by Peter Taylor
The following summer, on 11 August 1986, the IRA attacked the RUC station in the tiny village of The Birches along the southern shore of Lough Neagh. It was unmanned at the time. On this occasion, the East Tyrone Brigade used a new delivery system, a JCB digger with a 200-lb bomb placed in the bucket. The JCB crashed through the perimeter fence, the bomb exploded and the station was reduced to rubble. The attack was so successful that the IRA decided to use the tactic again at Loughgall. But this time, TCG South knew the IRA was coming.
The ‘Group’ was already on high alert in the spring of 1987 after the IRA had killed Lord Justice Gibson, the controversial judge who had commended the HMSU for bringing three unarmed IRA men to ‘the final court of justice’. The headlines of the British tabloids echoed the national mood: ‘Unleash SAS on the killer squads’, demanded the Daily Mail. ‘SAS set to swoop – undercover army is briefed for battle’, revealed the Daily Mirror. The Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King, visited Killeen, the scene of the explosion, and knew he not only had to talk tough but act it. ‘It was obviously my duty after that appalling outrage to give reassurance to the law-abiding people of Northern Ireland that they would be protected from being terrorized and murdered in that way,’ he told me. ‘We were conscious that we were facing an enhanced threat and we took enhanced measures to meet them.’4 The ‘Group’ was ready.
Loughgall police station, which was only open for four hours a day and manned by a token force, was hardly Fort Knox. The IRA clearly thought they could pull off Ballygawley and The Birches again. Uncharacteristically, it put together a large eight-man ASU armed to the teeth and led by some of its most experienced operatives. It was known as the ‘A Team’.
‘Eyes-on’ and technical surveillance with a listening device had been going on for weeks, with premises being bugged by MI5 and the ‘Det’. Critically, there was also intelligence from the Special Branch agent who was part of the ASU. Cornering the ‘A Team’ was a highly complex operation involving all the police, army and intelligence resources at TCG South’s disposal – MI5, Special Branch, E4A, the ‘Det’ and the SAS. The operation was put in place on Thursday 7 May 1987, the day before the IRA’s attack. Three Special Branch officers from the HMSU volunteered to remain inside the station as decoys to give the appearance of normality when the IRA did its ‘recce’. ‘Matt’ was one of them. He and two Special Branch colleagues entered the station with some of the SAS as darkness fell on the Thursday evening. They made sandwiches and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting, knowing the station was going to be attacked but not aware at that stage of the precise details. ‘I knew there was danger. Every tasking we were on was a danger. But I took it in my stride, followed my orders and was quite happy to do so,’ ‘Matt’ told me. But ‘Matt’ did know some of the IRA ‘players’ who were likely to be involved. ‘We were briefed on personalities at various times. We just knew they were a lethal unit and ruthless outfit of PIRA.’
Whilst ‘Matt’ and his HMSU colleagues waited inside the station, ‘Anna’ and her partner were part of the ‘Det’ surveillance cordon covering a wide area around the approach roads on the look out for the approach of the A Team. All ‘Anna’ knew was that Loughgall police station was to be attacked by a heavily armed IRA unit which, presumably, would be travelling to the target in some vehicle. The vehicle was, in fact, a blue Toyota Hiace van that had been hijacked in nearby Dungannon that afternoon. Anna and her partner scoured the country lanes three or four miles from Loughall village in the hope of being able to give the TCG early warning that the IRA was on its way.
Suddenly, they spotted a van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle but when they saw that the vehicle in front was a JCB digger and the driver of the van was in blue overalls – the clothing often worn by the IRA on operations – they immediately put The Birches and Loughgall together. ‘You suddenly realize that it’s a previous MO [modus operandi] used by the East Tyrone Brigade,’ ‘Anna’ said. ‘It was like a replay. But this time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the information and pulled off.’
