By Brendan Anderson

NATIONALISTS have given a frosty reception to the news that the British intelligence agency, MI5, is to have a greater role in the North.

It was confirmed Tuesday that the agency, which has played a controversial part in the Irish Troubles over the past 30 years, has been given its own premises in an army base at Palace Barracks in Holywood, five miles from Belfast. The agency has for many years operated out of government buildings at Stormont Castle on the outskirts of east Belfast.

The enhanced role comes ahead of legislation, to be enacted this week in the British Parliament, which would prepare the way for the handing over of policing and justice powers to local politicians.

The transfer of these powers from London to a Northern Assembly has been demanded by Sinn Fein as one of the conditions of the party supporting the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

But hard on the heels of the news that the police force, and its notorious political Special Branch, were about to be made locally accountable, came the revelation that intelligence-gathering operations would remain firmly in the hands of a British government agency.

MI5 will assume the lead role in these operations next year. The government has indicated it will not entertain protest, saying that the issue “was not negotiable.”

It is now feared the British are bidding to circumvent the checks and balances on the Special Branch that local accountability of policing would bring.

Mark Durkan, leader of the SDLP Party, claimed MI5 would be exempt from scrutiny by the Policing Board and the Police Ombudsman (commissioner for police complaints).

Nationalists and Republicans have long believed that MI5, which stands for Military Intelligence, Section Five, and its sister group, Special Branch, actively colluded with Loyalist paramilitaries in the murder of many Catholics. Much evidence has been emerging in recent years that the groups were often the driving force behind many Loyalist operations.

Durkan told BBC radio, “We worked a long time to ensure we ended the force within a force, which was the old Special Branch, and get intelligence policing on a completely new basis. That would be bypassed and undermined if we had an ulterior intelligence policing operation continuing in a completely unaccountable way.”

Sinn Fein policing spokesman Gerry Kelly said it was unacceptable that an organization which “has set itself against police and political change” should be given an expanded role.

“The role of the securocrats within both the Special Branch and MI5 needs to be reduced and ended, not supported and expanded. Sinn Fein have raised this very serious matter with both governments over recent months and we will do so again in our discussions this week,” Kelly said.

Meanwhile, there is growing unease at the lack of urgency involving 20 cases of alleged collusion between soldiers and police and Loyalists.

The cases, mainly involving the murder of Catholics, were referred to the Public Prosecution Service three years ago following lengthy investigations by senior British policeman John Stevens, later Lord Stevens.

Stevens, who carried out three investigations in the North, found evidence of collusion in several cases including that of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane.

Sinn Fein Assembly Member Alex Maskey was targeted a number of times by Loyalists controlled by intelligence agencies. He came close to death on one occasion in his own home when he was blasted in the stomach with a shotgun at close range.

Maskey has now demanded to know if any of the 20 people named by Stevens are still serving in the PSNI.

“Given the history of the British state’s cover-up and concealment of their involvement in state-sanctioned murder, it will come as no surprise to many that this process seems to have become stalled within the system,” he said.

“However, I think now, as an absolute minimum, that (Northern Secretary) Peter Hain needs to tell us if any of those individuals under suspicion for their involvement in a campaign of murder, violence and intimidation against the broad Nationalist and Republican community are currently involved in the PSNI and if they are, remove them forthwith.”