The Committee, by Sean McPhilemy, began life as a Channel 4 documentary. McPhilemy's company, Box Productions, had been riding high on the back of a string of highly-regarded programmes when, one day early in 1991, a young employee suggested making a programme about collusion between the RUC and loyalist death squads in Northern Ireland. The project became an expos? of the workings of a committee of protestant businessmen, policemen, clergy and various hit-men who, allegedly, assembled regularly in the late 1980s to plan murder-"the committee."
This grouping was said to have emerged from protestant disillusionment with the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985. The film provided a chilling insight into Northern Ireland's underworld of paramilitaries, informers, corrupt policemen and, too often, ordinary decent people. It was a scoop. The only snag was that it was based almost exclusively on the testimony of one witness, later identified as Jim Sands, a Portadown loyalist and assistant to the Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Hugh Ross, who had agreed to talk only on a strictly anonymous basis. As Sands was not prepared to go to court, Box Productions knew it could not name names. It did, however, hand over the names it had (about 19 out of the 60 members of the committee).
Predictably, the film caused a stir and the RUC launched an enquiry. The first action of those charged with the enquiry was to take Channel 4 and Box Productions to court in an attempt to force them to reveal their source. The judge found in favour of the policemen, but the film-makers refused to break their pledge to Sands, and were adjudged to be in contempt. Eventually Channel 4 and Box Productions were jointly fined a mere ?75,000 for their failure to comply-possibly in order to avoid attracting too much attention to the issue. There matters would have rested, had it not been for a police raid on the home of the researcher who had done most of the initial leg-work for the programme, Ben Hamilton. Papers seized in that swoop led the RUC to Sands.
It was not long before the RUC had convinced Sands that he should make a recantation and help them discredit the film-makers. A Belfast journalist who had once been a member of the Official IRA was made to take most of the blame for the "hoax." But not all of it. McPhilemy, too, was targeted. A life-and-death struggle over his professional reputation now ensued.
In December 1992, Richard Monteith, a Belfast solicitor, sued McPhilemy and Channel 4 for having identified him in the programme as a member of the committee. Channel 4 apparently lost its nerve; it not only settled with Monteith, but declined to fund a follow-up programme on the scandal. McPhilemy refused to be party to the settlement, even though he knew he would thereby lose his most powerful ally. Discredited in the eyes of the law, he began work on the book of the programme. He also launched libel proceedings of his own against the Sunday Times and the Sunday Express for having run articles claiming that he had been involved in a deception. Now, seven years after the original screening, matters are coming to a head just as the peace process is turning its attention to the RUC, through Chris Patten's commission on policing.
In February this year McPhilemy's book was published by Roberts Rinehart in the US, far away from the draconian British libel laws. For a special interest book it has been a runaway success, selling 33,000 hardback copies to date. Substantial sales have also been made over the internet, mainly to Britain and Ireland.
However, the book's success has attracted another libel suit, this time in the friendlier arena of US libel law. The Prentice brothers, who run Northern Ireland's best-known car dealership, have lodged a $100m complaint against McPhilemy and his publishers for having named them as members of the committee. Proceedings in both cases are being watched closely by the British press, which has so far fought shy of covering the issue in any detail.
McPhilemy was not the first to point to the existence of systematic collusion between the Northern Ireland state and loyalist paramilitaries, but ever since the early 1970s the allegations have always been denied. Why has the issue resurfaced now? The issue of RUC reform has revived the memory of these murders, some of which took place almost three decades ago. (Chris Patten was given his personal copy of the book by a high-ranking UN official; it was also brandished in his face at a public meeting of his commission in November.)
This year, there have been two other important developments in the story. In September, details were released to the Commons home affairs select committee of the sum paid by Greater Manchester Police, back in 1995, to settle a claim for malicious prosecution put forward by John Taylor, a Manchester businessman, and three others. The sum-which the police had been keen to keep secret-was a huge ?1m. Taylor was a friend of John Stalker, the former deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester, who had been assigned the job of investigating allegations of a "shoot-to-kill" policy in Northern Ireland in the mid-1980s. When Taylor was accused of having links to criminals in Manchester and of financial fraud, Stalker was removed from the investigation. Although the case against Taylor collapsed, the Stalker enquiry had been stopped in its tracks and its final report was never published.
And, earlier this year, the Sunday Telegraph revealed the contents of secret files from the Stevens enquiry of the late 1980s into collaboration between the RUC and UDA. This enquiry was sparked off by the UDA killing of Loughlin Maginn, an "IRA intelligence officer." At least that was how he was described on the confidential security forces file the UDA brandished to back up their case. Stevens's report was never published and there was only one significant prosecution to follow from it, that of Brian Nelson. He pleaded guilty. This enabled the RUC to keep certain key documents, known as "contact" forms, from reaching the public domain. These are the forms that the Telegraph managed to get its hands on, and they are dynamite, because the contact in question is between Brian Nelson, an "intelligence officer" in the UDA, and his handlers in British military intelligence, ultimately MI5. They show how the army used the UDA to assassinate republicans and others in the late 1980s by supplying the UDA with "proper targeting" information. They also reveal attempts to impede Stevens' enquiry when he got too close.
As we emerge from the conflict in Northern Ireland-a peculiarly British, unofficial war-the past becomes even more of a battleground. Should it be forgotten, to enable reconciliation? Or must it be confronted, to enable reconciliation?
Supporters of the former view point to the absence of absolute historical truth, and remain sceptical about the possibility of real reconciliation. "Reconciliation" might be appropriate for a conflict within a community, but there isn't necessarily a pre-existing harmony to be rediscovered in conflicts which take place between communities. Peace involves not an acceptance of the other side but a durable balance of power. The example of Chile shows that democracy can flourish on the basis of unholy compromise.
The problem with this "least said soonest mended" view is that it conceives of peace as the absence of war, rather than as a process of finding common ground. Respect for human rights can be the basis of that common ground.
No single formula will suit all countries. But having fought a deniable war in Northern Ireland there will be strong pressure for a confessional peace. This book, naming names as it does, means that only genuinely radical reform of the RUC is likely to halt the momentum towards a full investigation into the secret campaign of collusion.
Perhaps we need that anyway. Without it, we may allow one of the enduring legacies of the conflict to confirm that maxim about lies: once a lie is big enough it will do as well as the truth. Do we really want to vindicate Goebbels?
The Committee
Sean McPhilemy
Roberts Rinehart, $24.95 (from amazon.com)
