The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  The Nationalist Short Strand area of Belfast. (Mark ‘C’)

  POWERLESS TO HELP

  David Lees, Royal Scots Dragoon Guards

  One day, whilst serving in Lisnaskea, I was sent out as part of a routine town patrol. We took it upon ourselves to pop into the local bar – ‘Leekie’s’ – for a crafty drink but as we were heading towards the Bar someone ran out to tell us they had received a warning of a car bomb outside. As we got near to the car it was clear there was a bomb and from the smell we could tell it was Co-op mix. Our patrol leader organised an evacuation of the locals from the danger area, then we took up positions at a safe distance to keep the area clear and wait for the explosion. This occurred shortly before midnight, causing a horrendous amount of damage to the surrounding properties. Within 5-10 minutes of the explosion, the locals returned to check the damage, and it was difficult to keep them away. But one man in particular wouldn’t move away even though I pointed out the danger of the unsafe buildings. He turned on me angrily, demanding to know where I had been and why I hadn’t prevented this as his business had been destroyed. I felt that I had failed in my duty to protect his property and utterly helpless in that I was not able to prevent it from happening. Looking back now, I realise just how saddened I was by the destruction of an innocent man’s livelihood.

  Later we went back to the police station for a rest before going back to the scene and we all got invited into a house for breakfast. To my surprise, and a little embarrassment, the house was owned by the angry man I had met earlier. He recognised me and apologised for his outburst, explaining this was the seventh time his business had been hit by bombing. I told him there was no need to apologise, and we shook hands. We were strangers; we didn’t even know each other’s names. The memory of this incident has stayed with me ever since.

  On the 2nd, shots were fired, presumably by PIRA gunmen at a Protestant bar in the Newtownards Road area; two men were slightly wounded. In Leeson Street, a notorious Republican stronghold which sits between Divis Street/Falls Road and the Grosvenor Road, a PIRA punishment squad ‘kneecapped’ a drinker whom they had dragged out of the Bush Bar. Minutes later, in an attack on a Protestant bar in Beersbridge Road, East Belfast, a gunman fired several shots, wounding two drinkers. It is thought that the IRA was involved; both men survived their wounds. It was also around this time in April, when Merlyn Rees, MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, made the unexpected but not surprising statement that the Loyalist paramilitaries had made an attempt on his life during the first few months of the fledgling Labour Government of Harold Wilson.

  On the 3rd, the Provisionals, ostensibly in ceasefire mode then targeted a member of the UDA, Allen Simpson (19) who lived at Highfield Drive in Belfast, just off the West Circular Road. It is a Protestant enclave with New Barnsley and the Ballymurphy Estate to the west and Springfield Road to the south. Both are major Republican heartlands and for a mobile assassination gang, easy bolt-holes after a killing. Allen Simpson answered a knock at his door and as he did, PIRA gunmen fired through the wood and hit the UDA man several times. As he fell dying, his killers sped off in a stolen car and family members gave chase and managed to get registration details. The car was later found abandoned in a Republican area.

  The day was not yet over, nor the bloodletting, when a Loyalist gunman stalked and shot a Catholic man as he finished a late night shift at his place of work. Martin McVeigh (22) a father-to-be, was cycling home in Portadown, Co Armagh. As he began cycling up a steep incline, it is thought that he dismounted and continued on foot, pushing his bike along. A car, stolen earlier in a Loyalist area, pulled alongside and a gunman shot the innocent Catholic; Mr McVeigh died soon afterwards, his life ebbing away within reach of his home. April was fast becoming a bloody month, but worse was to come.

  On that same Friday, a soldier belonging to the 9/12 Hussars, Lieutenant John Cecil Boghurst Garner-Richards (23) was killed in what has been officially classified an RTA. Sources close to the author suggest that the young Hussars officer was being followed by a car, possibly driven by Republicans who tried to ambush him. As he tried to avoid this car, an accident ensued and he was killed.

  The following day, Saturday 5 April, proved to be a day of infamy which will live long in the memories of the despairing, decent people of Northern Ireland, as paramilitaries on both sides of the sectarian divide killed a staggering nine people.

