by Matt Johnson
From that day until the day I left the army, that pistol never left my side.
The threatened attack on ACC O’Keefe never materialised. He was kind enough to send me a personal ‘thank you’ note in which he accepted that when it came to putting fear in the minds of the terrorists, I may well have made my point.
And Richard Webb? The RUC picked him up less than a day after the attack. Sick and still shaking, he was caught hiding in a cow shed.
Chapter 7
The SAS Regiment were used to having soldiers around recovering from one kind of injury or another. The medical staff rated me P3: temporarily unfit for military duty.
I took a lot of stick from the lads in the squadron. Having a bullet wound in the foot led to the predictable accusations that I’d done it myself. For the next couple of months, even the slightest error or mistake was inevitably met with ‘shot yourself in the foot there, boss’, or something similar.
Take a look at any branch of the army, and you will find plenty of admin tasks and a distinct shortage of people volunteering to do them. Officers and soldiers on ‘light duties’ are perfect for these jobs, so, as soon as I was well enough, I found that my daily commute was from the Officers Mess to HQ Company Administration Office. To get around the camp, I tied my crutches to the side of an old Dawes bicycle and then pedalled with my good leg.
It wasn’t long before I became bored. Watching other people training, trying out new equipment or heading off to a deployment or exercise wasn’t my idea of fun. So when an invitation arrived on the adjutant’s desk for a volunteer to join a training course with the Metropolitan Police, I was the first to put my name down.
Two weeks later, I joined nearly twenty police detectives from various parts of the UK on a National Hostage Negotiators’ Course.
The hostage programme was euphemistically known to us students as the ‘Hello, my name is Dave and I’m here to help’ course, on account of the standard opening that we were required to employ when initiating dialogue with a hostage taker. It was a good course: I learned a lot, including how to take different approaches to terrorists, criminals and the mentally disturbed – the mad, bad and sad, as we termed them. It even included advice on handling individuals who were threatening to throw themselves off bridges or high buildings.
The reason for the SAS being offered a place on the programme was clear. If the wheel came off and a terrorist hostage incident took place, we would be called. Three weeks after the course ended and I had returned to Hereford, that exact scenario occurred.
At 11.30 am on 30th April 1980, a man called Salim Towfigh was at the front of a small group as they approached 16, Prince’s Gate, London: the Iranian Embassy. Salim was surprised to find that the police officer who normally stood outside the embassy was not at his post.
As the small group of terrorists burst in through the front door, they found the PC inside, enjoying a short break and a cup of tea. They fired an automatic pistol into the roof of the reception area.
The Iranian Embassy siege had begun.
Chapter 8
I was sat drinking tea in the Kremlin when the telephone rang.
The Kremlin I’m referring to wasn’t the seat of power of the Russian government, more a rather untidy and dilapidated military building that served as the planning and intelligence base for HQ Company. After the welcome interlude provided by the hostage course, I had returned to my admin role. Like most large organisations, the army has an insatiable appetite for paperwork. My less-than-challenging job was to make sure that the beast didn’t go hungry.
For nearly thirty seconds, the phone kept ringing. A corporal from the Army Ordnance Corps who was supposed to deal with calls was away from his desk making a brew for the CO and one of the squadron commanders, so finally I picked up the receiver.
‘Who’s that?’ said a gruff male voice.
‘Perhaps I should be asking the same question?’ I said.
‘Get me someone from the headshed,’ the voice demanded.
Whoever the caller was, he seemed to be familiar with our local terminology. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and not hang up the phone. ‘Who’s calling?’ I asked.
‘Colin … is that you? Now stop fuckin’ about and put an officer on. It’s Reg Toms, here. I used to be on A squadron.’
Colin was the name of the clerk who was making tea. I was convinced.
‘You’re speaking to an officer, Reg,’ I replied. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘Uh … OK, boss.’ Reg Tom’s voice took a different tone. ‘Well, it’s not what you can do for me. It’s what I can do for you. Find a television and turn it on. I’m a copper in the Met now. The shit’s hit the fan down here, big time. The Iranian Embassy has been taken over by terrorists.’
It took a moment for the words to sink in.
As Reg continued, I waved frantically to Colin to get him to hand me a pen and paper so I could jot down what Reg was telling me: The police in London had responded to a hold-up alarm at the embassy after being unable to raise the PC posted to guard the building. They had arrived at Prince’s Gate to find the PC and a number of staff had been taken hostage.
Reg reckoned it was only a question of time before we got the call. My squadron had just taken over our stint on CRW, the Counter Revolutionary Warfare team. If the Met did ask for help, we would be it.
Colin barged in on the ‘Headshed’ meeting. A few seconds later, he emerged from the CO’s office with instructions to initiate the CRW call-out.
I kept Reg on the line as Tom Crayston, the B-squadron Commander, appeared behind Colin. He looked at me, apologetically. I knew what that meant. Someone was going to have to stay behind, to monitor phone calls, to organise movement of men and equipment … to do the paperwork. With an injury that prevented me from being any use at the sharp end, I was the obvious choice.
‘Sorry, Finlay,’ said Tom.
