Prompting more questions than it answered, Barron’s report was unable to provide any definite findings on collusion between Northern loyalists and the British state instead saying that such collaboration was possible but “not proven”.
The report is highly critical of the role played by the Irish government in the aftermath of the attacks. It claims that Liam Cosgrave’s Fine Gael/Labor coalition government failed to investigate the bombings and ignored evidence regarding loyalist suspects.
While relatives say that British cooperation in a public inquiry is highly unlikely they believe that further examination of the Cosgrave cabinet and successive governments is needed.
“Most politicians are already writing off the prospect of cooperation by the British,” said solicitor for the Justice for the Forgotten group Greg O’Neill. “However there is scope for a public inquiry that addresses questions susceptible to being answered by witnesses here in this jurisdiction.
“We do believe it is possible to have a constructive, transparent inquiry, that satisfies relatives and victims needs for the truth, without it becoming an open-ended trawl through the nebula of related issues.”
O’Neill said that a number of issues relating to the Irish government itself needed further public examination.
“The questions of the state’s failures, in particular its response to information it received about the bombers need to be addressed in a public way,” he said. “A huge shadow hangs over the reputations of the cabinet members of the time. Their responses are due in the coming weeks — of course they can and will probably deny Judge Barron’s findings. In such an event we are left with two contradictory positions. There will be a need for further public inquiry.”
O’Neill said an inquiry need not be as expensive as the Bloody Sunday inquiry in Derry.
“Unlike with the Saville Inquiry (Blood Sunday Inquiry) Justice for the Forgotten represents all but two of the families and has only one legal team,” he said.
Meanwhile sources have indicated that one of the report’s main findings is flawed. Barron reported that the U.V.F., the loyalist paramilitary organization, which claimed responsibility for the bombings, was fully capable of carrying out the attacks without the assistance of British military intelligence.
However informed sources insist that the U.V.F. did not have the expertise to plan, coordinate and carry out the multiple bombings, which claimed the lives of 33 people. They believe that the report’s conclusions about the level of U.V.F. sophistication was derived purely from interviews with prominent loyalists and fails to properly take account of the testimony of several former intelligence officers.
Observers point out that the testimony of two former British intelligence officers Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd has been largely discounted in the report. Both Wallace and Holroyd have maintained that the U.V.F. was incapable of such attacks at that time. Holroyd, who was a MI6 intelligence agent based in Portadown in 1974, has described the U.V.F.’s capabilities as “pretty primitive.
Holroyd’s assertion has been supported by several notable figures including a former Garda Commissioner and a former head of the British Army’s explosive ordinance disposal department, Lieutenant Colonel George Styles.
Wallace, a former British army press officer and MI5 operative, has gone on the record as saying that practically all the main suspects in the bombing were working as army or police agents in 1974.
Barron said his investigations were hampered by a lack of cooperation from the British authorities. He refers explicitly to “excessive’ delays in answering requests for material, highlighting the difficulties encountered by Metropolitan police commissioner John Stevens who is currently attempting to uncover collusion in the North. Barron complains that requests for information made in November 200 were not met until February 2002. The British have said that this was mainly because the vast majority of files involved were uncomputerized and had to be trawled through. Other material was held back on “security grounds”.
Despite these apparent setbacks relatives of those who were killed or injured in the bombings believe that a public inquiry can go some way in revealing the truth.