FRFI 165 February / March 2002
The ongoing campaign of terror being carried out by gangs of loyalist fascists against the nationalist working class claimed yet another life when, on 12 January, postal worker Daniel McColgan was gunned down as he was about to enter the postal sorting office where he worked in north Belfast. The murder was ‘claimed’ by the Red Hand Defenders (RHD), which is a cover name used by both the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) for sectarian attacks they want to distance themselves from. However, in a statement to The Guardian newspaper, a leader of the UDA in Belfast admitted that members of the UDA carried out the murder.
The death of Daniel McColgan came after a week of increased loyalist attacks centred on the Holy Cross school in North Belfast. Since children started back at school on Monday 7 January there has been continuous harassment, abuse and attacks on Catholic parents and their kids. On the Wednesday afternoon, a loyalist mob attacked the school, ramming the school gates with a car, smashing windows and assaulting parents waiting for their children. When the ‘new’ Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) arrived on the scene their immediate reaction was not to confront the loyalist mob but to blockade the Ardoyne Road, preventing parents not already at the school from collecting their children. At about the same time, another loyalist mob began to attack nationalist homes on the Crumlin Road, many occupied by pensioners. As people went to defend the homes, three people were injured by shotgun fire. The attacks from loyalist thugs escalated over the evening, leading for the first time to the Holy Cross School being shut down for the day on Thursday 10 January. That same day a gang of loyalist thugs attacked Our Lady of Mercy girls’ school. Around half a dozen men armed with crowbars, hammers and guns went into the school grounds and proceeded to smash up cars belonging to the teachers.
On 11 January the RHD issued a death threat to all Catholic teachers, declaring that they were ‘legitimate targets’. The murder of 20-year-old Catholic postman Daniel McColgan followed the next morning, with the UDA then declaring that all Catholics who work in the public sector are considered ‘legitimate targets’.
The death threats against Catholic postal workers and a sense of revulsion at the cowardly murder of McColgan led to postal workers in the north of Ireland refusing to deliver any mail on Monday 14 January and staying away from work in Belfast on the Tuesday and Wednesday. The response of the UDA to the outcry over the murder and the death threats was to cynically issue a statement under the name of the UDA and another cover name, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, condemning the death threats and calling on the RHD to disband. Within a few hours the RHD had complied, issuing a statement announcing they were disbanding and lifting all death threats. As the UDA has already admitted murdering Daniel McColgan and issuing the death threats against Catholic workers, the RHD statement is not worth the paper it’s written on.
As the Sinn Fein newspaper An Phoblacht reports, over the past two years the UDA has been responsible for almost 20 murders, many more injuries and over 300 bomb attacks against Catholic homes, churches and property. In that time the RUC has only secured one conviction in connection to the murders and hardly any in connection with bomb and gun attacks. Why is this? Well one reason is that, as the Finucane case is exposing, the UDA and loyalist terror gangs are riddled with agents of the British security services and the RUC.
Who killed William Stobie?
On 12 December 2001, William Stobie, one-time quartermaster of the UDA, agent of the RUC Special Branch and central figure in the murder of civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989 was shot dead. His murder came days after the trial for his part in the murder of Pat Finucane collapsed. Stobie was an RUC Special Branch agent at the same time as he was the quartermaster for the UDA. He supplied the weapons to the gang who murdered Pat Finucane and disposed of them afterwards. He knew who had pulled the trigger and more importantly he knew the role the RUC Special Branch had played in orchestrating the murder.
Stobie’s trial was the result of the Stevens Inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane but as more information becomes available the Finucane family are reiterating their demand for an independent public inquiry. William Stobie would have been an important witness at that inquiry, a potentially dangerous one for the British government. Collusion between the British state and the UDA in the ‘elimination’ of republican activists is a proven fact. At the time of the murder of Pat Finucane the head of the UDA in West Belfast was an RUC Special Branch agent along with Stobie. The UDA Intelligence Officer who gave the murder gang photographs and information was Brian Nelson, an agent of the British Security Service. On 13 January it emerged that a loyalist who admitted killing Finucane, Ken Barrett, was subsequently recruited into the RUC Special Branch!
Stobie’s death was certainly very convenient for the British Security Services.
Bob Shepherd