  McLaughlin’s Bar was a Catholic-owned and Catholic-patronised pub which sits on the New Lodge Road in North Belfast. Today a bar bearing the same name sits some six streets away in Duncairn Gardens; the author cannot confirm if this is the same bar, albeit relocated. On the day that the author made a visit to North Belfast, dozens of schoolchildren wandered past innocently with no fear of murder groups. On that day in 1975, two young Catholics among many other drinkers were enjoying the ‘sport of Kings’ as the English Grand National was televised in bars and clubs and pubs around the world. As posterity has recorded, the winner that day was ‘l’Escargot’ ridden by Tommy Carberry. To the dead and terribly wounded in the rubble of McLaughlin’s Bar, that simple fact was of no consequence. A UVF gang had placed a gas cylinder packed with explosives inside the entrance to the bar.

  Cheshires patrol the Nationalist Creggan Estate, Londonderry. (Mark ‘C’)

  It exploded mere seconds after a call of ‘Bomb’ had been shouted and two young friends Kevin Kane (18) and Michael Coyle (20) were both killed and amongst the injured was a man who was dreadfully wounded. Although the cowardly attack on the packed bar was claimed by the so-called ‘Protestant Action Force’ it is known that this was simply a cover for the UVF. The Belfast Coroner described the attack as an attack by: ‘…lunatics who used a satanic approach.’ Associated Press reported on the following Monday: ‘… a young blonde woman hurled an explosive in a gas cylinder through the door of McLaughlin’s Bar, used mainly by Roman Catholics as patrons gathered around the television set to watch the Grand National Horse Race. It killed two persons and injured about 15, police said. A bartender said the blast blew three people across the floor and into another room.’

  It was almost impossible that worse could follow, but this was Belfast during the Troubles and one could always imagine that where the bloody hands of the Provisional IRA were concerned, things could get worse. PIRA were swift to exact their bloody revenge and around three hours later and just over a half mile away, they struck. The ‘Mountainview Tavern’ is situated on the Shankill Road and at around 18:00 hours, it was, like McLaughlin’s, packed with drinkers watching the repeats of the Grand National and discussing the day’s football results.

  A gunman and an accomplice walked into the bar – located at 417-21 Shankill Road – and began firing a pistol indiscriminately at the customers; several were hit and the remainder dived to the floor. At this, the accomplice threw a box into the room and both men ran outside. The fuse on what turned out to be an explosive device must have been set for a few seconds, as survivors recalled that the blast was almost instantaneous. The four drinkers nearest the device were killed absolutely instantly and scores were injured in the blast and fireball; a fifth man died later in hospital. Shortly afterwards, an anonymous telephone caller claimed that a rival loyalist group was responsible, but the attack bore all the hallmarks of a PIRA reprisal and the RUC have always laid the blame at the feet of the Provisionals. Two days later, the Irish Times led with ‘Ten Killed By Bombs and Bullets; Northern Ireland’s Worst Weekend for Months.’ It further mentioned that over 80 people had been injured, many very badly.

  Those killed were Joseph Bell (52), Alan Madden (18), Nathaniel Adams (29) and UDA member William Andrews (33); Albert Fletcher (32) died shortly afterwards. PIRA would have always been the red-hot favourites for the attack and, given the close proximity, both time-wise and geographically from the McLaughlin’s Bar attack, it does rather stretch credulity to believe that the carnage at the Mountainview was anything but PIRA extracting bloody revenge. The UVF were af
fronted and it was a case of any Catholic would do as they too extracted further tit-for-tat revenge.

  JOE ‘N’, PROTESTANT CIVILIAN

  The Mountainview Tavern Bombing Saturday 5 April 1975

  Myself and seven friends – including the uncle of Man Utd legend Norman Whiteside – had been playing football and decided to go for a drink in the Mountainview Tavern at Woodvale. There was tension on the Shankill as earlier that day the UVF had bombed McLaughlin’s bar on the Antrim Road, so we knew there was a possibility of a retaliatory attack by the IRA, but didn’t realise it would come so quickly.

