The Assasination of Airey Neave

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• published: 07 Jan 2013
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Airey Neave was assassinated on March 30 1979 as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster car park by a car bomb detonated using a mercury tilt switch. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) claimed responsibility for the operation and paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher, they stated that, ''He was an 'incalculable loss'—and so he was—to the British ruling class.'' Although Neave was killed a few weeks before Thatcher's successful election, he was poised to take up the position of Northern Ireland secretary within Thatcher's cabinet and had planned to introduce tougher military measures to quell the republican insurgency, including a shoot on sight policy. Neave was alleged to have also been involved in organising smear campaigns against labour politicians, orchestrated within sympathetic circles of MI5. Tony Benn had also claimed that had he became Labour leader in place of James Callaghan that Neave had planned to have him assassinated. Furthermore, Searchlight magazine had reported that Neave was involved in organising 'stay-behind' cells in Europe post second world war which would be in theory used to militarily resist, if necessary, a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe. In reality many of these groups were various right wing organisations of different hues, including neo-fascist paramilitaries which were involved in sabotage, terrorism and subversion directed towards communist and other left wing movements across Europe. The relationship between European and American intelligence services, politicans and other sections of the bourgeoisie and these stay behind cells only partially emerged in the early 1990s with a parliamentary inquiry launched in Italy. Here is an excerpt from the 1991 Searchlight article: ''Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher backed top-secret plans to modernise armed cells that could carry out actions abroad. This allegation highlights the undoubted fact that the secret networks of the kind proposed under NATO's Stay Behind plans carried on their activities right into the 1980s. In particular. it is alleged as has long been suspected by Searchlight that the persons involved in the secret armed cells conspiracy included George Kennedy Young, the ex-deputy director of the British intelligence service MI6, and others who had launched Thatcher's campaign for leadership in the mid-1970s. One of these was Airey Neave MP, a top and very close adviser to Thatcher, later murdered by the IRA. Ex-spymaster Young. a notorious racist and antisemite who died last year. was for many years a key link man between the extreme-right of the Conservative Party and some of Britain's most dangerous and violent neo-nazis. The vehicle for this liaison, which included contact with individuals connected with the underground fascist elite paramilitary organisation, Column 88, was his own pressure group called Tory Action. David Muire, another former intelligence officer, was using British Movement members as couriers for British Intelligence. Tory Action, founded by Young and supported by Neave, was also at the centre of a smear campaign, involving the secret services, aimed at discrediting the then Labour Government in Britain in 1975. Just before the 1979 general election, which brought Thatcher to power. Young and Neave were plotting to use a disinformation campaign against Labour. In 1987 a former MI6 officer. Leigh Tracey, revealed that Neave had approached him to join a small, highly select group to organise an army of resistance in case Labour won the election. Seen in the context of Stay Behind, the anti-democratic manoeuvrings of Young and Neave and their connection with efforts to build so-called private armies take on a deeper meaning. According to The Guardian, the secret armed cells plan existed before Thatcher took office in 1979 and continued until the French secret service attack on a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand in 1985 led to its abandonment. So far the British Ministry of Defence has remained tightlipped on the whole subject of the terrorist Stay Behind networks, but two former British army generals have confirmed that such plans were operative in Britain.''