Why is Pat Finucane Centre board member Stuart Ross still attacking my work on collusion?
In 2013, in a number of internet discussion sites (see below) a member of the board of Pat Finucane Centre , Stuart Ross, described my book on collusion A Very British Jihad as ‘easily dismissed’ and consisting of ‘foolish innuendos’. Mr Ross did this by supportively echoing and quoting the sentiments of Queens University academic Adrian Guelke in his 2004 review of my book in Fortnight magazine. Mr Ross continues to this day to disseminate this surprising and unwarranted slur on my journalism, but at the same time imperiously ignores myself and others who have pointed out how (factually) wrong both he and Adrian Guelke are. Thus I have no choice but to go public, as it were, on this issueI wish to make some introductory points:
1) The Pat Finucane Centre
What follows is not an attack on the work of the Pat Finucane Centre. The focus is solely on its board member Stuart Ross, though I do have a question as to why the chairman of the PFC board, Robin Percival, has backed Mr Ross even when collusion victims, and others, contacted the PFC to protest on this issue.
2) My record on collusion
It is a matter of record that I too have done some service to the cause of exposing collusion and have had a price to pay for that. I will not have that reputation traduced, even if the person doing the traducing is on the board of the PFC. In fact especially if that person is on the board of the PFC.
3) Private emails
It is an extreme exception for me to publish private mails from anyone (and I mean anyone), but given that the integrity of my journalism has been gratuitously attacked in the manner described below, and over a long period of time from such a surprising source, I’m left with no option. In private emails to me in 2001 (see below) Adrian Guelke says the exact opposite of what he went on to say in his 2004 Fortnight review.
4) Apartheid South Africa and loyalist State agents
The question of collusion between what was the South African Apartheid secret services and loyalists who were also agents of the British secret services goes to the heart of the State’s collusion with loyalists in Ireland. Without the State sponsored South Africa connection, pro-British death squads in Ireland could never have unleashed their sectarian ‘Jihad’ in the late 1980s and 199os. It is also for this very important reason that Stuart Ross’s ill-informed assault on my work needs to be exposed as the nonsense it is.
5) Adrian Guelke
Queens University academic Adrian Guelke is clearly an establishment figure in Northern Irish society but he is a respected scholar in the field of international relations and conflict-societies. The fact that he got it so wrong (or perhaps strangely changed his mind as we shall discover) on collusion generally, and my journalism in particular, doesn’t remove my belief that he is essentially a decent man and I am the first to applaud his consistent opposition to Apartheid as a younger man.
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Long standing Cic Saor readers who already know about my work on collusion will forgive the preamble. It is necessary for a new raft of readers I’ve gained, very few of whom have seen my films on collusion.
Paul Larkin receives the European Journalist of the Year award from former Uachtarán na hÉireann Patrick Hillery (RIP)
I don’t walk around telling people I won the European Journalist of the Year award in 1997 or that this award also included the award for the film-documentaries sub-section. This is easily checkable. As is the fact that in June 2003 I had the great honour of being invited by the Justice For the Forgotten group to speak at a large meeting on the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings. This ‘Truth In The Open’ meeting was at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin. Here I sat on a panel that also included the then MEP Patricia McKenna and also included Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd. Both Wallace and Fred Holroyd will be happy to confirm that it was I, more than most journalists in Ireland, who fought against the smear campaign that was waged against them. Now their accounts of the UK State’s pseudo gangs and State terrorism in our country are widely accepted, but that wasn’t the case when I worked in the BBC and RTÉ in the 1980s and 1990s. There were no collusion support groups back then and trying to raise collusion was a lonely, sometimes dangerous place.
Readers will note from the above flyer for the Gresham Hotel meeting that Paul O’Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre chaired the meeting. Introducing me to the large audience, Paul O’Connor described me as someone who had made a series of ground-breaking films on collusion for the BBC and that in 1995 I’d made a film for RTÉ – Friendly Forces - which had thrown new light on the State sponsored bombing of Dublin and Monaghan in 1974. These bomb attacks claimed the lives of 33 people and maimed and devastated the lives of hundreds more. My RTÉ film showed clearly that the UK State, via the operations of an ‘Int’ cell based in Lurgan/Portadown (and cooperating with members of the RUC, UDR and UVF) was responsible for these atrocities. In other words I highlighted what has become known as the Glenanne Gang as far back as 1995.
