by Peter Taylor
In the wake of the devastation and death, the IRA issued a chilling statement.
Mrs Thatcher will now realize that Britain cannot occupy our country and torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.16
A criminal investigation on an unparalleled scale immediately got under way. Almost 4,000 dustbins of debris were removed for forensic examination, 38,000 records were logged and 6,000 statements taken. More than 800 inquiries were made in fifty countries as detectives tried to trace guests on the Grand Hotel’s list.17 In particular, police inquiries focused on the previous occupants of Room 629. In an astonishing piece of detective work, all were traced, except one man who had signed the registration card as ‘Roy Walsh’ and booked into the hotel with another man a month earlier. ‘Roy Walsh’ was the name of a member of the IRA unit who had bombed the Old Bailey and other London targets in 1973. On the registration card the police found a palm print and a finger print which they eventually matched with those on record of a teenager convicted for theft in England many years before.
The prints belonged to Patrick Magee, a Belfast man whose family had moved to Norwich when he was four years old and whose grandfather had been in the IRA in the 1920s. Magee left school at thirteen, got into trouble with the authorities and police, and eventually returned to Belfast in 1971 and joined the IRA.18 After a complex surveillance operation, he was arrested on 24 June 1985 in a Glasgow flat along with an IRA unit that had been planning to explode bombs with delayed timers at several English seaside resorts. Arrested with Magee in the raid were Peter Sherry, a former Sinn Fein by-election candidate who had met up with Magee at Carlisle railway station when Magee had been under surveillance; Gerard McDonnell, another Maze escaper; and two women, Martina Anderson, a former Derry beauty queen, and Ella O’Dwyer, from a respectable middle-class family in the Irish Republic with no republican connections.19 On 11 June 1986, all five were sentenced for conspiring to cause explosions in England. Magee was the only one convicted for the Brighton bomb. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with the recommendation that he served a minimum of thirty-five years. In fact, he became the 277th paramilitary prisoner to be released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, having served fourteen years of his sentence. On 22 June 1999, the ‘Brits’ ’ most notorious prisoner, and now a graduate of the Open University, walked free from the Maze prison as Dr Patrick Magee Phd, BA (first class hons).20
Far from making the Government more amenable to engaging in dialogue with the Republican Movement, the outrage of Brighton made it even more determined to hit back on both the military and political fronts. Mrs Thatcher, the Iron Lady of the hunger strike, was in no mood to do business with members of an organization that had just killed five of her friends and colleagues and tried to kill her. Four months after the Brighton bombing, on 28 February 1985, her determination was reinforced when an IRA mortar bomb hit the canteen of Newry RUC station, killing nine police officers as they were eating their evening meal or relaxing. Newry was the RUC’s Warrenpoint, the Force’s biggest loss in a single day in the whole of the conflict. Despite the setbacks inflicted by the SAS, the IRA was still a force to be reckoned with.
If the SAS and the ‘Det’ were spiking some of the IRA’s Armalites, the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) was designed to spoil Sinn Fein’s Ballot Box. It was signed by Mrs Thatcher and the Irish Prime Minister, Dr Garret FitzGerald, at Hillsborough Castle, County Down, on 15 November 1985, nine months after the IRA’s lethal mortar attack. From the point of view of the ‘Brits’, it was designed primarily to do two things: to arrest the apparently inexorable rise of Sinn Fein (in May its candidates won fifty-nine seats in the district council elections – which it contested for the first time – with 11.8 per cent of the first-preference votes);21 and to enlist more support from Dublin for more stringent security measures against the IRA who, despite Mrs Thatcher’s discussions with Charles Haughey at the beginning of the decade, were still using the Republic as a haven and operational base with apparent impunity. The discussions that led up to the signing of the Agreement were conducted in the utmost secrecy by a joint Anglo-Irish working party led by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, and his Irish opposite number, Dermot Nally. Mrs Thatcher instructed Sir Robert Andrew, the NIO Permanent Under Secretary, not to mention a word in Belfast since a leak could torpedo the whole endeavour. Being his Prime Minister’s obedient servant but also feeling loyalty to his Northern Irish officials in Belfast who were out of the loop, Sir Robert observed the letter of the Prime Minister’s instruction. ‘I told the Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service in strict confidence in London,’ he said, ‘because I wanted his reactions.’ Being a unionist from hat to handbag, Mrs Thatcher was never wholly enthusiastic about the Agreement anyway and was only finally persuaded of its merits by Sir Robert Armstrong. He regarded getting the Prime Minister to put pen to paper at Hillsborough as the greatest achievement of his governmental career.
