
@Pork Hunt: Nobody defends/ justifies the murders committed by loyalist terrorists though. It’s only Provo supporters who seem to forget that the Provos murdered more Catholics than the British Army during the Troubles. Revisionism is good business these days. I don’t forget the poll carried out at the end of the Troubles that showed both Catholics and Protestants in the high 80s% say there was no justification for the terrorism committed in their name.
@honey badger: it’s not surprising to see you in support of a brutal apartheid occupying force.
Both the IRA and Hamas have done heinous things, for sure but both of them are a result of unjust suppression and disenfranchisement of people, illegally. Neither of them grew in a vacuum.
If you brutally push people down, they will rise up with whatever means they have at their disposal. I’ve no doubt that Palestinians would love to face Israel down with a conventional army but Israel has seen to it that that can’t happen. You reap what you sow.
@Soundy Sound: Lovely word salad and whataboutery. What “unjust suppression, disenfranchisement, illegally” were the Catholic victims of their supposed defenders guilty of? Strangely, Israel/ Hamas has/ had zero to do with it.
@Pork Hunt: The Shankill butchers murder 9 Protestants .
@Soundy Sound: They didn’t rising up . The majority of Catholics were supporting non violent organisations like the civil rights movement and John Humes SDLP . The IRA did not represent the Catholic population of NI . The 26 counties was a 98 percent RC state. It political system was made up of Republican parties . 40 thousand Protestant fled the 26 counties from intimidation and murder during the war of independence. The Protestant population fell to 3 percent. All this is long forgotten. Ireland was not partition in 1921 . The UK was partition . Irish Nats gain 26 counties the UK lost 26 counties. The UK people and unionists just accepted it and move on . Violence has always been the first choice for republican organisations . They always see themselves as the victims in history.
@honey badger: There is literally no point in arguing with someone who’s starting point is claiming that the nationalist population in Northern Ireland were not discriminated against by the ruling system.
@Jack Moss: protected nobody, and in this instance, actively pushed propaganda that could have caused serious damage to a fragile peace process.
Actual state-sponsored terrorism from so called “security forces”
@Alan Roddy: The security forces had a 99 percent arresting rate . Over 25000 republicans were arrested and prosecuted for terrorism and criminality . Less then 200 were killed by the security forces over 25 yrs of the troubles . 3500 people were killed almost half of those were the security forces . In 69 NI was facing an all out civil war . The only thing that stop it going over the edge was the security forces . Over a 100 thousand people died in the three yr civil war in Bosnia . 3500 died in 26 yrs in NI . If it wasn’t for the security forces and emergency services nurses , doctors , paramedics, fire fighters that all stood in the face of terrorism the IRA would have succeeded in murdering tens of thousands more .
@Soundy Sound: What you mean to say is you can’t comfortably justify why the Provos murdered more Catholics than the British Army. The only place you heard there was no discrimination was in your own head. It’s an odd thing to throw out there. Discrimination was so bad that the provos had to kill more of their own people than the British Army.
RUC might’ve changed their name, but didn’t change their anti-Irish senior personnel.
@Uí Braonáin: If I remember rightly if you got a train from Dublin to Belfast the train was often stop before crossing the border on the recommendation from the RUC north of the border . People were put onto buses for their own safety to travel the rest of the journey because the IRA was constantly blowing up the rail line . They blew it 26 times in six months . Trains carrying people from the south came within minutes of being derailed .
British spy planes hover over Gaza daily passing information to Israel on which tent full of innocent defenceless women and children to blow up next
@Kevin O Brien: Are these the same spy planes that are collecting evidence of war crimes etc?
@Kevin O Brien: Ah! Come on now Kevin!!
@Gary Kearney: Same accuracy
Any article on the cop saying no iPas are unvetted , which he clarifies as fingerprinted as identified. Kids in transition year get more vetting for work experience. No comment from the cop on forced deportation , it’s just part of the process. What a joke.
It was a common tactic of the IRA to leave secondary devices to kill the people that attempted to help the injured . The Claudy bombings consisted of three car bombs left on a public street. Car bomb two and three were timed to go off a few minutes after the first bomb detonated . There purpose was to kill the people that ran out onto the street to help the injured of the first bomb . 9 died 6 of them Catholic .
@Jack Moss: Why do you keep bringing religion into it.
@Daniel Roche: People are living in some fairytale land that the IRA were defenders of Catholics which is untrue.
@Jack Moss:
SF RA did not give a dam about the Irish. It was all about a one Island communist sithole state.
Pikes in the Thatch.
@Róisín Guffpuffin:
Pub in Rathkeel??
have your say