Sunday, 13 March 2016

Dunblane + 20. Hungerford + 30 (nearly!)

Dunblane is a small town on the outskirts of Stirling in Scotland. On Wednesday 13 March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, aged 43, entered the local Primary School at about 9.30 am. A few minutes later 16 children and a teacher lay dead, shot through body and head. Hamilton also died at the scene, with apparently two self administered shots through the head. Following the incident a national enquiry led by Lord Cullen, a Scottish High Court judge, was held, the papers of which were subsequently sealed for one hundred years!

It also led to national legislation to ban all hand-guns. The Firearms (Amendment) Act, 1997 banned all cartridge ammunition handguns with the exception of .22 calibre single-shot weapons in England, Scotland and Wales. The Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act, 1997, banned the remaining .22 cartridge handguns in England, Scotland and Wales. This left only historic, muzzle-loading and certain sporting handguns outside the ban. Rather paradoxically, considering the history of civil unrest, the ban did not apply to Northern Ireland, where some might argue, it was most needed! 

In common with many other such terrible incidents, there are many strange features that have never been satisfactorily resolved or explained. Some have argued for another more independent and exhaustive inquiry.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre

In some respects it replicated an earlier massacre that shocked the nation. On Wednesday 19th August 1987, Michael Robert Ryan, an unemployed part-time handyman, fatally shot 16 people, including his own mother, in a rampage around the town of Hungerford in Hampshire, before shooting himself, holed up in the local school, which by that time had been surrounded by armed police.

After the incident, Douglas Hurd the Home Secretary commissioned a report. In the wake of this and massacre, the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988) was passed, which bans the ownership of semi-automatic centre-fire rifles and restricts the use of shotguns with a capacity of more than three cartridges.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre
The Hungerford Massacre - BBC 2005 Documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrAowjf5ULQ

In both cases the motivation for the attacks has remained a mystery but they have common features. They were both carried out by an adult unmarried male, in Hungerford and Dunblane, both relatively isolated small rural communities with little experience of serious crime. Respectively Michael Robert Ryan (27) and Thomas Hamilton (43)) had a limited social circle and a rather troubled or unconventional past.  Both apparently had a fascination with guns and collected many. In neither case, despite warning signs, did police intervene previously.

Both strangely involve sixteen fatalities. Both were carried out on a Wednesday, one on the nineteenth of the month, the other on the thirteenth. (The recent Paris outrage we might recall was on Friday 13th November, 2015 and now we can add Ankara and Ivory Coast on the 13th March, 2016!)  In the former, the wider suspicious connections with sexual misbehaviour and high level political and social connections for dubious purposes, appears absent but in both there are important unanswered questions. In both cases legislative changes led to progressive banning and/or control of firearms.

Needless to say both events left deep and enduring psychological and social scars and had a dramatic effect on the nature and attitude of British policing, that today places far more reliance on weapons itself than ever before.