Also at this 2003 Gresham meeting, Paul O’Connor mentioned that I was the author of a forthcoming book called A Very British Jihad. This book is now out of print. In other words, it sold out its print run of three thousand copies, despite attempts by the media to ignore it to death. I’m very proud of A Very British Jihad and the book is a central reason why I am returning to this otherwise dormant blogsite; namely to defend both the book’s, and my own, integrity. The book is a remarkable achievement on a number of levels. First of all, collusion victims, and in particular the victims of Brian Nelson and the Dublin and Monaghan bombs, contacted me to thank me for my work. Then there was the fact that the book was sold, in the main, by word of mouth amongst the plain people of Ireland. I am not a man of means. I was born in a slum in Salford, which Manchester is near. Nor do I ingratiate myself with posh people or political parties who can guarantee TV and radio exposure and/or column space in newspapers. The only media outlets that have regularly covered my work on collusion are our Irish language broadcasters Radio na Gaeltachta and TG4. Mo sheacht beannacht orthu.
Brian Nelson's diary, or jail journal, laid the 'Jihad' bare
There are two other important elements to my Jihad book – one is Brian Nelson’s diary, or so called jail journal. It was, and still is, my firm view that details from the diary were being cherry-picked to suit certain agendas that broadly sought to downplay collusion and focus on particular issues. Of course I too have an agenda. That was to publish and disseminate as much of the contents of the diary as possible and as widely as possible, both in my book and amongst tribunals (Barron and Smithwick), officers of the Ombudsman’s office, researchers, collusion activists and lawyers. As far as I am aware no other collusion book and no other collusion writer has revealed the core of what Nelson said. It is priceless journalism in my view. A view clearly shared by many.
The Vlakplaas house of horror
Secondly and just as importantly I have spent a long time dealing with South Africa and the former Apartheid State’s links to UK spy agencies and pro-British death squads in Ireland. My expertise in this area is acknowledged in South Africa itself. In the 1990s I was interviewed by lawyers from South Africa working for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission who were seeking information in those very same areas. The internationally renowned lawyer Brian Currin helped to arrange this meeting. Much of my work focussed on a gang of Apartheid police goons who worked out of a rural farmstead called ‘Vlakplaas’ about twenty miles west of Pretoria. I will never ever forget finally being able to film at the Vlakplaas police terror centre in 2002. I shiver here as I write about it. At Vlakplass, ANC and/or Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK) members, and also Askari who went back to the ANC (or who fell out of favour with the Vlakplaas units) were regularly interrogated and tortured by the secret police members based there as they also enjoyed a brai or barbecue on lazy Sunday afternoons. It brought terrible resonances for me of the Shankill Butchers. Some of the murders that took place at Vlakplaas were truly unspeakable and it is no accident that its commander in the 1990s, Eugene de Kock, was nicknamed Prime Evil
See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_de_Kock
Now meet Ulster loyalist and British agent Charlie Simpson
As far as I l know, I was the first to reveal (in 1993) that when Brian Nelson went to South Africa to begin the arrangements for illegal arms importation (a trip also involving mid Ulster UVF figures based in SA) Nelson was met in Durban by yet another British agent, Charles (Charlie) Simpson. Committed, long term Ulster loyalist Simpson was a South African military intelligence ‘asset’, but he was also working for the British secret services
This is just one of the extracts from Brian Nelson’s diary where Nelson describes the key role played by Simpson in securing a South African arms deal for loyalist death squads.
One evening during the second week of my stay there we were strolling along when Simpson said to me ‘A fella from the Bureau of Information was asking me if you could manage to get a Shorts blowpipe, (he said) they’d be really interested in getting their hands on one and if you did they would be willing a trade of an arms exchange.
Nelson diary extract page 190 A Very British Jihad
The media and unfortunately even collusion experts have completely vanished Simpson, not only from the Nelson narrative but also from the wider collusion context. However, Charlie Simpson is just as important a State agent as Nelson himself. It must be said that Simpson will argue that, in all he did, he was simply following orders from British Intelligence and indeed I agree with this sentiment to the extent that it is the higher up spooks and securocrats I have always wished to focus on and not the likes of Simpson in isolation. (It's my belief that the collusion movement has failed utterly in this respect.)
