In 1992, Flanagan returns to duty with the RUC as Assistant Chief Constable of Operations, later taking on the responsibilities of Operational Commander for Belfast. He is appointed as head of Special Branch in 1994 and is promoted to Acting Deputy Chief Constable the following year. He becomes the Deputy Chief Constable proper in 1996, and when Chief Constable Hugh Annesley retires later that year, he succeeds him. When the PSNI is established in 2001, he serves as Chief Constable until his retirement the following year. He is replaced by Hugh Orde.
Since then Flanagan has served in Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and is appointed as HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary in 2005. He is tasked to review the police arrangements in Iraq in December 2005 as part of the British involvement there. Following his retirement in December 2008, Denis O’Connor succeeds him as Her Majesty’s Acting Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
Flanagan denies any wrongdoing or acting with any knowledge of the events in question. He agrees that these events had taken place. In the aftermath of the ombudsman’s report, Irish nationalist politicians say he should be forced to resign from his job as Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
The Police Ombudsman criticises Flanagan’s role in the RUC inquiry into the Omagh Bombing of August 15, 1998, in a report published in 2001, to which his response is that he would “publicly commit suicide” if he believed her report was correct, though he later apologises for the form of words he used.
In July 2010, Flanagan appears before the Iraq Inquiry into the UK’s role in the Iraq War. In 2005, he had conducted a review into the UK’s contribution to policing reform in Iraq. As he gives evidence, he has to apologise for the amount of acronyms in his report on Iraq, which is presented to the government in January 2006:
“In my view, and I would like to almost apologise for the number of acronyms in this report – but it wasn’t written with a view to being read publicly. It was written for the people who invented the acronyms…”
Frazer grows up in the village of Whitecross, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, as one of nine children, with his parents Bertie and Margaret. He is an ex-member of the Territorial Army and a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. He attends a local Catholic school and plays Gaelic football up to U14 level. He describes his early years as a “truly cross-community lifestyle.” Growing up, he is a fan of the American actor John Wayne and wrestling. His father, who is a part-time member of the British Army‘s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and a council worker, is killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on August 30, 1975. The family home had previously been attacked with petrol bombs and gunfire which Frazer claims were IRA men, due to his father’s UDR membership. He states that his family is well respected in the area including by “old-school IRA men” and receives Mass cards from Catholic neighbours expressing their sorrow over his father’s killing. Over the next ten years, four members of Frazer’s family who are members or ex-members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) or British Army are killed by the IRA. An uncle who is also a member of the UDR is wounded in a gun attack.
Soon after his father’s death, the IRA begins targeting Frazer’s older brother who is also a UDR member. Like many South Armagh unionists, the family moves north to the village of Markethill. After leaving school, he works as a plasterer for a period before serving in the British Army for nine years. Following this he works for a local haulage company, then sets up his own haulage company, which he later sells.
During the Drumcree conflict, Frazer is a supporter of the PortadownOrange Order who demand the right to march down the Garvaghy Road against the wishes of local residents. He is president of his local Apprentice Boys club at the time.
For a brief period after selling his haulage firm, Frazer runs “The Spot,” a nightclub in Tandragee, County Armagh, which closes down after two Ulster Protestant civilians who had been in the club, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, are stabbed to death in February 2000 by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), after one of them had allegedly made derogatory remarks about dead UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson. Frazer is confronted in an interview on BBC Radio Ulster about the murders by the father of one of the victims, Paul McIlwaine. During the Smithwick Tribunal, set up to investigate allegations of collusion in the 1989 Jonesborough ambush, it is alleged by a member of Garda Síochána that Frazer is a part of a loyalist paramilitary group called the Red Hand Commando. Frazer denies this allegation, saying they put his life in danger.
Frazer applies for a licence to hold a firearm for his personal protection and is turned down, a chief inspector says, in part because he is known to associate with loyalist paramilitaries.
FAIR, founded by Frazer in 1998, claims to represent the victims of IRA violence in South Armagh. It has been criticised by some for not doing the same for victims of loyalist paramilitary organisations or for those killed by security forces.