The first that people outside this tight circle of Whitehall mandarins saw of the Agreement was when it was signed at Hillsborough Castle on 15 November 1985. From the outset, both Governments agreed in Article 1 that ‘any change in the status of Northern Ireland would only come about with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland’. They recognized too that ‘the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland is for no change in the status of Northern Ireland’.22 These were the twin pillars of what became known as the principle of ‘consent’ and were to underpin all political developments for the next fifteen years. Dublin was now to have a direct say in Northern Irish affairs through the establishment of a Permanent Representative’s office at Maryfield outside Belfast and regular meetings of what became known as the Anglo-Irish Conference, at which British and Irish Ministers could co-ordinate policy and discuss contentious issues and matters of mutual interest, not least security policy. The Conference, as set out in Article 4, was to provide a framework ‘for the accommodation of the rights and identities of the two traditions’ and for ‘peace, stability and prosperity throughout the island of Ireland by promoting reconciliation, respect for human rights, co-operation against terrorism and the development of economic, social and cultural co-operation’. To Mrs Thatcher, Article 9 on cross-border cooperation on security was crucial, setting out mechanisms for co-ordinating ‘threat assessments, exchange of information, liaison structures, technical co-operation, training of personnel and operational resources’.
Nationalists and the SDLP were jubilant at what they saw as the provision of a voice – albeit through Dublin – they had long lacked. Despite the ‘guarantee’ underpinning the whole Agreement that a majority would not be coerced into constitutional change against its will, unionists were outraged and saw it as the latest and most perfidious betrayal by the ‘Brits’. Thousands of loyalists took to the streets to protest, most memorably at a huge rally outside Belfast City Hall, where Paisley roared one word three times to a crowd of around 100,000. ‘Never! Never! Never!’ Street protests turned to violence, policemen were attacked and their houses burned. There was even the bizarre sight of one ‘loyalist’ hitting a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary over the head with a Union Jack. It seemed like the long prophesied Protestant backlash had finally arrived. Mrs Thatcher and the Chief Constable, Sir John Hermon, stood firm. This time the ‘Brits’ were not going to cave in as they did over the 1974 UWC strike. Looking back on that turbulent time, Sir Robert Andrew provided a rare insight into the way officials were thinking and Mrs Thatcher’s response to their thoughts. In the run-up to the Agreement, Sir Robert and other senior officials were at Number 10 discussing Northern Ireland with Mrs Thatcher.
We were looking at the various options, from a united Ireland, to redrawing the boundary, to the full integration of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom and
all the other possibilities. At one point the Prime Minister said, ‘Well, where shall we be in a hundred years’ time?’ And I and another very senior official, without collusion, said, ‘Well, probably a united Ireland, Prime Minister.’ To which the Prime Minister said rather forcefully, ‘Never! Never!’
In the light of his remark, I asked Sir Robert Andrew to elaborate on his view about the likelihood or inevitability of a united Ireland at some stage in the future.
The demographic trend is moving towards an eventual Catholic majority in Northern Ireland. Of course you can’t be certain that all Catholics would vote in favour of a united Ireland. You just can’t tell; but even if 51 per cent voted in favour of a united Ireland you’d still have 49 per cent who were opposed to it. So I think the thing to do is that somehow, between now and the time when there might perhaps be a vote in favour of a united Ireland, which the British Government has pledged to respect, one has got to try to make sure that if that transition were to come about, it would do so in a peaceful way rather than in a non-peaceful way.
