Big Boys' Rules

by Mark Urban

  Martin Dillon, a Belfast-born writer, used contacts in loyalist terrorist groups to investigate the Holroyd claims in his book The Dirty War. He says he has interviewed people close to the groups which carried out the Green and Miami Showband killings and that there is no substance to the claim that Nairac was involved in either. Both acts were carried out by loyalist gangs, without state support, he contends. Dillon finds Holroyd an unreliable witness and believes ‘he was obliged to construct a conspiracy’ to rationalize his own removal from SMIU and referral to a psychiatric hospital at the time of his marriage break-up in 1975.

  In September 1987 the Independent published a lengthy article critical of the more sensational Holroyd and Wallace allegations by its Belfast-based correspondent David McKittrick. Colin Wallace subsequently appealed to the Press Council that the articles had contained inaccuracies about him, a complaint which was upheld. Among many liberal-minded commentators there was both surprise that the newspaper should have devoted so much space to a ‘knocking’ story, and a feeling that McKittrick may have been fed disinformation by the RUC. Many felt that the subsequent government inquiry into the dismissal of Wallace, which judged that he had been unfairly dismissed and recommended the payment of compensation, vindicated his allegations. But matters were hardly this straightforward.

  McKittrick reproducd a page from what was said to be Holroyd’s scrapbook. It showed a photograph of Green taken many hours after his death by Irish police photographers, according to the Independent, and was accompanied by notes saying that Green was killed by loyalist paramilitaries. Holroyd maintains that the picture shown was not the one given him by Nairac which he says was taken some hours before the Gardai photographers got there.

  Albert Baker, the prisoner who claimed the security forces had used him to kill republicans, has not been backed in his allegations by others among the 200 or more loyalist terrorists serving life sentences for murder. None of the ninety or so convicted of murders in early 1975 have endorsed Wallace’s claim that the security services put them up to it. It may be argued that they would not do so out of fear of reprisal, either against themselves in jail or against their families. However, it may equally be said that a man facing a minimum thirty-five-year stretch in jail, as the killers of the Miami Showband were, might say anything if he thought such allegations would lessen his sentence. The willingness of loyalist paramilitary groups to embarrass the government has been apparent on other occasions; for example, in 1989 there was a wave of leaks of security forces documents on republican terrorist suspects, prompting an inquiry into possible links between loyalist terrorists and the security forces.

  McKittrick did not contest in his article Wallace’s own claims that he had been involved in disinformation in his role as Army intelligence officer, smearing politicians in Ulster. But some other journalists believed there was more to it than just that: investigations by the This Week television programme and by Barrie Penrose of the Sunday Times provided a measure of confirmation for some of Wallace’s other claims. Penrose tape-recorded a telephone conversation with Peter Leng, Commander Land Forces in the mid 1970s, which indicated that, as Wallace had claimed and contrary to the position of the government in various inquiries on the matter, the Army had had knowledge of homosexual abuse of youths at the Kincora boys’ home. The revelation is a serious one because it shows that successive ministers have misled Parliament about just how much the authorities knew about abuse at this home. The suggestion is that the Security Service (MI5) blocked moves to stop the abuse because it provided them with valuable blackmail material to be used against a member of a loyalist terrorist group who worked there and was one of the alleged abusers.

  Neither McKittrick nor the soldiers who speak in Nairac’s defence can prove that the Captain was definitely not involved in illegal killings. On the other hand, the government inquiry in 1990 which found that Wallace had been unjustly dismissed, and confirming that Wallace had indeed been involved in disinformation, do not invalidate the main point of McKittrick’s article – the questioning of allegations by Holroyd and Wallace that the intelligence services colluded with loyalist hit squads. And such allegations have not been confirmed by the government or substantiated by other journalists.

