by Ken Wharton
However, the one mortar* that did succeed achieved a direct hit on the very portakabin in which more than a dozen officers were sitting down to a meal. The explosion was absolutely devastating, killing nine officers and wounding every single person in the room, which was being used as a canteen for officers and civilian staff. Those killed were: Woman Constable Ivy Kelly (29), who was also married to a fellow officer; WPC Rosemary McGookin (27); Chief Inspector Alexander Donaldson (41), a father of three; Sergeant John Dowd (31); Constable David Topping (22); and RUCR Constables Sean McHenry (19), Geoffrey Campbell (24), Paul Hillery (33) and Dennis Price (22). By a dreadful coincidence, the death toll of RUC officers since the start of the Troubles reached 200 before the echoes of the blast had even started to die down.
The mainland British press referred to the outrage as ‘Bloody Thursday’, with both Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald using terms such as ‘barbaric, cruel and cynical’. The Irish leader added that he would provide the assistance of the Irish Army, but it was an empty gesture and too little, too late. In the Commons, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Douglas Hurd said:
It shows yet again and how cheaply and in what contempt the terrorists hold the lives of the whole community, civilian as well as police. The effect on me and on thousands of others in Northern Ireland will simply be to reinforce our determination that the terrorists will never win, and that terrorism will be defeated.
However, a spokesman for the Provisionals declared chillingly: ‘It demonstrates our ability to strike when and where we decide.’
The Daily Express led with: ‘Nine Killed in IRA Revenge Mortar Raid Against the Police’ ‘WPCs among the dead in canteen’. The following day’s headline was: ‘Debris of Death’, and the reporter wrote poignantly about ‘... the anger and sorrow which lives on’. The article was accompanied by a photograph of a shocked policeman looking at the devastated room, in a scene that might not have looked out of place as the first light of dawn illuminated the shattered East End of London the morning after a devastating Luftwaffe raid in 1940/41.
Whilst the UDA/UFF were never an organisation that needed a reason to retaliate, a spokesman warned: ‘We are under pressure to revert to the old days. These terrorists must be destroyed.’ At that time, the author was a member of the British Labour Party, attending Branch meetings in Wakefield, West Yorkshire; the Trotskyist splinter group Militant were occasionally in attendance. I was discussing the tragedy with the then Labour Deputy Chief Whip, Walter Harrison, now deceased, when a young man selling copies of their ‘newspaper’ interrupted us saying: ‘Well that was their fuckin’ last supper then wasn’t it?’
Jonty Brown, RUC:
From the Marine Commandos to the Royal Scots to the Paras I served alongside them all. Sitting in the rear of open jeeps and stopping without warning to set up snap VCPs on major and minor roads in and around Belfast.
As a member of what they called ‘Rucksack’, I had many happy experiences interacting with English soldiers on the streets of our beleaguered Province. We patrolled with caution in the knowledge that our lives could be taken in a heartbeat by cowardly terrorists who came out of nowhere, struck with deadly firepower and then immediately disappeared back into the cesspool they had come from.
The carnage in Newry continued the following year with the terrible ‘bloody poke’ killings. In Ulster, ‘poke’ is the common term for an ice cream cone. On 26 July 1986, three officers were on patrol in Market Square; it being a very hot day, they had parked up, buying ice cream ‘pokes’ to cool themselves down a little. Their heavily armoured Ford Cortina had no air-conditioning, so they had allowed themselves the luxury of opening one of the passenger doors for ventilation. Eyewitnesses later reported that several men dressed as butchers came out of a nearby shop, walked over to the car and wrenched the door open before repeatedly opening fire, killing two of the officers and fatally injuring the third. For good measure, one of the gunmen threw a hand grenade into the car before they ran off laughing. Several shoppers ran over to the scene of the carnage, with the first person on the scene crying out: ‘Get him out; he’s still alive!’ It was at this point that they noticed the grenade, which forced them to retreat to cover. Fortunately, the grenade’s pin had not been fully pulled out and it failed to detonate. The mortally wounded officer was rushed to the Daisy Hill Hospital but sadly died. The three RUC men were: Sergeant Peter Kilpatrick (27), Constable Karl Blackbourne (19) and Constable Charles Allen (37). As the dead and dying officers lay in their car, their ice cream ‘pokes’ rapidly melted in pools of their own blood.
