What Roy Greenslade gets wrong about the IRA’s bomb warnings

There are plenty of reasons to object to the journalist Roy Greenslade’s secret support of the IRA, which he now admits to harbouring during his long Fleet Street career. But as a former police officer involved in counter-terrorist search operations during the height of the Troubles, there was one thing in particular that is hard to take: his view on who was responsible for the casualties from IRA bombings. In his article republished in the Sunday Times, Greenslade said:

‘In Belfast, in discussions with republicans, I heard about the beginnings of what came to be known as “the dirty war”, the security forces’ use of collusion, the deliberate failure by the authorities to act quickly enough in response to phone calls warning of bomb placements, and the willingness of the RUC and army to allow loyalist paramilitaries to bomb and kill with impunity.’

Here Greenslade appears to point the finger, not at those who planted the devices, but at people – police officers who responded to these incidents across Northern Ireland and the mainland UK -– who apparently failed to react in time. 

Although such bomb warnings are presented here as some kind of favour from the IRA, they were anything but.