MI5 in Northern Ireland
According to official historian Christopher Andrew, MI5 sent a liaison officer to Belfast during the IRA border campaign of 1958-1962.[1]
On 17 March 1966, Air Marshal Harold Maguire, deputy chief of the Defence Staff (Intelligence) raised the need for 'up to date information on the IRA threat' at a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee. However, the director-general of MI5 Martin Furnival Jones argued that the IRA represented a 'law and order' problem rather than a security one, and intelligence assistance should go through Special Branch. The Defence Operations Centre was suggested as a possible vehicle for this.[2]
On 6 November 1968, the Home Secretary James Callaghan asked MI5 for an up-to-date appreciation of the prospect of violence in Northern Ireland from the IRA. Deputy Director-General Anthony Simkins told the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, Sir Philip Allen that this placed MI5 "in a rather Gilbertian situation as we derived our information from the [RUC] and had no independent coverage." An MI5 paper entitled "The Threat of Violence in Northern Ireland" was completed in December 1968.[3]
In the spring of 1969, an internal MI5 newsletter stated: "The total effort deployed by F. Branch in matters Irish was until recently confined to one part-time desk officer in F.1.C.[4]
On 25 April 1969, Simkins told the Official Committee on Northern Ireland that the RUC Inspector General had asked that MI5 send a liaison officer once again:
- If we took up this suggestion we should probably get a very good idea of the reliability of the RUC's intelligence about the IRA. Allen said the Home Secretary approved of our doing so, and the meeting warmly endorsed the idea.[5]
An MI5 Security Liaison Officer (SLO) was accordingly posted to RUC headquarters at Knock near Belfast four days later. A full-time Irish desk was established in F1B at around the same time.[6]
Stella Rimington, then a junior assistant officer, wrote of this desk:
External Resources
- Policing/MI5, Pat Finucane Centre
Notes
- ↑ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.602.
- ↑ Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding, Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and the War on Terrorism, Andre Deutsch, 2003, p.136.
- ↑ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.602.
- ↑ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.602.
- ↑ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.604.
- ↑ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.604.
- ↑ Stella Rimington, Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5, 2002, p.105.