  Much of what the two men have said is undoubtedly true: there was a deep rivalry between SIS and MI5 of a kind described by Holroyd in his book and articles, and politicians were smeared, as Wallace claims. The fact that many of their allegations are rooted in fact has given them a wider credibility. There is a community of journalists and people active in politics which believes all of their allegations are true. Another group believes the two men have failed to prove their most disturbing suggestions: that the security forces colluded with loyalist death squads to dispose of dozens of republicans and (in Holroyd’s case) that serving British soldiers were directly involved in a number of killings.

  The schism between the believers and those who are sceptical has become acrimonious – journalists have labelled one another as gullible or as instruments of state disinformation. My own research has not produced any evidence to support the claim that the security forces colluded with loyalist death squads in any planned or deliberate way. Soldiers who served with Captain Nairac have, on the contrary, denied Holroyd’s allegations. In the absence of conclusive evidence one can say only that the most serious charges levelled by Wallace and Holroyd remain unproven.

  *

  Republican activists and some journalists also allege a link between the intelligence services and the killing of several people connected with the Irish Republican Socialist Party and its military wing the INLA. In June 1980 Miriam Daly, a senior IRSP figure, was shot dead in her home in Belfast. The killing was reported as the action of an unspecified loyalist group. In October another senior IRSP figure, Noel Lyttle, and an important INLA commander, Ronnie Bunting, were also killed. They too, it was assumed, had been killed by an unspecified loyalist group. Robert McConnel, a UDA man later convicted for his part in the killing of a moderate nationalist politician soon after the murder of Daly, alleged later that he had been in contact with Army intelligence, who had asked him for information on leading IRSP figures.

  Some people have connected the killings to the death of Airey Neave, arguing that the intelligence services killed them in revenge. On 30 March 1979 Airey Neave, the senior Conservative who had orchestrated Mrs Thatcher’s campaign for the Party leadership, was killed by a car bomb outside the Houses of Parliament, and the INLA had claimed responsibility for the blast. Neave had enjoyed close contacts with the intelligence establishment and had called for a stepping-up of SAS operations in Northern Ireland.

  The writer Martin Dillon has also investigated the INLA killings. He says claims that they were carried out by the SAS are ‘nonsense’ and, through his own paramilitary contacts, concludes that they were the work of a UDA hit team. However, he suggests that the actions of the killers, deep in republican territory, may indicate that local UDR members had colluded in the murders.

  Like many other rumours surrounding the intelligence services in Ulster the ‘Neave revenge’ thesis cannot be comprehensively disproved, but it must be said that the evidence to support it is feeble and circumstantial. Loyalists had also killed an INLA man in Armagh in 1978, before Neave’s assassination; that they did so afterwards as well proves nothing.

  Any operation which appears to be the work of loyalists, but which shows a level of sophistication higher than simply shooting the nearest available Catholic, tends to attract the suspicion of republicans. The killing of John Francis Green in 1975 was an example. The more interesting, and perhaps more plausible, charge against the intelligence specialists is not that they have run loyalist groups but that in cases where they have learned of an imminent loyalist attack against a republican target, they have made only half-hearted attempts to stop it. Allegations of this kind have been made to me about the attempt in 1984 on the life of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. He was seriously injured as
he was being driven away from a court house. Republicans said the loyalists had been put up to the attack; Army and police officers retorted that Adams would have found it rather hard to thank the soldiers who intercepted the attackers for saving his life. The assassination attempt will be examined more closely in chapter eighteen. Despite the Adams incident, it must be noted that if ever anybody in the intelligence world did commission loyalist terrorists to kill senior IRA figures, they failed to do so during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

  During 1989 many official documents identifying republican suspects came to light. These were said to have been used to target people for assassination and were later leaked to journalists by loyalist paramilitary groups. The loyalists did prove more effective in targeting leading republicans during the late 1980s, although many put this down to them learning the IRA’s lesson and putting more preparation into their attacks. Once again, however, there is a great difference between obtaining such documents and proving that the intelligence services, or elements within them, were conspiring with the loyalists.