In February 2006, Frazer is an organiser of the Love Ulster parade in Dublin that has to be cancelled due to rioting. In January 2007, he protests outside the Sinn FéinArd Fheis in Dublin that votes to join policing structures in Northern Ireland. He expresses “outrage at the idea that the ‘law-abiding population’ would negotiate with terrorists to get them to support democracy, law and order.”
In January 2007, Frazer dismisses Police OmbudsmanNuala O’Loan‘s report into security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
In March 2010, Frazer claims to have served a civil writ on deputy First MinisterMartin McGuinness, of Sinn Féin, seeking damages arising from the killing of his father by the Provisional IRA. Both Sinn Féin and the courts deny that any such writ had been served, but in June 2010 Frazer announces that he will seek to progress his claim in the High Court. There has since been no report of any such litigation. He previously pickets McGuinness’s home in Derry in 2007 to demand support for calls for Libya to compensate victims of IRA attacks. Accompanied by two other men, he attempts to post a letter to the house but is confronted by local residents and verbally abused. When McGuinness stands for election in the 2011 Irish presidential election, Frazer announces that he and FAIR will picket the main Sinn Féin election events, however, no such pickets take place.
In September 2010, the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) revokes all funding to FAIR due to “major failures in the organisation’s ability to adhere to the conditions associated with its funding allocation” uncovered following a “thorough audit” of the tendering and administration procedures used by FAIR.
In November 2011, the SEUPB announces that it is seeking the return of funding to FAIR and another Markethill victims’ group, Saver/Naver. FAIR is asked to return £350,000 while Saver/Naver is asked to return £200,000. Former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Reg Empey demands that the conclusions about FAIR’s finances be released into the public domain.
In January 2012, Frazer announces a protest march to be held on February 25 through the mainly Catholic south Armagh village of Whitecross, to recall the killing of ten Protestant workmen by the South Armagh Republican Action Force (SARAF) in January 1976 in the Kingsmill massacre. He also names individuals whom he accuses of responsibility for the massacre. He later announces that the march is postponed “at the request of the Kingsmills families.” A 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team finds that members of the Provisional IRA carried out the attack despite the organisation being on ceasefire.
A delegation including Frazer, UUP politician Danny Kennedy and relatives of the Kingsmill families travel to Dublin in September 2012 to seek an apology from the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. The apology is sought for what they describe as the Irish government‘s “blatant inaction” over the Kingmills killings. The Taoiseach says he cannot apologise for the actions of the IRA but assures the families there is no hierarchy for victims and their concerns are just as important as any other victims’ families. The families express disappointment although Frazer states he is pleased to have met the Taoiseach.
On November 16, 2012, Frazer announces that he is stepping down as director of FAIR, after he had reviewed a copy of the SEUPB audit report which, he claims, shows no grounds for demanding the reimbursement of funding. He adds, “I will still be working in the victims sector.”
In 2019, the BBC investigative journalism programme Spotlight reports that Frazer distributed assault rifles and rocket launchers from Ulster Resistance to loyalist terror groups who used them in more than 70 murders. A police report on the activities of the former Ulster Defence Association (UDA) boss Johnny Adair states he was receiving weapons from Ulster Resistance in the early 1990s and his contact in Ulster Resistance was Frazer.
In addition to his advocacy for Protestant victims, Frazer contests several elections in County Armagh. He is not elected and, on most occasions, loses his deposit. He runs as an Ulster Independence Movement candidate in the 1996 Forum Elections and the 1998 Assembly elections, and as an independent in the 2003 Assembly elections and a council by-election.
In the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election Frazer is listed as a subscriber for the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) candidate for the Newry and Armagh constituency, Barrie Halliday, who secures 1.8% of the vote. At Newry Crown Court on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, Pastor Barrie Gordon Halliday is sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for eighteen months, when he pleads guilty to seventeen counts of VAT repayment fraud.
In November 2012, Frazer announces his intention to contest the 2013 Mid Ulster by-election necessitated by Martin McGuinness’s decision to resign the parliamentary seat to concentrate on his Assembly role. He is quoted in The Irish News in January 2013 as stating that he will not condemn any paramilitary gunman who shoots McGuinness.
