Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland

by Ed Moloney

  In the first week of February 1975, just before the ceasefire was renewed, Merlyn Rees announced that new H-blocks would be built at Long Kesh as an interim measure. It was the first manifestation of a change of gear by the British in their war against the IRA. Within a year the special-category status given to IRA prisoners in 1972 would be phased out and newly convicted IRA men would be sent to the H-blocks, not to the huts and cages of Long Kesh. To symbolise the change the prison was renamed ‘The Maze’. Within a year the British Army would gradually be replaced on the front line of the struggle against the IRA by the RUC. IRA suspects would be arrested and questioned in new police holding centres where a remarkably high number would sign confessions sufficiently credible for them to be convicted in new single-judge, juryless courts. The IRA’s struggle against the British was being criminalised.

  The charge levelled by Adams, Bell and Hughes against the IRA leadership of that time is that their foolishness gave the British a breathing space within which to develop and implement their new security approach. The ceasefire also encouraged the IRA on the ground to drop its guard – as ceasefires invariably do – and allowed the British further to improve their intelligence in preparation for processing suspects through the holding centres. Their alleged crime, in other words, was at worst to create the conditions for the IRA’s defeat and at best to allow the British to redefine the struggle in their own terms. The ceasefire had meanwhile set alarm bells ringing in the world of Loyalist paramilitarism and the response of the UDA and especially the UVF in 1975 and 1976 was an unprecedented surge in killings. Gangs of Loyalist killers scoured the streets of North and West Belfast at night to abduct, torture and kill any Catholic unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, while during the day no-warning bombs would be tossed into Catholic bars. The IRA’s response, particularly in Belfast, was to retaliate by killing Protestants, sometimes on the pretext of targeting Loyalist activists but often on the same indiscriminate basis as the Loyalists chose their victims. The IRA in some areas of Belfast, notably Ardoyne, were notorious for their sectarianism and this period allowed them to indulge their prejudices virtually unchallenged. Adams, Bell and Hughes were incensed by this, not just because the IRA claimed to operate by much higher standards but because in their view the IRA was helping to legitimise Britain’s claim that it was involved in Northern Ireland only to keep the irrational, murderous Irish from each other’s throats, that they were playing the part of ‘piggy in the middle’ in a ferocious sectarian war. The IRA presented the war in a very different way, as a fight to eject a neo-colonial power whose meddling in Ireland over the centuries was the major cause of sectarian conflict and division. Those who led the IRA in 1975 and 1976, who sent out Volunteers to take Protestant lives in this way, were, the trio angrily charged, playing straight into the hands of the British.

  This, in essence, was the case developed by the deposed Belfast leadership confined inside Long Kesh against the 1975 IRA leadership. It was the start of a rift that would fuel the later Adams–Bell takeover of the IRA and pave the way, ultimately, for the Adams–McGuinness partnership, which brought Republicans to the peace process. The internal IRA conflict has often been inaccurately depicted as another example of the North–South rivalry that was otherwise pervasive in the IRA. Nothing could be further from the truth, although it sometimes suited the Adams camp to portray things that way. Of the eight-strong delegation at Feakle only O Bradaigh and O Connail were Southerners. The divisions were really based on other factors, such as age, politics, outlook and ambition.

  On 10 May 1974 Brendan Hughes’s luck ran out. An informer – a strong candidate is the Belfast QM, Eamon Molloy – told the British about Hughes’s hideout in Myrtlefield Park and he was arrested. A search of the house revealed a cache of weapons – a sub-machine gun, four rifles, two pistols and several thousand rounds – as well as a sum of stolen money. For this and because of his escape in December 1973, Hughes would receive a fifteen-year jail term. During Brendan Hughes’s five months of freedom the IRA was pushed increasingly on the defensive, although there were some notable successes. IRA engineers had been able to tap the phone used by the British Army’s Commander, the GoC, in Thiepval barracks, its Lisburn headquarters, and to acquire the technology to unscramble the recordings. But the story otherwise was of a seemingly endless series of arms seizures and arrests, many the result, it seems, of Molloy’s treachery. When first Bell was arrested, escaped and then re-arrested and then Hughes was caught in Myrtlefield Park, the Belfast IRA’s best years were at an end. When the ceasefire came it was at a point of great IRA weakness.

