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Issue
No.12 Spring 2003
Breach
of Trust
By Billy Mitchell
In
the weeks leading up to and immediately following Christmas some twenty-five
Protestant community workers, many of them trade unionists, were visited
by the police and informed that details concerning their movements or
their involvement in community work were in the hands of the Provisional
IRA. Each person visited by the police was given an official document
explaining that during security operations at Stormont and West Belfast
in October 2002 the police came into possession of documents which contained
details about themselves. The document went on to specify what those details
were and, in the majority of cases, the details were provided in the form
of extracts from documents found during the security operations.
It would appear that an intelligence gathering operation had been ongoing
for a number of years through which every sector of the unionist community
was being profiled. Members of political parties, the loyal orders, the
business community and the community and voluntary sector appear to have
been targeted along with members of the police and prison services. A
close examination of the documents given by the police to community workers
reveals that, while some of the information may be regarded as “targeting”,
much of the information would be better termed “profiling”.
That certainly would be the view of the Association of Protestant Community
Workers - an ad hoc committee set up in response to allegations of intelligence
gathering on community workers. It would be our view that this “profiling”
is far more sinister than traditional “targeting”. Targeting
happens within the context of an organisation regarding the “target”
as an enemy to be watched and, where necessary, dealt with. Profiling
happens within the context of community and political activists meeting
to engage in dialogue and the development of community development projects.
It has more to do with individuals touting on their colleagues than it
has to do with targeting enemies. That is what makes it so distasteful.
The vast majority of the information gathered on Protestant community
workers was gathered at inter-community events where the principles of
confidentiality are supposed to be paramount. It is taken for granted
that all such events are conducted under Chatham House Rules where nothing
is attributed to named individuals. Not only were republican sympathisers
attributing comments and personal details to named Protestants, they were
placing their own interpretative glosses on what was being said. We have
compared the quotations given in the papers provided by the police to
community workers with the minutes of the meetings at which the information
was gathered and have been shocked at the deliberate misquotations and
the outrageous interpretations placed on those misquotations by certain
elements within the Republican Movement..
This policy of republican sympathisers reporting back to what amounts
to a Thought Police Unit is an attack on the very core principles of inter-community
dialogue. It undermines the trust that is needed to ensure that cross-community
work is effective as a tool for peace building and it undermines the basic
principles that underpins political and cultural dialogue. Those of us
from the Protestant-Unionist community who have taken risks to engage
in, and to actively promote, cross-community work and political dialogue
feel betrayed not only by the Republican Movement but by those who engaged
with us simply to act as intelligence gatherers for the Provisional IRA.
They are more guilty than the people for whom they touted, and those cross-community
initiatives that touted around for “token Prods” to take our
place when we withdrew from certain cross-community events are an even
bigger disgrace. It shows that they were more interested in securing funding
than they ever were in genuine inter-community work or peace-building.
To turn a blind eye to what was happening is tantamount to condoning what
was happening.
The Republican Movement has, predictably, denied that anyone within their
movement has done anything wrong. Our complaints and concerns have been
dismissed either as a political stunt by disingenuous loyalists or as
political mischief making by the security forces. The republican policy
of blaming loyalists and “the brits” for their own bad behaviour
just won’t wash this time. The information found during security
operations at Stormont and in West Belfast can be traced back to specific
meetings and events on specific dates and at specific places. In all cases
we can identify the people present and, in many cases, those most likely
to be guilty of breaches of confidence and trust. We do not expect the
Republican Movement to come out any openly admit to what has been going
on. But we do expect the leadership of that Movement to assure us that
the practice of using inter-community events to gather information on
members of the unionist community will cease.
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