A response to Ian S. Wood’s ‘Brian Nelson—the rise and fall of a double agent’ (HI 31.2, March/April 2023).
By Margaret Urwin
If Ian S. Wood wished to portray the extent of collusion as a figment of Irish republican imaginations he chose the wrong example. Brian Nelson’s story illustrates Britain’s secret war in Northern Ireland, confirming complicity with murder and lying about it. The Nelson saga is a sordid tale of collusion at a high level between the British Army/RUC Special Branch and the UDA.
From October 1965 until February 1970, Nelson served in the British Army’s Black Watch regiment. Ciarán MacAirt’s research has revealed that Nelson was discharged on grounds of mental instability. He returned to Belfast and joined the UDA. In March 1973 Nelson abducted, brutally beat and tortured a partially sighted Catholic, Gerard Higgins. Nelson and two accomplices were caught by members of the Coldstream Guards removing Higgins from their ‘romper room’ to, most likely, his death. They got off lightly—Nelson as ringleader was sentenced to seven years. His accomplices received, respectively, two years and a suspended sentence.
RECRUITMENT BY THE SECURITY FORCES
Nelson may have been recruited by the security forces at that time. A contemporary Royal Military Police (RMP) report (also discovered by Ciarán MacAirt) suggests this possibility. The RMP author informed his CO why the arrest procedure was delayed. On arrival at Springfield Road RUC station, he met with the 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards intelligence officer. The latter informed him that, before hand-over to the RUC, he had permission from the Brigade Major, 39th Infantry, to interview each of three males in custody, providing ample time alone with Nelson. Special Branch Deputy Head Brian Fitzsimons claimed in a July 1990 memo that, on release in August 1977, Nelson ‘avoided contact with the UDA and lived quietly’—that is, until he rang the intelligence section in Lisburn garrison on 4 May 1984 to offer his services. He was met by personnel from the Force Research Unit (FRU). It is an open question as to whether Nelson worked for the security forces beforehand.
Despite evidence of mental instability and sectarian brutality, the FRU tasked Nelson with rejoining the UDA. He was soon appointed intelligence officer for west Belfast. It is unclear whether Nelson succeeded in obtaining South African arms in 1985. While Desmond De Silva was adamant in 2012 that there was no shipment, he acknowledged that obtaining them was Nelson’s sole purpose. It was done with the approval of MI5 and the FRU, who paid Nelson’s expenses. Judge Cory is less certain that no shipment took place and noted that ‘… whether the transaction was consummated remains an open question’.
Nelson left Belfast in October 1985 and worked in Germany until mid-1987. He had no sooner settled into his new life than the FRU anxiously tried to recruit him again, meeting him as early as December 1985. For a time, both the FRU and MI5 competed for Nelson’s services. MI5 even considered employing him full-time.
UDA KILLINGS INCREASED ON NELSON’S RETURN
Nelson was re-recruited by the FRU with the blessing of the Army Chief of General Staff and Assistant Head of Intelligence, an FRU officer. MI5’s Director General was also involved. Nelson was offered a very tempting package—a house was purchased for him along with a taxi (designed as a cover for his surveillance activities) costing a total of £7,200, plus £200 per month for his services. Was the re-recruitment of Nelson necessary at all? The OC of the FRU, Col. Gordon Kerr, told the Stevens Inquiry:
‘There was a desperate need for operational intelligence on the Protestant terror groups, who were successfully targeting individuals for assassination … We, in the FRU, decided that if we could persuade Nelson to return … we could reinstate him as Intelligence Officer in the UDA and gain valuable intelligence on UDA targeting.’
That statement does not add up. Killings carried out by the UDA in that period were: 1982, one Catholic civilian; 1983, one UDA member and one Protestant civilian; 1984, one Catholic civilian; 1985, one Catholic civilian (the year Nelson left Belfast); 1986: four Catholics, one Protestant and one UDA member (while Nelson was in Germany); 1987: eleven people killed, most of them after Nelson’s return. A telegram dated 21 May 1987 stated that ‘[Nelson] is now established in UDA HQ’. In 1988 the UDA’s killing rate increased to twelve people, and six were killed in 1989, all during Nelson’s term of employment.