Colin Breen* quotes the terrible task one officer faced when he had to deliver the news of Constable Blackbourne’s murder to the dead man’s father:
I was given the job to go and tell his parents the dreadful news. I went to the family home and Mrs. Blackbourne, she was actually away in Spain on holidays, but Mr. Blackbourne was there and I pulled up and introduced myself. Where do you start? ‘Mr. Blackbourne, I have some bad news.’ He immediately said: ‘Karl?’ I said: ‘Yes, it’s Karl, there’s been a shooting incident in Newry.’ He asked; ‘How bad is he?’ I said: ‘I’m so sorry, he’s dead.’ He just kept saying: ‘Oh, no, no, no, not Karl. What’re his injuries? Will he live? He’ll be ok?’ I was trying to keep it together myself, and I said: ‘Mr. Blackbourne, listen to me. He’s dead.’ He just slumped down in front of me as what I’d said sank in.
There were numerous examples of officers being killed and injured while they attended to 999 calls, which while routine to the English, Welsh or Scots officers, were potentially fatal to the Northern Ireland enforcement agencies. On 7 July 1997, a Co. Tyrone RUC car was parked outside their station during a community event when a gunman hidden close to a local pub opened fire with a double-barrelled shotgun, blasting at the officers through their side windows. Although the glass was armoured, parts of it shattered inside, wounding a female officer. In another incident in Co. Fermanagh, local Provisionals faked a break-in at a garage forecourt, which started the alarm bells clanging. As officers attended, a hidden booby trap was detonated, seriously wounding a WPC in the face; she later lost an eye and was forced to retire on medical grounds. A fake 999 call to a mainland officer was a nuisance; for an Ulster officer, it was highly likely to be a PIRA ‘come on’.
Another perfect, though nonetheless tragic, example occurred on 1 November 1971, when a burglary was reported at a fashion shop in the Avoca shopping centre near the Busybee supermarket in Andersonstown. PIRA gunmen were already in place awaiting the arrival of RUC officers, who were duty-bound to investigate. As Detective Constables William Russell (31) and Stanley Corry (28) walked towards the shop, gunmen armed with a Sten automatic and a Webley pistol fired more than twenty rounds at them; both died at the scene. Shoppers had been warned to stay away, giving the gunmen free rein to shoot down the RUC men. A local priest told the press: ‘It was tragic to see their dead bodies lying at the roadside.’ A local doctor attended to the two men but could do nothing to save them.
I WAS A NORTHERN IRELAND POLICEMAN
David Mac, RUC:
Every day for nearly 30 years, myself and my colleagues, in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, (RUC) patrolled, day in, day out, in the fight against crime, as was the case in any country in the UK. However, where Northern Ireland was concerned, the risks were different, for here we had a vicious terrorist campaign of violence and to every request for help was added a real and present threat of attack from hidden enemies. Never was there a single instance where we refused to attend any call for assistance, from no matter which side of the sectarian divide the call came. [If a call came in to attend non-Troubles-related incidents in a Nationalist area, the RUC knew that the odds that it was a come-on increased astronomically.]
We neither noted nor cared who needed our help; religion did not matter to us, but we knew that the location of the call-out would largely determine our tactics and probable reception once we arrived. I sti
ll reel with disgust when I hear nationalist politicians and their supporters claim that the PSNI is for all the people, whereas the RUC, they claim, was a sectarian force. It was their vile propaganda that falsely sullied the good name of the RUC and we are hurt that the generations which we served with pride, diligence and without fear or favour, have been turned against us by the lies of Sinn Féin. They have managed to convince the world, especially here and in America, that we were some sort of Loyalist paramilitary outfit.
