James Mitchell (Glennane)

This article is part of SpinWatch's Northern Ireland Portal.

James Mitchell is a former RUC reservist and owner of a farm at Glennane in Co Armagh. The Barron Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings concluded that the farm was likely to have played a significant role in the preparation of the attacks.

Whilst in prison, John Weir wrote a letter to a friend in which he made allegations linking British Army Captain Robert Nairac with loyalist paramilitary Robin Jackson and then RUC Reserve member James Mitchell - both of whom would feature heavily in his later statements.

By his own account, Weir had become part of a group of security force members involved in sectarian attacks at some time during 1975-76:

The Glenanne farm was the place where most of these attacks were planned, and where explosives, weapons and ammunition were stored and prepared. The farm owner, James Mitchell (who was a member of the RUC Reserve) was fully involved in this.

Weir said he was given details of these activities by a few of the RUC officers, “so that I would have a proper understanding of the character of the organisation I was joining”. Some of these stories were later confirmed by UVF members of the group and by the farm owner. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings were among the atrocities for which they claimed to have been responsible.

Weir says that only two persons admitted their own involvement in the bombings to him – Stewart Young told him he was involved in the Monaghan attack, and James Mitchell said that the explosives for the Dublin bombs were stored on his farm. Even if true, these admissions do not preclude the possibility that the attacks were planned in Belfast.

Arms and ammunition were found on the Mitchell farm in 1978. The Barron Inquiry criticised the RUC for playing down the significance of this in a 2000 report on Weir's allegations.

there was information in the Daily Record Sheets which established that Mitchell knew ten named loyalists whom he believed were involved in moving arms and explosives to and from his farm. Of those ten, six appear in Weir’s statements accused of participating in one or more of the attacks listed above.

In any event, as a subsequent Garda report pointed out, amongst the equipment that was found in 1978 were two home-made sub-machine guns – something that lends credence to another of Weir’s allegations concerning the acquisition of those guns from an RUC constable.

Secondly, the report said that there was no evidence from the investigation papers that Mitchell’s farm had been used to store any equipment other than that which was recovered in the search. This too is incorrect; the investigation in fact established that his farm was a major arms dump for the UVF.

Mitchell was interviewed by the RUC at the request of the Garda on 9 August 2000:

In relation to his own conviction, he was adamant that the find of weapons and ammunition had been on adjacent land, which he had merely rented. He said he had no previous knowledge of the existence of the equipment on the property before the search in 1978. From the transcript of his interview he said that he had never seen where the arms and ammunition were found and that in any case the land was in the joint ownership of himself and his brother. He said that he didn’t know the men that had left the arms and ammunition on the land and that the RUC had never shown him where they were found. Later in the interview he suggested that the arms and ammunition must have been left at night since he didn’t know when it had been left in the field.

These denials are contradicted by his account to the RUC in December 1978, in which he admitted knowing the men, seeing them and talking to them on at least one occasion, and giving them permission to store ‘stuff’ on his land. Regrettably, the RUC did not attempt to reconcile the differences between his accounts in 1978 and 2000.

The Barron Report suggested that Mitchell's farm was used to store weapons used in a number of loyalist attacks between 1973 and 1976:

All this information leads strongly to the conclusion that there were one or more groups operating in Northern Ireland involving not only loyalist paramilitaries but also members of the RUC and of the UDR, and using weapons obtained from some central quartermaster to whom the guns were returned after use.

Among the evidence obtained following the arrests in December 1978 was an allegation that one of those involved would have been responsible for obtaining the guns after they had been used in any particular attack, and returning them to where they were kept. Other information obtained at the same time suggested that whoever the quartermaster may have been, the guns may have been kept at James Mitchell’s farm at Glenanne.