The UK has refused to release archive material on paid Irish police informants from more than 100 years ago – amid fears that their descendants could be shunned or even targeted by dissident republicans.

Irish historian Barry Keane argued that the 100-year-old file may hold vital clues to such critical events in Ireland as the Phoenix Park murders of 1882 and precisely what Britain knew about plans for a rising in the years before 1916.

Reported by the Irish Independent. You can read the full story here. 

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.