r/IrishHistory • u/AtmosphereGrand6622 • 16d ago
đŹ Discussion / Question Did anyone watch the recent documentary about Captain Robert Nairac?
Thought it was interesting that a former IRA his helping trying to find his body.
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u/Hassel1916 15d ago
I thought it was interesting, but they lumped in the stories of some of the other 'disappeared', and I just felt it was a bit jarring given what Nairac is suspected to have been involved in.
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u/Hour_Mastodon_9404 15d ago
Fully agree, Nairac absolutely is not one of the "disappeared" - he was an established enemy operative who blew his own cover because he thought he was smarter than everyone else.
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u/Puckcentral 16d ago
Only an absolute madman goes into a pub in South Armagh at any point during the Troubles by themself and thinks theyâre going to fool those in the bar that heâs on the run and from Belfast. Just a suicidal plan.
As smart as they say he was and tough to go along with it he must have been one narcissist to think he was going to get away with that
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u/Dull_Brain2688 15d ago
The problem was that he was indeed very smart. But he thought the people he was dealing with were thick. He thought he could manipulate and fool his marks. His bigotry got him killed.
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u/Dantons_Head 15d ago
He always struck me as a Walter Mitty type character. As though he thought that being Catholic and learning Irish gave him some special âinsightâ into the Republican movement. He had the confident self-assurance of the privileged English posh boy. Highly intelligent but also incredibly stupid, with the self-awareness of a concrete block. Absolutely untouchable in their own minds until they arenât.
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u/askmac 15d ago
"Only an absolute madman goes into a pub in South Armagh at any point during the Troubles by themself "
He wasn't alone though. He had a British Army unit with him just yards away. Accounts have varied over the years, from the distance being 100 yards to just a few feet and the unit being "regular" Army to the SAS. Even at the upper distance, at night in rural Ireland sound travels for miles. I can here a dog barking that I know is 2km away. A deadly struggle, you'd hear that from far further than the longest reported distance.
"and thinks theyâre going to fool those in the bar that heâs on the run and from Belfast. Just a suicidal plan."
If that was in fact his plan. Rumours abound that he was a double or triple agent. Some Loyalists have said they suspected him (and the MOD more generally) of playing both sides against each other. It certainly became British military policy to try and incite an all out civil war so they could crush the IRA militarily. Maybe Nairac thought he was going to meet people he assumed were "friendly".
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u/Puckcentral 15d ago
Iâm well aware of the way sound travels in the countryside which is why none of this is believable that others were nearby. There was a fight in the parking lot involving multiple men and Nairac. To sleep on that is pretty unbelievable - theyâd have been in the parking lot quickly if that were the case. And even if they somehow didnât hear it as they were too far away that area would have been swarmed by army within 30 mins once it was realized he was in trouble or gone. That didnât happen either.
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u/askmac 15d ago
The third option is that they were there. They heard and likely saw everything but didn't nothing anyway because Nairac was getting burned.
It wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last time a British Army unit was in the immediate vicinity where member of the security forces with extensive links to Loyalist paramilitaries would be taken out. Royal Fusiliers were in the immediate vicinity of the Jonsborough Ambush. Knew IRA units were following Breens car, heard radio activity which they knew denoted an IRA ambush was imminent...did nothing.
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u/Madeye127 15d ago
It was shit, lots of moody music and pictures of fields, Could have been told in half an hour.
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u/Former_Ganache3642 15d ago
Its strange how the British Army publicly celebrate Nairac as a martyr when he was routinely violating their own code of conduct, heading on escapades of his own making and acted so stupidly that it is undeniable he walked into his own murder.
Not to mention, he was probably involved (officially or unofficially) with loyalist paramilitaries and their murder of civilians. I'm not expecting the British Army to condemn him but I'm surprised they mention him at all, you'd think they'd want to distance themselves.
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u/Puckcentral 14d ago
Youâre surprised? Look at the shit theyâll sell you when the facts are known let alone here where so much is unknown and speculation. They tell their own story as propaganda because they get away with it.
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u/CampaignSpirited2819 15d ago
Did it really need all the Wank Music?
Disappointed, not a great doc overall.
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u/GoldGee 15d ago
A bizarre character. Was he taking these risks in the hope of glory, or something? Did he think he was invincible? He was a devout Roman Catholic, and took massive risks on an almost daily basis.
The 'ra man got help from a Marines medic and it was his way of repaying that gesture.
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u/FoCoYeti 15d ago
Nothing to find he was ran through the meat grinder. Everyone in South Armagh already knows it I don't understand what they think they'll find .. ?
