IRA pal saw terror of his ways He even proved Longford right about forgiveness

MAGGIE Thatcher’s former top aide Sir Bernard Ingham says: I don’t envy Mrs May.” You’re not the only one, mate.

WHEN I was young and Lord Longford still prowled the earth the old dinosaur accused me of being “unchristian.”

This was because I argued there were some crimes so terrible that those who committed them should die in jail.

Longford was engaged in a long campaign to get Moors Murderer Myra Hindley released and, at a chance meeting in Parliament, he loudly denounced my heresy.

I recounted this incident to a vicar chum who said: “We’re very big on forgiveness.”

I took that to mean he was on Lord Longford’s side.

Those events sprang to mind when I heard my old friend the IRA supergrass Sean O’Callaghan had drowned in a Jamaican swimming pool at the age of 62.

It was not his death which surprised me but the manner of it.

We both thought he would die full of bullets – not water.

I got to know Sean after his early release from prison when he used the House of Commons as a hideout. It was the one place he thought IRA assassins couldn’t get him. We used to talk a lot about atoning for sins – 539 years’ worth in Sean’s case. That was the jail sentence he received when he confessed to them.

Among 40 terrorist crimes as an IRA top gun were two coldblooded murders he personally carried out. The ghosts of his innocent victims haunted him, and his remorse was genuine.

He had thought at the time he was acting as a soldier, but came to realise what he had done was pure evil. To atone for that he put his own life on the line by becoming an informer.

In doing so he saved scores of lives, including those of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

His work behind the scenes with Tony Blair’s No10 team and the Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble smoothed the Northern Ireland peace process saving hundreds more from slaughter.

He gave me valuable insights into the intricate politics of peace which ensured my reporting was both accurate and fair.

Did the good Sean outweigh the bad? I began to think so.

It made me reassess my own attitude to forgiveness.

And if Lord Longford was still around I would tell him so. THE London Cage was a top secret wartime detention centre in exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens where 3,000 German PoWs were interrogated.

Historian Helen Fry has just written a book about it. It provided essential information on U-boat and aeroplane factories, early signs of the Holocaust,and invaluable intelligence before D-Day.

But 70 years on the Cage is still classified so we do not know the secret behind the remarkable success of its commander Lt Col William Scotland. Did he discover interrogation techniques useful in today’s war against terror? Or did he use illegal torture?

If it was a technique, say so. If it was torture then it’s time Britain owned up.