by Ken Wharton
In just eighty-one minutes, there were twenty-plus explosions, nine people were killed and well over 100 were injured, in what can only be described as a callous and cynical display of ruthless and thoughtless murder by the Provisional IRA. The Daily Express had this to say: ‘This is the scene, straight out of a modern Dante’s smoking Inferno, at the Oxford Street bus station in Belfast yesterday after an IRA bomb exploded.’ Their journalist described it as ‘one of the most bloody, horrifying disasters I have ever seen’. An eyewitness said:
People were scrambling everywhere. In the panic they were getting trampled. I rushed to help. One woman was kneeling over a small child crying and sobbing for help. Her face was covered in blood and the child looked lifeless. Through the smoke I saw torn pieces of bodies poking out from between twisted metal, bricks and shattered glass. I thought: ‘Oh my God,’ and then I was sick. A soldier grabbed me, helped me to my feet and told me to get out quick.
The late Brendan Hughes, a senior commander in the Provisionals, spoke openly to Ed Moloney* about the events of Bloody Friday. He told how he waited in Leeson Street for the bombing teams to return from the carnage that they had caused in the centre of Belfast. He had armed himself with an Armalite, although he needn’t have bothered as the bulk of the SF in Belfast were far too busy trying to evacuate the terrified populace and contain the damage that was tearing the centre part. Hughes talks of his initial feelings of elation and then, as he heard explosion after explosion thunder through the air, the sudden realisation that they had stretched the British to breaking point. He accepted that they simply couldn’t cope with the vast amounts of bombs and that, inevitably, there would be enormous casualties. Hughes told a Boston College interviewer: ‘I have a fair deal of regret that “Bloody Friday” took place ... a great deal of regret ... if I could do it all over again I wouldn’t do it.’
One of Hughes’ PIRA colleagues, Gerry Bradley,** said, ‘... all the work we put in to make sure our people were safe, and no one got hurt. The civilians being killed ruined everything. On the Friday morning I thought brilliant we’re highly organised. On the Friday night I thought disaster.’
Gerry Adams has always denied that he was an active member of the Provisionals and, indeed, was a senior Sinn Féin politician at this time. Eager never to criticise; always fast to justify the actions taken by PIRA. However, tellingly, Hughes has the following to say: ‘The bombings were planned and approved by the then Belfast Brigade, including Seamus Twomey, the Brigade Commander; Gerry Adams, his Adjutant, and Ivor Bell, the Brigade Operations Officer [author’s emphasis].’***
Later that evening, in an incident that proved there had been insufficient blood-letting for the men of the IRA, Joseph Rosato (59) was shot dead by a PIRA murder gang at his home in Deerpark Road, in the sectarian interface near the Oldpark Road. His ‘crime’ has never been revealed.
Between the 21st (Bloody Friday) and the 31st, a further twenty people died: soldiers, innocent civilians and paramilitaries. On the 31st, the Provisionals struck again, striking at the sleepy village of Claudy in Co. Londonderry, with a devastating and bloody fury that could have only been conceived in the blackest of hearts. This was the work of the South Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA and the operation was on the direct orders of Martin McGuinness. This was such a major operation with such far-reaching consequences that it seems likely that the order can have only come from one man: the most senior Provisional in the Co. Londonderry area. The late RUC agent Raymond Gilmour told the author that the same man also gave the order to assassinate Lord Louis Mountbatten in August 1979. In my opinion, therefore, the late Martin McGuinness is the architect of the Claudy outrage.
Claudy is a small village and townland that lies in the Faughan Valley, 9 miles south-east of the city of Londonderry, some 62 miles north-west of Belfast. In the 2011 census it had a population of 1,336; it features two primary schools, two churches and a Roman Catholic college named St Patrick’s and St Brigid’s College. It was and is a sleepy village, visited by the author on a cold November day in 2008; quintessentially quaint and friendly, the graveyard contains the bodies of nine of that sleepy populace, their lives cut short by a terrorist action that served no purpose whatsoever. There is a monument to the dead; it shows a distraught young woman, hands clasped to her face in shock and horror; she kneels on a plinth surrounded by a small iron fence, gazing down in anguish at the names of those whose lives were cruelly cut short at the hands of the Provisional IRA.
