Papers released on 'bloody 1976'

BBC Source

Previously confidential government files relating to 1976 have been released by the Public Records Office.

I'm going to have a look about to find if the document is online and post a link to it.

It will be intresting to see what has been written in these files about these murders, but suppose that some important information will have been ommited from the document. At least now people can get some additional inforrmation on these murders.

The link you want speight89 is this one -
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk...

The news had a lot of the interesting stuff about those days tonight.

Some of it reasonably well known - Dennis Healy and the Labour Gov's approaching the IMF for loans which later statistics showed was unnecessary (bit like the 1970's and Labour's version of 'black Wednesday'), for instance.

Interesting too was Wilson's reaction to the so-called 'Loyalists' collapsing the then NI power-sharing arrangements (Sunningdale) and the horrific instances of violence that continued to plague Northern Ireland - he made references to an independent NI with the Queen withdrawing 'sovereignty' (ha! one can only imagine what Paisley & Co. would have made of that!).

Water from Norway to combat the drought of 76 was a new one on me.

Some further detail would be nice.

I wonder if there's more to be gleaned about the plot by elements within the British security establishment to overthrow the democratically elected British Gov
(we now know Wilson was aware of parts of this plot and have extensive comments on this from Peter Wright and Colin Wallace who were in the British intelligence community at that time)?
A planned military coup in Britain in the mid 1970's, absolutely incredible.

Also of note (and only something I heard cos I now live in NI) is that the Gov of the Irish republic also have a similar 'calander' and are releasing their state papers from those times.
The Irish Gov's documents are also a source of insight in the policies of both Govs (as each refer to the other and in their deliberations and responses add to what the other is recorded as saying).

I'm looking forward to reading the papers from 1998 and GFA etc, also the cabinet meeting minutes of the Iraqi war will make for very interesting reading, I'm sure.
Pity we have to wait so long for them (although with the 'Freedom of Information Act' I seem to recall that fewer papers will be subject to the same level of secrecy as before).

Wishing everbody a happy, peaceful and prosperous new year!


[edit on 29-12-2006 by sminkeypinkey]