The irony of course wasn’t seen or recognised by the public, here or outside the Province, when, in 1986, the RUC stood against the Loyalist mobs protesting the ban to stop their parade route in Portadown. Jack Hermon gave the order to stop them marchers from entering Oban Street at what was known as the ‘tunnel’. In the following months, Loyalists attacked the homes of RUC personnel, in several cases, assaulting their families too; in one such incident, an officer’s wife was rescued by one of our patrols as she ran down the road, screaming in terror as she was pursued by a mob of so-called Loyalists. The terrified woman had her two young children in her arms and had been forced to flee her home, which was ransacked and burned by people supposedly loyal to the Crown; it was left uninhabitable and she never returned. It was with a bitter irony that I noticed how the Republican movement sat back and laughed at how the Loyalists had turned on us, thanks to their malicious plan. It was actually Sinn Féin’s first – but not their last – foray into the manipulation of the parades issue. That they managed to ignite things in such a manner only confirmed their major plan for the years ahead was ready to launch. They were very good at playing the innocent, whilst stoking up the inferno and then sitting back with the look of pure innocence on their faces. The tactics were comparable to those of the Nazi Party in the late 1920s and early 1930s in Germany; they secretly manufactured incidents, then stepped forward as the solution.
The last contributor speaks of ‘manipulation’, which to the outsider is impossible to detect; placatory comments such as ‘Sure, they were terrorists once, but they are statesman now; they have met several US Presidents and the Queen; doesn’t that prove that they are reformed and only want peace?’ These very words were spoken to me by a Labour Party member, content to view the lists of injured and dead as an ‘acceptable price to pay’ for the peace that Northern Ireland enjoys. Those who protest at the very manipulation about which Mr McClenaghan writes are quick to accept the rewriting of recent history by those who are seen to have an agenda for a united Ireland. The recent flag protests in Belfast significantly illustrate the manifestation of the power that Sinn Féin enjoys and its ability to manipulate the political system of the post-Good Friday Agreement (GFA).
Not only were officers attacked during the execution of their duties, but also at the vulnerable moment that they arrived for work. The stations were veritable fortresses, requiring permanently locked gates and security barriers. These resulted in several heart-stopping moments for officers reporting for duty in that second or two before the gates were unlocked, ushering them to the relative safety of the base. On 23 June 1987, Robert Guthrie arrived at the rear entrance to Antrim Road RUC station in North Belfast. Opposite the gates was a children’s playground, which on that particular summer’s day contained several children with their mothers; hiding behind one such person pushing a baby in a pram was a PIRA gunman. As the officer pulled up, the gunman stepped from behind the pram, firing at very close range; Guthrie was hit several times in the chest and stomach. He was rushed to hospital, where he underwent intensive emergency surgery; he died two hours after the shooting. The weapon was placed underneath a cushion in the pram as the women hurried away from the scene; the gunman was never caught.