Charlie Simpson was a former member of TARA who was picked out by MI5 for use in first ‘Rhodesia’ and then South Africa. He would have had an immediate rapport with Apartheid police and military because he served with the white regime’s notorious Selous Scouts against majority rule in what is now Zimbabwe. There is not space here to go into Simpson’s career but he was a crucial link man, not just with the SA arms manufacturer Armscor, but also between the Vlakplaas killers and loyalist death squads. One notorious Apartheid hitman in particular, Leon Flores, worked closely with Simpson. South African intelligence documents I have seen place Simpson and Flores as working together from at least 1991. I made a film for the BBC about Leon Flores and Charlie Simpson – Spies Stings and Double Crosses. This was broadcast in July 1993.
My film on the Dirk Coetzee hit with reporter Jeremy Adams (Leon Flores is pictured far right)
It was Vlakplaas hitman Flores who targeted none other than Adrian Guelke, using loyalist paramilitaries, in September 1991 because of Guelke’s opposition to Apartheid. Guelke was shot by the UFF at his Belfast home in September 1991. Leon Flores then went on to target former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee in April 1992 for his betrayal of the Apartheid regime after he defected to the ANC. Coetzee survived an assassination plot, again to be carried out by loyalists commissioned by Charlie Simpson and Leon Flores, in April 1992. Two serious murder attempts by Flores using loyalist killers as proxies in the space of six months. It is beyond doubt that Charlie Simpson was Flores’ liaison point for loyalist paramilitaries.
Flores’ activities were part of a worldwide stratagem by the Apartheid State to assassinate its most vocal critics. This assassination campaign was called Project Echoes and was run by the greatly feared Civil Cooperation Bureau. The CCB was nothing more or less than an Apartheid death squad and Leon Flores was one of its key agents. In Irish terms, the CCB strategy was to smear its targets with a pro-IRA tag. But don’t just take my word and research for the close links between Leon Flores and Charlie Simpson. Go to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s website, for example here:
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/amntrans%5C1999/9911151210_pre_991115pt.htm
And read the following Statement from Leon Flores’ former commander at Vlakplaas, Eugene de Kock, in relation to the murder bid on Dirk Coetzee in London in April 1992:
MR DE KOCK: The contact with Flores was Simpson and he contacted Flores - or let me put it this way. I met Simpson one night here in Pretoria and the task was not to kill Coetzee, it was to gather information about him. There weren't any tasks given, there wasn't a written report or a verbal report on it, but Flores later came and said that Simpson said that they had certain expenditures, him and others, and that he did follow Coetzee and did surveillance on him and that they had certain expenses, and that the amount from rand to pound was between R10 000 and R12 000.
De Kock has subsequently admitted that he gave Leon Flores the order to kill Dirk Coetzee. However, it’s also important to note that at no stage did the UFF, certainly at leadership level, believe, they were shooting Adrian Guelke because he was a republican, their claim of being tricked and the subsequent idea of a mistake was just a flag of convenience. Nobody would seriously suggest that Ulster loyalists, with a promise of weapons and training from the SA State, would have refused to shoot Adrian Guelke. Certainly they would have asked for a good cover story and that’s exactly what they got from Leon Flores in the form of a fake document purporting to show that Guelke was an IRA supporter.
So given all the work I’ve done in exposing not only Brian Nelson and Charlie Simpson but also their clear links (via Charlie Simpson) to the Apartheid State and the likes of Leon Flores, where does Adrian Guelke (and the PFC’s Stuart Ross behind him) get the idea that all of the clear detail above is somehow made up?
Queens University academic Adrian Guelke
In 2001, as part of my research for A Very British Jihad, I interviewed Adrian Guelke at his Queens University office in Belfast and also engaged in correspondence with him. The result of this was that Guelke quite rightly stressed that his anti-Apartheid activities were the reason for the SA regime taking a hostile interest in him. But he also told me that Brian Nelson’s sister had personally told him that her brother had received information on him from the Apartheid State. Thus Guelke himself was giving another indicator of loyalist/State awareness (via Brian Nelson) of the Project Echoes conspiracy. However in correspondence with me during August 2001, Guelke (whilst admitting that Leon Flores pointed out his house in 1991) asked me to remove his references to Brian Nelson’s sister:
Adrian Guelke mail to author 3rd of August 2001
Incidentally when Brian Nelson's sister referred to the Department of Information being my problem, I thought that it was a reference to this episode (a row over a newspaper article PL) rather than being a reference to the CCB. However, on reflection this seems somewhat far-fetched, so as it isn't clear what she was referring to I think it might be best to leave this reference out.
