[A-List] UK state: Northern Ireland

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Hume denies police files claim that he was Dublin agent
By David McKittrick, Ireland Correspondent
The Independent, 10 February 2004

The Nobel prize winner John Hume has angrily denied a report in old police
files that he and other nationalist political leaders in Northern Ireland
had been agents of the Irish government. The claim came from a document
revealed at the Bloody Sunday tribunal investigating the deaths of 14
civilians at the hands of British troops in Londonderry in January 1972.

The document, dated a few days after the shootings, claimed that Jack Lynch,
the Irish Taoiseach at the time, had promised funding for groups working to
otherthrown the then Unionist-dominated Stormont government. It claimed that
Mr Hume and three other leaders of the nationalist Social Democratic and
Labour party (SDLP) ­ Ivan Cooper, Austin Currie and Paddy O'Hanlon ­ were
intelligence officers for the Dublin government. It added: "It is also worth
recalling previous intelligence to the effect that Mr Lynch's intelligence
officers in Northern Ireland are Messrs Cooper, Currie, O'Hanlon and Hume,
the latter now having publicly stated that only a united Ireland will
satisfy the minority." The document was the work of the special branch of
the Royal Ulster Constabulary, since replaced by the Police Service of
Northern Ireland.

Describing the claim as "a load of nonsense", Mr Hume said it was incredible
that police would say such a thing. He added: "It came as a surprise, but
then, when I thought of the RUC of those days, it's not a surprise. They
would know so very little, not only about our own community but our
relations with the south. It's not surprising that the RUC of those days,
who were drawn totally from the Unionist community, would be so ignorant
about sensitivities."

Few will quarrel with Mr Hume's assertion that the special branch was
notoriously out of touch with nationalism, and the department had a distinct
Unionist ethos. The most obvious example of its inaccuracy was seen in
August 1971 when the branch provided wildly incorrect lists of republicans
to be interned without trial. This has been noted in republican, security
and political quarters.

In Chris Ryder's recent book The Fateful Split, the security expert wrote of
"the abysmal quality of the outdated intelligence", adding: "In some cases,
fathers and sons with the same names had been confused. The omission of any
Protestant subversives was a bigoted and costly blunder."

The SDLP has always been regarded as close to Irish governments in a
political sense, since the party and most southern parties have been in
favour of promoting Irish nationalism by peaceful means. Last week, Mr Hume
announced he was bowing out of front-line politics.