It was the last Monday of the bloodiest month in the Troubles, which were now approaching their third anniversary. Claudy had been untouched by the violence that had blighted their country of Northern Ireland, with the death toll now already approaching 600. It was the UK’s school holidays and the town’s children would be playing in the streets, unburdened of lessons and homework; this was their time. Several cars and minivans were driven into the village, carefully parked and locked, their drivers walking off as though in search of a shop or a café, or even a toilet to relieve themselves – all innocent and routine tasks. All attracting no attention whatsoever, watched by the unsuspecting. These men, fully cognisant of the horror that was to follow in their wake, walked to another car, parked some distance away, got in, drove off and left the people of Claudy to their fate.
One of the men who parked the explosive-packed cars was a so-called man of God: Father James ‘Jim’ Chesney, a local Roman Catholic priest who was also the South Derry Brigade’s Director of Operations and Quartermaster, a known and unrepentant hater of the British. The author has learned from a very reliable source that the rogue priest parked the vehicle bomb opposite the shop front where little Kathryn Eakin was standing. This author is not a deeply religious man, but one must question the mentality and utter lack of humanity that this ‘man of God’ displayed, leaving a lethal explosive device just yards from where this little girl was standing. Did he for a split second consider the mental image of this child being torn to pieces by his bomb?
Main Street, Claudy, in August 1972 when three Provisional IRA car bombs exploded without warning, killing nine.
The bombing crew then drove to a nearby village to telephone warnings through to the RUC but searched in vain for a working telephone box; at 10.20, the first car bomb exploded.
A car had been placed outside McElhinney’s Bar on Main Street, opposite the same family’s petrol filling station. Elizabeth McElhinney (59) was filling a car with petrol and was killed instantly; Kathryn Eakin (9) was washing the windows of her parents’ shop and was also killed instantly, as was Joseph McCluskey (39). Three other people were fatally injured in this first blast: Rose McLaughlin (52), mother of eight, Patrick Connolly (15) and Arthur Hone (38), who all died the following month from their horrific injuries. By this time, police officers had discovered a second bomb outside the village post office and were keeping people away. However, these people then walked towards the Beaufort Hotel, where another bomb had been placed inside another minivan. It exploded, killing David Miller (60), James McClelland (60) and milkman’s assistant William Temple (16), who was delivering milk close to the hotel. A further thirty people were injured, some terribly, and the heart of a small town had been ripped out.
Memorial in Claudy to the nine innocents killed by an IRA bomb.
There were several investigations over the years, but the Provisional IRA never admitted responsibility, although it was clearly the handiwork of their South Derry Brigade, and it was masterminded by that organisation’s Director of Operations, ‘Jim’ Chesney. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church covered up Chesney’s involvement, closing ranks to disguise the Church’s role in the massacre, even smuggling Chesney into the Republic and later to Australia.
The final words from Claudy: the Coroner later said, ‘This was sheer, cold, calculated, fiendish murder.’ Earlier that day, the British Army had launched Operation Motorman, a mass incursion into the so-called ‘no-go areas’ of Londonderry, Belfast, Newry and other IRA strongh
olds throughout Northern Ireland.
The bloodiest year wore on, with British soldiers being killed at a far higher rate than at any time since the Korean War. By the end of the year, 172 soldiers would have died from a variety of causes – mostly at the hands of the Provisionals – and were being killed at the rate of three a week. On 4 August, Lance Corporal David Card (21) of the Royal Green Jackets was killed in an exchange of fire with PIRA gunmen in Andersonstown in the west of Belfast. As his patrol crossed waste ground in Bearnagh Drive, intending to search nearby houses for weapons, Card was hit in the chest and stomach and fell to the ground badly injured. Heavy fire from an M60 machine gun, firing .50-calibre rounds, kept the wounded man’s comrades at bay. They managed to get his radio pack off and give him rudimentary first aid, but the accurate bursts kept them largely pinned down. A fellow rifleman, Rifleman ‘W’, takes up the story:
The boys tried everything that they could to save his life; they were desperate to save him. They were in tears and it was tears of rage because they were trying to save him, but they were pinned down by the sniper and rounds were flying everywhere. Whenever we got one of them bastards, there was always some RC Priest kneeling over him, saying all sorts of prayers for his ‘eternal salvation’ but our lads died with his mates screaming at him: ‘Fight it mate’ or ‘Fucking stay with me mate!’