Guelke is clearly wrong here to say that it wasn’t clear what Brian Nelson’s sister was referring to and obviously I refused to remove the Nelson reference. It is of crucial importance where collusion is concerned. Brian Nelson was in jail by 1990 but his jail journal makes clear that he was informed of possible targets involving allegedly pro-ANC targets in Ireland. Adrian Guelke was never an ANC member but the secret Apartheid State clearly wanted him dead and used its connections with loyalist State agents to try and bring that about.
Guelke went on to attack A Very British Jihad in Fortnight magazine in 2004, stating that his shooting hardly demonstrates the intimate level of collusion that I wished to suggest. Guelke also said that much of my work (not just my book) contains foolish innuendoes about prominent people. It is this surprising and groundless critique that Stuart Ross of the Pat Finucane Centre has echoed for the past three years. I replied to Guelke in Fortnight the following month stating, as shown above, that it was Guelke himself that had linked Brian Nelson to his shooting and I of course referred to the clear involvement of another loyalist and State agent in his shooting, Charlie Simpson. Stuart Ross of course makes no mention of my demolition of Guelke’s arguments, but quite simply I argued that anyone who disputes Leon Flore’s relationship with Ulster loyalist killers who were also State agents is being disingenuous. There are many academics and journalists in Ireland who can’t bear to look collusion in the face and I believe Adrian Guelke is one of them. But what of PFC member Stuart Ross?
Now we get to the heart of the matter.
Death dealer Leon Flores (left) cannot be wished away, nor his link to Charlie Simpson
It is extremely important to note that Guelke was made aware by me in 2001 that the Apartheid hitman who targeted Adrian Guelke (Leon Flores) was assisted by, amongst others, Ulster loyalist and State agent Charlie Simpson. In his correspondence with me on the 3rd of August 2001, Guelke admits he had no knowledge of Simpson’s involvement:
Adrian Guelke mail to author 3rd of August 2001
I was also totally unaware that Simpson had anything to do with my case specifically.
The Flores/Simpson link is made abundantly clear in A Very British Jihad but it would take no more than five minutes to discover this on the internet. So to make things easier for both Guelke and his cheerleader Stuart Ross of the Pat Finucane Centre, lets look at a cross examination of one of Leon Flores’ comrades from Vlakplass Willie Nortje over the targeting of Dirk Coetzee using Ulster loyalists, with Charlie Simpson as the middle man:
See - http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/amntrans%5C1999/9911151210_pre_991117pt.htm
MR LAX: Just one small aspect on this question of Mr Flores. You said that you met with Simpson and Flores at Flores' house one evening.
MR NORTJE: Yes.
MR LAX: And I didn't catch the full extent of your evidence in relation to that incident and I just wanted to re-canvass it with you please. What exactly did you pick up from Simpson on that night in relation to their discussion? What was his task?
MR NORTJE: You must just remember that we knew he (Simpson PL) was an MI6 agent. Mr de Kock handled him with care, he also did not trust him so he wouldn't have told him directly what we wanted, but after the discussion and after we left, there was talk about the fact that he had contacts with this group in Ireland who did this type of work and that is the assassination of a person, so that was still the beginning of the process, so far as I can remember, they just talked about it.
MR LAX: Let me just stop you there. Who spoke about this? Did Mr de Kock speak about this?
MR NORTJE: Mr de Kock talked about it. Flores was present, Simpson was present and myself but it was never said directly and this is my recollection, it was never said that we are going to kill Dirk, we talked about the possibility.
The reference to Simpson’s MI6 link in the above exchange should be noted. Note also that it is Charlie Simpson who is arranging loyalist murder squads for Leon Flores. Though they were wary, the Vlakplaas killers clearly believed that a section at least of British intelligence was willing to help them attack their opponents in Ireland using Ulster loyalists who were also agents of the State. In return the loyalist would get missile technology, as Simpson promised, so as to break the arms embargo in place at the time. What is it that is not clear about collusion here?
If there is one thing that stands out in the above testimony and in all the relevant SA Truth And Reconciliation evidence that I’ve seen it is that Charlie Simpson and Leon Flores knew each other intimately. Bearing in mind that I also spoke with Leon Flores several times and interviewed him at length for my BBC film.
