Is there more to come out about Roy Greenslade’s links with the IRA?

Roy Greenslade worked for The Sun, was editor of the Daily Mirror 30 years ago, and then became perhaps the best-known commentator on the press, in the press – and on the BBC. He also lectured on press ethics. During part of that time, I was editing this newspaper. We had good reason to believe that Mr Greenslade was a strong but covert supporter of Sinn FEIN/IRA and a close friend of at least one of its leaders, Pat Doherty. We drew public attention to this, feeling that it was disgraceful in itself, and made his press commentary dishonest; but were constrained by the laws of libel.

So I feel relieved, sort of, that Mr Greenslade now admits it, and more. In an article in British Journalism Review, he reveals that he wrote for the Sinn Fein newspaper An Phoblacht under the alias of George King. “I supported the use of physical force,” he adds, writing of a time when the IRA were killing hundreds. Even such wellknown IRA sympathisers as Jeremy Corbyn have never quite said that.

But Mr Greenslade wished to save his own skin: “I employed what might be called ‘journalistic entryism’, working as required by my employers while holding polar opposite political views that, were they to have been known, would inevitably have led to me not only being fired but also being unemployable.”

Mr Greenslade admits that the need to pay his mortgage overrode his desire to speak out. His calculation worked nicely. He now lives in a handsome country house in Co Donegal, not far from the western borders of Northern Ireland where the IRA often murdered Protestant farmers. He is still alive; those farmers aren’t.

He has said a lot, but also not enough. If he was so close to the IRA, did he pass them information obtained, as editor or journalist, on confidential terms? Did he let them know when British security briefings let slip something operational? If his reporters told him IRA secrets, did he warn the IRA of informers in their midst? These seem reasonable questions, since Mr Greenslade has now told us clearly whose side he was (and is) on.

Roy Greenslade is happy that he stood surety for his Donegal neighbour, John Downey, the man accused of the Hyde Park bombing which killed many horses and men in 1982. “All I know of him,” he writes, “is his dedication to peace.” If that is really all he knows, he is a remarkably unobservant journalist. If he knows more, but is not telling us, he is covering up the truth yet again.

There was dismay last month when Churchill College, Cambridge, hosted a conference, called “The racial consequences of Churchill”. The college named after Winston Churchill, founded with his support and funded because of global admiration for him, gave space to unchallenged attacks on our wartime prime minister. It was like the Two Minutes Hate imagined by Orwell in 1984, except much longer.

Now there is more to say. The record of the conference has been carefully filleted in a new pamphlet from Policy Exchange, written by Churchill’s best biographer, Andrew Roberts, and the young British-ethiopian writer Zewditu Gebreyohanes.

As well as prejudice, they find ignorance. In his foreword, Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, writes that “this conference about history was composed largely of non-historians, as was made clear by the dismal confusion between Aneurin Bevan and Ernest Bevin.” Contrary to what was asserted from the platform by Dr Onyeka Nubia, Bevan (the Left-wing Labour Welsh firebrand) did not serve in Churchill’s wartime Cabinet. Dr O probably meant Bevin (the mighty Right-wing Labour trade unionist), who did. To confuse the two is to commit what used to be called “a schoolboy howler”. Someone who does not know the difference is unfit to talk about the wartime Churchill.

The platform’s other factual mistakes were bigger and more ideological. Dr Madhusree Mukerjee said: “Of course it was the Soviet Union that defeated the Nazis.” Certainly the Soviet contribution was enormous, but Dr Mukerjee did not mention that, from 1939 to June 1941, the Soviet Union was allied with Nazi Germany. Britain, and its empire that the speakers so abhor, fought almost alone. If Britain had not, Hitler would have won.

The third panellist, Professor Kehinde Andrews, going slightly off-piste, claimed that Christopher Columbus, in 1492, began “the largest genocide that has ever existed on the planet, killing up to – the midpoint estimate of people who died in the Americas is 17 million people ... I actually don’t understand the science of this, but apparently there were so many people killed, the temperature of the Earth actually rose.” I almost feel sorry for Prof Andrews as the pamphlet’s authors patiently remove the nonsense from this statement, leaving almost nothing behind.

The core problem, however, lies not with Churchill’s ignorant detractors, but with the Master, Dame Athene Donald, and governing body of the college. They see their conference as a contribution to free speech. Would it be free speech to let academics speak, for example, about Isaac Newton without being able to expound his laws of motion? A seat of learning must uphold learning. Churchill College is a seat of learning entrusted with the archives of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and other political figures (which, I know from using them, are admirably cared for). The college needs to understand the reputational damage it is inflicting on itself, and start repairing it.