The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  Two days after the sectarian murder in Erinvale, the UVF – possibly the same men who had killed Mr Barry – were cruising along the Ormeau Road in Belfast when they spotted several men outside the newly rebuilt Rose and Crown Bar, which had been damaged by a bomb the previous year. [See Chapter 17 of Sir, They’re Taking The Kids Indoors by the author for details.] As teenager James Templeton (15) stood chatting to friends, gunmen inside the car opened fire, hitting the young man. According to Lost Lives (pp.566/7) the boy – for he was no more than that – had intended to head into Andersonstown to attend a disco, but had instead gone to a Chinese takeaway in the Ormeau Road. He died a few hours later in hospital.

  On the same day that the two young Catholics died, and some several miles away on the British mainland, the IRA’s England Team would kill a British soldier. A renewed campaign by the IRA and known to them as ‘Phase 2’ had actually started the previous day. On Thursday 28 August, members of the England Team planted a time bomb in the Caterham Arms public house in Caterham, Surrey. No warning was given and it exploded at 21:20 hours, injuring 23 civilians and 10 off-duty soldiers. The pub was used by members of the Welsh Guards who were based at a barracks nearby. Shortly afterwards, another time bomb was planted in Oxford Street, London. The bomb had been booby-trapped and was designed to kill anyone trying to defuse it. On 28 August, the IRA attacked shops on Oxford Street, London and a large device exploded, injuring seven people. A warning was telephoned through to the tabloid newspaper The Sun but with less than five minutes to detonation, it was a pointless exercise. A further device detonated in High Holborn, London, but fortunately, no one was injured in the explosion.

  The next device however had fatal results, culminating in the death of Captain Roger Goad (40) a bomb disposal expert in the RAOC. The same IRA gang planted a booby-trapped time bomb in Kensington Church Street, London, and then gave a telephone warning. Captain Goad, an officer in the bomb-disposal squad, was killed as he tried to defuse the device. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross. Metropolitan Police found a suspicious package placed in a shop doorway in Kensington Church Street in west London. The bomb, fitted with an anti-handling device, had been placed with the deliberate intention of taking out an expert. As the officer attempted to defuse the bomb it exploded, killing him instantly. Goad, a married man with two children, had been decorated for gallantry while serving in the Army in Cyprus.

  The month ground its way bloodily on and the Provisionals, seemingly tired – but not for long –of hitting sectarian targets turned once again to killing off-duty UDR soldiers. Corporal James Frazer (49) was a part-time soldier and also a Council employee. He had been watched by an IRA murder squad for some weeks making regular weekend trips from his home in Dungormley, close to Newtownhamilton to a friend’s farm near Whitecross, Co Armagh. He was being watched on that fateful last Saturday of the month and he left the farm after his regular visit, an armed gang opened fire on the soldier, mortally wounding him. They then dragged the dying man from the car, and used it to escape.

  On that same Saturday, a UFF murder gang attacked a Catholic bar in Hill Street in Belfast’s city centre. The Harp Bar was frequented in the main by Catholic residents of the nearby New Lodge and was packed with Saturday drinkers when the Loyalists attacked. The gunmen opened fire on a man drinking outside in the late summer evening and then threw an explosive device into the bar. It exploded almost immediately, killing Dennis McAuley (30) and fatally wounding another man – John Doherty – who died 11 days later. The Coroner who presided at the men’s inquest referred to the bombers as ‘insane murderers.’ One can only wonder what effect, if any, this had on the conscience of the Loyalists paramilitaries

  With only 150 minutes remaining of one of the deadliest months of the year, PIRA struck again and killed another off-duty UDR soldier. Joseph ‘Joe’ Reid (46) was a Lance Corporal in the UDR’s 2nd Battalion and ran a farm at Keady, Co Armagh. Keady is approximately six miles from the border with the Republic and it was a short journey in their stolen car for the murder gang who would have entered at a myriad number of crossing points into the ‘sanctuary’ of Ireland. The part-time soldier was the father of five children, one of whom answered a late night knock at the door. As her father, who was naturally armed, passed her in the hallway, a gunman shot him five times in the chest and he staggered back into the house, fatally wounded. He died shortly afterwards.