The FRU ordered Nelson to focus his targeting on ‘known PIRA activists’. Col. Gordon Kerr explained his rather dubious rationale for this in his October 1990 statement to Stevens:
‘We carefully developed Nelson’s case … with SB [Special Branch] with the aim of making him Chief IO [intelligence officer] for the UDA. By getting him into that position, FRU and SB reasoned that we could persuade the UDA to centralise their targeting through Nelson … on known PIRA activists who … were far harder targets. In this way, we could get advance warning of planned attacks, could stop the ad hoc targeting of Catholics and could exploit the information more easily because the harder PIRA targets demanded much more reconnaissance and planning and this gave the RUC time to prepare counter measures. In the event, this concentrated targeting also resulted in far fewer attacks, because despite a great deal of reconnaissance, PIRA targets often proved too difficult.’
A certain inescapable fact, in De Silva’s view, was that Nelson’s return from Germany—for which the FRU was responsible—increased the UDA’s ‘military’ capacity to target and attack supposedly ‘legitimate’ republican targets.
De Silva insisted that neither Nelson nor the FRU had any involvement in an arms shipment via Lebanon in December 1987. He placed the bulk of responsibility on Ulster Resistance. The Guardian, however, quoted an Armscor source that, ‘when arrangements were being made for the shipment of the arms from Lebanon, it had to be agreed by John McMichael and his intelligence officer, Brian Nelson’.
The FRU claimed that they passed on Nelson’s information on targeting individuals to the RUC Special Branch so that their murders could be stopped. Special Branch, on the other hand, claimed that the FRU failed to pass information to enable them to take action. In fact, in a declassified NIO file, authorities expressed concern about claims being taken by the widows of Gerard Slane and Terence McDaid, targeted by Nelson and murdered by the UDA. It was noted that ‘it will be impossible for the MoD to deny that Nelson was in their employment and had passed to them clear evidence of Slane and McDaid being targeted’. A court could find that the security authorities were at least negligent in continuing to permit Nelson’s involvement in conspiracies to commit murder and failing to act on his information to prevent their deaths—or, worse, that they conspired in the killings. De Silva regarded the Slane case as the most serious example of the FRU failing to pass on important intelligence to the RUC Special Branch prior to a UDA attack taking place.
ATTEMPTED MURDER OF ALEX MASKEY
Another case was the attempted murder of Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey. Nelson told his handler of his near-success in killing Maskey on a previous Sunday, missing him by about twenty seconds. The handler, without hesitation, confirmed Maskey’s car registration number, thus facilitating further attacks. De Silva found it ‘difficult to conceive of a clearer example of FRU … being prepared to assist the UDA with their targeting … rather than action to save lives’.
Nelson also disseminated targeting material to the UVF, over whom his handler had no control. His handler wrote on 7 April 1989:
‘Nelson feels that if the UDA are not going to act then it is better that the UVF do it than no one. Although the UVF are not particular about their targets they appear to be more aggressive. If this is successful it will enhance Nelson’s standing with L/28 (a UDA leader), particularly if the UVF carry out an attack on one of the targets for which Nelson supplied the information.’
It seems to have been clearly understood that the information could assist the UVF in carrying out the attacks. There is no suggestion that it would be used to save lives.
The strongest evidence of FRU handlers passing information to Nelson is to be found in their own documentary records. For example, when he received the registration numbers of five cars, Nelson was advised to tell UDA leader Tommy Lyttle that he had obtained them on a drive past Conway Mill. One of those vehicles belonged to IRA member Brendan Hughes.
UDR ‘VETTING’
The Stevens investigation exposed serious problems inherent in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) vetting system, which, from our own research, we know existed from its very formation. Stevens found 1,350 adverse RUC vetting reports on individuals seeking to join the UDR during 1988–9. Despite that, 351 of these were enlisted. Of 210 loyalists arrested by Stevens, all but three were working for one or other State agency, further evidence that loyalist paramilitaries acted as a deniable arm of the State.
Significant assistance was provided by members of the security forces to loyalists. In 1985, of thousands of items of intelligence material held by the UDA, 85% was drawn from UDR and RUC records. De Silva lists 270 instances of security force leaks to the UDA between January 1987 and September 1989. In September 1989, the Special Branch Deputy Head noted:
‘Our researches suggest that RUC links are as extensive as the UDR’s … UDA/UDR links are significant. Given the differing sizes and nature of the UDA and UVF (the latter being a proscribed organisation) we would expect there … to be more scope for contact between the security forces and the UDA than the UVF.’
