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The Stevens Inquiries were three official
British government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_es ...
inquiries led by
Sir John Stevens John Arthur Stevens, Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, (born 21 October 1942) was Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (head of the Metropolitan Police Service) from 2000 until 2005. From 1991 to 1996, he was Chief Constable of Northum ...
concerning collusion in
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
between
loyalist paramilitaries Ulster loyalism is a strand of Ulster unionism associated with working class Ulster Protestants in Northern Ireland. Like other unionists, loyalists support the continued existence of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, and oppose a uni ...
and the state security forces. While Stevens declared in 1990 that collusion was "neither wide-spread nor institutionalised", by April 2003 he acknowledged that he had uncovered collusion at a level "way beyond" his 1990 view. Much of Stevens' evidence was obtained from advanced fingerprint techniques to link people to documents. By 2005 the team had identified 2,000 people from their prints with a further 1,015 sets of prints outstanding.


Stevens 1


Loughlin Maginn

In September 1989 RUC chief constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, ordered the initial enquiry about the circumstances following the August 1989 death of Loughlin Maginn. Maginn, a 28-year-old Catholic, was shot by the
Ulster Defence Association The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is an Ulster loyalism, Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 as an umbrella group for various loyalist groups and Timeline of Ulster Defence Association act ...
(UDA) at his home in Lissize, near
Rathfriland Rathfriland () is a market town in County Down, Northern Ireland. History In older documents written in English, the town's name was usually spelt ''Rathfylan'' or ''Rathfrilan''.
. Although Maginn had no paramilitary connections, the UDA claimed he was a
Provisional Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reun ...
(IRA)
intelligence officer An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile or analyze information (known as intelligence) which is of use to that organization. The word of ''officer'' is a working title, not a rank, used in the same way a ...
. In an attempt to prove the accuracy of their targeting, the UDA published security force documents and a video of police intelligence. (It was later found that the video had been provided by sympathetic soldiers using equipment supplied by UDA double agent Brian Nelson).


Obstruction

Stevens would later claim in a book he wrote that from the investigation's outset there was a concerted campaign to discredit the inquiries among elements of the British media.p153 ''Not for the Faint-Hearted;'' He also claimed that when he enquired the British military authorities on whether or not a dedicated Intelligence Corps unit operated in Northern Ireland, he was told that there were no such units currently operating there, only for Stevens to discover that the
Force Research Unit The Force Research Unit (FRU) was a covert military intelligence unit of the British Army's Intelligence Corps. It was established in 1982 during the Troubles to obtain intelligence from terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland by recruiti ...
was indeed operating in Northern Ireland when senior RUC officers blamed the unit for an arson attack at his Inquiry headquarters.p2 ''Not for the Faint-Hearted;'' Following their discovery of the then-unknown Brian Nelson's fingerprints on security documents, the Inquiry team encountered a wall of silence as they tried to investigate further: Brian Fitzsimmons, Acting Head of the RUC's Special Branch, became evasive, telling Stevens: ''We can't help you with this man;'' and, at the Grosvenor Road station, Nelson's card in the intelligence card system was initially whipped away from the investigators. However the team persevered and gathered enough fresh evidence to plan a secret operation to arrest Nelson on Monday 10 January 1990. Stevens went home the weekend before the planned arrest. As he returned to Belfast on the Sunday afternoon, there were two journalists on the plane; they informed him that they had been sent over to cover the raids. It was obvious that there had been a leak, and it was decided to postpone the operation for 24 hours. In the meantime, Nelson escaped to England. That night there was a fire at the team's incident room within the secure complex at Sea Park, the RUC's
Carrickfergus Carrickfergus ( , meaning " Fergus' rock") is a large town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It sits on the north shore of Belfast Lough, from Belfast. The town had a population of 27,998 at the 2011 Census. It is County Antrim's oldest t ...
Headquarters. The main team had left at 9pm but four members unexpectedly returned 25 minutes later to find the room alight. Neither the smoke alarm nor the heat sensors had gone off and the telephone lines had been cut. They made an attempt to tackle the fire but found that there was no water in the fire protection system.


Stevens 3


William Stobie

In April 1999, as part of the Enquiry, William Stobie was arrested and charged with the murder of solicitor
Pat Finucane Patrick Finucane (; 21 March 1949 – 12 February 1989) was an Irish lawyer who specialised in criminal defence work. Finucane came to prominence due to his successful challenge of the British government in several important human rights cases ...
. In June that year, as agreed, journalist
Ed Moloney Edmund "Ed" Moloney (born 1948–9) is an Irish journalist and author best known for his coverage of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the activities of the Provisional IRA, in particular. He worked for the ''Hibernia'' magazine and ''Magill ...
published Stobie's version of the circumstances of Finucane's death.