  Hughes was dispatched to Crumlin Road prison, to the remand wing to await trial. But the British were not far behind. The IRA was about to be edged into a long and debilitating ceasefire and British Intelligence had plans to sow distrust and conflict in the ranks of the IRA’s prison community. It might have been the British intention to distract, confuse and possibly dilute opposition to the planned cessation from inside the jails or it might have been an attempt just to cause as much damage and turmoil as possible. Either way it demonstrated that the British had recovered well from the Four Square Laundry setback. The extraordinary story of the Heatherington–McGrogan psy-op affair began not long after Brendan Hughes fell back into the hands of the British.

  When I was arrested, I was wearing a grey checked suit. I was taken to Castlereagh, interrogated for a few days, and then put into a prison van and driven to Crumlin Road jail. There were other people in the van, young lads who thought I was a Special Branch man because of the way I was dressed … it got a wee bit uncomfortable. But when we got to the Crum, I was asked was I claiming political status, and I says yes, of course I was. There was little or no hostility at the time from the prison regime. I was led to A Wing and in A Wing there was one cell left aside, left empty for debriefing. The IRA controlled the wing, so anyone entering it had to first pass through the Intelligence Officer who would question you. Who were you, where were you coming from, what were you in for? And only when they were convinced that you were who you said you were, only then were you allowed to stay in the wing. It made no difference who you were, whether you were Chief of Staff or Belfast Brigade O/C or whatever, you had to go through this. Obviously I was pretty well known at the time so I didn’t have any problem getting through the debriefing and I was allowed entry … I was allocated a cell, not by the prison regime but by the command structure of the IRA in A Wing. Quite soon afterwards I was appointed Officer Commanding of the Wing. Tommy Roberts had been the O/C; he was up for trial, and wanted to stand down so he asked would I take over, and he became my Adjutant. There were roughly, I think, between two hundred and fifty and three hundred men in A Wing at that time; it was practically full, I believe. But there was a constant flow of people going from remand to court, being sentenced and then moving on to Long Kesh. So it was a place for passing through. Being O/C consisted mainly of debriefing people when they came into the jail. So a squad of Intelligence Officers was set up to question people coming in, people who were arrested with guns, with bombs and so forth and our job was to find out as quickly as possible and to get word to the outside if a man had broken under interrogation and had given information … on other Volunteers or about weapons … The idea was to get word out as quickly as possible so as the weapons could be removed. Or if the dump or the men were in jeopardy … to make sure they got offside as quickly as possible … A good few would break. I think the age of the average IRA prisoner at that time was eighteen or nineteen. I was an old hand, and I was twenty-five or twenty-six. A lot of these young lads did break under interrogation. There’s a difference between someone breaking and someone being an informer. That had to be investigated and we had to decide whether the person had just broken or whether they were working for the British. If the Intelligence Officers doing the interrogations believed that something was seriously wrong, then I would move in and take over … Or some of the other higher-ranking staff would, and t
here were a few of them: Junior Fitzsimmons; ——, who had an assistant from Newry, whose name passes me.

  … what you have to remember here, as well, is that people were always passing through. You might have had an Intelligence Officer one week and the next he would have been taken away to court, sentenced and you didn’t see him again. So someone else took his place. So there was a continual flow of staff, Adjutants, Intelligence Officers and so forth. And so our intelligence was here, there and every where. But there was always that line of communication from Crumlin Road jail to Long Kesh, which was the main holding centre for sentenced prisoners. This was a passing-through period and you would have spent from six months to a year, sometimes eighteen months, on remand, depending on the case, [and] how much evidence they had and so forth. The average was a year to eighteen months …