  After the high tide of loyalist sectarian murder in the mid 1970s the rate of killings dropped considerably. During the late 1970s and 1980s the rate of killing by loyalists of active republicans was low compared to the number killed by the IRA itself for informing. Two active IRA and two INLA men were killed during 1977 to 1987 by loyalists, compared to more than twenty-four Catholics killed by the IRA itself as informers. Of course the loyalists killed many other Catholics who were not in the IRA, including people involved in republican politics during this period, but their attacks were, by and large, poorly targeted. This is not what one would have expected if intelligence agencies, frustrated by their inability to put senior IRA members behind bars, were behind the killings.

  6

  Lethal Confusion

  At about 9 p.m. on 20 June 1978 four men arrived at the Shamrock club in the republican Ardoyne area of west Belfast. They found the owner of a car and asked him to hand over the keys. Afraid, he allowed the men, IRA members of the 3rd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade, to take his car, a blue Mazda.

  The IRA men – William Mailey, thirty-one, believed to be the leader of the Active Service Unit; Denis Brown, twenty-eight; James Mulvenna, twenty-eight, and another who was at the wheel of the car – went to collect several explosive incendiary bombs.

  Each bomb consisted of a plastic container full of petrol, an explosive charge and a timing device. When the explosive detonated it caused a fireball. Three months before an explosive incendiary device had incinerated twelve people at the La Mon House hotel in County Down. The incident caused widespread revulsion, drawing an admission from the Provisionals that the nine minutes of warning given had been ‘totally inadequate’ and calls from loyalist leaders for tougher measures against the IRA.

  On that night in June the bombers had a different objective. As they drove north into the strongly loyalist area of Ballysillan they came in sight of their target, a Post Office depot. A little after midnight they parked the car in Wheatfield Drive and Mailey, Brown and Mulvenna began taking the bombs from it. None of the three was carrying a gun. The IRA’s aim was to destroy the depot and vehicles parked behind it.

  But the security forces had been tipped off. A joint SAS and RUC force, including members of the SPG Bronze Section and Special Branch, was lying in wait. As the men walked towards their target they were intercepted by the soldiers. The Army said later that warnings had been shouted. The soldiers opened fire, killing the three IRA men.

  They knew from their surveillance that there was a fourth member of the bombing team. SAS men found a man standing in the playing field next to the depot and shot him. They had killed William Hanna, a twenty-eight-year-old local Protestant who was walking home from the pub with a friend. Hanna’s companion hid beneath a hedge. The fourth IRA man fled across the nearby housing estate, banging on doors, pleading for help. He had chosen the wrong part of Belfast’s tribal patchwork to look for mercy, although he managed to escape on foot. Another bystander was injured after shots were fired into a car at a roadblock near the scene. Five SAS soldiers and one policeman had fired a total of 111 shots.

  Experience from previous incidents involving undercover forces had left security chiefs with the belief that they had to get their version of events to the media before the IRA did. But following the incident the Army press office at Lisburn distributed versions of what had happened which some people at headquarters knew to be inaccurate, suggesting deliberate deception rather than mistakes made in haste.

  Newspapers were told that the IRA had opened fire first and that Hanna had been killed in a ‘crossfire’. Hours later it was admitted that no guns had been found. Two days later a Belfast newspaper carried a police claim that the fourth IRA man had been armed and it was he who had opened fire. When the SAS men came to account for their actions at an inquest two years later, no evidence was offered that the fourth man had opened fire. Instead the soldiers said they had seen ‘flashes’ and heard what they believed to be gunshots.

  While inaccurate information on whether the terrorists were armed might have been released accidentally, other elements of the version given to the press were deliberately misleading according to an Army officer then serving at Lisburn who was fully briefed on the operation. Journalists were told that the soldiers who took part were not SAS but one of the ‘SAS-type units’, which had been set up the previous summer. The Belfast Telegraph reported, ‘Security chiefs – pleased with the success of the SAS-type stake-out at the depot – are considering stepping up “undercover” operations in Belfast and Londonderry.’ The officer confirms that the claim that an ‘SAS-type unit’ or Close Observation Platoon, as they are properly known, was used was untrue and designed to ‘deter’ the IRA.