Arguably, this is what the long-term political strategy of the ‘Brits’ is all about. But the first step was to end the violence by making it clear to the IRA that they were not going to win, at least not through ‘armed struggle’. The ‘Group’ – the SAS and the ‘Det’ – were the most powerful instruments in making sure the message hit home.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Loughgall
8 May 1987
The nightmare for any handler was to find his source turning up on an IRA operation that the SAS were about to ambush. The risk of this happening was perilously high since the source might actually be part of the ASU that was the target of the ‘Group’. Although every precaution was taken to avoid this, there was no guarantee that it would be successful on every occasion. Calling in sick could easily arouse suspicion in an organization whose habitual paranoia about informers had intensified in the mid to late 1980s as more and more operations were intercepted or thwarted. Under such circumstances, sources would face a dreadful dilemma. To participate might mean death at the hands of the SAS. Not to do so might mean death at the hands of the IRA. Often the TCG chose to sidestep the dilemma by aborting the operation if a handler learned from the source that he had to take part. Sources were too valuable to be sacrificed and the suspicion that one had died whilst on active service for both sides was hardly good for recruitment and morale. ‘Mary’ knew the frustrations when a ‘job’ was called off, sometimes after weeks of painstaking investment and discomfort.
On one particular occasion we’d done a job and it went on for ten weeks. We were in an army base along the border and we’d been living like rats in the attic. The conditions were really bad. The ‘troop’ [the SAS] were there and the ‘Det’ and the police and all the different authorities were there for this massive job. The ‘troop’ had ‘eyes-on’, the heli-surveillance had gone mobile and it was all happening. That one ended abruptly because the informer was part of the team. Now, after sitting in this army barracks for ten weeks and when all of these organizations had all been revved up for the job, it was total devastation at the end of it. It was the closest myself and the ‘troop’ members I was with had got to mutiny. It was really bad, you know. What can you do after such a build-up? It’s like telling a child he’s getting a bike for Christmas and when Christmas Day comes, he gets a bag of cinders. It’s a real let-down at the end of the day.
How close were you getting to intercepting your targets?
Well, seconds away. The troop had ‘eyes-on’. The helicopter was airborne. We were seconds away from the scene. They cut it really fine.
What would have happened if the operation hadn’t been called off?
Well, on that particular one, there would have been a dead informer.
Was the informer armed?
All of the terrorists on that job were armed.
‘Mary’ said she and the ‘Group’ would not ask why an operation was called off. There was no point. They would know in their bones. ‘It’s source protection. A lot of jobs ended like that.’ And although Special Branch would be upset if a source was shot dead, to most of the ‘Group’, who did not ‘run’ sources, a dead agent would simply be another dead terrorist. ‘Mary’ was matter-of-fact. ‘They were terrorists performing a terrorist act.’