  I remember it was Grand National day and because the bar was packed, we couldn’t get a seat downstairs so instead, went up to the bar on the first floor and got seated in a cubicle. I can’t remember if we had been served our drinks or not, when suddenly I got blown off my feet and landed behind the bar. I was stunned and bleeding badly from a hand wound, but I got up and looked at where my friends were. Three of them were dangling at the edge of the cubicle; the other four had disappeared into the lounge below when the floor collapsed, with the force of the explosion.

  I then made my way out and remember being in an ambulance getting aid but got out and went back into the bar to help the wounded. I helped carry out an old man who was still sitting in a chair covered in dust; I thought he was dead until he spoke. Unfortunately the same man was knocked down and killed by a taxi on the Shankill two weeks later. Bizarrely there was also a woman walking amongst the wounded and rubble, saying she was only here for an Iceberg lettuce. I can only assume she was walking past on her way to the shops, when the bombers struck.

  Apart from me, one of my mates had a broken leg and another a broken arm, but we were the lucky ones; five others were killed and 60 odd injured. Of them I only knew Billy Andrews; incidentally a relative of his, Alexander Andrews, had been killed in another pub bombing less than a hundred yards away from this one.

  I found out later that the attackers had sprayed the downstairs bar with gunfire first, so nobody could get out and then left the bomb at the door which exploded within seconds. But I didn’t know that at the time; in fact the next two days were a bit of a blur. My mates and me tried to get drunk for two days running but for some reason couldn’t; it must have been the shock or the adrenalin still going round my body. Scary days in Belfast indeed.

  Mountainview Tavern; bombed by PIRA 4 April, 1975. (Author’s photo)

  Joe N. was aged 23 at the time of the bombing.

  As news filtered through of the atrocity near the Shankill Road, many Catholics, fearing that they might be potential targets for Loyalist revenge, curtailed their usual Saturday night activities. Thomas Robinson (61) and his wife were two who decided on this course of action, thinking it prudent and began walking to a relative’s house in the Brompton Park (Ardoyne) area. Unable to get an answer, they set off to walk to their own home in Stratford Gardens and to reach it, started walking along the nearby Etna Drive. As they did so, two men on foot walked up to the couple and shot Mr Robinson dead. Lost Lives reports that a soldier in an OP on Etna Drive was dazzled by the lights of a shop as he tried to draw a bead on the two assassins and they escaped in the direction of the nearby Crumlin Road.

  That dreadful Saturday was not yet over and already eight people were dead at the hands of sectarian killers. There was one more violent death to come and this would be a deserter from the Irish Army. Daniel Loughran (20) had deserted from the Republic’s security forces the previous year and had joined the Official IRA for a short time. The trained soldier then defected to the INLA and was described as a staff officer. He had been inside a social club in the Divis Street area of Belfast and despite warnings that the OIRA were in the area, unwisely decided to walk out into the street where he and a fellow INLA member were gunned down. Two OIRA gunmen were lying in wait at the ‘planet of the IRPS’ armed with sub machine-guns. Loughran died at the scene, the latest victim in the ongoing Republican feud and the other man was badly wounded but survived.

  Nine people had been murdered on that Grand National Saturday and whilst millions of Irish racing fans celebrated the victory of ‘L’Escargot’ at Aintree in Liverpool, other Irishmen and women mourned the nine dead who now occupied spaces in the morgues of North and West Belfast. The death toll could have been so much higher as Loyalists – likely to be the UVF – fired a volley of shots into Beagom’s Bar in the Catholic Springfield Road; no-one was hurt.

  The Daily Express was slow to mention the weekend’s carnage, and it was only in the Tuesday edition that a reference was made to the attacks; and that was on page 2. Under a sub-heading of ‘New IRA Threat To Truce’, John Ley wrote: ‘The IRA last night made a new threat to end their ceasefire in Ulster. They placed their forces on alert after the sectarian violence of the past 48 hours in which 11 died and about 90 were injured. The Provos warned that Britain was not doing enough towards securing a permanent peace and said that violence would be resumed if there were truce violations either by the Army or by ‘sectarian forces.’