  1. Never let leave of a healthy scepticism - from whatever quarter is, I think, a useful motto! "Fides tamen quin"? Regards, Tim.
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  2. David Ike's take on Dunblane here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JuGUHdJuqQ. March 5th, 2016 at 3:23 pm
    These incidents are as intriguing as they are are tragic and even with the passage of time, remain so. It is hard to come up with a psychological explanation equal to the circumstances. Why would a man wish to inflict such carnage on innocent children? Was it to fulfill some demented fantasy, or to satisfy some vindictive grudge, or according to instructions received, or even not carried out by him but blamed on him by person or persons unknown? All of these are not beyond the realms of possibility. If as seems to be the case, Hamilton was shot TWICE in the head, it certainly raises a serious question as to how he died and by whom. And if there is a question about that, there is a question about everything. I know little or nothing about the case but know enough about others, never to necessarily take the official description or explanation at face. How and why, I ask myself, was Hamilton carrying two different weapons – a Browning pistol, plus 25 extended box type magazines, each containing 20 bullets? Was the .357 Smith and Wesson revolver in a holster that would enable him to handle the Browning revolver including changing the magazines? Is a possibility that someone else did the shooting to be blamed on Hamilton who had to be ‘neutralised’ as part of the plan, so out of the question. Knowing of the wider highly inflammatory activities of a wider network of high-profile figures that Hamilton was probably wise to, his danger and the need to get rid of him, is not hard to visualise. The subsequent treatment of the case and the unprecedented secrecy that surrounded it, tend to support such a possibility. Only a thorough and careful analysis of the facts enables certain hypotheses to be at least ruled out, one of which appears to be that Hamilton killed himself.
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  3. Note parallels with other mass shootings, world-wide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m7hBpGpNCQ Published on 2 Sep 2014
    Sandra Uttley discusses what she knows about the Dunblane murders. There was a coverup to the highest degree, from the police, and Freemasons, to Government officials. Thomas Hamilton looks like he was supplying and grooming children for his rich elite controllers. We need an open inquiry into this.
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  4. Sandra Uttley's Dunblane interview continues here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pa3_6fpbxY&ebc=ANyPxKrxazGh045oUcK6YQeTZ5CcAJr2PT6_zXFsP-TfNLZGDaSM0wXuoo56G80fzey0g4mlEXRL2tRlr_3nIhJQv6CgcDS1dQ
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  5. In response to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krEfFI4N1Ms I made this observation:

    "These films are inherently unreliable if not intentionally misdirecting. As usual focus on everything OTHER than the difficult questions. They concentrate on the very understandable and moving emotional consequences for the next of kin. Post Paris, it cannot escape notice that despite the distance in time there are strange similarities. Notice the wording: Major says "What happened cannot be understood". Those were the words used by Bush and others about planes flying into the twin towers. In both cases we now know in fact it could be understood, but the explanation could not be revealed. Indeed in an unprecedented move all the documents relating to the case were by the order of Lord Cullen made secret for a century! Why? The reasons given are unconvincing. It replicates what happened in the not unrelated Holly Grieg case. There are many dubious issues that are glossed over - the fact that he set off much earlier than stated yet missed the assembly, his technical ability to cut telephone wires, the ability to carry so much ammunition into the school, a Smith and Wesson, a convenient letter to the Queen just before, the fact that he had TWO head wounds(!) - but so many accurate shots in so short a time including head shots, both technically and psychologically points to a trained killer. Hamilton might have had many defects, but those were not some of them. The unrevealed hinterland of high-level political and other contact around the topic of pornography and child abuse creates question that were never even addressed by Cullen and all emphasis was placed on perhaps largely irrelevant gun control that would not have been possible without the incident. How often have we seen these recurring in other incidents around the world? The question never posed in MSM (what a surprise) is did Hamilton in fact shoot himself, was it him that shot the children, was he in fact a 'patsy' that had to be eliminated in a military style operation with a two fold objective of removing a risk and achieving policy objectives that would otherwise be impossible?"
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  6. Exaro report on the BBC 'Smith Review' here: http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5785/smith-review-finds-72-bbc-linked-victims-of-sir-jimmy-savile?utm_source=newsletter-news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter-09-03-2016
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  7. THE HUNDRED YEAR RULE! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Machon

    "Annie Machon (born 1968) is a former MI5 intelligence officer who left the Service at the same time as David Shayler, her partner at the time, to help him blow the whistle about alleged criminality within the intelligence agencies. By doing this, they had to give up their careers, go on the run across Europe (August 1997), live in hiding for a year, and then spend the next two years in exile in Paris. They, and many of their friends, family, supporters and journalists, claim to have been intimidated, and some of them were arrested and put on trial. A death threat was announced against her on a Middle Eastern radio station."