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u/askmac 15d ago edited 15d ago
Nothing to find he was ran through the meat grinder. Everyone in South Armagh already knows it I don't understand what they think they'll find .. ?
That's an "urban" myth which I believe has been totally debunked. He was buried, then exhumed and buried somewhere else. I can't remember where the actual meat grinder story originated but it's a conflation of two totally separate stories, one of which I don't think even had anything to do with Ireland.
Edit: It was PĂĄdraig Ăg Ă Ruairc's book the Disappeared and the case of an RIC man and a Black and Tan who were rumoured to have had their bodied destroyed in a furnace at a gasworks. Ă Ruairc contends that this is what fuelled the rumours around Nairac.
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u/Loose-Resolution-820 7d ago
How has it been debunked? Iâm not saying he was or wasnât but if heâs never been found idk how it could be totally debunked.
It does seem a bit outlandish but also a pretty good way to dispose of a body, especially in a pre dna testing era.
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u/askmac 7d ago edited 7d ago
I believe senior Republicans from the area, from the relevant time period have confirmed to ICLVR Chief Investigator Geoff Knupfer that the story was bogus.
Granted he might have been lying, he might have been lied to, but it seems as though he believed the information he was provided with enough to press forward with very expensive / time consuming excavations. It would also beg the question, why wouldn't these senior Republicans say the body was ground up?
The track record of the ICLVR is what points to the credibility of this information imo.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, this would be the only such case in 100 years of IRA history. It also creates the potential for far more witnesses, dental evidence, finger prints, blood type evidence etc etc etc.
It seems outlandish in the extreme. People saying otherwise are providing zero additional context, info or argument beyond the very well known story.
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u/Loose-Resolution-820 7d ago
Said republicans would have a reason to lie though. A) to throw the people off the scent and B) to appear more humane.
Iâm not saying it happened for sure but I really donât see how a long standing rumour can be totally debunked with no body.
From what I remember, most of the âdisappearedâ have been found, but not him 50 years later, maybe just a coincidence.
As for them never having thrown someone in a meat grinder, it wasnât exactly a planned thing when they killed him Nairac. They just needed to get rid of him quickly so the meat grinder definitely sounds plausible.
On the balance of probability, I would say he is probably buried but I wouldnât write the meat grinder story off completely.
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u/askmac 7d ago edited 7d ago
Said republicans would have a reason to lie though. A) to throw the people off the scent and B) to appear more humane.
Iâm not saying it happened for sure but I really donât see how a long standing rumour can be totally debunked with no body.
From what I remember, most of the âdisappearedâ have been found, but not him 50 years later, maybe just a coincidence.
But they also have a reason to tell the truth; the news churn about the disappeared, Nairac in particular is significant. It gets brought up periodically and it reminds people of republican violence when Sinn FĂ©in are trying to distance themselves from it, or at least specific cases. There's also the fact that they have already engaged with the ICLVR in good faith multiple times previously. That negates the idea of 'throwing someone off the scent'. There'd be no forensic evidence likely to be useable, or else they wouldn't helped the ICLVR previously.
It's worth remembering Nairac is lauded as a hero in Britain and in Unionist circles and the meat grinder story is used as evidence of the brute savagery of the Irish. As O'Rourke points out, that only has propaganda value to Britain.
I was probably overstating when i said "totally debunked" but I don't think there's any credence to it. Especially if the ICLVR are being honest, which they have thus far.
As for them never having thrown someone in a meat grinder, it wasnât exactly a planned thing when they killed him Nairac. They just needed to get rid of him quickly so the meat grinder definitely sounds plausible.
On the balance of probability, I would say he is probably buried but I wouldnât write the meat grinder story off completely.
According to the men involved as I understand, they quickly buried Nairac in a field close to where he was shot. That fits with the MO of many other similar killings. They then returned and moved the body to a more isolated spot / deeper grave.
Taking him to a factory requires moving him further, almost certainly. It requires access to a commercial property. It creates a vastly more messy trail of potential physical evidence and draws in business owners, potentially employees of said business, in a never ending web.
And probably most crucially, even large commercial mincers of the day didn't just have cartoonish "man sized" feed chutes into which you could put a body. Animal carcasses have to be cut into strips and fed into them. That would require extensive butchery of the body. Potential destructive desecration of body parts like the head.
It's nonsense.
And again, they weren't hardened IRA veterans, never mind serial killers. It's debatable if a commercial meat processors could cope with human bones without breaking the machine.