  In contrast to the 15 lives lost the previous month, August witnessed the deaths of 30 people to the Troubles. Of these, four were British soldiers or former soldiers and one was a former Policeman. A staggering 21 were innocent civilians of whom, 17 were Catholics and four were Protestant. Two Loyalist paramilitaries were killed and two IRA members were killed in feuding. The IRA was responsible for all of the five SF deaths, despite being, officially in a ceasefire. Loyalists killed 15 innocent Catholics and the IRA was responsible for three sectarian killings.

  9

  September

  The first of September was indeed a bloody day in the Province, as no less than seven people were all killed on that first day of the month. The IRA was responsible for five of the deaths and the UVF for the other two. The ‘non-sectarian’ IRA struck another blow for freedom by cold-bloodedly killing a Protestant businessman at his shop premises in Donegal Street, close to the Unity flats and equally Nationalist New Lodge areas of Belfast. Thomas Taylor, an expert in TV repairs was found dead by his wife; he had been shot in the head by an unknown group of Republicans, probably a free-lance group acting independently of PIRA.

  The second death on that day was a case of mistaken identity, but still robbed a Co Antrim family of their only son. A UVF gunman walked into a scrapyard at Ballyclare, Co Antrim, north-west of Newtownabbey, which was known to be owned by a Catholic family. The gunman opened fire at the owners, missing them, but hitting a young Protestant worker and killing him instantly. Leslie Shephard (20) was an apprentice at the scrapyard and had his entire life to look forward to; his future was ended there amongst the scrapped cars because of the indiscriminate and irresponsible attack by the Loyalists.

  Tullyvallen Orange Hall is situated on the Altnamackin Road, close to Newtownhamilton in Co Armagh. The local Orange Order had arranged a regular meeting there on that fateful 1 September they opened their meeting with prayer, and had just moved on to a general discussion, when several masked IRA gunmen burst into the hall through the kitchen at the back. Carrying machine guns, they sprayed the inside of the room with bullets as they attempted to massacre all of the 17 men sitting in the hall; whilst this was happening, another gunman fired through a window from outside. Three men were killed immediately while several others were wounded. Two of the injured were mortally wounded and one died at the scene and the second man two days later in hospital.

  An off-duty member of the security forces – thought to be a UDR soldier – attending the meeting was able to use a personal protection weapon to fire back. He shot and wounded one of the gunmen who escaped with the other IRA members. The medical services and an Army patrol arrived very quickly afterwards and a routine search by the soldiers discovered a metal container with 2lb of explosive inside; this was defused. Four Protestants were killed and a fifth died on 3 September. The dead were: William McKee (70) and his son James (40), Nevin McConnell (40), and John Johnston (80); George Herron (67) died of his wounds.

  Knowing that their already sullied reputation would be further damaged by yet another blatantly sectarian slaughter, PIRA’s Army Council was quick to distance itself from the atrocity. It stated that an ‘independent’ unit, acting without the leadership’s ‘consent’ had carried out the killings. The murder of Thomas Taylor earlier in the day was presumably also carried out with the Army Council’s permission?

  As that bloody day faded into history, it was the UVF who were determined to have the final say or the final murder as they killed an SDLP politician in Moy, Co Tyrone. The SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party) Páirtí Sóisialt
a Daonlathach an Lucht Oibre is a social-democratic, Irish nationalist political organisation in Ulster. Its basic party platform advocates Irish reunification, and the further devolution of powers while Northern Ireland remains part of the UK. Dennis Mullan (36) was lured to his front door by a loud bang and as he opened it, he was shot dead by a masked UVF gunman armed with an automatic weapon. Mr Mullan was hit over 10 times and died in the entrance to his house in Moy. September was only 24 hours old and already seven people lay dead, killed by paramilitaries of both sides.

  Troops duck as a bomb explodes in May Street, Belfast. (Mark ‘C’)

  On the following day, the same ‘independent’ PIRA unit was responsible for a further sectarian murder in North Belfast. Demonstrating clearly just how little control their Army Council had over them, Republicans murdered Protestant businessman John Cathcart (38) and left three children fatherless. The three Cathcart children would soon be walking, grief-stricken behind the coffin of their father, thus adding to the long, almost endless list of children left without their dad by sectarian killers. Mr Cathcart was gunned down in his office in Frederick Street close to the sectarian interface with the Catholic New Lodge.