I shrugged. Although I’d now ditched my crutch in favour of a stout walking stick, I knew I was still something of a passenger.
‘Boss is on the phone to the Met now,’ Tom continued. ‘We’ll take one of the Range Rovers to London.’
‘We’re not waiting to be called out?’ I asked.
‘No. Boss wants two teams of twenty-five. If we can’t get enough people together from B squadron then make up the numbers from anyone qualified who can get here within the hour. I’ll call you with as much as I know while we’re in transit. Get the kit loaded and have everyone on the road by 1400 hours. Clear?’
I nodded.
Some of the lads were in the ‘killing house’ going through drills and practising their skills; others were preparing to leave for an exercise. Many were off base: on-call but off-duty. Colin bleeped them.
I made a few friends that day. As Tom had predicted, Colin struggled to locate the numbers that the CO had ordered to be called in. With all the overseas deployments, the initial ‘live-op’ transmission via the squadron pagers didn’t produce enough men to create two teams. I called in some lads from A and D squadrons to make up the numbers. To my surprise, a few treated the calls I made with some cynicism, believing it to be ‘just another exercise’. They changed their tune on learning it was a live operation.
All through the day we kept the televisions on and the radios tuned in to London channels.
Tom Crayston telephoned with sufficient information to enable me to do an initial briefing in the camp hangar. After that, the lads were to load up and head to the Education Corps barracks at Beaconsfield, just outside London. The regimental Sergeant Major created the two teams, red and blue, and allocated men to them.
The two p.m. target for departure soon slipped, but, by six that evening, once we’d obtained the right governmental approvals and prepared fifty men with what they needed, the Range Rovers and transit vans were loaded with enough kit to start a small war.
I was kept so busy I didn’t have time to dwell on the sense of disappointment I was feeling. Like everyone
else, I was champing at the bit to get involved in the kind of incident that seemed to be unfolding.
But at seven-thirty, just as the first Range Rover was about to head out through the gates to the camp, I had a stroke of luck. The hostage negotiator the Met had appointed to speak to the Arabs at the embassy turned out to be one of the instructors from the course I had just been on. He suggested to Tom Crayston that it would be a good idea to bring me along.
I had my boots on, my kit packed and my personal weapon booked out of the armoury within ten minutes of receiving the news from Colin that I was being ordered to join the convoy. I threw my kit into the back of the last remaining Range Rover and climbed into the front passenger seat. As I slid my walking stick beneath the seat and turned to the driver, I almost laughed. Driving the car was the very same soldier that had handed me a sweetened tea at the end of the Fan Dance exercise during selection.
‘Scraped inside the time again eh, boss?’ he said, grinning from ear to ear.
It was during that long drive up to London that I had my first real introduction to Sergeant Kevin Jones. He had just been posted to our squadron on promotion from corporal. Although I had seen him around the camp on several occasions, we hadn’t had the chance to speak. We made up for lost time and I discovered we had much in common. Kevin was from the Welsh Valleys, my mother was from Swansea. We soon bored the two lads in the back with our stories of mis-spent youth: holidays on the South Wales Gower, the local discos, and both of us, coincidentally, losing our virginities at a caravan park in a village called Oxwich. That day marked the beginning of a long and important friendship.
Chapter 9
On the final leg of our journey, from Beaconsfield to London, we were accompanied by a police escort, which took us right to the gates at Regent’s Park Barracks in Albany Street. We were expected.
That didn’t mean we were provided with decent accommodation, though. Regent’s Park barracks is a nineteenth-century building that had once been home to the Household Cavalry. Most of the buildings were derelict, running water was erratic, the electricity was unreliable and the toilets were nearly all blocked. It wasn’t exactly five star, but then it wasn’t supposed to be.
The CO was waiting to brief us. Red team was to take on responsibility for ‘Immediate Action’ and, to that end, was to spend the night in several furniture vans positioned at a forward holding area next door to the embassy. Immediate Action was the ultra-violent, breaking-down-doors option that would be implemented if the shit hit the fan before we were ready with a properly considered assault plan.
When the CO asked me to speak, I took the opportunity to tell the lads what I knew about the terrorists. If the news reports were right, the men we were facing were from the Democratic Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan. As all officers do, I’d attended a number of classes on subjects that included military history and world politics. Not all of the lectures were relevant or interesting but I had learned enough about Iran to know it had its own form of home-grown terrorism.
I explained that, in the south-west of Iran, the predominant population were Arabs, in an area referred to by them as Arabistan and by Iran, as Khuzistan. Once independent of Iran, the area was taken over in the late 1920s and rule imposed from Tehran.
The previous year, supporters of the DRMLA had carried out a sustained campaign of sabotage against Iranian oil pipelines and installations, which are mainly situated in Arabistan. Tehran hit back ruthlessly, and many young Arab men were rounded up, accused of treason and then executed.
The briefing room fell silent when I explained the danger that we would be facing. The DRMLA were ruthless and not afraid to die for their cause. They had been known to employ suicide bombers and, should they decide to booby-trap the embassy with explosives, would not hesitate to use such devices, even if it meant killing themselves.