Overview & Recommendations Report

The "Stevens Enquiry 3", Overview & Recommendations, report was released on 17 April 2003. The report claimed that members of the security forces in
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
colluded with the UDA during the paramilitary's killing of Catholic civilians in the 1970s and 1980s, including the solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989. The security forces units accused of colluding with the UDA included the Force Research Unit of the
British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
and the
Royal Ulster Constabulary The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)Richard Doherty, ''The Thin Green Line – The History of the Royal ...
(RUC), in particular its Special Branch. Stevens required three police inquiries, during which time his offices within RUC headquarters suffered an arson attack. Stevens noted, under "Obstruction of my Enquiries":
There was a clear breach of security before the planned arrest of Brian Nelson and other senior loyalists. Information was leaked to the loyalist paramilitaries and the press. This resulted in the operation being aborted. Nelson was advised by his FRU handlers to leave home the night before. A new date was set for the operation on account of the leak. The night before the new operation my Incident room was destroyed by fire. This incident, in my opinion, has never been adequately investigated and I believe it was a deliberate act of arson.
Stevens concluded:
4.6 I have uncovered enough evidence to lead me to believe that the murders of Patrick Finucane and
Brian Adam Lambert William "Billy" Stobie (1950 – 12 December 2001) was an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) quartermaster and RUC Special Branch informer''Cory Collusion Inquiry Report: Patrick Finucane'' 1 April 2004 who was involved in the shootings of student ...
could have been prevented. I also believe that the RUC investigation of Patrick Finucane's murder should have resulted in the early arrest and detection of his killers.
4.7 I conclude there was collusion in both murders and the circumstances surrounding them. Collusion is evidenced in many ways. This ranges from the willful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence and evidence, through to the extreme of agents being involved in murder.
4.8 The failure to keep records or the existence of contradictory accounts can often be perceived as evidence of concealment or malpractice. It limits the opportunity to rebut serious allegations. The absence of accountability allows the acts or omissions of individuals to go undetected. The withholding of information impedes the prevention of crime and the arrest of suspects. The unlawful involvement of agents in murder implies that the security forces sanction killings.
4.9 My three Enquiries have found all these elements of collusion to be present. The co-ordination, dissemination and sharing of intelligence were poor. Informants and agents were allowed to operate without effective control and to participate in terrorist crimes. Nationalists were known to be targeted but were not properly warned or protected. Crucial information was withheld from Senior Investigating Officers. Important evidence was neither exploited nor preserved.
Under "Other Matters concerning Collusion", Stevens noted:
2.17 My Enquiry team also investigated an allegation that senior RUC officers briefed the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Rt Hon Douglas Hogg QC, MP, that ‘some solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA’. Mr Hogg repeated this view during a debate on the Prevention of Terrorism legislation in the House of Commons. Within a few weeks Patrick Finucane was murdered. Mr Hogg’s comments about solicitors’ support for terrorism made on 17 January 1989 aroused controversy. To the extent that they were based on information passed by the RUC, they were not justifiable and the Enquiry concludes that the Minister was compromised.
2.18 A further aspect of my Enquiry was how the RUC dealt with threat intelligence. This included examination and analysis of RUC records to determine whether both sides of the community were dealt with in equal measure. They were not.


Aftermath

Loyalist "Twister"
Billy McQuiston William McQuiston, also known as "Twister", is an Ulster loyalist, who was a high-ranking member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Leader of the organisation's A Company, Highfield, West Belfast Brigade, McQuiston spent more than 12 ye ...
revealed to journalist Peter Taylor that he and his comrades believed the Stevens Inquiry and the arrest of Brian Nelson did the UDA a favour, declaring "The Stevens inquiry got rid of all the old guard within the UDA and fresher men took over". In its aftermath, Loyalists began out-killing the IRA for the first time in decades,^ Clayton, Pamela (1996). Enemies and Passing Friends: Settler ideologies in twentieth-century Ulster. Pluto Press. p. 156. "More recently, the resurgence in loyalist violence that led to their carrying out more killings than republicans from the beginning of 1992 until their ceasefire (a fact widely reported in Northern Ireland) was still described as following 'the IRA's well-tested tactic of trying to usurp the political process by violence'…" leading up to the eventual ceasefires and
Good Friday Agreement The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), or Belfast Agreement ( ga, Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or ; Ulster-Scots: or ), is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of The Troubles, a political conflict in No ...
.


References

{{Reflist


External links


The Stevens Report
on the
Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Gri ...
web site
Madden & Finucane

Pat Finucane Centre


on the web site of
CAIN Cain ''Káïn''; ar, قابيل/قايين, Qābīl/Qāyīn is a Biblical figure in the Book of Genesis within Abrahamic religions. He is the elder brother of Abel, and the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, the first couple within the Bible. He wa ...
ttp://cain.ulst.ac.uk/index.html Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland (1968 to the Present)part of
ARK Ark or ARK may refer to: Biblical narratives and religion Hebrew word ''teva'' * Noah's Ark, a massive vessel said to have been built to save the world's animals from a flood * Ark of bulrushes, the boat of the infant Moses Hebrew ''aron'' * ...
br>Northern Ireland Social and Political Archive
in collaboration with
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and the
University of Ulster sco, Ulstèr Universitie , image = Ulster University coat of arms.png , caption = , motto_lang = , mottoeng = , latin_name = Universitas Ulidiae , established = 1865 – Magee College 1953 - Magee Un ...
. This article is referenced in the Stevens Report.
Scandal of Ulster's secret war
— ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' newspaper story
Security forces 'aided' loyalist murders
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