IMAGINE that Police Scotland or the Metropolitan Police were found to have used a serial killer as an informer. What would happen? How many high ranking officers would face disgrace and dismissal? How many politicians would be ruined? How many hours, how many pages, would newspapers and broadcasters devote to such an appalling discovery? It would be a national scandal of such proportions that Britain would be shaken to its foundations.

Well this is precisely the scandal that’s unfolding in Northern Ireland: the discovery that police used the most monstrous criminals as state agents.

While there’s outrage across the Irish Sea, there’s simply silence here on the mainland. To the undying shame of the Scottish, Welsh and English media there’s been barely any whisper of this news.

Why? Because no matter how much England, Wales – and in particular Scotland, which constantly bemoans being overlooked by London – pretend to care about Northern Ireland, the vast majority of people don’t give a damn.

‘It’s just Paddies killing each other’. As an Irish reporter who’s spent my career in 'mainland Britain' that’s a refrain I’ve heard in newsrooms time and again to justify the turning of blind eyes and the refusal by citizens here to accept responsibility for what’s gone on in Ulster – because, after all, it was done on your watch, by governments you elected over the last five decades.

READ MORE NEIL MACKAY: Cry for Northern Ireland

Let’s summarise the facts in the case. Northern Ireland’s Police Ombudsman, Marie Anderson, found, as the Belfast Telegraph reported, that “loyalist informers were retained by RUC Special Branch even after they became suspects in the murder of Catholics”.

Loyalist serial killer Torrens Knight was one of the informers named in the Belfast press. He was convicted of killing four workmen in 1993, and the attack on the Rising Sun Bar – known as the Greysteel Massacre – in which eight people died. The murders happened just before Halloween. Gunmen shouted ‘trick or treat’ as they opened fire.

Greysteel is seared into mind. I was 22, and it was a pivotal moment for my generation – the Peace Generation – in deciding enough was enough. We could stand it no longer. Innocent people were being murdered as they drank after work. We were scared to go to the pub in case masked men came through the door and machine gunned us. Greysteel was a dreadful, bloody step on the path to peace for a nation bled white by murder.

Yet Torrens Knight, we're told, was hand-in-glove with the police force. He was, apparently, just one of many. Suzanne Breen, the Belfast Telegraph’s Political Editor, wrote a powerful and eloquent denunciation of state collusion in the wake of the Ombudsman’s findings.

Describing Torrens as a “snarling, sectarian serial killer”, Breen damned the “faceless figures in the security apparatus who colluded by omission or commission with those who sledge-hammered down doors and shot dead men sleeping beside their wives”.

READ MORE NEIL MACKAY: We can't wash our hands of the dirty war

Let’s return to the facts in this case. The Ombudsman found that terrorists from loyalist murder gangs like the UFF “provided intelligence of questionable quality … however they were retained and managed by RUC Special Branch as informants despite other evidence and intelligence indicating that they were actively involved in serious crime, including murder”.

The Ombudsman also found that information from loyalists indicated that the Greysteel massacre was imminent, adding: “I am of the view police should have considered a number of disruption tactics to address the threat of a significant attack.” Clearly, the attack went ahead – as eight graves attest. Yet, if the police had warning, then the question remains: why?

The Ombudsman also investigated the murder of Gerard Casey – shot dead in bed beside his wife in 1989. Special Branch received intelligence that a member of Ulster’s homegrown British Army regiment, the UDR, provided loyalist terrorists with information that assisted in the murder. Special Branch passed this intelligence to the military, but the Ombudsman “found no evidence it was forwarded to police investigating the murder”.

Fearghal Shiels, the Casey family lawyer, says: “Almost every level within the military and RUC Special Branch were complicit in the targeting of Gerard Casey, the arming of those who murdered him and the subsequent protection of those suspected of having been involved in his murder. The unmistakeable conclusion … is that Gerard Casey is a victim of state-sponsored terrorism.”

Readers may note that Shiels works for Madden & Finucane solicitors, founded by the lawyer Pat Finucane. As the company says, Finucane was himself “murdered by a pro-British death squad … those directly involved in his murder were working for British military intelligence”.

The British military intelligence outfit in this case was the Force Research Unit - an organisation I’ve spent much of my career investigating. It was run by a Scottish officer, Brigadier Gordon Kerr - later promoted to British military attache in Beijing. Its most infamous asset was IRA double agent Freddie Scappaticci aka Agent Stakeknife who I exposed 20 years ago.

On it goes. The Ombudsman identified “collusive behaviours” and raised significant concerns about police conduct, over just a four year period between 1989 and 1993 when loyalist murder gangs took 19 lives. There isn’t space here to recount all the information uncovered by the Ombudusman. I suggest you read the excellent work of Suzanne Breen and her colleague Allison Morris in the Belfast Telegraph for the full horrific story.

As Breen recently wrote: “An appalling vista was laid bare. Police failing to make individuals aware of threats to their lives; the deliberate destruction of records relating to informers suspected of involvement in serious crime including murder; UDR members with loyalist links attending security briefings where they had access to high-grade intelligence.”

Mark Hamilton, the Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI - the successor force to the RUC - apologised fulsomely to the families of victims. “These were appalling crimes carried out by those with evil intent. We are very aware of the hurt and anger felt by the families of those killed and those injured and we apologise to the families for the findings in this report,” he said.

Consider the facts in this case, and then consider the silence on this side of the Irish Sea. And ask yourself ‘why?’

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