  On the third, it was the UVF’s turn to add to the sad procession of heart-broken children when they killed a man and his daughter at their remote farm a mile or so outside Belfast and close to the B56 which runs parallel to the busier Antrim Road. Masked gunmen broke into the farmhouse and shot and mortally wounded William Hamilton (63) and then shot him again as he tried to stagger away. They then shot his daughter Patricia McGrenaghan (35) a mother of five, mortally wounding her too. Another daughter was threatened, but the cowardly gunmen escaped; Mrs McGrenaghan died a few hours later in hospital. Ironically the dead man had emigrated to Australia but family ties and love of country had brought about his return and his tragic death.

  On the following day, a holiday for a resident from the mainland turned into horror and tragedy. Margaret Hale (32), a mother of five young children had moved to Lincolnshire and returned to see friends and family. On the 4th, they were visiting a Catholic bar in Ballyhegan in Co Armagh when the UVF attacked it with guns and a bomb. The bar – McCann’s – was attacked at around 23:00 hours when masked men sprayed the drinkers with automatic gunfire and then left a small explosive device. Mrs Hale was fatally wounded and a further 11 people were badly injured. She died 18 days later in hospital without ever recovering consciousness.

  Attention was then turned to the British mainland and the IRA’s England team struck at the very heart of London’s business and tourist centre when they attacked the Park Lane Hilton. The author is very familiar with this hotel, having done business with them as a sales consultant in London from 1985-95 and knows well its luxurious layout and impressive tower with its imposing view of Park Lane and Hyde Park. On the 5th, an obscure warning was telephoned through to the Met police stating that a bomb had been planted in the hotel but failing to specify where the device was located in the multi-floored building. The warning was received by the Daily Mail newspaper, only ten minutes before it exploded.

  The newspaper notified Scotland Yard which immediately sent three officers to investigate, but they were not able to evacuate the building before the bomb exploded at 1218 BST. Two people were killed and 63 injured when the bomb exploded in the lobby. Police worked quickly to clear the area after the explosion fearing there could be another device nearby. The blast caused extensive damage to the hotel and neighbouring shops with broken glass spread over a wide area. Witnesses said police arrived only five minutes before the bomb went off, and it is not clear whether the hotel was warned before they turned up. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said an officer telephoned the Hilton shortly after receiving the warning, but the hotel denied this. Robert Lloyd (no known age) who worked nearby and a Dutch tourist Grace Lodhuis (39) were both killed instantly and many of the injured were terribly maimed.

  The echoes of the explosion on Park Lane were just dying away and the air over London was still black from the smoke, when the UVF struck again, several miles away. Michael O’Toole (41) and a father of six, was a Catholic who lived in Larne, Co Antrim. Larne is a little over 20 miles north of Belfast and sits on the side of the Irish Sea; it is also the docking point for the Larne-Troon ferry which links that part of Northern Ireland with Scotland. He was a senior foreman at a construction company and had no connections with any paramilitary force. It is thought possible that a Protestant worker may have informed the Loyalists that Mr O’Toole was a Catholic and that effectively sealed his death warrant. A UVF gang, evidently taking a leaf out of the Provisionals’ car-bomb handbook, planted a device underneath his car. He was dreadfully injured in the blast, losing both legs and died in hospital two days later.

  AN IRISH-AMERICAN’S THOUGHTS

  Jeanne Griffin

  I am a California-born American of about 70% Irish ancestry. My dad was the Catholic son of immigrants from the west of Ireland and my mother was a Protestant with considerable Ulster ancestry. So that does establish my credentials as an Irish-American? Probably more so than the pathetic supporters of NORAID who finance the death, injury and maiming of their fellow Irish people and British soldiers by a ruthless terrorist group? The Provisional IRA has always been allied to Muslim extremists which are the enemies of America. My Irish blood would not have prevented me from becoming a victim of this savage killing machine comprised of violent Marxist Catholics seeking to force the majority Protestant population to unite with an impoverished Irish Republican.

