Henry Robinson

Henry Robinson is a former member of the Official IRA and a co-founder of Families Against Intimidation and Terror.

Official IRA

As an 18-year-old Official IRA member, was convicted of knee-capping a member of the rival Provisional IRA and was sentenced to two years in prison.

Families Against Intimidation and Terror

Robinson co-founded Families Against Intimidation and Terror in 1990.

According to Dean Godson, Monsignor Denis Faul worked closely with Robinson:

Faul was one of the key hidden hands behind Families Against Intimidation and Terror, set up in the early 1990s by Henry Robinson, a former Official IRA activist, to highlight republican punishment beatings and exilings.

Faul supplied Robinson with the blueprint that he had employed in exposing the British Army: taking photographs and witness statements and then giving them the widest possible audience. Thanks to his work on “the Disappeared” — mostly Catholic victims abducted by the Provisionals and whose bodies were then secretly disposed of — the culture of omertà began to erode. It was a masterpiece of political warfare, exposing “freedom fighters” for what they were, and was often subsidised with his own private money. There was more than one way of skinning the Provo cat, Faul believed — and “soft power” with a cutting edge was far superior to having suspects beaten to a pulp in some holding centre.

Newry Protests

Robinson organised a protest after the IRA threatened a number of men in Newry in August 1991:

the IRA had set a noon deadline for six men from Newry, County Down, to leave the island or face "direct military action."

The IRA issued the order after what it described as an investigation of a "criminal gang" operating in Newry, 35 miles south of Belfast. Security sources in Belfast said they believe the threats resulted from a feud between warring factions of the IRA. Three men left, but two took part in an anti-intimidation demonstration in Newry on Saturday despite a new IRA threat that they would "get a bullet" if they did, said Henry Robinson of Families Against Intimidation and Terror, which organized the protest.

During this episode, the Provisionals accused FAIT of being a front for the Workers Party, the political wing of the Official IRA.

MI5 allegations

In 1994, Ruth Dudley Edwards accused the Phoenix magazine of putting Robinson's life in danger by alleging he was an MI5 agent:

Since Henry doesn't fall into any of those categories - broad as they are - the good old MI5 smear is the only solution. And by an interesting coincidence, a Dublin satirical magazine called Phoenix last Friday announced that Fait was funded from the MI5-run Political Department at the Northern Ireland Office. Fait, it explained, was run by Henry Robinson, a converted terrorist or CT (a term British intelligence have used since Sir Maurice Oldfield invented it in the Malayan colonial campaign, and which basically means an informer). Its funding had been cut: Times are tough, even for converted terrorists (CTs) who are assisting Her Majesty's security experts to grapple with the forces of darkness in Ireland. However, there had been no decline in donations which flow into Robinson's organisation from unnamed backers in Britain who enable him to deliver propaganda against the Sinn Fein-IRA peace process.

Fait is an independent and miserably poor organisation with a niggardly grant from a Northern Ireland Office department that funds peace and reconciliation groups, many of them in Gerry Adams's heartland of West Belfast. Its honourable volunteer workforce try to put their own sufferings from terrorism to positive use.

Denis Faul and Ruth Dudley Edwards testified for Robinson at a libel action in 1997. Edwards recalled:

I met [Faul] first in 1997. I had spent a tedious day in court in Dublin, waiting to give evidence for my friend Henry Robinson, of Families against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT), who had been libelled by a magazine as an agent of MI5.

Palermo Conference

In December 2000, took part in a Palermo conference to mark the signing of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

Attended by representatives from over 140 countries, among the audience were the First Minister, David Trimble, MP, Minister of State, Adam Ingram MP, a representative of the Omagh bomb victims, Sean O'Callaghan and Henry Robinson, a human rights activist.

Summit Against Violent Extremism

Robinson spoke at a session in the Summit Against Violent Extremism in Dublin in June 2011:

• 2:55 Idea 3: Crossing the Threshold: Justifying and Renouncing Violence (Amanda Lindhout, Global Enrichment Foundation; Moe Muhamad, Generation Islam; Henry Robinson, Families Against Intimidation and Terror; Usama Hasan, Imam and Senior Lecturer, Middlesex University; James Muvel Wuye, Interfah Mediation Centre).