Investigative journalist Martin Dillon reflects on writing during the Troubles and his life on the edge

“There is no alternative to good journalism,” Martin Dillion reflects, speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback programme the day after I interview him in Dublin. He’s there to promote his new memoir, Crossing The Line: My Life on the Edge. As it happens he’s also the man who launched Talkback – a radio programme which broke the normal rules of broadcasting – over 31 years ago.

The very idea of letting the public air their opinions and grievances on the British Broadcasting Corporation, in Northern Ireland, during the height of the Troubles, surely seemed like absolute lunacy at the time. And yet Talkback thrived off its own, democratic melting pot of views. Experts talk on air about the minute details of reaching political agreement, while John from Carrickfergus phone in to discuss transatlantic nuclear war…

Scanning the Talkback Twitter feed it’s clear that Martin’s appearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by his detractors. In 140 character bursts, he’s accused of being an opportunistic seller of books; an unrepentant liar (apparently republicans and loyalists are united on that point); and, even more intriguingly, an undercover MI5 agent. I imagine that if Martin ever read what was written about him online, he’d chuckle, knowing that it’s a lot easier to disregard keyboard warriors than it is the real death threats he received in the ‘90s.

Intimidation never stopped Martin from writing what he believed to be the truth. But as a young reporter wrorking for The Irish News at the start of the Troubles, the biggest challenge was getting even near the truth. “In the early ‘70s,” he recalls, “the British Army ran an ‘Information Policy Unit’. In actuality, this was a Disinformation Policy Unit, because they knew better than anyone else the simple fact of war: that information is a weapon. All the news that the police and Army press office gave was carefully written and timed. They’d ring up and we’d get told: ‘Here’s what’s going on’.”

TERRORIST AGENT

Martin’s memoir examines not only his work during the Troubles, but also the dynamics, ethics and motivations of journalism over the 30-year period.

“There was so much happening at the time,” he reflects. “So much so that no one could stop and ask: ‘What’s the wider story? Whose interests do we serve by the stories we tell?’

“It’s happening now in America. Trump is just grinding out stories all the time. Saying anything outrageous to deflect from what’s really serious or important, while he does what he wants. That was happening, almost by accident, because the Troubles just were outrageous. So many bombs going off. So many people killed. So many stories to write. No time to think about it all.”

Dillon was on the ground during the riots and shootings that engulfed Belfast in the ‘70s. It was during this period that he developed a network of contacts – people who enabled him to write what turned out to be hugely controversial books. His words have been bitterly resented by some, but Martin stands by what he wrote.

“Journalists should do their job no matter what,” he says adamantly. “Whatever is there, whatever matters, you should report on it.”

Dillon’s The Dirty War, published in 1990, detailed the criminal actions of the State during the troubles, as well as exposing double agents who informed on paramilitaries, like the IRA.

“There are a lot of things during the troubles that, if they came under scrutiny, would suggest the UK was running a target assassination campaign. And the actions of the double agents they ran were always dirty. Someone who works in an intelligence agency said to me recently, ‘If we run an agent inside a terrorist group nowadays, he’s allowed to observe but not act’.

“I said, ‘Bullshit. If he’s not acting, he’s not on the inside. He’s just a flunky’. If you had a real agent, like Agent Ascot [an IRA operative named Brendan ‘Ruby’ Davison who is alleged by Dillon to have been a British agent], who is still permitted to commit acts, then you have an effective terrorist agent.”

After the release of Dillon’s memoir, Davison’s family publicly denounced the author, denying claims that Davison was a British agent.

“Of course they did,” Dillon says when I ask him about it.

How does he feel about that?

“I don’t give a shit.”

CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT

One of the most high profile, and fruitful, contacts that Dillon developed during the course of his career was with the senior IRA member Brendan Hughes. He describes Hughes as very bright – but incredibly cold. “When he told you something, you knew he meant it,” he notes. “He said to me, ‘I’m going to tell you certain things, so you’ll know where the IRA is coming from. If you print them, we’re going to kill you. There’s nowhere to hide’. I understood that that wasn’t a threat. It was a serious point. But I got on with him very well. I had tea and biscuits every time I met him.”

