Britain’s Secret Terror Squad – Where is it?

By AM Tuesday, December 18, 2012

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The former BBC Northern Ireland political analyst Brian Walker has raised questions about the BBC’s decision to pull a Panorama broadcast, Britain’s Secret Terror Squad, which was billed to highlight the homocidal role of British Army undercover units in the North. Walker referred to his copy of the Radio Times in which it was reported that:
   

For nearly two years in the early 1970s, the British Army ran an undercover squad that operated outside the law, hunting down enemies of the state – with orders to shoot known terrorists on sight. For the first time in 40 years, three former members of this secret operation talk candidly about their role in Northern Ireland, which they believe saved lives. But reporter John Ware uncovers evidence that the unit may also have killed innocent civilians, fabricated statements and covered up its deeds.

Material that would be of immense interest to those who have suspected for years that there is something rotten in the state of Britain and who believe, to cite Niall Stanage writing in the Guardian from ten years ago, that:

The British state has been conspiring to murder its own citizens in Northern Ireland. That is the only credible conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence that has seeped slowly into the public domain over the past decade.

A decade later it is still seeping when it should be gushing. A British state foot is firmly in place on the brake pedal to ensure there is no rush towards destination transparency.

When he became aware that the programme would not be appearing Walker searched around for some explanation: ‘Not a dickey bird that I can find.’ Not much that I could find either. ‘Sorry! We couldn't find the page you were looking for’ was about as much as I managed to get. Although An Phoblacht said the programmes has been rescheduled to the New Year, we will believe it only when we see it.

For now, scheduled to replace Britain’s Secret Terror Squad is a broadcast about the owners of the Daily Telegraph, David and Frederick Barclay, itself earlier held back by former BBC director general George Entwistle. 

As Walker points out something similarly underhand in relation to Jimmy Savile's activities led to the sacking of the same George Entwistle. But even more eyebrow-raising is his allusion to the question that is on the lips of more than the imaginary paranoid he puts in the frame since it emerged that Britain’s Secret Terror Squad had been pulled: ‘days after the de Silva report on collusion over the Finucane murder, has the BBC got cold feet over interviews with an army undercover squad?'

Whatever the reason – and it might yet prove innocuous enough -  there will be much suspicion in Ireland that the BBC is more concerned with the British part of its name than the Broadcasting bit, that it is once again acquiescing in the institutional instinct to cover the truth rather than convey it when it comes to raison d'etat. 

A decade ago Niall Stanage concluded:

the promise of a new start offered by the Police Service for Northern Ireland, the direct descendant of a constabulary suspected of murder, rings hollow for many nationalists. That poisonous past will remain inescapable while the British government dodges the truth about what was done in its name.

A decade of the PSNI and nothing has emerged to suggest Stanage is wrong but quite a bit that would lead to the conclusion that he was right. In terms of the past, powerful institutions are determined that our view will be myopic rather than panoramic.