Despite his earlier advocacy of Ulster nationalism, in 2013 Frazer declares himself in favour of re-establishing direct rule in Northern Ireland.
Frazer dies of cancer in Craigavon, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on June 28, 2019. Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister and DUP Assembly member Jim Wells pay tribute to his memory.
About 24 people are gathered in The Heights Bar, also known as O’Toole’s Pub, watching the Republic of Ireland vs. Italy in the 1994 FIFA World Cup. It is thus sometimes referred to as the “World Cup massacre.”
At 10:10 PM, two UVF members wearing boilersuits and balaclavas walk into the bar. One shouts “Fenian bastards!” and opens fire on the crowd with a vz. 58 assault rifle, spraying the small room with more than sixty bullets. Six men are killed outright, and five other people are wounded. Witnesses say the gunmen then run to a getaway car, “laughing.” One witness describes “bodies … lying piled on top of each other on the floor.” The dead were Adrian Rogan (34), Malcolm Jenkinson (52), Barney Green (87), Daniel McCreanor (59), Patrick O’Hare (35) and Eamon Byrne (39), all Catholic civilians. O’Hare is the brother-in-law of Eamon Byrne and Green is one of the oldest people to be killed during the Troubles.
The UVF claims responsibility within hours of the attack. It claims that an Irish republican meeting was being held in the pub and that the shooting was retaliation for the INLA attack. Police say there is no evidence the pub had links to republican paramilitary activity and say the attack is purely sectarian. JournalistPeter Taylor writes in his book Loyalists that the attack may not have been sanctioned by the UVF leadership. Police intelligence indicates that the order to retaliate came from the UVF leadership and that its ‘Military Commander’ had supplied the rifle used. Police believe the attack was carried out by a local UVF unit under the command of a senior member who reported to the leadership in Belfast.
The attack receives international media coverage and is widely condemned. Among those who send messages of sympathy are Pope John Paul II, Queen Elizabeth II and United States PresidentBill Clinton. Local Protestant families visit their wounded neighbours in the hospital, expressing their shock and disgust.
There have been allegations that police (Royal Ulster Constabulary) double agents or informants in the UVF were linked to the massacre and that police protected those informers by destroying evidence and failing to carry out a proper investigation. At the request of the victims’ families, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland investigate the police. In 2011 the Ombudsman concludes that there were major failings in the police investigation, but no evidence that police colluded with the UVF. The Ombudsman does not investigate the role of informers and the report is branded a whitewash. The Ombudsman’s own investigators demand to be disassociated from it. The report is quashed, the Ombudsman replaced, and a new inquiry ordered.
In 2016, a new Ombudsman report concludes that there had been collusion between the police and the UVF, and that the investigation was undermined by the wish to protect informers but found no evidence police had foreknowledge of the attack. A documentary film about the massacre, No Stone Unturned, is released in 2017. It names the main suspects, one of whom is a member of the British Army and claims that one of the killers was an informer.
At its peak the force has around 8,500 officers with a further 4,500 who are members of the RUC Reserve. During the Troubles (late 1960s-1998), 319 members of the RUC are killed and almost 9,000 injured in paramilitary assassinations or attacks, mostly by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which by 1983 makes the RUC the most dangerous police force in the world in which to serve. During the same period, the RUC kills 55 people, 28 of whom are civilians.
The RUC is superseded by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2001. The former police force is renamed and reformed, as is provided for by the final version of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000. The RUC has been accused by republicans and Irish nationalists of one-sided policing and discrimination, as well as collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. Conversely, it is praised as one of the most professional policing operations in the world by British security forces.
Allegations regarding collusion prompt several inquiries, the most recent of which is published by Police Ombudsman For Northern IrelandNuala O’Loan on January 22, 2007. The report identifies police, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Special Branch collusion with loyalist terrorists under 31 separate headings, in her report on the murder of Raymond McCord, Jr. and other matters, but no member of the RUC has been charged or convicted of any criminal acts as a result of these inquiries. Ombudsman O’Loan states in her conclusions that there is no reason to believe the findings of the investigation were isolated incidents.
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