I do indeed Keith, make it sound like the UDR supplied the UVF because that would appear to be what happened. How many soldiers get to take their SLR rifles home at the weekend? How many roadblocks could be set up in an area of high military surveillance unnoticed? We are talking the main Banbridge to Newry road. The showband's vehicles were followed by a blue Triumph 2000 the minute they passed through the RUC's security checkpoint in Banbridge.

So lets move on to the collusion part shall we. Stephen Travers one of the survivors of the attack said that he recalled a soldier with an English accent and wearing a different uniform take charge when the band's van was stopped at the UVF road block. After the band were lined up at the side of the road this soldier began to demand that their names and dates of birth should be taken. Then the explosion happened the UVF men were ordered to fire on the band members. Travers survived by pretending to be dead and Des McAlea escaped across a field. The forensic tests on the weapons used to murder the band members revealed the links of the gang to a series of sectarian killings right across the so-called 'murder triangle'.

For years after the event it has been claimed that the killings were organised by Captain Robert Nairac, the British intelligence operative killed by the IRA in 1977. That would certainly account for the soldier with the English accent in Travers' statement. That claim has also been made by, among others, the former intelligence operator Fred Holyroyd. And how about this for another piece of collusion there was evidential linkage to Nairac's presence at the killing of John Francis Green an IRA escapee from the Maze six months earlier. The gun that was used to kill Green was also used to kill band member Brian McCoy.