There were occasions when a Special Branch source was involved in an operation without being the source of the intelligence for it. But the most tragic situation of all is when an informant is involved in an operation for which he has provided vital intelligence and which, for whatever reason, has not been called off. This is what happened during the most spectacular SAS ambush of all, on 8 May 1987, when a heavily armed eight-man ASU from the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade was wiped out whilst attacking Loughgall RUC station in County Armagh. The informant was part of the ASU and gunned down in the hail of 600 bullets fired by the SAS from a variety of weapons including Heckler and Koch G3 rifles and General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs). The SAS outnumbered the IRA by three to one. Amongst the bullet-riddled bodies left in the road and inside the blue Toyota Hiace van in which the ASU had been travelling were some of the IRA’s most wanted men. They included Patrick Kelly, the leader of the ASU and commander of the East Tyrone Brigade; Jim Lynagh, known as the ‘Executioner’ and based in Monaghan where he had been a Sinn Fein councillor, and Padraig McKearney, another Maze escapee. The other members of the ASU were Gerard O’Callaghan (29), Tony Gormley (25), Eugene Kelly (25), Seamus Donnelly (19), and Declan Arthurs (21). One of the eight was the informer. The latter four were from the Cappagh area of East Tyrone and had all joined the IRA in the wake of the death of the Cappagh hunger striker, Martin Hurson.1 Amelia Arthurs, Declan’s mother, remains bitter about the way her son died. ‘He was mowed down,’ she told me. ‘He could have been taken prisoner. They knew that the “boys” were coming and they lay in wait. The SAS never gave them a chance. Declan died for his country and I’m very proud of him. He was caught up in a war and he died.’2
By the time of Loughgall, the ‘Provos’ had entered a new phase of their ‘war’ against the ‘Brits’, on the military as well as the political front. Although the IRA had never been short of arms, given the steady stream from America and elsewhere, it had always lacked the heavy weaponry it believed was necessary if it was to deal the ‘Brits’ a decisive blow and change the face of the ‘war’. By the mid-1980s, that weaponry had arrived in the shape of an arsenal of 136 tons, courtesy of Mrs Thatcher’s sworn enemy, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. The vast tonnage was made up of four shipments brought ashore on the County Wicklow coast south of Dublin between August 1985 and October 1986. A converted fishing boat, the Kula, landed three consignments of seven, ten and fourteen tons, respectively, whilst the fourth consignment of 105 tons was brought in on board a boat called the Villa, which was twice the size of the Kula. Astonishingly, all these shipments were transferred to the shore by Zodiac inflatable dingies and then taken to underground bunkers prepared in advance across Ireland without detection by either British or Irish intelligence. More than a decade later, these great ‘dumps’ of Libyan arms became central to the issue of IRA decommissioning.
Gaddafi’s munificence gave the IRA the capacity to fight an even longer ‘war’. The consignments included heavy-duty machine guns, surface-to-air missiles, AK 47 assault rifles, Semtex high explosive and vast quantities of ammunition. The ‘Brits’, however, were not caught napping a fifth time when, on 1 November 1987, a freighter called the Eksund, carrying a further 150 tons of Libyan arms, was seized off the French coast by French customs authorities. Although British intelligence insists it was a ‘chance’ seizure and a stroke of good luck, it probably owed as much to ‘chance’ as did the HMSU checkpoints that dominated the era of ‘firepower, speed and aggression’.
An attack such as that planned on Loughgall police station was nothing new. Strategically, the IRA had determined to create ‘liberated’ zones – as the Vietcong had done i
n South Vietnam – in the border and contiguous areas in which there would be no effective security force presence. The Maze escaper Padraig McKearney was thought to have been one of the architects of the strategy, which was also designed to remove what the IRA saw as the unionists’ ‘second border’ or second line of defence.
Not only were security force bases attacked but civil contractors brought in to repair them were also targeted and killed. One of the IRA weapons recovered at Loughgall was believed to have been used only a few weeks earlier in the killing of Harold Henry (52) whose family firm, Henry Brothers, carried out work for the security forces. Five masked men came to his home on 21 April 1987, demanded the keys to his car and then stood him against a wall and shot him four times in the head. The IRA said, ‘such people are a more prime target than the foot soldier or the RUC constable because of the crucial function they perform’.3 The fact was that they were also ‘soft’ targets. The IRA found it increasingly difficult to kill soldiers and police because of their improved body armour. As a rule builders wear donkey jackets not flak jackets.
The IRA’s new strategy began with the devastating mortar attack on Newry RUC station on 28 February 1985 in which nine police officers died. It was followed by a gun and bomb attack (believed to have been led by McKearney) on Ballygawley RUC station on 7 December 1985, in which the IRA shot dead two police constables, George Gilliland (34) and William Clements (52), before planting a 100-lb beer-keg bomb that destroyed the station. The IRA took the hand-guns from the dead constables, one of which is believed to have been used in the killing of Harold Henry and subsequently at Loughgall.