David Mac, RUC:
The police attended anything and everything, from a road accident, to a murder; never did we shy away from doing our job, providing the service which we took an oath to deliver; hundreds paid the ultimate price and thousands of others were injured in the line of duty. Of course, there was the odd ‘rotten apple’, and I would have no credibility if I claimed otherwise. But, there is always an element which spoils every walk of life, people who would sully the names and reputation of those with whom they work, and in the RUC, we refused to allow these odd ones to stop us from doing our duty. Our job was to apprehend the criminals and that was the same whether they were a bank robber or a bomber, and at times, we had to arrest fellow officers. The author of this book has previously written of the arrest of a member of the RUC who was betraying secrets to the IRA because he had been passed over for promotion. He was a traitor and he was caught; that is all that I need to say on that score.*
It is very popular now for Sinn Féin and other Irish Republicans to constantly badmouth us and point to our supposed shortcomings and sectarianism, but not once have I heard of how the RUC stood and ‘held the line’ at Drumcree, between 1994 and 1998, when we stood side to side and protected the terrified Catholic residents. All through those horrible days, we did what was asked of us; we faced those with hate in their eyes at every Sinn Féin-manipulated event, where they contrived allegations of religious offence. These parades went on for over a hundred years and most passed peacefully, albeit with a little added tension; many Catholics watched parades, pre-1969 and the rise of the Provisionals. Suddenly, the Irish Republicans claimed that their constituents were being intimidated and offended and from there it deteriorated, and we were bang in the middle of it. What was very noticeable was that not one single journalist stood up and praised the RUC for their sterling work over the years; not one of them asked awkward questions of Sinn Féin/IRA and meekly accepted their prepared press statements and soundbites, as they fell over themselves to accept the version given out by Adams and McGuinness.
I believe that, not only at Drumcree but at dozens of other points over the years since 1969, Republican leaders have wanted their communities attacked and their supporters killed because it set them apart as ‘protectors’ of Nationalist areas; in short, they portrayed themselves as the ‘real’ police and that unless it suited their purposes for a ‘come on’, local people should report local crimes to their PIRA commanders. It suited them to cry foul and use the ‘victim card’ because it accorded with their manipulative agenda, and their preferred false story of an oppressed community.
I will always maintain that we did not once fail in our duty, in spite of the insults and the dangers. It did not matter that the ‘eyes of the world’ were upon us, we did our job without fear or favour. Contrary to belief, the majority of decent and good people from every community, especially in the Nationalist community, actually respected and supported us, but were very often unable to show this openly. I assisted the injured, the needy, the dead and the respective families, at all times with professionalism, respect and dignity, regardless of their religion, and so did the vast majority of those in that police service. We now have a situation where the UK Labour Party at the behest of criminal murderers, spit on the brave name, uniform, history, victims and bravest police service in the world, simply to appease terrorists. I will never forgive those who chose the fake smiles of terrorists, against the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
We did our job; many paid the price, with their lives, thousands with their blood, limbs and have been left with both physical as well as mental scars. We deserve more from our Government and from history. I resent that Anthony Blair, the Labour Prime Minister, chose vanity with his now-famous ‘hand of history’ soundbite and his place in it, at the expense of our name and reputation. He was prepared to ‘sell us down the river’ just so that historians a century from now will label him as a ‘peace-maker’ and the man who ended the Troubles, conveniently forgetting that it was our blood and muscle and sinew and that of the soldiers who stood next to us which made all that postulating on the world stage possible for him. Had we not faced the stones and petrol bombs on the streets, the landmines in the countryside, the booby traps underneath our cars and the deadly rockets of places like ‘RPG alley�
�* Mr Blair would not have been able to flash his smile at the assembled world press and portray himself as the man who ended the Troubles.
It is too late for those – like Blair and Major – who thought they could be immortalised and feigned over in history; they were simply just another tactic used by conniving terrorist who saw much further than the Good Friday Agreement. The British Government dispensed with the RUC on the demands of criminal murderers, and I will not shed a tear for anyone who worked with those who were out to destroy and murder and deceive. You cannot deal with evil; it must be challenged and eradicated.
We have previously spoken of the constant and inherent dangers that the Ulster police men and women faced, not only in their daily routines but also on reaching the ‘sanctuary’ of their homes. One officer describes such an attack as the Provisionals ambushed him at his mother’s house at the end of his shift:
... unknown to me, two gunmen were across the road waiting to murder me ... They fired something like twenty-eight shots at me. Thankfully I wasn’t hit ... As soon as I barred the gate, that was obviously the trigger for them to shoot. All hell broke loose. I heard a massive bang and the gravel beside me just scattered. I threw myself behind a hedge. I had my gun, my Walther pistol. But I may as well have had a water pistol.**