  In contrast with the carnage of Saturday, the Sabbath was almost another day in paradise with only one death and again, it took place in a small area of North Belfast. William Archer (19) a young Protestant electrician had been drinking with friends in the Jolly Roger Social Club in the Sydenham Road area. He left the building in order to go and meet his girlfriend but shortly afterwards, the sounds of gunshots rang out and staff dashed outside to find the young ‘sparkie’ lying in a pool of blood. An ambulance was sent for but he died en-route for hospital. His killers were never found, but sources claim that PIRA was heavily involved and the killers may have been acting independently of their ‘Battalion.’

  The new week started; that ‘Monday morning’ feeling which is universally despised took on a rather more horrific dimension in Belfast as it heralded the last day on Earth for three more people; one innocent civilian and two Loyalist paramilitaries. One man – Gerard McLaughlin (20) – was walking to his place of employment at Mossley, Newtownabbey, just north of Belfast early on the Monday morning. A stolen car pulled alongside him and a gunman fired a volley of shots into the young man’s body; he died at the scene. The murder is widely considered to be the handiwork of the UVF. It is felt that the Catholic man was chosen, not at random, but because the Loyalist murder gang was aware that he walked the same route every day and was therefore an ‘easy’ target.

  Another unit, or possibly the same one, its bloodlust high after the murder in Mossley, struck within hours when it abducted two members of the UFF on the Shankill Road. David Douglas (28) and Hugh McVeigh (36) had normal jobs and were employed as delivery men for a furniture company. Either as they arrived at their first delivery point of the day, or whilst en-route to it, a gang of men abducted them and bundled them into a vehicle and drove to a place in Co Antrim called Islandmagee. Islandmagee (from Irish: Oileán MhicAodha meaning MacAodha’s island) is an isolated area, located between the towns of Larne and Carrickfergus. No news was heard of the two men until the night of 31 August, when a UVF member surrendered himself to the RUC and gave them details of the graves of the missing UFF men. In the subsequent Court case, four members of the UVF were found guilty of abducting the men and then taking them to Islandmagee with their hands bound. The two men were then shot and their bodies dumped into shallow graves where they were discovered on 1 September.

  The area which covers the three Co Tyrone towns of Moy, Aughnacloy and Coalisland was known as the ‘murder triangle’ owing to the high numbers of sectarian murders which took place there during the Troubles. On the 10th, just before the carnage of the Short Strand, Owen Boyle (41) a father of eight children was shot and badly wounded by a UVF murder gang at his home in the village of Glencull. He bravely forced his family to take cover, despite being shot five times by the men who had entered his back garden; he died in hospital on 22 April.

  The UVF were again involved in an attack on a Catholic bar on the 11th, when they bungled another attemp
t at mass murder. Gunmen opened fire at the customers in the ‘Jubilee Bar’ in the Republican Markets area of Belfast but their weapons jammed and a tossed explosive device failed to detonate. As they fled the area in a stolen car, they had the misfortune to run into a British Army patrol, and the soldiers opened fire, hitting the three occupants of the car. The car roared off but crashed shortly afterwards. Inside the vehicle were two wounded men, one of whom, Robert Wadsworth (22), died in the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) a short time afterwards. RUC and soldiers also recovered a number of UVF weapons.

  The weekend arrived again and police and Army were in a state of readiness as it was feared – correctly as it turned out – that more sectarian violence would follow the bloodletting of the previous one. It was not in the nature of either the Republican or the Loyalist paramilitaries to allow attacks against their supporters to go unpunished. On the Saturday morning, the ongoing and increasingly bloody feud between the INLA and the OIRA burst into life again. Paul Crawford (25) who was employed by the GPO in Belfast, and was also a member of Official Sinn Fein, was selling Republican newspapers on the corner of the Falls Road and Springfield Road, opposite the RVH. As he chatted to another man – almost certainly OIRA – an INLA gunman approached the pair and shot them both. Despite the proximity of the hospital, he died shortly afterwards.

  The Strand Bar; attacked by the UVF on 4 April 1975, killing six innocent Catholics. (Author’s photo)

  In 2012, a 54-year-old man was arrested over Paul Crawford’s murder. A suspect was arrested in west Belfast and taken to Antrim PSNI station for questioning. The PSNI Serious Crime Branch is currently reinvestigating the murder after information was forwarded to it by the Historical Enquiries Team.