Blog

Investigative journalist and author, Ian Cobain, has led the way in uncovering the lengths to which the British state will go to bury evidence of its human rights abuses and dirty secrets in books such as Cruel Britannia and The History Thieves. Most recently in the Guardian, he informed us that the British Government admits […]

In this Paper Trail Pro Podcast, author Ciarán MacAirt discusses the legacy of General Frank Kitson. This is the second part of a two-part podcast examining the legacy of General Frank Kitson in light of his development of the covert British Army unit, the Military Reaction Force, which was guilty of dozens of murders and attempted murders […]

In the second of the Paper Trail Pro Podcasts, author Ciarán MacAirt discusses the legacy of General Frank Kitson. General Frank Kitson (right) is a renowned British Army military strategist and counter-insurgency expert. His books include Gangs and Counter-Gangs and Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping. Kitson was last deployed to the north of […]

In the first of the Paper Trail Pro Podcasts, author Ciarán MacAirt discusses World Wars and Local Memories. This personal journey finds him trudging from the killing fields of World War 1 to the back-streets of Belfast where death-squads roamed. He discusses his work with the McGurk’s Bar campaign and his family’s service in British […]

British military archives discovered by the charity, Paper Trail, prove that IRA Volunteer, Daniel McAreavey, was killed in a planned ambush and not shot by an accidental British Army patrol. Vol. Daniel McAreavey was shot and killed by the British Army in disputed circumstances in the Lower Falls area on 6th October 1972 during an […]

The 45th anniversary of the Kelly’s Bar attack and cover-up just passed. A startling archive find from British military archives proves that a member of the Parachute Regiment alerted his superiors to the names of two Loyalist suspects involved in the bombing of Kelly’s Bar. At the time, the British Security Forces and government blamed […]

The family of murdered mother, Jean Smyth-Campbell, won an historic legal battle against the Police Service of Northern Ireland on Friday (3rd March 2017). The application for Judicial Review centred on: The failed Historical Enquiries Team’s (HET) review of the murder of Jean Smyth-Campbell and its review of other Military Reaction Force (MRF) killings The […]

Last year we completed research into the dire need that victims and survivors have for truth and acknowledgement. This research became the foundation of Paper-Trailers, funded by the Executive Office’s Good Relations Fund and managed by Paper Trail. After individual meetings and interviews with key stakeholders, we canvassed the anonymous views of 109 individuals using […]