Billy Wright Murder Inquiry.

Today (14/9) the UK government as released a very watery report into the 1997 murder of infamous Loyalist paramilitary Billy Wright.

Born in Wolverhampton on the UK mainland Billy Wright moved to Northern Ireland as a child and joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in his teens. By the mid-1980's he'd risen to the position of mid-Ulster commander. Under his command that division of the UVF gained such a fearsome reputation for violence and sectarian murder that they were dubbed "the Rat Pack" and due to reporting restrictions that prevented him being named Billy Wright became known as "King Rat."

An ardent opponent to the peace process Wright soon fell out with the UVF leadership and was expelled from the organisation and Northern Ireland. Rather then heeding the warning and going into exile Wright set up his own paramilitary gang called the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). This new organisation then did everything it could to derail the peace process through the random killing of Catholics and instigating riots during contentious Protestant marches. This prompted the other Loyalist organisations to give permission for Wright to be arrested and in March 1997 he was jailed for witness intimidation. As was standard practice at the time Wright was held within a LVF wing at the Maze Prison. This did little to curtail his activities and he continued to be an irritant to the Loyalist mainstream.

In December 1997 four member of the Republican Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) managed to escape from an INLA wing, break into the yard of the LVF wing and shoot Wright dead with two guns they had smuggled into the prison. Quite how the INLA, who have long been seen as the IRA's idiot cousin, managed to do all this in what, at the time, was Europe's most secure prison has long been cause for accusations that they had help from both the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the prison service. In 2007 an inquiry was launched to answer these questions. The results of that inquiry have been published and it is a complete and obvious whitewash. While it identifies certain failings on behalf of the RUC and the prison service it found no evidence of deliberate collusion in the murder and lays no blame at any official.

No-one in Northern Ireland is going to be believe this. It is obvious that Loyalist paramilitaries, the RUC, the prison service and possibly MI5 all colluded to allow the INLA to kill Billy Wright to get him out the way so the peace process could continue. It is this sort of collusion between the RUC and Loyalist paramilitaries which is why the RUC was disbanded as part of the peace process.

By releasing such an obvious whitewash of a report now the British state appear to be trying to mobilise a whole new generation of Loyalist paramilitaries by re-writing history and giving the impression that the prison service and the RUC were somehow all secret Republicans who were out to oppress Northern Irish Protestants.