Over the course of the Troubles at least eleven Army/police wives and children were killed during attacks on members of the security forces, which included nine relatives of UDR personnel. One such incident occurred on 21 September, when several PIRA gunmen broke into the house of part-time UDR soldier Thomas Bullock in Killynick, Co. Fermanagh. His wife, Emily (50), was shot dead as she walked into the hallway to investigate the commotion; Private Bullock (53) was just rising from his armchair, when he too was gunned down. It was later revealed that a gang of nine gunmen in two separate cars had made the raid on the Bullock’s house before escaping across the nearby border. The pair had farmed fields at Aghlane, which is very close to the Republic and this made security next to impossible. Members of the same gang also tried to kill another UDR soldier that day in a house close by; the soldier was not at home, so the paramilitaries tried to intimidate his wife. They eventually wrecked the furniture before leaving.
There was a particularly unsavoury postscript that revealed the gloating nature of the Provisionals. ‘Burn House’ is the local nickname of a business that burned animal carcasses; it is located in Lisburn. A member of the PIRA gang telephoned the manager of the ‘Burn House’ telling him that there were ‘... two Bullocks to be collected from Killynick’. On the same evening of the murders, Nationalist mobs gathered outside the house, laughing and jeering as the bodies were taken to the morgue; at one stage, they blockaded the vehicles in as they attempted to leave.
On 2 October, the Provisionals ambushed a British Army undercover unit in the Twinbrook area of West Belfast. The ambush caused the death of a soldier and ended a brilliantly conceived and executed undercover operation that yielded major results and arrests. The mythical ‘Four Square Laundry’ was set up in Belfast in 1972 and involved a mobile laundry collection and delivery service. The delivery vans also allegedly contained concealed compartments to allow undercover operatives to secretly observe the goings on in the heart of IRA territory. Laundry was collected – the Army having shrewdly undercut local rivals – washed in Army premises having first been tested for evidence of arms or explosives handling, and the now fresh linen, etc., was then returned in the same open manner. Through the forensics and through their ability to penetrate and observe inside the Republican strongholds, several major ‘players’ had been lifted, including local PIRA operatives Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee. Both men had been ‘turned’, becoming double agents, known in Army parlance as ‘Freds’.
However, top Provos had become suspicious about both men, following several failed operations and the seizing of several local arms caches. Wright and McKee were picked up by Internal Security, where they readily admitted their double agent status in the hope that they would be spared the mandatory death sentence. Gerry Adams was allegedly involved, and he gave the order – according to Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price – for them to be taken away and executed. Knowing, however, that one of the men – Wright – came from a prominent Republican family, it was decided that instead of dumping their bodies at a roadside, they would be executed with a brand new £20 stuffed in their mouth, which was the hallmark of a traitor and their bodies buried in makeshift graves in a highly remote area.
At approximately 11.30 on Monday, 2 October, unaware that they had been rumbled, one of the vans containing Lance Corporal Sarah Warke (WRAC) and Sapper Edward Stuart (20) of the Royal Engineers drove into the Twinbrook estate in south-west Belfast. As they parked outside a house in Juniper Park, Sarah Warke approached the front door while Edward Stuart remained in the van. A waiting car containing PIRA gunmen opened fire, mortally wounding Sapper Stuart; Lance Corporal Warke overcame her initial shock and dashed into the house, the occupants thinking that it was a Loyalist murder gang making the attack. She was later rescued, although Sapper Stuart died from his wounds. The Four Square Laundry was no more, but if it proved that the Army could easily penetrate the Republican strongholds, it also showed to the Provisionals that they had to be alert all the time.
In 2010, former PIRA bomber Dolours Price – she died in 2013 – spoke to Irish journalist Ed Moloney in New York City. Patrick Radden Keefe, who has written several books on the Troubles, quotes from the Moloney interview. He states that Price, convicted of a car bombing at London’s Old Bailey in 1973, admitted that she was the ‘death chauffeur [author’s emphasis]’ who drove McKee and Wright to their deaths. ‘After they confessed, Wright and McKee were told that their lives would be spared, so they joined Price for the final ride without resistance, believing that they were going for a brief holiday in the South.’ Price said, ‘Ultimately, I believe they were shot ... we believed that informers were the lowest form of human life.’*
On 20 December, the UFF were again involved, when one of their gangs from the neighbouring Fountains area attacked the Top of the Hill bar on Old Strabane Road, in Londonderry’s Waterside. It was frequented in the main by Catholic drinkers and, given the fact that the Loyalist Fountains area was a convenient bolt hole for the UFF, the pub was a prime target. Several armed men burst into the bar, indiscriminately firing into the drinkers with automatic weapons. The gunmen were unable to miss their massed targets, causing utter carnage. A slightly wounded barman later stated that the gunmen had simply sprayed the whole bar. Leaving the dead and the cries and moans of the dying and wounded, the gunmen fled the scene. In all, five innocents were murdered and four others were wounded, some badly.