Adrian Guelke says my book A Very British Jihad is rubbish (I paraphrase), full of innuendo and easily dismissed and Stuart Ross of the PFC agrees with him, but Guelke himself admits that he was not aware of a possible connection between Leon Flores and Charlie Simpson with regard to his shooting. Moreover, in a subsequent email to me Guelke makes an even greater admission. In fact he says the exact opposite of what he says in his 2004 Fortnight attack.
Adrian Guelke mail to author 4th of August 2001.
Thank you very much for your message. I appreciate that you know much more about Simpson's role, relevance and his relationship with Flores than I ever will.
What’s this? That very same Adrian Guelke saying that the ‘foolish’ Paul Larkin knows more than he ever will about an Apartheid hitman (Leon Flores) and loyalist State agent (Charlie Simpson)? But there’s more. In the same email Guelke accepts the obvious link between HIS shooting in September 1991 and the murder attempt on Dirk Coetzee six months later. And it is as I have always said - that when Flores was eventually deported from Britain in April 1992, after the hit on Dirk Coetzee, British police made a direct link to the Guelke shooting. It is none other than Adrian Guelke that confirms this:
Adrian Guelke mail to author 4th of August 2001
In July 1992 the Independent published the story of the expulsion of Flores and Du Randt from the UK in April over the stalking of Dirk Coetzee and mentioned my shooting in the story so the implication was fairly obvious.
In January 1993 when I took up a senior post at the University of the Witwatersrand a journalist from the Weekly Mail and Guardian came to interview me about my new job. By coincidence he knew about my case from other stories he had been doing. Thus he told me that he had recently spoken to Flores who had told the journalist that the British police had accused him (Flores) of involvement in my shooting after they found newspaper cuttings about the shooting in his pocket. I was in SA in 1993, 1994 and 1995 so I missed your Spotlight programme about Simpson and Flores though I was later shown it by Jeremy Adams. As you might imagine the interview with Flores was the bit that had by far the most impact on me. While I was in South Africa Flores regularly featured in the media in relation to the horror show connected with Eugene de Kock.
Here is the paragraph in the UK Independent article which not only clearly links loyalist killers and Apartheid goons but also makes a direct link, as Guelke points out, between his shooting and the murder plot against Dirk Coetzee:
The article can be read in full here
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/agents-on-mission-to-kill-south-african-intelligence-operators-who-plotted-with-ulster-loyalists-to-1533272.html
One should note that this single paragraph also links the Nelson/Simpson arms importation in 1985 to the sensational arrest of DUP members and sanctions busting arms suppliers in Paris in 1989.
One wouldn't expect the UK Independent newspaper to ask in 1992 how loyalist death squads were able to obtain so much lethal armoury when at least two agents of the UK state were involved with Armscor and these same Apartheid killers over a number of years, but one would have thought this question would have occurred to Adrian Guelke and subsequently to Stuart Ross. No collusion? The evidence is there for all to see, if one cares to study it properly instead of engaging in platitudes.
So how do we square what Guelke admits in 2001 about the link between loyalist State agent Charlie Simpson and Vlakplaas killer Leon Flores and his shooting with what he says in his attack on me in Fortnight in 2004:
my case hardly demonstrates the intimate level of collusion that he wishes to suggest existed among the Loyalists, elements of the security forces and the apartheid regime
Let us be clear about the above email from Adrian Guelke to me. It is not me that’s making a link between his shooting and the murder attempt on Dirk Coetzee and then the clear collaboration between Flores and loyalist State agent Charlie Simpson but Adrian Guelke himself. Yet two years later that same Adrian Guelke accuses me of having no evidence about collusion!
Furthermore, the suggestion that two State agents Brian Nelson and Charlie Simpson are involved in targeting, or assisting the targeting, of a particular victim picked out by Apartheid goons and that the secret State won’t be aware of this is clearly not tenable. Moreover we already know that these two same State agents were a key part of the South African arms importation that led to such devastating attacks in the 1990s. Yet according to Guelke in Fortnight, I have presented no evidence of collusion and it’s all innuendo.
Deary me.
Stuart Ross of the Pat Finucane Centre
When I wrote A Very British Jihad I was of course prepared for harsh criticism from right-wingers and those who seek to deny collusion. However, given my previous fraternal ties with the Pat Finucane Centre I never believed I’d see the day when one of its board members would publicly attack my decades of work by saying it was easily dismissed and dismissible and quote none other than collusion denier Adrian Guelke as his authority for so doing. But PFC board member Stuart Ross (and speaking as a PFC board member), did precisely this in November 2013 when making a completely needless reference to my book in a review of Anne Cadwallder’s Lethal Allies.
