Travis B. wrote:For some reason people have always seemed to make a bigger fuss about Islamist terrorists than the Provos... when arguably the Provos were much better at what they did than Islamist terrorists have ever been, when one looks at actual political goals and not body counts...
Indeed. "Bombs" in the UK today are whatever some nutter bodged together reading the Anarchist's Cookbook. Bombs when I were a lad were thousands of pounds of explosives and obliterated city centres. A direct strike on the state these days is stabbing a policeman; times were, it was assassinating a cabinet minister.
The big difference, though, is that the Republicans, in their mainland campaigns, primarily targeted economic infrastructure; the terror element was in making people fear that at any moment they might have to evacuate (most IRA attacks, they gave warning to the authorities in
just enough time to get everyone to safety if they really tried; which also meant they could create panic just by sending a false warning). Only 125 people were killed in England through the whole of the Troubles (though large numbers were injured - Manchester* alone injured over 200, but none died), though the financial costs were huge. [£1.5bn in today's money for the Baltic Exchange bombing, similar for Manchester, half that for Bishopsgate, half again for Canary Wharf, etc, and those are just the direct costs of physical repairs. The long-term irony, however, is that the huge bombings were actually a boon to the economy, allowing much-needed regeneration of these areas. Manchester in particular credits the bombing for much of its current success]
*the 1996 Manchester bombing, the third most expensive terrorist attack in history after Bishopsgate and 9/11, saw the detonation of 1,500kg of explosives. 75,000 people had to be evacuated in just 90 minutes. The explosion created a mushroom cloud 300m high, showered debris for up to half a mile, and could be heard 15 miles away.
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The Troubles have been in the news recently not only because of the DUP business, but because there's a trial of one of the top "supergrasses". Basically, it's turned out that during the Troubles, many of the top Republican AND Loyalist terrorist commanders were actually working for the British government all along. They murdered and ordered the murders of dozens of people in order to maintain their cover, and to pass good intelligence onto their masters - so, for instance, an IRA commander would order some soldiers to murder someone, so that the IRA commander could give the police information incriminating his soldiers. When one supergrass found out about another, they'd have them murdered too, before the other supergrass could have them murdered in turn. Things were even worse on the Loyalist side, where it seems there was overt collusion with the police - if the police didn't like a particular catholic, they'd nudge their loyalist supergrasses, who would have them murdered. Of course, since a large percentage of the people the paramilitaries killed were on their own side, this could also be true of Republican supergrasses. Most famously, the head of the IRA's unit to root out British spies was himself a British spy (with an £80k government salary), and most of the 40 people he murdered with the permission of the government were other IRA members (including some who were themselves spying for the British). It was all a little pointless, really - since these were all manipulative killers mostly interested in their own advancement, the information they gave couldn't be trusted, and almost all the people charged following their evidence were either acquitted or subsequently had their convictions overturned (when it was realised that these people, dependent on the government for both their income and their personal safety, would give any evidence they were told to give).
Anyway, one such supergrass, Gary Haggarty, has just pleaded guilty to 200 terrorist charges, all conducted under the aegis of the UK government. The charges include conspiracy to riot, intimidation, assisting offenders, converting criminal property, conspiracy to defraud, possession of an offensive weapon, conspiracy to rob, criminal damage, arson with intent, common assault, actual bodily harm, conspiracy to wound, grievous bodily harm, wounding with intent, aggravated burglary, possession of information likely to be of use to terrorists (yes, we've actually criminalised possessing information - including things like, in this case, having a DVD of a public parade), posession of terrorist property, possession of articles for use in terrorism, directing terrorism, membership of a proscribed organisation, making explosives under suspicious circumstances (presumably the suspicious circumstances were that he was making explosives - I'd find that damned suspicious, I must say...), possession of explosives under suspicious circumstances, possession of explosives with intent, conspiracy to possess firearms with intent, possession of imitation firearm with intent to cause fear or violence, carrying an imitation firearm with criminal intent, possession of firearms and ammunition with intent (66 counts! Including machine guns!), hijack, false imprisonment, kidnap, 23 counts of conspiracy to murder, aiding and abetting murder, 5 attempted murders, and 5 actual murders. Just the full and detailed list of charges he's confessed to covers 82 pages.
He's also confessed to 304 non-terrorist criminal charges, for a total 504 offences. It's expected that his sentence will be minimal, at most, because he's offered to give evidence against 15 other UVF members... and, in another twist of irony, he's also offering to testify against the police officers who were paying him to do all this stuff.
It's an unpleasant reminder of how deeply morally compromised the police and the security forces (and the government itself) became in that era.
And along similar lines: charges have, after 30 years of public lobbying, finally been brought, mostly against policemen, over the Hillsborough disaster, when 96 football fans died in a crush at a football stadium. The case has been intensely controversial, because, amongst other things:
- the disaster was largely caused by the police
- the police leaked false stories disparaging the dead to shift blame away from themselves
- half the dead could have been saved by more competent treatment by the emergency services
- 164 witness statements were altered by the police to remove any elements that might be seen as critical of the police
- 55 junior police officers were pressured to themselves retract or alter their witness statements to protect their superiors
Anyway, after 30 years, the policeman in charge of the even has now been charged with 95 counts of manslaughter, and various other people have been charged with perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office.