The Green Ribbon Books

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 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.