The intelligence of the imminent arrival of the ASU was passed on to TCG South and the SAS got ready outside the station and the HMSU inside. I asked the Chief Constable, Sir John Hermon, why the unit could not have been arrested before it reached Loughgall. He said it was never a realistic option. ‘People see every movement. I cannot see that putting up roadblocks is going to help. You know the way the IRA work. They’ve got vehicles going ahead, people looking at the scene and radioing back. In operational terms it doesn’t make sense, unless you’re 100 per cent certain that it would work.’5 Yet roadblocks had been used in anticipation of stopping Toman, Burns, and McKerr and Grew and Carroll in the shootings that John Stalker investigated. In the case of Loughgall, either it was deemed too risky to take on an exceptionally large number of heavily armed IRA men, or the plan was to lure them into the SAS ambush and teach the IRA a lesson they would never forget. Perhaps it was a combination of both.
The JCB, with the 200-lb bomb raised high in the bucket, rumbled past the RUC station accompanied by the blue Toyota van. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had come. Suddenly, the JCB revved, headed for the perimeter fence and crashed through it as the van drew up outside, disgorging Patrick Kelly and some of his comrades who sprayed the station with their assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise. ‘Matt’, who had taken up position by the window at the front of the station, was only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt. He turned and ran, amidst the gunfire, with one word on his mind.
Bomb! I just thought of The Birches and Ballygawley. The next minute there was an almighty bang. I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought, I’m dead, simple as that. But the fact I was still thinking made me realize I was still alive. I found myself buried at the corner of the station, in rubble, inhaling dust and in darkness. A colleague grabbed my belt and we pushed our way through to the rear of the station, completely covered in dust and rubble. Our green uniforms were now grey. I saw the light of a window at the back and just went for it. I don’t know where I got the strength from but I just pushed myself out through it. Colleagues helped us out and gave us first aid.
‘Matt’ and his colleagues survived but the IRA did not. They died in a thunderous barrage of fire put down by the SAS’s GPMGs and Heckler and Kochs. The van was riddled like a sieve. The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. Forensic tests carried out on the IRA weapons retrieved were linked to eight murders and thirty-three shootings.6 Although the world did not know it, one of the bodies was that of the informer who had provided his handlers with intelligence on the attack. Special Branch officers waiting at TCG South are said not to have been pleased. In the wake of the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 (when it lost a dozen of its men at the hands of Black and Tans)7 the IRA’s internal security unit left no stone unturned nor interrogation undone to find the informer. They did not succeed. Recovering in hospital, ‘Matt’ had no sympathy for the dead.
I hate to see anybody being killed, but they were there to kill us. If we hadn’t been there, the police officers in the station would have been annihilated. These guys were responsible for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead terrorists are better than dead policemen.
When the ‘Group’ got back to base, ‘There was a huge party and it probably went on for over twenty-four hours,’ ‘Anna’ said. ‘A lot of beer was drunk. We were jubilant, there’s no two ways about it. We thought it was a job well done. It sent shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top. It was a huge blow for the IRA and a big victory for the security forces, a “coup” if you like. We’d really sort of put them on the back foot again. We were really on top of the intelligence game at that point.’ And how did she fee
l about eight dead IRA men? ‘They’re all volunteers and actively engaged against the British army. They’re at war, as they would describe it. My attitude is that if you live by the sword you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end of the day to be alive ourselves.’ The Permanent Under Secretary, Sir Robert Andrew, was well pleased too.
My personal first reaction was really one of some satisfaction that we had ‘won one’, as it were, in this continual conflict and that it was a victory for the forces of law and order. I would think it was a salutary message. I think it demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough and that they could not with impunity carry out the sort of attack which had been planned and which fortunately we gained intelligence about. I hope it sent a message that the British Government was resolute and was going to fight them. It may also have contributed to a view in the IRA and Sinn Fein that they weren’t going to get their way by terrorism, and that perhaps a political solution was something which they ought to be putting more emphasis on.
