CARELESSNESS, coincidence or conspiracy? Those are the only possible conclusions which the forthcoming Omagh bomb inquiry can reach.
Carelessness means that the bombing might have been prevented if the RUC had acted on advance information about a planned attack on the town. Conspiracy suggests that their failure to act was deliberate, probably for political purposes and that it originated far above the RUC. Coincidence just means coincidence.
There is evidence for the first conclusion. There is none for the second and the third does not need evidence.
The facts are clear. The Real IRA planted a car bomb in a busy Omagh street on August 15 1998, killing 29 civilians, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injuring about 220 others. The deaths and injuries were their responsibility. Their aim was presumably to continue the Provisional IRA’s bombing campaign to drive the British from Ireland.
(I always imagined senior British politicians smiling at the thought of the Irish blowing up their own towns in the name of patriotism to drive the British out. “If you don’t leave, we will kill our own people.” There was nothing republican, real or otherwise, about bombing civilians.)
A 2001 report by the then Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, revealed that 11 days before the bombing, the RUC in Omagh received an anonymous telephone call warning that there would be an “unspecified attack” on police in the town on August 15.
The information was passed to RUC Special Branch, but they did not relay it to Omagh’s Sub-Divisional Commander for appropriate action. This failure was in contravention of the RUC Force Order. The RUC Chief Constable later said it was acceptable not to relay the information. Ms O’Loan said he was wrong.
An RUC informer, known as Kevin Fulton, provided supporting information to CID about a possible attack three days before the bombing. Records of the meeting with Fulton could not be found within Special Branch. They said they never received them.
The O’Loan report expressed “concerns about the management and dissemination of intelligence by Special Branch”.
The inquiry judge will evaluate this and other evidence and most likely conclude a case of carelessness. He/she is unlikely to match the evidence to the politics of the time and the political consequences of the bombing. Government inquiries do not do politics.
The explosion came four months after the Good Friday Agreement, while Stormont was still in shadow form. About 150 key IRA members are reported to have opposed the Agreement. The IRA leadership feared a repeat of the civil war split following the signing of the 1921 Treaty.
That war swung heavily in favour of the pro-Treaty forces when the British gave them field guns to bombard the IRA position in the Four Courts. Sentiment swung against anti-Agreement republicans following the Omagh bomb and two weeks later, Gerry Adams could confidently declare that violence was “over, done with and gone”.
Sinn Féin could now enter Stormont and administer the state the PIRA failed to destroy.
Anti-Agreement republicanism would never regain credibility following Omagh and its various factions gradually withered away, rejected by a people sickened of violence and the human suffering it brings. Was Omagh the modern equivalent of the Four Courts?
Is that why the RUC Special Branch were apparently careless? Or was it just mere coincidence?
The conspiracy theory is based on the belief that the British would use, or allow, violence for political ends. There is ample evidence that they would: Bloody Sunday, the use of Stakeknife to kill others to protect himself, and RUC collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
Whether they did so in Omagh, or whether it was just political coincidence, we shall probably never know. That’s because the public inquiry will be held partly in private. According to the Secretary of State, “there will be some material which will not be able to be examined in public”.
Which means we will be left wondering if the peace process was finally secured by a bomb.
Pull-quote:
The conspiracy theory is based on the belief that the British would use, or allow, violence for political ends. There is ample evidence that they would: Bloody Sunday, the use of Stakeknife to kill others to protect himself, and RUC collusion with loyalist paramilitaries