  * * *

  Four days after Brendan Hughes was arrested in Myrtlefield Park, the Ulster Workers’ Council strike began. The trigger was a motion supporting Sunningdale that was passed in the new assembly. Anti-Sunningdale Unionists were defeated by 44 votes to 28 but the balance of Unionist politics had changed radically since the assembly was elected and there was little doubt by the spring of 1974 that anti-Sunningdale Unionists reflected majority Protestant opinion. After all, their candidates had outpolled Brian Faulkner’s pro-Sunningdale Unionists by four to one in the February 1974 general election. On the evening of 14 May, workers at the Ballylumford power station in ultra-Loyalist Larne, County Antrim, reduced electricity output by nearly half, a signal that Protestant Ulster had begun an extraordinary rebellion against British authority. It soon became clear that the Protestant middle class was backing the strike and after that it was just a matter of time before the UWC won. Loyalism had been in a ferment ever since the February election and sectarian tensions were rising alarmingly. Protestant crowds had rioted against the British Army in East Belfast and there had been gun battles in which one Loyalist was shot dead. Respectable anti-Sunningdale Unionists were cosying up to the hard men; in April the UDA, the largest of the Loyalist paramilitaries, was invited to attend the anti-Agreement Unionists’ conference to plan the way ahead. There were marches at which Unionist leaders mingled happily with men wearing masks and combat gear. In such an atmosphere predictions of a civil war, or a serious bloodbath, did not seem outlandish and the IRA was making plans for the worst. Documents outlining one such plan had been discovered in Myrtlefield Park, and the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, claimed they were evidence of a plot by the IRA to ‘foment inter-sectarian hatred’ so that they could take and occupy large parts of Belfast. But, according to Brendan Hughes, the documents were really a proposal to defend Catholic districts in the event of a Loyalist uprising against Sunningdale. He was working on the plan when he was arrested.

  When I came into Crumlin Road jail, the IRA outside had great fear that Unionists would declare UDI, a unilateral declaration of independence, and the reason why I was caught [in Myrtlefield Park] was that we were drawing up plans for defence of Nationalist areas in the event of this happening. So I carried all that in my head into the prison with me, that there was a possibility of a major blow-up in the six counties; that the Loyalists, especially Paisley, believed that the British were withdrawing. I didn’t believe that, but precautions had to be taken within the prison and we began to organise defence preparations in the event that something developed inside the jail. I was quite conscious of the fact that if UDI was declared by the Unionists – the militant Unionists – we would be in grave danger.

  That worry became quite acute when eight men arrived onto A Wing. On the day I was arrested two policemen were shot dead¶ and some of these people had been charged as a result.58 Now I should have known these people, at least some of them … but I didn’t. So … interrogations started under Tommy Dougan and his assistant. Within a short period it became clear that these people were not involved in shooting the policemen. Tommy was interrogating a guy called Vinty [Vincent] Heatherington who was put into a cell just two away [from] me. Tommy asked me would I take over, that there was something wrong. So I began to interrogate Heatherington. He told me that he was in the Fianna but he couldn’t understand why he had [been] arrested for [killing] the two cops; he hadn’t been involved. I then left and went up to interrogate McGrogan, Myles McGrogan, and he insisted that he wasn’t involved either. And he didn’t know why he had been arrested. The other people who came in with them were also being investigated but the interrogations centred round these two people, Heatherington and McGrogan, because the intelligence I was getting said that they were two hoods. People who knew them and were from the same area told us this. It was so crazy that they had been arrested because they were not even Republican. Heatherington had a short history of involvement in the Fianna, but had been dismissed because of his criminal activities. Heatherington was, I think, about eighteen or nineteen. So I started the interrogation and initially I talked to him in a very friendly way, to try and tease him out. And he told me that a few years before he had been arrested by the [RUC] Special Branch and taken up to Hannahstown Hill|| – it was a Sunday. There was a Gaelic match being played … and the Special Branch fired a burst of automatic fire at the people playing football. They then handed the rifle to Heatherington and took it back off him and said, ‘Your prints are now on this gun; you can be charged with this shooting.’ So I put the question to him: ‘Did you start working for them?’ He says, ‘No.’ He denied it. And I says, ‘What did you do?’ ‘I went on the run,’ he said. I was soon able to break that down. I went and made tea and sandwiches for him and came back and talked to him in a fatherly way. He then admitted that he was working for them, at a low level, passing on information, watching people, their movements, and passing that on to his handler. He told me he used to meet his handler in different places. He had a code name, which I can’t remember, that his handlers gave him.

