September 5, 2010 5
A SUPERGRASS
PROMISE: Martin McGuinness made phone call CELEBRATION: The accused and their families after the trial collapsed
●Derry tout wants to face down IRA
●Demands his pension from MI5
●His bomb run with Martina
Bogside
RUC officers led a loyalist
mob on a drunken rampage
through the tight-knit
Catholic Bogside district
following trouble earlier
that day at an Apprentice
Boys Parade.
On the January 30,
1972, Gilmour’s mother
Bridget took Raymond
and his younger brother
and sister across the
River Foyle to the loyal-
ist Kilfennan district to
visit her eldest son who
was married
Protestant.
to a ered the money
Mrs Gilmour had a premo-
nition that trouble would
erupt at a Civil Rights march
due to take place in Derry
that day.
By the afternoon 13 people
had been shot dead by the
British Army Parachute Regiment in
what became known around the world as
Bloody Sunday.
One of those killed that day was Hugh
Pius Gilmour, a teenage cousin of 12-
year-old Raymond. The death of a close
relative in such horrific circumstances
had a profound effect on the young
Gilmour who was about to attend St.
Peter’s Secondary School.
Like many other teenagers in Derry at
that time, Gilmour spent a large part of his
youth rioting and throwing stones at
British soldiers as they carried out house to
house searches in the area where he lived.
He left school without any formal quali-
fications and quickly drifted into a life of
crime.
When he was 16, he and another
SCOUT: Martina
Anderson helped
Gilmour to plant
bomb
teenager Leo Young stole a toy gun from going to be paid for doing it” said Castle, during World War II.
Woolworths and coloured it black with Gilmour. “I told my handlers who killed Airey
shoe dye. They then robbed £100 from The police persuaded Gilmour to join Neave. I knew they had secretly travelled
Rosemount Post Office. the maverick terror group the Irish to Britain on a fishing boat and I told the
As he escaped, a National cops everything I knew.’’
female shop assis- L i b e ra t i o n Gilmour had been a member of the
tant pulled the Army which INLA for around a year when he decided
mask from
Gilmour’s face. She
‘I told handlers was strong
in Derry at
to quit. He had also fallen in love with
local girl Lorraine Harkin and the couple
recognised him as
a member of the who killed Airey that time.
He quickly
planned to marry.
However, he thought his cover had been
local Legion of
Mary and he was
arrested the follow-
Neave, he’d b e c a m e
involved in
the INLA
blown when Liam O Comain – a leading
member of the Irish Republican Socialist
Party in Derry – accused him of being an
ing day.
The police recov-
gone to England terror cam-
paign and
informer.
Offer
from under the
on fishing boat’ he became a
close associ- “O Comain took me upstairs in
floorboards at ate of Derry Connolly House in Chamberlain Street
Young’s house and Raymond INLA man and told me he believed I was a tout. At
charged the pair P a t s y first I nearly passed out, but I decided to
with armed rob-
Gilmour O’Hara, who brass it out and said, ‘I’m not a tout, but
bery. later died how do I know you’re not one!’
While on remand during the The damage Gilmour did from within
in Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail, Gilmour republican Hunger Strike protest in the practically put the INLA in Derry out of
and Young were beaten up by IRA prison- Maze Prison. business.
er Bobby Storey, who is now the chairman “I knew Patsy well,” said Gilmour, “I Raymond Gilmour and his new wife
of Sinn Fein in Belfast. remember being sent across the border to Lorraine soon settled down to married
The IRA was opposed to gangsterism in hand him a bag of bullets. But I made sure life and two babies, a boy and girl, quick-
Catholic areas under its control. the cops knew exactly what I was doing.” ly followed.
Gilmour also revealed how he told the However, the RUC Special Branch
Lured decided Gilmour’s skills were too good to
cops the identity of two Derry INLA men
It was during his time on remand in linked to the murder of Tory MP Airey lose. They made him an offer he couldn’t
Crumlin Road that the RUC first moved Neave. The politician died when a bomb refuse.
to recruit Gilmour as an agent. He dis- exploded under his car as he drove out of This time with a promise of big money
missed the police offer out of hand. the car park at the House of Commons on and a pension for the rest of his life, the
However, a few months later he was March 30, 1979. Branch persuaded Gilmour to apply for
arrested again. And once more a police offi- A personal friend of PM Margaret membership of the Provisional IRA.
cer approached him about becoming a tout. Thatcher, Neave was one of the few ser- After a series of interviews with a lead-
Lured by the money, this time he agreed. vicemen who escaped from the notorious ing Derry republican, Gilmour eventually
“I had been thinking about it. I wasn’t German Prisoner of War camp at Colditz managed to get himself sworn in as a
brought up to do harm to others. I
realised violence was wrong and I
thought, what the hell, and also I was Last time I saw my kids: Continued on Page 6