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Ex-RIR soldier jailed for possession of loyalist arms

01 March 2001

A former Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) soldier who stored weapons for loyalist paramilitaries was jailed for nine years at the beginning of April. William Thompson, a former Lance Corporal with the RIR before he received an “exemplary” discharge in 1999, was arrested by Norfolk detectives investigating the murder of civil liberties lawyer Rosemary Nelson (see Statewatch vol 9 no 3/4). The police found an Uzi sub-machinegun, a sawn-off shotgun, cartridges and components for a pipe bomb in the garage of his Hamiltonbawn home, along with propaganda from the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Loyalist Volunteer Force.
Also found was material from Combat 18 (C18), a far right organisation whom Thompson had contacted, initially in London and afterwards in Northern Ireland, through a mutual interest in football and football violence. Mr Justice Mclaughlin described C18 as “a fascist organisation which glories in its association with the thinking and philosophy of Hitler.”
Collusion between the British military, loyalist paramilitaries and nazi groupings has a long and disreputable history. Johnny Adair, the leader of Belfast's Shankill Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), took part in demonstrations organised by the National Front and Blood and Honour. Only last year Steve Irwin, Adair's UFF colleague, who served a sentence for an indiscriminate gun attack that killed eight people, was observed playing a prominent role at a C18 demonstration in London. In March 1999 police raids netted a number of British soldiers who were questioned about their membership of Combat 18 and other far-right groups; two were dismissed (see Statewatch vol 10 no 6)
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Irish News 5.4.01; Belfast Telegraph 4.4.01.