In December 1988, MI5 and the RUC Special Branch learnt that a UDA member intended to break into a UDR camp in County Down. The operation was allowed to proceed, ostensibly on the basis that nothing new would be found. Nonetheless, a videotape of a UDR briefing featuring a number of individuals, including Loughlin McGinn, was discovered. The FRU recorded that Nelson, having viewed the tape, noted that UDR members offered the UDA hit team ‘refuge’ in the local barracks. This resulted in the UDA killing of McGinn in August 1989. That, in turn, led to the appointment of John Stevens to head a collusion inquiry.
NELSON’S TRIAL
Nelson was given Army tuition in resisting interrogation at the outset of the inquiry. Stevens noted that it was only through his investigative efforts that he was able to identify and arrest Nelson in January 1990. Interviews revealed that Nelson had been in possession of an ‘intelligence dump’, crucial evidence that FRU handlers seized and held for several months.
In 1992 Nelson was committed for trial on 34 charges—two of murdering Gerard Slane and Terence McDaid, four of conspiracy to murder and 28 lesser charges. He pleaded guilty to twenty charges on 21 January—five of conspiracy to murder, fourteen of possessing information of use to terrorists and one of firearms possession. The prosecution dropped all other charges, including murder. The authorities stressed that the DPP’s decision not to proceed was reached after ‘a scrupulous assessment of the possible evidential difficulties and a rigorous examination of the interests of justice’ [emphasis added]. Nelson received merely a ten-year sentence.
De Silva’s 2012 report details the deceit, complicity and irregularities of the various security agencies—the RUC Special Branch, the FRU and MI5. They all acted beyond the law, lying to their political masters, running propaganda campaigns, leaking massive amounts of sensitive information to loyalists, ignoring threats to the lives of those they were tasked to protect and telling falsehoods in criminal trials. British government ministers, however, are exonerated.
During Nelson’s trial, the British authorities underlined the fact that Stevens initially believed that the passing of information to paramilitaries was neither widespread nor institutionalised. In 2012 De Silva wrote to Stevens to ascertain his current position. Stevens’s reply highlighted the withholding of documents:
‘On the basis of all the intelligence gathered by all three inquiries, I do believe from these records that leaks of information from the security forces was far more widespread and extensive than expressed in my initial findings’.
With regard to the targeting of Pat Finucane, the FRU claimed that Nelson was unaware of it. While it was admitted that Nelson confirmed his address, a ‘belief’ was fabricated that Nelson believed that the target was Pat McGeown because of his inclusion in a photo of Finucane provided by Nelson to the UDA. An undated MI5 report noted, however, that Nelson ‘undoubtedly did the recce on the solicitor, Patrick Finucane’. Moreover, William Stobie, the man who provided the weapons for Finucane’s murder, and at least one of those who carried it out, Ken Barrett, were RUC Special Branch agents.
Wood claims that the focus on Pat Finucane’s murder ‘has crowded off the stage the equally brutal murders of other lawyers such as Edgar Graham, shot dead by the IRA in December 1983’. Edgar Graham, however, was not killed by State agents avoiding accountability. Wood suggests that some ‘in the collusion debate … don’t … answer the question of why, if there was a co-ordinated and over-arching state structure of collusion, it was the police force, the RUC, which in 1990 arrested the army’s principal agent within loyalism’. This is absurd! Nelson’s arrest was ordered by Stevens, whom the RUC obstructed at every turn. Nelson would certainly not otherwise have been arrested.
Why are a lot of ‘dead Provos’ required to prove collusion? Colluders believed that killing uninvolved Catholics was as effective as killing IRA members. The State-assisted Glenanne Gang carried out 120 murders—only one victim was an IRA member and he may not even have been the intended target. Killing Catholics lowered nationalist morale and, potentially, IRA support. Pat Finucane’s killing is a perfect example. As a lawyer often successfully representing republicans, his death constituted a warning: wind your neck in before you get it in the neck. Solicitor Rosemary Nelson’s death played a similar role. This constituted a terror campaign that adapted and directed loyalists’ activities.
Margaret Urwin, Justice for the Forgotten/Pat Finucane Centre.
Further reading
D. de Silva QC, The Report of Patrick Finucane Review (December 2012).
The trial of Brian Nelson (1991–2), CJ4/10390 & CJ4/10456, UK National Archives.