What the very dogs on the streets of the Six Counties had known for years and years about collusion between the dreaded RUC police, British intelligence officers, and loyalist gangsters in the murders, assassinations, and killings of Catholics, is now public knowledge.

A fourteen year investigation summarized its findings in a 20-page booklet it issued in mid-April 2003.

It was but one more in the long series of disclosures of official wrong doings in the statelet called Northern Ireland. Had it been Iraq, Iran, Somalia, or Nigeria, the news might have been passed off with a shrug and a grimace of distaste on the part of the complacent. Coming after revelations of the wrongful convictions and years of imprisonment of the Birmingham Six, the Guilford Four, and recent revelations at the Bloody Sunday inquiry, still ongoing, it copper fastens the historic mistrust of British governance in any part of Ireland, and adds further urgency for a complete withdrawal from the Six Counties.

Only thirteen years remain until the centenary of the 1916 Rising which led to British withdrawal from the Twenty-Six Counties. Does anyone believe that the continued claim of Britain to occupy six counties in north-east Ireland will be tolerated when that date comes?

Sir John Stevens, Britain's most senior police officer, revealed that his 14-year inquiry had been willfully obstructed by the security forces. He also claimed intelligence elements had set fire to his own office, and that the Army and MoD (Ministry of Defence) had systematically blocked his efforts to get to sensitive documents.

The abbreviated 20-page report may be accessed on the Internet at www.statewatch.org/news/2003/apr/stevensrep.pdf for inspection.

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