Jeremy Corbyn ‘helped jailed IRA bomb-making terrorist pal net cushy council flat after release’
JEREMY Corbyn helped his IRA bomb-making pal bag a cushy council flat after he was released from jail, according to reports.
Gerard McLaughlin and his fiancee Val Cardwell skipped the 12,000-strong queue for the flat in the Georgian terrace in Islington, North London, in December 1983.
The Derry-born IRA terrorist had just been released from a four-year sentence for possession of equipment capable of making radio-controlled bombs - similar to those used in the devastating Hyde Park attack.
While in jail, McLaughlin had glorified the 1982 bombings, which killed 11 people including four members of the Royal Household Cavalry.
As a result of the attack, hate was continuing to grow against the IRA - with McLaughlin desperate to leave his home in South Wales, reports.
The couple moved in to the flat, now worth £500,000, in December after Val applied under her name while McLaughlin was still banged up.
CUSHY FLAT
He wrote at the time: "Val, my girlfriend, has at last got a flat in London so I will have somewhere to go.
"I have a few irons in the fire which I shall tell you about when I see you. Nothing mysterious but what the Home Office don't know — the Home Office can't foul up, so it's probably best not to write it in a prison letter."
Corbyn's socialist pal Keith Veness, who helped the PM-candidate rise to power in Islington in the 1980s, told the newspaper the MP would not have intervened in securing the flat.
But he U-turned, saying: "Jeremy . . . might have written a reference. Yeah, he's a fine, upstanding person . . . that's all it would be."
His wife Valerie claimed the home came as a result of a "council house swap" with a family who wished to live in South Wales where Cardwell was at the time.
JOB FOR TERRORIST
Corbyn also reportedly gave McLaughlin a job in December 1983 after he joined the pro-republican Irish In Britain Representation Group (IBRG).
A new pressure group - the Irish In Islington Project - had emerged, with the terrorist taking up the role of "community outreach worker".
McLaughlin worked alongside Michael Maguire - a Sinn Fein activist who married civil servant Jackie O'Malley.
She had supplied the IRA with secret plans to H-Block prison that enabled the mass breakout of 38 republican terrorists in September 1983.
McLaughlin and Corbyn remained friends over the years - with the Leftie leader hosting the convicted terrorist at the Commons in 1984.
It came a year after the Brighton bombing and triggered the first of many IRA-related rows in Corbyn's political career.
IRA LINKS
Last month, he was branded "dirty IRA scum" by crowds in key marginal constituency Dudley over his links to the terror group.
The Leftie boss had earlier been slammed as "crass" for choosing to launch Labour's "manifesto of hope" on the day 21 people were killed and 182 injured when the IRA blew up two pubs in Birmingham.
And Corbyn was also in the past close to magazine the London Labour Briefing, which ran an infamous editorial after the sickening murders claiming that “the British only sit up and take notice when they are bombed into it.”
This year saw nearly 40 victims of the sick IRA atrocities demand an apology, accusing the Labour leader of “giving succour” to terrorists.
They demanded he condemn the terrorist campaign waged by the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s.
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But self-confessed pacifist Corbyn repeatedly failed to condemn IRA violence in an interview in 2015 when he was asked five times to do so.
The Sun also revealed last month how Corbyn aided a campaign to free an IRA assassin who served 20 years for trying to kill a cop.
Paul Norney was given a life sentence in 1976 for attempted murder after shooting Inspector Emlyn Watkins in Manchester.
