The Green Ribbon Books

Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair

Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding
Andre Deutsch
1999

In 1997, MI5 officer David Shayler went public with a series of damning criticisms of the Security Service. With this book, Hollingsworth and Fielding took Shayler's story as the starting point for a survey of the organisation as a whole.

At the time, Shayler's primary grievance was with what he saw as MI5 incompetence, and the two journalists were particularly impressed by his refusal to indulge in wild conspiracy theories, or to reveal details of  ongoing operations' or agents' identities.

His more recent bizarre behaviour is obvious ammunition for his critics, but arguably only enhances the importance of this book as an exposition of his original views.

Public Servant, Secret Agent: The Elusive Life and Violent Death of Airey Neave

Paul Routledge
2002
Fourth Estate

As the title of this biography implies, Airey Neave's spent much of his life at the interface between two worlds, those of politics and intelligence. His career went through several intriguing phases. each of which sheds light on the history of Britain's secret state.

A visit to Germany as a 17-year-old Etonian in 1933 gave Neave an early hatred for fascism. In the 1930s, when many of his colleagues at Oxford were turning to socialism and even communism, he began a lifelong interest in the Territorial Army.

By 1940, he was a young army lieutenant, fighting in the bloody, and ultimately doomed, defence of Calais. His capture by the German paved the way for the defining period of his life.

The Squad and the Intelligence Operations of Michael Collins

T Ryle Dwyer
Mercier Press
2005

Historian T. Ryle Dwyer has written several studies of Michael Collins and the War of Independence. In this book, he re-examines the subject in the light of new material from the Bureau of Military History.

Dwyer stitches together these first-hand acccounts from members of 'the squad' into a coherent narrative of Collins' activities as the IRA's director of intelligence.

One thing this reader found striking was how closely Collins methods conformed to the theories of US military strategist John Boyd, which emphasise cutting an opponent off from their environment, and paralysing their ability to make effective decisions.

Unfinished Business: State Killings and the Quest for Truth

Bill Rolston
Beyond the Pale
2000

One in ten of those killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland was killed by the state.This book tells some of the stories behind that statistic.

22 chapters are each devoted to a single incident, beginning with Bloody Sunday in 1972, and ending with the case of Robert Hamill, who was murdered by loyalists in 1997 while nearby RUC officers refused to intervene.

Each chapter contains a substantial account of the case, alongside interviews with relatives of the victims and campaigners. Three further chapters include extended interviews with human rights campaigners Fr Raymond Murray, Clara Reilly of Relatives for Justice, and Fr Denis Faul.

Unfinished Business is an extremely valuable record of the cases it documents, but above all it is powerful testimony to the often untold story of how ordinary familes have fought for the truth about the deaths of their loved ones.

Buy this book at the Green Ribbon aStore: UK - US - France - Deutschland - Canada

The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism

Robert Kee
Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1972
Penguin 2000

A widely read history of Irish nationalism, that has been published both as an omnibus, and as three separate volumes: The Most Distressful Country, the Bold Fenian Men and Ourselves Alone.

In the opening chapters, Kee surveys the Medieval and early modern background to Irish history. The bulk of the book, however, consists of a sustained narrative of the years from the rise of the United Irishmen in the late Eighteenth Century to the Civil War of 1922-23, an eventful period which included the Act of Union, the struggle first for Catholic emancipation, and then for Home Rule, the Great Famine and the Land War, the emergence of the Fenians, the War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty that created the modern Irish state.

Kee concludes with an epilogue which considers events up to the time of writing, during the earliest and most intense years of the Northern Troubles. It's clear thoughout that his sympathy is with constitutional nationalism and the Home Rule movement, rather than with the republican tradition. Nevertheless, The Green Flag is an obvious choice for anyone looking for a well-written narrative history of the period.

Buy this book at the Green Ribbon aStore: UK - US - France - Deutschland - Canada

The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings

Don Mullan
Wolfhound Press
2000

At 5.30pm on May 17, 1974, three car-bombs exploded in the centre of Dublin. 90 minutes later, another bomb exploded in Monaghan Town. Between them, the attacks killed 33 people, one of the worst death-tolls of the Troubles.

The bombings occured at a crucial political moment, in the midst of the Ulster Workers Strike which brought down the Sunningdale Agreement, the last attempt at power-sharing between the two communities in the North of Ireland for decades. A veil of silence soon descended over the episode, in spite of widespread suspicions that British intelligence had assisted loyalist paramilitaries in carrying out the attacks.

In this meticulously researched book, Don Mullan provides the accounts of eyewitnesses, survivors and the bereaved, and documents the struggle to uncover the truth about the bombings.

Stalker: Ireland, 'Shoot to Kill' and the 'Affair'

John Stalker
Penguin
1988

The story of an honest cop who did his job too well and paid the price.

In October 1982, an IRA landmine killed three RUC officers in Co. Armagh. In the following two months, a special RUC squad shot dead six men, giving rise to accusations that the force was operating a "shoot to kill" policy.

In 1984, John Stalker, the high-flying Deputy Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police was appointed to investigate the killings. This is his own account of the extraordinary events that followed.

Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA

Mark Urban
Faber & Faber
1992

An influential account of the covert struggle between the security forces and the IRA.

Big Boys' Rules includes a neat diagram at the back of the book which details the evolution, through the 1970s and 80s, of Army and RUC covert units in the areas of surveillance, agent-running and firearms.

The substance of the book details the events underlying that diagram, the successes and failures of changing tactics, the political controversies they provoked, and the ever shifting lines of demarcation between Army and RUC responsibilities.

Who Framed Colin Wallace?

Paul Foot
Macmillan 1989
Pan 1990

The definitive account of one of the most remarkable stories ever to emerge from Britain's secret state.

When the British Army arrived in Northern Ireland in 1969, the local knowledge of Antrim-born public relations officer Colin Wallace proved a godsend. As the conflict developed, information became a crucial battleground, and Wallace became increasingly involved with psychological warfare.

Initially, this meant working with MI6, but in 1973 the Northern Ireland role passed to MI5. This was followed by the initiation of project Clockwork Orange, a smear campaign intended to discredit paramilitary leaders.

However, as Foot shows using Wallace's contemporary notes, the project soon became a right-wing propaganda campaign aimed at British politicians, notably including the key smear that Harold Wilson was a KGB agent.

The campaign intensified in 1974, as MI5 set out to undermine the new Labour government and it's attempt at power-sharing in Northern Ireland, the Sunningdale Agreement.

The Nationalists of Northern Ireland 1918-1973

Enda Staunton
The Columba Press
2001

A huge number of books have been written about the Northern Ireland troubles. There are far fewer covering the first half century of the northern state's existence.

Of those few, Enda Staunton's study of the political history of northern nationalists is among the most important.

Staunton begins with the 1918 election in which Sinn Fein swept the board throughout Ireland including much of the North. In the Belfast constituency of the Falls, however, Eamonn De Valera was to be defeated by Home Ruler Joe Devlin.

This event underlined the internal differences within nationalism, both between North and South, and within the North Itself.

Devlin would later describe the creation of a separate northern Parliament as 'the greatest and last of all calamities.'