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUb7RKMu8zY

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrRXWmk49vU
See also how the concerns of a housemaster of a boarding school linked to government and Crown, and which allowed Hamilton free access often with guns, was not only ignored but harassed and persecuted for raising them.
http://stolenkidsdunblane.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/irregularities-at-queen-victoria-school.html

 As regards the 'British 9/11' on 7th July, 2005 see:

 https://spidercatweb.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/uk-court-finds-london-77-bombing-was-false-flag-secret-service-op/

Summary from UK Column
Alternative Narrative
5 hrs

Thomas Hamilton & the Scottish TV Connection.
"Between 1988 and 1993 the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) – under Lord Advocates Lord Fraser, Lord Rodger and Lord Cameron – repeatedly blocked efforts by the Central Scotland Police (CSP) to investigate the criminal activities of paedophile and child abuser, Thomas Hamilton.
Had Hamilton been charged and convicted at that time, then not only would he have been prevented from running his ‘boys’ clubs’, his gun license would also have been revoked.
On the 13th March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, armed with four hand-guns, opened fire on a class at Dunblane Primary School, killing 16 young children and a teacher, before turning a gun on himself.
A public inquiry into the circumstances of that massacre, under Lord Cullen, was initiated in the city of Stirling on the 29th May 1996. However, that crucially important opportunity to discover the reasons behind Hamilton’s act of mass murder was effectively wrecked by the bizarre way in which the Inquiry was conducted – including the disgraceful behaviour by some members of the legal profession, instructed to assist in that Inquiry.
The Crown Office and Hamilton’s Criminal Behaviour
Repeated efforts by Central Scotland Police to investigate (and curtail) Hamilton’s activities, were blocked by the Crown Office Procurator Service (COPFS). Five such cases are recorded, relating to incidents at: Inchmoan Island, Loch Lomond in July 1988; Inchmoan Island (again) in August 1988; Millarcochy Caravan Park, Loch Lomond in July 1991; Dunblane High School in June 1992; and Dunblane High School in June 1993. Almost all of the incidents were reported to the police by the parents of young boys (but not exclusively so). Those complaints concerned Hamilton’s paedophilic conduct and abusive behaviour (including physical assault) towards young boys attending his boys’ sports clubs, and summer camps.
Responses by the COPFS included the comment that “where criminality was indicated the circumstances – taken at their highest level – were such as to not require prosecution in the public interest”. This was clearly a reflection of a Crown Office “public interest” policy that had begun to emerge in the late 1980s/early 1990s. It was a policy to be found (for example) in the Directive No 2025 (28th November 1991) in which the Crown Office effectively sanctioned particular criminal acts, contrary to Law – such as (for example) allowing teenage boys to be sodomised by older men.
In 1994 Thomas Hamilton accepted a police caution from Lothian and Borders Police after having been caught behaving indecently with a young man in Edinburgh. That the police chose to issue a caution, rather than lay formal charges (and go to court), is an indication of the difficulties the police faced as a result of decisions taken by The Crown Office. It was the prevention of the police to effectively challenge Hamilton’s behaviour, especially the abuse and exploitation of small boys, which undoubtedly encouraged him to believe he was doing nothing wrong – that he felt justified in claiming he “was not a pervert”.
It is clear from the evidence available that Hamilton’s interest in young boys was sexual. He also felt no need to conceal his paedophilia – with an expert witness to the Inquiry describing Hamilton’s behaviour as “overt”. It is also clear (from that same expert) that the videos Hamilton made at his boys’ sports clubs would have had considerable pornographic value to both paedophilic individuals and to organized paedophile groups. Thomas Hamilton began making videos of the young boys attending his clubs and camps sometime in the late 1980s, and continued to do so for almost 8 years (until approximately a year before the Dunblane massacre).