  I stopped the interrogation after that, once I had established that he was an informer. Now the question was: what the hell was he doing in the prison? He then admitted he’d been sent into prison. He was told the day before his arrest that he and McGrogan would be sent into the jail. ‘What for?’ I asked. He replied that he didn’t know; he would be told that in the prison by someone. This really was concerning. So I asked the I/O, Tommy, to put a bit more weight on McGrogan, to question more deeply, not to use violence. Heatherington then began to break down a bit more and told me about a group of people he had been working with, a network working for the Brits. I was passing on to Tommy information that Heatherington was giving to me, and obviously the way they were putting it to McGrogan, McGrogan knew that Heatherington was talking to me. We broke for something to eat and McGrogan was seen walking past Heatherington’s cell and he threw something into Heatherington’s cell, into a small rubbish bin. The note was found; Tommy Dougan went to the cell, searched through the rubbish and found this note which said, ‘Talk and you die.’ That’s all it said: ‘Talk and you die.’ That was given to me. I then realised that this is getting a lot more serious. So I put more mental pressure on Heatherington. He then broke down and told me about some of the operations he was involved in. I brought Junior Fitszimmons in on the interrogation. He told us more about the group – they were based in Holywood Barracks, they were supplied with money, with women, along with their handlers. They were allowed to come and go as they pleased. The Special Branch initially employed them but … they were then handed over to the military – but the backbone of the operation was British Intelligence. He had been taken away for training in Essex; they lived in a large country house. They were given weapons training, explosives training and anti-interrogation training and sent back. He told me about a flat that they had in Dublin, beside Connolly station, about the women who were involved with them. I can’t remember their names but one of the women was a Protestant from the Shankill. They were given explosives and weapons to be brought to Belfast. They also had a house near a police station on the Lisburn R
oad. Heatherington really began to open up now. I asked him what operations was he involved in. And he told me about this particular operation in Corporation Street, near the docks, when he and McGrogan drove a car bomb into the street with a five-minute timer on it. According to Heatherington, he had seen two kids swinging on a lamp-post and he tried to talk McGrogan into defusing the bomb but McGrogan said no. So they left, and the bomb went off and the two kids were killed. McGrogan was the dominant figure; Heatherington was the weakling. This was around Hallowe’en 1972. It was made to look as if it was the IRA had done it. What they also did was when the IRA put bombs into the town they would slip one in as well. And I know this happened, because there were times when bombs exploded that wecould not account for. He told me about raping a young girl on Kennedy Way, about robbing a garage. When Heatherington admitted to the shooting at the Gaelic football match, Junior, who was a big fella, immediately went for Heatherington’s throat. I had great difficult pulling Junior off. He had been at the match that day along with his wife and kids.

  I then asked him for the names of the other people in this group with him. And he began to give me them. He named one of the guys that came in with him who was an IRA Volunteer, ——. So more trustworthy Intelligence Officers had to be pulled in, to interrogate [him]. Heatherington then gave me a list of other names, of people in the jail. Names such as ——; —— from the Strand; he gave ——’ s name as well. So all these people had to be interrogated and some of them were up in Long Kesh. I asked him, ‘Well, what was the purpose of this group?’ And he told me this. I mean, this is a kid telling me this. In the event of major confrontations in Belfast that they would be the sabotage unit. In the event of barricades going up, they would be sent in to plant bombs at barricades and they would be sent in to disrupt as much as they could, to break down defences. Fifth columnists, that’s what they were. Now I believed him when he said McGrogan was involved but of the rest of them I wasn’t sure. We still couldn’t understand or work out their mission. He then told me that he had been sent in to poison the wing, when he got the OK. I said, ‘How were you going to get the poison?’ He says, ‘A prison officer …’ They didn’t know the name of the prison officer. They were told the prison officer would approach him with instructions and the poison. They were to put the poison in the water we used to make tea. But before that they had major targets. Me, I was to be targeted first. Tommy Roberts. Junior Fitzsimmons. Curly Coyle from Derry.