  I was in London on 5 September 1975; a thrilled 17-year-old finally able to walk the streets of this fabled capital and to visit the Tower of London where Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey and many others from the pages of history were executed. I could have met that same fate. The PIRA phoned in a hoax warning of a bomb at the Tower when I was there, we were evacuated for about a half hour until the place was deemed safe to re-enter. That same afternoon the IRA exploded a bomb outside the London Hilton which resulted in death. Had the IRA done the reverse I could have been blown to bits; at 17. Teenagers, children, pensioners, women, men, soldiers, police, babies, horses, dogs; no living thing was safe from this malevolent octopus whose tentacles reached everywhere to strike instant gruesome death.

  I lived in Dublin during the 1980s and even worked in Talbot Street, which had been devastated by a UVF bomb in 1974. I always felt a frisson of fear whenever I passed that spot outside Guiney’s. I also worried that with every IRA atrocity in the North, there was an increased risk that Dublin could be hit again by Loyalist bombers and I could fall victim. And the IRA and NORAID would be indirectly responsible for setting the ball rolling on the path to mayhem and destruction with their ‘armed struggle.’ I observed that this conflict was not ethnic but a political and religious war in which ‘Irishness’ was a convenient umbrella under which brutal sectarian killers could huddle and plan the next blood-letting. Most Irish-Americans (out of ignorance or effective brainwashing) do not know that most senior IRA members have non-Irish surnames and what’s more important that the IRA never had a mandate from the Irish people to wage this war against the British Army and majority Loyalist population; they never did. Not in 1916 and not in 1969. Irish-Americans are not part of post-partition Ireland’s collective history and need to butt out and stop listening to the lies of mass murderer Gerry Adams.

  I think I should add that my hatred of the IRA and Republicans hardened into outspoken condemnation following my visit in 2001 to the Omagh grave of 16-year-old Alan Radford who was one of the 29 victims of the RIRA’s obscene Omagh bombing. I felt such sadness that I was sitting beside the remains of what was once a vibrant teenager full of dreams and plans for the future – denied him by the evil bastards who kill anyone who get in the way of their pathetic illusion of a United Ireland. This is a dream which cannot ever become reality and is only really wanted by a small minority of nationalists. The Irish who went to America chose to remain and pursue the Americ
an dream rather than return to the strangling Catholic ambience of post-Treaty De Valera-led Ireland. They as Americans have no right to demand that the Protestants of Northern Ireland – many of whom have bloodlines like my mother’s Gilmore family which go back to the early tribes of Ulster – surrender their British nationality and re-join a bankrupt Republic which cannot even secure a future for its own citizens. I have been to Northern Ireland many times and observed that Belfast in all its aspects is a British and not an Irish city. Irish-Americans need to accept this fact and get over it.

  The dangers of belonging to the ‘wrong’ religion and being seen in the ‘wrong’ sectarian area were never more evident than when the non-sectarian Provisionals abducted and killed Andrew Craig (20) on the 8th. Mr Craig was a Protestant and worse, he was drunk and in a Catholic area. He was heading home to the south of Belfast when he was picked up by Republicans on the Ormeau Road. He was later taken to the Markets area and shot; his body was dumped in Alfred Street. Two known Provisionals were said to be have been involved in the sectarian murder. One of whom, Brendan Davison was cleared of the murder, but he was later killed by the UVF in July 1988. The other man, Kevin McGrady, a known player, was convicted of Mr Craig’s death some eight years later.

  There were many deaths which resulted from the Troubles; some have no mystery attached to them and some have. George Quinn (41), a Belfast Catholic who lived on the Ballymurphy Estate was shot and killed on 9 September whilst walking along the Upper Springfield Road. The road itself – location of the besieged RUC station close to the junction with the Falls Road, runs from the crossroads with the aforementioned Falls and Grosvenor Roads and finally peters out where the Ballycolm Road meets the Hannahstown Road several miles to the south-west of Belfast. Where Mr Quinn was going and by who he was shot remains a mystery. The road is almost entirely rural after it becomes the Upper Springfield Road and he could have been a sectarian murder victim, shot in all likelihood by Loyalists who could well have assumed that he was a Catholic in a Catholic area.