Ross’s article attacking me, ‘Reviewing Collusion, can be read here:
https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/reviewing-collusion/
Ross simply takes Adrian Guelke’s suddenly altered view that my work can be easily dismissed. This is what Stuart Ross says:
Anne Cadwallader’s Lethal Allies also takes on the controversial issue of collusion in Ireland; her work isn’t so easily dismissible or dismissed.
Stuart Ross made no effort to contact me to verify what Guelke was saying; he has clearly not read A Very British Jihad (or hadn’t when he wrote his review); nor does he refer to my demolition of Guelke in the following issue of Fortnight. Needless to say I was astonished at what a member of the board of the PFC was saying and wrote to him immediately pointing out these very facts and also the fact that it was none other than Paul O’Connor of the PFC who had announced my book at the Gresham Hotel meeting referred to above.
The plain people of Ireland know the score
Moreover, I pointed out that I had given Anne Cadwallader (whom I have known for years) all assistance I could when she was writing her book. In January 2011 for example, Anne wrote to me looking for information on RUC/UVF quartermaster James Mitchell, the very same James Mitchell who was deliberately allowed to hold a huge arsenal for the Mid Ulster UVF right from the 70s to the 90s, storing munitions for the Dublin and Monaghan attacks and the Loughinisland atrocity amongst many others. A lethal coach and horses in other words to any collusion deniers arguments. Here is Anne’s mail to me:
On page 312 of “A Very British Jihad”, you make reference to a second conviction against George Mitchell, for holding guns in November 1979 alongside David Jameson and George McKeown. Can you confirm this conviction and say if there is a reference to it published anywhere? We were not aware of it and it is REALLY important.
Of course I was happy to provide the information Anne Cadwallader and the PFC needed and would do so again. I explained all this to Stuart Ross and the Chairman of the board of the Pat Finucane Centre, Robin Percival, but all these points have been ignored. I mean I haven’t received a single reply from them. If I may say so this is nothing short of blind arrogance and a denial of my rights.
The PFC did issue a Statement on Facebook a week after the Stuart Ross attack (I believe written by Paul O’Connor):
WE are happy to clarify that was not the PFC's intention to cast aspersions on Paul's book. The intention was to 'review' the 'review' which is where the reference to Jihad first arose. PFC
Of course, it was good to get some sort of defence of A Very British Jihad from the PFC but the above statement does not explain (or apologise for) the fact that one of its board members (Stuart Ross) gratuitously attacked my book quoting ‘no collusion’ Adrian Guelke as the authority for that attack.
At the end of the day, and as the positive person I am, I decided to put it down to a very unpleasant (not to say shocking) experience, move on and feel the affection of those who have always supported my work. Then in March/April 2016 I got a mail from an Irish American commentator Michael John Cummings. Completely off his own bat, Mike Cummings has been very kindly publicising both A Very British Jihad and then subsequently Lethal Allies in the United States. I’ve never met Mike and our correspondence arose purely via his interest in my book on collusion. In his quite recent mail, Mike showed me correspondence which included Stuart Ross’s 2013 attack on my book, and clearly demonstrates that Stuart Ross continues to disseminate this utter rubbish about Guelke and my journalism (this time in the United States) some three years later.
Enough is enough.
Given that he continues to disseminate his ill-advised paean to Adrian Guelke and both he and Robin Percival continue to ignore protests from me and others, I am now publicly calling on Stuart Ross and Robin Percival to either provide the evidence that there was no collusion in the UFF shooting of Adrian Guelke and that collusion was not as widespread as I claim, or admit that it was wrong to use Guelke to attack my book. Asserting the truth about the activities of loyalist State agents in South Africa is just as important as any other aspect of collusion and I have been to the fore in this work.
One other very easily checkable fact about me is that I take dismissive arrogance neither from ‘prominent people’ nor from people who ‘diss’ me and then run away when challenged. That’s one of the few benefits that comes from my being brought up in a slum. I am a fighter and my integrity as a journalist and writer will be asserted.
If my now public call for an answer to my questions is still ignored, both I and the many people who support me will take this issue to the next stage.
@Paul Larkin
Gaoth Dobhair
Mí Mheán Fómhair 2016