But eight IRA men were not the only deaths that day. An innocent civilian, Anthony Hughes (36), was also shot dead by the SAS, and his brother, Oliver, was wounded and scarred for life. They had been returning home from work through Loughgall village and were a few hundreds yards from the police station when the SAS, perhaps thinking they were an IRA ‘scout’ car or part of the ASU, opened fire on their white Citroën. Forty shots were fired at the car. No warning was given. Anthony was wearing blue overalls, which may be one reason why the SAS mistook him for part of the IRA unit. Oliver was hit twelve times in the body and twice in the head. He told me of his brother’s dying breath. ‘He gave a bit of a shout, “Oliver, Oliver, help me!” Those were the last few words he said.’ Sir Ronnie Flanagan, who later became the RUC Chief Constable, described it as ‘an unspeakable tragedy’ and blamed the IRA not the SAS for his death. But the culpable party was TCG South who had not cordoned off the area to prevent any ‘innocent’ vehicles straying into the area. ‘I think it was very unjust,’ said Oliver. ‘They could have had a checkpoint and stopped us from going in there and told us about the danger. But they didn’t.’ Had they done so, they would have risked scaring off the IRA. Anthony and Oliver Hughes paid the price. Oliver was awarded substantial compensation but, like Con Boyle who lost his son, John, in the SAS ambush in the graveyard in 1978, he never received an apology from the MOD or RUC.
At Jim Lynagh’s funeral, Gerry Adams said that Loughgall would become a ‘tombstone for British policy in Ireland and a bloody milestone in the struggle for freedom, justice and peace’. He described the ‘executions’ of Lynagh and his seven comrades as ‘the pound of flesh demanded by the British colonial murder machine’.8 ‘Anna’ was convinced that the disaster at Loughgall would act as a powerful deterrent to the IRA. ‘I don’t think volunteers were particularly willing to “volunteer” for missions after that because obviously they didn’t want to die or be captured,’ she said. But ‘Anna’ was wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Death in the Afternoon: Gibraltar
6 March 1988
Ireland-watchers always knew that the IRA would no more let Loughgall go unavenged than they had the hunger strike. If the Brighton bomb was the response to ten men dead, what blow would be struck to settle the score of eight IRA men riddled with SAS bullets? But time erased the thought for all those outside the Republican Movement. If it took three years before the IRA almost wiped out Mrs Thatcher and her Cabinet, the Provisionals were in no hurry to take vengeance for Loughgall. In the ‘long war’, the IRA reasoned, time was on its side. Success, although never guaranteed, was most likely to come from the careful identification of the target, meticulous planning and painstaking selection of an ASU. Loughgall sent the IRA the message not only that the ‘Brits’ could ‘play it rough’, as Sir Robert Andrew bluntly put it, but also that they knew the IRA’s plans. Accordingly a decision was made to hit the ‘Brits’ overseas, at a place and time when they were least expecting it and at a location likely to be free of their prying cameras and eyes. British bases in Germany were too obvious a target and already on alert following an IRA bomb attack two months before Loughgall on a British army base at Rheindalen in which thirty-one people were injured.1 The IRA looked south to Gibraltar.
I remember driving down the M6 on Sunday 6 March 1988 after a short family holiday in Scotland. I had decided to take a break after completing a film for BBC Panorama called ‘The Long War’ in which I analysed Loughgall, the arms shipments from Libya and the IRA’s long-term strategy. As we approached the Lake District with a long journey still ahead, there was a news flash on the radio. There had been a confrontation involving the security forces in Gibraltar and three people were dead. I cannot remember whether the IRA was even mentioned at that stage. The details were very sketchy and did not come much clearer as we drove on through the evening. It was only the following morning that things gradually began to emerge. The early news bulletins told us that the IRA was involved and there had been a bomb. The calm voice of the news reader, Peter Donaldson, gave some of the still-hazy facts. ‘It’s now known that the three people shot and killed by the security forces in Gibraltar yesterday were members of the Provisional IRA. It’s thought they were challenged while trying to leave Gibraltar after planting a huge car bomb in the centre.’2 We were then told that the target had been a military band and the army’s prompt action had saved many lives. Not knowing the full facts, I thought that what had happened was probably a confrontation like Loughgall, albeit on a smaller scale and much further from home. I assumed the SAS had intercepted an armed IRA ASU as they had done at Loughgall police station ten months earlier. Shortly afterwards, the Minister for the Armed Forces, Ian Stewart, went on the Today programme to reveal that a car bomb had been found and defused. That morning’s newspapers all carried varying accounts of the same story. There was mention of a shoot-out with armed members of the IRA. ITN reported that ‘a fierce gun-battle broke out’ and that ‘Army explosives experts used a robot to defuse the bomb’.3 By this time, the IRA had issued a statement saying that three of its members, two men and a woman, had been killed whilst on ‘active service’.