Dillon laughs sardonically. “You know, they love tea and biscuits – terrorists. I’ve gone to so many meetings with them and they’re always served. I was once put in the boot of a car and taken to a meeting, brought to a house, had everything taken off me, my briefcase searched inside and out, poked all round to see if I had any listening devices. At the end of it all, the tea and biscuits came out. Then I knew I was OK!”

The same Brendan Hughes claimed, in the Boston Tapes, that Gerry Adams was responsible for Jean McConville’s death. What’s Martin’s response?

“Look, here’s what I’ll say – I can’t speak for Hughes. Hughes was involved in Internal Security, which meant he knew who was doing the killing. He was ordering killings too. He took me through it all and it was all very sophisticated. But I can’t speak for Hughes about Adams. Hughes got to a point where he didn’t like Adams, and he didn’t like the deal that was being done. There was no love lost there. Put it that way.”

One of the highlights of Dillon’s memoir is his yarn about interviewing former Prime Minister Edward Heath (“the most obnoxious man I’ve ever met”) for Channel 4 in 1994. Heath had presided over some of the worst incidents of the Troubles – including Bloody Sunday and the introduction of internment. Unbeknownst to Heath, Dillon had befriended a British Field Marshall named Michael Carver, who revealed that, during a meeting in Downing Street in the ‘70s, Heath had claimed that it was legal for soldiers to shoot protesters in Northern Ireland if they ‘obstructed the Armed Forces of the Queen’.

“I remember Heath insulting me the morning that I arrived,” Dillon recalls, “and I thought to myself, ‘You have no idea what’s coming here. You think you’re in control and that people will listen to your bullshit’. I made sure to have two cameras for the interview, one that would face me and then one that would face Heath, so that if I had to ask him a question three times, the camera would catch me.

“Heath obviously hadn’t checked out who I was. He’d obviously thought, ‘Ah, some fucking Irish guy. Let’s get this over with’. He’d asked for £1,000 for the interview. I thought, let him have the money. Let him have double if he asks. We’ve got this guy in a place he’s never been before.”

Dillon’s questions about the British ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy were so provocative that Heath kicked the interviewer and his camera crew out of the house before Dillon had finished. Although a second interview was scheduled, it never occurred. But evidence from Dillon’s interviews with Carver and Heath formed part of his submission to the Bloody Sunday Tribunal, which ultimately deemed that the British government had been at fault.

“This interview was a look inside one of the most important organisations during the early days of the Troubles,” says Dillon. “The British government. And what I found was that the guy at the top was totally negligent. He put the army in control and said, ‘Here, you go. Do whatever you want’. He was criminally negligent. I’ve been praised by two British Prime Ministers – Thatcher and Major – and I’ve been kicked out of the house of a third (laughs). It’s not a great scorecard.”

BOMB THREATS The author has developed some unusual friendships over the years. Field Marshalls and paramilitary leaders are one thing, but Dillon also managed to befriend Van Morrison while at the BBC.

“Oh, Van (laughs)!I have the utmost respect for Van after what he did for me,” says Dillon. “We were doing an episode of The Show for BBC and I’d asked Van to come on and perform. And The Show was a very controversial programme back the ‘80s. We were doing a lot of skits about the RUC and collusion, and the authorities didn’t like it very much. One evening, while we were recording an episode, detectives arrived to say there’s been credible bomb threats made against us. We were doubtful. We asked the detectives specifically, ‘Did you get a code word?’ They said, ‘No’. So we said, ‘Well, then, fuck it. They’re not credible’.

“So we said to Van and everyone else, ‘Look, these detectives are saying there’s been a bomb threat. You can either stay or you can leave’. Van says, ‘I’m not fucking leaving’. And not only does he get everyone to stay, but he also does a 30-minute version of ‘Gloria’ that night too! It was incredible.”

Martin is a mine of great stories. Some of the more contentious ones are told strictly off-the-record – as much for my safety as for his – while others he doesn’t want mentioned, because they involve issues that he hasn’t gotten to the bottom of yet. Despite being in his late sixties, Dillon’s appetite for investigative journalist doesn’t appear to have waned. Signing my copy of his book, he praises my desire to ask the difficult questions. He’s been doing that for a long time – and there’s no sign that be giving it up any time soon.

Martin Dillon’s Crossing The Line: My Life On The Edge is out now on Merrion Press.