The North’s nationalist community would not be considered as a hospitable repository for news or commentary deposited by the Daily Telegraph.
Throughout the violent Northern conflict that raged or simmered for the best part of three decades, the Daily Telegraph was viewed as a stanchion of British officialdom, colloquially referred to as the Daily Torygraph. It had never earned a reputation for searching under every stone, preferring instead to place stones over the graves of the many British army colonels and generals it glowingly obituarised, burying beneath the stone’s weight a candid account of the role of senior British military in the North.
Season Three of Bed of Lies has broken the mould. With Cara McGoogan narrating and Mick Brown fact checking Conflict takes the listener into the murky murderous world of British intelligence operations.
Broadcast ahead of the Kenova Report, Conflict raised both anticipation and scepticism about what Jon Boutcher’s team might reveal. One of its core themes is that Freddie Scappaticci, the agent known as Stakeknife, is only a small window on a much larger espionage world where the rule of law became displaced by the rule of law enforcement.
Conflict interviews an expansive body of state and non-state actors who played a violent hand during the North’s turbulence. Most tellingly, the candour with which some of the legacy investigators spoke will cause earache for those directing the British intelligence community. Their agencies had dirty hands in a dirty war.
In earlier seasons of Bed of Lies Cara McGoogan had exposed a scandal involving British police emotional and sexual exploitation of the agents they were handling, as well as calling out the behaviour of the NHS during the infected blood controversy.
As the violence of the conflict recedes into the distance, the reverberations are no longer from the bomb blasts and gun fire of republican and loyalist activists but pulsate from the shock waves at revelations about those who claimed to be working to stop such actions. With Conflict the sound of J’Accuse emanates from the most unlikely of sources.
Throughout the violent Northern conflict that raged or simmered for the best part of three decades, the Daily Telegraph was viewed as a stanchion of British officialdom, colloquially referred to as the Daily Torygraph. It had never earned a reputation for searching under every stone, preferring instead to place stones over the graves of the many British army colonels and generals it glowingly obituarised, burying beneath the stone’s weight a candid account of the role of senior British military in the North.
Season Three of Bed of Lies has broken the mould. With Cara McGoogan narrating and Mick Brown fact checking Conflict takes the listener into the murky murderous world of British intelligence operations.
Broadcast ahead of the Kenova Report, Conflict raised both anticipation and scepticism about what Jon Boutcher’s team might reveal. One of its core themes is that Freddie Scappaticci, the agent known as Stakeknife, is only a small window on a much larger espionage world where the rule of law became displaced by the rule of law enforcement.
Conflict interviews an expansive body of state and non-state actors who played a violent hand during the North’s turbulence. Most tellingly, the candour with which some of the legacy investigators spoke will cause earache for those directing the British intelligence community. Their agencies had dirty hands in a dirty war.
In earlier seasons of Bed of Lies Cara McGoogan had exposed a scandal involving British police emotional and sexual exploitation of the agents they were handling, as well as calling out the behaviour of the NHS during the infected blood controversy.
As the violence of the conflict recedes into the distance, the reverberations are no longer from the bomb blasts and gun fire of republican and loyalist activists but pulsate from the shock waves at revelations about those who claimed to be working to stop such actions. With Conflict the sound of J’Accuse emanates from the most unlikely of sources.
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| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
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