  Press officers also claimed that security at the depot had been stepped up following a statement in An Phoblacht/Republican News, the Sinn Fein paper, that the IRA was going to target communications centres. In fact the SAS had been there as a result of information from an informer. Admitting to foreknowledge of an IRA operation can cause the Army problems, since it could prompt questions about whether it was necessary to use force at all or whether other measures could have been used to protect life and property.

  Some Army officers told the press that William Hanna was a member of a loyalist paramilitary gang. Whether or not this was true should have had no bearing on the case; and it appears that this was an attempt to deflect any sympathy which might have attached to the accidental killing of a passer-by.

  The Provisionals issued a statement saying that the men had been captured but were ‘summarily shot in an orgy of British Army and RUC concentrated fire’. The IRA, apparently in reference to the stated desire of Army commanders to frighten it through increased undercover activities, added, ‘Death is no stranger or deterrent to the volunteers of the Irish Republican Army.’ An estimated 2000 people joined the funeral procession for the three bombers. The mainly Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) said the killings were part of a ‘shooting-without-question’ policy by the Army and asked for an inquiry into the incident – a request which was turned down by Roy Mason, the then Northern Ireland Secretary.

  At HQNI, Lisburn, there was jubilation following the shooting. It was felt a great success had been scored against the Provisionals. The view at RUC headquarters, Knock, was different. Jack Hermon, Deputy Chief Constable, is said to have told Major General Trant forcefully at one of their regular meetings that he did not want shoot-outs on the streets of Belfast. Senior officers at Knock appear to have succeeded in checking the Army’s desire for more undercover operations of the Ballysillan kind in Belfast. It was to be ten years before another person died in an SAS operation in Belfast, and that was a passer-by who was not a member of a paramilitary gang.

  Despite the desire at Lisburn to step up covert SAS operations and the increase in intelligence information available, it remained difficult for intelligence specialists to
gain reliable foreknowledge of a terrorist attack. Most informer or ‘tout’ intelligence was extremely vague. A certain person was going to be killed, for example, but the tout didn’t know where or when. As a result many operations by the SAS, COPs and 14 Company produced no information, no arrests and no dead terrorists.

  Unsuccessful operations of this kind led to Army impatience with informers and the Intelligence Corps briefers or ‘green slime’ as they are known in special forces slang – a reference to the Int Corps’ bright green beret – who liaise with them. ‘Soldier I’, an SAS sergeant who subsequently wrote his memoirs, remembered an operation which produced no results: ‘Bastard, I thought, all this pissing about for nothing! The sharp acid of frustration started to well up and corrode my insides. My skull seemed to grow tighter and press in on my brain. The fucking tout had got it wrong. How much was the green slime paying him anyway?’

  By late 1978 it had become clear that the use of the SAS carried political risks. Killing the wrong person, particularly if they are unarmed or not members of a paramilitary group, can carry a heavy political penalty. It confirms a belief among many Catholics that the SAS are a force of state executioners. The death of William Hanna marked the beginning of a string of mishaps for the SAS.

  The month after Ballysillan a group of four SAS men travelled to Dunloy in County Antrim. The village is set in close, rolling country. Its Catholic population reside in a predominantly Protestant area. Outside the village, on the side of a hill overlooking the road from Ballymena to Ballymoney is a small, disused graveyard. It is connected to a small road which runs up the hill by a track with hedges on both sides.

  Quite close to where the path enters the graveyard and fairly central to the small, square, burial area which is surrounded by a hedge is a fallen headstone. It was underneath this slab that John Boyle, the sixteen-year-old son of a local farmer, made what he must have thought an exciting discovery. Secreted beneath the slab was an Armalite rifle, a pistol and other terrorist paraphernalia. John rushed home to his father, Con Boyle, who immediately phoned the police.