Through the fog of ‘war’, what had happened seemed dramatic but, like Loughgall, it also seemed pretty clear-cut: an armed engagement in the ‘war’ the IRA always insisted it was. But as the hours went by, the picture gradually changed as the truth began to emerge. There had been no bomb and the three IRA members were not armed. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, made a statement to the House of Commons that for the first time provided the facts and the Government’s interpretation of them, most notably that a warning had been given.
On their way to the border, they [the three IRA members] were challenged by the security forces. When challenged, they made movements which led the military personnel, operating in support of the Gibraltar police, to conclude that their own lives and the lives of others were under threat. In the light of this response, they were shot. Those killed were subsequently found not to have been carrying arms.4
It seemed like a replay of the 1982 shootings in County Armagh that John Stalker had investigated – dead terrorists and no guns. Clearly there had been good intelligence on the ASU but it had not been good enough. At least, that was the benign interpretation. The malign version was that British intelligence knew what the putative bombers were up to and had been authorized by the Prime Minister and her Cabinet to take ‘executive action’ and finish the IRA off before they could plant and detonate their bomb.
Whatever the case, there was unlikely to be much public sympathy for those whose organization had, only four months earlier on 8 November 1987, exploded a bomb in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday, causing wholesale slaughter in an IRA atrocity whose enormity ranked alongside ‘Bloody Friday’, La Mon and Birmingham. The IRA’s intention had been to detonate the bomb and kill members of the security forces as they carried out a security sweep before the service but it exploded prema
turely killing eleven bystanders and injuring more than sixty others. The most poignant memory was of one of the injured, Gordon Wilson, as he comforted his dying daughter, Marie. Both were trapped under six feet of rubble. ‘Daddy, I love you very much,’ she said. They were the last words she uttered. The IRA expressed ‘deep regret’ but the day came to haunt it and perhaps marked the beginning of the IRA’s road to peace.
After Enniskillen, most of the British public probably thought that the three dead IRA members in Gibraltar got no more than they deserved, armed or not. However, once the story of a gun-battle and bomb had been relayed by Government and media, whether ‘spun’ by design or transmitted in ignorance, it became fixed in the public’s mind. However, the unadorned and ‘unspun’ facts are as follows. The three dead IRA members were Mairead Farrell (31), a former IRA prisoner in Armagh gaol from a respectable middle-class family in Andersonstown who, after her release, became a student at Queen’s University, Belfast;5 Sean Savage (23), who had spent a brief period in gaol in 1982 on the word of a ‘supergrass’ before the charges against him were dropped;6 and Danny McCann (30), a former IRA prisoner who had also been ‘fingered’ by a supergrass. McCann and Savage are also believed to have been the gunmen who shot dead two Special Branch officers on 26 August 1987, as they sat in the Liverpool Bar by the ferry in the Belfast docks. Neither had any compunction about ‘shooting to kill’.7
The Gibraltar ASU had been carefully selected to carry out an operation to bomb the Royal Anglian regimental band at the ceremonial Changing of the Guard on the Rock. At least two other IRA members were also involved but were never captured or killed. One of them was a woman operating under the false identity of ‘Mary Parkin’. The other was a man travelling under the pseudonym ‘John Oakes’. Both, like other members of the ASU, were experienced in counter-surveillance techniques and, although observed, succeeded in giving their MI5 ‘watchers’ the slip, thus evading the ‘Brits” tightly-drawn net..