They presented a very different threat from the IRA.
As the briefing came to an end, the lads headed off. I was given the role of liaison officer and was allocated an unmarked car with a police driver to make sure I could move easily between the barracks and the embassy.
I was also given another job. It turned into a real blessing. Almost every officer that joins the regiment gets a nickname. Not all were complimentary and you could be sure that, one day, you would either do or say something that would result in you being ‘tagged’. In the weeks prior to the embassy siege, I had come in for quite a bit of stick from the lads due to the nature of my admin work. They had invented several nicknames for me and to my dismay, the name ‘Clip-Board’ was starting to become popular. My role at the embassy changed things slightly for the better. After spending a great deal of time with the caretaker from the embassy, creating a life-size mock-up of the building to assist with the attack plan, I was given the nickname ‘Bob the Builder’. I was happy with that, some of my peers having been called a lot worse.
When I wasn’t spending my time with a hammer and nails, knocking together various sheets of plywood, I took my turn with the police hierarchy as we listened to negotiations in the Police Forward Control. The police had been quick to cut off all telephone links to the embassy and then feed just one secure phone line in through a front embassy window back to an empty nursery school we were using in Prince’s Gate.
Although most of the talking was the responsibility of Mike, a Chief Inspector, the support team that worked with him was incredibly professional. Fortunately, the lead terrorist spoke good English and, although an interpreter was always available, she was not often called upon for help. My job, when in the control room, was fairly simple: if the police gave me the word, I was to send the lads into action.
Although I was glad to be involved, the atmosphere in the nursery school was often tense. Amongst the negotiators, there were several strong personalities who clearly didn’t always agree on the best way to progress talks with the terrorists. Conversation near to the lead negotiator was banned and, although the other members of the team had headsets that they could use to listen in, they were not permitted to speak until they were in another room. Many times, written notes would be passed from one member of the team to another. Often the recipient of the message would simply nod, but occasionally the result was very different – sometimes a glare, sometimes a thumb up or thumb down to register agreement or otherwise.
I kept out of it. Although I had done the same course as these men and women, it was clear to me that their experience placed them a league above me in terms of ability.
On 5th May, shortly after one in the afternoon, Salim, the lead terrorist, made a decision that would irrevocably change the course of events. Mike, the lead negotiator was talking to one of the hostages, PC Trevor Lock, when three shots rang out. Mike winced as the sound hit his ears. Everyone else in the room heard it as well. One of the hostages had been shot.
Within a short while, senior officers from the Met started to arrive through the back door to the nursery. Our CO joined them, as did Tom Crayston.
On the military radio network, I heard instructions being given to both red and blue troops to move into attack positions.
Even then, the political machine moved slowly. As Mike continued talking to Salim, it appeared that arrangements were being made to bring a bus to Prince’s Gate and park it in front of the embassy. It was a stalling manoeuvre, to buy us some time. I still wasn’t certain, though, that we were going to be given the authority to attack. Then, at a quarter to seven, three more shots were heard, Four minutes later, the body of a murdered hostage was pushed through the front door of the embassy onto the steps outside.
Mike took off his headset, threw it on the desk and switched off the microphone. ‘Well, that’s it,’ he said.
He looked at me. I knew I had a confused expression on my face.
‘I’ve spent five bloody days talking to these men and in five bloody minutes it’s all changed. Have you any idea how disappointed I feel?’ he said.
I didn’t know ho
w to respond. I looked around the room at the other members of the negotiating team. They all looked tired. A feeling of intense sadness dominated the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But we’ll need you to keep Salim occupied while our lads get into their final assault positions.’
‘I know … just give me a moment. There are twenty people in there and in the next few minutes they might all be dead.’
I was just about to answer when Tom Crayston walked in. Everyone turned to look at him.
‘What’s the news from upstairs?’ I asked.
Tom’s lips were tight. ‘The Met have just signed things over to us. It took a while as the Home Secretary had to agree.’
I turned to Mike. ‘Can you get back on the line to Salim and start arranging their bus ride to the airport?’
‘You’re going in then?’
‘Not me, personally.’
‘Nor me,’ said Tom. ‘Are you comfortable with what you need to do, Mike?’
‘As best I can be. It’s alright for you guys. I’ve spent days making friends with these people. We’re here to save lives – not just the hostages but everyone in that building.’
‘And so you would have,’ said Tom, ‘but they decided to start killing people. What is important now is that they don’t kill anyone else, don’t succeed in any of their aims, and that our government isn’t seen to give in to terrorists.’
‘Is that what is comes down to?’ said Mike. ‘Being seen to do the right thing?’
‘It’s about making this country safe, Mike,’ I said. ‘Putting fear back in the minds of the terrorists.’
Mike turned back to his desk and placed the headset back over his ears. The conversation was over.
‘One other thing, Finlay,’ said Tom. ‘There’s to be no smoke.’
For a moment, I didn’t reply. During the preparations for the attack phase of the operation, it had always been stressed that the operating methods of the regiment would be hidden by using smoke machines to conceal the embassy from watching cameras.