It was the content of those videos (and also reports of his bullying and aggressive behaviour towards the boys) that so alarmed parents, and which led them to remove their children from both Hamilton’s boys’ clubs and his summer camps. And it was that entirely understandable reaction, from extremely concerned parents, that Hamilton was not prepared to accept. It was a situation of potential (and actual) conflict whose origins lay in the appalling policy and operational decisions made by The Crown Office, some five years previously.
Avoiding The STV Connection
In the years preceding the Dunblane massacre Thomas Hamilton regularly associated with at least one employee of Scottish Television – an STV News Cameraman by the name of Mr. Clive Wood. In fact Mr. Wood, together with STV Reporter Martin Geissler, were the first of the news media to beat a path to Hamilton’s door, in the hours following the shooting. On seeing the police outside his house, and realising Hamilton was a mass killer, Mr. Wood reportedly exclaimed: “God Thomas, what have you done?”
In a pre-Inquiry witness statement of Clive Wood there is the observation that:
The witness [Clive Wood] would sometimes run Hamilton to shoots. The witness on occasion went into Hamilton’s house only for a cup of coffee and from memory he never at any time saw photographs of any young boys within the house. The visits would last about 20 minutes.
In a pre-Inquiry witness statement by a neighbour of Thomas Hamilton, Mr. Robert Mark Ure there is an observation that:
One of the vehicles that he [Ure] saw beside his [Hamilton’s] house was a large blue K registration car about the size of a Granada, sometime driven by a male and other times by Hamilton [my emphasis].
However during the actual Inquiry, the examination of Mr. Ure (by Mr. Ian Bonomy, Advocate Depute for The Crown) was extraordinarily brief – and, most noticeably, the matter of the observations by Robert Ure of Hamilton having the use of a “large blue car” was never raised. There was no cross-examination.
Also during the Inquiry, another neighbour of Thomas Hamilton, Mr. Robert Comrie Heslop Deuchars, recalled seeing only two regular callers to Hamilton’s house: “One of them was a landscape gardener by the name of James Gillespie and the other, I won’t say frequent, was somebody who I am assuming worked for STV because they were in a blue Rover Estate with the STV insignia on the side of it.” The legal counsel (Mr. J C Lake, Advocate for The Crown) did not pursue the matter but instead abruptly changed the subject, with the question: “were you aware Hamilton kept guns?”
‘Smearing’ The Police
However it is the evidence given by the witness Mrs. Grace Jones Ogilvie, and the behaviour by Inquiry counsel towards her, that is especially revealing.
In a pre-Inquiry witness statement by this neighbour of Thomas Hamilton, Mrs. Grace Ogilvie (63) there is the observation that:
Another regular visitor to the house [Hamilton’s] was a man in a Scottish Television Car. The witness [Mrs. Grace Ogilvie] cannot describe the man but the car she believes to have been a blue Volvo estate.
As with Mr. Deuchars, she recalled seeing only two regular visitors to Thomas Hamilton’s house – someone driving an STV car, and Mr. Gillespie the landscape gardener.
However during the Inquiry we find this most peculiar exchange between witness Mrs. Ogilvie, and Mr. Ian Bonomy (the Advocate Depute for the Crown Office) during his questing of Mrs. Ogilvie: firstly a response to a question from Mr. Bonomy:
Q. Can you tell me something of who these visitors were?
A. Well, mostly STV
Mr. Bonomy then introduced the notion of only a single visitor in “a car with STV on it” – his words, not hers; followed by a blatantly leading question inviting Mrs. Ogilvie to confirm both the nature of the ownership of the car, and the visitor’s purpose:
Q. And this is a private visitor as you would understand it who happened to have such a car?
A. Yes, the police.” [see also Figure 1]
Under any other circumstances such a bizarre dialogue would have been subject to the ridicule it deserved. However there was no response from any other legal counsel, or from Lord Cullen. Therefore we suddenly find a third category of regular visitor(s) being introduced – “the police” – who (we are required to believe) were known to be visiting Hamilton in a private capacity (how?).
It is therefore extremely difficult not to conclude that the witness (Mrs. Ogilvie) had been ‘coached’ prior to the Inquiry to give untrue testimony – and presumably for the purpose of undermining the reputation of Central Scotland Police, and to falsely connect police officers to Hamilton’s paedophile activities.
A Conflict of Interest?
For the duration of the Cullen Dunblane Inquiry Mr. Colin Campbell QC appeared on behalf of the victim’s families, and was acting on instruction from the Glasgow-based solicitors Levy and McRae. According to the ‘Legal 500’ website:
Levy & McRae’s impressive client list includes ITV, STV, Channel 4, Sky, Granada and Newsquest. Its comprehensive defamation practice represents pursuers and defenders. Peter Watson is the main contact.
In fact we can find an early reference to the Levy and McRae and STV relationship in an official Crown Office publication from 1993:
He [Robert Henderson QC] then, however, went on to say that shortly after 23 October 1991 Peter Watson of Levy and Macrae [sic], Solicitors, Glasgow, told him that Scottish Television [STV] had damaging information relating to [Lord] Alan Rodger. David Blair-Wilson told us at interview that Robert Henderson had made a similar statement to him. Peter Watson ‘legals’ for STV, i.e. he advises them on the legal implications of matters which they have it in mind to broadcast. When we spoke to him, he denied that he had said anything of the sort to Robert Henderson. Indeed, he has since confirmed to us on behalf of STV that the Lord Advocate has never featured as part of any investigation by them, which is why he could not have said to Robert Henderson what Robert Henderson alleged he had said.
The Crown Office report went on to state that there was “no evidence whatever [sic] that Lord Rodger is or ever has been in any way compromised, either as Solicitor General or as Lord Advocate.”
It is the relationship between the legal counsel for the Dunblane victim’s families, the solicitors Levy and McRae, Scottish Television (STV), and one of the principle witnesses (Mr. Clive Wood, a long-time associate of Thomas Hamilton, and employee of STV) that obviously raises questions of a possible conflict of interest of those chosen to provide legal representation for the victim’s families.
The grounds for those concerns are exemplified by the manner in which Mr. Clive Wood was cross-examined by Mr. Campbell. Given the long association (of at least 15 years) between Mr. Wood and Thomas Hamilton, given Mr. Wood’s connection to STV (as a News Cameraman), and the fact that Hamilton was determined to distribute his videos to all and sundry, it would be reasonable to expect that Mr. Wood would have been subject to a detailed and searching cross-examination – of questions (in particular) concerning Mr. Wood’s visits to Hamilton’s home, and whether or not Hamilton had discussed his video-making hobby with him, or had attempted to provide him with any of his boys’ club or summer camp videos.
At no time during Mr. Wood’s examination (nor at any time during the Inquiry) was a connection made between him and his employer STV, or with the STV car seen outside Hamilton’s home.
The cross-examination of Mr. Wood, by Mr. Colin Campbell QC, amounted to just three rather vacuous questions: (1) what rumours had he heard concerning Hamilton; (2) did he discuss those rumours with Hamilton; and (3) what was Hamilton’s response? And that was it. The sum total of the cross examination of the principal witness Mr. Clive Wood, by the legal representative for the victim’s families, amounted to little more than one page of the 3,376-page Cullen Inquiry transcript.
All of which rather begs the question as to whether Mr. Campbell QC had been instructed not to question Mr. Wood in any way that could draw attention to his work for STV.
Disinformation, Misdirection and Time-wasting
It is perhaps not surprising that as soon as people began to investigate the manner in which the Cullen Inquiry was conducted, that those people were subject to a campaign of disinformation and misdirection. Very often they were persuaded to waste much of their time chasing false leads, or in seemingly endless correspondence with individuals who would insist on discussing and investigating the most trivial or mundane of matters.
We can get some clues as to the source(s) of such behaviour from looking at the content of the disinformation, and the subject of the misdirection. Most noticeably it is clear the intention has been to promote the notion that members of the police service (of the CSP, especially) were not only involved with Thomas Hamilton in his paedophile activities, but were also involved in a cover-up following the Dunblane School massacre. Often this has involved the gross distortion of evidence, or of complete invention.
However, what is most noticeable is the total absence, within that disinformation, of any reference to the actual activities of the legal profession, the judiciary, or (most especially) The Crown Office of Scotland."
http://www.ukcolumn.org/…/dunblane-massacre-%E2%80%93-crown…
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