The dead were: Charles Moore (31), a Protestant; Charles McCafferty (30), father of seven; Bernard Kelly (26); Francis McCarron (58); and Michael McGinley (37), the latter four all being Catholics. The death, destruction and sheer randomness of the killings demonstrated the sickness and depravity of the gunmen, as nine children were left fatherless. It was a dress rehearsal for several attacks on bookmakers and, of course, for the Greysteel attack in 1993.
The bloodiest year was over; a total of 566 people had died in or because of the Troubles. Of these, 189 were members of the security forces and 265 were innocent civilians. Most of the civvies had died at the hands of the Provisionals by bomb and bullet, but many others had died because of sectarian attacks by the Loyalists. There had been major bombing attacks by the Provisional IRA: at the Abercorn, at Donegall Square, on Bloody Friday and at Claudy; there had been sectarian bombings by the Loyalists, notably at the Hillfoot bar; and British paratroopers had been responsible for fourteen deaths on Bloody Sunday.
Deaths had risen dramatically, more than double the previous year’s total of 300; for the next five years, they would hover around the 300 mark before falling into the low hundreds, but they would never again reach the number of killed in 1972.
There is one noteworthy point that the reader should bear in mind: during the year of 1972, the British Army, that much-maligned organisation, openly disliked by Irishmen and the British Labour Party, killed seventy-nine people during this ‘bloodiest year’. The IRA killed 280 people, not all of whom were soldiers and police officers; many were innocent Catholic civilians. Yet interestingly, Republicans malign the Army as murderers, when clearly this is very selective vision; it was simply more propaganda for the delectation of NORAID and the Irish American community in the United States of America.
________________
* Local colloquialism for wee ones; children.
* This vagueness was a hallmark of their misleading warnings, as witnessed at Victoria Rail Station, Warrington, Manchester and Lisburn, to name but a few.
** There are many observers who see towns such as Rosslea and Crossmaglen as being synonymous with the Irish Republic.
* See reference to Marietta Biscuits in Chapter 9.
** Voices from the Grave, Ed Moloney (Faber & Faber, 2010).
* A Force Like No Other, Colin Breen (Blackstaff Press, 2017), pp.142–43.
* Voices from the Grave, Ed Moloney (Faber & Faber, 2010).
** Insider: Gerry Bradley’s Life in the IRA, Brian Feeney & Gerry Bradley, (The O’Brien Press 2011).
*** Moloney, op. cit., p.106.
* www.newyorker.com/news/newsdesk/the-last-testament-of-a-former-ira-terrorist.
CHAPTER 7
THE POLICE
On a cold Sunday in March 2009, former RCT soldier Tom Clarke, former Royal Artilleryman John Swaine and myself were filming a pilot programme for a soon-to-be-produced documentary on the Troubles. It was Sunday, 1 March, at the end of two hours’ filming, when Tom, the man who had displayed great bravery at Crossmaglen in 1976, turned to the cameras and said, ‘It isn’t over yet.’ Both Mr Swaine and I could have had no clue just how prophetic those words would be; a mere six days later, a dissident Republican group, the ‘Real IRA’ (RIRA), shot two soldiers at Massarene Barracks, in Antrim, killing Sappers Mark Quinsey from Birmingham and Patrick Azimkar from London the night before they were due to deploy to Afghanistan in Op Telic. Just two days later, another dissident group called the ‘Continuity IRA’ (CIRA), described as ‘rag-bag Republicans’, shot dead Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer Stephen Carroll after he had been lured into the Nationalist estate Linsmore Manor in Craigavon, Co. Armagh. He fell, mortally wounded, leaving Kate Carroll a grieving widow and becoming the first RUC/PSNI to be killed by terrorists since Constable Frank O’Reilly (30) in a Loyalist bomb blast in Portadown’s Corcrain estate on 6 October 1998.