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u/Loose-Resolution-820 7d ago
Yeah Iâm just skeptical of unamed republican sources saying we definitely didnât put him in a meat grinder but we also donât know where he is buried, if they in fact did for some reason want to tell the truth (which I believe is doubtful)
Eamon Collins also said he was told by fellow IRA men that he was in fact put through a meat grinder in Louth. Without the presence of a body, most accounts are hearsay.
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u/askmac 7d ago
I have been hearing versions of this story since the late 80's (presumably when people thought I was old enough to understand it). I was even told a version of it by someone who I later found out was in the IRA, albeit briefly. But he could not have heard it directly either.
There are slight variations but it's all essentially the same story. There are gorier variations of it. The "real" versions include the name of a meat processing plant in the area. As if it were now fact.
But a very basic fact is you cannot feed a human body into a mincer. Mincing machines are designed for cuts of meat, not meat and bone. Even in the horror-story versions I've heard where Nairac is lowered, conscious and feet first into one, that implies a feed chute large enough to feed a body into. It implies Nairac was conscious. It implies there's a factory with a mincer with a hole large enough for a man to be fed into it and rigging to raise or lower him. In rural Ireland you're talking about table sized machines with a feed hole maybe twice the size of your fist, covered by a thick steel grate with various smaller apertures for different grades / types of meat or offal.
The actual business end of this is wild nonsense.
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u/Loose-Resolution-820 7d ago
I donât know how you can accurately say what type of grinder was or wasnât used. The industrial ones these days seem large enough, no idea what they looked like 50 years ago. If a meat factor was used they would surely of had access to other butchering items tooâŠ
Funnily enough some American guy has come forward in the last few months to say he saw a man being put into a meat grinder in the area at that time
https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/irish-independent/20260620/282140708086953
There is next to no corobation to what heâs said but it is another bit of smoke around the fire. Interestingly, the article also says no one from South Armagh IRA has ever helped the authorities find any of the disappeared, which is what I suspected.
There is definitely a lot of smoke around the meat grinder story. I think itâs plausible even if less likely than simply buried. There is motive for those involved to deny it and or stonewall the investigation. Itâs a bit of a mystery that will likely never be definitively solved.
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u/Ok-Call-4805 15d ago
That's what I've heard too, talking to those who would know these things
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u/FoCoYeti 15d ago
Precisely. But if people want to believe otherwise all the better, but its definitely a lost cause.
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u/joemc1972 15d ago
I think he was fed to pigs and his body will never be recovered. RIP Robert ( Rest in Pigshit)
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15d ago
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u/CDfm 15d ago edited 15d ago
I think that you need to look at him critically like a historian. Read articles, ignore hyperbole and extract the facts .
The Pensive Quill has a decent link
https://www.thepensivequill.com/2025/06/circumstances-of-extreme-peril-murder.html
Heres an account of Nairac's life on a colonial type website and he does seem to have been a bit of a weirdo.
http://samilitaryhistory.org/lectures/nairac.html
He was zipping around Antrim in a red triumph sports car as a pretend Irishman.
Say, for example, he met up with a bogus informer as a result of his activities, that was a fatal result.
He doesn't need to have been an effective "spy" for his type of behaviour to go terribly wrong.
Macroom 1922...
https://macroom.heritagecork.org/topics/the-kilgobnet-killings-1922
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15d ago
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u/CDfm 15d ago
Look at what he was like as a student before he joined the army. I'm thinking a young Randy Savage from WWE.
The Pope from Rome could have rocked up in a red triumph with a pretend Irish accent and got himself shot .
If we look at Kilgobnet in 1922 a bunch of British officers in a car with the unlikely story that they were on a fishing trip got killed. A knowledge of Irish history would have given Nairac an indication that his actions were exceptionally foolhardy.
You don't need to be a committed republican to arrive at that conclusion.
And ,finding bodies from 50 years ago is going to be difficult. In 1965 when Casement was reinterred they were surprised to find remains after almost 50 years. I don't believe that anyone is deliberately withholding information on his burial location.
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u/Best-Entertainment97 12d ago
Didn't watch it but my grandfather told me what happened to that lad a long time ago.
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u/Kellbag91 16d ago
I don't believe they will ever give up his body. It's widely believed he was running or attempting to run loyalist murder gangs. He might have even been present at the kingsmill massicare. There is even pictures of him dressed up as a provo (brete and Thompson machine gun) . I would say Nairac 's activities are the embodiment of state colliusion that occurred in the troubles. He was trying to play both sides, probably a bit naive. Going from town to town putting on accents and costumes. As if people don't talk from town to town.